Haila Stoddard
Encyclopedia
Haila Stoddard was an American
actor
, producer, writer
and director. During her career as an actress, Stoddard appeared in a number of plays, movies, and television series, including sixteen years as Pauline Rysdale in The Secret Storm
from 1954 to 1970. Stoddard also worked as a producer, both independently and with her production company, Bonard Productions Incorporated, which Stoddard created with Helen Bonfils in 1960. In addition to adapting plays such as Come Play with Me and Men, Women, and Less Alarming Creatures, Stoddard also wrote plays such as A Round With Ring (1969) and Zellerman, Arthur (1979).
, Stoddard moved from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, California
with her family at age 8. She graduated from L.A. High in 1930, married, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Southern California
in 1934 with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech, while appearing in leading roles with the National Collegiate Players.
In 1938 Stoddard married Jack Kirkland with whom she had two children. The couple divorced in 1947 and in the following year Stoddard married director-producer Harold Bromley with whom she had one child. After divorcing Bromley in 1954, Stoddard married actor-producer Whitfield Connor in 1956 with whom she remained married for thirty-two years until his death in 1988.
.
Stoddard arrived on Broadway in 1937, succeeding Peggy Conklin in the title role of Yes, My Darling Daughter
. She subsequently starred in A Woman's a Fool – To Be Clever, I Know What I Like
and Kindred
(1939), Susannah and the Elders (1940), Mr. and Mrs. North
(1941), The Rivals
(1942), The Moon Vine and Blithe Spirit
(1943), Dream Girl
(1945), and The Voice of the Turtle (1947). Her co-stars included Clifton Webb
, Louis Calhern
, Walter Slezak
, Peggy Wood
, Bobby Clark
, Monty Woolly, and Edgar Everett Horton.
During World War II
she toured the South Pacific as Lorraine Sheldon in a 1945 USO production of The Man Who Came to Dinner
with a cast including director Moss Hart
, as Sheridan Whiteside, and Tyrone Power
, Dina Merrill
, Dora Sayers, Paula Trueman, Nedda Harrigan, and Janet Fox.
She drafted a cookbook entitled Applause and produced a short-lived play called Dead Pigeon. In the late 1960s she opened Carriage House Comestibles, a popular gourmet restaurant off the Boston Post Road in Westport, Connecticut.
She starred in Joan of Lorraine
, The Trial of Mary Dugan
, and The Voice of the Turtle
(1947), Rip Van Winkle
(1947-’48), Doctor Social, Goodbye My Fancy, and Her Cardboard Lover
(1949), Affairs of State
(1950), Springtime for Henry
(1951), Twentieth Century
, Glad Tidings
, and Biography
(1952), ten summer stock productions at Denver's Elitch Gardens Theatre and The Frogs of Spring, a revival which she co-produced with husband Harald Bromley on Broadway (1953). She took over the leading role on opening night when illness struck Constance Ford
in her own Broadway production of One Eye Closed, took over for Mary Anderson in Lunatics and Lovers in 1954, and directed the national touring production. She played in Ever Since Paradise (1957), Patate
(1958), and Dark Corners
" (1964).
Stoddard and Jack Kirkland were original share-holders in the creation of the Bucks County Playhouse
in 1938; she appeared there in a total of sixteen productions from 1939 to 1958, including The Philadelphia Story, Petticoat Fever, Our Betters, Skylark, The Play's the Thing, Golden Boy, Mr. and Mrs. North, and Biography. During five seasons, she was the Playhouse's leading lady to leading men Walter Slezak and Louis Calhern. She produced her husband's plays The Clover Ring and Georgia Boy in Boston, and The Secret Room on Broadway, all in 1945.
. In the early days of live dramatic television during the 1950s Stoddard appeared in over 100 teleplays in principal roles on CBS's Playhouse 90
, Studio One
, The Web, The United States Steel Hour
, Hallmark Hall of Fame
and The Prudential Family Playhouse; and on NBC's Goodyear Playhouse, Kraft Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse
, The Armstrong Circle Theatre and Robert Montgomery Presents
. On radio she played the Little Sister with Orson Welles
on Big Sister
on CBS. In 1937-39 she simultaneously played Stella Dallas
and three other day-time radio serials, then called washboard weepers, while appearing on stage in three different plays. Her radio co-stars included Agnes Moorehead
, Garson Kanin
, and Clark Andrews.
and Harold Pinter
to Broadway
. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson
called her 1960 adaptation of A Thurber Carnival "the freshest and funniest show of the year." Stoddard produced the Tony Award winning musical, her first production on Broadway, with Colorado heiress Helen Bonfils and Michael Davis. She had befriended Bonfils while appearing during the summer of 1953 as leading lady at Denver's Elitch Theater where Bonfils, the owner and publisher of the Denver Post, played character parts in the summer stock company. Her original cast included Tom Ewell
, Alice Ghostly, Paul Ford, Peggy Cass
, John McGiver
, and the Don Elliott
Jazz Quartet, and was directed by Burgess Meredith
. A later production, at the Central City Opera
House, featured Thurber himself, then blind, as narrator.
Combining her name with Bonfils as Bonard Productions, and associating with her New York theatrical attorney Donald Seawell
, she brought to Broadway productions of Noel Coward
's Sail Away (1962), The Affair by C.P. Snow (1962), her own adaptation of Thurber's The Beast In Me (1963), and the Royal Shakespeare Company
's The Hollow Crown (1963), which went on to tour American colleges for four months in the spring of 1964. For Sail Away she was nominated for the Tony Award
for Best Producer of a Musical. In association with Kathleen and Justin Sturm she presented That Hat!, her adaptation of An Italian Straw Hat, in 1964.
Stoddard often had to handle tensions between her conservative producing partner Bonfils and flamboyant figures in entertainment, including Noel Coward. In 1962, Stoddard asked Andy Warhol
to design costumes for Thurber's The Beast in Me, after learning of Warhol through choreographer John Butler.
With Bonfils and Davis, Stoddard produced her co-adaptation, with dancer-actress Tamara Geva
, of Marcel Achard
's Voulez vous jouer avec moi? as Come Play with Me starring Tom Poston
and Liliane Montevecchi
in 1960, and with Mark Wright and Leonard S. Field premiered Harold Pinter
on Broadway in 1967 with The Birthday Party. She later offered Off-Broadway productions of Coward's Private Lives (1968), co-producing with Mark Wright and Duane Wilder; Lanford Wilson
's Lemon Sky (1970) and The Gingham Dog (1971), and The Last Sweet Days of Isaac
a musical by Gretchen Cryer
and Nancy Ford (1970) which won three Obie awards. With Neal Du Brock she produced The Survival of St. Joan (1971); and, with Arnold H. Levy, Lady Audley's Secret (1972) and Love, based on the play by Murray Schisgal
, starring Nathan Lane
(1984 Outer Critics Circle Award).
Pursuing her interest in young playwrights, she produced off-Broadway productions of Glass House (1981), Casey Kurtii's Catholic School Girls (1982 Drama Desk Award), Sweet Prince (1982), Marvelous Gray (1982), and John Olive's Clara's Play (1983).
Bonard also presented the RSC productions of King Lear and Comedy of Errors to open the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in May, 1964, and her London productions of A Thurber Carnival (1962) and Sail Away (1963) played the Savoy Theatre
in London's West End.
Her dramatic adaptations of Thurber material include Life on a Limb, and Men, Women, and Less Alarming Creatures, produced with The Last Flower on Boston WGBH-TV public television in 1965. In A Round with Ring she adapted Ring Lardner
works which she directed in New York for the ANTA matinee series. She also directed the national touring production of Lunatics and Lovers, and she wrote original scripts entitled Abandoned Child and Bird on the Wing, and co-wrote Dahling – A Tallulah Bankhead
Musical with composer-lyricist Jack Lawrence
.
Stoddard also served as understudy
to Bea Lillie, Greer Garson
, Betty Field
, Rosalind Russell
, Uta Hagen
, Mercedes McCambridge
, and Jessica Tandy
. As Rosalind Russell
's stand-by, she never played the part of Auntie Mame
on Broadway in 1956. Russell, when feeling infirm, would request that Stoddard sit in the wings where she could see her: "So long as I can see you", she said, "I will never let you get on that stage." Russell never relinquished, and once played with a 105 fever. Stoddard got her chance when Russell's replacement, Greer Garson
, was indisposed after her first performance in the demanding part.
She replaced Elaine Stritch
as the matinee Martha for in the original 1962 Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, playing the part each Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, and standing by in her dressing room each evening until the curtain rose for the second act with Uta Hagen
safely in command on stage.
When Hagen left the Broadway production to open the show in London, Stoddard performed the role of Martha an unprecedented eight times a week until Mercedes McCambridge
was ready to replace Hagen for the evening performances. She played with separate casts, opposite different actors. "After that stint, there was nothing more I could do on stage as an actress, so I turned to my greater fondness for writing, adapting, and producing." Meanwhile, she continued to stand by for Jessica Tandy in Edward Albee
plays produced on Broadway by Duane Wilder and Clinton Barr.
to produce summer seasons at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut, was on the Board of Directors of New Dramatists in New York City, and a Founding Member of the Westport (CT) Theatre Artists Workshop.
Stoddard died at her home in Weston, Connecticut
from cardiopulmonary arrest at age 97.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, producer, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and director. During her career as an actress, Stoddard appeared in a number of plays, movies, and television series, including sixteen years as Pauline Rysdale in The Secret Storm
The Secret Storm
The Secret Storm is a soap opera which ran on CBS from February 1, 1954 to February 8, 1974. The series was created by Roy Winsor, who also created the long-running soap operas Search for Tomorrow and Love of Life...
from 1954 to 1970. Stoddard also worked as a producer, both independently and with her production company, Bonard Productions Incorporated, which Stoddard created with Helen Bonfils in 1960. In addition to adapting plays such as Come Play with Me and Men, Women, and Less Alarming Creatures, Stoddard also wrote plays such as A Round With Ring (1969) and Zellerman, Arthur (1979).
Personal life
Born in Great Falls, MontanaGreat Falls, Montana
Great Falls is a city in and the county seat of Cascade County, Montana, United States. The population was 58,505 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Great Falls, Montana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Cascade County...
, Stoddard moved from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
with her family at age 8. She graduated from L.A. High in 1930, married, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
in 1934 with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech, while appearing in leading roles with the National Collegiate Players.
In 1938 Stoddard married Jack Kirkland with whom she had two children. The couple divorced in 1947 and in the following year Stoddard married director-producer Harold Bromley with whom she had one child. After divorcing Bromley in 1954, Stoddard married actor-producer Whitfield Connor in 1956 with whom she remained married for thirty-two years until his death in 1988.
Early career
Stoddard's first professional stage appearance was in San Francisco as a walk-on/under-study in the 1934 California production of Merrily We Roll Along, succeeding to the ingenue's leading role for opening night in Los Angeles. She appeared for 65 weeks in 1935-36 as the mute Pearl in the national touring company of Jack Kirkland's Tobacco RoadTobacco Road
Tobacco Road refers to the tobacco-producing area of North Carolina and is often used when referring to sports played among rival North Carolina universities...
.
Stoddard arrived on Broadway in 1937, succeeding Peggy Conklin in the title role of Yes, My Darling Daughter
Yes, My Darling Daughter
Yes, My Darling Daughter is a 1941 song by Jack Lawrence first introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor's radio program, as well as Shore's first record. The music used by Lawrence is based on a Ukrainian folk-song "Oj ne khody Hrytsju", often ascribed to the Ukrainian songstress Marusia Churai....
. She subsequently starred in A Woman's a Fool – To Be Clever, I Know What I Like
I Know What I Like
"I Know What I Like" is a song performed by Huey Lewis and the News and released as a single from the album Fore! in 1987. The single peaked at number nine on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100...
and Kindred
Kindred
In the Heathen movements, a kindred is a local worship group and organisational unit. Other terms used are hearth, theod , blotgroup, sippe, and other less popular ones such as garth, stead, and others....
(1939), Susannah and the Elders (1940), Mr. and Mrs. North
Mr. and Mrs. North
Mr. and Mrs. North are fictional American amateur detectives. Created by Frances and Richard Lockridge, the couple were featured in a series of 26 Mr. and Mrs. North novels, a Broadway play, a motion picture and several radio and television series....
(1941), The Rivals
The Rivals
The Rivals, a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, is a comedy of manners in five acts. It was first performed on 17 January 1775.- Production :...
(1942), The Moon Vine and Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
(1943), Dream Girl
Dream Girl (play)
Dream Girl is a play by Elmer Rice.At its core is Georgina Allerton, a young woman whose efforts to run a bookstore are undermined severely by her tendency to drift off into Walter Mitty-like flights of fancy on a regular basis...
(1945), and The Voice of the Turtle (1947). Her co-stars included Clifton Webb
Clifton Webb
Clifton Webb was an American actor, dancer, and singer known for his Oscar-nominated roles in such films as Laura, The Razor's Edge, and Sitting Pretty...
, Louis Calhern
Louis Calhern
Louis Calhern was an American stage and screen actor.- Early life :Louis Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt on February 19, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York. His family left New York City while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he grew up...
, Walter Slezak
Walter Slezak
Walter Slezak was a portly Austrian character actor who appeared in numerous Hollywood films. Slezak often portrayed villains or thugs, most notably the German U-boat captain in Alfred Hitchcock's film Lifeboat , but occasionally he got to play lighter roles, as in The Wonderful World of the...
, Peggy Wood
Peggy Wood
Peggy Wood was an American actress of stage, film and television.-Early career:She was born Mary Margaret Wood in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Eugene Wood, a journalist, and Mary Gardner, a telegraph operator. She was a direct descendant of Daniel Boone...
, Bobby Clark
Bobby Clark (comedian)
Robert Edwin Clark , known as Bobby Clark, was a minstrel, vaudevillian, performer on stage, film, television and the circus....
, Monty Woolly, and Edgar Everett Horton.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
she toured the South Pacific as Lorraine Sheldon in a 1945 USO production of The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert...
with a cast including director Moss Hart
Moss Hart
Moss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
, as Sheridan Whiteside, and Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
, Dina Merrill
Dina Merrill
-Early life:Merrill was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton in New York City, New York, the only child of Post Cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, Wall Street stockbroker Edward Francis Hutton...
, Dora Sayers, Paula Trueman, Nedda Harrigan, and Janet Fox.
She drafted a cookbook entitled Applause and produced a short-lived play called Dead Pigeon. In the late 1960s she opened Carriage House Comestibles, a popular gourmet restaurant off the Boston Post Road in Westport, Connecticut.
She starred in Joan of Lorraine
Joan of Lorraine
Joan of Lorraine is a 1946 play-within-a-play by Maxwell Anderson. It is about an acting company who stages a dramatization of the story of Joan of Arc and the effect that the story has on them. As in the musical Man of La Mancha, most of the actors in the drama play two or more roles...
, The Trial of Mary Dugan
The Trial of Mary Dugan
The Trial of Mary Dugan is a play written by Bayard Veiller.The melodrama concerns a sensational courtroom trial of a showgirl accused of killing of her millionaire lover. Her defense attorney is her brother, Jimmy Dugan. It was first presented on Broadway in 1927, with Ann Harding in the title...
, and The Voice of the Turtle
The Voice of the Turtle (play)
The Voice of the Turtle is a comedic Broadway play by John William Van Druten dealing with the challenges of the single life in New York City during World War II...
(1947), Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon...
(1947-’48), Doctor Social, Goodbye My Fancy, and Her Cardboard Lover
Her Cardboard Lover
Her Cardboard Lover is a 1942 American comedy film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay by Jacques Deval, John Collier, Anthony Veiller, and William H. Wright is based on the English translation of Deval's play Dans sa candeur naïve by Valerie Wyngate and P.G. Wodehouse...
(1949), Affairs of State
Affairs of State
Affairs of State is a 1950 Broadway comedy written and directed by Louis Verneuil. It opened at the Royale Theatre, then moved to the Music Box Theatre and played for a total of 610 performances.It was the first play Verneuil wrote in English.-Cast:...
(1950), Springtime for Henry
Springtime for Henry
Springtime for Henery is a 1934 American comedy film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Otto Kruger, Nancy Carroll and Nigel Bruce. It was based on a play of the same name by Benn W. Levy which enjoyed an eight month run on Broadway.-Plot:...
(1951), Twentieth Century
Twentieth Century (film)
Twentieth Century is a 1934 American screwball comedy film. Much of the film is set on the 20th Century Limited train as it travels from Chicago to New York. The film was directed by Howard Hawks, stars John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, and features Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns and Edgar Kennedy...
, Glad Tidings
Glad Tidings
Glad Tidings is a free Bible magazine published monthly by the Christadelphians...
, and Biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
(1952), ten summer stock productions at Denver's Elitch Gardens Theatre and The Frogs of Spring, a revival which she co-produced with husband Harald Bromley on Broadway (1953). She took over the leading role on opening night when illness struck Constance Ford
Constance Ford
Constance Ford was an American actress and model. She is best known for her long-running role as Ada Hobson on the daytime soap opera Another World.-Career:...
in her own Broadway production of One Eye Closed, took over for Mary Anderson in Lunatics and Lovers in 1954, and directed the national touring production. She played in Ever Since Paradise (1957), Patate
Patate
Patate is a town in Ecuador in the Tungurahua Province in northwestern South America between San Juan de Ambato and Baños. It is close to the foothills of the still active Tungurahua volcano.- References :* * - External links :*...
(1958), and Dark Corners
Dark Corners
Dark Corners is a 2006 horror-thriller film starring Thora Birch as a woman who can't escape her bad dreams. The line begins to blur between reality and the horror that lives in her mind, making everyone wonder what's really happening.-Cast:...
" (1964).
Stoddard and Jack Kirkland were original share-holders in the creation of the Bucks County Playhouse
Bucks County Playhouse
The Bucks County Playhouse is the State Theater of Pennsylvania, and is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.When the Hope Mills burnt in 1790, the grist mills were rebuilt as the New Hope Mills by Benjamin Parry. ....
in 1938; she appeared there in a total of sixteen productions from 1939 to 1958, including The Philadelphia Story, Petticoat Fever, Our Betters, Skylark, The Play's the Thing, Golden Boy, Mr. and Mrs. North, and Biography. During five seasons, she was the Playhouse's leading lady to leading men Walter Slezak and Louis Calhern. She produced her husband's plays The Clover Ring and Georgia Boy in Boston, and The Secret Room on Broadway, all in 1945.
The Secret Storm and other television roles
On television Stoddard played the malevolent Aunt Pauline from 1953 to 1971 on CBS-TV's The Secret StormThe Secret Storm
The Secret Storm is a soap opera which ran on CBS from February 1, 1954 to February 8, 1974. The series was created by Roy Winsor, who also created the long-running soap operas Search for Tomorrow and Love of Life...
. In the early days of live dramatic television during the 1950s Stoddard appeared in over 100 teleplays in principal roles on CBS's Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
, Studio One
Studio One
Studio One is one of Jamaica's most renowned record labels and recording studios, having been described as "the Motown of Jamaica." One online review of "Respect to Studio One" released by Heartbeat adds "Stax-Volt" to the American R&B comparison and describes Studio One's founder Clement...
, The Web, The United States Steel Hour
The United States Steel Hour
The United States Steel Hour is an anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. The television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation....
, Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
and The Prudential Family Playhouse; and on NBC's Goodyear Playhouse, Kraft Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse
The Philco Television Playhouse
The Philco Television Playhouse, a live television anthology series sponsored by Philco, was telecast from 1948 to 1955. Produced by Fred Coe, the NBC series was seen on Sundays from 9:00pm to 10:00pm...
, The Armstrong Circle Theatre and Robert Montgomery Presents
Robert Montgomery Presents
Robert Montgomery Presents is an American dramatic television series which was produced by NBC from January 30, 1950 until June 24, 1957. The live show had several sponsors during its seven-year run, and the title was altered to feature the sponsor, usually Lucky Strike cigarettes, for example,...
. On radio she played the Little Sister with Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
on Big Sister
Big Sister (radio)
Big Sister was a daytime radio drama series created by Lillian Laugerty and broadcast on CBS from September 14, 1936 to December 26, 1952. It was sponsored by Lever Brothers until 1946 when Procter & Gamble became the sponsor....
on CBS. In 1937-39 she simultaneously played Stella Dallas
Stella Dallas
Stella Dallas is a 1923 novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, written in response to the death of her three-year-old daughter from encephalitis. It tells the story of a woman who sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her daughter....
and three other day-time radio serials, then called washboard weepers, while appearing on stage in three different plays. Her radio co-stars included Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences...
, Garson Kanin
Garson Kanin
Garson Kanin was a prolific American writer and director of plays and films.-Film and stage career:...
, and Clark Andrews.
Bonard Productions
Stoddard was the first to bring the work of James ThurberJames Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
and Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
to Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson
Brooks Atkinson
Justin Brooks Atkinson was an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1960...
called her 1960 adaptation of A Thurber Carnival "the freshest and funniest show of the year." Stoddard produced the Tony Award winning musical, her first production on Broadway, with Colorado heiress Helen Bonfils and Michael Davis. She had befriended Bonfils while appearing during the summer of 1953 as leading lady at Denver's Elitch Theater where Bonfils, the owner and publisher of the Denver Post, played character parts in the summer stock company. Her original cast included Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell was an American actor.-Early life and career:Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, where his family expected him to follow in their footsteps as lawyers or whiskey and tobacco dealers....
, Alice Ghostly, Paul Ford, Peggy Cass
Peggy Cass
Mary Margaret “Peggy” Cass was an American actress, comedian, game show panelist, and announcer.A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Cass became interested in acting as a member of the drama club at Cambridge Latin School; however, she attended all of high school without a speaking part...
, John McGiver
John McGiver
John Irwin McGiver was a character actor who made more than a hundred appearances in television and motion pictures over a two-decade span from 1955 to 1975....
, and the Don Elliott
Don Elliott
Don Elliott was an American jazz trumpeter, vibraphonist, vocalist, and mellophone player. His album Calypso Jazz is considered by some jazz enthusiasts to be one of the definitive calypso jazz albums. Elliott recorded over 60 albums and 5,000 advertising jingles throughout his career...
Jazz Quartet, and was directed by Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
. A later production, at the Central City Opera
Central City Opera
Central City Opera is the fifth-oldest opera company in the United States, founded in 1932. Each festival is presented in the 550-seat historic Central City Opera House built in 1878 in the gold mining era town of Central City, Colorado. Pelham G...
House, featured Thurber himself, then blind, as narrator.
Combining her name with Bonfils as Bonard Productions, and associating with her New York theatrical attorney Donald Seawell
Donald Seawell
Donald R. Seawell was born in Jonesboro, North Carolina. His father was Aaron A. F. Seawell, a Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, and UNC Law School. In 1941 he married Broadway actress, Eugenia Rawls, who played Tallulah Bankhead's...
, she brought to Broadway productions of Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's Sail Away (1962), The Affair by C.P. Snow (1962), her own adaptation of Thurber's The Beast In Me (1963), and the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
's The Hollow Crown (1963), which went on to tour American colleges for four months in the spring of 1964. For Sail Away she was nominated for the Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Producer of a Musical. In association with Kathleen and Justin Sturm she presented That Hat!, her adaptation of An Italian Straw Hat, in 1964.
Stoddard often had to handle tensions between her conservative producing partner Bonfils and flamboyant figures in entertainment, including Noel Coward. In 1962, Stoddard asked Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
to design costumes for Thurber's The Beast in Me, after learning of Warhol through choreographer John Butler.
With Bonfils and Davis, Stoddard produced her co-adaptation, with dancer-actress Tamara Geva
Tamara Geva
Tamara Geva was a Russian actress, ballet dancer and choreographer. She was the first wife of dancer/choreographer George Balanchine.-Biography:...
, of Marcel Achard
Marcel Achard
Marcel Achard was a French playwright and screenwriter whose popular sentimental comedies maintained his position as a highly-recognizable name in his country's theatrical and literary circles for five decades...
's Voulez vous jouer avec moi? as Come Play with Me starring Tom Poston
Tom Poston
Thomas Gordon "Tom" Poston was an American television and film actor. He starred on television in a career that began in 1950...
and Liliane Montevecchi
Liliane Montevecchi
Liliane Montevecchi is a French actress, dancer, and singer.Montevecchi began her career as a prima ballerina in Roland Petit's dance company...
in 1960, and with Mark Wright and Leonard S. Field premiered Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
on Broadway in 1967 with The Birthday Party. She later offered Off-Broadway productions of Coward's Private Lives (1968), co-producing with Mark Wright and Duane Wilder; Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
's Lemon Sky (1970) and The Gingham Dog (1971), and The Last Sweet Days of Isaac
The Last Sweet Days of Isaac
The Last Sweet Days of Isaac is an American Off-Broadway rock musical by Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, which premiered in 1970. It starred Austin Pendleton and Fredricka Weber, and later Alice Playten. It received positive reviews, and won three Obies, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer Critics...
a musical by Gretchen Cryer
Gretchen Cryer
Gretchen Cryer is an American playwright, lyricist and actress.-Early life:Cryer was born Gretchen Kiger in Dunreith, Indiana, the daughter of Louise and Earl William Kiger...
and Nancy Ford (1970) which won three Obie awards. With Neal Du Brock she produced The Survival of St. Joan (1971); and, with Arnold H. Levy, Lady Audley's Secret (1972) and Love, based on the play by Murray Schisgal
Murray Schisgal
Murray Schisgal is an American playwright and screenwriter.Native New Yorker Schisgal won his first recognition for the 1963 off-Broadway double-bill The Typists and The Tiger, which won him the Drama Desk Award. His 1965 Broadway debut, Luv, earned him Tony Award nominations for Best Play and...
, starring Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...
(1984 Outer Critics Circle Award).
Pursuing her interest in young playwrights, she produced off-Broadway productions of Glass House (1981), Casey Kurtii's Catholic School Girls (1982 Drama Desk Award), Sweet Prince (1982), Marvelous Gray (1982), and John Olive's Clara's Play (1983).
Bonard also presented the RSC productions of King Lear and Comedy of Errors to open the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in May, 1964, and her London productions of A Thurber Carnival (1962) and Sail Away (1963) played the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in London's West End.
Her dramatic adaptations of Thurber material include Life on a Limb, and Men, Women, and Less Alarming Creatures, produced with The Last Flower on Boston WGBH-TV public television in 1965. In A Round with Ring she adapted Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
works which she directed in New York for the ANTA matinee series. She also directed the national touring production of Lunatics and Lovers, and she wrote original scripts entitled Abandoned Child and Bird on the Wing, and co-wrote Dahling – A Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
Musical with composer-lyricist Jack Lawrence
Jack Lawrence
Jack Lawrence was an American songwriter. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975.- Biography :...
.
Stoddard also served as understudy
Understudy
In theater, an understudy is a performer who learns the lines and blocking/choreography of a regular actor or actress in a play. Should the regular actor or actress be unable to appear on stage because of illness or emergencies, the understudy takes over the part...
to Bea Lillie, Greer Garson
Greer Garson
Greer Garson, CBE was a British-born actress who was very popular during World War II, being listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top ten box office draws in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, and 1946. As one of MGM's major stars of the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award...
, Betty Field
Betty Field
Betty Field was an American film and stage actress. Through her father, she was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims John Alden and Priscilla Mullins....
, Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...
, Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
, Mercedes McCambridge
Mercedes McCambridge
Carlotta Mercedes McCambridge was an American actress. Orson Welles called her "the world's greatest living radio actress."-Early life:...
, and Jessica Tandy
Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...
. As Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...
's stand-by, she never played the part of Auntie Mame
Auntie Mame
Auntie Mame is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis that chronicles the madcap adventures of a boy, Patrick, growing up as the ward of his deceased father's eccentric sister, Mame Dennis. The book is a work of fiction inspired by the author's eccentric aunt, Marion Tanner, whose life and outlook in many...
on Broadway in 1956. Russell, when feeling infirm, would request that Stoddard sit in the wings where she could see her: "So long as I can see you", she said, "I will never let you get on that stage." Russell never relinquished, and once played with a 105 fever. Stoddard got her chance when Russell's replacement, Greer Garson
Greer Garson
Greer Garson, CBE was a British-born actress who was very popular during World War II, being listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top ten box office draws in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, and 1946. As one of MGM's major stars of the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award...
, was indisposed after her first performance in the demanding part.
She replaced Elaine Stritch
Elaine Stritch
Elaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...
as the matinee Martha for in the original 1962 Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, playing the part each Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, and standing by in her dressing room each evening until the curtain rose for the second act with Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
safely in command on stage.
When Hagen left the Broadway production to open the show in London, Stoddard performed the role of Martha an unprecedented eight times a week until Mercedes McCambridge
Mercedes McCambridge
Carlotta Mercedes McCambridge was an American actress. Orson Welles called her "the world's greatest living radio actress."-Early life:...
was ready to replace Hagen for the evening performances. She played with separate casts, opposite different actors. "After that stint, there was nothing more I could do on stage as an actress, so I turned to my greater fondness for writing, adapting, and producing." Meanwhile, she continued to stand by for Jessica Tandy in Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
plays produced on Broadway by Duane Wilder and Clinton Barr.
Later life
Following the death of Helen Bonfils in 1972, she incorporated with The Elitch Theatre Company, which produced 25 summer seasons in America's Oldest Summer Theatre in Denver, Colorado between 1962 and 1987. She simultaneously associated with Lucille LortelLucille Lortel
Lucille Lortel was an American actress and theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of an off-Broadway playhouse and theatrical award....
to produce summer seasons at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut, was on the Board of Directors of New Dramatists in New York City, and a Founding Member of the Westport (CT) Theatre Artists Workshop.
Stoddard died at her home in Weston, Connecticut
Weston, Connecticut
Weston is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The population was 10,179 at the 2010 census. The town is served by Route 57 and Route 53, both of which run through the town center. About 19% of the town's workforce commutes to New York City, about to the southwest.Like many towns in...
from cardiopulmonary arrest at age 97.
External links
- Haila Stoddard Playscript Collection is held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.