High Praise Indeed

Last night my old drama and stage production teacher, Charlie Brown, was in the audience for Guys and Dolls. For those of you who don't know Charlie, he taught at Cyprus for about 30 years, and was the drama teacher there for about 25 of those thirty years.

Charlie grew up in the area, and we had talked before about how he used to watch movies in the Empress as a kid. After the show, he'd have to walk home; almost five miles.

Before going into teaching, he was an on-air radio personality for KKID radio in, I believe, Pendleton, Oregon. Before he retired 14 years ago, Charlie was known in theatrical circles throughout the Salt Lake Valley. After he retired, he served a senior mission at the Bountiful Regional Center (formerly Valley Music Hall) for the LDS Church. His son, Spencer, is a professional lighting designer who has worked in New York, and now does most of the shows at Hale Centre Theatre. Spencer is but one of Charlie's students to go into a professional career. And Charlie taught me most of what I know about theatre.

So I was anxious to hear what Charlie would have to say about the Empress and our production of Guys and Dolls. Here are some of the highlights of our telephone conversation this afternoon (we talked for more than an hour).

• He was extremely impressed with our Adelaide, and mentioned that she would make a wonderful Annie should we decide to do Annie Get Your Gun.
• He found Porter William's choreography to be extremely effective. He especially liked the way that Porter used the choreography to advance the story rather than making it a showcase of dance. His comment about the crap game ballet was interesting, he said, "I wouldn't have done it that way, but after watching it, I think it worked better [the way Porter did it].
• He loved Thomas Gasu's performance as Nathan Detroit.
• He thought Nate Unck did a wonderful job as 'Big Julie" but thought the character should have been named "mean Julie" because of Nate's smaller stature.
  
• He had tremendous praise for Rachael Dugan's sound mix. He said she did it better than the guy at Hale Centre.
• He thought Glen's portrayal of Nicely-Nicely was a hoot.
• And the list could go on. These are just the things I remember.

The comment that most struck me however, was when he said that our show was better than some things he's seen at Hale or Pioneer! Kudos to the entire cast and crew!

I asked him if he had any suggestions for us, and his biggest suggestion was that we needed to get the word out so we could fill the house for each performance. He told me that once people know about us, we'll be full for every show.

But we already knew that.

Another Famous Patron from Empress History

In past blog entries, we've seen that Claire Huffaker, a Hollywood screen writer, and Glade Peterson, the founder of the Utah Opera, spent their youth here in Magna, probably enjoying a movie here at the Empress from time to time. Here is another former Magna native that made a name for himself. Howard Jarvis.

Stories differ on whether Jarvis was born in Magna or in Ogden, but he was raised here in Magna, and graduated from Cyprus High School in 1921 or so. It seems likely that Jarvis would have seen the Empress being built in 1917. It is certainly likely that he spent a few evenings watching early movies as a young man.

For those of you who don't recognize Jarvis, this is what Wikipedia says about him:

Howard Jarvis (September 22, 1903 - August 11, 1986) was an American politician.

Jarvis was born in Magna, Utah, and died in Los Angeles, California. In Utah he had some political involvement working with his father's campaigns and his own. His father was a state Supreme Court judge and, unlike Jarvis, a member of the Democratic Party. Howard Jarvis was active in the Republican Party and also ran small town newspapers. Although raised Mormon, he smoked cigars and drank vodka as an adult. He moved to California in the 1930s due to a suggestion by Earl Warren.

Jarvis was a Republican primary candidate for the U.S. Senate in California in 1962, but the nomination and the election went to the liberal Republican Thomas Kuchel. Subsequently, he ran several times for Mayor of Los Angeles on an anti-tax platform and gained a reputation as a harsh critic of government. An Orange County businessman, he went on to lead the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and spearheaded Proposition 13, the California property tax-cutting initiative passed in 1978 which slashed property taxes by 57% and initiated a national tax revolt.
Jarvis collected tens of thousands of signatures to enable Prop. 13 to appear on a statewide ballot, for which he garnered national attention. The ballot measure passed by a two-thirds margin. Two years later, voters in Massachusetts enacted a similar reform measure