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Under the Ivy
December 8, 2004: Triangle Follies It’s a classic picture of a stressed-out theater director: book open on lap, fists and teeth clenched, eyes closed and head thrown back in frustration. Somehow, though, even through the taut jaw, it’s obvious the man’s tongue is held firmly in his cheek. He’s Jose Ferrer ’33, and his tortured pose was featured on the cover of the December 10, 1937 PAW. Ferrer, already a Broadway star so soon after his Princeton graduation, was directing the Triangle show that year. As a kickoff for the troupe’s national tour – from Princeton and New York through Omaha, Chicago, and Cleveland, among other stops – Ferrer wrote an article about the allure of the annual revue. “In the professional theater,” Ferrer began, “there are a number of well-known people who attend the Triangle show religiously, in the same way that children go to the circus every year. Henry Fonda and Burgess Meredith are two of them, Clifton Webb and Dwight Fiske are others. To those alumni of the club who have chosen the theater as their profession (people like Josh Logan, Myron McCormick, and Jim Stewart) seeing the show is like a disease. If they’re working and cannot attend a performance, they come to Princeton and see a rehearsal. They annoy everyone with suggestions, gags, pieces of business. Josh and Jim, who spend a great deal of time making a ridiculous amount of money on the Coast, write letters asking for details, even phone long-distance to find out what the show’s about.” Ferrer continued, “I remember the night the show I was in played in New York. In the audience were Guy Lombardo, the Marx Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, and probably more that we didn’t know about. Why do they come, year after year?” His guess was that the spirit of the show – the same joy in performance that might make a college football game, for example, preferable to a professional one (particularly in 1937) – drew the crowd. “In a good Broadway play,” he wrote, “you will find a perfection of detail, a general excellence in the different departments, a smoothness of execution that are at times almost unbelievable. In a good Triangle show, on the other hand, there is a boisterous good humor that is like a terrific shot in the arm to the jaded theater-goer.” In short, Ferrer postulated, “The boys feel that the audience must be made to participate in the fun they’re having, and it is this state of mind which makes a Triangle show irresistible to those happy souls who wisely overlook its deficiencies and go there to be shaken up by a good laugh.” Ferrer also observed that the Triangle alumni now on the stage professionally seemed to “have carried this spirit with them, to their credit and the theater’s gain. They seem to have a wonderful time while earning their bread and butter.” At the end of his entertaining piece, Ferrer finally admitted that his ulterior motive was to drum up an audience for his show. “Well, it’s called Fol de Rol, although nobody knows who named it. The cast is beyond reproach, the costumes and scenery will knock your eye out, and the book would have graced the shelves of the Bard of Avon.” All that certainly would have been enough to make me, as Ferrer
urged, go “and have a swell time.” Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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