Glenna Stearman Park, “Angel Face,” the 9th Grade Play

Roosevelt Intermediate’s 9th Grade Play, 1957

A one-act play about a family’s reaction to date night turned into a crazy comedy for Roosevelt 9th graders and their teacher Mrs. Summers.  The play was Angel Face, by Josephine Bacon and Jack D. Keller. The cast and crew went on to join East High’s Class of 1960. Brenda Benjamin recently sent me her script and photos, which surprised me into writing how about encouraged me to write this article.

Janet Thelman (at left) played the role of the leading character, a.k.a. “Angel Face” or Sue Summers (no relation to Mrs. Summers, our Roosevelt faculty director).  Sue was the baby of the family’s three daughters. 

Synopsis of Angel Face. Copyright 1937,  by  Josephine Bacon and The Ivan Bloom Hardin Company.  “Everybody in the house has plans for an exciting evening, except Sue and Grandpa, so these two put their heads together with chaotic results.  Sue, in her mother’s dress, almost walks off with Roger Sutton, her sister Mary’s date for a boat dance. Andy Stevens, sister Peggy’s date for a party, finds himself in the way of a garden hose and receives a ducking that spells finis to his rented tuxedo. Henry Summers, the dad, cannot budge the family car, mainly because a small but important piece of the machinery has been removed. Mary and Roger miss the boat. Andy’s car keys disappear behind Grandpa’s beard. As if that were not enough, Sue “plays possum” and comes down with a stomach ache!  When the uproar finally subsides, the net results are that Sue spends the evening at home, and Grandpa has no one to play chess with him in spite of all his maneuvering.”

A Cast Member’s Retrospective 

The spoiled youngest girl in the family, named Sue and usually called “Angel Face,”  was the protagonist. She was a squealing manipulator who crafted one scheme after another to be able to have a “Date Night” out with her various family members.  Grandpa, played by Lee Ayres wearing a huge gray beard, just wanted someone to play chess with him, and he maneuvered, unsuccessfully, all evening long trying to get a chess partner. 

The parents were Mr. and Mrs. Henry Summers.  He had a name, Henry, but since this was written in 1937, the mother of the family was just a Mrs.  Playing the roles of the parents were Danny Kinney and Glenna Stearman.  

Their other children were Debbie Snyder as Peggy and her boyfriend, Calvin Ross, a.k.a. Andy Stevens.

 

 

Brenda Benjamin played sister Mary, and Andy Lambert played her boyfriend, a.k.a.Roger Sutton.  The play was set in the living room of the Summers’ home. 

 

Reading this script at age 80 is very different than when I was 14!  Mr. Summers was the final word in this family, while Angel Face was a brat who refused to be left out. The quotations below come straight from the script.

Mr. Summers: (pleased with himself).  “Don’t know what the rest of you would do if you didn’t have somebody to think for you.” 

In another conversation among the sisters, one calls Angel Face “sweetie pie” as she gets ready to borrow some earrings and later says, “You’re a dear in spite of being a spoiled brat.”

One of the dates arrives asking, “Is the Queen of Sheba ready yet?” and then Angel Face observes the boy’s tux saying, “A complete outfit of gent’s furnishings from soup to fish!”

In order to finish reading this play, one needs to be a linguist familiar with idiosyncratic phrases from the 1930s.  The setting is plausible for a normal Friday night in the 1940s and 1950s, but various players display cuteness that is stomach churning for the modern reader.  The play is an obsequious nod to “father knows best” and “a woman who knows her place” in society.  One could read the script as if the themes are foreign, but to look back on the play without a warning light flashing is really naive.  It is best to look at the photos and muse with the cast about “good old days” without benefit of the actual script.

Reading the text of the play makes my skin crawl as I come face to face with my being in training to become a lady, for real.  My mother, a truly kind and generous person, worked hard to raise her three daughters to grow up to marry doctors or lawyers and join wives’ clubs.  Fortunately, we three girls went to college, earning much of our own expenses as we all got graduate degrees and worked outside the home. 

The hippies opened the door for us.  Gloria Steinem paved a path, and we three marched against Phyllis Schlafly and her politicized view of delicate womanhood.  Mom cried.  Guyna offered her a cigarette.  Suzanne and I laughed, telling her that we were card-carrying feminists.  None of us married a doctor or a lawyer.  Suzanne earned her PhD., and we have accepted PhD’s, MD’s, and lawyers in the family now.  Our father and older brother knew enough to keep quiet!

The Cast and Crew

Left to right: Richard Hayes and Jim Horner (stage hands); Lynette Henkel (make-up); Glenna Stearman (Mrs. Summers), Danny Kinney (Mr. Henry Summers), Debbie Snyder (Peggy Summers), Calvin Ross (Andy Stevens), Mrs. Sterling (director), Janet Thelman, (Sue Summers), Lee Ayres (Grandpa), and Brenda Benjamin (Mary Summers); Terry Lee Calvin and Mary Lohrenz were prompters and also understudies.