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Congratulatory Messages received at the outset of THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY.

 

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fth Avenue-New York 21,N.¥

 

    

   

 

EIGHTY-SIXTH CONGRESS " : “ay
Congress of the United States cm
Bouse of Representatives

 

Through Senator Thruston B. Morton, I have
learned of the ceremonies to be held in the Old
Kentucky Home Park at Bardstown to perpetuate

the memory and spirit of Stephen Foster.

The songs of Stephen Foster have won a special
place in the heart of America. They have en-
riched the culture of our country and they are
sung by people throughout the world. Itis most
fitting that his birthday mark the beginning of a
project in honor of his genius, now the possession

of mankind,

Itis a pleasure to send greetings to all gathered
at Bardstown for this purpose on July fourth.

Sincerely,

Presi

dent

ent 7

Wlnited Glates Denate

WASHINGTON, BD. C.

Nene WG A _SYMPBSNHA Mayas x

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Mrs. Lawrence W. Adams
Ralph M. A. Alexander

A. & P. Company

Mr. and Mrs. Rai Baillie
Baldwin Motel

Ballard Marathon Service
Mrs. E. R. Barbre

Bardstown Cab Company
Bardstown Chamber of Commerce
Bardstown Finance Company
Bardstown Flower Shop
Bardstown Laundry

Bardstown Volunteer Fire Department
L. W. Bare

Barnes and Britton

Barnes Produce Company
Barton Distilling Company
Beam’s Liquor Store

Lucian C. Beeler

Mr. and Mrs. Bev Beeler
Behr’s 5 & 10c Store
Bennett, Mattingly and Hilton
Joe Blair

Blanchett Electric

Frank L. Bloner

Boone’s Butcher Shop

Mr. and Mrs. Harold Browning
Brown Refrigeration

Rev. J. T. Burdine, Jr.

Cliff Buzick Lumber Yard

Mr. and Mrs. John R. Cauble
Paul Clayton

Cleveland Welding

Clore’s Market

Coca-Cola Bottling Company
Colonial Flowers

Mrs. Catherine Conner

Mrs. James F. Conway

Elmer Coomes

Credit Bureau of Nelson County
Ted Crosswaite

Crume Drug Store

Mrs. Ernest Crume

Mrs. P. Burr Crume

William Davenport

Distillery Transfer Service
Dobbs Brothers Family Shoe Store
Double Spring Distillery
Marion Drew

Ray Durk

Mr. C. Allen Duvall

Farm and Home Company
Flaget Whiskey

Mrs. Ray G. Foster

John A. Geis, Jr.

John A. Geoghegan

Sam Gilbert

Glencoe Distilling Company
Greenwell Brothers

Ben T. Guthrie

Hall Electric & Appliance Company
Floyd Hail

Polly Hall

Hall’s Shell Service
Henderson Hite Company

Hill Pan Am Oil

Hoffman Distributing Company
Chester Holt

Home Tax Service

E. E. Hubbard

L. P. Hubbard

Hurst’s Restaurant

Mrs. L. M. Ice

Irvines Tourist Court

Mrs. Bryan Heady

Joe’s Whiskey Store

Hugh M. Johnson

Jones Furniture Store

Jones’ Kentucky Home Restaurant
Mrs. Donald Keene

John S. Kelley

Rev. Robert P. Kelley

Kentucky Chemical & Supply Co., Inc.

Old Kentucky Home Motel

Kentucky Liquor and Wine Company
L. R. Kidwell

Kroger Company

Wallace E. Abeli

Mr. and Mrs. Lester Abelson
Mr. and Mrs. Calvin K. Arnold
Hagan Ballard

Bardstown Finance Company
Bardstown Transfer Line, Inc.
Mildred Beam

Mr. and Mrs. T. Jere Beam
Mrs. Louis Benoist

Bloomfield Garden Club

Blue Grass Cooperage Company
Mr. and Mrs. Cliff Buzick
Caney Creek Community Center
Freeman Carothers

Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Chandler
Frank Chelf

City of Bardstown

Sen. and Mrs. Earle C. Clements
Dr. and Mrs. Farris Clifton
Coca-Cola Bottling Company
Mr. and Mrs. Earle Combs
Conn Organ Studios

Most Rev. Francis R. Cotton

Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Barry Bingham
Commonwealth of Kentucky
Conway Motor Company

Mrs. Ted Cronk

Yancey L. Barber Cummins

Dr. W. K. Crume

R. R. Dawson Bridge Company
S. R. Demaree ,
Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Despain

GENERAL MEMBERSHIP OF DRAMA ASSOCIATION

Mrs. Martha C. Lewis
Life Insurance of Kentucky
Linder Jewelers

Lindsey Service Station
Louise Beauty Shop
Louisville Stores

Gene Lowe

Mrs. Lovell Marks
William H. May

G. L. McClain

Chester F. McLure
Mary C. Metcalf

Meyers Firestone Store
Mi-Gas Company

Leora Miller

Model Liquor Store

B. J. Nally

Sam Nally Companies
J. J. Newberry Company
J. C. Newcomb & Son
T. B. Nichols

Adrian 0’ Daniel

Dr. William Oakley

Old Talbott Tavern
Polley’s Used Auto Parts
Mrs. E. D. Porter

Salt River Rural Electric Cooperative Corp.

Red Cedar Truck Line
Dr. J. P. Reynolds

C. Randall Riley

Rizer Brothers

Roberts Marathon

Mrs. Nancy Rouse
S.-M. Samuels

T. W. Samuels Distillery

Seeger Service Station
J. H. Settles

Sexton Company

Rev. Robert G. Shaver
Shehan Motor Company
Simpson Service Station
Mrs. B. B. Sisco

Smith Cafe

Spalding & Sons

Dr. Charles B. Spalding
Elizabeth W. Spalding
Spank Oil Company
Vangie Sparrow

Standard Oil of Kentucky
Standard Publishing Company
Dr. A. D. Steely
Stephen Foster Hotel
Stephen Foster Music Cleb
Mrs. Nancy C. Stiles
Nash Stoner

Sympson Motor Company
John C. Talbott

Towne Cafe

Triangle Engineering Company, Inc.

Uptown Liquor Store
Dr. C. M. Vaupel
Elsie C. Wade
WBRT, Radio Station
John Weaver

Mrs. J. J. Wheat
Tom M. Williams, Jr.
Wilson Motel

Jouett Wood

Charles Woodson
Paul York

Vincent Zachem
Joseph Zehnder

Gordon Adams

A. K. Aikers

Mrs. Dewey Allen
Sylvester Allen

Leon Applegate

C. D. Arnold

Mrs. C. K. Arnold
Mrs. Grace S. Arnold
Kathy Arnold

Elmer Ballard

Leon Ballard

J. T. Banning
Bardstown Manufacturing Co.

 

Mrs. J. Edward Bennett
Bernard Blair

Beta Sigma Phi
Bethlehem Academy

Mrs. Frank Bohn

Daisy Boone

Mrs. Virginia Boone

Mr. Selby Bowling

Mrs. Vernon Brashear
Sue Brent

Mrs. Mildred Briney
George S. Brown, Jr.

Joe Mason Brown
William Brooks

Mildred Brunson

Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Buckman
John Burris

Mrs. Florida Byers

Mrs. Albert Campbell
Howard Campbell

Mrs. Lil Carothers
Francis L. and Anna Cecil
C. L. Coffey

Mr. and Mrs. James Conner
John B. Coomes

Nellie V. Coomes

Miss Nora Coomes
Shirley Cross

Mrs. Curran Crume

Harry Davis

Charles J. Delaney

Mr. and Mrs. Willis Drake
Isaac W. Dugan

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Elston
Mrs. Victor Fister
Richard P. Floyd

Mildred Forrill

Dr. Forsee

A. B. Foster

Judge W. R. Gentry

W. R. Gentry, Jr.
Georgetown College

Mr. |. D. Greer

A. B. Grigsby

Mr. and Mrs. Lee Grigsby
Marie Guthrie

Sabina Guthrie

Miss Emily Hall

Miss Leslie Hall

Mrs. J. W. Hammond
W. H. Hansen

Herbert Hardesty

Alice C. Harned

Emily B. Hart

Mrs. J. L. Hayden

Tobey Head

Mr. and Mrs. Charles 0. Hewitt
Franklin Hibbs

Phebe B. Hibbs

Mary Hickman

Ida Belle Hicks

Mrs. Orin Hill

Mrs. Paul Hohman
Thelma Holcombe

Dr. Edward E. Hord

Joan Howard

Mrs. Paul Howard

Anne Hurst

Julian Hurst

J. W. Hutchison

Mrs. Jack Irvine

Bill James

Jack Jameson

Mrs. Ballard Jewell

Keen Johnson

Bernard Keene

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Keene, Sr.
Dorothy H. Langford
Walter Langsford, Jr.
Roy L. Lawrence

Fred Leathers, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Fred Leathers, Sr.
Andy Lewis

Mrs. N. W. Lewis

Reva Lewis

Richard |. Martin

Mrs. Cliff Matthews

LIFETIME MEMBERS

Dr. J. T. Dorris

Falls City Theatre Equipment Co.
James A. Farley

Farmer’s Bank and Trust
Mrs. Ruth Floyd

Mary Louise Foust

Froedtert Malt Corporation
M. F. Frye

Ernest Fulton

Paul Gannon .
Geoghegan and Mathis

Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Getz
Glenmore Distilling Company
Dr. and Mrs. C. F. Gobert
Dr. and Mrs. James B. Graham
O. E. Grigsby

Ralph Grooms

Aimee Lee Guthrie

Mr. and Mrs. Ben T. Guthrie
S. L. Guthrie

Hagan’s Dairy

Mrs. Mildred Hancock
Herman G. Handmaker

Mrs. Lorana Hannahs

Mis. M. M. Harrison

Col. Joseph M. Hartfield
Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hensley
Thad Holt

Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Hubbard
Mr. and Mrs. L. P. Hubbard
Ice’s Produce

Mrs. C. C. Jett

Mr. and Mrs. Edward C. Jett
Jewell & Hayden

Robert J. Johnston, Jr.
Keene & Sons

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Keene
Mrs. J. S. Kelley, Sr.

H. R. Kendall

L. R. Kidwell

Mrs. Ben Kilgore

Murrel Klein

Lucien B. Knight

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Kraus
J. M. Kurtz

Frazier Lebus

Eli Liily
Mrs. J. K. Lilly
W. B. Lindsey

Louisville Cooperage Company
Dorothy B. Lynn

Cornelia Brooke Marshall

Mr. and Mrs. G. Lee McClain
McKay Antiques

Lud McKay

Mr. and Mrs. Wathen Medley
Gen. J. Fred Miles

James M. Millen

Mrs. Muriel Moore

Mrs. Rosalie S. Murphy

Ralph Murray

Nelson County Homemakers

Mr. and Mrs. T. B. Nichols

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Nolan, Jr.
Dr. and Mrs. William W. Oakley

Mrs. James H. Matthews
Mrs. Joseph B. Mattingly, Jr.
Mrs. Walter Mattingly
Roy E. May

Mrs. A. C. McCandless
Miss Nora McGee

Mrs. Phil McKay

Joan K. McLaughlin
Miss Inez Menah
Eudora Meyer

George Miller

Charles R. Mitchell
Mrs. Chic Molyneaux
Betty Money

Lafe Monroe

Ernestine Morgan
James Rouse Morris
Mr. and Mrs. Horace Nicholson
Dr. John R. Oakley
Mrs. W. J. Oakley

Joe Palsgrove

Rev. William Pank
Mrs. Ernest Pardue
Mrs. R. H. Parrish
Clifford Pash

Mrs. Duncan Pate
Jessie Patterson

Dr. and Mrs. Harry Plock
Mr. J. R. Potts

Mr. John Prewitt

Mrs. Hazel Ralston
Mrs. Erby Proffitt

Mrs. Macon Ray
Burris A. Rardin

Verna Richardson
Kathryn Riley

Mrs. Pat Ritchie
Walter Riley

Mrs. W. J. Roby

Emily S. Roby

Mrs. Clarence Rogers
Sara Lee Royalty
Robert L. Sallee

St. Joseph Elementary School
St. Monica School
Emory Beamis Samuels
Harold Searcy

Marion Seay

Barry Shelton

Mr. W. R. Shephard
Reginald C. Silby

Mrs. James R. Sims
Emily T. Sisco

Mr. and Mrs. Charles 0. Smitb
George Smith

Dr. Jerry Smith

Mrs. Josephine S. Smith
Sarah B. Smith

Mrs. Letticia F. Snider
Willie Mae Snider
Billy Spriggs

Ethel Spriggs

Loretta G. Stanfill
Mrs. Harold Strange
Fred Sutherland

A. B. Taylor

J. D. Taylor

Oren B. Theiss

Frank Thomas

Charles E. Thomason
Mrs. Charles Tong
Gladys Tyler

Wanda L. Voigt

Gilbert VanSant

Tom Wallace

Reuben Walls

J. T. Weaver

Minnie Whelan

Mrs. Pen Whitesides
Willmes Drug Company
Mrs. A. C. Wilson

B. N. Wilson

J. A. Wommer

Mrs W C Woodard
Joe Wycoff

Andrew Yaden

Order of Eastern Star

Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Padgett
Mrs. E. D. Porter

Mr. and Mrs. M. J. Rahiya

Salt River Rural Electric Cooperative Corp.

Reynolds Foley Company

Mr. and Mrs. Avery Robinson
Grace Chess Robinson

Dr. Benjamin Gore

Mrs. Nancy Rouse

Saltzman Construction Company
Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Samuels

Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Samuels
Schenley Distillers, Incorporated
Mrs. Elinore Sedley

Harry L. Seeger

Dr. and Mrs. A. D. Steely

James L. Stoner

Judge and Mrs. James A. Sutherland
Mr. and Mrs. W. G. A. Sympson
Mr. and Mrs. Paul R. Thompson
R. S. Trigg

Lexington Herald-Leader Company
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lee Waterfield
J. S. Watkins

Willett Distilling Company
Wilson and Muir Bankers

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Wilson
Wilson Brothers Garage

Mr. and Mrs. Guthrie Wilson
Wright Way Service Station

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Wyatt
University of Kentucky

 
 
 

 

 

Scene

PROGRAM.

TIME: July 1849 - July 1850

PLACE: Pittsburgh and Bardstown
ACT =-I

1—The back porch and yard of the Foster home, a July day in 1849.

“Ah, May the Red Rose Live Alway” (Stephen with flute)
“Nelly Bly” (Stephen and Lievy)
“Louisiana Belle” (Josh)

Scene 2—On the bank of the Allegheny River, several weeks later.

Scene

Scene

Scene

Scene

3—In

“Onward And Upward”—(Jeanie and Chorus)
“Oh, Susanna”—(Stephen, Quartet and Chorus)

and around the McDowell home, Christmas Eve of the same year.

“Open Thy Lattice, Love” (Jeanie, Stephen and Chorus)

“Away Down Souf” (Chorus)
“Oh! Lemuel!” (Chorus)
“Camptown Races” (Joe and Chorus)

4—-A shipping warehouse on the river, some weeks later.

5—lIn

“The Glendy Burke” (Roustabouts )
“Old Folks at Home” (Stephen and Christy)

and around the Federal Hill mansion at Bardstown, Kentucky,

some days later.
“Tioga Waltz” (Dancers)
“Ah, May the Red Rose Live Alway” (Stephen and Lucy)
“Ring, Ring de Banjo” (Stephen, Lucy and Chorus)

“2 e ee

1—In and around the McDowell home, an evening in May, 1850.

“Wilt Thou Be True?” (Jeanie)
“If You’ve Only Got a Moustache” (Dudley)
“Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair” (Stephen)

“De Shanghai Chicken” (Stephen, Josh, Joe)

Scene 2—At a Pittsburgh theatre, night of the same day.

“Old Folks at Home” (Christy and Stephen)

Scene 3—A Series of Mood Actions, some weeks later—

Actions A and B—the Foster home, afternoon.

Action C—Nighttown on the river, a few hours later.

Action D—The McDowell home, a few minutes later.
“Beautiful Dreamer” (Jeanie and Stephen)

Scene 4—A boat landing on the Allecheny River, a July day, 1850.

“My Old Kentucky Home” (Entire Company)

page three

 
   

Produced by

THE STEPHEN FOSTER DRAMA ASSOCIATION,
INC.

Board of Trustees

JAMES B. GRAHAM

Chairman

LAWRENCE W. ADAMS BEN T. GUTHRIE

WILLIAM E. JONES J. FREEMAN CAROTHERS

PROGRAM DEDICATION

BORN WN-DIED 1959

THIS PLAQUE ERECTED HERE THE GRA recite
ACK HOWLEDGEMENT OF CTS OUTS rAMDING
PRODUCER'S UNTIRING WORK AND LEADERS
SHIP WHICH MADE POSSIBLE THE CREATION
OF THIS DRAMATIC PROJECT.

BOAR OF TRUTTERS
THE STEP FOSTIR ORAMA ATENIATION E .

 

page four

 
 

 

 

 

“a finder of many melodies”?

By FLETCHER HopGEs, Jr.
Curator, Foster Hall Collection
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER

 

As the centennial of the Civil War approaches,
Americans recall, with nostalgia, those years
which are the most colorful and the most romantic
of our country’s history. The 1850’s and the 1860’s
form more than a mere physical period of time
and action; they are an intrinsic part of American
legend and tradition. The recent death of the last
surviving Confederate veteran of the Civil War
reminds us that another link with those stirring
times is broken, and that those decades retreat
still further into the sunset of our legend.

Of all the poets who wrote and the composers
who sang of those years, none wrote or sang with
more deep feeling than did Stephen Collins Foster
of Pennsylvania. Here, too, a death brings home
to us the fact that another link with the past has
been broken. Stephen Foster’s granddaughter,
one of his two surviving grandchildren, died in
Pittsburgh in 1959.

To the best of our knowledge, there is no one
alive today who knew Foster personally.

His brief life was a strange combination of
success and failure, happiness and tragedy. It
was not particularly eventful. The biographical
facts: of his life are not of special importance;
he is remembered today only because of the songs
which he wrote. Born near Pittsburgh, Pennsyl-
vania, on July 4, 1826, he lived in Pittsburgh the
greater part of his life. Most of his famous songs
were written in Pittsburgh, although he also lived
in two other cities — Cincinnati and New York —
for several years. He died in New York on Janu-
ary 13, 1864, at the age of thirty-seven.

Through his genius, he caught the spirit of a
period of our country’s history which is gone,
never to return. The romance, the sentiment, the
tenderness, and the humor of ante-bellum days
are reflected in his greatest songs. These songs
were sung and loved throughout the entire world.
They are as popular today as when Foster wrote
them. Stephen Foster made the Swanee River
and the Old Kentucky Home imperishable symbols
of American thought and feeling. They have be-
come an undying part of the nation’s cultural
heritage, a part of the world’s heritage.

Stephen Foster was among our first genuinely
American composers, in that his songs were
American in theme, rather than imitations of the
English and German music of his time. There
were other composers in America during his

youth, it is true, but most of them lived in the
older seaboard cities of Boston, New York, Phila-
delphia, or Baltimore, where the influence of
European-trained teachers was strong. Such men
looked across the Atlantic to England and Ger-
many for their inspiration, with the result that
they merely composed transplanted English or
German music. Not so with Stephen Foster!
Living in Pittsburgh, at that time the meeting
place of North and South, East and West, he did
not look elsewhere for his inspiration — he found
it all about him.

He sang of the America that he knew: the
American home, the sentimental emotions under-
lying the superficial practicality of the American
temperament, life on the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers, slavery, the slumberous plantation life,
the red-hot political campaigns, and Southern
battlefields. Because he generally knew what he
was singing about, and felt it deeply, his best
music lives and breathes.

In the early years of the decade preceding the
Civil War, Stephen Foster’s genius was at its
height. He found within himself the God-given
gift for expressing not only his own feelings, but
the fundamental emotions of the human spirit.
Like Robert Burns of Scotland and Franz Schu-
bert of Austria, Stephen Foster of Pennsylvania
had the ability to sing for all mankind. In Pitts-
burgh, the growing, dynamic center of heavy in-
dustry, there lived a gentle, dreaming poet and
composer. There he created songs which could
move men’s hearts: Old Folks at Home, My Old

Kentucky Home, Massa’s in de Cold Ground, and
Old Black Joe.

These beloved plantation melodies were simply
intended to portray one race of people, one section
of our country, and one period in our history. But
Foster did more than this. He created songs which
have leaped the boundaries of space and time and
express universal thoughts and emotions. Love
of home, love of family, homesickness and time-
sickness — these are the themes of Stephen
Foster’s immortal melodies

The best of his sentimental ballads are still
sung today. His hauntingly beautiful Jeanie with
the Light Brown Hair, his tender Come Where
My Love Lies Dreaming and Beautiful Dreamer
recall the charm of an age which is past. Oh!

page five

 
   
  
  
  
  
   
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
   
 

page six

    

Dare old Massa am a-sleeping,
Sleeping in de cold, cold ground.

Susanna and Camptown Races are proof that
Foster possessed a sense of humor and could sing
in a lighter vein. Other songs still heard today
are Old Dog Tray, Old Uncle Ned, Nelly was a
Lady, and Nelly Bly.

Foster was a prolific writer who devoted most
of his life to music. During his brief career, he
wrote more than two hundred original songs and
compositions. He also arranged, adapted, and
translated over a hundred other works. About
twenty of his best works so combine the qualities
of poetry and melody, simplicity and sincerity,
that the resulting songs form a remarkable con-
tribution to the music of our nation and of all
mankind.

Stephen Foster burst like a shooting star upon
American music. He burned with a quick, bright,
brief flame for a few spectacular years; then he
faded away, in a dim trail, lit by only a few occa-
sional sparks. His tragedy was that he could not
maintain the high standards of his early years.

Foster’s parents had a family of eleven children.
After the death of his youngest brother, in in-
fancy, Stephen was the youngest member of this
large family, cherished and protected by parents,
brothers, and sisters. This position of youngest
child in his much-loved family colored his way
of life and is reflected in his songs.

The Fosters were a close-knit family, and
Stephen had a bright, happy childhood. The
Fosters were interested in music, art, and litera-
ture. His mother and sisters sang and played
musical instruments, and it was from these mem-
bers of his family that the young Stephen early
acquired an interest in music and poetry. With
their encouragement, he learned to sing, compose,
and play, with little or no formal training. The
cultured atmosphere of the Foster home helped
to compensate for Stephen’s failure to complete
his formal education.

As a boy in Pittsburgh, Stephen showed early
that music was his chief interest, whether par-
ticipating in children’s neighborhood theatricals,
or singing in his home, or learning to play various
musical instruments. While his family encouraged
him in his music, they thought of it simply as an
interesting hobby, rather than as a possible life
career. There was little opportunity for the serious
study of music in the Pittsburgh of Foster’s
youth. Whatever he learned was largely through
his own efforts.

The composer’s biographers usually refer to
him as Stephen, rather than as Foster. This is

Down on de Mississippi floating,
Long time I trabble on de way

because of the youthful qualities in his person-
ality, which he kept through all his short life.
As a boy, he was kind, modest, unassuming, sympa-
thetic, and impractical. His personality did not
seem to change with the passing of the years. He
remained an immature boy, in many ways, to the
end of his life.

Stephen’s education was obtained from private
tutors, and from academies in Pittsburgh and
Bradford County, Pennsylvania. In July, 1841, at
the age of fifteen, he entered Jefferson College,
at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. His experience with
higher education lasted only a week. After a brief
struggle with homesickness, he returned to his
family in Pittsburgh. This lack of stability and of
stamina was characteristic of much of his life.

The next five years, from 1841 through 1846,
were spent in Pittsburgh. Stephen studied with
private teachers. He learned French and German.
He acquired some ability as an artist. He had
occasional work in an office or warehouse. He
devoted his leisure hours to music, for which, his
father said, “he possesses a strange talent.” He
began to compose songs, and had the satisfaction
of seeing some of his early efforts appear in
published form.

Late in 1846, Stephen left Pittsburgh and went
to Cincinnati, to become a bookkeeper in a steam-
boat agency, Irwin & Foster. One of his brothers
was a partner in this firm. Stephen was now
twenty years old.

He spent the next three years in Cincinnati.
They were among the happiest and most forma-
tive years of his life. Cincinnati was a vigorous
and growing young city of the West, populated
by New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, Virginians,
and Kentuckians. The traditions of the old South
played an important part in the life of the city.
To this mingling of the streams of several Ameri-
can cultures, a strong German element added an
Old World flavor, and an interest in the arts,
notably music. Cincinnati’s levees were washed
by the waters of the Ohio River; she was an
important shipping point for both passengers and
freight. Southern planters, river men, soldiers
bound for the Mexican War, gold-seekers bound
for California, Negro roustabouts, all formed a
colorful and ever-changing panorama of humanity
along her water front. She carried on a thriving
trade in pork, wheat, and cotton. Cincinnati well
deserved her title of Queen City of the West.

From his office on the levee, Stephen could

observe, first-hand, all this activity. His new life

  
 

 

 

Everyone Enjoys a Visit to Berea Campus

Home of the famous Student Industries of Berea College

Boone Tavern Hotel, well known for its attractive guest rooms, its delicious

regional food, and courteous service by student staff

The daily campus tours include Woodcraft, the
Fireside Weaving, Bakery and Candy Kitchen.
Products of Student Industries on display in Log
House Sales Room and Boone Tavern Hotel Gift
Shop. See collection by America’s noted furniture

maker in Wallace Nutting Museum.

 

<—« Log House Sales Room and Wallace Nutting Museum

Make Boone Tavern Hotel your headquarters while visiting historical and scenic places within easy driving

distance. The hotel will pack a tasty picnic lunch. Swimming, golf, or hiking on the marked trails up Indian

Fort Mountain.

Completely Air Conditioned e No Tipping e Free Adjacent Parking Facilities e Motor Entrance

—— : -
o* 3 ~ » ° ’
* i

ha ,

: F . nh,
“ea
_s, * :

 

Campus Tours—CDT—daily, with student guides except Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Tours start at 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
Reservations for tours are made at Boone Tavern Hotel desk.

Meal Hours—CDT—Boone Tavern Hotel Dining Room. Breakfast 7 to 9 a.m. Lunch 11:30 am. to 1:30 p.m. Dinner 6 to 8 p.m.
For reservations write to Boone Tavern Hotel, Berea, Kentucky, or telephone Berea 25 or 26

Berea is a short drive from Bardstown.

page seven

 
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
   
 
   
    
     
 
   
 
 
    
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
  
   
 
  
  
   
   

was interesting and stimulating. In the friendly
environment of Cincinnati, both fresh and mellow,
Stephen’s genius blossomed. It was in Cincinnati
that he began to write songs in earnest, and it was
there that he decided to abandon a business career
and to become a professional composer.

While Stephen was interested in the steam-
boats and the picturesque life along the water
front, his heart was never in the actual business
of the steamboat agency. He was more interested
in other phases of Cincinnati life. He made
friendships among the musicians, writers, mins-
trels, and publishers of the city, which vitally
affected his later career. He continued to write
songs. Slowly but surely, the number of his pub-
lished works began to increase, and the minstrel
bands began to make use of them, in their concerts.

Oh! Susanna was published in 1848, just after
gold was discovered in California. By 1849,
thousands of Americans had started for the West,
to seek their fortunes. These Forty-Niners took
unto themselves Stephen’s hearty Oh! Susanna,
made it their marching song across the continent
to the gold fields of California, and eventually
transformed it into that young state’s unofficial
anthem. The song spread all over the world. Oh!
Susanna and Old Uncle Ned, which was also pub-
lished in 1848, became national and international
successes. Their composer, who had simply been
writing songs for the amusement of himself and
his friends, found himself famous.

Early in 1850, Stephen returned to Pittsburgh,
as a professional composer, to devote himself com-
pletely and intensely to his music. He was no
longer an amateur; he intended to earn his living
by writing songs. He was ambitious; he worked
hard; his efforts were crowned with immediate
and spectacular success. The six years from early
1850 through 1855 were the most successful of his
entire life. Songs, compositions, arrangements,
and translations— more than one hundred and
sixty works in all— poured from his pen during
these years. Many of these works were of only
passing interest; they enjoyed a brief period of
popularity and then were forgotten, just as most
of the popular songs of the present are soon for-

The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright;

teers Es

 

 

gotten. But his genius was now at its height. In
addition to his many works of only moderate
quality, he was composing songs which would
never die. Each year, at least one new song was
published which added to his permanent fame.

In this part of his life, he knew happiness,
success, and fame. He came of a good family. He
enjoyed recognition on a world-wide scale. He
had many advantages of education and _ back-
ground. He had gaiety and humor. He was known
for his kindness, his friendliness, his gentleness,
and his generosity. He married a pretty Pitts-
burgh girl. Life seemed to offer everything that
could be desired.

Two of the greatest years of Stephen Foster’s
life were 1850 and 1851. He became a successful
professional composer; he fell in love; he married;
his daughter was born; his finest song was
composed.

Just about the time his child was born, in 1851,
he was working on Old Folks at Home, or Way
Down Upon the Swanee River, as the song is often
known. Perhaps the great events of love, marriage,
and the birth of his daughter which he had re-
cently experienced gave him the inspiration to
create his masterpiece. This wonderful song is
among the best-loved melodies in the history of
the world. Although Stephen never saw the
Suwannee River of Georgia and Florida, he im-
mortalized it in song. It has become a half-
legendary stream, encircling the earth. It flows
through the soul of humanity. It has become the
symbol of all mankind’s vague, lost, wordless
dreams, of joys that have vanished, of unattainable
longings, of homesickness and timesickness.

The following year he composed My Old
Kentucky Home. It was published early in 1853.

This great song is another flawless creation of
Stephen’s genius. It is a gem of poetry, of melody,
and of sentiment. The soul of the person who
sings it is released of emotions almost too deep,
too intense to be borne.

“The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,
With sorrow, where all was delight.”

With the passing of the years, a gradual change

took place in his personality. As our country

(Continued on page 26)

When will I hear de banjo tumming,
Down in my good old home!
 

 

pon

<3

e
3

!
—

JAY WILLOUGHBY, Stephen Foster , a recent graduate
of Washington University in St. Louis, is now a
graduate student in music at Indiana University. While
in St. Louis, he was active in the Community Playhouse
both in dramatic and operatic productions, working
with Edwin McArthur, musical director of the St. Louis
Municipal Theatre. Last summer he was featured
vocalist for the “Band Concert in the Park” series which
was broadcast over KMOX. His St. Louis career also
included appearances with the St. Louis Symphony,
three years with “Summer in St. Louis” broadcast over
KMOX and three years as featured vocalist on “The
Protestant Hour.” Last November, Willoughby was

 

called to New York to record four solos for an if?
stereo record by Epic Record Company. “Remember
When” includes songs from the years 1860-1900. In
the field of television, his most notable appearances
are as featured soloist on the Raymond Massey stereo
TV Christmas show and the premiere television per-
formance of the Beeson-Saroyan “Hello Out There.”
As a recipient of both the Award from the National
Society of Arts and Letters and the famed Metropolitan
Opera Award for 1959, Willoughby was well received
at Indiana University and has appeared in productions

of “Most Happy Fella,” “Tales of Hoffman,” and
“Rigoletto” during his first year there.

 

BARBARA ALLEYN LOCKARD, Jane McDowell, returns
for a second season to create the role of “Jeanie With
the Light Brown Hair.” She was originally discovered
while appearing in The Judy Garland Show in New
York City. Prior to her work in New York, Barbara
received her Masters Degree from the University of
Indiana where she was President of Theta Alpha Phi,
the honorary theatrical fraternity. Also as a student,
she toured the Far East and Caribbean Commands with
the world-renowned “Belles of Indiana.” Since her
appearance with the original cast of this show last
summer, Barbara has been pursuing her career in New

York City, being seen Coast to Coast on the NBC-TV

productions of “Cavelleria Rusticanna,” ‘“Amahl and
the Night Visitors,” and “Don Giovanni.” On March
31st, she appeared in “Talent 60,” as a winner of the
1960 Broadway Show League’s search for new talent
discoveries. She travelled out of New York with the
Manhattan Soloists, a trio of violin, piano and soprano
and also made a guest solo appearance with the Chatta-
nooga Opera Association in November. She received
rave reviews for her performance in “The Beggar’s
Opera.” Her latest appearance was at the General
Assembly of the Eighth National Dramatics Arts Con-

ference at Indiana University during rehearsals for
this show.

‘
wer cae

page nine

 

 

 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

 
  
   

THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY—
A Synopsis
Edited by SAMUEL SELDEN

Dr. Selden, who directed THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY in its premiere
season, has a long history of success in the field of outdoor drama having
brought into being the first of the great symphonic dramas, THE LOST
COLONY and followed it with his direction of WILDERNESS ROAD
and THE CONFEDERACY. He is now the chairman of the Department
of Theater Arts at the University of California in Los Angeles.

 

The “Stephen Foster Story” tells in dramatic form the events of one year in the life of America’s first full-time
ballad maker, and presents to us in a new setting a number of his most beloved songs. Since this is a play and not
a biographical account the author, Paul Green, has adapted parts of the story. He has not done this with a view |
to creating a new character, but to making Foster and his compositions a little more understandable to an audience
of a different century from that in which the song writer lived and worked. Says Mr. Green: “For dramatic clarity I
have in certain instances in this play freely interpreted the facts of Stephen Foster’s life, but the main course of

action is authentic.”

ACT I
In place of the usual instrumental overture, THE

STEPHEN FOSTER STORY opens with a chorus.
The great singing company, standing on stage, lifts
its voices in a special rendering of a group of Foster's
songs. The voices fade, the lights dim, and we catch
a glimpse of young Stephen in the woods picking out
a tune on his flute. He is sitting on a pile of half-cut
logs while beside him is the axe which he has brought
with him for a chore of chopping now forgotten.
Below, on the other side of the stage is the Foster
family’s faithful servant, Lievy Pise. Standing on the
porch of the Foster home she is calling loudly to
Stephen to bring her some stove wood. We see clearly
that Stephen’s slowness in doing his chores is a great
trial to her. But she loves him, and when he brings
down the hill a pitifully small armful of kindling, she
forgives him. Doesn’t he joke and make up wonderful
songs, songs that always make her laugh and feel good?
Stephen says he will make up a song about her and

she is very happy.

Their merriment is interrupted by Dudley Morton,
a young lawyer who enters briskly down the street.
He brings the news that William B. Foster, Stephen’s
father, has lost his suit for recovery of personal funds
‘used to finance Andrew Jackson’s New Orleans cam-
paign. Stephen’s brothers, William Jr., Morrison, and
Dunning are with their father. When the group returns
after losing the suit to Dudley, the brothers reproach

Igoe:““Stop that laughing!”

“ —

   

Stephen for not having accompanied them. They have
little patience with his doodling music, and he has
little interest in their preoccupation with commercial
matters.

Left alone by the family, Stephen is joined by his
good friend and music teacher, Henry Kleber. Kleber
is one of the few people in town who understands the
young man’s restlessness and has faith in his talent.
Stephen is writing a song for Jane McDowell to sing
at the groundbreaking for the new factory which is
being built by Mr. Igoe. Everyone says the ground-
breaking will be a big event. Kleber reminds Stephen
that he has also promised a song to Gussie Jordan,
daughter of the tavern keeper, for the same ceremony.
Stephen decides that he can solve the problem of
possible jealousy between the two girls by writing a
song for each of them.

At the groundbreaking we meet the great industrial
magnate, Gottlieb Igoe, who delivers an impressive
speech on the mighty progress of industry in the city.
At an appropriate moment in the ceremony Jane sings
one of the many beautiful hymns written by Stephen,
and then Gussie appears dramatically in the raucus
costume to dance with a tambourine as Stephen and
a quartet sing “Oh, Susannah.” This boisterous
display causes a sensation. The company breaks up
immediately for dinner and Jane leaves Stephen with
his friends as she goes off on the arm of Dudley Morton.

Stephen:“Don’t bet your money on de Shanghai”

      

oe
 

 

‘i

 

Josh: That’s a boy, Stevie. Whup him good!”

It is now Christmas Eve. Dr. McDowell’s family
is at home. The Doctor, with Jane’s assistance, is
bringing his bookkeeping up to date. Mrs. McDowell
confides to her husband that she is very much concerned
about Jane’s interest in the rattle-brain Stephen Foster.
It seems to her that Dudley Morton would make a
much better husband for the girl. Their conversation
is interrupted by Stephen and a group of Christmas
serenaders dressed in outlandish animal masks. Stephen
and Jane sing his new song “Open Thy Lattice, Love,”
and the group, including Jane, the reluctant Dudley
and Joe from the McDowell household, joins hands
and winds its merry, noisy way into the darkness.

Stephen tries to give up his songwriting and adapt
himself to the commercial business world by taking
a position as a clerk in Mr. Igoe’s new factory. But
even as he works, the chanting of the roustabouts along
the docks and even the whistle of the steamboats on
the river take the form of songs in his mind. He is
able to continue his bookkeeping only by stuffing
cotton in his ears.

We are led to believe that Stephen might have been
able to conquer his desire to compose if he had not
had a visitor. The minstrel King, E. P. Christy, finds
him in the Igoe office and tells him that he has heard
about some of his songs. Christy finds a discarded
scrap of paper on which Stephen has sketched out a
few bars of “Old Folks At Home.” Christy buys fhe
rights to this for fifteen dollars and asks that Stephen
send him anything else he writes. Stephen is over-
whelmed. He decides to spend the whole amount of
his fee on a bouquet of roses for Jane.

Stephen has relatives in Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr.
Igoe sends the young man to the plantation of Judge
John Rowan at Federal Hill to arrange for a contract
on tobacco. At the home of his cousin, Stephen is
swept up in the spell of gracious hospitality. He is SO
occupied with this that he forgets to submit his bid
for the shipping contract. Realizing that he is a failure
as a business man he is depressed. However, Stephen’s
spirit is quickly stimulated by the action of the Ball,
the happy singing crowd of well-dressed guests, and
the sadder singing of the plantation Darkies. This
visit at Federal Hill is to prove to be the inspiration
for “My Old Kentucky Home.”

ACT It

As the second act opens we find Dudley courting
Jane in the McDowell Home. They are interrupted
by the rude appearance of an intoxicated Stephen.
Dudley and Jane go into the garden leaving Stephen
with his good friend Joe, the McDowell butler. Filled

with his thoughts of Jane, Stephen sits at the piano
to compose words and pick out a tune for a song he
will call “I Dream of Jeanie With the Light Brown
Hair.” The music drifts out through the window into
the garden. Jane, talking with Dudley who proposes
to her, tries not to listen to the song. In spite of the
effort, however, she is drawn back into the sitting room.
After quarrelling over Jane, Stephen and Dudley leave
her sobbing in her father’s arms.

Joe leaves with Stephen and soon they meet two
of Stephen’s cronies, Henry Kleber, the music teacher,
and Josh Pollock, the town drunk, along the side of
the road. Forming a quartet they sing “Shanghai
Rooster.”

Christy’s Ethiopian minstrels are giving a gala per-
formance at the opera house. After the End Men’s
routines, Christy comes forth in a distorted version
of “OLD Folks at Home” which he is selling his
song. Stephen angrily interrupts the show and gets
permission to render the song in the manner in which
he had intended it to be sung. His way proves to be
more persuasive than Christy’s. The minstrel king,
always practical, takes advantage of Stephen’s triumph
to announce that Stephen is going to do another song,
a great plantation song, especially for Christy’s show.
As the audience makes its exit from the theatre, Stephen
gets into another fight with Dudley. Dr. McDowell
forbids Stephen from ever seeing Jane again. Dudley
escorts Jane from the theatre.

Completely depressed and unable to see Jane,
Stephen finds that the once plentiful songs will no
longer flow from his mind. He wanders drunkenly
along the dark wharves by the river side. Lying on
the ground he has a nightmare in which the figures
and sounds of his songs whirl and cry around him.
Running out into the night, he finally finds himself
standing below Jane’s window. He calls and she
answers. He whispers to her his song, “Beautiful
Dreamer.” She joins him in singing. Then, still in
her nightgown, she comes down to him in the garden.
Jane tells Stephen that she still loves him. They plan
their wedding. In his great joy, Stephen recalls the
warmth of his summer visit to Kentucky and the scenes
of Federal Hill and the plantation and “My Old
Kentucky Home.” Now he and Jane know that he
can and will be a successful song writer.

As the final notes of ‘““Weep No More” fade across
the stage we see Stephen and Jane, now married,
boarding the river boat on their way to New York.
The great chorus catches up the song and sends it
down the river after them.

page eleven

   
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
    
 
   
  
   
   
   
   
   

fa & te tea a ae
Stephen:‘‘No matter where Jeanie and I go, here will ever be our home.”

 
 

'
;
|
i
|

Every nation is engaged in the business of building
some sort of civilization. And true civilizations are
built on ideals, on tenets and purposes of the human
spirit and imaginative reach of the citizens which soar
beyond the pother and stir of grab and gain alone—
or they are not built.

A nation is like the heroes it honors, like the events
it cherishes and remembers, like the shrines and the
sacred places of its history which it visits and keeps
vivid, active and alive. This was true of Greece, of

Carthage, of Rome, and is still true of England,

America, Russia, China, India, or any nation whatsoever.

And the State of Kentucky, in building an amphi-
theatre here in the My Old Kentucky Home State
Park and producing a play on the folk musical hero
Stephen Foster, is adhering to this belief and thus
furthering the cause of American culture as well as
strengthening the fibre of the national being. So I
believe.

Some time ago I was reading an essay by the
eminent 19th century German scholar Dindorf in which
he said that the Aeschylean dramatic trilogy, The
Oresteia of some twenty-five hundred years ago was

perhaps the greatest production ever put forth by the
creative genius of man.

Whether Dindorf was right or not, I don’t know,
but I am dogmatic enough to say that I do know that
one of the reasons for the splendor of Aeschylus’ work
—and that goes for Sophocles, Euripides and Aristo-
phanes and Shakespeare and Lope de Vega as well—
was that he loved his subject, found it important and
worthy of his devotion as a writer.

Aeschylus loved Greece, he loved her heroes and
the, to him, glorious events of her mighty past. And
in writing about his native land and about these states-
men and heroes and these events with the fire and

fervor he did, he the more kept alive the greatness
and the importance of both.

Now I along with many other humble citizens in
this land—and I am sure in fact that this applies to
a vast number of our people—have again and again
and much too often found it hard to keep faith in our
leadership, in our statesmen and thus keep faith in
our country. Too often, try as I would, I could not
rouse up any reasonable admiration for the keepers
and guardians of our American way of life.

Actually at this very hour many of us are asking
what has happened to our leadership. No doubt there
has been plenty of asking going on all through our
history. But it seems.there never were better reasons

page twelve

OUR INSPIRING HERITAGE

by PAUL GREEN

for such asking than there are at this time of global
sensitivity.

Yes, this day seems like one of the special times
for asking.

And yet whatever lack of statesmanship and great-
ness lies in our present political leaders and whatever
doubts and questions I for one may have about them,
I have never felt there was any real reason for such
asking or doubting concerning the principles of de-
mocracy which underlie our form of government and
which are, I think, identical with the principles of truth
and as inspiring, enriching and life-giving as that truth
itself. As the years have passed with me and I have
moved up and down the land and back and forth
among the peoples of the world, I have come to hold
certain unshakable convictions, faiths and contentions
about our democracy.

I have come to believe that our American heritage,
our American way of life as an ideal, possesses the
righteous reality of a true religion and that men giving
service thereto are in line with the pattern of human
survival and not of human extinction.

I know that in this atomic age of power you can
hear the voice of cynicism and of scientific materialism
declaring that democracy and Christianity are too soft
to provide a philosophy sufficient to meet the demands
of power, the mailed fist, the fierce competition of
national strengths and the clash of arms.

But I do not believe this. Call these times times
of crises and jeopardizing of the nations one by the
others, still I do not believe this.

And so it is that in these days and times of crises
I find myself turning back more and more to the
elements and constituencies of our early democratic
faith. I find myself turning for aid and sustenance to
the pioneers and forefathers who helped define, delimit
and bring forth into living phrasing and terminology
these ideals that are both the root and branch of our
faith.

I find myself going back to the early days of our
nation’s history trying to put my ear, my spirit in tune
as it were to the speaking, to the visioning of these
thinkers and leaders.

And just as in Greece her literary workers inter-
preted and reinterpreted her heroes, her historical
events —told and retold the story of Ulysses, of
Menelaus, of Achilles and Agamemnon, of.the Elu-
sinian mysteries, of the Delphic oracle, of the blood-
stained ground at Thermopylae and Marathon, of the
sun-lit glories of Salamis—told the story of the

 
 

beauteous gods and goddesses walking wreathed in
beauty on the earth, of the dryad and hamadryad

spirits living in the streams and trees and of the rosy-
fingered dawn advancing over the edge of the world—
just as the literary workers of Greece did this and
with each interpretation raised them into more vivid
and inspiring reality, just so it has seemed to me that
we in this nation should seek to interpret, to reinterpret,
to tell and retell, to dramatize and redramatize our
heroes and heroic events and to seek’ to memorialize
and consecrate the shrines of our national being—to
tell the story of our pioneer figures, our explorers, our
statesmen, our builders, our poets, and our singers—
men like Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, the
strong-souled Indian Chiefs Red Jacket, Tecumseh,
Logan and especially tragic Osceola, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Foster, Walt
Whitman, Thomas “A. Edison, Woodrow Wilson,
Luther Burbank—and on and on.

And for renewal and inspiration let us consecrate
and visit and tend with loving care our nation’s shrines
—Roanoke Island where the first struggling beach-head
colonists of our nation suffered, hoped, endured and
died—Jamestown Island where our early founders
experienced hunger, starvation, even rot and decay
as they worked to begin a new nation—the dour,
bleak shore of Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrim
fathers established their tough and tenacious hold
against all odds and terrors of freeze and flood—
Valley Forge with its remembered snow-stained drip-
pings of blood of the suffering trusting soldiers there—
the Gettysburg battleground where the blind and pitiful
tragedy of a nation’s fratricide reached its crest of
fury—Kitty Hawk where man’s first winged soaring
into the sky took place—and Los Alamos where the
crude dross of earth was first transmuted into the
celestral fire of heaven—and so on here to old Federal
Hill where a young singer once visited while drawing
his immortal melodies from the living air.

For if we work to make these characters live again,
quicken the sense of these events into being, enshroud
and fill these consecrated places with both actual and
symbolic meaning, so much more will all of these with
their best virtues live in the lives of our children and
the generations of the future—generations who in turn
can retell, reinterpret and redramatize them for their
children.

I don’t mean that this is ancestor worship, an
unreal devotion to the past. I simply mean that if
we can make real and manifest and dramatic in our
thinking, feeling, and doing the stories, the lessons

 

and the ideals of our forefathers and leaders, of our
historic events and places, just so much stronger and
more stimulated and inspired can we be in facing the
tasks that lie ahead of us.

So it is that'we the more can fill the cup of our souls
to joy and enrichment.

And in moments of weakness as now, times of
uncertainty and wandering as now, we can look back
for a moment to these events, these places—look back
to these historic figures standing there in a close-up
actuality, can crook our hand to our ear and listen
to Washington’s words riding on the wind as it were—
hear him saying—“Observe good faith and justice
towards all nations.”—‘“Cultivate peace and harmony
with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct,
and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin
it?” —*The foundations of our national policy will be
laid in the pure and immutable principles of private
morality.”

Or hear the ever encouraging voice of Jefferson
declaring “We stand for the equality of man, for the
freedom of man, the responsibility of man.” “Truth
is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.”—
“The purpose of the state is to see that the talents of
its citizens reach their fullest expression, each and
everyone.”—*A nation can only be as strong and as
healthy as its citizens are strong and healthy.”

And when Jefferson talked about the people he
meant all the people, of whatever color, race, creed
or class.

Or lean out te listen and hear the mighty words of
Abraham Lincoln, speaking to you and me across the
ages—"“Let us have faith that right makes might, and
in that faith let us dare to do our duty.”

Or hear again that nearer and likewise tragic figure
Woodrow Wilson in his last public speech on earth
declaring in militant words addressed to a wavering
people—“An aggressive fight for the establishment of
high principles and just action will restore the prestige
of our nation as nothing else could, and I shall be glad
to take part in it.”

And thus it will be that from a backward look and
a backward listening we can turn squarely to the future
and face that future more reassured, more certain of
the way we should and must go, of the things we should
and must do, of the leadership we need to take and
must take!

And joyful will be our challenge and our duty. And
joyfully we move to meet them.

It is in something of this spirit then that we offer
this Stephen Foster play to the American people.

“Foster's songs have been received into the world’s choir. His music lives and
has become universal, but the name and memory of the man who created it lie

bb)

dead amidst the singing crowds. .

— Young Ewing Allison in his

My Old Kentucky Home.

page thirteen

 

 
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    

    

A COMMUNITY PROJECT

by LAWRENCE W. ADAMS, Secretary

of

The Stephen Foster Drama Association

To review the steps that led to “THE STEPHEN
FOSTER STORY,” as you see it produced on the
spacious stage of the beautiful outdoor amphitheatre,
and what you don’t see in community support and in-

terest, is like trying to review in five hundred words
or less World War II.

Those of us who have watched it evolve — and the
word is used advisedly — hardly recognize the form it
now takes in reality as compared with the original plans
put forward in June and July, 1957.

At the outset, let it be said that the resiliency, tenac-
ity and almost foolhardy doggedness of a community,
personified in the person of the late Ted Cronk, are the
basic factors responsible for the project being carried
through to its completion.

Reviewing the step-by-step process whereby a com-
munity becomes welded to an idea is not only not easy,
when set down on paper it appears almost ludicrous,
at least in this instance.

The idea was pursued in 1957. Actually, the “idea”
evolved sometime before that, in 1954, when Paul
York, then Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce,
contacted Cronk in Berea.

The first public action occurred in July, 1957, when
a meeting at the Old Kentucky Home Country Club
was called at the behest of the Kentucky Department
of Conservation, under which, at that time, the Parks
Department operated. Present were representatives of
the State, officials of the University of Kentucky, and
local citizens. A plan was presented whereby the State
would build an amphitheatre, the University of Ken-
tucky would produce “The Life of Stephen Foster,”
funds for staging would be solicited from Kentucky
industries, and Bardstown, as a community, would be
called upon only to provide a 50 thousand dollar sus-
taining fund with cash and pledge. The local fund
would stand in reserve to help the production over any
fiscal rough spots.

One published account at that time said.that July
Ath, 1958, might find the opening of the show here in
Bardstown.

The July, 1957 meeting was enthusiastic. Everyone
left it filled with zeal. But, if as a community we didn’t

Citizens of Bardstown rally for Opening Day Speeches

know it then, we were to learn soon that the Lord helps
those who help themselves.

A second thought by the University of Kentucky
officials determined that the college was not in a posi-
tion to act as producing agent for a project so far afield,
both physically and in intent. In the fall of the year,
the University of Louisville, while interested, similiarly
determined that a production such as envisioned was
not a proper undertaking in line with school practices
and policies.

With the chill of fall, °57, a chill of pessimism crept
in. No big funds were forthcoming from Kentucky
industries. No producer was available to take the ball
and run with it.

it was generally known that a possibility of a pro-
duction based on the life of Foster was more than of
passing interest to an area in Florida.

But, black despair that prevailed, more local folks
than not thought that, just possibly, something might
be salvaged. Ted Cronk, Business Manager of “WIL-
DERNESS ROAD,” had left Berea and come to
Bardstown, a man — suddenly — without an organiza-
tion. The local folks refused to punt. Instead, at a
meeting specially called at Bardstown City Hall, Octo-
ber 31st, 1957, Incorporators of the “Stephen Foster
Drama Association” were elected, and a campaign fund
chairman was appointed. This latter duty fell to Ben T.
Guthrie, now one of the Drama Trustees. Incorporators
of the Drama were, as published in the Kentucky
Standard, Larry Adams, Freeman Carothers, C. W.
Dobbs, Dr. James B. Graham, Ben T. Guthrie, Mrs.
Polly Hall, W. E. Jones, Donald Keene, Randall Riley,

and Rev. Robert Shaver.
In the meantime, a log cabin had appeared on the

horizon, and Nelson County Homemakers were to
officially host a “log raising” for a “Hospitality House,”
near the amphitheatre site. On log raising day, October
19, 1957, it was privately conceded that prospects
seemed much brighter for building a log cabin than an
amphitheatre. Things had struck a snag in Frankfort.
However, the log raising went on as scheduled, and, if
nothing else, served as a focal point for Nelson
Countians to actually see. something in the way of
 

 

  

Ted Cronk and Paul York meet in true
country tradition, by the old pot-belly
stove, to discuss plans for production

of THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY.

activity in an area much discussed, but physically still
disturbed only by an occasional rabbit or a misdirected
golf ball from the adjoining fairway.

Following the October decision that if a drama were
to be produced, Bardstown and Nelson County would
produce it ... and if an amphitheatre were to be built,
Bardstown and Nelson County would have to assume
the burden of responsibility of selling the idea to the
State, a period of quietude set in. Pledges in the fund
raising effort continued to mount toward the 50 thou-
sand dollar mark.

In February, 1958, it was publicly acknowledged
that, while the Drama project was still being actively
pursued, a July 4th opening was out of the question.

The entire project consisted in the first four months
of 1958 of interminable trips to Frankfort, diligent
work by such men as Frank Wilson, Ballard Jewell, and
Jim Sutherland using their good offices with the
administration, and with an end result that on April
14th, 1958, Lt. Governor Harry Lee Waterfield
announced in Bardstown that the State would build an
amphitheatre on the grounds of the Old Kentucky
Home State Park.

Paradoxically, this announcement followed by nearly
one year the original meeting at which it was proposed
that the State would build an amphitheatre for the pro-
duction. By this time, the local citizens had their hearts,
souls, and some amounts of cash money in the effort.
Again, the project was off the ground.

Ground breaking ceremonies for the amphitheatre
were set for July 4th, 1958. Many talks, many visitors,
and again much enthusiasm was exuded by the prin-
cipals for the occasion. The local folks looked on,
cheered the ground breaking, and immediately returned
to figuring ways to “actually get the thing built,” and
raise the funds for the production.

October 6th, 1958, 3 months later, it was learned
that drawings for the theater were being completed, and
a plan was formulated whereby the Drama Association

“During Construction”

 
 
 
 
   
  
   
    
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
   
 
  
  
   
   

would lease the Theater from the state, when it was
completed.

National publicity for the project, target date June
26th, 1959, started in earnest. Talent searches for
prospective cast members, particularly the roles of
Stephen and Jeanie, were instituted through selected
“monitors” across the zountry. After several more bleak
and disappointing hours in December, 1958, and
January, 1959, contracts for the construction of the
theater were let by the State.

In this capsule summary of events that evolved into
“THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY” as staged, many
names have been omitted. Tribute is due to many
people and many organizations, not the least of which
is Phil Clore, who was President of the Bardstown
Chamber of Commerce when the Stephen Foster
Drama idea was proposed.

We have already mentioned the late Ted Cronk and
reserve for his memory a special place in this program
and in our hearts. Others who deserve mention as
supporters of this project; with their pledges and with
their very real enthusiasm without which the trustees
would have been helpless to act, are found on the
membership rolls in this program.

Numerous trials and tribulations connected with the
project have been purposely left out to avoid undue
burdening of this account.

It was a genuine thrill for the first season to be so

successful as to assure this, the second year of “THE
STEPHEN FOSTER STORY.” This is a project of the
people of Bardstown and Nelson County. They deserve
the credit. It is their musical and scenic ambrosia for
you, the visitor, to savor and enjoy and we sincerely
hope you do.

The sweetest fruit is that which is difficult to attain,
and if for no other reason, we know that the
“STEPHEN FOSTER STORY” is yours to delight to,
and in it find true American music and entertainment,
a product of a Kentucky community’s determination
not to be denied.

“After”

 

 

 

 
 

|

a

 

if / Wherever you drive in the Bluegrass State you can

stop with confidence at the Standard Oil sign — knowing

you'll find quality products, courteous service and clean 7

rest rooms. Look for the Standard Oil sign — it’s

the best place to stop to refresh and refuel.

STANDARD OIL COMPANY

(KE SNe bee yy}

 

 

STANDARD

     

page sixteen

 
 

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“a ka faras pee AEE LA — ae ees
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(We wish to express our gratitude to Mr. Jack oe ye sa coe
Muir, local historian, without whose assistance Path Pie Miconcolean ob Ai cn age cae

this article could not have been written.)

Nestled in the heart of Kentucky is Bardstown,
whose formidable and exciting history greatly
transcends its size. Here Stephen Foster received
his inspiration for the song which has become
known the world over as one which spells “Home”
for all who are away from home; and here he
found the color and the traditions of the South
which he used so liberally in his “Ethiopian”
songs. Bardstown has taken Stephen Foster to
its heart and claimed him for its own — making a
shrine of the Rowan Mansion where Stephen
visited and wrote his most famous song “My Old
Kentucky Home.”

The traditions and histories of Bardstown are
rich and varied. Now the seat of Nelson County,
it is the site of the original Kentucky Court of
Appeals as well as the location for the Salem
Academy which was established prior to.1782 but
later moved to Tennessee where it has grown into
the famous Peabody Teachers College.

Bardstown was incorporated as a town by an
act of the Legislature of Virginia on November 4,
1778. Thirty years later the Episcopal Sees of
Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Bardstown
were created and here was built the first Cathedral
west of the Allegheny Mountains —the third in
the United States. St. Joseph’s Proto-Cathedral,
whose cornerstone was laid in 1816 and which was
dedicated in 1819, was made of materials found in
the immediate vicinity. The large pillars are
actually whole poplar trees which have been
finished at the lower level with plaster and stucco.
Bricks that compose the walls were made from
the native clay molded by hand and the stone for
the foundation was quarried from native limestone
rock. A certificate from the Department of the
Interior, Washington, D. C., states that “historic
building known as St. Joseph’s Cathedral in the
County of Nelson and State of Kentucky has been
selected by the Advisory Committee of the His-
toric-American Building Survey as possessing ex-
ceptional historic or architectural interest and as
being worthy of most careful preservation for
the benefit of future generations and that to this
end a record of its present appearance and con-
dition has been made and deposited for permanent
reference in the Library of Congress.”

Nine Master Paintings by Van Bree, Murillo,
Van Dyck, Van Eyck, Reubens and Jacob Hast
are the most interesting and most valuable treas-
ures of St. Joseph’s. These and the tabernacle
and vestments, consisting of chasuble and dal-
matics, were the gifts of Pope Leo XII, Louis
Phillippe, King of France, and Francis I, King
of Naples. The paintings may be seen at the
Cathedral at any time during the daylight hours.

 

 

 

St. Joseph’s College for boys was built in 1820.
Conducted by the Jesuits from 1848 to 1868, it
is now under the direction of the Brothers of
the Xavierian Order. Similarly, Nazareth College
for girls was founded by the Sisters of Charity in
1814 and grew from the Sisterhood of Nazareth

Hill, home of the Rowan family, later to be known
as My Old Kentucky Home.. It was here, in 1852,
that Stephen Foster composed his most famous
song. The original rear wing was built in 1795
by Judge John Rowan, who was then the United
States Senator from Kentucky, and in 1818 he
added the present front of the building. The
Rowan family lived in it for four generations
until 1922 when it was sold by the last of the
family in residence there, Mrs. Madge Rowan
Frost, to the trustees of a subscription with the
understanding that it would be presented to the
State of Kentucky as a State Shrine. As nearly
as possible, everything in the Home is exactly as
it was in 1852 when Foster visited there and each
year hundreds of thousands of visitors come from
all over the world to see this famous Homestead.

Judge Rowan, Master of Federal Hill, is noted
in history for his many accomplishments in law.
and government. He was a successful lawyer, great
statesman and judge. “Young John” Rowan,
trained in law but not active in public life as his
father had been, inherited the plantation upon
the death of the elder Rowan in 1843. Under his
guidance Federal Hill became a gathering place
for intellectual and artistic society of the day. In
spite of his lack of interest in public office, he
was eventually persuaded to serve in the State
Legislature and, shortly thereafter, he was ap-
pointed by President Polk to be minister in charge
to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies where he
remained for two years until Millard Fillmore
became President of the United States. He re-
turned to Kentucky in 1852 and it was in this
year that Stephen Foster visited Federal Hill.

True to Kentucky tradition, Bardstown is not
without its place in the annals of horse racing.
As early as 1797 a notice of races in “Bairdstown”
appeared in the Kentucky Gazette and in 1842 a
four day fall meeting was announced in the Bards-
town Gazette. The famous “show” horses, Beau
Brummell 800, Old Star Denmark and Belle of
Nelson were bred at Kenmore Farm which was
across the road from Federal Hill.

With the advent of the Civil War, Kentucky
became a “border” state and towns and families
were divided among themselves in their sympa-
thies and loyalties. Bardstown was no exception.

(Continued on page 20)

page seventeen

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Stephen Foster Hotel & Motel

Old = nore Motel eS >

Ae RR

a Se ee ene

In
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On West
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Foster Ave.

Jones’ Ky. Home Restaurant

14 Good
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Single Rooms
And Family
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North 31E and 150

Motel and
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North on
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Histouc Landmarks of Od Bi
on"
am \2

LINCOLN’S
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HOME

TRAVELER REPORTS 3 TIMES DAILY

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URT HOUSE

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DISTILLERIES

@) Barton @ Double Springs
@) James B, Beam J.T.S, Brown
3) T. W. Samuels Geo. T. Stagg
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ON THE HOUR AND HALF HOUR

Connecting
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Breakfast
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Choice Steaks
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Entrance

“Treasures of
The Past’’
THE OL’ INN
‘Lodging in the
Heart of Town’’

Since 1779

Mr. and Mrs. H. N. Locke, a | )

Your Hosts

 

 

 
  

HISTORIC BARDSTOWN

(Continued from page 17)

Most of the citizens were Southern sympathizers
and there are many stories, still related today,
which concern the troops, both Union and Con-
federate, which passed through town. At least
three skirmishes in this area are a matter of public
record — October 4, 1862; July 5, 1863; and
August 1, 1864; and no doubt there were many
more. One of the better known Civil War
anecdotes concerns the surprise attack on a band
of Federal soldiers by General John H. Morgan
and a detachment of his troops near the old town
water mill. There was a sharp encounter and,
although the Union troops were captured, one of
the Confederate soldiers was killed. He was buried
near the scene of the skirmish not far from a
Civil War Cemetery which, although but a short
distance from My Old Kentucky Home, is all
but forgotten today.

In the Courthouse Square stands a monument
to John Fitch, inventor of the steamboat. Al-
though unrecognized for many years, it is now a
proven fact that Fitch’s steamboat preceded that
of Robert Fulton by nineteen years. He exhibited
a practical model of a steamboat on August 29,
1785; and on October 12, 1788, a boat built by
him — moved by steam power only and carrying
thirty passengers— made the trip from Phila-
delphia to Burlington—on the Delaware River
against the current, a distance of twenty miles,
in three hours and ten minutes, or at the rate of
about six and one-half miles per hour.

Fitch originally came to Kentucky in 1780
while surveying this territory and establishing
land grants. He made several subsequent trips —
once being captured by Indians and turned over to
the British as a Revolutionary War prisoner —
and later used money received from maps made by
him on those trips to finance his exploration of
the steamboat. When all attempts to gain financial
support for his project failed, he returned to
Bardstown in 1796. Here he continued his studies
of stegmboat construction and designed a model
boat which he tried out successfully on the Beech
Fork River near Bardstown. He died on July 2,
1798 and was buried in the old Bardstown Ceme-
tery. At the instigation of the John Fitch Chapter,

  
 
  
  
  
  
   
  
   
   
  
  
   
  
  
     
  
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Daughters of the American Revolution, the United
States Government erected the present monument
opposite the Court House. The remains of Fitch
were moved from the cemetery to their present
and final resting place and the monument was
unveiled on May 25, 1927.

If the magnificent trees which border the
streets of Bardstown could give voice to all they
have beheld, we would hear tales of the many
great men who settled in this area. Bardstown and
Nelson County can proudly claim such men as
John Hays, one of Nelson County’s greatest
orators; Felix Grundy who founded the Circuit
Court system; the two John Rowans, both in-
fluential in governmental affairs and masters of
Federal Hill; Charles A. Wickliffe, former gover-
nor of Kentucky, member of Congress and Post-
master General under President Tyler; Ben
Hardin, lawyer and statesman; John Fitch, inven-
tor of the steamboat; John E. Newman, lawyer,
Judge of the U. S. Supreme Court, Secretary of
the Treasury under President Grant and author
of “Newman’s Pleading and Practice”; Robert C.
Wickliffe, son of Charles A. Wickliffe, Governor
of Louisiana in 1855; William Johnson, Governor
of Kentucky in 1869; John Pope, Governor of the
Territory of Arkansas in 1829; and Ben Johnson,
lawyer and 15 times Congressman from Kentucky.
This list could go on and on but suffice it to
say that great is Bardstown’s contribution to the
history of our country.

Long famous for its illustrious residents,
Bardstown also boasts many beautiful old homes.
Most famous of these is, of course, Federal Hill.
Wickland, historical residence of the Wickliffe
and Beckham families, known as “the home of
three governors,” has been awarded the certificate
of historical significance by the Department of
the Interior. The beautiful home of Ben Hardin,
Governor William Johnson’s residence and the
Old Talbott Tavern are but a few of the many
lovely old structures which add historic interest.

Blessed with an unusual abundance of lime in
its water supply, Nelson County has long been the
center of the distilling industry in Kentucky, with
records of the manufacture of whiskey dating
back to 1776. This industry grew and prospered
and by 1904 there were 18 family-owned dis-
tilleries in the area Prohibition brought an end
to this thriving business but, following the repeal
of the eighteenth amendment, by 1940 there were
13 family-owned distilleries in operation. Since
then most of them have been sold to large corpo-
rations so that at this time only two remain in the
families which founded them.

Little historical information has been recorded
since the middle of the nineteenth century but the
whispers of the trees tell over and over of the
exciting days which have passed since then. In the
days to come the story of the evolvement of “The
Stephen Foster Story” will be an integral and
fascinating addition to the story of Historic
Bardstown.

  
 

   
   
 
   
   
      
   
   
     
       
 

uN
During Intermission

Have a Coke

BOTTLED UNDER AUTHORITY OF THE COCA-COLA COMPANY. BY

THE COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY OF ELIZABETHTOWN

   
 

 

 

 

Birth date of two important events

In 1850 Stephen Foster reached his daring decision to

make song-writing a career instead of a hobby . . . and in the
same year, the L&N Railroad came into existence.

Just as Foster’s melodies have contributed unforgettably

to the South’s romance and tradition .. .

L&N’s tireless service has contributed

 

 

to its progress and development.

When you ship or travel use LO U S Vi L L 2
& NASHVILLE
§ RAILROAD

The DIXIE LINE

 

 

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Author

PAUL GREEN, Author, is one of America’s greatest and most
published writers. He is often referred to as a “Message Writer,”
all to his credit, for the power of his pen is considered by him
to be a sacred trust. National acclaim was first awarded him
in the form of a Pulitzer Prize for his Broadway show, “In
-Abraham’s Bosom,” and fast on the heels of that came a coveted
Guggenheim fellowship. After years in Hollywood as a writer
for such celebrities as Will Rogers and George Arliss, he re-
turned to his native State of North Carolina to concentrate his
efforts almost exclusively on saying something important for
Democracy. His Outdoor Symphonic Dramas, THE LOST
COLONY, THE COMMON GLORY, THE FOUNDERS,
WILDERNESS ROAD and THE CONFEDERACY, which have
been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of Americans, mark
the success of his efforts. However, Paul Green is known not
only as a playwright but also as a novelist, essayist, short story
writer, philosopher and educator. As a superb representative of
America, he has toured Asia as a “cultural Ambassador” and
served as advisor for the American delegation to UNESCO in
Paris. His newest artistic offering, THE STEPHEN FOSTER
STORY, is a glowing result of his thirty-five years in theatre.

T he Composer
Stephen Collins Foster

The Arranger

IsAAC VAN GROVE, Musical Arranger, first collaborated with
Paul Green in the production of THE SEVENTEENTH STAR
which was produced for the Ohio State Sesquicentennial celebra-
tion. His skill as a composer, arranger and conductor is known
throughout America and all of Europe for his ballets REVENGE
and “Merry Widow” have been performed in Paris, London
and Manchester, England. “Camille,” his newest original ballet,
was composed especially for the Chicago Opera Ballet to tour
nationally during its 1959-60 season. Also well known in America
is his opera “The Music Robber” which won the David Bishpham
Medal awarded for American Opera. Indeed he has covered much
musical ground since he started his professional career as pianist-
accompanist for Caruso, Melchoir and Grace Moore. He has been
Musical Director for the Cincinnati, St. Louis, Cleveland and
Chicago Summer Operas and was the Musical Director for the
Max Reinhardt-Kurt Weill Broadway spectacle, “The Eternal
Road.” His glorious and vibrant arrangements of the familiar
Stephen Foster songs are added credit to his position in the ranks
of contemporary American composers.

 

  
 

 

JAMES Byrp, the Director, became Director of this show after twelve
years of work in Outdoor Drama. He was Lighting Director for THE
LOST COLONY and THE CONFEDERACY, Director of HUSHED
WERE THEIR WAR CRIES and Assistant Director of THE STEPHEN
FOSTER STORY in its premiere season. A graduate of the Univer-
sity of North Carolina, he spent five years as Instructor of Drama at
both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. While
at Maryland, he directed the “Flying Follies,” a revue which toured
Europe under State Department sponsorship. He is presently Assistant
Professor of Drama at University of Louisville and Director of the
newly formed Belknap Theatre.

RALPH BurRIER, the Musical Director, is one of America’s outstanding
Choral Directors much in demand as a Guest Conductor for Festivals
and Choral Clinics all over the Nation. As a recipient of a Fulbright
Scholarship to the Akadamie of Music in Vienna, he studied with the
most famous European Choral Authorities. He served as Head of the
Choral Conducting Department at Westminster Choir College and was

Musical Director for THE LOST COLONY for many years. He is
returning for a second season with this show.

HARRY COBLE, the Choreographer, acquired his extraordinary knowledge
of the dance as one of the famous Ted Shawn Dancers with which
he appeared professionally for several seasons. Since his graduation
from the University of North Carolina, he has divided his time between
performing and teaching. As a professional dancer, he has worked with
the Charles Weidman Dancers and the Jan Veen School of Dance in
Boston where he was alsq choreographer. He choreographed THE
LOST COLONY, HORN IN THE WEST and the original production
of THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY. He has taught dance and
dramatics at the Boston Conservatory of Music, Emerson College of
Boston, and is presently on the faculty of Tennessee Wesleyan College.

page twenty-three

 
 

DONALD TREAT, the Scenic Designer, comes to Bardstown from his winter position
of Designer-Technical Director of Erie Playhouse in Pennsylvania. His specialized
training in outdoor drama comes from nine seasons with UNTO THESE HILLS
and as a Graduate Assistant at the University of North Carolina from which he
received his Bachelor and Masters degrees. He has received the coveted Play-
makers Award from the University for his designing prowess. He served with the
Navy in World War II and the Korean War.

 

Mary LOUISE BRECHER, the Costumer, a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, is pres-
ently the wardrobe mistress for the Louisville Little Theatre Company and the Uni-
versity of Louisville Players. Among her notable achievements in the field of design
is the position of decorator for the Columbia Manufacturing Company Showroom
at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Throughout the Winter Season, she carries
on a busy schedule of volunteer social work through the Louisville Woman’s Club.

 

 

FRED PARROTT, the Stage Manager, is a native of Poughkeepsie, New York, a grad-
uate of St. Lawrence University and holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He is
Associate Professor in Charge of the Dramatics Laboratory and Director of the
Berea Players at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. For several seasons he was
Associate Director of Paul Green’s WILDERNESS ROAD. This is his second
season as Stage Manager for THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY.

 

 

RAYMOND EBERT, Organist, comes to Bardstown directly from his commencement
at Wake Forest College where he was a music major. Though new to the field of
outdoor drama, he is far from new as an accompanist having been official organist
for all of the famous Wake Forest Choirs and organist for one of the famous
Winston-Salem Moravian Churches. He has had the unusual honor of being
President of the College American Guild of Organists for two years.

 

GENE LAFFERTY, the Technical Director, of the University of Arizona Drama De-
partment has degrees from Ohio State University and the University of Texas. He
has to his credit over four years of technical work in summer stock in New Jersey,
New York and Connecticut. However, he is not a stranger to Kentucky nor out-

door drama since he spent three seasons as Technical Coordinator for Paul Green’s
WILDERNESS ROAD and was Technical Director in this show’s first season.

 

OWEN E. RyANn, the Lighting Director, has designed scenery and lighting for the
Lyric Community Theatre in Washington, D. C., and the Frankfurt Playhouse a
U. S. Army theatre in Germany. A graduate of the University of Maryland, he par-
ticipated in over 22 productions to become a member of the National Collegiate
Players. Next winter he will continue work on his Master of Fine Arts Degree at
Yale Drama School. This is his second season in the Light Tower for this show.

page twenty-four

   
 

 

 

 

Teg 1 eS -EOE eek te OoON ae a 2 Nal a We Ses Tae Sh = he — Ac

THE WILLETT DISTILLING COMPANY

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i will, we trust, bea

 

recurring pleasure whenever your .%. ca . Xi Se ee dwells upon its
beautiful melodies, de- Coe aa , : lightful songs and exciting por-
trayal of how “OLD => BARDSTOWN” was in our ante-
bellum days. , 2 2G Ape | “OLD BARDSTOWN?” people are
de- | | i | a lighted to have you here tonight; and
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page twenty-five

 

 
 

STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
““@ finder of many melodies’

(Continued from page 8)

progressed towards the tragedy of the Civil War,
Foster’s own bright star began to fade. His
creative ability decreased. His domestic life was
complicated by discord. His management of his
business and financial affairs deteriorated. There
was an increase in the instability of his tempera-
ment. He became moody; he was careless about
money and other practical matters; he was occa-
sionally improvident; towards the end of his life
he grew increasingly intemperate. He did not have
the strength, or the stamina, or the stability to
control his own destiny. Sorrow, failure, and
obscurity marked the closing years of his life.

The year 1860 was a definite turning point in
his career.

During the summer, he made a supreme effort,
and created one of his truly great works, Old
Black Joe. There was still a spark remaining in
Stephen’s dying genius, and in the turmoil of his
emotions, this spark was kindled into flame for the
last time. We know that when Stephen composed
this song, it was not written simply to earn money,
much as he needed money. He had to write this
song, to give expression to the intense emotions
burning within him.

Stephen Foster was deeply moved by the
passing of happy youth and the loss of family and
friends. He grieved for those departed forms. He
heard the calling of the gentle voices of his dead
parents, his brothers, and his sister, gone to a
shore where he, himself, now longed to go. These
feelings were intensified by his growing sense of
insecurity and failure. It is not a blackface
minstrel who steps forward on the stage to sing
Old Black Joe. It is Stephen Foster himself, and
he sings to us from his very soul!

In the vain hope that he could change the
pattern of his life, Foster moved to New York,
late in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. It was
an unwise move. He was a personality that needed
sympathetic, understanding family and friends —
without them he was lost. Faced with the bitter
realities of the Bowery and Broadway, he ex-
perienced poverty, hunger, loneliness, and despair.
Night was closing in around Stephen. But through
all the misery of his last unhappy days, there is
evidence that he still maintained his pride and
his courage. Stephen Foster’s life ended in
tragedy, but it did not end in degradation.

On January 10, 1864, Stephen was seriously
injured in a fall in his room on the Bowery. He
was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died on
January 13, at the age of thirty-seven years. His
body was taken back to Pittsburgh, where it was
buried in Allegheny Cemetery. His grave has
become a shrine for those who love the Foster

page twenty-six

songs. Many people have visited it, to do him
honor, during the passage of the years.

If Stephen Foster had been a stronger per-
sonality, of practical temperament, one who could
have taken an active, successful part in the ma-
terial growth of this country in a period of great
change, he no doubt would have been a happier
man. It was an age of transition. The canals had
been built and largely abandoned. The steamboats
were giving way to the railroads. Slavery, the
“peculiar institution” of the economy of the South,
the institution which was the theme of many of
Foster’s songs, was at its height. But it was in-
exorably doomed — doomed by the economy of
steam and steel. “Westward the Star of Empire
takes its way.” Foster could look on all these
things as an observer rather than as a participant.
But if he had been able to participate, actively
and successfully, he probably would not have had
the temperament to create, out of his own inner
conflicts, the Swanee River and the Old Kentucky
Home. The world is the richer because of those
conflicts. We can only grieve that he who brought
so much happiness to the world, through his
“blessed, Heaven-sent gift of melody,” knew so
much unhappiness.

When Stephen Foster died he had just thirty-
eight cents in his purse, not much to show for
a lifetime, if money were the only legacy. But
with the coins there was also a scrap of paper,
bearing five words penciled by the hand that had
phrased so many thoughts common to our hu-
manity. The words were these — “Dear friends
and gentle hearts”. Even at the last, Stephen was
able to distill sweetness from his own pain. The
little pocketbook, with its contents, is one of the
most treasured relics in the Foster Hall Collection
at the University of Pittsburgh. It is the thing
that visitors most wish to see —a touchstone and

a talisman.
The five words on the scrap of paper —

Stephen Foster’s “Last Message” — were no doubt
intended to be the theme or title of a song he did
not live to write. They reflect something of the
personality of the man himself — his kindness, his
friendliness, his gentleness, and his generosity.

We Americans can take pride in our composer
whose music has become the heritage of all man-
kind. His songs are a bond between people of
different languages and cultures. Stephen Foster
made the world a better place in which to live.
Let us continue to honor him and to keep fresh
his memory.

In January, 1864, shortly after his death, an
article, “The Late Stephen C. Foster,” appeared
in The New York Evening Post. The writer com-
pared Foster with the Italian composer, Gaetano
Donizetti, on whose tomb is a modest inscription.
These same simple words could well stand as the
epitaph of Stephen Collins Foster. We, his fellow
Americans, who loved his songs, will agree that

Stephen Foster was
“A FINDER OF MANY MELODIES.”

 

 
 

General Manager John Cauble returned
to Bardstown at the end of the pre-
miere season to assume his duties with
the production. John originally was
asociated with this venture in the early
days when it was nothing more than a
“dream’’ and was drafted to go to
Virginia Beach to act as Manager for
Paul Green’s great Civil War Drama,
THE CONFEDERACY during its first

two seasons.

Cauble is by no means a stranger to a
Paul Green-authored symphonic drama,
having worked with THE LOST
COLONY as Assistant Technical Di-
rector and served as Technical Direc-
tor on the opening season staff of
WILDERNESS ROAD and for three
subsequent years as Administrative
Assistant.

John is the director for the Bardstown
Arts Club Drama Group and has most
successfully produced ‘Night Must
Fall” and ‘‘Harvey” during the 1959-
1960 season. While a student at the
University of North Carolina he was
the local Stage Manager for “John
Brown’s Body,” directed by Charles
Laughton. He has been an instructor
of Drama at Maryville Coliege, Ten-
nessee.

Publicity Director Jean Cronk first
became associated with the field of
outdoor drama when, as a student at
Westminster Choir College, she was a
member of the Company of Paul
Green’s THE LOST COLONY. Her
interest in the media grew and she was
a part of the original planning for
WILDERNESS ROAD at Berea.

Mrs. Cronk’s musical training and
experience is vast and she has toured
the nation as a professional singer,
appearing under such noted conductors
as Arturo Toscanini, Sergei Rachmani-
noff, Leopold Stokovski, Alfred Wal-
lenstein and Bruno Walter.

 

A TOAST

Best of the
Great Kentucky Composers

Best of the
Great Kentucky Bourbons!

DISTILLED AND BoTTLED BY ME AVEN HILL DISTILLERIES, INC. sarpstown, NELSON county, ky.

 

 

 

Seated: Jean Cronk (Publicity Director), John Cauble (General Manager),
Rai Baillie (Assistant to the General Manager).

Standing: William Sisco (Ticket Controller), Kathryn Riley (Secretary),
Frank Hammond (Housing), Marion Drew (Secretary ).

Rai Baillie, Assistant to the General Manager, brings with him more than a decade of profes-
sional acting and directing, plus vast experience in the field of public relations. He has appeared
as an actor in outdoor drama, having done character parts in THE COMMON GLORY, THE
FOUNDERS, UNTO THESE HILLS, CHUCKY JACK and THE CONFEDERACY. He has
made several movies, doubling as director of make-up which is a specialty with Rai.

For ten years Baillie and his wife, Lucille, toured the nation with their “Baillie’s Theatre Lab,”
performing in W. S. Gilbert’s “Sweethearts.” This coming winter they will present their second
season of ‘The Boor’? by Anton Chekov.

 

to the

by the

4 years old @ 100 proof @ Bottled in Bond

KENTUCKY STRAIGHT
BOURBON WHISKEY

 

 

 

 
 

 

page twenty-eight

 

LEONARD STARLING, Dudley Morton, a graduate of East Carolina College, Green-
ville, North Carolina, recently received a Masters of Sacred Music from Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary in nearby Louisville. He is particularly well known
as guest soloist with choral groups and for his Oratorio performances. While at
Seminary he worked as assistant choral director for the Oratorio Society and Tour-
ing Choir. During a four year tour with the United States Air Force as a naviga-
tor, he participated in several civic choral organizations. Notable among these was
the role of Jeremiah in the musical comedy, “Spring For Sure,” with the Musical
Arts Guild, Fayetteville, North Carolina.

NAYMOND THOMAS, Joe Aiken, of Ardmore, Oklahoma, plays the role of the man
who inspired Foster to write “Old Black Joe.” His introduction to show business
came in 1957 when he won the All Army Talent Show for his post. He is now
a student at the University of Louisville School of Music and has appeared with
the Kentucky Opera Association in “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” “Beatrice”
and ““LaBoheme”’ and is soloist with the University of Louisville Choir.

DONALD HENRICKSON, Christie, of the music faculty of Eastern State College,
Richmond, Kentucky, has wide experience in concert, oratorio and opera perform-
ance. At Christmas he was bass soloist for the “Messiah” presented in Independ-
ence, Missouri, over 700 radio and television stations. In 1956, through Boris
Goldovsky, he was given a solo opportunity with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
under Charles Munch. Other famous personalities under whom he has been soloist
include Sir Thomas Beecham, and Lukas Foss. Mr. Henrickson is well known in
Kentucky through his solo performances with the Lexington Symphony Orchestra,
and his Oratorio roles of “Elijah” and “Raphael” in the “Creation.”

WILLIAM G. HAAN, Igoe, is Director of Dramatics at Male High School in Louis-
ville, Kentucky. Since obtaining his Master of Arts Degree from West Virginia
University, he has been continuously connected with the theatre both as actor and
director. For over nine years he has taught drama in the public schools of West
Virginia, Missouri, Ohio and Kentucky and in that time has worked with over
thirteen major productions such as “The Man Who Came To Dinner,” “Arsenic
and Old Lace,” and “The Moon Is Blue.” As a member of the Louisville Little
Theatre this season, he had a leading role in “The Hooper Law” directed by
James Byrd.

 
 

 

 

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Michael Perlstein, Fran Delaney, Lee Grigsby, Bobbie Martin, Pat Tilly.

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page thirty

 

 

EWEL CorNeTT, Dr. Andrew McDowell, of Louisville, returns
for a second season. A graduate of University of Illinois
School of Music, he has sung leads in “Othello,” “Agemem-
non,” “Don Pasquale,” “Carousel,” “Oklahoma,” and many
others. He appeared a season with Paul Green’s ‘“Wilder-
ness Road” and several seasons with the Louisville Park
Theatrical Company. He had leads in “Trial Of John Brown”
and “A Little To The Left” this season with the Louisville
Little Theatre and in “Oedipus Rex” produced by the Carriage
House Players.

CYNTHIA MATTINGLY, Mattie McDowell, returns to recreate
the role of the mother of “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair”.
She lives in nearby Valley Station where she is a public school
teacher and is co-director of children’s plays and programs.
She studied drama at Blue Mountain College in Mississippi.
This past season she played the role of Preem in “The
Hooper Law”, a Louisville Little Theatre Production.

JUDITH KAY WARREN, Gussie Jordan, a member of the original
cast of THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY, returns this year

in the role which she understudied last season. A resident of
Alliance, Ohio, Judy is a recent graduate of Mount Union
College where she was an outstanding soloist with the College

Choir and an unqualified success in the role of Laura Partridge
in “Solid Gold Cadillac”.

RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, Henry Kleber, a Doctoral student at
University of Illinois, started his professional career as an
actor-singer in the original company of “Brigadoon”, the
Radio City Music Hall Glee Club, and in radio and television.
A Fulbright Fellow in Opera in Italy, he sang in Italy, Germany
and Austria from 1950 through 1953. He has appeared as
orchestra soloist with the Cincinnati, Houston, Chautauqua,

CBS and Mozarteum Symphonies. As concert accompanist he
has concertized with Ljuba Welitsch, John Langstaff and
Theresa Randall.

RICHARD P. FLoyp, Josh Pollock, portrays the show’s comedy
character for a second season. A resident of Bardstown, he is
employed by the U. S. Government as a Distillery Gauger. He
is a member of the Board of Directors of the Bardstown Arts
Club and has had leading roles in “Arsenic And Old Lace”,
“Lo And Behold” and “Harvey”. His dramatics training was
received as a student at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky,
and Springfield State Teachers College in Missouri.

JOHN E. WALKER, Bones, a native of Illinois and a student at
the University of Illinois, has an extensive record of Operatic
appearances. He has appeared with the Central City Opera
Company in Colorado, Tanglewood Opera, Oglebay Park
Opera and University of Illinois Opera Workshop. Perform-
ances in “La Boheme,” “Carmen,” “Falstaff,” “Gianni Schichi”
and “Merry Wives of Windsor” are among the most notable
in his career.

Ray MusTon, Tambo, in addition to being a singer, is a skilled
actor, clarinetist and popular master of ceremonies. As a
student at the University of Indiana, he has appeared in “As
You Like It”, “Jordan River Review’, and is a member of the
famous “Singing Hoosiers”. His latest achievement is as
Master of Ceremonies for the University and as Disc Jockey
on Radio Station WTTS, Bloomington.

 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

VERNON Oaks, William B. Foster, Sr. comes to the Company
of THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY with a splendid back-
ground in music and acting, having put in a season with
HORN IN THE WEST, at Boone, North Carolina, as Lighting
Technician, Singer and Actor. Now a student at the University
of Alabama, Vernon is a member of the Men’s Glee Club,
University Choir, Choral Union and University Players. In
1959 he was awarded the Black Frier Award for the best
freshman actor.

LucILLE BAILLIE, Eliza Foster, comes to THE STEPHEN
FOSTER STORY after having completed an extensive tour

with Checkov’s “The Boor” with her husband. The “Baillie
Theatre Lab” has also given over 2500 performances of
“Sweethearts” during the past ten years. Theatre began
for Lucille with the Kansas City Children’s Civic Theatre.
Her first professional miming was with the late Guy Kibbee
in “Shore Acres” as a child. In recent years she has had
leading roles in UNTO THESE HILLS, THE FOUNDERS,
THE COMMON GLORY, and THE CONFEDERACY.

JOAN BELL Pryor, Lievy, is a June Graduate of Tennessee
A. & I. State University as a Speech and Drama Major. During
her dramatic career at the University, she appeared in such
plays as “Sabrina Fair”, Romeo And Juliet”, “The Crucible”,
“Inherit The Wind’’, and “The Lark”. She received an award
for “excellence in acting” for the year 1958-59, and was a
member of the Tennessee State Players Guild, Theta Alpha
Phi, and the National Association of Dramatic and Speech
Arts.

CHARLES JONES, John Rowan, a June graduate of La Grange
College is a veteran actor at twenty-one. Roles in “Hamlet”,
“The Merchant Of Venice”, “La Boheme”, “Visit To A Small
Planet”, and “Lil’ Abner” attest to his versatility as an
actor. In the Georgia premiere of Vaughn Williams’ Christmas
Masque, he danced the role of Marley’s Ghost. His pro-
fessional experience has been with the Plymouth Drama

Festival in Massachusetts and with the outdoor drama
CHUCKY JACK.

Moses GUNN, Tom, attended Tennessee A. & I. as a drama
student on a National Honor Society Dramatics Scholarship.
During his tour with the Army, Moses continued acting in
the Special Services Branch working with the Heidelberg Little
Theatre in Germany. His roles there in “Murder In The
Cathedral” and “Heaven Can Wait” received much acclaim.
At present he has a Graduate Drama Scholarship at the

University of Kansas where he recently appeared in “Othello”
and “Member Of The Wedding”.

JEANETTE SALLEE, Lucy LeMoyne, a member of the chorus
during the original season, is so talented she has moved up
to a main role for the second season. As a student of Western
Kentucky State College, she was president of Western A
Capella Choir, Western Chorus and Music Educators Club
and winner of the AGMA Award. This year she worked on
her Masters Degree at Cincinnati Conservatory and won the
opportunity to sing the role of Wellgunde in “The Ring”
under Josef Kreps for the famous Cincinnati May Festival.

YOLANDE TATUM BRYANT, Charity, has just returned from a
European tour of “See How They Run” sponsored by the
U. S: O. Although she is only a Junior at Tennessee A. & I.,
she has already achieved many honors as an actress. Her
major roles in “Witness For The Prosecution”, “Romeo And
Juliet” and “The Lark” caused her to be selected to tour
Europe with the Tennesssee State Players’ Guild. This
Spring, she received a citation from the National Council of
Negro Women.

page thirty-one
 

 

THE BELLES: Sue Campbell, Barbara Surbis, Dorothy Lancaster, Charlotte Ditto,
Carol Oyster, Darlene Robart, Marta Melendez, Binnie Pulliam, Phyllis Willis,
Carol Malone

THE PLACE OF STEPHEN FOSTER INIT

Let us say outright, and all will agree, that the
music of Stephen Foster entered into the very
bloodstream of our national life, and that, more
than the music of all the other American composers
before him, nourished it and stamped upon it a
personality that could be called distinctively
American; and that his music will continue to stir,
inspire, and give joy to countless generations to
come, as long as there exists a voice to sing, ears
to hear, and hearts to feel the charm and loveliness
of his perfect melodies.

Foster has often been called the greatest folk-song
writer of America, indeed, of the world. And so he
may be called. But we must remember that, since
every folk-song was at one time a living, contem-
porary popular song (whether improvised or written
down, or learned by rote), in his own time Stephen
Foster was universally considered to be a ‘‘pop”’
song composer, turning out scores upon scores ot
sentimental ballads, rhythm tunes, nonsense songs,
whose words and melodies were quickly memorized
and performed—at home, on the street, and on the
stage. It might. be said that Foster was indeed
writing the folk-songs of the future, though certainly
unaware that he was doing so.

Stephen Foster was, as every artist is, a child
of his own period and environment. He understood
his fellow Americans. And he was able, out of their
common bond, to interpret them and to give expres-

page thirty-two

sion, in song and story, to their deepest sentiments,
their joys and sorrows, and to their fondest hopes.

The hardy pioneers, pushing westward through
wildernesses, over mountains, across endless plains
and deserts, found in his ‘‘Oh! Susanna” an infec-
tious tune to lighten the load of their heavy burdens,
a nonsensical humor in its words to cheer their
hearts, and a rollicking rhythm to stir their tired feet
and send them on their way.

The merry Minstrel troupes, the ubiquitous and
the most popular entertainers of his era, vied with
each other to be the first to introduce Foster’s every
new song. For them he poured forth, out of a
seeming inexhaustible source of creativity, a pro-
fusion of Ethiopian songs, plantation songs, sad
ones, happy ones, dance tunes, that needed only
the ringing strum of banjo or guitar and the jingling
beat of tambourine for their ample accompaniment.

In return, these black-faced entertainers, traveling
their special form of ‘‘Minstrel Show’’ into every
city, town and hamlet throughout America, and
across the seas, performing their routines before
royalty and commoner alike, spread far and wide
the fame of Stephen Foster and his Ethiopian songs.
Many of these were translated as soon as they were
published into foreign tongues; (in Leipsig, ‘‘Old
Kentucky Home’’ became ‘‘Leb’ wohl, Kentucky
Land’’!). For the people of Europe and of other
lands, American music and the name of Stephen
Foster were synonymous.
 

 

THE BEAUX: William McRary, Vernon Oaks, Charles Ellington, Ray Muston,

  

P| se ea be ie

John E. Walker, Paul Corder, Vearl Pennington, Ronald Melampy (not pictured)

And this evaluation remained for a half century
or more, and indeed in some lands persists even
today. (It is not without pertinence to this point
to mention that when a delegation from the Russian
Theatre came to America last summer on their first
formal inspection trip here since Stanislavsky’s visit
in 1923, they chose Bardstown and Paul Green’s
‘‘The Stephen Foster Story’’ as one of the theatres
and musical plays to observe. | quote from one of
their reports in a letter to Stuart Littlhe—‘‘Stephen
Foster which we saw in the enchanting and hospitable
Bardstown combines an enchanting naive theatrical
quality with true poetry’’.

What were the musical influences that entered
into and helped form the Foster style? Certainly we
can trace in his works the contributions of the
English and Scottish balladry, and their American
imitations, which were current in his era. Also, Foster
could not but be affected by the river chanteys, and
the dances and songs of the negroes who worked
or loafed on the wharves of the Ohio. But just as
he transformed the affectations and exaggerations
of the sentimental ballads into sincere, moving,
poetic musical art-forms, so he raised the banal
and crude levels of the cheap minstrelry and the
barroom ditties into enduring folk-literature.

Though no Franz Abt nor a Schubert (with whom
he was temperamentally akin as person and in
melodic gifts) Foster could write ‘‘composed through”’
songs such as ‘‘Come, where my love lies dream-

 

| THE AMERICAN MUSICAL SCENE

by Isaac VAN GROVE

ing’’, and the Romeo and Juliet duet ‘‘Wilt thou be

gone, love’, songs that compare favorable with those
of the great European masters of the ‘‘lieder’’ form.

It is idle and futile to speculate whether Foster
had the musical stature and sufficient learning to
have composed a symphony, an oratorio or an opera,
because he never did, and there is no evidence that
he ever even tried. But we can be grateful to the
Profidential Destiny that guided his muse, that Foster
limited himself, consciously or not, to short song-
forms; so simple in harmonies, his melodies so
easily within the voice range of the untrained singer,
that anyone, even a child, can sing them; still, of
such a high artistic standard that the sophisticated
recitalist continues to deem them worthy of pro-
gramming.

And what is the secret of the magic power that
has placed and kept Stephen Foster in the foremost
echelon among American composers? Melody!
Melody, without which music has no heart! Melody,
eternally new, though a century old.

A world-famous musician said to me after raptfully
listening to the performance of a certain musical
masterpiece, ‘‘It was like a spiritual bath’. Even
so does a Foster melody bathe and cleanse us.

Stephen Foster lived with melody, and for melody;
and when he died he bequeathed to us a priceless
legacy of melodies. His epitaph could have well
been the very words he wrote in one of his songs:—
“‘In Melody, in Melody, | would breathe my soul away’’.

page thirty-three

   
 

The Lost Colony

Eleanor Dare and John Borden hear Sir Walter Raleigh
(center) describe the wonders of the new world.

Now in its twentieth season on Roanoke Island, Man-
teo, North Carolina, the Lost Colony is staged on the
very spot where the first English settlers landed in
1584. It is the story of Sir Walter Raleigh’s first colony
in the new world.

|
| 8:15 Nightly Except Mondays
Through September 7

Reserved Seats $3.00
General Admission $2.00

For Reservations Write

THE LOST COLONY
BOX F MANTEO, NORTH CAROLINA

HORN wwe WEST
| et TN 5

      
 

Horn in the West unfolds on the natural amphitheatre stage,
the highest outdoor theatre in Eastern America.

See the courage of Daniel Boone, the divided loyalties
of Dr. Geoffrey Stuart, the inspiration of Preacher
Isaac Sims. 1960 fresh new approach to this fabulous

story of America seeking freedom from the English
tyranny.

8:15 Nightly except Mondays
Through August 28

Reserved Seats $3.00
General Admission $2.00

For Reservations Write

HORN IN THE WEST

DANIEL BOONE THEATRE BOONE, N. C.

 

 

 

The Actors are robed and masked in brilliant mosaics from
feet through face and look like living stained glass.

This dramatic production of “The Book of Job” is a
careful arrangement of the King James Translation.
It seeks to heighten the timeless debate about human
suffering and divine purposes.

8:30 Nightly Except Sundays
June 24 through August 20

General Admission $2.00
Children $1.50

For Reservations Write

THE BOOK OF JOB

THE COMMON GLORY

PINEVILLE, KENTUCKY

 

Thomas Jefferson discusses the Declaration of Independence
with other members of the Virginia Legislature.

More than a million Americans have relived our na-
tion’s struggle for liberty in this blazing drama of the
Revolutionary War years. Portrayed by a cast of 150,
rich in music, comedy, costume, with ballet and
pageantry.

8:15 Nightly Except
Mondays through August 28

Reserved Seats $2.50 & $3.00
General Admission $2.00

For Reservations Write

THE COMMON GLORY
BOX 488 WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
 

 

} These Hills.”

The “Theatre of the People’ — drama in the open
air — actually was born almost 3,000 years ago. It
had its conception in the great amphitheatres of ancient
Greece, was nurtured in the Rome of the Caesars, and
came of age during the lusty Elizabethan era of
England.

And then it died.

But now, some 400 years later and a continent re-
moved, the “Theatre of the People” is coming alive
again. It is being revived through the outdoor his-
torical drama right hete in America whose history is
young. And this summer, a half million persons will
sit in open-air theatres and watch the re-creation of
history, much of it on the very spot where it was lived
and written.

Strangely enough, revival of the “Theatre of the
People” began in North Carolina and was instituted
by a North Carolinian and produced on the very spot

 

THEATRE OF THE PEOPLE

by Harry Davis

This article was written by Mr. Davis for the souvenir program of Kermit Hunter’s
Outdoor Drama at Cherokee, North Carolina, “Unto These Hills.” It is re-printed
here through the courtesy of Mr. Davis and the Cherokee Historical Association.
Mr. Harry Davis is Chairman of the Department of Dramatic Arts at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina, a member of the Board of the American Educational
Theatre Association, Director of the Carolina Playmakers, and Director of “Unto

where the first English colony in the New World was

founded.
It began with the premiere of Paul Green’s now-

famous outdoor play, THE LOST COLONY, at
Manteo, on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. And in
the wake of this trial-breaking play, more than a
dozen other dramas, based on American history have
followed, principally in the Southeast, of which Green
authored five more — THE COMMON GLORY,
WILDERNESS ROAD, THE FOUNDERS, THE
CONFEDERACY and THE STEPHEN FOSTER
STORY.

The summer of 1950 saw the opening of UNTO
THESE HILLS, a drama concerned with the impact of
white settlers on the ancient civilization of the Cherokee
Indians. Presented in the breathtaking sweep of Moun-
tainside Theatre, located in the heart of the Qualla
Reservation and with the immemorial peaks of the

 

8:00 Nightly Except Mondays
Through September 4

UNTO THESE HILLS

MOUNTAINSIDE THEATRE

All Seats Reserved
$3.00 $2.40 $2.00 $1.50

For Reservations Write

CHEROKEE, N. C.

page thirty-five

 

 
    
 
   
 
   
  
  
   
  
    
   

 

 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

 

  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
    
   
  
  
  
    
  
  
  

 

page thirty-six

Great Smokies, for a backdrop, this production, like
THE LOST COLONY, has special significance.

Written by a hitherto unknown young playwright, it
marked the emergence of a new talent in the field of
the historical play, Kermit Hunter. The success of Mr.
Hunter’s first venture into this specialized field of play-
writing has led to his authorship of a number of other
historical plays, among them FOREVER THIS LAND,
HORN IN THE WEST, VOICE IN THE WIND, and
CHUCKY JACK.

The Broadway play may treat of almost any con-
ceivable theme, but the topic of the outdoor historical
drama is invariably connected with actual events and
personalities of the past.

Another important feature of the historical play is its
direct indigenous relation to the locale in which it is
staged. In nearly all instances the dramatized story,
rooted in historical fact, is presented on or near the
site where the real story took place. This imparts a
valuable spiritual quality into the performance, since
it becomes a sort of pilgrimage to holy ground.

Inevitably the outdoor historical drama is a drama
of patriotism, but its patriotism must be positive and
affirmative in the finest sense, it must be a thoughtful
patriotism and not a childish flagwaving in the pep-rally
tradition. Though regional in its flavor, the dramatic
story must be universal in its appeal. The dry fact that
George Washington once slept somewhere is unimpor-
tant to most of us, unless perchance he slept at Valley
Forge, at Yorktown or at some other place intrinsically
related to American destiny. And American destiny is
not limited to yesterday, it is also a thing of today and
of tomorrow.

In overwhelming proportion the audiences who see
these outdoor plays are made up of family tourist
groups, a somewhat different audience from that found
in the indoor metropolitan theatre. Some are experi-
enced theatre patrons, many are not. Children are
present in all age ranges, including babies in their
mother’s arms. The holiday spirit is predominant, and
one wonders, sitting among them, if the crowd in the
great open-air theatres of ancient Greece and Rome,
even the lusty Elizabethan audience, might not have
been very much akin in spirit to this people’s audience
of our Atomic Age.

The likeness to the classic Greek theatre may be
carried even further, for here, too, the people are
watching a re-enactment of their own past; here, too,
the legendary heroes, the forefathers, the founders of
the nation, striving mightily with great forces, and
showing us firsthand their monumental labors, their en-
during faith, their sore trials and their triumphant vision
of the future. In theatre of this kind the common
brotherhood of man becomes a most palpable reality.

Much of the success of these plays must be credited
to the dedicated and unselfish contributions of money,
time, energy and knowledge given to them by com-
munity projects, presented by a non-profit corporation,
with its top authority resting in an elected Board of
Trustees composed of distinguished leaders in the
community.

In almost every case the funds to float the initial
production must be raised through civic contributions,
bolstered occasionally by grants from the State. The

 

 

State of North Carolina has been especially generous
in assisting its historical dramas, since it recognizes
quite honestly their great advertising value as high-
quality area attractions. The State of Kentucky con-
structed the J. Dan Talbott Amphitheatre especially for
the: production of THE STEPHEN FOSTER STORY
on the grounds of My Old Kentucky Home State Park.

The slickness and versatility so rightly admired on
the Broadway stage and the Hollywood screen are not
usually suited to the rugged honesty of the pioneer
character, which suffuses most of the historical plays.

The Carolina Playmakers of the University of North
Carolina have been directly associated with the staging
of many of the outdoor historical shows. The fact that
this type of drama exists at all may in one sense be
credited largely to the influence of the Playmaker
family. Under the messianic leadership of the late
Professor Frederick H. Koch this university group, of
which both Paul Green and Kermit Hunter are gradu-
ates, earned for itself a national reputation as the home

of the folk play, a regional drama created by native
writers.

An electric little man, dressed characteristically in
a Norfolk jacket and puffing contentedly on a pipe,
“Proff” Koch imbued his students with the doctrine
of creative self-reliance. “Write what you know,”
“Drama is right on your own doorstep,” and “Believe
in yourself” were phrases which he skillfully ingrained
into his students’ thinking.

So instead of aping Broadway, they wrote and staged
plays about their own lives, touring them adventurously
throughout the broad expanse of the Old North State,
and into other parts of the country.

As might be expected, the early folk plays of this
group were relatively simple, and sometimes pretty
rough-hewn. But gradually a tradition and a skill were
built up, and a sizable body of really good plays began
to accumulate. These folk plays were indeed a drama
of the people, by the people, and for the people as
Archibald Henderson so aptly dubbed it. They gave
expression to grass-roots democracy, the democracy of
that fictitious reality, the average American. They re-
affirmed his inborn dignity, and gave voice to his stub-
born independence, his rich sense of humor, his fervent
patriotism and his belief in beauty and in God.

When THE LOST COLONY was first conceived,
Paul Green was already a Pulitzer Prize winner and
the leading dramatist of the South; it is evident that he
was the ideal man to write the Roanoke play. And it
is also natural that the Playmaker group was called on
by the local association to assist in staging the produc-
tion. This collaboration between the local sponsoring
association and the college dramatic group is a natural
and workable arrangement, and it has been the plan
adopted in many cases.

In its ideal form then, the outdoor historical drama
would seem to be primarily a drama of democracy, and
to belong most fittingly to the people, both spiritually
and physically.

Today, in our modern electronic age of the rocket,
the space ship and the atomic bomb, the need for
spiritual stamina is greater than ever. Perhaps these
dramas of the people may help to give us some of the
hope and the strength we Americans need as we face
the future of our world.

  
 

  

 

 
    
      
   

  
 
 

BARTON OF BARDSTOWN SALUTES THE
STEPHEN FOSTER STORY

Whiskey perfectionists in Kentucky since 1879, BARTON, Bardstown’s most prominent industry, §
proudly hails the STEPHEN FosTER SToRY as a magnificent and rewarding dramatic experience.
This stirring musical tribute will live on in the memory of all who see it long after the final curtain.

TWIST

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