Starting with some of the London ones, I almost immediately came across two fascinating and related items from the first and second seasons of London's Open Air Theatre in Regents Park.
The first is The Open Air Theatre Souvenir published by Theatre World Magazine. It's the magazine's ouvenir program for the Theatre's Second Season in 1934. The editorial matter and pix recount the success the theatre had in its first year. Included are welcoming messages from Sydney W. Carroll, "director-in-chief" and Robert Atkins, producer.
Featured are formal portraits and shots from some of the shows, including: Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Iris Hoey, Nigel Playfair, Margaretta Scott, Leslie French, Henry Hewitt, John Drinkwater, Letty Littlewood, Anna Neagle, and Jack Hawkins..
Neilson-Terry was the daughter of Julia Neilson and Fred Terry and neice of Ellen Terry, thus carrying on a theatrical family line that spanned several generations. She made her first stage appearance in 1909. She was an actress for more than 50 years.
The wonderfully-named Sir Nigel Playfair was the actor-manager of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in the 1920s. After studying at University College, Oxford, he went on to star in the Mermaid Society's well-received 1904 London production of "The Way of the World" by William Congreve. Playfair is credited with a major influence on the BBC's 1923 wireless Shakespeares, the first produced by that organisation. He continued to work as a BBC producer for some years, and is credited with having commissioned Richard Hughes to write the world's first radio play, "Danger", in 1924. Playfair also appeared in a few motion picture films during the last years of his life. Fortnum & Mason still markets Sir Nigel's Vintage Marmalade, and there is a Nigel Playfair Avenue in London.
And then there was Jack Hawkins. an English film actor of the 1950s and 1960s. Hawkins made his London stage debut aged 12 (1922), and was appearing on Broadway in "Journey's End" by the age of 18. He appeared in several films during the 1930s but it was only after service in World War II that he begn to be a real success in the cinema in films like "Angels One Five", "The Long Arm", and "The Cruel Sea", the film that made him a star.
From the late 1950s he appeared in character roles, often in epic films like "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia" (playing General Edmund Allenby) and "Oh! What a Lovely War".
Other productions in that first season were: "As You Like It", the ballet "Comus", "Twelfth Night", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "The Comedy of Errors".
The second item is also from the theatre's Second Season. in 1934. The first production that year was "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare.
This production starred Griffith Jones as Romeo. Jones a film, stage and television actor who went on much later to appear at The Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in over fifty productions. He was also father of actors Gemma Jones and Nicholas Jones. It also starred Sydney Bromley, a prolific English film actor. He appeared in more than sixty films and television programmes. Margaretta Scott starred as Juliet. Scott is perhaps best remembered is best remembered for playing the wealthy and eccentric widow, Mrs Pumphrey in the BBC television series, "All Creatures Great and Small".
Hubert Gregg went on to become a BBC broadcaster, and was a writer as well as stage actor. He is arguably best known for the BBC Radio 2 "oldies" shows "A Square Deal" and "Thanks For The Memory". In an earlier era he had also been a novelist, a theatre director and and a hit songwriter. However, Gregg spoke German well, and during the war worked for the BBC German service, to such good effect that Goebbels assumed he must be a German traitor.
Oh yes, and we must not forget, appearing as an extra, the Academy Award-winning actress (in "Miss Miniver"), Greer Garson. Garson had joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre two years earlier and made her stage debut in "Street Scene". This (1934) was her London debut at The Open Air Theatre. And so successful was she that in 1935 she made her first West End appearance in "Golden Arrow" opposite Laurence Olivier.
The season also included a series of Monday evening ballets and another Shakespeare classic, "The Tempest" with Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Iris Hoey, Nigel Playfair, and Hubert Gregg.
