Shubert Archives
Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.
The same year the Shubert Theater opened, the Panama Canal was inaugurated, Babe Ruth debuted with the Boston Red Sox, Charlie Chaplin made his first appearance on film, and Harry Houdini performed stunts in New York City.
Gentlemen wore bowler hats and drove heavy black automobiles with large spindle wheels down College Street in New Haven, where the theatre opened on December 11, 1914.
New Haven was a lively place then as now, with a hopping downtown full of restaurants, shops, and hotels. The avid theater-going crowd welcomed the Sam S. Shubert Theatre with The Belle of Bond Street, raising the curtain on what was to be called the birthplace of America’s greatest hits.
Lee and J.J. Shubert named the theater (and all their theaters) for their brother, who passed away in 1905. The theater’s success in New Haven was immediate, with the brothers’ backing and knowhow. They had opened a Broadway theater in New York two years earlier and were on a roll.
“At one time the Shubert brothers owned, managed, or booked over 1,000 theaters across the country,” explained John F. Fisher, the New Haven Shubert’s vice president and executive director. “Most try-outs (pre-Broadway shows) happened in Boston, Philadelphia or New Haven.”
Why was New Haven often the first place a musical or play was produced?
“Certainly because we were close to New York. Trains stopped in New Haven,” Fisher offered. “In the film All About Eve starring Bette Davis there’s of a shot of them walking down College Street while the narrator says, ‘To the theater world, New Haven, Connecticut is a short stretch of sidewalk between the Shubert Theater and the Taft Hotel — surrounded by what looks very much like a small city. It is here that managers have what are called ‘out of town openings,’ which are openings for New Yorkers who want to go out of town.”
About three decades down the line, however, the jig was up for the Shubert brothers.
“They were the Clear Channel of the day,” Fisher said. “The government called it a monopoly and broke them up in the ’40s. They were able to keep a few theaters, those in New York, Boston, Chicago, and maybe DC. They were the largest theater owners on Broadway, with about 18 theaters.”
But the theater’s real heyday came after the Shubert brothers leased it out. Maurice H. Bailey took it over in the fall of 1941 and ran it for the next 35 years. The theater hit legendary status with the world premieres of Oklahoma, South Pacific, The King and I, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and many more. Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, Mary Martin, Julie Andrews, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, and Sidney Poitier all earned their professional acclaim at the Shubert. All in all, the theater has presented around 600 pre-Broadway shows and 300 world premieres, including virtually all the Rodger and Hammerstein shows.
At 91 years of age, long-time Shubert patron Evelyn Dermer has long been a champion of the venue, seeing countless performances, helping it to reopen in 1983 after its seven-year hiatus, and even serving on the board.
“My introduction to the Shubert was basically beginning in the ’40s. I graduated from Hill House (James Hillhouse High School) in 1940 and around that time, I had an older cousin who went to Yale and he was my older sister’s age. They would go to the Shubert and I guess I wasn’t a pesky kid, so they would invite me. We used to sit in the upstairs balcony. We went to all the musicals, it was 55 cents in those days,” Dermer said.
When she met her husband, their first date was to a boxing match. When she got home, her mother asked her, “Well, do you like this guy?” She replied, “Not particularly.” But after the second date she asked again and her answer summed it up: “I think this might be something, he took me to the Shubert.” They went on to marry in 1946.
One of the many world premieres Dermer saw with her husband was that of My Fair Lady.
“It was a Saturday night when we went to see My Fair Lady, which was of course absolutely fabulous, but Rex Harrison was having a rough time, didn’t want to sing. We sat up front and you could hear him being prompted by someone behind the scenes. They were threatening that he’d never be on stage again. He was having a rough time. He didn’t sing, he talked his lines, but it was so good how he did it, it was wonderful. Of course he went on to play in New York and in the movie and was wonderful,” Dermer recalled.
Another anecdote involved Julie Andrews (as Eliza Doolittle) singing “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight,” which was later taken out of the long My Fair Lady show and used in Gigi instead.
A young Audrey Hepburn (left) in Gigi.
“When I saw Gigi, I said, ‘That originated in My Fair Lady!’” That happened a lot, they made changes. [The shows in New Haven] were basically a big dress rehearsal,” Dermer said.
“We would go to Shubert, and the custom was all the big shots would go across the street to Kayseys [Restaurant] on College Street after,” Dermer said. “We always went there, it was a good dinner. One of the reasons was because all the actors and actresses would come in and we would applaud.
“Once my husband and I went to Sicily on vacation and we were all dressed up walking around, and we saw the actor Ben Gazzara on the street. Real handsome guy. I said to him, ‘I used to see you all the time at Kayseys!’ And he said, ‘The best part of playing in New Haven was going to Kayseys after the show.’”
Kayseys is now Briq (266 College St.), and the Shubert itself, instead of being the first place shows are staged before Broadway, is now often the first post-Broadway stop.
“Back then [the Shubert] was a Broadway touring theater. Nowadays you’ve got to mix it up for a broader audience,” Fisher said. “We’ve reinvented ourselves as a regional performing arts center.”
In a town that has seen many theaters come and go, the Shubert has endured.
“The Palace was across the street. There was the Iperian, which was torn down around 1999 and had been closed for 30 years. There were one or two on Church Street,” recalls Fisher of New Haven’s rich theater history. “It was a different time. There is a lot more for people to do now. This was before TV, high def, all that. This was also before the regional theaters like Hartford Stage and Long Wharf. They didn’t exist.”
Next month, it will be one hundred years since the Shubert opened, and they are reinventing themselves once again. As Anthony Lupinacci, director of marketing and community relations, puts it, “with the centennial, we are celebrating our past, building our future.”
They have been literally building, beginning a multimillion dollar renovation in May 2014. See a performance at the Shubert this year to see the first phase of their renovations, which are mostly back-of-house, but include bathrooms on all levels for audience members. Coming phases will include a new entry and façade and a 150-seat black-box theater.
Visit the Shubert’s website for this year’s schedule of performances.
This article originally appeared in the Arts Paper.