Free Street Gang by Michael Davis Page B

of summer stock at a non-Equity theater on Cape Cod. While there, he crossed paths with a musician who would also soon relocate to New York. “I was directing a production of Dream Girl, a light little comedy which called for something like fifteen scene changes. In our tiny little theater there was limited machinery for segueing effortlessly from one set to another, and I desperately needed some entre’acte music to cover the transitions. One of the actresses in the company remembered that a friend of hers, a seventeen-year-old Harvard freshman, was playing cocktail piano across town at the Coonamessett Inn. She introduced me to Joe Raposo. He sat at his piano and asked how long each set change took, what happened at the close of the previous scene and what was the mood at the beginning of the next one. I started the tape recorder and Joe improvised a series of little compositions, each designed to lead the audience delicately out of one scene and into the next, and each precisely timed to cover the scenery change. I was blown away. He made it up on the spot.”
    By midautumn, the hard realities of competing for parts in New York had begun to sink in for Stone, who had yearned to live among the proto-beatniks of Greenwich Village. Then as now, it was a haven for performers, poets, painters, and street philosophers. Only one barrier separated him from moving into a blessed bohemian roost in the Village: a critical shortage of folding money in his pockets. And so, in the grand tradition of artsy immigrants to Manhattan, Stone dropped his bags in a less desirable neighborhood. His monthly rent was fifty-five dollars, and his fifth-floor walk-up had all the cold running water a guy could want. Beyond that, tenants were never at a loss for company. (In his hilarious and poignant unpublished memoir, Stone estimated the building had four thousand residents: “Me, about 10 mice, and 3,989 cockroaches.”) 18
    That morning Jon Stone was on his way to meet Lou Stone—no relation, to his regret—a TV executive with the power to jump-start an eager young man’s career. CBS had appointed him to oversee a two-track training program meant to develop producers and directors, and word had it that Ivy Leaguers and graduates of other well-regarded northeastern schools had a leg up.
    Jon figured he had two check marks beside his name already, because he could boast of a bachelor’s degree from Williams College, along with a Master of Fine Arts from Yale Drama School in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was raised.
    CBS needed quick studies, men with theater backgrounds who had at least a basic understanding of stagecraft, lighting, sets, direction, costumes, and dealing with highly combustible egos. Another check.
    He’d heard Lou Stone quickly weeded out candidates who would turn up their noses at a first assignment in the mailroom. There would be no special favors, and the assignments would become increasingly rigorous as trainees familiarized themselves with the production-process steps, in ascending order of importance.
    That made perfect sense to Jon, who was not averse to toil and was almost born to be in that CBS training program. Stone had a musician’s ear, an artist’s eye (he had drawing talent and took photography seriously), and a bricklayer’s stamina, despite a childhood bout of spina bifida that kept him out of the draft.
    He blended well with people in show business, even—and maybe especially—with the oft-cantankerous union tradesmen offstage. Less a dreamer than a doer, Stone accomplished things, with energy, flair, and great good humor.
    Though he had no television production experience, Stone sensed there was a place for him in the emerging entertainment field, and his desire to be a part of it was ignited after visiting Bob Myhrum, a Yale acquaintance, on the set of The Robert Q. Lewis Show , a live variety program broadcast each weekday from Maxine Elliot’s Theater on Thirty-ninth Street. Myhrum, a bear of a