Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1978 - 17

shopper for two years. His name was Donald Oenslager. An
earlier shopper was Rose Bogdanoff. In a rush to get shields
sewn into bodices she tried to help by basting through their
seams into the seam of the armscye. However, she went on to
become Jo Mielziner's right hand, and Donald later got her to
teach at Yale. I'll bet her students learned not to perforate
dress shields.
When Bobby and I first began to work together he would
bring in a bit of red sixteenth-century Venetian cut velvet as a
sample of what he had to have. I tried hard to explain that if it
could be found we could not afford it anyway, and that it
would be a sin to cut it up besides. Instead of breaking our
hearts, why didn't I churn along Fourteenth Street from
Hearn's Department Store to the Fourteenth Street Store, an
upholstery emporium (both are gone now), to see what could
be found in large quantity, and at our price. It might even look
better from the house that the real thing.
My designing had always been based on what materials
were readily available. I went out in a sort of free-floating
mindlessness to collect large quantities of samples. These
were clipped to lines by gradations of color and texture.
Braids, fringes, ribbons, and tassles hung below. As one
passed by one would see out of the corner of an eye, that
some things went together and that others should be eliminated. In the end, the show practically designed itself. Maybe
some sharp accent of color had to be looked for, "like this,"
one would say, snipping a bit off one of the many books of
colored paper that we kept on hand. Bobby was a fast
learner. I was very amused when years later, in London,
someone who was looking at my Love For Love sketches
said, "Every sample, every piece clipped onto the drawing,
just like Bobby Jones."
The Provincetown Players were always on the verge of
bankruptcy, until a show opened. Since I did not need my
$125 a week pay check I would give it to Fitzie so that0he help
could be paid that week. I try not to keep anything, so I looked
forward to getting more information from a history of the
Provincetown Playhouse, written by Helen DeutSCh. My name
appears only on the facsimile of one playbill. Fitzie was outraged. "Why you saved the Princetown Playhouse more often
than Otto Kahn, who always got the credit." (And I did not
have to put on a hat and gloves, go to his office and cry.)
Decades later, after she had had her nose fixed, Deutsch
became a great beauty and a Hollywood writer of such films
as Gigi. She rented a country house near me, and we became
great friends, while Jack Javitts and my handsome electrician
both courted her. She told me that she had written the book
as revenge, eliminating me from the Provincetown Playhouse
as she felt she had been left out of the fun at the Provincetown
Playhouse. She had been a pitiful waif working her way
through Barnard as assistant to a glum widow who did our
publicity. They were seldom seen and never invited, perhaps
deliberately, to our opening night parties, which were always
given at my house.
For his Love for Love sets Bobby used a marvelous burlesque house curtain covered with hugh convex bunches of
silver grapes and their leaves. These cutouts hung very Grinling Gibbons from the tops of flats made of sheet aluminum
built into panels by natural colored lathes. My costumes had
to be gorgeous to match. I found several trunks of Vanderbilt
family gowns from the 1870's-lots of fabric magnificently
edged with braids, beads, passementerie, and fringes. Of
course, all the bodices were too short, no matter what I
contrived. However, the dresses did look handsome, if you
were not aware how very wrong they were.
USITT /Winler, 1978

That adorable man, Walter Huston, had acted with us.
Through him, Bobby met his sister, who was something else.
She was married to an immensely rich man, and Bobby got
Mrs. Carrington to give $100 to make desperately needed
second gowns with correct bodices for the principal ladies.

Theatre Design & Technology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1978