On the Road with Molarsky’s Marionettes

By Osmond Molarsky ’34

"Shortly before the First World War, Swarthmore became active on the Chautauqua circuit, which brought to rural America tent shows combining vaudeville, theater, lectures, and moral uplift. At its height the Swarthmore Chautauqua visited annually nearly a thousand towns in fourteen eastern states and three Canadian provinces."
—Richard J. Walton, Swarthmore College, An Informal History

The 1929 Swarthmore Chautauqua, four days of "culture and entertain-ment," was only a vestige of the origi-nal 10-day Chautauquas that for two generations had uplifted rural audiences with everything from William Jennings Bryan’s "Cross of Gold" speech to Swiss bell ringers and now was in competition with radio and moving pictures that actually talked.

Following my 1928–29 freshman year, the Swarthmore Chautauqua listed among its attractions "Molarskv’s Marionettes," a marionette variety show my brother and I had produced while still in high school. That year I had shared a suite of rooms at the top of Woolman with three seniors, one of whom, James Michener ’29, had a job lined up for the fall, but had no visible means of support until then. He had seen a 10-minute segment of Molarsky’s Marionettes in the 1928 Hamburg show, and he conceived the idea of booking us on the circuit, with himself as my assistant.

Our contract for the summer tour called for six afternoon performances of the marionettes each week and our appearance as actors in the play the same evening. Three weeks of rehearsal were enough to fit Michener into my brother’s part in the show— puppeteering, shifting scenery, and cranking the portable Victrola that provided incidental music.

Featured in the show was a scene from The Merchant of Venice, which required some abridgement to fit into the program. As an Honors student in English, Michener seemed the appropriate abridger, for which he required an extra dollar a week above the $40 we had agreed on as his pay. His literary contribution incliuced also a prologue, in Shakespearean meter, as follows:

In ancient Venice, where our scene is laid

There dwelt two noble men, in friendship bound.

The first had wooed and won a lovely maid.

The second was the richest merchant known

In all the city—rich alike in gold and honor

But detested by a Jew, one Shylock, stooped

With avarice and old in hating Christians.

Now we bring to you the story of these men— Antonio, the noble merchant,

Shylock, the crafty Jew

And I, the borrower, Bassanlo.

The extra dollar a week I paid Michener for this contribution may be said to mark the beginning of his professional literary career.

As to the rest of the program, to be manageable by two puppeteers, my brother and I had kept it in a vaudeville format. Politically not unseemly for 1929, almost every one of a dozen acts was a demeaning stereotype of some minority, all highly enlightening to our rural audiences from Somerset, Pa. to Brattleboro, Vt.

The fine print of our contract, which I still have in my files, required us to drive between engagements. The long hops were negotiated in a broken-down 1922 Dodge panel truck provided by the company. Leaving after the play, driving all night, and exploiting a gravity speed of 50 mph on steep grades, we were able to make the next afternoon’s marionette performance, catching what sleep we could on the coffin-like box that contained the show’s equipment. On the entire five-week tour, we never stopped at a hotel, had a proper bath, or even got our makeup off com-pletely, and we alarmed more than a few early-morning break-fasters at all-night diners with our garish complexions.

Our evening play was Skid-I ding, a 1928 Broadway comedy hit that became the basis of the Andy Hardy series starring Mickey Rooney. Michener was the romantic lead, to Barbara Pearson (Lange Godfrey)’s [‘31], leading lady. Mortimer Drake ‘29 was Judge Hardy. At age 19, with a gray wig and other disguises, I played an aging campaign manager. We were billed on the program as "a Broadway cast," with Ted Fetter ‘28, as Andy Hardy, the only certifiable professional actor in the company. (The previous winter, Ted had had a part in The Garrick Gaieties, a Broadway musical revue star-ring Sterling Holloway and Imogene Coca.) Trooping with the Chautauqua produced some memorable moments, both amusing and harrowing. Coasting downhill into a small Pennsylvania town, I tried to avoid a tank truck backing out of a service station. Centrifugal force flipped us over. Michener, asleep on the dismantled mari-onette stage, crawled out of the back of the truck, not yet fully awake. (Michener, it may be said here, once fell asleep on stage during the evening play.) Ted Fetter, riding with us that day, climbed out of the passenger’s side. I followed. It was raining. A crowd assembled to gawk at our dis-comfiture, a damp theatrical troupe about to miss an engagement. The spell was broken by a latecomer, a matronly woman who stopped, surveyed the scene, and inquired eager-ly, "Were they all killed?"

In another mishap, hurrying in from the pasture on hearing my cue, I tripped on a tent guy rope, picked myself up, and dashed up the steps to the elevated stage. On entering the living-room scene, I grabbed for my hat, to doff it, and lifted my gray wig half a foot from my head before I realized what had happened. The hat had been knocked off by a guy rope. I had grabbed the wig. The laugh this got from the audience tempted us to keep it in the script, but there were limits.

Following the Chautauqua tour, Molarsky’s Marionettes became my means of working my way through college, mainly booking tours of the large resort hotels in the Poconos, the New Jersey shore, the coast of Maine, the Berkshires, and the White Mountains, where captive audiences were eager to drop money into the collection for good entertainment. My part-ner now once again was my younger brother, a music stu-dent and versatile performer.

Senior year my farce "No! Not the Russians!" placed second to a profound drama by Bob Cadigan ‘34 in the one-act play contest, but my frivolous effort convinced me that I was the next Noel Coward. (My play was later published in Stage and widely performed in the United States and Canada.) Noel Coward failed to material-ize in me, but a variety of writing assignments followed, including a long-running children’s feature in Family Circle and authorship of many children’s books, including a Book World "Best Book" for 1968. As a radio talk show host in San Francisco, 1967—69, 1 was the target of many poison pen let-ters and death threats for my early opposition to the war in Vietnam. None of this made me either rich or famous, but, with my wife, Peggy, a poet and archeologist, I’m alive and well in California, writing, sailing, and playing serious tennis.

I hope there are a few alumni who still recall the 1928 Hamburg Show, which included not only Molarsky’s Marionettes but also a buck-and-wing dance by Alfonso Tomassetti ‘32 and Russell Jones ‘32 and a moving anti-war pantomime by James Michener ‘29, with piano accompaniment improvised by Eddie Dawes ’32. Times have changed, but marionettes, an ancient art, will always have a very special appeal.