Second Front

Victorious on Broadway (TIME, Nov. 1), Shakespeare is also advancing at a neat clip up the West Coast. Last month Cinemactor John Carradine (Grapes of Wrath, Reunion in France) "dress rehearsed" Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, at Pasadena's famed Playhouse, a Shakespeare stronghold that has produced all 37 of the Bard's plays. Carradine's productions were thoughtful rather than exciting, shunned novelty and sensationalism: as Shylock, for example, Carradine refused to point up the racial issue. But, despite gas rationing, Carradine's three-week run broke all Playhouse records for Shakespeare, turned away 250 people a week.

Last week Carradine's Hamlet gave San Francisco its biggest Shakespeare premiere of modern times, started outgrossing the Maurice Evans Hamlet there of three years ago. Opening night there was one vacant seat, between seats occupied by Carradine's wife and his former secretary, for Carradine's "very close friend," John Barrymore. Said Carradine: "Jack and I used to sit up nights together, reading Shakespeare. He always complained that I was not lyrical enough and criticized my reading as too natural and colloquial--I often thought he was too lyrical. Jack always said he wanted to see my opening. I don't know whether he saw it or not."

The second night a three-minute earthquake rattled the chandeliers and the audience alike, but failed to halt the show. Carradine, who has had trouble getting back his ability to project his voice after long whispering into movie mikes, merely spoke louder. The audience stopped buzzing after some sailors yelled "Shut up, everybody!"

Gaunt, 37-year-old Actor Carradine has played in 175 movies (at a top $3,500 a week) without wanting to play in any. His passion is Shakespeare (to understand the peculiar relationship of Othello and Iago, Carradine at first alternated in both roles); he got his first movie job because Cecil B. De Mille heard him spouting Hamlet as he tramped Hollywood Boulevard looking for work. For his present nationwide venture, Carradine sold his yacht and mortgaged his house. He is his own producer, director and sole owner as well as star. Says he: "That's the only way to do Shakespeare, for good or evil, so that it hangs together. If this goes over," he vows, "I'm through with Hollywood forever."

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