Carol on Broadway a/k/a Carol Goes to Broadway - the Third Carol Page theater story

First, she served as an apprentice at the Stuyvesant Theatre under Miss Marlowe.  Then, she was able to play summer stock at the Richards Village Theatre in Winasser, Maine.  Now, after a year of theater training, Carol Page is ready to head for Broadway - the ultimate goal of all theater actors!  This is the third book in Helen Dore Boylston's series about a young woman whose love of acting and the theater is awakened after participating in a high school play and getting the opportunity to serve an apprenticeship under an experienced actress.  The series has followed Carol, and her two friends, Julia Gregg and Mike Horodinsky, as they have pursued their careers - Carol as a series actress; Julia as a comedic player; and Mike as a director.  Thus far, the series has given a pretty accurate portrayal of theater life, and so I was anxious to see how Carol's attempts to get a part on Broadway would play out.

 

Carol on Broadway (a/k/a Carol Comes to Broadway) opens as Carol is packing, ready to begin her new life in New York City as an aspiring actress.   Carol and Julia already have a room reserved in a "brownstone on a dingy side street west of Eighth Avenue" (p. 20).  It is there we get to meet our new cast of characters, with whom Carol and Julia will share their New York and Broadway adventures!  And these characters are some of the most fun and unique ones to appear in this series to date.  The first is Mrs. Garrentt, who runs the boarding house. Aldred Dean, who was the leading lady at Richards Village Theatre in the previous book, recommended  the place as a "respectable, old-fashioned theatrical boardinghouse" (p. 21).  Mrs. Garrett (and, yes, the first person I pictured is Charlotte Rae from TV's The Facts of Life - in fact, her image pretty much stuck with me during the whole book!) is a real hoot.  When she opens the door to Carol, Julia, and Mrs. Page, Boylston describes her as an "enormous woman dressed in purple filled the doorway like a sequin-embroidered mountain.  Her frizzed hair was dyed a color between red and blond which could only be classified as nasturtium, and in it she wore an artificial red rose" (p. 22).  With this description, my mind pictured a cross between Charlotte Rae's Mrs. Garrett and Audra Lindley's Mrs. Roper, from Three's Company.  She turns out to be a very caring person, who looks after and protects her tenants as if they were her own children.

 

As for the other tenants - Mitzi Katherine Malloy is another aspiring actress who is somewhat shy and who is beholden to the whims of her boyfriend, "who wants her to dress like those girls in the Russian Drama School" (p. 24); Miss Iverson is an aged actress, who is a bit high-strung and a bit jaded; Charlie Anders is a pasty-looking young man who is quite sure of himself, as well as a self-proclaimed ladies' man; and then there is Billy Beaseley, the former clown and current comic, whose sidekick, Herbert, makes the most unexpected appearance on the stairs of the boardinghouse, startling Carol, Julia, and Mrs. Page alike - for you see, Herbert is a skunk!  Thankfully, the girls soon learn his scent glands have been removed, and he has been trained to be a part of Billy's act,  The girls make fast friends with all of the other tenants (well, except maybe Charlie), and Carol especially gains some valuable knowledge from each of them, in their own way.

 

Boylston does not go easy with the girls.  Carol and Julia are both excited as they head out their first day to "make the rounds," as the saying goes.  They hit up every casting agency they can find, only to discover that no one is willing to see an unknown.  It seems that in order to see a casting agent, one must have experience on Broadway; yet, the only way to get experience is to get cast in a play through a casting agent!  The girls are discouraged, but they remain determined. For a while, at least.  Billy ends up providing Carol with some much needed advice, which ultimately gets her in to see one casting agent - Arthur G. Sweetster Theatrical Enterprises.  While he does not get her cast, he does provide some encouragement that eventually leads her to taking a job doing a radio commercial.  Eventually, just as Carol is about to give up hope, she falls into the good fortune of getting a small role in a play at the Valencia Theater - which, by the way, is an actual theater in New York City, located in Queens, New York.  The real Valencia Theater opened its doors in 1929, which means it would have been in existence at the time this book was written and published.

 

One thing I enjoyed about all of the tension that Carol discovers while rehearsing for this play is how realistically it is portrayed.  As a professional Broadway play, rather than just a community theater production, it's less of a family-generating atmosphere where everyone pulls together and more of a dog-eat-dog arena, where everyone is out for themselves and looking to prove they are better and more talented than everyone else.  At one point, as the cast are heading to New Haven (which is about four hours away from New York City) for the opening performance, one of the other cast members makes the snide remark that "it really won't matter how many mistakes you make, really.  After all, just remember you haven't got an important part" (p. 166).  Carol, already frustrated, replies with a stupendously catty remark, "Thanks so much.  I hope you'll be able to get some reset.  That part must be an awful strain on you.  You're looking terribly tired" (p. 166).  The insinuation that the other woman is old and tired looking would certainly strike hard to any actress, and Carol, being the nice person she really is, immediately regrets the comment.  Me, on the other hand, was happy to finally see her strike back a bit!

 

Boylston keeps Carol on a timeline that she has established with her father - if she is not steadily employed as an actress within one year, then she will return home and go to college.  Boylston builds some suspense for the reader, as the production in which Carol has a party is shut down, leaving the poor girl with very little time to find another role before she must return home.  Just as she has given up hope and is packing to leave, she gets a call from none other than Miss Marlowe, who is back at the Stuyvesant and ready to put on a new production written by a friend of Mike Horodinsky.  It is a big chance she is taking, but since the theatre is being converted to one showing films, Miss Marlowe believes she has nothing to lose.  Carol, of course, is cast in a large role opposite Miss Marlowe herself, and on the opening night, Carol is surprised to find her parents and brother were in the audience.  And, as fate would have it, so was Mr. Sweetster, who is so impressed with the play that he is going to have it produced on Broadway!  Thus, Carol finds herself in a guaranteed production just in time to beat that deadline, and it leaves us all wondering - just where will Carol go next?

 

While Carol's good fortune in getting in to see the casting agent, falling into the radio commercial gig, lucking into the role of her first Broadway play, and the instant success of her performance with Miss Marlowe reek of series book coincidences, the one realistic thing about it is that in order to truly make it, it all boils down to who you know.  And in each of these cases, that is exactly how Carol managed to succeed in each circumstance. 

 

There are plenty of other subplots that move the story along - Julia managing to land a role in a touring show; Mike meeting a young woman who is an aspiring playwright and who clearly has eyes for Mike; Mitzi's controlling boyfriend and her efforts to change; and Billy's desire to get back to performing in the circus like he and Herbert used to do.  The art in this book is once again provided by Major Felton, who did the illustrations in the previous book.  They do not really depict any exciting scenes (one is simply Carol pointing theater-goers to their seats, which another simply shows Carol taking bows at the end of a performance); however, they are clean and a little more refined than those in the second book.  Plus, the one illustration depicts the scene where the girls first meet Herbert!  And, just like the first two books, this book was also published in Britain, where it underwent a slight name change - instead of Carol simply being "ON" Broadway, for the British edition, the title tells reader that Carol "COMES TO" Broadway.  It follows the format of the first two books, with that same headshot of Carol, only it is outlined in blue, instead of the yellow of the second book or red of the first book.

 

One final thing worth mentioning is the dedication at the beginning of the book.  Boylston dedicates the book "FOR BUSHY - Who Was No Help at All."  I had to snicker when I read this, as Bushy Trott is the name of a villain from one of the Nancy Drew Books (Old Attic),  and it is also a nickname of a very good friend of mine.  The fact that Bolyston dedicates the book to Bushy with the comment that he was "no help at all" certainly keeps in line with the villainy of the Nancy Drew crook; as far as my friend?  Well, let's just say he would definitely get a kick out of this dedication!

 

RATING:  10 tattered, disreputable tramps on a park bench out of 10 for giving readers a taste for the darker, more difficult side of professional theater work - it's not all glamour and stardom!