"It Is Not To Be Acquired Without Undue Merit"

Let me begin by acknowledging my indebtedness. In researching the history of the Civic Little Theatre's [now Civic Theatre of Allentown's] first half century I have had two indispensible guides and helpers, the late John Y. Kohl, co-founder of CLT, editor of the Allentown Sunday Call-Chronicle, columnist, and tireless booster of local theatre, whose writings (including his memoir of CLT's first thirty years) I have shamelessly ransacked, and Richard P. Hoffman, CLT's official historian since the forties. Few organizations are blessed with so articulate a pioneer or so meticulous a recorder. Their combined efforts made this historical note possible.

But a lot of others combined to make it interesting, and not the least was the anonymous author of an earlier history whose creative prose included the walloping triple negative I have used above as a subtitle. Don't try to make sense of it - it can't be done. Take it at face value, as a stage buff's tribute to this maddening infatuation we all suffer from. There's craziness in this atmosphere. It's the answer you are likely to get from anyone "in theatre" if you inquire about the quality of the printing on the tickets or the conversation at the last cast party or the future of dramatic arts in the galaxy. "Oh, yes, it certainly is," they'll say. "And then again," they'll add, "it isn't."

And so the first fifty years of CLT have certainly been. And then, again, they haven't.

Founding, Growing, and Finding a Home

It all began with a conversation between John Kohl and Fred McCready over lunch in a tea room called "The Louisianne," on Seventh Street north of Linden. That was in the spring of '27, when both men were reporters for the Call-Chronicle papers and the little theatre movement was stirring all over the nation. Of that first year, John Kohl wrote:

There were a lot of meetings after that, some in the studios of WSAN in the Morning Call building and others in the picturesque sign shop of the late Eddie Mann on the top floor of the building adjacent to the Orpheum State Theatre.

Finally, by June of that year we had advanced sufficiently to put on a play - a one-acter - Suppressed Desires - which we presented in the National Guard Armory at Fourth and Union Streets. It was a strange affair with the theatrical program embellished with a dance and refreshments.

Somehow the Reading group got wind of it and a number of their members showed up and augmented the program. The Rev. Griswold Williams was their leader and he offered a barefoot dance illustrative of a poem which someone recited while he danced. We may have been antedating Agnes DeMille and her delineative type of choreography - who knows?

Then activities ceased for the summer and it was some time before the torch again burst into flame. It was a call from Rev. Williams that we take part in a one-act program in Reading, together with Reading and Lancaster, and, feeling that he had been most kind in starting us off, we determined to return the favor.

Funny, about those titles in those early days - because the title of the one-act play we presented in Reading was, of all things, "Trash!"

Within two years of our dining and dancing kickoff, the Allentown Fine Arts Club, which rented attic rooms at 616 Hamilton St ., contacted the new theatre group with a proposition - use the rooms and help defray the rent. What the Fine Arts Club didn't realize was that when a theatre moves in, it moves in. The 1929-1930 season was staged in those rooms, after which the fine Arts Club faded away and CLT was homeless again.

Then enter the Allentown Recreation Commission. The Commission ran a dramatic group and had access to the Fairgrounds. Would CLT be interested in merging? With the particular aid of Karl Weber and Elmer Huhn, respectively the original group's technical handyman and financial mastermind, the merger was effected. Weber designed a set of tarpapered partitions inside the Fairgrounds' Main Building and Huhn contrived to produce some heat for it without actually setting fire to the building - although contemporary testimony suggests that no amount of heat would have been enough to warm the chilled audiences in the Fairgrounds' vast spaces. The 1930-31 season also saw CLT's first full-length play, Daisy Mayme.

Next season the group rented the vacant Madison Theatre at the then staggering cost of $450 per year. They moved in tarpaper and all, and for the Christmas season they staged a version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol done into play form by Kohl and McCready. The Madison Theatre, at Thirteenth and Chew Streets, was home for fifteen years.

Without question the high spot of those years was one play produced in 1944 and revived in 1947. The play was Papa Is All, and it indelibly impressed itself on Allentown theatre history in three ways. First, it ran from Ground Hog Day until St. Patrick's Day, 1944, and set records for attendance and number of performances never approached before or since. (Note #1) Second, it put CLT in so strong a financial position that all subsequent history of the organization has been informed by optimism directly traceable to Papa Is All. Third, it established John Kohl's local reputation as a theatrical genius, since only he, then serving as CLT's president, had predicted success for the Pennsylvania German dialect play, and he had picked Grundsow Day for its opening.

For thirty-eight performances, and for another twenty-eight in 1947, Papa Is All packed the customers in. Subscribing memberships topped 1300. Then in 1949 the Madison Theatre announced that CLT's lease would not be renewed.

The group took the shows to Allen High for a season and then to the Muhlenberg College Science Auditorium. Membership continued to grow, attendance stayed up. In 1952 Stefan George was hired as paid director, followed in 1953 by John Kichline, who served for nine seasons before the current policy of five plays, five directors was adopted. (Note #2) But the group felt above all the need for a home.

In November of 1953, Hess's Inc., the owners of the Towne Theatre at Sixth and Gordon Streets offered to give it to CLT. Rejoicing quickly soured when the board, after investigation, realized that the Towne could never be converted to present stage productions, and the most generous gift in CLT's history had to be rejected.

In 1957 the city of Allentown acquired the barn near the present Rose Garden from the estate of Abe Sofranscy, once an owner of the Lyric Theatre. The CLT board negotiated for a lease and set out to raise $75,000 to renovate its new, permanent home. The fund drive was going well. Then bids were taken on the renovation plans - and once again the axe had fallen. The cost was going to be nearly double the theatre's maximum figure. The home in the park went glimmering.

And then, in the summer of 1957, Charles Hoch and the Board of Governors announced one day out of the blue that the Nineteenth Street Theatre had been purchased for CLT.

Continued