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Special theatrical talent lost when his voice changed

By Willys Peck

It's been a long time since Sam has surfaced in my train of thought--Sam (for Subliminal Argumentative Mouthing) is the voice in my subconscious that calls me to account for everyday shortcomings--and his latest outburst really caught me off guard.

"You said it yourself in your last column," said Sam, "you've been cranking out this drivel for 10 years. In all fairness to this newspaper and its readers, don't you think it's time to call it quits? You're going to be doing nothing but repeating junk you've already written."

"Well, we have a few current issues," I ventured. "There's the North Campus, and the debate over what kind of Village shopping area we want. That kind of thing."

"Sure," said Sam. "But do you write anything about them? No. You've said yourself that you live in the past, and that's what you write about."

"Well, I'll have to admit that," I said, "and I'll repeat again a quote from the late columnist Herb Caen: 'When you live in the past, you meet a better class of people.' "

That old bromide was enough to silence Sam, but it left me with the task of following through on my plan announced last week of writing about Saratoga's dramatic past. I said I'd do it if neither of my readers objected, and neither one did.

When you talk about theater in Saratoga, the name Dorothea Johnston immediately surfaces. She had already had considerable theatrical experience when she came in the early 1930s to live with her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Johnston, who was managing the Saratoga Inn, located on the site of the present Saratoga Inn Place condominiums.

Dorothea, or "Dee" as she was known to her friends, followed her mother's advice and started giving lessons in acting and generally sharing her knowledge of theater arts with the community at large. This involved presenting plays, and that's how I got caught up in her orbit. In 1933, she staged Alice in Wonderland in the Foothill Clubhouse with a local girl, Olivia De Havilland, as Alice. Olivia was a junior in high school at the time.

As with others of Miss Johnston's productions, this was a chance for townspeople to tread the boards. In Alice, I played the Duck, my brother was either Tweedledee or Tweedledum, and my mother was the Cheshire Cat.

The following year, 1934, Miss Johnston launched the Theatre of the Glade, an outdoor venue behind the Saratoga Inn on a piece of land bordering Saratoga Creek. The first production was Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Olivia playing the part of Puck. Right after that show, Olivia went to Hollywood and played Hermia in Max Reinhardt's Dream production in Hollywood Bowl, then in the film.

My own involvement with Miss Johnston's productions had to do with a laryngeal peculiarity that enabled me to imitate bird calls. I lost this ability when my voice changed, but while it lasted it made for some interesting times. I was an offstage wild creature in the 1935 production of As You Like It, and in 1936 I played the title role in Cricket on the Hearth (no, I wasn't the hearth).

During the time I was in high school, I had some small speaking parts in Miss Johnston's Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet and a repeat of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Miss Johnston's last Theatre of the Glade production was in 1941, when she produced Distant Drums, by playwright and screenwriter Dan Totheroh. It was a drama of the Overland Trail, and as far as I ever knew, that was its only production.

I will always think of Dorothea Johnston as one who made a priceless contribution to her community. While it is true she sometimes went fairly far afield to recruit her lead players (exception: Olivia De Havilland), her productions gave local residents a chance to soak up some real culture and have a good time doing it. I know that I feel the best way to gain an appreciation of Shakespeare is to hear his lines spoken over and over again, which one does in attending rehearsals. Pretty soon, the poetry really sinks in.