LEST WE FORGET JEAN DALRYMPLE
(September 2, 1902 - November 15, 1998)

September Child is the title of her first autobiography.

This post about her life was written by her close friend Nancy Rhodes for a program entitled "Visionary Producers of the Twentieth Century" presented on May 30, 2015 at the Manhattan Theatre Club Rehearsal Studio.
Produced by Mari Lyn Henry with the support of the League of Professional Theatre Women.

I had met Jean when we had lunch at her favorite booth at the Russian Tea Room. I wanted to talk to her about her vaudeville years as part of my research and she was so gracious, witty, generous with her time.  She was an inspiration and kept inspiring the theatre community and beyond with her love of performers and talent.

"Born in Morristown, New Jersey, she was a highly successful actress, writer, lecturer, dynamic manager of concert artists, and a legendary producer of musicals and plays for City Center and other venues, as well as for film and television.  She was the daughter of George H. Dalrymple, a concert manager who arranged tours for artists in the United States and Latin America.  Her professional career began at the age of nine when her short story The Spinning Top was sold to a newspaper for one dollar.      

She went on to write sketches for vaudeville and created an act with Dan Jarrett for the
Keith-Orpheum circuit--sometimes on the same bill with James Cagney and Cary Grant.  With her first husband Ward Morehouse she wrote the screenplay It Happened in New York produced by Universal Pictures.

As a playwright she collaborated with Dan Jarrett on Salt Water, a play presented by the well-known producer John L. Golden. She then began working for Golden as an understudy, then a casting director, play doctor and press agent. Impressed with her skill in handling the press, Golden encouraged her to establish her own office in 1937. She was the publicist or personal manager for such artists as Jose Iturbi, Tallulah Bankhead,
Mary Martin, Lily Pons, Andre Kostalenetz, Nathan Milstein and
Leopold Stokowski.  In the late 1940a she produced several shows on Broadway, most notably a revival of Burlesque (1946) and Red Gloves (1948) which starred Charles Boyer in his Broadway debut.

She was instrumental in the founding of New York's City Center in 1943, and carried out the dream of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and City Council
President Newbold Morris to have "a temple for the performing arts." Early productions included Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Porgy and Bess, and Othello starring Paul Robeson.  She was named to City Center's Board and subsequently mounted successful productions of Mister Roberts and a series
of plays with Jose Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac; The Shrike, Richard lll,  and
Charley's Aunt.

Between 1957 to 1968, she was general director of the City Center Light Opera Company, mounting forty-seven revivals of thirty different musicals including her favorite musical Brigadoon with Edward Villela as
Harry Beaton, Pal Joey starring Bob Fosse, The Pajama Game and South Pacific.  She persuaded Orson Welles to star in King Lear and Tallulah Bankhead to portray Blance Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire with Anthony Quinn and Uta Hagen. Many other great starts performed at City Center under her leadership including Franchot Tone, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Charlton Heston and
Helen Hayes.

One of the founding members of the
American Theatre Wing in 1939, she was its first publicity volunteer and during World War ll she trained speakers who sold war bonds at the
Stage Door Canteen. She was a guest producer for William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life for the Armchair Theatre Television series in 1958; produced Gian-Carlo Menotti's opera The Consul for TV in 1960; and in 1977 was Associate Producer for a documentary film about the
Kirov School of Ballet, narrated by
Princess Grace of Monaco."

From September Child published in 1965

"On the wall of my bedroom is the sampler of the Twenty-third Psalm which Paula Laurence painstakingly cross-stitched for me when we first met  I read it and gratefully know that surely goodness and mercy have followed all the days of this September child.

'Oh, Earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?----Every, every minute?"

Well, I have tried!"





Resource:  Nancy Rhodes, Founder, Encompass New Opera Theatre
www.Encompassopera.org
Dalrymple, Jean. September Child. The Story of Jean Dalrymple By Herself.   1965
Dalrymple, Jean.  From the Last Row. 1975