Theater Books from Other Realms: Waxing Eloquent About Mary Wickes

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Mary Wickes: I Know I’ve Seen That Face Before

By Steve Taravella (University Press of Mississippi)

 

There’s nothing “meta” about this biography of a hardworking, long-living actress whose career encompassed Broadway, old time radio, the golden age of television and the waning days of the Hollywood studio system. Mary Wickes’ career is not suggested to be symbolic of so many similar second-tier, sidekick or character types of her times.

No, this is a biography of a specific performer whom many writers wouldn’t consider deserving of a 370-page biography. That’s what makes it so cool.

Wickes had a life full of worthy roles. She had famous friends. She seemed like a nice lady. Because her story’s never been told at length, this book is just full of remarkable anecdotes.

There are some vaguely familiar tales, made fresh since they’re told from a different perspective. For my own purposes as a Connecticut-based theater critic, I’m delighted to have a new take on the Stony Creek rehearsals for Orson Welles’ production of Too Much Johnson. The show collapsed in New York but is famous for a filmed segment which was Welle’s first real foray into the cinema medium. Wickes, who at the time was working regularly at a summer theater in Stockbridge, Mass., joined Welles’ Mercury Theatre Company for fifty bucks (later $75) a week. This account not only concentrates on how Welles treated his company, it references such long-defunct Stony Creek/Branford haunts as the Flying Point Hotel. It then segues directly into Wickes’ role in a more successful and prestigious Welles production, Danton’s Death.

True, Orson Welles adventures don’t carry the weight they once did. (Though his Stony Creek film continues to fascinate: See Frank Rizzo’s recent Courant piece here.)

Many readers will likely be more intrigued by the revelation that Wickes, whose TV sitcom roles ranged from Danny Thomas’ press agent on Make Room for Daddy to Zelda Marshall on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, nearly played Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy.

But it’s the live stage details which resonate most strongly with me. She was Mary McCune in the original Broadway production of Stage Door, then Nurse Preen in the original Broadway production of The Man Who Came to Dinner (a role she played again in the 1942 film version), and Miss Hebe in still another George S. Kaufman comedy, Hollywood Pinafore. She was Mrs. Squires in the film of The Music Man. She was also in the atrociously named melodrama Dark Hammock.

What more do you need from a biography? Mary Wickes—the legend of Dark Hammock!!