Noel, Tallulah, Cole, and Me by John C. Wilson

Author:John C. Wilson [Macauley, John C. Wilson;Thomas S. Hischak;Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2015-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Lillian and Bea

My first independent American production was a play called Excursion by Victor Wolfson. Gladys Calthrop did an extraordinary set of a ship that folded and unfolded like a pack of cards during the many scene changes. Worthington Miner directed a large cast that included some interesting people. There was young Joseph Olney, who would later become Joseph Cotten; and Whitford Kane, who remained Whitford Kane. And there were Marilyn Erskine, Anthony Ross, Frances Fuller—who was Tony Miner’s wife—and particularly a budding young actress named Shirley Booth. Richard Maney was our press agent, and typical of his promotional feats, he induced the clergyman who had married the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to attend a performance. Those newsworthy nuptials had made the little minister the hottest item in town, and he entered the theater flanked by photographers whose presence had obviously been arranged in advance by Maney.

Excursion was a critical success in New York and was subsequently sold to MGM for $100,000. The script dealt with a Coney Island ferry boat captain, played by Whitford Kane. Looking over some of his bedraggled passengers, the captain decided that what they needed most was freedom from the drudgery of their daily existence. Thus, he changes the boat’s course and heads out to the open sea. Some audiences may have been confused by—or indifferent to—the philosophical differences, because business at the box office began to fall off after a few months. But I kept it going—philanthropic as it may have been—until the movie-rights bonanza was finally exhausted. This added some months to its run. As far as I know, the script is still reclining in MGM’s files. [No movie version of Wolfson’s play has ever been made.]

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