Free Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (Applause Books) by Ted Chapin Page B

the American drama. It takes its form one step further than Company, and higher praise I cannot bestow.”
    The supporting players in a publicity pose on the
first day of rehearsal: Mary McCarty, Ethel Shutta,
Michael Bartlett, Fifi D’Orsay, Ethel Barrymore Colt.
    The actors started arriving around nine-thirty. And they were quite a group. Mary McCarty, a zaftig woman in her late forties, had made a splash in 1949s Miss Liberty, but hadn’t been on Broadway since Bless You All in 1950. Her career had included a lot of nightclub work, and she had recently opened her own “Eastside niterie,” appropriately named MaryMary. She would play Stella Deems, who would lead the group of old Follies girls in “Who’s That Woman?” Hers was a secondary character, but her backup dancers would include every woman listed above her in the show’s program. This number would prove to be a highlight. Fifi D’Orsay was to play Solange LaFitte, the Follies’ resident French person. She had been calling all week to check on this or that, so often that Hal stopped taking her calls, always happening to be unfortunately unavailable. She arrived fully made-up, a librarian’s chain hanging from her eyeglasses, in a sweater, plaid pants, and a pageboy hat, and she talked a mile a minute in her heavily French-accented English, greeting everyone with “ ’Allo, babee” and calling everyone “chickie-poo.” Turns out she was from Montreal and had never been to France, but never mind. She was a bundle of nerves. And then there was Ethel Shutta, at seventy-four the oldest member of the cast, who trudged up the stairs, solid, standing firm in her sensible orthopedic shoes. When she was hired, she wrote a four-page thank-you letter to casting director Joanna Merlin, telling her how happy she was to be cast, since she had been sure her career was over. She was the one holdover from one of the show’s previous incarnations, having been cast by Stuart Ostrow when he held the option, and had written to Hal when she heard that he had the show. “You won’t have heard of me,” she began, but what she didn’t know was that when Hal was eight, he had stood in line at his school with all the other boys to get the autograph of one classmate’s mother, who, they said, had been a Follies girl. The classmate was Georgie Olsen, and his mother was Ethel Shutta. Michael Bartlett was to play Roscoe, the old tenor who serenades everyone with the opening song, “Beautiful Girls.” He looked as old as Ethel did, and seemed a little bewildered, his eyesight less than perfect. But his silver-white hair and mature girth gave him an aura of faded grandeur. Ethel Barrymore Colt, a member of the famous theatrical family, was always gracious, although she looked as if she had ventured a little farther downtown than she was used to. Somewhat out of her element, she stayed pretty quiet. Gene Kelly’s younger brother, Fred, who had been running a dancing school in New Jersey, played a small role. He, too, was a quiet figure, keeping to himself most of the time. Sheila Smith, Broadway’s stalwart leading lady standby, most recently for Angela Lansbury in Mame, had her own part this time but was also called on to cover the leading women. Low-voiced, dark-haired, and slim, she had the poise of a dancer and the look of someone who had seen it all. Justine Johnston, a full-figured character actress with an operatic voice, would play Heidi Schiller, a singer from Vienna, who, years ago, had had a waltz written specially for her. She would shortly be elected Equity deputy for the company, with the responsibility of seeing to it that management behaved and that rehearsals were run by the rulebook. As rehearsals progressed, she could be seen glancing at the watch she wore permanently around her neck. Justine wasn’t someone to tangle with.
    The rest of the company was full of good New York character actors—among them Dick Latessa, Helon Blount, Charles Welch, Dortha