An Amazing Celebrity Story George C Scott and Colleen Dewhurst

Here’s a celebrity story that slipped through my brain sieve when I was writing my first memoir, the so-called celebrity book, Three Stages.

[Note: Until I had a marketing coach it never occurred to me that Three Stages was a celebrity book or that I was marketing celebrity stories. I was simply telling tales of my life and the people I met and worked with. I knew a lot of them happened to be famous but this was not something to which I gave any thought.]

But I digress.

During the summer of 1966 I was a resident actor at the Mount Gretna Playhouse, our oldest Actors’ Equity summer stock company. The director, Charles F Coghlin was one of the founders of Equity. We did three plays and three musicals, each of which ran for two weeks, six nights a week and no matinees. (The best schedule ever in summer stock.) The aforementioned book has many tales – mostly funny – of that wonderful summer and my adventures there.

However one notable event that happened that season took place at another famous theater in Pennsylvania, Bucks County Playhouse. It was so extraordinary that I’m flabbergasted that it escaped my memory when writing Three Stages.

My actor friend Jeff Siggins

Jeff Siggins LSD guide

Jeff Siggins in The Lion in Winter

who I’d met the previous year in the ill fated Broadway musical, Pousse Cafe, was doing The Lion in Winter at Bucks County, which was about a two hour Vespa ride from Mt. Gretna, and their technical rehearsal was on our night off. Not only that but the stars of the show were George C Scott and his on and off wife, the brilliant Colleen Dewhurst. There are usually a few friends and family in the house observing these events and Jeff invited me. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see these two giants of the theatre at work.

Colleen & G C

 

For readers who are not showbiz folk I need to explain “tech rehearsal”.

They occur the day or night before the dress rehearsal which is the last run-through before opening. Depending on the complexity of the technical aspects of a show they can be anywhere from twice to four or five times the length of an actual performance. Generally the actors more-or-less “walk through” the tech but given the limited rehearsal schedule of summer stock productions most performers like to play their scenes “full out”.

The latter was the case with GC and Colleen and their fellow players.

This is not easy for actors because part of the process is that any one of the crew members – lighting director, costume designer, stage manager or director – will, from time to time, stop a scene in the middle to make some sort of adjustment. And there were many such halts of the dramatic flow on this night’s tech.

But the actors were working, going full performance mode in their scenes. I was riveted. The stops and restarts didn’t phase the twenty or so of us in the house. We were all theatre pros so it was natural for us to jump into and out of the drama just as the actors on stage were doing.

At one point about halfway through the play Mr. Scott was in the middle of a powerful declamation when one of the crew hollered, “Hold it, George.”

Suddenly the King disappeared and a guy who needed a smoke took a step downstage, reached under his tunic into the top of his tights, took out a Zippo, a pack of Camels and lit one up. After a few minutes the technical problem was corrected. GC was still puffing away when the director said, “Okay. George, continue.”

The camel hit the floor, George C Scott smothered it with his foot and was instantly transformed back into a person of undeniable Regal Stature.

The King was back.

The show went on.

That, my friends, is the definition of Acting.

Click here to get Three Stages.

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