Actress From Heyday of Sewell Troupe at Dunaway

(Written by Jeff Bishop, originally for the Times-Herald newspaper, Aug. 4, 2008 edition.)

For a young girl living in a small town in Alabama in the 1930s, when a Wayne P. Sewell production came to town, it was like having a little bit of Hollywood in your back yard.

At least that's the way Celeste Mitchell — a former director with the Roscoe-based acting/production troupe — remembers it.

"Everyone got very excited," she said. "In a small town, where there was very little activity going on, they thought that maybe Hollywood had shown up."

Mitchell, now in her 90s, remembers when she and her sister went to see one of the Wayne P. Sewell touring musical productions, which included such popular titles as "The Flapper Grandmother," "Here Comes Arabella," "Black Eyed Susan," and countless others. In the days before television, such productions were a major event.

"One of Mrs. Sewell's directors came to our town and put on a nice play at the auditorium, and my sister was quite interested," she said. "So she got to talking to the director."

What do you have to do to become involved in something like this? she asked. All you have to do is apply, she was told. Before long, both she and her sister Celeste were part of the Wayne P. Sewell Production Company.

"My sister sent in an application and joined the company before I did," remembers Mitchell, who recently visited Dunaway Gardens for the first time in decades.

"My sister always had so many funny stories and tales to tell that I became interested in it, too," she said.

Mitchell thought her application might not be accepted since her sister was already employed with the company, "but behold, they called and told me to come to Atlanta. I told them that I didn't know how I'd get there, but I'd come one way or another."

Sewell met Mitchell at the bus station and drove her to Roscoe in his "big Cadillac," she remembers.

"He ushered me into it like I was a queen," she said. "Mr. Sewell was very dignified. He had a big office there in Atlanta, so he just came down to the bus station. It was a big thrill, having him stand there to meet me."

She was put in a class of 20 young women, all under the direction of head drama coach Sarah Ophelia Colley, who would be better known in later years as Minnie Pearl of Grand Ole Opry fame.

"She was in charge of training us," said Mitchell. "We went through the whole script, learning the choruses and the dances. She'd have us get up there and do the routines. If we didn't do it right, she said, 'Hold it!' and we tried again. She was good at what she did — a funny lady with a great sense of humor."

She remembers that even at that time, in about 1939, Colley had begun crafting her one-woman stage routine that would later prove to be such a hit, landing her recurring appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and on TV's "Hee Haw."

"She had a one-woman show at the piano," said Mitchell. "It was really funny. I remember one of her lines was, 'Well, that makes me think of my brother.'" Minnie Pearl often talked of her brother in her comic routines as an apparently dim yet somehow also very wise country boy.

Mitchell said the training period "was so much fun."

"There was this log building we all stayed in, which was quite bare, but for the piano," she said. "We had to wake up early in the morning and go through all the choruses. Ophelia would play the piano for us."

The prospective drama coaches didn't get to waste any time walking around the gardens, said Mitchell.

"They kept us back in the woods. We didn't get to come up to the gardens," said Mitchell. "We had a lot of practicing to do."

Still, the girls all managed "to have a good time," she said.

"I remember we all slept in a big barn-like building," said Mitchell. "At night we'd just pile up the quilts and the pillows, spread them all out, and that's where we slept. It was a little bit rugged, but it was fun."

There's only one original building left standing at Dunaway Gardens, and Mitchell said she doesn't remember it.

"Those two buildings out in the woods, that was our home," she said. "Now there was a little country store out here in Roscoe that we'd walk to to get our toothpaste and our candy bars, and I think that's probably still around."

At the end of the training period, each of the young women was given an assignment.

"Mine was Arkansas," she remembers. "I tried to tell myself that I'd always wanted to go to Arkansas. I'd always heard that it was a beautiful, prosperous place, and that the people were so kind. But I was just trying to make myself happy about it, because the truth is that it was very hard."

Mitchell went to a town with a population of about 800, she said.

"The ladies all came out to meet me and they were very nice," said Mitchell. "They were anxious to do anything they could to help me get situated. I tried very hard to look seasoned."

In most of the towns, the Wayne P. Sewell production company would partner with local schools to put on the shows, and use local talent. Coaches like Mitchell would spend about 10 days advertising the event and auditioning and drilling everyone in preparation for the performance, a "one night only" affair. After expenses were taken into account, Sewell would split the remaining funds between his company and the local committee established to help mount the production.

"People were usually very cooperative and enthusiastic," she said. "Any time of day, during school, I could ask for some boys to be sent over to rehearse, and they were anxious to help.

"If I'd say, 'I need a white picket fence,' the boys would jump up and say, 'I can do that,'" she said. "Most of the small towns were like that."

Sometimes they would also "give you the eye," she said, since Mitchell was essentially an outsider coming into closed communities.

She remembers one interesting occasion in a place called White Castle, Louisiana.

"This was in southern Louisiana, and there were an awful lot of Cajuns in this town," she said. "One of the very first places they took me to was a bar. And this was at 10 o'clock in the morning."

She was introduced to the man behind the bar, and it was explained that Mitchell would be putting on a play for the community. Would the owner be interested in purchasing an ad for the program?

"He said, 'Let me get you guys a little something,'" she said. "So he begins to pour something, and it's very, very dark and very, very thick. And I begin to think to myself, 'What in the world have I gotten myself into?'"

Still, she tried a sip of it, to be polite.

"It was strong stuff," she recalls. "But he gave us a nice ad."

Selling ads was a key part of each show's financial success. Sewell would send Mitchell telegrams and notes while she was on the road, traveling from state to state. In one dated March 23, 1940, Sewell says that the $102 she reaped at a town called Shangaloo "overtops them all."

"You deserve a good bulletin on that and one will be forthcoming," he said.

He was so impressed with her that he soon placed Celeste in the plum role of "Tantalizing Tillie," the company's most successful production at the time.

"We are staging only Tantalizing Tillie now — not booking any other plays," Sewell said. "In a little while, all the coaches will be trained in Tantalizing Tillie. I expect to see you lead the role in this new play."

"I do believe you are about the best money-maker on the list today," Sewell said.

They didn't just sell ads and show tickets. There were other ways to make money, too, Mitchell said.

"Schools were always in need of extra funds, and that's why they would want to do these shows," she said. "But we'd do things like 'Prettiest Baby in Town.' It would be something like $5 to vote for the prettiest baby. And the winning baby would get a silver cup."

People weren't always cooperative. But Mitchell had ways of dealing with those folks.

"I was sent to south Alabama to do the first Tantalizing Tillie," she said. "I was working with a school, once again. And they would not let me sell any ads."

She decided to pay the man in charge "a little visit," she said.

He explained to her that the people of the town were broke and they were "sick and tired" of solicitations.

"I understand," she replied. "But if we can't sell ads, our profits are going to go way down. And isn't that why you brought me here? To help you raise money for the school?"

She assured him that the ads would be "reasonably priced."

"Well," he answered, "I know the people around here aren't going to be happy to see you coming."

"I think we can handle that," was Mitchell's reply. The ad sales were not a problem, and the show was a resounding success, she said.

Mitchell wound up producing 57 shows for the Wayne P. Sewell Company during her two-and-a-half year stint.

"I made so many good friends," she said. "And there was a certain melancholy aspect to it, in that I knew I could only be with them for 10 days."

Life on the road could get lonely and difficult, she said.

"It was a great learning experience and I enjoyed seeing new parts of the country. But I knew I could not travel forever. I did not want to leave some of these wonderful people, but I had no choice. I was traveling all the time, more or less living out of my trunk."

She carried all her belongings around in a huge trunk provided by the company. One of these trunks is on display at Dunaway Gardens. Mitchell immediately recognized it. It's nearly as large as she is. But that was never a problem.

"I never had to touch it," she said. "There was always some young man on hand to lift it up for me."

It may have served as a kind of test for potential suitors. Mitchell admits that looking for a man was definitely a part of her agenda, at the time.

"You know, people in the small town where I grew up admired my sister and me very much," she said. "And my father was especially proud. We'd have to give him a report of each state we'd visit, what it was like and what there was to do there.

"But I remember we had a large front porch with a swing, and we'd sit out on the swing in the summer time," she said. "And we had an especially lengthy session out there one night. And my father said, 'Well, I'll tell you something, girls. If you find a nice man out there, just marry him.'"

She said her father had eight other children and "wanted to be rid of us" as quickly as possible.

So in one town she visited she heard a report about a young "man about town."

"So I said, 'Show him to me,'" she said. "He was handsome, a little shy." She gave him "a small part" in the play, but a permanent place in her heart.

"That was my husband-to-be," she said, and the end of her days with the Wayne P. Sewell Production Company.

She was happy to have had the opportunity to see towns all over Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana — mostly by Greyhound bus, Mitchell said.

But she was also happy when those days came to a close.

"The people were so dear, to take me into their homes like I was their daughter. Everyone was so very nice," she said.

Mitchell was also grateful for the opportunity to personally meet the namesake of Dunaway Gardens, Hetty Jane Dunaway Sewell, herself a former Chautauqua actress.

"Mrs. Sewell, by the time I met her, was a little chubby. But she was still a tiny woman, and very pretty," said Mitchell. "Looking at her pictures, she was very pretty when she was young. She was very friendly to me."

Glancing around the restored Dunaway Gardens today, with its rock walls and pathways and extensive gardens, Mitchell adds, "She must have been a very busy little lady!"

Dunaway Gardens to Re-Open to Public Sunday, April 7th

Being Brought to New Peak of Botanical Perfection

(Originally published in 1957 or 1963)
Once one of Georgia's far-famed tourist attractions, Newnan's beautiful Dunaway Gardens will reopen Sunday (April 7) after an interval of nearly two decades.
Closed to the public in the gas-rationing days of World War II, Dunaway Gardens is being brought to a new peak of botanical perfection by their founder, Mrs. Hatty Jane Sewell, and Mr. H. W. Moore, formerly of the Ida Cason Callaway Gardens.
Located on a towering ridge over looking a branch of the stories Chattahoochee River, Dunaway Gardens are filled with old-fashioned flowers, framed by massive oaks, beeches, magnolia, and dogwood. Landscape experts have called the "the most beautiful rock garden in the land."
To go with the peaceful beauty of its stream, pools and waterfalls, Dunaway is planning a summer program chock full of special events, according to Mr. Moore. A series of twilight concerts is being scheduled for the amphitheater. Little theatre groups are planning productions for the picturesque Patch Work Barn indoor theatre. Fashion shows, Garden tours, Flower arranging courses are also being included in the activities plan.
A touch of romance and history is added by the 'McIntosh Rock', located in the center of the Gardens. Stories passed through generations of the Sewell family place this rock as a meeting place for the Creek Indians while Georgia was still a "Crown Colony" and later as a tribal rock for "Chief McIntosh" who was responsible for the sale of western Georgia in 1824 to the then young United States.
Extensive plantings have been mafde during the winter in preparation for the Spring opening, in addition to the azaleas, daisies, pansies, tulips, iris, dogwood, the sweet william, and many other plans are now in flower.
Masses of ivy has woven itself among the rock work, along the terraces and in many cases hangs like veils from trees furnishing a dark green background for the flowers.
Of great charm and interest to the visitors is the aged rustic appearances of buildings throughout the Gardens with their low sloping roofs and soft colored mellow interiors. Of particular interest to theatre enthusiasts is the Patch Work Barn Theatre, its story book interior features old-fashioned patchwork seat covers and curtains, the curtain hangars are discarded garden tools, rakes, hoes, shovels, etc., seats are made from pine slabs with the bark exposed on the sides and backs. The large wagon wheel chandeliers are surrounded by framed patchwork suspended from the ceiling. This theatre througb the years has been used by both local and professional groups.
Physical improvements made throughout Dunaway's include new public lounges, parking facilities and drives.