THEATRE IN OTTAWA IN THE 1930s: A MEMOIR

J.M.C. Meiklejohn

Edited by Denis W Johnston

Michael Meiklejohn (1906-89) joined the Ottawa Drama League on his arrival in Canada in 1930, and became one of the ODL's most prominent members over the ensuing thirty-five years. In this memoir, written about 1981 and found among his private papers after his death, Mr Meiklejohn offers his observations and describes his activities as a young actor, director, and stagehand with one of Canada's leading 'little theatres' in the 1930s.

Dès son arrivée au Canada en 1930, Michael Meiklejohn (1906-1989) se mit de l'Ottawa Drama League don't il devint, au cours des trente-cinq années suivantes, l'un des membres les plus en vue. Dans ce mémoire, rédigé vers 1981 et trouvé parmi ses effets personnels après sa mort, M. Meiklejohn offre ses observations et décrit ses activités comme jeune acteur, metteur en scène, et machiniste au sein d'un des 'petits théâtres' les plus actifs des années 1930.

Michael Meiklejohn's career in Canadian theatre is remarkable for both its length and its breadth. He joined the Ottawa Drama League (founded in 1913) on his arrival in Canada in 1930; and he remained a vital member of the ODL, except while serving overseas during World War II, until 1965. In Ottawa in the 1930s, he acted for such luminaries as Rupert Caplan, Rupert Harvey, and Lord Bessborough, and opposite Bessborough's son the Viscount Duncannon. After the war Mr Meiklejohn became one of the Drama League's foremost stage directors, working with such future professionals as Bruce Swerdfager, Betty Leighton, Amelia Hall, and Rich Little. He served as vice-president of the Ottawa Drama League for several years, and as president from 1957 to 1959. In the 1950s he was also chairman of the Eastern Ontario Drama League, a member of the Ontario Drama Council, and a governor of the Dominion Drama Festival.

In the years following World War II, Mr Meiklejohn became one of the few directors in Canada concerned with developing new Canadian scripts, at a time when the idea was not a fashionable one. At two successive DDF finals, his entry from the Ottawa Little Theatre won the Sir Barry Jackson Award for best production of a Canadian play. Both of these were new plays by the young playwright Robertson Davies: Eros at Breakfast in 1948 and Fortune, My Foe in 1949. In addition, Eros at Breakfast was chosen to represent Canada in a presentation of international amateur theatre at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. In 1950 Mr Meiklejohn was named recipient of the Canadian Drama Award, by then a national award recognizing outstanding contributions to Canadian theatre.¹ Other CDA winners that year included Charles Rittenhouse and Gratien Gélinas.

From 1948 to 1955 Mr Meiklejohn was a theatre consultant with the Physical Fitness Division of the Department of National Health and Welfare. As such he was the first federal civil servant, in the era before the Canada Council, charged with coordinating theatrical activity all across Canada. Mr Meiklejohn was a gifted teacher, and his teaching in this period ranged literally from sea to sea. His friends and his contacts comprised an entire generation of theatrical leaders in Canada.

Mr Meiklejohn moved to British Columbia in 1965 to become Registrar of Royal Roads Military College near Victoria. He and his wife Barbara, also an outstanding actor, director and teacher, quickly became theatrical leaders in their new community. They directed and acted in many amateur and professional productions through the 1960s and 1970s. Their last theatrical collaboration was a series of liturgical plays produced in the early 1980s at St John's Anglican Church in Victoria. These were thought-provoking choral dramas, written by Michael Meiklejohn and directed by Barbara Meiklejohn, which were performed as part of the Easter services and the 125th anniversary celebrations of that church. It was, in a sense, appropriate therefore that, after a long and productive life, Mr Meiklejohn should have died on Good Friday, 1989.

In the late 1960s Mr Meiklejohn became one of Canada's pioneer historians in Canadian theatre. His duties as Registrar of Royal Roads involved annual recruitment trips, which enabled him to re-establish contact with the many theatre people whom he knew from his years as the federal government's itinerant theatre expert. Beginning in 1965, he conducted audiotaped interviews with literally dozens of key figures in the development of Canadian theatre in the years just before and just after World War II. Copies of most of Mr Meiklejohn's interviews reside in the Sound and Moving Image Division, National Archives of Canada, with smaller collections in the Provincial Archives of British Columbia and the McPherson Library of the University of Victoria.

Mr Meiklejohn was a delightful raconteur. In fact, listening to his theatrical reminiscences was a major influence in my pursuing a doctorate in Canadian theatre history. In order to preserve his anecdotal style, I have kept textual changes to a minimum. Minor infelicities, such as in word-usage or punctuation, have been corrected but not flagged. Occasional cuts are marked by ellipses, and interpolations by square brackets. All endnotes are editorial additions. The original manuscript is deposited in the National Archives of Canada.²

The first production of the Ottawa Drama League in the 1930-31 season was The Devil's Disciple by G.B. Shaw. It was directed by Rupert Caplan, with Dorothy White as assistant director. Rupert came down for the weekend. He rehearsed all day Sunday. As I remember, Dorothy held one rehearsal during the week. I was cast as Major Swindon, just one-and-a-half hours after I first opened the door of the Little Theatre, which was I believe just starting its second season in that location. The building, converted from an early Protestant church, was a very handsome one. The auditorium seated 498, which (as it was less than 500) allowed it not to pay taxes as a theatre. It was blue and gold, with a very handsome gold proscenium arch and a lovely front curtain which was blue with vertical purple folds and a gold reverse.

The cast was headed by John Roger Watkins-Pitchford, an exceedingly fine-looking actor, tall and well built with bright blue eyes and truly Anglo-Saxon flaxen hair. It was a very good casting for the tinsel heroics of Dick Dudgeon. The minister was played by Shirley MacDonald, a strong plain-spoken actor with plenty of energy and no pretensions. Audrey Graves, an ex-professional with a lovely speaking voice and a true talent for relaxation and serenity, played Judith Anderson. General Johnny Burgoyne was played by the superb actor Steve Brodie.³ Bald as a coot, bright of eye, staccato in delivery, and with a slight lisp, he had a sharp ear for vocal nuance that made him the perfect Shavian actor. Some years later, when the CBC was formed, Steve became the first director of announcers for that organization.

At the first rehearsal I attended I was told that I was not to play Major Swindon, but would play a small part as Uncle Willie. I refused to have any part of this, handed the book back, and left the theatre. Later that day I was phoned by Rupert Caplan who apologized and asked me to return to the cast. This was a singularly fortunate occurrence for me. It established me as a positive character with the theatre, but also started a friendship with Rupert. I never had a chance to act for him after this production, but we met on a number of public occasions in the next thirty years, and he always went out of his way to give public demonstration of a personal regard, in a very flattering way. My memory of the production is that it was a successful one. I think probably that the effects of the Depression were just starting to make themselves felt. Rupert ended his connection with Ottawa theatre at the end of that season, and Theo Deblois ceased to be paid secretary. I was not connected with the theatre during the next season, during which I was living in Montreal.⁴ This was the year that the Depression really hit Eastern Canada. Panhandlers were common on Sparks Street in Ottawa and on St Catherine in Montreal. The Little Theatres experienced an alarming fall-off in popular support. I attended one performance by the Montreal Repertory Theatre that winter, in Westmount Town Hall. I don't remember the play, but I do remember the rather tatty mock-up set and the extremely uncomfortable seats.

Also that spring I attended a performance by the British Players of The Barretts of Wimpole Street directed by Sir Barry Jackson. I notice that my souvenir programme calls it the company's 'first visit.' It was in fact the last cross-Canada tour of a British company. They played in repertory with Yellow Sands by Eden Phillpotts and She Stoops to Conquer as the additional plays.⁵ I saw only the one play, and I guess that somebody else paid for the tickets. I was not spending any money that winter.

About a week before I saw this production in March 1931, Lord Bessborough arrived in Canada.⁶ As one chapter closed the next was opening. By early June I was back in Ottawa, working for the British Ministry of Pensions in the Journal Building and living as a 'paying guest' with Mary Edwards, who ran a private school for boys in New Edinburgh. Miss Edwards, as she was universally known in Ottawa, was a character, and an Edwardian, if the pun can be excused. She looked vaguely like Mary Tudor. Her hair, which was abundant, was always jet black, and she used very pale mauve powder with reckless abandon. When she was dressed up to go to the theatre she was a wonderful sight, as she had a great deal of style and loved flamboyant garments. She was an expert at making entrances. In a tailored riding habit, breeches, hand-made riding boots, a snow-white stock, a hunting bowler and a riding crop, she was a truly formidable sight. Mary Edwards was a very kind person. She loved good food, good conversation, a drink, and the theatre.

I was not the only 'P.G.' [paying guest] at Miss Edwards'. There were also Miss Wills, small and sharp and vaguely connected with Gold Flake and Capstan,⁷ and Mrs Edgerson, very large, very much dressed-up and always just about to go out to play bridge. ('Auction' bridge I suspect; contract and Culbertson were still in their infancy.) But the star boarder was Miss McQueen. Already in her late eighties when I first knew her, she was as sharp as a whip when she chose to be. . . . She loved going out for a drive. At the time of an election she was asked by the local Conservative association to act as chaperone in the car that was sent around to pick up all the old ladies to take them to the poll. She came home, triumphantly, after a lovely day proclaiming, 'Of course, I voted Liberal!' She came from Prescott, where her father had been a doctor. He was said to have been the regimental surgeon in a Highland Regiment which had been settled in Eastern Ontario on disbandment. She remembered her father being called out at the time of the Fenian raids and her mother telling the servant girl to put the horse in the trap and go down to bring her father back from the battlefront, to have his lunch!

. . . Having led you into one diversion I think I should lead you into another, and describe the organization of the Ottawa Drama League as I remember it at this particular period. This group, under one name or another, was founded prior to the First World War and operated in the little auditorium in the National Museum on Argyle Street. Some time during this early period it employed a professional director called Major Loring, who was I believe the son of Marie Tempest.⁸ When the Parliament Building was burnt down in 1916, Parliament took over the Museum building and the Drama League was forced to hire the Russell Theatre on Sparks Street, near Elgin, for its productions. When the federal government bought the Russell Theatre as part of its plan for the construction of a National War Memorial, it was decided to open a campaign for the construction of a Little Theatre in Ottawa. Colonel Henry Osborne, who had just been appointed Canadian Commissioner on the International War Graves Commission, was a prime mover in this campaign. At every Drama League show he appeared on stage to advertise the bond issue, which eventually raised the money for the purchase of the building occupied by the Wesleyan Methodist Church (at the corner of King Edward Avenue at Rideau Street) and its modification into a theatre. The extent of the sum raised by this issue was, as I remember, in the area of a hundred thousand dollars. Nearly half of this amount was contributed by Mr H.S. Southam, the owner of the Ottawa Citizen. In addition there was a mortgage of a slightly lesser amount. The existence of this mortgage became extremely important in the difficult financial history of the building. Since it was the first charge against any profits made by the League, it was possible during the coming difficult financial days of the Depression to stave off any possible raid upon the assets of the League by unhappy bondholders. In the event, no such raid ever took place and in the end the accepted morality of the Board was that the money spent on the purchase of bonds should be regarded as donations to a good artistic cause. This was vaguely comic, because initially the Board was in fact a committee of bondholders. As the Depression ground its way through the hungry thirties the number of bond holders with a continued interest in the theatre diminished to such an extent that it was not possible to obtain even the semblance of a quorum at the annual meeting, and it was found expedient to enlist all holders of season's tickets into the general membership of the theatre so as to create a tangible democratic entity to give authority to the continuation of the business of the theatre. During this early period the membership in the Board reflected the Ottawa society of the day, centred on Government House and generally resident in Sandy Hill and Rockcliffe. As President of the League, Duncan Campbell Scott, a senior federal deputy minister and Canada's premier poet, gave a clear-cut and positive artistic direction to the organization. He stressed artistic integrity above commercial success and saw the theatre as an important cultural influence for Ottawa and for Canada. His great height, and his austere and pale Scandinavian face, gave him a formidable presence. He had the classic immobility of an Ice-King. He was revered and listened to. Among the members of the Board at this time were:

- Henry Osborne, whom I have already mentioned.
- Colonel O.M. Biggar, partner in the firm of Smart and Biggar, Canada's premier patent attorneys.
- Betty Cruickshank, wife of the president of the firm that supplied most of the office machinery to the federal government.
- Bill Cromarty, senior architect in the National Parks Branch.
- Leslie Chance, then Secretary to the National Pension Commission.
- D. Roy Kennedy, chairman of the Ottawa School Board and a prominent Ottawa lawyer.
- Jack Aylen, who was Dr Scott's brother-in-law and a member of the legal firm Aylen and Aylen, which represented the great Maclaren lumber firm in Ottawa. He was one of the few lawyers in Ottawa qualified at both the Quebec and the Ontario Bar.
- Howard Stannard, a rugged New England industrialist, manager of a hosiery mill in Hull.
- Dorothy White, who for the next twenty-five years was going to be the prime mover and doer in the Ottawa theatre, and who was a granddaughter of the great George Brown of the Toronto Globe. She had been a society figure in Ottawa and was also an established actress. I will be talking much more about Dorothy when writing about the latter half of the decade.

On my return to Ottawa early in the 1931-32 season, I was not a member and did not become one for a little time.⁹ Some time in that season I played Bluntschli, the lead in a production of Shaw's Arms and the Man, for a group called the Garrick Players in the Little Theatre. This was a result of a policy to increase the use of the theatre facilities by independent groups at minimal rentals. I played opposite Mary Laidlaw, daughter of Dr Campbell Laidlaw, as Raina. Mary subsequently went to London and trained at RADA. On her return she married an American engineer and settled in Montreal. For many years she played professionally in radio dramas directed by Rupert Caplan.

I don't remember very much about my performance in Arms and the Man or the production as a whole, but I think that I was not very well cast in this romantic role. I think that I was probably much more satisfactory as Major Petkoff, in a production during my university years. My rather show-off bombastic style of playing was much better suited to the latter part.

Perhaps a better casting was the part of Willie in a sentimental drawing-room comedy called Mrs Moonlight [by Benn W. Levy] which the Drama League offered that season. The leads were carried by the beautiful Audrey Graves and Roy Kennedy, whom I do not remember as an actor of any merit except perhaps a certain pawky Celtic sentimentality. I was cast opposite Julia MacBrien, the RADA-trained daughter of General J.H. MacBrien, the head of the RCMP. A strong influence in my theatrical education, Julia was an actress of considerable force and style with most unusual dark good looks, which owed quite a lot to her reportedly Cree grandmother. The play was directed (or 'produced' as we used to say in those days) by Audrey Graves.

This was the season in which the influence of Lord Bessborough first started to be felt. At the end of October in 1932, a meeting was held in Government House in Ottawa of a group of people who eventually became the first Governors of the Dominion Drama Festival and arranged for the first Festival to be held in Ottawa, in the Little Theatre, the following April. The people who comprised this group had been selected from every province in Canada, on the basis of recommendations made, as I understand it, by Col. Henry Osborne, who as commissioner for Allied War Graves was regularly travelling not only across Canada, but also across the Atlantic.

It is customary nowadays to regard these nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish aristocrats as rather vapid characters whose sole distinction lay in their Eton-Harrow accents, their ability to look good in a morning coat, and their apparent lack of a visible chin. Lord Bessborough was a true amateur of the theatre. His operation of his own private theatre at Stansted Park in Hampshire, his chairmanship of the British Educational Council, which had sponsored the visit of the British Players and Sir Barry Jackson to North America the previous year, had both made his position clear in this respect.¹⁰ His son Eric Duncannon came to Ottawa in the winter of 1932 and played Hamlet in an Ottawa Drama League production directed by Rupert Harvey, professional director of the Stansted Players and adjudicator of the first Dominion Drama Festival. During the next two theatre seasons Lord Duncannon played as guest lead in productions of Romeo and Juliet and James Bridie's Tobias and the Angel.¹¹ did not play in Hamlet, and was in fact too broke to afford to go and see it. In Romeo and Juliet I played a walk-on as an aged Capulet, and nightly obtained the only laugh in the production. The following year I played Old Tobit in Tobias and the Angel. Duncannon of course played the Angel. This was the production which ended so unfortunately for Rupert Harvey, when he was fired by Lord Bessborough at the dress rehearsal. In retrospect I realize that I was in a measure responsible for this unfortunate event. As usual, in all these three productions, Duncannon arrived from the U.K. with his lines learned, and his moves and business all worked out. The rest of the cast did not see their parts prior to his arrival. As Old Tobit I had two scenes in which I was not only supposed to be both blind and deaf, but was also required to speak great reams of theatrical prose taken directly from the book of Tobit. My memory says that in the whole of these two scenes I never received a motivating cue. At the dress rehearsals I was still extremely insecure. The net result was that Rupert departed for the U.K. by the next boat and I spent a long afternoon being rehearsed by His Excellency, who proved to be a helpful, kind and considerate director.

I have tried to remember, in detail, what kind of personal relationship Eric Duncannon had backstage when he was in a play. There was certainly no coffee housing [i.e. socializing after rehearsals]. He arrived on time for rehearsals, and just as soon as he was finished he left in a Government House car driven by a chauffeur. In those days the Little Theatre had just two dressing rooms (one male, the other female), and no provision for a 'star' dressing room. I have a feeling that he arrived at the theatre already made-up and that an on-stage mock-up dressing room was provided for him. His valet arrived with him and acted as a dresser. After the Romeo and Juliet production, Government House gave a formal party for the cast. I do not think that the backstage people were included. All the girls who were extras in the ballroom scene were Ottawa debutantes and so, of course, had been officially received by their Excellencies and had 'learnt how to curtsey.'

As an actor Duncannon was talented, trained, and disciplined. He had a good voice with good tone and feeling. He worked hard at rehearsals, and had excellent stage manners. In retrospect, I think that all three productions probably were planned for the Stansted Players and that his father's appointment to Canada had deprived him of the opportunity of playing the parts in England. It seems to me that he was vain and very aware of his good looks. I think there is probably a Ponsonby tradition of beauty of which he was very conscious. In Ottawa it was said that he was very good as Hamlet, but played exactly the same role in the other two plays. I recall, in contrast to this, that when in the 1934-35 season Julia MacBrien, who had played Juliet to his Romeo, had directed Edgar Wallace's melodrama about Al Capone, On the Spot, Duncannon came twice to see the production and came backstage to talk to Julie and the cast. At this date, I see that in all this we were delighted with his condescension.

The picture that I have tried to draw is of a theatre in which snobbery was an element, and social values were tremendously important; but at the same time the activity in that theatre was interesting enough to engage people of importance and to attract people of talent.

During this period, when I was becoming increasingly involved with the Drama League, I was also forming what might be called parochial contacts in the village of New Edinburgh where I lived. I played the Butler in a farce at MacKay Street United Church, where the church itself was used as the theatre auditorium. As the altar was the main structural support of the mock-up stage, a fast exit entailed a four-foot leap from the stage level to floor level. The rector of the rival Anglican church, St. Bartholomew's, just a block and a half down MacKay Street, was Archdeacon Walley, a theatre enthusiast. He decided to form a village theatre group, which became known as the 'Good Companions.' Both Mary Edwards and myself were charter members, and I continued my relationships with the group right through to the end of the decade. I remember playing in a comedy called Meet the Wife [by Lynn Starling], and the romantic lead in a play by Freddie Lonsdale called I believe The High Road. Later I helped to put together a revue, and directed several plays including one-act play entries in the Anglican and City one-act play festivals. I had many very pleasant relationships with the people I met in these activities, particularly with Courtney Bond and the girl he married, Beth Berton, and her brother Vivian. It was in a production of It Pays to Advertise ¹² that I was unwise enough to suggest a mixture of potassium nitrate and white sugar with a small drop of sulphuric acid, as a possible method of producing an explosion for the end of the play. Dramatically the results were entirely satisfactory, but Court burnt off his eyelashes and Beth was not at all pleased.

In 1933-34 Rupert Harvey became the first national regional adjudicator, visiting each DDF region. By providing one standard for all festivals, and by choosing each winner regionally, this made it possible to construct some sort of a planned programme for the Final Festival. In this decision, however, lay the seeds of dissension. At the early festivals all participants were provided with hospitality while in Ottawa, but each group had to look after its own travel expenses. With six evening performances and two matinees, it was possible to present twenty-four one-act entries during the week. At Lord Bessborough's original meeting, twelve regions had been created: three in the Maritimes, one each for the Western provinces, three for Ontario and two for Quebec. In theory the first and second prize winners in each region would have provided a full final programme. But all sorts of other factors crept in. For example, it was desirable that at least two French programmes should be provided. This was in a measure assisted by the creation of special French-speaking competitions in Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec, which would provide the six plays needed for two completely francophone programmes. The fact that the Cercle Molière de Saint-Boniface under the talented direction of Monsieur et Madame Boutal frequently took first place in the Manitoba regional festival, started to put any neat solution out the window. Furthermore, every year there were one or two plays which tended to turn up as the presentation of two or more groups. There was nothing unusual, for example, to get two productions of The Happy Journey in a single region. These situations made it necessary for the executive of the DDF to give the regional adjudicator some discretionary power. While it was possible, when the DDF was strictly a one-act festival, to ensure that regional winners were given invitations to the finals, it was still not possible to avoid apparent injustices in the distribution of places at the finals. This situation was exacerbated by the requirement that the local host committee for the Final Festival present a full programme.

No invitations for the finals could be issued until the regional adjudicator had completed his cross-Canada trip and had reported to the Executive. As soon as invitations went out, umbrage was taken all over Canada. Particularly in Regina and Winnipeg, local drama critics took off in abusing the Executive of the DDF, the adjudicator, and anybody else who seemed abusable. As Canadians, everyone indulged in the universal sport of abusing other Canadians. The heat generated by these activities each year erupted both in the annual Court of the Governors of the DDF, and in the meetings of the Executive. At the beginning the flak originated with F.W. Morris in the Winnipeg Free Press. Later the region most dissatisfied was Saskatchewan. In those days, when train travel was the only means of communication, it is obvious that the Ottawa committee had to make the decisions, otherwise there would have been no festival. The appointment of the travelling regional adjudicator did a great deal to educate theatre people in standards of acting and production. This education must be regarded as an important element in creating a climate in which professional theatre could be recreated in Canada in the 1940s. Rupert Harvey was the first of these travelling adjudicators. He was careful, he was thorough, and he was articulate.

Before Rupert set out across Canada, the Ottawa Drama League hired him to produce one play for the opening of the 1933-34 season. This play was The Skin Game by John Galsworthy. The lead in the production was played by Janet Smart, a RADA graduate. After the war Janet, who had by then become Janet Smith, was president of the Victoria Theatre Guild. I had a small part as Mr Jackson, an agricultural labourer. This was not an outstanding casting, but the part did at least bring me to Rupert's attention, and gave me the opportunity to play a second lead in Tobias and the Angel the next season. At the end of that season I made my first essay backstage at the Little Theatre, as ASM to a production of Elmer Rice's See Naples and Die. This was a fun production with an enormous cast. The director, Leslie Chance, collected a fine team of players, including Sylvia Smellie, now the wife of Charles Ritchie, the diplomat diarist, and Yousuf Karsh as the second Bulgarian Assassin. The leads were Tom Palmer and Kay Lewis, both of whom turned professional in later years. Kay went off and trained in London, and for a number of years ran a repertory company in Margate. Tom turned professional with the John Holden Players in Winnipeg, and when that company folded, moved to New York. During the second world war, he ran a stock company on Tottenham Court Road in London, providing entertainment for U.S. servicemen on leave. He now lives in Hollywood.

In the 1934-35 season, as well as playing Tobias, I had a nice little part as Hunter the valet in the very effective murder mystery Ten Minute Alibi [by Anthony Armstrong]. Tom Palmer was again in the lead and I began to learn a great deal from him about the importance of setting business. As each scene was blocked he would take time, meticulously, to rerun every single piece of business. This was particularly important in this play, because of its construction. In the first act, the hero dreams about how he will kill the villain. In the second act he does it, but a few details go wrong. Each of these details must be carefully placed. Tom's skill in 'placing' such business was superb. In the third act the detectives try and run the whole thing back, but at the critical point they fail to understand and the hero gets away with it. The key element was a working clock, which had to be operated from backstage throughout the duration of the performance. The constructor and operator was a lad called Kennedy, who gave his whole creative energy to his task. He was a great talker. As the run of the show progressed, he made it clear to all of us that, in his eyes, he was the star. We refrained from punitive action with difficulty.

This production, for me, started a very rewarding association. Kay Lewis and Tom had formed a group within the Drama League called 'The Studio Players,' with which they had produced a number of light American comedies with young casts. During 1934-35 Tom asked me to play the love interest in a play called Three-Cornered Moon [by Gertrude Tonkonogy], and also the part of the Manager in a one-act play by Sidney Box called Fantastic Flight. This was entered in the DDF regional drama festival at Kingston, and did well enough to get an invitation to participate in the final festival. Malcolm Morley was the regional adjudicator that year, and I was lucky enough to meet him. Later, after the war, he became director for the 'Stage Society' which later turned into the Canadian Repertory Theatre, the first professional company in Canada after the Second World War.¹³

Tom Palmer in those days belonged strictly to the Kaufman-and-Hart school of comedy direction: get your cast onto their toes and keep them at a full gallop till the final curtain comes down. Tom also had another important gift. He was an extremely fast study, and he expected to know his whole script before he started rehearsals. He would shake you to the core by prompting you from the back row of the darkened theatre when you were first trying to 'go-it' without the book.

I think of the 1934-35 season as the beginning of a period of superior productions directed for the Little Theatre by Dorothy White. In April of 1934, in the second Dominion Drama Festival, most of us had seen Joan Miller playing Queen Elizabeth in the last act of Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen, produced by the Vancouver Little Theatre, with Bill Buckingham as Essex and Guy Glover as the Jester. We were thrilled at the power of the play, and were delighted when it was announced as a play in the [next ODL] season. As the result of hosting the DDF, the Little Theatre had greatly improved its production facilities. In addition to the original set of grey drapes, a complete set of blacks had been added. The number of baby spots had been doubled and a second traveller installed. For Elizabeth the Queen, Dorothy got Kathleen Fenwick from the National Gallery to design and make the costumes. Vern Ridgeway, an American who was an industrial artist, designed a wonderful set.¹⁴ Its chief element was a set of table seats and stools which could be arranged into a number of groupings, including a wide-mouthed 'U' form. This in effect enabled the audience to be at the very heart of the council meeting, which constituted so much of the activating action of the play. Elizabeth was played by Nancy Barrow, an excellent actress with a beautiful full voice. Edward Wade Devlin, a good romantic actor, played Essex; Humphrey Porritt, who had a pronounced lisp, made it an asset in his characterization of the younger Cecil; and Roger Watkins-Pitchford was excellently cast as Raleigh. I had a small part as Captain Marvel, the commander of Essex's guards. The resulting production was colourful, dramatic, and effective.

In succeeding years, Dorothy directed Saint Joan and Mary of Scotland for the Drama League; and in 1938 she directed The Petrified Forest as the first three-act play to be presented at the DDF finals. The following year, 1938-39, she changed to a more frivolous note with French Without Tears, which won the Bessborough Trophy as the best production.¹⁵ In both these two latter plays, I was in contest for the lead. In The Petrified Forest, the lead was played by a young Vancouver actor, Dale Macdonald, who subsequently turned professional with the John Holden Players. In French Without Tears, the lead was given to Frank Templeton, a Scotsman with an English establishment voice. Frank was an architect in private practice in Ottawa, and Dale sold shoes in Ogilvy's basement. I remember Dorothy, many years later, reminiscing about those days and saying that, in both plays, she was prepared to cast any of the three of us in the lead.

On looking back over the years, I am aware of how much Dorothy White contributed to the consistently high standards of the Little Theatre. As well as being Secretary of the Board and Theatre, she undertook the day-to-day supervision of every aspect of the operation, from polishing the lobby floor to the supply of toilet paper in the lavatories, the cleanliness of the stage and workshop, the planning of seat distribution, the operation of the box office, and the annual membership campaign. As a producer, she did a very good job of picking good people for design functions, both in costume and setting. In casting a play, she took endless trouble, and was always looking for new talent.

Dorothy had a tremendously careful eye for detail. She would come backstage on opening night, and when you were hoping for a word of praise she would say 'Your shoes need shining' or 'That costume could do with a press.' As a director, she was hard-working, meticulous, and absolutely certain of the shape of every scene she was directing. Very little time was wasted in indecision. Both Barbara and I played for her on a number of occasions. Our view is that she had a very clear knowledge of what were the important elements in any particular scene, and was always prepared to sacrifice individual performance for an overall effect. She knew what she wanted the audience to be looking at, and made certain that distraction did not intrude. I remember in Mary of Scotland I was cast as Maitland, one of the leaders of the Scottish lords. In history, Maitland is always called 'The Fox', and I was trying to develop a characterization based on this. Dorothy asked me what I thought I was doing. When I explained, she said 'Michael, I did not cast you because of your knowledge of Scottish history, but because I knew you could drive a scene. Get out there and drive it!'

One remembers Dorothy as acerbic, ruthless, and unbelievably hard-working. But one also remembers her immense love for theatre in every aspect, and her tremendous personal consideration and kindness. In the period immediately after the Second World War, when Barbara and I were trying desperately to establish a family life in Canada, the arrival, year after year, of a beautiful fresh turkey from a farm at Blue Sea Lake in Quebec, just a couple of days before Christmas, was a kindness which neither of us is likely ever to forget.

In 1935-36 I was chosen to play the lead in the Little Theatre's production of Escape by John Galsworthy. This episodic play is written in the form of a prologue and eight episodes, each of the episodes being placed on a different part of Dartmoor. The protagonist Matt is on stage throughout the play. Convicted of manslaughter as a result of a fracas with a plainclothes officer, he escapes from the Penitentiary during a fog and spends two days on the run.... The part is a tremendous opportunity and I was very fortunate to be offered it. My chief recollection of the play was of the pressure to keep it moving. Dorothy was determined that scene changes shouldn't hold up the forward movement and rehearsed the stage crew as vigorously as the actors. A couple of times I was nearly caught below stage when the curtain went up on a scene.

It was in this production that I first met Eric Stangroom who was the biggest influence in my life as a theatre person. He played the clergyman in the final episode of the play. He had just come from Hamilton, where he had been instrumental in the formation of a studio group within the Hamilton Little Theatre. He had a very full theatre library and he started me reading many of the basic texts of backstage and directorial theory. It was in this period I first read Appia, Gordon Craig, and Stanislavsky. My rapidly forming intellectual approach to theatre was particularly coloured by two companion volumes, The Art of Acting and The Art of Play Direction. I have lost my copies of these works, 'lent but never returned,' and have been unable to trace the references. The latter formed the basis for my own approach to the job of director and to my teaching in the 1940s and 1950s.

As I became close friends with Eric, together we developed a close-knit relationship with a young architect, Jim Dudley. Jim, a graduate of the University of Manitoba, had been studying at M.I.T. and had been appointed to the office of the chief architect for National Parks. Jim was a wonderfully facile designer and very interested in backstage techniques. The three of us met regularly, and burnt a great deal of midnight oil arguing about theatre problems and discussing plans and projects. At about this time Julia MacBrien was directing the Edgar Wallace melodrama On the Spot, and one way and another we were all involved in the design and building of the set. The play is set in a penthouse in New York. Jim designed and constructed a wonderful cut-out backdrop which presented the whole city of New York laid out before the audience. We had been talking for some time about the texture of painted surface in the theatre. There was a teacher of Art at the Ottawa Technical School at that time, Robert Darby, who had become interested in the Little Theatre as a possible opportunity for his pupils to obtain practical experience of painting in a situation where artistic standards and public exposure were concerned. Two of his girls came in to paint sets, and one of them at least, Dorothy Pharoah, was still working on sets around Ottawa in the 1950s. Bob was a striking character. He had started his professional life as a newspaper artist in London, before the days of the photograph. He had some wonderful stories about the English Art scene around the turn of the century when Augustus John was at the height of his powers. He knew a great deal about painting, and we all learnt a great number of practical things from him. I remember that we discussed the possibility of employing the principles of pointillage to the painting of plain surfaces in a set. I can remember working on the set and sprinkling small dots of colour over the total painted area. It was a terribly tiresome method of achieving a desirable effect, but as far as I was concerned it was an important stage in my education in the arts of the theatre.

At the same time, I was also serving an apprenticeship in some of the crafts of the theatre. I became acceptable to the stage crew as a working member. I learnt to run and lash a flat, and to handle the stage rigging. I was made welcome into the little group that met after performance in 'Bill's Room.'

Bill Adkins, still alive and active in his nineties, was the permanent stage manager of the Little Theatre.¹⁶ An Englishman, he had emigrated to the prairies early in the century. He had come to Ottawa on demobilization after the First World War and had got employment as an archivist with the Indian Affairs Department, whose Deputy Minister was Duncan Campbell Scott. Dr Scott had recruited him to backstage when the Drama League was putting on plays in the National Museum. At the same time he recruited another Englishman, Bert Bristow, who was also employed as an archivist by the Indian Affairs Department. Both of these men had learnt the fundamentals of the craft of stage manager from an old professional, George Haythorne, who had come to Ottawa with a touring company from the U.K. and had stayed on. Here was a core of professional craftsmanship which ensured that every show that was produced on the Ottawa Little Theatre stage was mounted in a professional way. Bill and Bert and a journeyman electrician also called Bill comprised the essential backstage crew of the Ottawa Little Theatre. All three received some small payment from the Drama League for their work. Bill Adkins was also a subscriber. As the organization which later became the Ottawa Little Theatre developed, all annual subscribers became members entitled to vote at the General Meeting. During the whole time that I was connected with the theatre, Bill always paid for a seat though he never occupied it.

Immediately below the centre of the stage, immediately behind the orchestra pit and abutting onto the long workshop which extended the full length of the building, there was a small windowless room used by the stage crew as a changing room. Over the years, a number of rather derelict chairs and sofas found their way into this room, and it became known as 'Bill's Room.' Regular admission to this room was a very real privilege which denoted one's acceptance as a backstage person. On the last night of any show the theatre had a party for the whole cast. At the same time a special session was conducted in Bill's Room. Since the stage crew were always responsible for the final locking-up of the theatre, the sessions were apt to be protracted. The 'Bull' session that went on was lively and conducive to expanding one's creative approach to backstage problems.

At about this time, that is 1936, I again played for Dorothy White in a rather wispy and romantic little play set in Edinburgh, The Wind and the Rain [by Merton Hodge]. The Scottish background demanded a real Scottish voice and introduced to Little Theatre circles the vigorous and forthright character of Lillias Cameron. Mrs. Cameron was the wife of the Chief Veterinary Inspector of the federal Department of Agriculture. As the 'bunk-wife' in a student boarding house close to the University of Edinburgh, she gave a tremendous sense of character and locale to this play. In subsequent years she had the leading role in the organization of the Workshop One-Act Play Competition and first envisioned it as a national cultural movement. To say this is in no way to diminish the importance of the loving contribution made by Mrs R.B. McGregor Watt, whose continued hard work kept the competition moving forward into the 1970s. The leads in The Wind and the Rain were played by Madeleine Charlebois and Edward Wade Devlin.¹⁷ Teddy Devlin was one of the few creative spirits of the theatre scene of those years, a fine imaginative director and the author of some effective one-act plays. The one I remember particularly was a dramatization of the French-Canadian folk tale Rose Latulippe. This was long before the Royal Winnipeg Ballet turned this same story into a delightful one-act ballet. He produced and directed the play at about this period for the DDF regional festival, with Solange Gauthier (shortly to become Madame Yousuf Karsh) in the lead, and with Ted playing the part of the Devil.

In The Wind and the Rain I had only a small stereotype part as a vacuous young Englishman, but I had the great pleasure of playing opposite Betty Low. At that time she was on leave from Colonel De Basile's Russian Ballet, for whom she danced under the name Lvova. From her I learnt a great deal about professional attitudes and disciplines. Both during rehearsals and performances, Betty would arrive at least an hour early so that she could take advantage of an empty stage to get her daily work-out. She was very hard-working, and very sensitive to the relationships of actors to one another. I was learning more and more.

At about this time Eric decided that it was desirable to get practical experience backstage by taking full responsibility for the creation of a set for a play. Tom Palmer was directing a comedy/melodrama so typical of the commercial theatre of those days, called Post Road. He asked if he would do the set. I was very swiftly drawn in and very shortly up to my neck in it. Looking back into my records I find that Eric got the credit for set on the programme, but for many years there was a photograph of the set hanging in Bill's Room, and it was always referred to, with a laugh, as 'Michael's Set.' No model or drawings were made. Eric, Tommy, and myself met with Bill Adkins on the stage on a Sunday morning. Tommy indicated what exits and entrances he required, Bill pointed out what flats were available, and we proceeded to make it look like a 16th century tavern on the Boston Post Road.¹⁸ We decided that the room should be panelled in eight-inch hand-cut pitch pine boards. Jim Dudley designed a period fireplace for us, and I proceeded with great labour to paint every knot-hole and grain line on the whole set of flats we were using. I am no artist and I knew no short cuts to achieve quick impressionistic effects. With line upon line, though subject to a great deal of ribaldry from other members of the crew, I persisted to the end. I think that the results justified the tedious work. I had done it, and I never needed to get through that kind of labour again until I went to Victoria.

At the end of this season, Eric was chosen as director of the final play which was Captain Brassbound's Conversion, the play which G.B.S. wrote for Ellen Terry in 1906.¹⁹ In the title role we had another RADA-trained actress, Tish Wilson. She was a great character and a very dear friend of mine. Her father was the first head of civil aeronautics in Canada. She was the first woman or one of the first women in Canada to get a pilot's license.²⁰
 

Notes

THEATRE IN OTTAWA IN THE 1930s: A MEMOIR

J.M.C. Meiklejohn; Edited by Denis W Johnston

1 See JAMES HOFFMAN, 'L Bullock-Webster and the B C Dramatic School, 1921-1932,' THIC/HTC 8,2 (Fall 1987) p 208
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2 I would like to thank MRS BARBARA MEIKLEJOHN for her invaluable help in editing this manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
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3 Listed in the house programme as William Brodie
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4 According to BARBARA MEIKLEJOHN, at the end of the 1930-31 school year Michael quit his teaching position at Ashbury College in a row with the headmaster, and eked out a living in Montreal the next winter by playing bridge for money
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5 Jackson's company presented two other programmes on this tour: Quality Street by JAMES M BARRIE, and a double-bill of SHAW's The Dark Lady of the Sonnets and BARRIE's Dear Brutus
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6 The dates did not actually coincide so neatly. Bessborough arrived to take up his vice-regal duties in April 1931. The British Players toured Canada from October 1931 to April 1932, beginning and ending with engagements at His Majesty's Theatre, Montreal. See PETER BRIGG, 'Sir Barry Jackson and the Canadian Theatre,' Canadian Drama/L'Art dramatique canadien 6,2 (Fall 1980)
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7 Names of English cigarettes
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8 Indeed, Who Was Who in the Theatre, 1912-1976 lists Norman Loring (1888-1967), actor and producer, the son of Marie Tempest. Loring evidently served in the army before, during, and after World War I, and 'retired from the Canadian General Staff' in 1922 after which he continued to work extensively in professional theatre
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9 BARBARA MEIKLEJOHN notes that, since he was broke on his return from Montreal, he probably couldn't afford the membership fee to rejoin the Ottawa Drama League
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10 The British Dictionary of National Biography does not mention any such involvement with British education. The souvenir programme from the British Players' tour, however, indicates that the tour was sponsored by a Canadian organization, the National Council of Education, of which Lord Bessborough was Honourary President
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11 All of Duncannon's appearances in Canada took place during the Christmas season, evidently to take advantage of his visits from Cambridge where he was studying
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12 A three-act farce by ROI COOPER MEGRUE and W I HACKETT
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13 'First,' as usual, is a slippery label, but Mr Meiklejohn is essentially correct. While the New Play Society in Toronto and the Everyman Theatre in Vancouver both predate the Stage Society and the Canadian Repertory Theatre, they did not operate on a professional production schedule as their Ottawa counterparts did
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14 Vern Ridgeway is not listed in the programme as the set designer for this production, although he is for both The Wind and the Rain and Saint Joan in 1936
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15 Playwrights here are SHAW, Saint Joan; MAXWELL ANDERSON, Mary of Scotland; ROBERT SHERWOOD, The Petrified Forest; and TERENCE RATTIGAN, French Without Tears
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16 Adkins died in Ottawa in March 1982 at the age of 93. He was resident stage manager of the Ottawa Little Theatre for over fifty years
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17 Madeleine Charlebois is not listed in the house programme for this play, although she is for several other ODL productions in the 1930s
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18 The stage directions read, in part, 'Living room of the old Madison house in Connecticut. The entire room is panelled in pine, the ceiling beamed, the floor of wide boards.' Although the vintage of the house is not given, it seems more likely to have been 19th century than 16th century. See WILBUR DANIEL STEELE and NORMA MITCHELL, Post Road: A Comedy in Two Acts and Four Scenes (New York: Samuel French, 1935)
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19 Captain Brassbound's Conversion was produced at the Ottawa Little Theatre in February 1936. Mr Meiklejohn's statement about the origins of the play needs some qualification. According to The Theatrical Companion to Shaw, the play was given its copyright performance in 1899 and its London debut in 1900, but (as SHAW wrote) 'it did not come into the normal traffic of the English stage until 1906, when it was produced by Messrs. Vedrenne and Barker at the Court Theatre, with Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Cicely'
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20 Loetitia Wilson is now Mrs R.A. Echlin of New Paltz, New York. Her father, J.A. Wilson, was Canada's Controller of Civil Aviation from 1922 to 1941. Her brother, J. Tuzo Wilson, became one of Canada's foremost scientists. In reply to my letter of inquiry, Mrs Echlin wrote (15 September 1989) that although she took a lot of flying lessons in 1934 and even went solo, her father discouraged her career aspirations to be a pilot and she never obtained her license
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