Elsbeth Hoffman and Don Gibson, the wife-and husband team that founded Atlanta's Penthouse Theatre in 1949.
Theatrical Excess
by Bob Foreman © 2014, 2015
The excessively theatrical Penthouse Theatre caused Atlanta in 1949 to become the “birthplace of commercial arena theatre” and brought us star stock, a rooftop venue and theatre-in-the-round all at once.
Located in the former Rainbow Roof of the Ansley Hotel, the 445-seat Penthouse was the brainchild of actors Elsbeth Hofmann and Don Gibson and advertised that patrons could “literally touch the stars” in both senses. The Ansley roof featured eleven more fire exits than its decaying sister hotel, the Winecoff, which had burned three years previously a block away.
Over thirty weeks, discriminating theatre lovers flocked to gaze upon celestials like Veronica Lake, Boris Karloff, Zasu Pitts, Anthony Quinn, Joan Blondell, Edward Everett Horton, and Georgia’s own Sterling Holloway in topical fare, sans scenery. Resident supporting players included Carl Betz and the brilliant Miss Elaine May.
In season two, the Penthouse announced the potboiler “Tobacco Road” which opened the door to Theatrical Excess, where the events surrounding a production become more entertaining than the production itself.
“Tobacco Road” which had nothing good to say about Georgia and which had enjoyed a decade-long Broadway run was immediately banned by the City’s official censor, the Atlanta Public Library. Certain cuts must be taken said they, or the invisible curtain would not rise on this vehicle for star John Carradine. The Penthouse relented, but the honeymoon was over, and soon they shuttered.
Official censors had been inspecting our morals and conduct at least as far back as 1915 when a road show of the northern screed “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” dared to set foot into the Atlanta Theatre. Reacting to concerns voiced by town mothers that the play “carried suggestions filled with injustice and misrepresentation towards the South,” the Mayor decreed that vast alterations must be made or no show. The greatly revised version opened a few days later as “Old Plantation Days,” a lavish minstrel musical, or just what the play doctor ordered.
Such was not the case with “The Boys in the Band” in 1970. Despite critic Terry Kay’s assurances that this first play to depict lavender life in candid terms was “not a play in favor of” those purple proclivities, merely the thought of the men portraying “The Women” set RING radio a jangle with the end result that “Boys” was summarily evicted from the taxpayer-supported Alliance Studio. The all-male orphan was then mercifully adopted and given Pocket protection by Dick Munroe and Luis Maza in their Courtland Street playhouse.
“Hair” the tribal love-rock musical opened with a bang the next season when protestors set off a Molotov Cocktail in the balcony of the new Civic Center on opening night. This road show was only permitted to play at all after a Federal judge “ordered the City” to allow it, and in the infectious spirit of forced compliance, Atlanta cops coyly snapped photos of the actors and audience during the Act I nude scene.
Never one to be upstaged, Fulton County Solicitor Hinson McAuliffe hauled the entire cast of “Oh! Calcutta!” off to jail in 1977 when that touring show played the Women’s Club, leaving 703 disappointed patrons alone with their raincoats. Acting with all deliberate speed, McAuliffe’s minions gave the show and its “total nudity” four thorough viewings before they finally decided to brand it on Friday “publicly indecent.”
None of the plays mentioned above could be faithfully reproduced nowadays because actors who smoke cigarettes on stage are in violation of the law, which may be excessive.
-30-