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Eighth-graders' 'Wizard' brings back memories
By Willys Peck
In what charitably passes for my mind, there is a clockwork-like mechanism that sends thoughts down the path of memory, reviving long-forgotten scenes. It's a mechanism that can be activated by a word or words, an object or an event.
My most recent experience in this connection involved a production of The Wizard of Oz, given in our backyard amphitheater by eighth-grade pupils at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, where my daughter, Anna Rainville, is on the faculty. My granddaughter Merina is in the class that gave the play.
The aforementioned activation of memory called to mind the author of The Wizard, L. Frank Baum. I never met the man (he died in 1919 at a young 63), but I did meet his granddaughter, Judie Baum, when she came to Saratoga in 1940 to appear in Shakespeare plays given by the late Dorothea Johnston in her Theatre of the Glade, behind the old Saratoga Inn, where the Saratoga Inn Place condominiums are today.
I don't know how it could be handled, but it seems to me that somewhere there ought to be a Dorothea Johnston plaque commemorating her contribution to Saratoga's cultural stature. The daughter of Elizabeth Johnston, who ran the Saratoga Inn, Dorothea had some professional stage experience back East and when she returned to Saratoga in the 1920s, her mother persuaded her to share her expertise with the locals. This Dorothea did by giving dramatic lessons to children and staging theatrical productions. A notable success was 1933's Alice in Wonderland, with Olivia de Havilland as Alice. And I never tire of telling about my own role as the duck in that production.
Alice was followed in 1934 by the initial Theatre of the Glade production, A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Olivia as Puck. The wheels were already turning with movie industry bigwigs, and Olivia was destined for Hollywood. Her first appearance there was in Max Reinhardt's Hollywood Bowl production of Dream and the following year she appeared in Reinhardt's 1935 movie of that Shakespeare classic.
It was only natural that this kind of success reflected back on Miss Johnston, and as her Theatre of the Glade productions continued their summertime runs, the name "star factory" found its way into print. It was only natural that publicity of this stripe would attract young people with theatrical aspirations, and one of them was Judie Baum.
This was in the summer of 1940, when I had finished my junior year at Los Gatos High School (Saratoga High was decades away) and I was doing my usual gardening jobs, with evenings free for playing at acting. Miss Johnston had two Glade productions in the mill, a repeat of Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor. I can't remember now where Judie Baum came from--I think it was somewhere in Southern California--but she had heard of the "star factory" and it fit in with her aspirations. She let the Baum drop and took the stage name of Judith Niles.
I remember her as extremely attractive, with a delightful personality, but I never could bring myself to ask her for a date. As far as I know, she never had any success in landing even a minor movie or theatrical role, and I never tried to keep in touch with her when she went back home. If either of my readers has any knowledge of her whereabouts, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Miss Johnston's Theatre of the Glade had its last production in the summer of 1941. It was a play, Distant Drums, by Marin County playwright and screenwriter Dan Totheroh, concerning the Overland Trail. Very heavy stuff. I don't recall any later major productions by Miss Johnston, who died in 1969 at 77.
I like to think of my own theatrical facility, which I call Theatre on the Ground, as a spiritual descendant of the Theatre of the Glade. It overlooks Saratoga Creek, a few hundred yards downstream from the Glade facility, where the seating area was close by the stream and faced a couple of terraced playing areas set against a rather high embankment.
The Theatre on the Ground has had its moments with the Waldorf School. The eighth-grade's Wizard of Oz was followed by the seventh-grade's A Midsummer Night's Dream. If this sounds like getting in a rut, then it's my kind of rut. Bring on the ditch diggers.
