Act III

By John Skow

FINAL DRESS by John Houseman Simon & Schuster; 559pages; $19.95

The director-producer-actor-author, who is 81, was raised to be a wanderer; his mother was Welsh-Irish, and his father was an Alsatian Jew who was an international speculator. John Houseman spoke four languages as a child, was educated as a privileged Englishman, won an Oxford scholarship in modern languages, but went instead to Argentina to live among gauchos, returned to London, and learned the international grain trade. He was on the point of becoming wealthy as a grain speculator in the U.S. when the Crash of '29 bankrupted his company. His entry into the performing arts occurred simply because he had married an actress and knew a few theater people.

In his early 30s, with no experience whatsoever, Houseman found himself in Harlem, directing the first production of the Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson opera Four Saints in Three Acts. Not long afterward he became Orson Welles' principal collaborator in the renowned and innovative Mercury Theater. In 1955, when this third volume of his memoirs resumes, Houseman is about to rescue the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Conn., after its wobbly first year. He has just finished a stint as a movie producer (Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando; Lust for Life with Kirk Douglas). He goes on to direct some of Playhouse 90's best episodes, then establishes a superior drama department at Lincoln Center's Juilliard School. Most of the time he is working by the light of at least one moon, directing an opera, salvaging somebody else's stalled dramatic production, setting up a repertory group.

Such an account in other hands might be a pompous progression of rave reviews, gently tinted by hindsight. Not here; Houseman has an adequate ego, but he is caustic and funny, a wry observer of theatrical furies and hysterias, including his own. He admits, stout fellow, to taking on the direction of a hopeless Jane Fonda film (The Cool of the Day) simply because it is to be shot on location in Greece and he wants a vacation.

Houseman never thinks of himself as an actor, but late in his career he is persuaded to play Professor Kingsfield, the law-school curmudgeon, in the film The Paper Chase and then in a subsequent TV series. At the Academy Awards the following year he waits "with clenched buttocks for some goon lady to open an envelope." The prize propels him into yet another subcareer in his 70s, acting in films and commercials.

One wonders what might have happened to Houseman had the Great Depression not ejected him from his merchant princedom in the grain-trading business. No doubt he would have become rich. Then, given his artistic bent, he would certainly have involved himself in the theater, probably as one of those opinionated amateurs, an intrusive, indispensable backer of the exasperating kind he describes at several points in his story Certainly Houseman could have played such a role with ease. But if he had, who would have played Houseman?

--By John Skow This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.