Katharine Cornell - The 1933 Tour

The 1933 Tour

After Barretts closed, Cornell played leading parts in two plays, "Lucrece" and "Alien Corn." A considerable portion of her role in "Lucrece" was played in pantomime. Her success in "Lucrece" landed her on the cover of Time Magazine on December 26, 1932. In the article, she is quoted as saying "To act, you have to burst out spontaneously and feel constantly and deeply. So if you're too accustomed to using your head instead of your feelings you won't be able to call on your feelings when you want them. I tell young women not to come on the stage, unless there is nothing else they can be happy in."

Her next production would be Romeo and Juliet, with Guthrie as usual directing, and Cornell playing Juliet. It would be the first time either had participated in any Shakespeare play, and their inexperience showed. Moreover, Shakespeare wasn't fashionable, and his plays were not often presented in live theater, the last play being Hamlet with John Barrymore twelve years earlier. The play opened in Buffalo and had a difficult time. Her friend, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, choreographed the dance sequences. While still in Buffalo, Graham thought the Juliet costume all wrong. She bought some soft white nun's veiling, from which she fashioned a flowing robe.

The play was incorporated into a seven-month country-wide tour that would rotate three plays, Romeo and Juliet, Barretts, and Candida. Planned during the height of the Great Depression, many theater experts and actors advised against such an ambitious tour. In fact, this was the first time anyone had tried to take a legitimate Broadway show on an all-country tour, let alone three. It took them to cities such as Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, San Antonio, New Orleans, Houston, Savannah, and back up the east coast to New England. The actors assembled for the tour had to be able to play multiple parts and included Orson Welles, Basil Rathbone, Brian Aherne, and Flush.

Because movies had so completely taken over from live theater, there were major areas of the country closed off to the tour. Many stops at smaller cities hadn't seen live theater since the First World War, or ever. Nonetheless, box office records were set in most cities and town. In New Orleans, women rioted when they found out that tickets has been sold out. Variety reported that the tour gave 225 performances and played to 500,000 people. People in smaller areas would travel up to two days to see a performance, and the presenting towns would gain a small but welcome swell in revenues from restaurants and hotels as a result.

The most famous story to arise out of the tour came when the troupe was to play Barretts in Seattle on Christmas night, which was Guthrie's hometown. They planned to arrive in the morning, and as it normally takes six hours to set up the stage, do lighting and blocking checks and distribute costumes, they figured there would be plenty of time.

However, it had been raining for 23 days, and roads and railroads were being washed out. The train moved very slowly, often stopping. The theater management telegraphed that the venue had been completely sold out for the evening performance and wanted regular updates to insure the public that the production was on its way. The troupe kept up the telegraphs, but eventually even these lines gave out. By that evening, the troupe was still far from the city and gave up hope of doing any performance that night. The train finally arrived in Seattle at 11:30 pm. There was a lively crowd waiting for them at the train station, and the manager of the Metropolitan Theatre came up to Cornell and informed her that the audience was still waiting. Guthrie asked, "how many?" "The entire house," was the reply, "Twelve hundred people." Cornell was shocked and asked, "Do you mean they want a performance at this hour?" "They're expecting it," the manager replied.

All 55 members of the cast and crew immediately drove to the theater. Sets and props had to be protected in the downpour. As soon as the troupe arrived at the theater, the audience streamed back into their seats. Cornell decided that the audience could watch the sets for "Barretts" be unpacked and set up, and so raised the curtain. The stage hands, sound checks and electricians worked to accomplish in one hour what normally took six. By 1 am, they were ready to begin the play. Mosel writes, "The audience had paid the actors the supreme compliment of having the faith to wait for them, and the actors responded with the kind of performance actors wish they could give every day of their lives." When the final curtain fell at 4 am, they received more curtain calls than they ever had.

Ray Henderson, the troupe's publicist and manager, managed to get this story into every newspaper in America the next day. Alexander Woollcott established a radio tradition on his program, The Town Crier. For years afterward, every Christmas, Woollcott would tell the story of the Seattle audience that waited until 1 am for to see Katharine Cornell 'emerge from the flood' and give the performance of her life. It was Woollcott who nicknamed Cornell "First Lady of the Theatre."