By 1949, there was no more work for me out there, and I went to New York in 1950 and just did whatever I could. Mainly television. Some Broadway. A lot of dinner theater work, which is not a very satisfactory medium.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started working in New York City as an actor and did many plays. I did regional theater, smaller theaters, children's theater.
I spent 10 years in New York doing theater.
When I was a young woman, before I moved to New York, working in small, non-Equity theatres in the Midwest, I did a lot of musicals in my early to mid-20s.
In the middle 1940s... I heard everyone live. Painting, the theater; everything was happening. It was an exciting time when New York was the place to be.
Pretty much from 1979 through 1988, the backbone of my career was the theater. Working on Broadway a couple of times, working off-Broadway, and also doing a lot of regional theater. Make no mistake, I lived very frugally. I had an apartment that was real cheap. I would get two or three jobs per season, and in between I'd be on unemployment.
I started out doing theater in New York. I used to go to Shakespeare in the Park a lot.
I did theater at Carnegie, and in Pittsburgh and New York.
When I first got to New York, all I did was musicals. After a few years I had to make a conscious choice to close the door on musicals, because I was getting pigeon-holed as a musical theater performer.
Soon I worked during twelve years in theater works of the prestigious Theatre National Populaire. It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting.
I had spent time in New York, where I loved the idea that theater could be done up in tiny little rooms rather than for lots of money on a big stage, and be tied to ordinary life.