David Hunt Stafford
David Hunt Stafford loves theater. Talk to him approximately 15 minutes and you know it. Talk to him another five or so, and he’ll tell you about Theatre 40, where he serves as Artistic and Managing Director. He loves that Luv by Murray Schisgal is the company’s next production, opening on May 18. His affection for, admiration of, and attraction to the allure of the acting arts approach an adventurous activism analogous to allegory.
Stafford’s love affair with the theater began in his native Tulsa. He relates, “I did a play in high school called The Girls in 509 [by Howard Teichmann] and enjoyed it enough to continue in others. I’d say there were three that sunk the hook in me for good. They were Bury the Dead [Irwin Shaw], David and Lisa [James Reach] and Waiting for Lefty [Clifford Odets]. They created in me an insatiable appetite for this art form. They made me say to myself ‘I can do this; I like doing it; I’m gonna keep doing it as long as I can.’ So far I’m not slowing down.”
He picked up speed after high school. “I went to Saint Gregory’s College in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where I earned an AA degree and played Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind. That was a profound experience that left me with a perfect memory. I did the old age makeup and strapped on a pot belly. I’m sure my skin would crawl now if I could see what I did with it back then but at the time I was thinking I was better in the role than Spencer Tracy.”
He accelerated even more after earning his first degree. “I wanted to pursue acting for a living. I had a choice of going to New York or California and figured the weather was much nicer here. I applied to Disney’s Art Institute and was accepted to study at CalArts in its very beginning days almost, actually the second year of its existence. I already had gotten history, English, math and geography out of the way at Saint Gregory’s so now I could focus and immerse myself in acting, improv, dance, tai chi and trampoline [exercises]. My classmates at the time included David Hasselhoff, Paul Reubens, Laraine Newman, Michael Richards and Katey Sagal.”
Betsy Zajko, Rob Roy Cesar and Michael Goldstrom in Luv
He graduated with a BFA in 1973 and began to embrace the professional world with an emboldened enthusiasm engendered by its academic equivalent. “I worked at ICM as head of their mailroom. One day the executives came down to tell us they were gonna take us upstairs and train us to become agents. Since I was the head of the department, I’d have the honor of becoming the first in their agent training program. I told them, ‘I’m trying to get an agent, not be one.’ So they fired me.”
Stafford’s chuckle at the distant memory indicates that he harbors no hard feelings, which he immediately substantiates with examples of personal pleasures and positive pursuits while employed there. “I got a call one day that Orson Welles was gonna be shooting a movie up at Peter Bogdanovich’s house and needed some extras. I said, ‘Count me in.’ I spent three nights from 9 pm to 3 am playing a waiter pouring coffee for Orson Welles. He’d say, ‘Young man, can you pour the coffee with a little more energy?’ I’d say, ‘Yes sir, Mr. Welles.’ The final scene we shot was in the dark walking around with Coleman lanterns and singing ‘Shine, little glowworm, glimmer, glimmer.’ It was all part of Welles’ so-called unfinished masterpiece, The Other Side of the Wind. I went to a special screening a few years ago of his restored Touch of Evil where I specifically asked if Other Side of the Wind would ever be released. They said there’s not enough completed footage to finish the picture. I do list it in both my resume and my bio. Even though I didn’t have a great part and the world will never see it, I’ll keep it in my credits forever.
“In my ICM mailroom days Dorothy Rivers, who was secretary to one of the top agents in town, Ben Benjamin, called me over a period of two to three years with special requests. For example she once asked me, ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ I said, ‘Nothing special.’ She said their client Laurence Olivier had a possible project coming up with Steve McQueen but wasn’t familiar with McQueen’s work. They’d supply the films. Would I be interested in taking them to the Charles Aidikoff Screening Room for Olivier to view them? So there we were, Olivier, his secretary and me looking at the last reels of The Towering Inferno, Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair. At one point Sir Larry turned to me and said, ‘Which one is McQueen?’
“On another occasion Alfred Hitchcock was being threatened with a lawsuit by some writer claiming Rear Window infringed upon his work. That time I went to Hitchcock’s house with just the two of us, his lawyer, his wife and his dog; that was the first time I’d ever seen Rear Window.
“One more quick story and we’ll move on. Julie Christie had to return to England every so often in order to keep qualifying for a work visa in America. I went to Warren Beatty’s house and helped Julie Christie pack up her belongings for her trip.”
Joseph Ruskin and David Hunt Stafford in Theatre 40's "Quartermain's Terms"
Once he was terminated at ICM, those kinds of assignments ceased but Stafford did not. He landed a role in Quartermaine’s Terms at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego which proved so successful it transferred to San Francisco, where he had the opportunity to meet playwright Simon Gray in town on a West Coast visit. A few years later he learned Theatre 40 was holding open auditions for company membership and also planning an upcoming production of Quartermaine’s Terms.
“I auditioned for the company,” he recalls, “with a monologue from Did You See the Lone Ranger? which I’d done at the Déjà Vu Coffeehouse on Kenmore in Hollywood, and for my classical piece a selection from Measure for Measure. I told them about having done Quartermaine as well as meeting Gray and stressed how much I’d like to do it again. Well I got in the company and also did the play again.”
That happened in 1990. In 2007 Theatre 40 reprised the show, and Stafford acted in it for his third time but his first go as the title character. [Full disclosure: this writer joined Theatre 40 in 2002 and worked onstage with Stafford in Halo in 2008.]
In those days Theatre 40 had a policy of always running two shows in repertory so that the stage never had a dark night. On weekends the company produced its main stage or spotlight production while the footlight production filled the weeknight slots on the same set with different furnishings. The two shows alternated Sunday performances. Selection for the footlight shows was generated from individual company members who had a particular piece they wanted to present as a showcase or for the opportunity to develop a specific character.
Stafford submitted a footlight presentation brightening the cockles of his heart—literally. He explains, “I’ve been collecting cigarette lighters since I was 13 or 14. I own between 1500 and 2000 lighters now. I used to smoke but I gave that up 40 years ago. Well I developed a one-man show called The Lights of My Life, auditioned a 20-minute segment before the artistic committee, and they let me do it as a footlight production. I was amazed at how enthusiastically it was received. I told stories about how and where I got a lot of my lighters. During the show I told the audience, ‘You know, there are some lighters I don’t have. If any of you want to gift me with a Ronson Decanter or Juno or Queen Anne, I’d certainly be grateful.’
“Members of an international collectors club called On the Lighter Side came and invited me to join so I did. The following year they asked me to do the show at their annual convention in Orange County so I did that too. At the conclusion of the performance they presented me with a Ronson Juno in appreciation.
“In addition to the history of the development of lighters and their different designs over the years and my personal stories about acquiring my collection, my show served as a metaphor. We all have a flame burning inside us. We all have dreams. We must strive to never let the fire go out of our dreams; never let the sparks of our desires die out.”
Catherine Stoskopf illuminated Stafford’s lights with a whole new brilliance a few years later. He still beams to this day recalling it. “I lived in a little house next to an apartment building in Hollywood. She was my neighbor. I tell everybody I married the girl next door. In the front yard of this house was a peach tree. One day I was on the phone when Catherine walked over and started picking peaches. I said, ‘Hey, I have to call you back. There’s a beautiful girl picking peaches in my front yard.’ We’ve been together now 27 years; married for 19.”
His bride-to-be learned in their eight years of dating just what importance his majestic mistress, the theater, played in his life and agreeably accepted the grand old lady along with her new husband. Stafford tells how they tied the knot: “We had set the date. Then I got cast in The Misanthrope at Theatre 40. I told Catherine, ‘Honey, I can marry you anytime and will marry you anytime you say, but I cannot do The Misanthrope anytime.’ Here’s what we did. We had it printed in the wedding invitations that we’d hold the nuptials at 11 am, the reception from noon to four and The Misanthrope at eight. The entire wedding party came to the play. Of course they all slept through it because they’d been drinking champagne all afternoon. At the curtain call I brought Catherine, still in her wedding dress, onstage to take a bow with us. She’s not an actress so this was one of the few times she ever set foot on a stage.”
A few years after such illustrious matrimonial and theatrical connubiality Stafford and Theatre 40 suffered through an imbroglio more injurious than idealistic. His rueful recollection raises rancor upon recall: “I had served on the artistic committee and then the board of directors when the school [Beverly Hills High, the site of Theatre 40’s stage] was doing some construction upgrades. They told us they needed to run some telephone lines through the back wall of the theater. We indicated that was fine but to please run them to the side so they would emerge in a backstage area. They said okay. Then somehow the word wasn’t communicated to the workers who ran the wires and installed a junction box upstage center. That was when things began to get out of control.
“Somebody wrote a nasty letter to the school board. We were performing Nicholas Nickleby at the time. Next thing we knew we were getting complaints because we had guns and liquor bottles onstage. Well they were prop bottles with tea in them and the guns were plastic. Then our storage space for props and set pieces was cleared out and moved off campus without our knowledge. Clearly this thing was blowing totally out of proportion. What had started as a smoldering little incident now had gasoline tossed on it and was threatening to become a raging inferno.
David Hunt Stafford, Carlyle King and Richard Hoyt Miller in Theatre 40's "The Little Foxes"
“Theatre 40 had a big meeting in which some of our leaders at that time urged us all to write very forceful letters to the school board attacking them. I thought this combative attitude was not gonna work. We needed to be working out the misunderstandings between us, not inflaming them. Then they recommended that maybe we should take a vote, shut Theatre 40 down and walk out. I raised my hand and said, ‘Look, we haven’t been evicted yet. You can leave if you want to but I’m staying and will work toward mending some fences.’ [Founding member] Katherine Henryk backed me on that.
“So Gloria Stroock and I scheduled a meeting with the mayor’s office, both of us as company members and Gloria as a Beverly Hills resident. We argued the audiences coming to our shows would go to the Odyssey or a theater in Santa Monica or even downtown if Theatre 40 closes, and the city would lose some residual revenue and some prestige as well. They told us the city council doesn’t dictate to the school district what to do or vice versa but they’d work behind the scenes to resolve the issues which they did.
“We’re still there; still doing shows there. Gloria and I emerged as some sort of heroes for saving the theater. To me it was just common sense to extend a hand in friendship rather than shaking a fist and trying to fight.”
Michael Goldstrom and Betsy Zajko in Luv
Stafford, who later acceded to artistic and managing director of the company, continues creatively searching for solutions to production problems. If it means occasionally dropping a name or two or utilizing a seemingly random contact from the past, he honors no hesitancy in helping himself to a heap of chutzpah to hustle it home. He did just that to lock in his next production.
He explains, “We lost the rights to Art because of an error in the licensing department in New York. Since we wanted to end our present season with a comedy, we then applied for Luv. They turned us down. But we have a bit of personal history with playwright Murray Schisgal. Many years ago we did his play Fragments. He was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for Tootsie and came to town for those ceremonies while Fragments was playing. The night before the Oscars he came to Theatre 40 to see his play. When they said we couldn’t get the rights to Luv, I wrote a letter to Schisgal reminding him who we are and what we’ve done. We got those rights.
“This will be a one-time co-production with West Coast Jewish Theatre. One of our long-time members Howard Teichman [no relation to the author of his first play in high school] is artistic director over there. They rent space at the Pico Playhouse but are preempted for about a month. This arrangement allows them to fulfill their season subscription and benefits us from a budgetary perspective. It’s a win-win situation.
Tom Dugan in Theatre 40's "Nazi Hunter"
“We’re also bringing back Tom Dugan’s Nazi Hunter in our old first-of-the-week footlight spot as a bonus production. Tom originally joined us in Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee as Hercule Poirot. During that run he told me he does a one-man show as Simon Wiesenthal and his tracking of war criminals. I thought that would have great appeal to our audience so we booked it in as a bonus. Now we’re bringing it back for those who may have missed it.
“Our brochures for next season will be mailed out soon. We’ve got a great lineup of plays: another Agatha Christie, Spider’s Web; Somerset Maugham’s The Circle; Laura [by Vera Caspary] made famous in the Otto Preminger film with Gene Tierney; a West Coast premiere of Roses in December, a world premiere called Jimmy and Sam and The Color of Rose about the life of Rose Kennedy written by our own company member Kathrine Bates who also wrote The Manor which of course has been a huge hit for us at Greystone Mansion.
“I have to say Theatre 40 is my life. It’s what I’m all about. It’s not my theater but I’m trying to make it as good as it can possibly be with my total focus on that goal. We’ve got a rich heritage to live up to, with over 450 productions in our history and over 300 awards during that time. Unfortunately the recession or near depression or whatever you want to call it affected us financially just like every other entity in America so we’re no longer producing as many shows each year as we once did. But we schedule in a bonus production as a reward for our subscribers as often as we can. I want to grow our resources and improve our quality always. I’d love for everybody in LA to come out and see us.”
Spoken like a pure paramour of the performing arts. That’s David Hunt Stafford.
**All production photography by Ed Krieger
Luv, presented by Theatre 40 and West Coast Jewish Theatre, opens May 18; plays Wed.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through June 26. Tickets: $23-$25. Nazi Hunter – Simon Wiesenthal opens May 22; plays Sun.-Tues., 7:30 pm (no performance on May 30 or June 5); through June 21. Tickets: $25. Special reservation number: 310.364.3606. Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills; 310.364.0535 or www.theatre40.org. Free indoor parking.
