By Carole Owens
Bill Swan was a handsome actor who played in movies and dozens of television shows—and over the decades, he performed more than any other actor at Stockbridge’s Berkshire Playhouse. We were pals, and he would duck over to my house between performances for a power nap.
Bill was an essential extra man at dinner tables in New York, California, and the Berkshires. He was a raconteur, and many of the stories he told were about being on the boards at the Berkshire Playhouse. Swan trod those boards as the theater grew and prospered (it would become the Berkshire Theatre Festival, now the Berkshire Theatre Group). One of my favorites went like this:
As the curtain went up, Bill and another actor stood around the piano and exchanged their lines. Next, Bill was to say the line that would cue the leading lady to enter.
He did.
She didn’t. The two men stood there for an awkward eternity with nothing to say and nothing to do. All of a sudden, the other actor had a bright idea and said, “I’ll go look for her.”
Exit stage left.
Bill was left alone on stage, in front of a full house, without a clue and without a line. In a panic he said to the audience, “I better go with him.”
Here endeth the tale, but who was the actress who missed her cue? We don’t know and Bill Swan is no longer here to tell us. It could have been Ethel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Bancroft, Eva Le Gallienne, or Cicely Tyson. It could have been Katharine Hepburn, because all those women performed at what would become the Berkshire Theatre Group.
“Everyone Has Performed Here”
In 2016, Tony and Emmy Award winner Judd Hirsch arrived to perform in “The Stone Witch” and told Artistic Director Kate Maguire, “If you haven’t performed at Berkshire Theatre Festival, you haven’t done theater in this country. Everyone has performed here.” After its run in the Berkshires, “The Stone Witch” moved to New York City.
Her first year at the theater (1930), Katharine Hepburn is said to have rented a single room in a house with six bedrooms, 12 actors, and one bathroom. As legend has it, she was known for taking long baths. Content in her tub, Katharine sang show tunes, oblivious to any of her housemates’ desire to bathe or need to meet urgencies. Among those who took a dislike to the skinny redhead was George Coulouris (unforgettable in “Citizen Kane”). The animosity finally blew up at dinner. The two actors jumped up, ran after one another armed with knives—butter, not steak, one hopes—both shouting “you will never be a star!”
If you think Kate the Great was self centered, self-important, or just rude, remember this. She is said to have stood, speechless, with all but a bowed head, any time Ethel Barrymore entered the room—a supplicant to her idea of true greatness.
There were tales of other women who left indelible images on the minds of Stockbridge folks: Anne Bancroft, hurrying down Stockbridge Main Street searching in vain for an egg cream. Margaret Hamilton, the wicked witch from “The Wizard of Oz,” knocking on the door of Mary V. Flynn (the grande dame of Stockbridge and its politics) looking for a room to rent—that knock was the first act of a lifelong friendship.
Of course, there were also the men—Jimmy Cagney, Al Pacino, F. Murray Abraham, Thornton Wilder, Frank Langella, Richard Chamberlain, Billy Miles, and many more. From 1928 to the day before COVID shut things down, the actors who would become the best and the brightest all came to Stockbridge. Many returned year after year. Why? Well, summer stock was a vibrant place to learn and test oneself. And local playwright Bill Gibson (most famous for “The Miracle Worker,” 1959) said it was the building itself that drew people here.
That building, now known as the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Fitzpatrick Main Stage, was designed in 1887 by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. It was a grand example of Gilded Age architecture. It was not built as a theater, however, but as a 19th century casino—a place for teas, exhibits, plays, and games. An elite club for summer residents.
In 1927, the building was 40 years old and in disrepair. Financier Walter Leighton Clark, sculptor Daniel Chester French, Dr. Austen Riggs and The New-York Tribune’s theater critic Walter Prichard Eaton bought it, moved it, and opened it as the Berkshire Playhouse. The rest, as they say, is history.
Carole Owens is an author of 12 books, including “The Berkshire Cottages: A Vanishing Era,” and more than 100 magazine articles for Parade Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, and New England Travel and Leisure. She lives in Stockbridge and writes a regular column in The Berkshire Eagle.
Restoring a Classic
The iconic Playhouse—now known as the Fitzpatrick Main Stage—has been the home of great regional theater for 96 years. It is currently undergoing restoration. The target date for reopening is prior to the theater’s 100th birthday, in 2028. Be a part of saving history and continuing a proud tradition of culture. For more information on ways to support the restoration project, please contact Tricia DeHart or Vladimir Zeleny in BTG’s Development Department at 413-448-8084.
