Carol on Tour - the Fourth (and final) Carol Page theater story

And so, it is with a heavy heart, we come to the fourth and final Carol Page theater story by Helen Dore Boylston.  I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Carol Page, her best friend Julia Gregg, and her gruff but faithful friend Mike Horodinsky, and it has been fun watching them start out as amateurs (Carol Goes on Stage), then spend the summer learning more of their respective crafts (Careol Plays Summer Stock), and finally return to New York to face the struggles of making their way in an already overcrowded industry (Carol on Broadway).  Now, here we are at last - Julia has been performing in a traveling show, Mike has been stage managing Miss Marlowe's show, and Carol has had a role in a Broadway hit!  So, what else is there for them to do?

 

Carol on Tour, by the title alone, gives a pretty strong hint of what comes next for Carol, Julia, and Mike. The story picks up not long after the end of the previous book, when the play written by Carol's new friend is picked up by a producer and brought to life by Carol's long-time teacher and mentor, Miss Marlowe.  The show is a success, and Carol has been getting rave reviews; although, Carol being Carol, she does not necessarily let those reviews go to her head.  At least, not at first.  The story throws a new (yet at the same time, old) twist into things.  One of Carol's fellow cast members sees Carol as a stepping stone, so she befriends her and starts taking her to a number of dinner engagements and parties - after all, in order to keep working on Broadway, it's all about who you know, not talent!  Carol is too naive to see the type of people she is associating with, and when Mike and Julia try to warn her, she only grows angry and defensive.  It's not until Carol has the opportunity to take on a major role in a touring company's production of The Merchant of Venice that she discovers the truth about her new "friend" - a truth that pushes her to take the role and head on a new journey in her career as an actress!

 

While the number of unbelievable breaks that come Carol's way continue to mount, Boylston manages to keep a certain level of believability to the story by integrating the various theater personalities around her - from those who simply use others to get ahead, to those who are always demanding to be the center of attention, to those who have years of experience and are only too happy to share their knowledge with others, to those who are anxious to get on the stage, willing to take any role offered!  And circumstances seem to always convene to make sure Carol remains humble, acknowledging her lack of experience and her great fortune to be where she is.  Of course, Boylston keeps Mike and Julia in the mix, as Julia gets a small walk-on part in the touring show, and Mike is promoted to an assistant director - so all three face some new challenges in this story, and not all of it on the stage.

 

One aspect of the tale I enjoyed was Carol's attempts to be a friend to one of her fellow actor, Harris Nichols, who seems despondent and depressed.  She soon learns he is having difficulties maintaining his relationship with the girl he loves back home, and he is fearful that she is going to turn to another man.  Carol tries to soothe his fears and boost his confidence, but when Harris gets notification that the girl has gone off to marry another man, he loses all hope.  The situation that develops is actually quite dark, and I'm rather surprised Boylston included it in a book intended for children and young adults.  However, it is that very incident that leads to a monumental decision that Carol must make - one that has been in the making since that very first book (and one I saw coming early on and kept hoping it would see fruition, and finally, at the end of this book, it does!).

 

There are couple of scenes in the book worth pointing out, as they reflect (or, rather in one case, do NOT reflect) true life in the theater.  The first is when Carol is considering the different types of audiences one must face when acting on the stage:

One never knew about the audience in the first few minutes, but as the play went on, one became more and more aware of it quality as a single, concentrated personality.  Sometimes it was responsive - quit to laughter or tears.  Sometimes it was dull and heavy - sitting out there like a great lump, a weight upon the performance and the players.  Sometimes it wasn't a personality at all, but just groups of differing reactions - "spotty" the company called it.  And sometimes it was maddeningly restless.

 

Each audience made the play a new play and each performance different from the one before. (p. 31)

Only someone who has been on the stage before can understand exactly how true this description is. The actors on stage react to the audience's reactions, and so a non-responsive audience can easily result in a not-too-exciting play; on the other hand, an audience that gasps, laughs, hoots, and is all-in can be a strong encouragement to the actors, who truly come alive in their performances as never before to make the play more real and more exciting for the cast and audience alike.  I thought this moment of reflection on the part of Carol shows just how much the character has grown over the past three books, and how much understanding she has gained with respect to the stage and its impact on those in each audience who attend.

 

The second moment in the book that caught my attention was closer to the end, as the touring group was preparing to get on stage for opening night.  As Carol fights those opening night jitters, Julia tells her, "Good luck!," to which Carol responds with her own, "Good luck!" (p. 138).  And just a few paragraphs later, as she slips by Mike to prepare for her entrance, she hears him say, "Good luck" (p. 138).  One might think these well-wishes are nothing to make note of - however, those who have worked in the theater know that you never, never, NEVER wish an actor "good luck" before they go on stage - that is considered BAD luck; instead, you tell the actor to "break a leg" (which is a theater superstition, along the lines of the ghost light that stays on at all times or never-ever saying the name of a certain Shakespeare play inside of a theater).  Considering how well Boylston managed to portray the theatrical world correctly, I was greatly surprised by this gaffe!

 

Other than that one flub, the book was another wonderful read, ending on a high note (despite the gloom of Harris Nichols) that takes Carol and Mike on to the next stage of their life (and if that doesn't give it away to you, then you have not been paying attention at all!).  The gorgeous black and white illustrations are once again provided by Major Felten, and the frontis piece is by far his best masterpiece of the series, showing Carol waking gracefully down a staircase in a stunning dress.  The color cover, also by Felten, displays Carol in her Shakespearean outfit as Nerissa, her eyes sparkling as she recites her lines on the stage.  The cover of the British edition is the same as the previous three books, with exception of the color, which changed for each book.  The British edition for this book is unique in one way - it is the only one of the four titles to use the same title as the American edition:  Carol on Tour.  

And with that, so comes to a close another wonderful series.  It is a true shame that Carol Page only had four books of adventures, as it would have been great to read her, Mike, and Julia's further adventures in New York and on Broadway as they took the theater world by storm!  Alas, all of those tales will remain forever untold...

 

RATING:  10 plain, wine-colored silk dresses out of 10 for sharing Carol's final theatrical adventures and ending the series in a very satisfying manner.

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!

Carol Plays Summer Stock a/k/a Carol in Repertory - the Second Carol Page theater story

Reading this series is pure joy for me, as it brings back so many wonderful memories of performing in community theater.  The author, Helen Dore Boylston, properly captures the excitement, the hard work, the disappointments, the backstage drama, the camaraderie, the hopes and dreams, the last minute mishaps, and everything else that goes into getting a play ready for that opening night!  And the continuing drama of what happens once the play begins - well, there's plenty of that, as well!  Boylston even offers up a word of thanks in an Author's Note at the beginning of the book - acknowledging how much she "looked to Jane Cobb for her lively suggestions and her true ear for dialogue.  In this new story of Carol she has cheerfully assumed the role of collaborator and godmother, and in gratitude I should like to dedicate the story to her." According to a tribute to Cobb in the New York Times (Jane Cobb - Author), she was a writer, too, having stories published in numerous magazines and a silent co-author of the Sue Barton books.  Thus, it is nice to see Boylston acknowledge her part in the creation of this series.

 

Carol Plays Summer Stock (a/k/a Carol in Repertory) picks up shortly after the conclusion of the first book.  For those who do not recall, at the end of the last book, Carol and her friends, Julia Gregg, Mike Horodinsky, Keith Macdonald, and Nan Walton were all selected to spend the summer at the Richards Village Theater in Winasser, Maine - Mike as a stage manager, Julia, Keith, and Nan as apprentices, and Carol in her first paying job as second ingenue!  The book opens as they arrive at the small town theater, full of hope, dreams, and excitement about the summer that lies ahead of them - and little do they know just how much drama they are going to experience - both on stage and behind the scenes!  Boylston ups the ante for this story, as her characters now have a bit of experience under their belts, so she puts them through some true challenges that test not only their dedication to the theater, but also their loyalty to one another.

 

With this book, readers are introduced to a small batch of new characters - Pete Gregory, Remember Hingham, and Orchid Wynton - two of whom become fast friends with the group, and one of whom defines the epitome of acting, both on and off the stage!  Pete, Julia, and Nan are relegated to classes and backstage work, while Mike becomes the assistant to the theater's own stage manager, Bill Dolan.  Carol is given a script for her first play, at which time she learns that Jane Sefton - the actress who gave Carol a ride in her car in the first book - is going to be performing at the theater that summer, and she has high hopes that she will have the opportunity to share the stage with her.  And it seems like she may get her chance, until a very sly Orchid Wynton decides she wants the role, and she tricks her way into it!  Yes, the story features an ongoing feud (of sorts) between Orchid and Carol, as Orchid is determine to keep her "star" status at the theater, even if that means making Carol look bad on stage.  But once Carol figures out what the other girl is up to, she manages to circumvent the mishaps and, once again, save the theater in the most imaginative way.

 

While I suspected in the first book that Carol and Mike were destined to get together - after all, it's the oldest trope in the world to have the two people who can't stand each other at the start end up together in the end! - this book seems to further the idea that while Carol and Mike have mutual respect for one another, their relationship is nothing more than friends in the theater.  That is not to say their friendship is not tested, as Boylston uses Orchid to come between the two in some rather devious ways, but despite her flaws, the one thing that can be said about Carol Page is that she is loyal to those she cares about - and it is her loyalty to Mike that helps save him from destroying his future by the end of the book.

 

There was an interesting comment in the book, when Mike gets irritated and makes the comment, "What's the Wonder Girl going to do now - imitations?" (p. 132).  As a long-time fan of the Wonder Woman comics from DC Comics, I was curious as to the name.  It seems this reference, published in 1942, actually predates the first appearance of Wonder Girl in DC Comics, who did not make her first appearance as a teen-age Wonder Woman until 1947!  However, the character of Wonder Woman had made her first appearance in All-Star Comics issue 8, published in 1941, just one year before this book was published, thus leaving one to wonder if the "Wonder Girl" reference was a simple play on words from the Wonder Woman character.

 

 Something that did surprise me in the book is a reference to divorce.  Remember (the character) admits to Carol that her father and mother were divorced, and that her father has re-married three times since then, and her mother twice (p. 155)!  While divorce was not necessarily uncommon by the 1940s, it was still unusual to see if mentioned in a young adult novel - and to think that the divorced man and women remarried multiple times after that, why, it is shocking!  According to a study by Bowling Green State University, in 1940 "approximately 3% of ever-married women in all education groups were separated or divorced"; however, the '40s basically started the increase in divorce rate, which grow higher and higher with each passing decade.  Now, it is fairly common to read about divorces; but in the early 1940s, it was a completely different story.  As such, I'm surprised not only that Boylston chose to give her character such a background, but that the publisher (Little Brown & Company) allowed it to be published.

 

As with the first book in this series, the plays referenced in the story are actual plays - from Dear Brutus, by J.M. Barrie (p. 21) to The Red Coat, by John Patrick Shanley (p. 33) to the musical Camille (p. 190) and even Seagulls Crying (p. 190), which is probably a take on Chekhov's 1895 play, The Seagull - while others are fictional in nature, such as The Upper Brackets (p, 68) and The Merry Woods of Windsor (p. 89), which is likely a take on the real play, Merry Wives of Windsor, as well as Run for Your Money (p 190), which, interestingly enough, was the name of a film in 1949.  Likewise, the location of this small town theater, Winasset, Maine, is fictional, but bears a close resemblance to the town of Wiscasset, Maine (although I could not find any community theaters in Wiscasset back in the 1940s when this book was written and published).

 

The artist on the internal illustrations changed - while the first book featured illustrations by Frederick E. Wallace, this book features internals by Major Felton.  From what I could learn online, Felton provided book illustrations and painted posters in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, and his biography page on Wikipedia ( Major Felton - Artist) even acknowledges his work on the Carol page and Sue Barton series!  And like the first book, the British edition published two years after the first American edition, changed the title, this time more drastically to Carol in Repertory.  The British edition does feature the same internal illustrations, but the cover art is merely the same painted headshot that appeared on the cover of the first book.

 

This second book confirms my love of the series and the characters, and as indicated in the final chapter of this book, Carol and Mike are off to Broadway to see if they can make a name for themselves!

 

RATING:  10 carefully carried cups of tea out of 10 for another fun romp in the world of theater and acting with some very real, very flawed, and very enjoyable characters!

Carol Goes Backstage a/k/a Carol Goes on the Stage - the First Carol Page theater story

Having enjoyed some years performing in local community theaters, it is only natural that I would pick up series books having to do with the theater.  I can't recall exactly how I came to find out about the Carol Page theater stories, but once I learned of them, I had to track them down.  I managed to get the first three fairly easy, but it was that fourth and final book in the series that proved elusive (and the completist in me just will not start reading a series until I have all of the books first!).  I did manage to track it down at last, and so I was finally able to sit down and give the series a read.  Of course, this does not account for the fact that the series was published in England, as well as here in the States, and that the book names differed depending on where they were published - so that left me with the conundrum - do I wait until I track down all of the "alternate" titles before I start reading?  Since I'm writing this post, clearly I decided not to wait (and more on those alternate titles below...).

 

Carol Goes Backstage (a/k/a Carol Goes on the Stage) is the first book in the series, introducing readers to seventeen-year old Carol Page, a high school graduate who has gotten a small taste of the theater in her senior year and has decided that acting on the stage is a career she would like to pursue - much to her parents' chagrin!   Carol, and her best friend Julia Gregg, audition for a chance to be a part of an apprentice group "connected with the Stuyvesant Theater in New York" (p. 54), where a select group of aspiring actors had the opportunity to learn under the tutelage of Miss Phyllis Marlowe, a woman Carol calls "a swell actress" (p. 55).  Of course, they are selected, and Carol is barely able to convince her parents to allow here to attend (as her father is determined that acting schools are a waste of time, and she needs to focus on a viable career).  Thus begins the journey of Carol Page to become an actress of the Broadway stage!

 

Carol Page is not like a lot of her contemporaries in series fiction of the time, as her family is not affluent, providing her the freedom to do as she pleases; while the Page family is not poor by any means, she and Julia share a room in a "respectable girls' club" (p. 88), where the room was "sunny and comfortable, and the food, as Julia pointed out, was probably better than anything they could have turned out for themselves" (p. 89).  But that does not stop one particular apprentice - Michael Horodinsky - from viewing Carol as highfalutin and taking an instant disliking to her, which leads to considerable contention between the two throughout the entire book.  Now, having watched soap operas for many years, I've learned that when two individuals begin a relationship by warring with one another, it usually leads to not only an amicable friendship, but eventually a romance - and while there is no romance in this book at all, I have a sneaky suspicion that Carol and Mike have a budding romance somewhere in their future (we shall have to see what the next three books hold in store...).

 

The story approaches theater life in a very realistic way.  While Carol has talent, she gets in her own way sometimes by thinking she knows better than others, or in thinking that she can succeed by copying the way she has seen others perform a particular role on stage.  She is called out more than once and must learn a bit of humility along the way, which often occurs with beginning actors in the theater.  And Julia, who was the one from the very beginning with big dreams of becoming a star, finds her path to stardom changed along the way, as she (and everyone around her) discover that she is far more talented as a comedic actor than in any serious role.  The story also introduces readers to all of the backstage trials and tribulations of putting together a show for the stage - from building of sets, working of the lights, learning of lines, timing of rehearsals, and overcoming differing temperaments of the actors, directors, stage managers, and set designers.  The character of Miss Marlowe reminds me of one particular director I had the pleasure of working with on a number of plays - he was extremely strict, he was direct and to the point, and he did not tolerate those who were not serious about their performance; yet, he would always offer suggestions and encouragement, and his efforts taught all of us so much about acting.  These are the things Carol, Julia, and all of their newfound friends discover during their time at the Stuyvesant Theater.

 

The book does have a few typical series book scenarios in it.  Once incident involves Carol having to hitchhike back to the high school theater after a friend convinces her to go out to the nearby river to run lines just before the show, and then his car dies.  Carol is picked up by a dazzling woman who questions her about her upcoming performance in Miss Hipkin's Descent (not a real play); it is only later when her brother Phil takes her to New York to see a play does Carol learn the woman was an actual Broadway actress, who they have the opportunity to meet backstage and who encourages Carol to pursue a career in acting!  Another situation involves the owner of a summer theater who offers a job each year to one talented apprentice, and so Miss Marlowe's apprentices put together their own show for a chance that one of them might get selected to be that person!  The only problem is, Carol's troublesome aunt has convinced her mother than Carol should be brought home and not allowed to stay in New York.  As such, Carol must find a way to convince her mother the theater is not detrimental to her future, that Michael Horodinsky is not her boyfriend, and that she has a real chance at landing that summer job with the summer program.  Obviously, all goes well and Carol is not only allowed to stay, but she - along with Julia, Michael, and two others - are selected to join the summer stock at Mr. Richards' theater (which leads directly into the second book in this series).

 

Now, since this book does deal with the theater and Broadway, it only stands to reader the author would include real plays and actors in its pages.  Carol and her brother take in a production of Candida, which is a comedy written by George Bernard Shaw, which was performed in both London and New York in the early 1900s.  Mr. Anders, who introduces the apprentices to the Stuyvesant Theater, tells them how the theater used to be an opera house, and how famous actors sushc as Edwin Booth, Sir Henry Irving, Sarah Bernhardt, and "the great Duse" (p. 80) had all acted on that stage.  All of those are real life actors, with the great Duse referring to Eleonora Duse, an Italian actress considered one of the greatest of all time.  In addition, readers are treated to the history of "the green room" (the backstage area were acteors wait until they must go on stage), which, in the book, is said to originate from the early days in England, when the theaters had waiting rooms close to the stage, where the doors were painted green (p. 87).  While the book references those early London theaters as "the Drury Lane and Covent Garden" (p. 87), in real life, it was likely from London's Blackfriars Theatre, in which the waiting room was painted green.  It is these type of historical facts that really breathe additional life and realism into the story!

 

One final tidbit I must mention, which has no connection to theater but which I found to be amusing and quite coincidental, is found on page 59, when Carol is trying to convince her father that she wants to pursue an acting career and go to New York to be an apprentice to Miss Marlowe.  In her argument, she finally confesses to her father, "Daddy - I don't want to go to Wellesley" (p. 59).   This is so amusing because Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, one of the major driving forces behind the highly successful Nancy Drew series, was a graduate of Wellesley (Class of 1914)!  Thus, the story has an unexpected (and unintentional!) series book reference in it.

 

The series is written by Helen Dore Boylston, who also authored the Sue Barton nursing series from 1936 to 1952.  Boylston was a nurse in real life, so her writing stories about a nurse was only natural.  Five years after her first Sue Barton book was published, she began the Carol Page series of novels.  From online sources, Boylston received advice from her neighbor, Eva Le Gallienne (a Broadway actress who eventually left that career and found the Civic Repertory Theatre - on whom the character of Miss Marlowe was clearly based).  Boylston also went backstage at the Civic Repertory Theatre to gain additional research, all of which explains why the details in her first book are so spot-on with regard to theater life!  (On a side note, the Civic Repertory Theatre was once a home for French dramas and operas, leaving one to believe that the theater was the inspiration for Boylston's Stuyvesant in the book.)

 

Now, as indicated above, this book was first published in America in 1941, but later republished in 1943 in England by John Lane The Bodley Head publishers under the title Carol Goes on the Stage.  Both books kept the same headshot of Carol on their covers, and both books featured the same beautiful internal illustrations by Frederick E. Wallace.  They also both featured a brief word of thanks from the author to Jane Ayer Cobb, "with whose help, encouragement, and staying powers have been invaluable throughout the writing of this book."  Cobb was an author of short stories and children's books, and some online sources give her credit as being a "co-author" of the Carol Page series.  An article in The New York Times written after the death of Cobb indicates the Carol Page series was "originated by Mrs. Berry, but again bore only the name of Miss Boylston" (The New York Time - Jane Cobb).  How much truth there is to this statement, I cannot say.

 

What I can say, though, is that I thoroughly enjoyed the book.  The characters were engaging and realistic, the portrayal of life in the theater was entirely accurate and not overly dramatized at all,  and the story itself was perfectly paced and throughout enjoyable.  I am anxiously looking forward to reading book two!

 

RATING:  10  bunches of white peonies out of 10 for a wonderful story of theater life and the start of one young woman's journey to becoming a real actress!