An Eighteen-Hour Drama on Central Park South
Screen 1 of 5It was now early June. Carol and I had been in New York more than a week. She had concentrated on being admitted to Juilliard where she could do graduate work in music, and she seemed to be making progress toward that goal. Following her piano audition a day or two earlier, she had been told she probably could be admitted in September. But since she was still considering the possibility of an acting career, she spent most of each day, along with me, visiting Manhattan offices of theatrical producers, directors, and casting agents. We talked to everyone who would listen and of course filled out applications for any kind of job connected with the professional stage. (A manager of a Shakespearean road company offered me a job which included driving a truck for the group, playing Banquo's ghost in the banquet scene of Macbeth, and carrying a spear in he battlefield episode. Seeing no bright future in that combination, I respectfully declined the offer.)
Day after day, the answers to our inquiries seemed always to be the same: "Sorry, nothing today; come back next week, if you wish." The two routine questions asked by nearly all those I talked to were: "What's your name" and "What have you done on stage?" By "name" they really meant how and by whom are you known in the theatrical profession? and by "what" it soon became clear they were interested only in what you had done on Broadway -- or at the least, "off Broadway." When I first responded to these questions by identifying the roles I had played in college and community theatre productions "back in Kentucky," I was met with laughter, disparaging remarks, or just cruel silence, accompanied by condescending raised eyebrows. "You must have professional experience before we can even consider you," several had said. But when I asked how I was to get professional experience if no one would give me a chance to begin, one of them said rudely, "That's your problem ...next applicant step up to the desk."
Carol had heard on good authority that if I really wanted a job as an actor, I would first have to join Actors Equity. So I had sent in an application for membership in that organization several days earlier, even though I was told by others who seemed to know that new applicants were being definitely discouraged from pursuing the matter or rejected outright, because of the scarcity of acting jobs in the summer of 1933. This kind of action was understandable, since many well-known and experienced actors and actresses were without employment. Still I kept at it --sometimes with Carol, quite often alone -- walking, making telephone calls, visiting offices, and asking again and again and again. Some of the office receptionists began to call me by name when I would come in the door, "Sorry, Mr. Travelstead, you made the trip today -- nothing yet."
After a week of these unfavorable and discouraging results, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get a break. If it had not been for Carol's affection and support and our evening activities of dining and dancing together, I probably would have purchased a bus ticket back to Bowling Green and missed out on what I am now calling the drama on Central Park South.
Late one afternoon --perhaps my ninth day in New York -- I decided to take an altogether different approach. Since daytime visits to business offices had not been successful, I would now make an effort to find some producer or director at home in the evening -- hopefully after he had downed his second martini. What brashness! As I look back on what happened that evening, I shudder to think I could have been so presumptuous. But then when I recall that I was only twenty-one and without employment at the time, my actions do not seem so reprehensible. I must have concluded on that day in June of 1933 I had nothing to lose by trying.
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