Jessica Fletcher - Who Killed Candlepin Bowling?

 

It's no mystery, NOBODY killed candlepin bowling.  It is still alive in New England, even if more and more bowling alleys offer only ten-pin lanes ("big balls") like an encroaching weed devastating a native species.  But you'd never know that if you saw the "Murder By Twos" episode of the beloved series Murder She Wrote.

I believe I am second to none in Jessica Fletcher or Dame Angela Lansbury fandom, and hardly miss an opportunity to watch a re-run, so please take this not as a rant, but merely as an observation by a concerned party.  SHE AND SETH WENT TO A BOWLING ALLEY IN CABOT COVE AND IT WAS TEN-PIN!!!!!

I almost choked on my New England clam chowder.  This is sacrilege.  Please see this previous post on candlepin bowling.  And remember, in New England, if it ain't candlepin, it ain't bowling.

While I understand the series was shot in California, one wonders why a New England consultant was not put on staff.  I am willing to overlook occasionally dubious "Maine accents" or even the absence of any kind of New England drawl when the episodes are set in the fictional Cabot Cove, Maine.  I am willing to overlook her nephew Grady constantly calling her "ant" Jess, instead of the appropriate "awwnt" Jess, though it has the same effect as fingernails on a chalkboard.  

I even kept my temper when Jessica once referred to "pop bottles."  Good lord.  "Pop?"  Really?

I am willing to overlook a lot of things, but not ten-pin bowling in this tiny hamlet in Down East Maine.  

"Murder by Twos" is episode 9, season 11 of the program, originally broadcast November 27, 1994.  There's nothing wrong with the story.  A murder happens.  Two of them, actually, but I guess that's a plot spoiler so I won't continue.  

Though Jessica traveled all over the world, stepping over corpses at every turn, I confess, I enjoy the episodes set in Cabot Cove the most.  I just have to overlook a few regional errors.  But I draw the foul line at not having a candlepin bowling alley in town.

For those who are curious, or, like Jessica, need proof, I herewith include this link for places to go candlepin bowling in Maine.  

Above image courtesy of the Encylopaedia Britannica,GNU Free Documentation License.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   

Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;

 States of Mind: New England, 

A Tragic Toast to Christmas -- The Infamous Wood Alcohol Deaths of 1919 in Chicopee, Mass.; as well as books on classic films and several novels.  Her Double V Mysteries series is set in New England in the early 1950s.  

TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN - SEE MUGS, SHIRTS, AND MUCH MORE HERE!!!

World War II comes to northern Maine - CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS

New England locations are featured in several middle grade and young adult novels published during World War II.  My latest book, Children's Wartime Adventure Novels - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II explores these stories and how they inspired and indoctrinated a young generation too young to fight, but not too young to be affected by a global war. 

In the first of this three-post series, I wrote about locations in western Massachusetts -- Smith College and Mount Holyoke College -- that were settings for two books for girls on officers' training in the WAVES and Women Marines.

In the second post last week, I talked about two boys' novels that show us New London, Connecticut, locations, including the Naval Submarine Base, where young men train during World War II.

Today, in the third and last post in this three-part series, we have a look at a book for girls set in Maine that blends the war and the home front.

Carol Rogers in War Wings for Carol by Patricia O’Malley, is an administrative assistant in a regional airline in northern Maine.  The author worked for the Civil Aeronautics Association from 1938, for Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. (TWA) and was employed by (its later incarnation) Trans World Airlines in the public relations department at the time of the book’s publication.  Ms. O’Malley brings the details of a career for young women as stewardesses and administrative staff to, in this case, a wartime setting

War Wings for Carol begins with her arrival in a rather isolated town in northern Maine where a small regional airport now shares its facilities with an Army Air Transport unit, which gives Carol and the reader a window on the mundane but very necessary non-combat military units which ferry supplies to the front.

Along with the nuts and bolts of airline administration, we are treated to Carol’s impressions of a part of the country with which she is not familiar, and the author describes New England in sometimes lyrical prose.

“The cities were built along the banks of rivers, and the rivers were lined with miles of red brick mills, chimneys belching tall columns of thick black smoke in defiance of an enemy which would reduce mankind to slavery.  For this was the heart of industrial New England, where thousands of men, women and machines had been mobilized into the unconquerable army of American production, where the wheels of democracy turned unceasingly, grinding out implements of victory.”

It is the dead of winter when she arrives on a connecting flight from Boston and Bangor.

“There were farms outside the villages, their red barns dark against the white earth.  In the distance, small hills rose against the western horizon and they flew across the icy Kennebec at Augusta, where the dome of the capitol rises in stately dignity above the very site where the men of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first trading post in America.”

She is to be assistant to Mr. Ingram, the Vice President of the fictional New England Airlines, and because he must travel a great deal, he leaves important duties in her lap, including the hiring and training of new air hostesses.  They are in northern Maine, close to the Canadian border, where they share the airfield with the Army Air Corps, and do some contract work for the military, carrying cargo and supplies along with its regular passengers.  Mr. Ingram hired Carol to take many details off his shoulders.  “‘It’s a big job for a girl and I thought a long time before I made up my mind to take you.  But women must shoulder men’s work, and I suppose we’ll see more of it before this thing ends.’

“After a few minutes of reflection, during which Carol sat quietly, he added, ‘And they always do it as well…or better.  It’s a sad commentary on the stronger sex, Miss Rogers, but it’s true.’” We can hope the young female readers took note of the praise.

The Army airfield is described without hyperbole:  “Two Flying Fortresses and their fighter escorts were making a spectacular showing against its backdrop. On the ground, squadrons of bombers were lining up for reconnaissance practice, and pursuit planes were waddling out of hangers into position for take-off.  Trucks, tractors, jeeps and station wagons sped in and out of the post gates.”

The small town nearby has changed with the war: “Men in uniform were everywhere.  They stood in doorways and they walked up and down, talking.  They filled the drug stores, drinking innumerable cokes and cups of hot coffee.  They jammed the movies and they patronized the shops and brought a wave of prosperity such as the little town had never known before.” Much could be said of many, many towns across the United States during the war.

Another loving passage on New England brings the story through the crisis and past a challenging winter.  “Spring in northern New England is not like spring anywhere else in the world.  She is not a hoyden here, who leaps at your throat and forces you to notice her presence.  She doesn’t hurl herself in your path.  Spring in New England is a perfect lady.  She has been taught how to enter a room and takes her time making an appearance.  She knows that winter lingers, loathe to leave the land on which he had such a long, secure hold.  But she also knows that victory is inevitably hers, so she walks softly and is gracious in her conquest.  She is all the more beautiful because of her good behavior. The snows melt, the hills turn green, the rivers break free from their bondage, and the waters sing as they carry the ice cakes down toward the sea.   The skies are washed, and crisply starched and ironed, and the chirp of the robin is heard in the early morning from the branches of trees that are giving promise of the gracious abundance which is to follow.”

Carol deals with wartime administrative problems, encounters a Nazi spy, and agonizes over one of their military supply planes lost in a winter storm somewhere over Maritime Canada.

Children's Wartime Adventure Novels is available in eBook directly from my online store here.

It is also available in eBook from Barnes & Noble, Apple, and a wide variety of online shops here.

It is also available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover from Amazon here.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   

Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;

 States of Mind: New England, 

A Tragic Toast to Christmas -- The Infamous Wood Alcohol Deaths of 1919 in Chicopee, Mass.; as well as books on classic films and several novels.  Her Double V Mysteries series is set in New England in the early 1950s.  

TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Western Mass locations in my new book CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS

New England locations are featured in several middle grade and young adult novels published during World War II.  My latest book, Children's Wartime Adventure Novels - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II explores these stories and how they inspired and indoctrinated a young generation too young to fight, but not too young to be affected by a global war. 

Three of the books covered have ties to western Massachusetts.  One, By Your Leave, Sir, by Lt. (j.g.) Hellen Hull Jacobs describes the Navy training of the first WAVES at Smith College in Northampton.  That book, and its locales of the college and of Hotel Northampton where the first female officers were billeted, I've already discussed here in this previous post.

A similar experience awaited another young woman just across the river from Northampton in the western Massachusetts town of South Hadley, where Mount Holyoke College, another women’s college, was the site of training for WAVES as well as for women Marines. The character of Priscilla Warner has chosen to become a Marine.

Lady Leatherneck was written by First Lieutenant Barbara A. White, MCWR (1921-2000), who graduated from Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, and taught for six months before joining the Women Marines, among the first to enlist.  At the time of her book’s publication, she was stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina, an adjutant of “a large men’s battalion.”  She later married fellow Marine officer Howe Morris and returned to her teaching career after the war, obtaining master’s degrees from Boston University and the University of Southern Maine.

Lady Leatherneck is similar to By Your Leave, Sir, in that the author is herself a woman in the service, in this case, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, and also is based on the author’s own real-life experiences.  

First group of Women Marine Officer Candidates, Mt. Holyoke College - 1943 (USMC photo)  

Unlike the character of Becky of By Your Leave, Sir, who is a Southerner adjusting to a New England winter, the protagonist in Lady Leatherneck (the term “leatherneck” is an old slang word for a Marine), Priscilla Warner, is a native Bostonian, and Massachusetts is home, and a place she longs to return when the war is over. She’s on familiar ground.

Priscilla is a recent college graduate and has spent the last few months teaching, and lives with her widowed mother.  Her older brother, Steve, a Marine, was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan in the Philippines, and it has been several months since she and her mother have had any word of him.

Walking through the streets of Boston, Priscilla spots a recruiting office and is inspired to join not only by her brother’s sacrifice but of boys she knew in college who were reported wounded or killed.

Priscilla must go through interviews, physical exams, and a great deal of soul-searching.  Her mother wonders what the future will be for her in the Marines, especially in light of giving up a good teaching job.

She wants to replace a man for combat, in this case, replacing her brother Steve in the prison camp.  Her training period is to last two months at Mount Holyoke College, and like the WAVES and the WACs (Women's Army Corps), they will perform duties as typists, stenographers, telephone operators, bakers and cooks, and a variety of other administrative and technical support tasks.

She is sworn in, and for the next month, concludes her teaching job and waits for orders.  Finally, she takes the train a just little way west to the Connecticut River Valley and South Hadley, where she will receive her training at Mount Holyoke College, like Smith College, one of the preeminent women’s colleges in the country.  She meets her fellow officer candidates, and, like By Your Leave, Sir, much of her Marine experience seems to have a sorority-like aspect.

More tests, and classes, and learning to call a floor a “deck,” stairs a “ladder,” and the bathroom the “head.”  Her platoon trains with a group of WAVES and she is confounded as the Navy cadence is different from the Marine Corps.  They have a course in aircraft recognition.  The training experience in this novel, however, is given short shrift in comparison to the detailed experience in By Your Leave, Sir.  Priscilla receives her commission and is posted to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  There she will find romance and adventure there and at other bases in California.

Another tie to western Massachusetts is the author Dorothy Deming, R.N. (1893-1972), who wrote Penny Marsh and Ginger Lee, Wartime Nurses, which she dedicated “To The Army Nurses of Bataan.”  

Ms. Deming earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at Vassar College in 1914; and graduated from the Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing in New York City in 1920.  She became the director of the Holyoke, Massachusetts, Visiting Nurse Association in 1924, and wrote extensively on nursing, both non-fiction and fiction.  Her books for girls were a window into the career of nursing, and her most popular series was the Penny Marsh series.

Penny Marsh and Ginger Lee, Wartime Nurses follows the civilian and military nursing of the two main characters.  Interestingly, the book alternates chapters between the two friends: one chapter to Ginger Lee, and the next to Penny Marsh.  Each tells a different aspect of wartime nurses.  Ginger is an Army nurse serving overseas, and Penny nurses on the home front.

Next week, I'll post on two boys' adventure books that visit the submarine base at New London, Connecticut.

Children's Wartime Adventure Novels is available in eBook directly from my online store here.

It is also available in eBook from Barnes & Noble, Apple, and a wide variety of online shops here.

It is also available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover from Amazon here.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   

Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;

 States of Mind: New England, 

A Tragic Toast to Christmas -- The Infamous Wood Alcohol Deaths of 1919 in Chicopee, Mass.; as well as books on classic films and several novels.  Her Double V Mysteries series is set in New England in the early 1950s.  

TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Mystery series set in post-War New England - the Double V Mysteries

 

Looking for Christmas gifts for the historical mystery lover -- who also happens to love New England?  

My "Double V Mysteries" series is set in New England, beginning in the spring of 1949.  The two main characters -- who will become partners -- are introduced in CADMIUM YELLOW, BLOOD RED.  She is an administrator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, who has just discovered her husband's infidelity.

He is an ex-con, recently released from the state penitentiary in Wethersfield, Connecticut.  His wife has passed away and his daughter is kidnapped, but the gang who has her assures him she will be returned if he helps them with his particular specialty. He must break into the Wadsworth.  She meets him on his practice run as he literally drops into her office, the same night her husband is found murdered.

They are both suspects.  They have nobody to rely on but each other.  And each has a mystery to solve.

The book is available in paperback through Amazon, but the eBook version is FREE and available through a variety of online shops:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple

And a variety of other online shops here.

Give it a try and perhaps you'll like to continue the adventures with Juliet Van Allen and Elmer Vartanian -- the "Double V" duo -- in the rest of the (so far) five-book series:

SPEAK OUT BEFORE YOU DIE (in which a murder occurs in a snowbound mansion in Hartford on New Year's Eve, 1949)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

DISMOUNT AND MURDER (Nasty doings at the Litchfield, Connecticut, horse show, summer of 1950.  Maine recovers from the year before in the "Summer Maine Burned," Oh, and a murder.)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

WHITEWASH IN THE BERKSHIRES (Juliet is blacklisted during the Communist witch hunts. Intrigue and kidnapping in an underground bunker in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts in the winter of 1951.  Oh, and a murder.)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

MURDER AT THE SUMMER THEATER (Juliet must join the cast to help ferret out clues in backstage shenanigans in the summer of 1951 on the Connecticut shore when the lead actress goes missing. Possibly murdered.)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

Follow the adventure, follow the clues, and watch this blog for the next novel in the series coming in late 2022!

Dickens, and Christmas, come to New England

English novelist Charles Dickens came on a book tour to the U.S. in 1842, the first of his trips to America. He was already famous, but it was still some five years before A Christmas Carol was written.  While New York and other parts of the young United States were celebrating Christmas, New England at that time still did not observe the holiday; here Thanksgiving was the big day. In some small measure, the popularity of his yuletide ghost story would help bring Christmas to New England, one of several factors that turned the Puritan tide.

When he was in the Boston area, they took this former workhouse victim to Lowell to show him the factories.  We mentioned his excursion there in this previous post on mill girls.

When Dickens left Lowell, his next stop was Springfield, on February 7, 1842, when accompanied by his wife, he toured the Springfield Armory.   This was before the impressive iron fence was constructed around the Armory.  That was made at the Ames Company in Chicopee, and the project was started in the early 1850s and not completed until 1865.  We may assume at the time of Dickens’ visit, the cows of local farmers continued to stray across the quadrangle and the lawns of the Army officers’ quarters.  


After his brief tour of the Armory, Dickens traveled down the Connecticut River to Hartford aboard a steamboat.  We discussed that journey in this previous post.

Though Dickens apparently felt favorably toward Massachusetts, the United States on the whole did not impress him on that trip, and, of course, he was particularly angered and disgusted by slavery.  He wrote of his impressions in American Notes.  He had made two trips here in 1842, but did not return until after the Civil War, when in 1867 on his next trip, both the war and slavery were over.  

Something else was different, too.  New England had adopted the custom of celebrating Christmas.  He could see this for himself as he arrived in late November and remained for the following month, giving readings from his novels in Boston and in New York.

The following year, 1868, he returned for another book tour, this time commencing in February and returning to England in late April.  He gave his readings in Boston, New York City and upstate, as well as Washington, Philadelphia, and in Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.  He read from many of his books, including A Christmas Carol.

His first public reading of A Christmas Carol was on December 3, 1867 at the Tremont Temple in Boston. According to this article at the New England Historical Society website, his agent noted the audience reaction at the end of the first chapter:

When at least the reading of The Carol was finished, and the final words had been delivered, and "So, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us every one," a dead silence seemed to prevail -- a sort of public sigh as it were -- only to be broken by cheers and calls, the most enthusiastic and uproarious.

He spoke at Tilly Haynes’ Music Hall in Springfield on March 20, 1868.  For a long time, the Tilly Haynes Music Hall on Main Street was the only theater in Springfield, built in 1856.  It burned down in 1864.  Haynes rebuilt it, and in 1881, he sold out to Dwight O. Gilmore, who established Gilmore’s Opera House there, until it burned down in 1897.  Twentieth century audiences would remember this as the site of the Capitol movie theater that showed Warner Brothers films. That has long since been demolished and is now the site of One Financial Plaza.

He arrived here on the train during a snowstorm, and stayed at the Massasoit House (part of this building remains in the building that was later constructed in 1929 for the Paramount Theater).  The Music Hall was packed for his appearance, as he was probably the most famous author of his day.

The Springfield Republican reported,

“Mr. Dickens is not a reader... He is simply and emphatically a very natural and delightful actor, gifted with the power of throwing a whole personality into his face.” He spoke in the voices Scrooge, the Cratchits, Mr. Pickwick and other characters from his novels. “There walks on the stage a gentleman who gives you no time to think about him, and dazzles you with 20 personalities.” 

He was “slightly bent, in the street not a remarkably noticeable man.” His face “bears signs of incessant toil.”

The tour was successful, but has been described as grueling, and Dickens died only two years later in 1870 at the age of 58.  That year, President Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas a national holiday.

We discuss two classic film versions of A Christmas Carol in my post “Mankind Was My Business” here at Another Old Movie Blog.

Valerie Harper & Sally Struthers at the Ogunquit Playhouse - Maine

Now playing at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine: The musical comedy Nice Work If You Can Get It, with Sally Struthers and Valerie Harper.  Runs through August 15th - More here at their website.

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A summer sale on two of my eBooks runs now through the end of July:

Classic Films and the American Conscience - a collection of essays on classic films in the context of the era in which they were made, and...

Double V Mysteries: Numbers 1 through 3 box set - a cozy mystery series set in New England in the post-World War II era.  A little noir, a little romance, a lot of New England.

Both eBooks are selling at half-price at Amazon.

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Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at [email protected] and I'll get back to you with the details.

Summer Theatre in Maine and New Hampshire This Week...

Arundel Barn Playhouse, photo by J.T. Lynch

Two summer theatre choices for this week:

At the Arundel Barn Playhouse on Old Post Road in Arundel, Maine -- My Fair Lady is currently running.  From the playhouse:

Welcome to Lerner and Lowe’s joyous, family-friendly musical about Eliza Doolittle, the cockney flower girl who turns into a bloomin’ elegant lady under the tutelage of Professor Harold Higgins. Eliza’s transformation in this rags-to-riches tale is often referred to as ‘the perfect musical’ with characters of brain and heart, witty dialogue and a stunning score featuring songs like I Could Have Danced All Night, A Little Bit of Luck, On The Street Where You Live and Wouldn’t It Be Loverly!

For info and tickets, see their website here.

Over in New Hampshire, we have Oscar Wilde's rollicking farce The Importance of Being Earnest The Winnipesaukee Playhouse, which closes this Saturday, July 19th.  

From the playhouse: 

Like Downton Abbey with only the funny bits!

Jack is in love with Gwendolen.  Algernon is in love with Cecily. But Gwendolen and Cecily are both in love with Ernest, who, in fact, does not exist. This tangled web of mistaken identity and delicious wordplay has proven to be one of the most loved and enduringly popular plays of all time.

Performances Mondays through Saturdays at 7:30pm
Matinees Thursday July 10 and Monday July 14 at 2pm
No Sunday Performances
Tickets: Orchestra - $29, Balcony - $10  Student Rush Available One Hour Prior to Showtime.  Cash Only $20 for Orchestra Seating.

See their website here.

Leavitt Theatre Silent Movie Series - Ogunquit, Maine

The Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine, which we featured in this previous post on my Another Old Movie Blog, will be showing a series of silent films this summer, beginning, June 5, with futuristic sci-fi “Metropolis” (1927), and running through October with  Lon Chaney's “Phantom of the Opera” (1925).


The films will be accompanied by live music by Jeff Rapsis, who specializes in scoring silent films.


Other films include  “The Lost World” (1925), “Peter Pan” (1924), ‘Tarzan and the Golden Lion’ (1927), and tributes to Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd.   For more on this series, have a look at this Seacoast Online article, or the Leavitt Theatre website.

Save the Leavitt Theatre - Ogunquit, Maine

Over at my Another Old Movie Blog we visited the Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine, here in this post. Recently, a drive has been started to help the Leavitt adapt to the new digital projectors that are so costly, and without which many small independent movie theaters, like the Leavitt, will go out of business.  Here's the press release that was sent to me.  I thought you might like to have a look, and help out if you can.

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As many as 10,000 movie screens in North America could go dark by Dec 31st, 2013! http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/how-digital-conversion-is-killing-independent-movie-theaters-20130904
LEAVITT THEATRE KICKSTARTER: http://kck.st/HhQ8MO

Hello.

By Dec. 31st Hollywood will cease distributing films to all movie theaters on celluloid reels in favor of digital prints. America's movie screens have been forced to buy digital projectors that can cost as much as $100,000. An estimated 10,000 screens – one in every five screens in North America – will go dark because they can't afford to convert.

Over 1000 independent old-school, mom-and-pop-owned movie palaces in small towns are struggling to come up with the price of conversion. They lack the cash and resources of big chain cinemas. And to make matters worse, the film companies are helping subsidize the large multiplexes' conversions but not the single screen movie houses.

The Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine (est. 1923) is one of these theaters. A beautiful, classic, independent, family owned movie theater that has been showing first-run films for 90 years, they must go digital by Dec 31st or go dark!

Please click on the link below to find out more about a new KICKSTARTER drive. The Leavitt Theatre has just 25 DAYS (until Nov 30) to raise $60,000. They need help!
KICKSTARTER:http://kck.st/HhQ8MO

 Please spread the word, even if you are unable to donate.

Thanks everyone!

Article:
http://retroroadmap.com/2010/07/29/the-leavitt-theatre-ogunquit-me-youll-love-it/

Also on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Leavitt-Theatre/99336197126?ref=hl

Hard Labor in New England

A few photos in anticipation of the upcoming Labor Day holiday.  Once upon a time, it meant more than the last backyard barbecue of summer.

The Fisk, Chicopee, Massachusetts, likely in the late 1930s.  Image Museum website.

 

 

 

Isaac Prouty Boot & Shoe Co, Spencer, Massachusetts, Spencer Historical Museum Collections. Richard Sugden Library, Spencer, Massachusetts.

 

 

Skinner Mfg. Co., Holyoke, Mass. Image Museum website.  See here for my previous posts on the Skinner silk mills: http://newenglandtravels.blogspot.com/2012/01/william-skinners-silk-mills-holyoke.html

http://newenglandtravels.blogspot.com/2013/07/doris-tanguay-at-william-skinner-mfg-co.html

http://newenglandtravels.blogspot.com/2013/07/doris-tanguay-at-skinner-company.html

 

 

 

War worker in 1942.  Gilbert Company, New Haven, Connecticut.  Photo Howard Hollem, Office of War Information.  See here for my previous post on women war workers:

http://newenglandtravels.blogspot.com/2013/07/ladies-who-were-wows-springfield-armory.html

 

 

Boys who worked at a cotton mill in North Pownal, Vermont, 1910. 

Lewis Wickes Hine, photographer, Library of Congress

 

 

Eastport, Maine, East Coast Canning Co., 1911,

Lewis Wickes Hine photographer, Library of Congress

 

 

Fiskeville, Rhode Island, Jackson Mill, 1909,

Lewis Wickes Hine photographer, Library of Congress

 

 

There but for the union go I.  Or you.  Happy Labor Day.

 

 

 



Phyllis Thaxter - Court Square Theatre, Springfield, Mass.

Phyllis Thaxter died a week ago on August 14th. Though many will remember her film and TV roles beginning in the 1940s and ‘50s, through to her stint as Superman’s mother in the 1978 film, perhaps a few will recall the young actress who toured New England in the stage production “Claudia.”


Above we have the program cover advertising the national touring company of “Claudia” when it hit the boards at the Court Square Theatre in Springfield, Massachusetts. It ran for three days, March 29, 30, and 31, 1943. Miss Thaxter played opposite Donald Cook and Frances Starr. She understudied Dorothy McGuire as Claudia on Broadway, and when Miss McGuire won the film role of the popular play, Thaxter took over in the leading role on stage. Phyllis would have her own Hollywood career soon.

She was a New England girl, born and raised in Portland, Maine, her mother a former actress and her father, Sidney, a Maine Supreme Court judge. On a visit to her family in 1952, while swimming in the ocean, she developed the first frightening symptoms of polio. She was pregnant at the time, and required treatment in an iron lung for a brief period. Fortunately, the illness abated, she recovered her ability to walk, and had no difficulties delivering a healthy son some months later.

Phyllis Thaxter and her husband, Gilbert Lea, spent their retirement years between Maine and Florida. She was 92 years old. Her obituary in the New York Times is here.

These program pages from the Court Square Theatre display advertising from Springfield businesses of the day. Perhaps you remember True Brothers, Inc., Jewelers, or Converse Carlisle Coal Company, or J.E. Cheney and Staff opticians. Perhaps you went to the Hotel Bridgeway to dance in the Mayfair Room to Vin Breglio’s Society Orchestra.

Or bought your shoes at Stetson’s Shoe Shop on Bridge Street.

Or maybe you’ve never heard of them. Until now.

Summer Theatre in Maine - 2012

A look at some current offerings at summer theaters in Maine:

This is the final week for the Rogers & Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” at the Ogunquit Playhouse. Have a look here for the details, a look at their great reviews, and the remaining schedule for the summer. “Damn Yankees” comes up to bat July 25th.

At the famed Lakewood Theater in Skowhegan, “The Fox on the Fairway”, a comedy by Ken Ludwig, starts July 19th. Here’s the synopsis from the Lakewood Theater:

This tribute to the great farces of the 1930's and 1940's has more twists and turns than a par 4 dog-leg or a double breaking, 60 foot putt as sex and water hazards collide in a mapcap adventure about love and golf. It is time for the annual match between rival clubs Quail Valley and Crouching Squirrel. The Squirrel has hoisted the trophy for many years but Baldwin of Quail Hollow is optimistic. He has found a ringer and has made a hefty bet on the outcome. When his secret asset changes teams, Baldwin must hand the ball - and his bank balance - to his nervous assistant, Justin. Justin does surprisingly well until his fiance, ditsy waitress Louise, loses her engagement ring down the toilet. Justin is unable to concentrate and as the match is slipping away Baldwin finds an unlikely replacement who may just save the day. Baldwin's humorless wife Muriel is not amused when she hears about his bet...and we hear her long before we see her. But we will be more than amused as the sturdy harridan arrives to set things straight. Filled with mistaken identities, slamming doors, and over-the-top romantic shenanigans, it’s a furiously paced comedy that recalls the Marx Brothers’ classic. Discussing his play Ludwig concluded "My plays are an attempt to move the ball in the right direction – towards a sense of humanity and good fellow-feeling. I hope (audiences) come away feeling rejuvenated, inspired, and happier than when they went in the door." It's a gimme!

For details and the rest of the season, have a look here.

Rogers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma” runs at the Hackmatack Playhouse in Berwick through July 21st. For more details and the rest of the season, have a look at the website.

The Arundel Barn Playhouse in Arudel is celebrating their 15th Season. “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” runs through July 14th, and then Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” takes over on July 17th through August 4th. Have a look at the link for the rest of the season.

As we can see, Rogers and Hammerstein musicals still pack them in.

Please support these fine summer theaters in Maine, and that summer theater near you. You’ll find a bit more on the history of these theaters in my Tragedy and Comedy in New England blog. Though I don’t keep it up with current posts, have a look in the sidebar labels for an archive of blog posts.