The Early Years
The location was originally home to the respected Bliss-Hayden School of Acting run by a husband and wife team of motion picture actors—actress Lela Bliss with over 45 credits stretching from 1915 to 1965, and her husband actor Harry Hayden with over 260 credits listed from 1936 to 1955 on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Veronica Lake, Mamie Van Doren and scores of other working actors studied there.
In 1954, the Bliss-Hayden Theatre was acquired by Douglas Frank Bank and Jay Manford, and renamed The Beverly Hills Playhouse. This was a showcase for many productions written by Douglas Bank (The Preacher, and Journey to a Lonely Star) as well as well-known plays of the time including Jenny Kissed Me, Room Service, The Lawyer, Harvey, and The Second Man. Many actors had performed there including Stanley Adams, Anne Baxter, Ken Mayer, Michael Fox and Louella Parsons, and directors Larry Stewart and Arthur M. Lowe, Jr., as well as others. They owned the theatre until 1959.
Read more about this topic: Beverly Hills Playhouse
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was almost two years ago, while awaiting the imminent birth of my second child, that I decided to start working part-time. This would have been unthinkable to me when I was younger. At twenty-five I should have worn a big red A on my chest; it would have stood for ambition, an ambition so brazen and burning that it would have reduced Hester Prynne’s transgression to pale pink.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)