File puptcrit/puptcrit.1002, message 18


Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:55:47 -0600 (CST)
From: Charles Taylor <cecetaylor-AT-verizon.net>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: [Puptcrit] The "Four" Yale Puppeteers


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Alan Cook wrote, =E2=80=9C . . .The basic Yale Puppeteers group was Harry, Forman Brown & Roddy Burnett,  to the end of their lives. Bob Bromley worked with them in the early 1930s on Olvera Street.

Dorothy Neuman, a partner of Turnabout Theater (begun 1941) was another student at Yale Drama School, where she met Harry. . .=E2=80=9D

Actually, Bob Bromley, then known as Bob Cressey,  and Dorothy Neuman joined the Yale Puppeteers in 1928 when they built and toured Blue Beard and Hansel and Gretel designed by Norman  Bell Geddes. (As an aside, Harry borrowed ten thousand dollars from his brother to pay Norman Bell Geddes. Harry told me that regretfully he never repaid the debt even though the each made a thousand dollars a month all during the 1940=E2=80=99s, a great sum at that time.)

Harry Burnett was not able to read the Norman Bell Geddes blueprints for the sets. He wrote to his perceived nemesis Professor Baker for a student that could help.  Bob Cressey had graduated with honors and was recommended.  Dorothy Neuman brought her acting talents and seamstress skills for costuming.  They toured all that summer and had a small barn theater called Talley Ho.  At the end of the season Bob Cressey and Dorothy Neuman went their separate ways to later join up with the Yale Puppeteers in Hollywood but nearly a decade apart.

Bob Cressey became a sound technician for the movies in Hollywood in the late twenties and early thirties. He also ran a small experimental theater in Beverly Hills.  He did one show by Shakespeare and had the actors perform on a teeter-totter.  Bob=E2=80=99s real purpose was to keep wives of well known directors busy and out of their husband=E2=80=99s hair. This the directors paid Bob to misdirect the wive=E2=80=99s attention from wanting their husbands to make them into  =E2=80=9Cmovie  stars=E2=80=9D.

According to Bob=E2=80=99s story, when the Yale Puppeteers opened Teatro Torito, =E2=80=9CTheater of Little Bull=E2=80=9D,  on Olvera Street they hired Bob to be the fourth Yale Puppeteer once again. But there was an occasion for a Yale Alumni Reunion in Los Angeles. (There is a delightful photograph of the =E2=80=9CFour Yale Puppeteers=E2=80=9D on the Los Angeles County Library Archives for Turnabout Theater which includes Bob standing on the left of Harry Burnett who is seated, Forman Brown and Roddy are stranding,)

Because Forman Brown, Harry Burnett and Richard Brandon=E2=80=99s names were alliterative, they insisted that Bob Cressey change his last name to begin with a =E2=80=9CB=E2=80=9D so it wouldn=E2=80=99t stand out.  Bob was not pleased over this request.

Bob Cressey felt he had been the only one to graduate from Yale with honors. Harry nearly got kicked out for bad grades and Roddy, Richard Brandon WAS kicked out for immoral turpitude. 
Bob had an upset stomach and took a Bromoseltzer.  As he sat there drinking and gagging on the fizzing liquid, he looked at the glass and thought, =E2=80=9CBromo,  Bromeley,  Bromley!=E2=80=9D And that is how he named himself Bob Bromely.  

Now the other confusing name is Roddy who was born Brandon Rhodehamel. Forman nicked named him Roddy which he was known by his friends all his life. But the  theatrical name he adopted was Richard Brandon.  So the Three =E2=80=9CB=E2=80=99s=E2=80=9D were Brown, Brandon and Burnett!  Bob Bromley felt he was always an outsider and treated as such. 

Their friendship ended abruptly when the Yale Puppeteers decided their success on Olvera Street would lead them to Broadway in New York.  Bob asked to buy the theater on Olvera Street from them.  (Remember, this is from Bob Bromley=E2=80=99s point of view.) The Yale Puppeteers refused, according to Bob, because he might use the name Yale Puppeteer since he HAD graduated with honors for Yale University.  Bob always  claimed he  never wanted to use the Yale name and continued his very successful career as Bob Bromley.

Bob went to Christine Sterling, the socialite that had put the Olvera package together to keep the historic street from being torn down in a development plan.  Bob asked her if she had any tenants for the carriage house and theater.  When she told him that she did not, he put a fifty dollar deposit down to hold the building.  Then Bob went to the Yale Puppeteers and told them what he had done.  He was fired on the spot, probably by Roddy who very like a lioness that guarded the other two  from outsiders.

Before moving from the theater, the Yale puppeteers destroyed any artifacts they couldn=E2=80=99t take with them to prevent the theater from having the ambience they had given it.  One of the items they carried with them to New York were the autographed plaster walls that followed them eventually back to Hollywood and were installed in the Turnabout Theater ten years later.

Bob Baker, a boy of eight years old, tells that he was boosted through a window and ran across the empty theater to open the door for Bob Bromley and Wayne Barlow so they could take measurements of the theater while the Yale Puppeteers were upstairs asleep and unaware of what was going on in the theater.

Once I asked Bob Bromley if he had ever done anything he was truly ashamed.  (We had been drinking Sangria wine coolers for lunch.). He told me that on the final night of the Yale Puppeteers performance on Olvera Street he got drunk, attended the performance and heckled all the way through the show.  He felt badly and never forgave himself. 

Bob Bromley passed away in September 1982.  A few years later, when Forman Brown was the last survivor of the Yale Puppeteers, I brought up the Olvera Street incidence.  Forman claimed they were completely unaware that Bob Bromley was in the audience or heckling.  =E2=80=9CIn fact=E2=80=9D, Forman said, =E2=80=9CIt was on of the best audiences and happiest memories of our lives!=E2=80=9D

Lest I forget,  Dorothy Neuman rejoined the Yale Puppeteers and purchased one fourth ownership of the Turnabout Theater.  After the Turnabout closed, her part was bought out by the Yale Puppeteers.  They remained friends until her death.  She was an extremely talented actress that had many movie rolls and during the late fifties and early sixties she was on every channel of television. It would have been difficult to find a show she wasn't in. Dorthy was also a friend of mine and costumed my Hansel and Gretel marionettes. And in case people are unaware, her father was Doctor Henry Neuman, the man that introduced the Humanist Movement into Modern Education and was greatly respected. Dorothy's father also was one of the founders of the Ethical Culture Society.

 Forman Brown was a very brilliant, gracious and positive man.  Harry had an impish sense of humor that amazed and bewildered me. And although I was a bit frightened and intimidated by Roddy, I realize that Roddy was the glue that held the Yale Puppeteers together. Roddy  was the one most responsible for the success of the Yale Puppeteers.  Forman would agree.

The great irony of my life is that the =E2=80=9CFour=E2=80=9D Yale Puppeteers were wonderfully endearing friends of mine.  I am humbled that I had their friendship and  appreciate all they did for me.  My life IS greatly enriched by them.
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