This was the glorious, big gamble. And it very nearly worked. The story of our successes and failure at CATCo will have to be written in full some day. For now, suffice it to say It would have been impossibe for me not to try to preserve what was a real asset for my adopted city of Cleveland. With the astonishing support and good counsel of the late Harold Fallon, I set out to form a company to make it possible to remain in Cleveland and continue to work as an actor and to provide work for the many people with whom I had spent many productive and happy years.

The first task at hand was to find a venue. I prowled through basements of large buildings, pored over ground plans. I even created drawings and a business plan for a new theater where Tower City's new mall now stands. Harold had arranged a meeting with Ruth Miller herself. (That kind and honest man could open any door) I had budgets, drawings, a new suit, and high hopes for a spectacular location. The idea was to build a 3/4 thrust seating about 500 people in some of the then empty space beneath the Terminal Tower. The groundplan for the enterprise bore a striking resemblance to the Hilberry Theater, which I knew to be an audience friendly and workable theater. I pitched my best pitch. Ms. Miller listened politely to the entire spiel with what might be described as an earnest, objective attention. The only question she asked me was whether I thought a movie theater might work in that location. I was prepared for such a query. I had done my homework. I told her the statistics I had found somewhere of the general failure of downtown movie complexes, the problems of competition with free parking at suburban malls and the many security problems associated with the sort of people who could only come to the theater via public transportation. She countered, "What about all the hotel guests who will be in the building?" Again I had done my homework: "Studies show that most hotel guests prefer to watch "R" rated movies in their room rather than go out and be seen going in or out of the theater..." She thanked me for my efforts and gave me a very skillful brush-off. Less that a month later, plans for the renovation of Tower City--including the Tower City Cinemas--were announced.

I had to keep looking. My peregrinations took me to myriad empty spaces and dilapidated old theaters all over town. Movie theaters, union halls, old school auditoriums. All had various up- and down-sides. None was quite right. The obvious choice was sitting on East 15th street, but it seemed unreachable. The 1200 seat Hanna theater had been dark for several years. Harold brought it up, and I shot it down. Too big. Too expensive. He suggested that we might not have to use the whole space, and we might be able to get a good deal. My experience with Harold had always been that if I took his advice, I came out smelling like the proverbial American Beauty, and when I didn't it was more like stinkweed. I reconsidered.

And it was a good thing that I did. I hit on the idea of a temporary, moveable wall that could frame off the lower portion of the auditorium creating a surprisingly intimate space. In effect all 349 seats (so I could use an affordable SPT from Actors' Equity) were in the orchestra. All the seats would be the best seats in the house. I set about making dreams and the budgets to go with them.

At Harold's urging (and after a preliminary session with Harold to grease the skids) I called Don Grogan at his office. I was flying solo at the time, but I had Molly Cornwell pose as my secretary to get him on the line. I'm not at all sure Don didn't see through my little ploy, but it added a touch of adventure to the enterprise from my end. We arranged a meeting during which I showed him all my plans and, because he truly loved the theater and the Hanna in particular, we were able to strike a bargain. And he gave me the offices to use until we got off the ground. Accordingly, I moved into Milt Krantz's old office and set up shop.

After more months of planning, I gathered together the fabled "circle of friends" at the Hanna theater on an amazingly icy evening. To my great delight, most of the people I invited came. We purposely didn't turn on the heat to underscore the great frugality with which I intended to operate the new company. I had decided that Ron Wilson's The Last Days of Route 66 would be the first offering, so I had Bob Snook cater a hot buffet of diner related food--sliders, mini Reubens etc. I can still see the heavy fur coats munching happily on forbidden greasy treats in front of the Hanna Curtain liner. We got most of our backers that night, and were soon headed for rehearsals and the beginning of a very eventful year.

The title alone conjured up a lot of interest. It is a great title. We were featured on a magazine catering to Corvette oficianados. The Plain Dealer gave us a lot of play, and it clearly seemed that we were off to a very good start.

But on the evening of the first performance, a day or two before we officially opened, I was at my desk when someone came in and told me that there was a picket line outside the theater. A patron had come in, crossing the picket line and informed the box office of the presence of this unexpected problem. Not the best news in the world, but I had a performance to do, so I sent someone out to find out what the picket line was for. Word came back that they were stage hands sent over by Buddy Short. The house was coming in, and so I went backstage and got ready to do the performance. I did a curtain speech in which I purposely didn't refer to the picket line, but it was clear that the people in the house did not approve of the pickets trying to do in our fledgeling effort on its first night.

The next day, I got a call from Buddy Short himself, the head of the stage hands' union, IATTSE. It seemed that he wanted to discuss coming to work for CATCo. He told me they wanted the same arrangement that they had had with Milt Krantz years before. That meant that I would have to call four men for a four hour minimum at $25.00/hour. That meant an extra $400 a night! Far more than I was paying anyone else in the organization. There were two things that were very wrong about his demands. First, IATTSE bargains with and has contracts with individual producers and not with a venue. He had no contract with me. So he had no legal reason to throw up a picket line. Second, and for me more important, the thuggish Mr. Short had opened his discussion with a picket line rather than a phone call. Something in my Yankee background would not let me consider giving into the extortion of a picket line. The irony was, I knew a great many of the guys on the line. They were my friends. I had worked with them. And truth to tell, they did not have any great enthusiasm for being on that picket line. I took them coffee on particularly cold nights, and they actually were helpful to my patrons. I'm told they even opened car doors and told people how to get into the parking garage and into the theatre.They knew that if I went out of business, 100% of $0.00 is $0.00, a concept that apparently escaped the peripatetic Mr. Short.

There is no way of knowing whether the picket line adversely affected the box office. Audiences responded very favorably to this play. And we got a surprising number of "non-traditional" theatergoers in the seats at the Hanna. We had done good enough business during the run that I scheduled an extra week. Since I hadn't given enough advance notice of the extension, business dropped off and we only broke even financially. But it never hurts to have HELD OVER" on the marquee. In any case, at the end of the run, the picket line disappeared never to return. And the decision to continue was made. We had proved that we could draw an audience and that was what we wanted to see. But we had only covered all our expenses and had made a very modest profit. Of course, if I had taken a salary, we would not have made that "profit." But I wasn't in it for the money--certainly not at that point.

Cotton Patch.

Gurney Mini-Festival

Death threats.