♪ "No Business Like Show BuBusiness" ♪ Emery: Paul and Mary Crabtree came to town and convinced a community tha having a theater was important.

McDonald: In my world they were the Kennedys, the Crabtrees were... ♪ There's no business like show business ♪ ♪ like no business I know... Dickinson: Very remote.

Crossvillle was a two-street town.

♪ Everything about it is appealing... ♪ Hackman: ...but it's got a huge heart.

♪ Everything the traffic will allow... ♪ McDonald: This small mountain town of less than 4,000 people built a 500-seat Broadway House.

They built a Broadway house!

Bryce: It was a Sundown Town - a community that was wanting to be enlightened.

Gunton: Paul Crabtree was sort of like the Music Man.

McDonald: It's a fairy tale, but this town did it.

Crabtree: Well, it is a cool story.

And I guess it starts with the fact that, we moved here accidentally.

Actor: Greeaat!

♪ Let's go on with the show ♪♪ [Instrumental Music] This program is brought to you in part by... Where it all started and never stopped.

The soundtrack of America.

Made in Tennessee.

By Crossville, Tennessee In the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

[Tee Shot sound] By First National Bank of Tennessee.

By Rob and Lisa Harrison.

And by these supporters of the creative arts.

And this program A full list can be found at APTOnline.org.

♪ "Pipeline" Narrator: In the summer of 1959, Paul Crabtree moved his family of nine across the USA.

Writer, actor and director, Crabtree landed in Hollywood, the warmest of the twin poles of the entertainment universe.

The opposite pole being New York City where he and wife Mary had shared gratifying careers, writing plays and starring on Broadway.

Paul had even managed a strin of East Coast playhouse theaters from Connecticut to Palm Beach.

Imaginative and multi-talented Paul was, of all things, a showman in everything he did.

McDonald: Paul could hold a room and you would think there was nobody else on the stage but Paul.

He was that captivating.

Crabtree: He and my mother had met in New York in the '40s in a comedy called Kiss and Tell and they fell in love.

McDonald: And Mary, she was gorgeous.

I mean she's just elegant.

And grace, and poise and she's classic Hollywood or classic New York.

Narrator: In the '40s and '50s Paul and Mary forged careers in the crucibles of Broadway's theaters beside the era's brightest star in such original productions as Eugene O'Neil's "The Iceman Cometh" and Rogers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!"

Romantic, dramatic, creative and fresh, it was The Golden Age of Theater.

But Paul and Mary traded in the Great White Way for Tinseltown and the golden Dawn of Television.

[Loretta Young Show theme] In Hollywood, Paul found work plentiful, writing for such prime time network offerings as Death Valley Days, Bonanza and My Three Sons.

Then, adding his skills as actor and director, he teamed with the glamorous Loretta Young.

Crabtree: She just loved Mr. Crabapple, as she called him.

(laughs) But unfortunately, Loretta Young was on opposite the good-looking young Dr. Ben Casey and her series got cancelled in the middle of the season.

Narrator: From the heights of Hollywood's to unemployment, the Crabtrees needed a plan.

McDonald: And Mary said, "Why don't we go to my mother's, Grandma Ducey's.

You can work on this book you want to write, Paul.

The kids can go to school.

We'll figure out what our next step is.

Crabtree: We traveled through the South in a station wagon singing songs from Broadway.

And I can remember seeing White and Colored water fountains in the South.

And they moved us, somewhat surprisingly to my mother's ancestral hometown, in Crossville, Tennessee.

♪ "Highway Blues" Narrator: The Cumberland Plateau stretches across Middle Tennesse in a broad, forested tableland.

In its center is Cumberland County, long-remote and once known as The Badlands for its history with outlaws and its untamed geography.

Rising two thousand feet, the escarpment offered early settlers little water an rocky, plow-busting pastures.

But civilization finally arrive as a country store at the junction of a cattle drover's trail and the Great Stage Road to Washington, DC.

Dickinson: Crossville was actually named because two roads crossed at that point.

In the '50s and early '60s, the interstate highway system was opening up the country, but Crossville was still a one-horse town.

And they had little white boards with pointers saying where you could go from Crossville.

It wasn't a place to go.

Gunton: There was a courthouse square, a post office and one little movie theater.

And I'm sure there was snake handling somewhere up there.

And there was bootlegging going on.

And it was like, To Kill a Mockingbird.

There was stuff going on.

And into this comes this invasion of art of the theater from folks who'd lived in New York and Los Angeles.

The Crabtrees had come from the most sophisticated milieu in our country to one of the least sophisticated areas.

[explosion] Narrator: In 1963, amidst the growing turmoil of the times, and in a reversal of the Beverly Hillbillies, the Crabtrees quit California just as eldest son Jim turned 18.

No strangers to the mountain town, Mary's family roots reached back to the mid-1800s and the children's grandmother lived here still.

Crabtree: She talked about her grandfather building the church and paying the preacher; building the school and paying the teacher.

Narration: The Crabtrees' celebrity virtually glowed, and they were soon asked to bring a bit of show business to Crossville's schools.

McDonald: He had written a show called the Perils of Pinocchio.

It's based on the book, not based on the Disney cartoon.

So they did that in the old junior high auditorium.

Over a hundred children from this rural county that was less than 4,000.

Crabtree: It was a tough schedule to rehearse after school every day.

McDonald: Mary would cut the fabric out and she would tape what the costume was to look like on the front of the bag.

And she would hand the parents the brown paper bag and they would have to get it sewn.

Narrator: Perils of Pinocchio opened in December of 1963, simply astounding the town wit the depth of its own talents.

McDonald: Here with all these kids, dancing, they were singing, reciting lines... Narrator: The shows were sellout hits.

The town wanted more and asked Paul how to get it.

Crabtree: And Dad said, "You'd have to build a theater.

McDonald: And they did, a year later.

Harrison: The people of the town were so taken with Paul and all that he had done with all the kids.

McDonald: Paul and Mary had been invited to dinner to a restaurant in town and they were like, "Okay."

So they show up at the restaurant and the restaurant had sold out because people had heard that there were different members of the town getting together to talk to Paul about this great experience that was "Pinocchio."

And this gentleman stood up and said, "I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, we want it and we think you've got it."

Harrison: They said, "If we build you a theater, will you stay?"

I am sure he thought, "Naw, there's no way they would do that."

Narrator: Supporters formed a corporation and Girls Scouts soon were selling stocks on the street.

Businesses and families invested and children saved jars of pennies to buy in at ten dollars a share.

Crabtree: They raised about $100,000 that way.

Gunton: Paul Crabtree was sort of like The Music Man, except he didn't leave with the money.

Narrator: But the $100,000 was only half the money needed.

The playhouse took on a mortgag and with it, major risk.

Harrison: The financial burden that they must have faced, I'm sure it was terrifying back then.

McDonald: The interstate did not even exist yet.

A section of our, our main town, our main street was not there.

You know, it was an old back road to get to what is now the Playhouse.

And they were able to build our 500 seat auditorium.

Crabtree: He had left Hollywood.

He had left Broadway and he had found a friendly, small town in which to raise a family.

He was trying to build something from scratch.

McDonald: That's miraculous to me.

They built a Broadway house.

In a year!

Narrator: News of a proper theater atop the Cumberland Plateau made headlines, but Paul's dream of an equity stock theater dissolved in the face of a mortgage that left no funds for the Actors' Guild's required bond.

Crabtree: You have to post a bond in case a theater or a producer goes belly up and the actors are stranded in Crossville, Tennessee.

How do they get back to New York?

And so he wrote Tennessee USA, a musical comedy cavalcade.

And he cast the town!

Narrator: Again calling on Crossville talent, Paul helped a local interior designer discover her flair for scenic design.

He convinced a portrait artist to hang and paint 30-foot wide canvas drops.

Mary expanded the costume department and Paul enlisted help with his musical composition.

Crabtree: Like Irving Berlin, he didn't read or write music but he numbered the keys on the piano, so he depended on a musician who did read and write to translate his numbers into melodies and harmonies.

Narrator: From the citizens of Crossville, Paul developed a theater company.

McDonald: Like on a Tuesday night he would hold like a three hour class, from acting to stage craft to upstage to downstage, to how to deliver a line.

So he taught and gave empowerment to these lawyers and house moms and doctors and bankers and city councilmen to come up and sing and perform on stage.

And Jim's father needed two guys to sing and perform in Tennessee USA, one to be the good guy that played the guitar and one to be a raucous bad guy.

That was Jim and Bob.

Crabtree: My college hall mate, Bob Gunton... McDonald: You know, he and Jim were in the seminary together... Crabtree: And the priests gave us special permission to stay up late and go down to the science lab where we wouldn't disturb anybody else during Magnum Silencium, the great silence overnight.

Gunton: I sang every song I ever knew for Paul.

♪ She passed my way in a garden... ♪ Gunton: A week later he sent me a letter saying, "I'm opening a show, the first show in the theater.

I'd like you to be the star of it."

And, it was mind-blowing for me, just exploding with enthusiasm, intensity...

It was emotional.

It was everything.

[drum roll] ♪ This is my home... McDonald: July 15th, 1965 the doors opened on the main stage and "Tennessee USA" was seen for the first time.

Gunton: Probably the most important summer of my life.

It gave me a dream that I hadn't had before and that was the dream of actually performing on Broadway... Crabtree: It sent me out of the seminary, to MTSU and in the meantime I met Anne Windrow, who was a piano player!

McDonald: And prior to that, they were going to be Catholic priests!

Narrator: Following a newfound dream, Bob Gunton stayed on for several seasons.

He and the Crabtree children were the stars of the shows as Paul and Mary honed and encouraged his acting career.

Gunton: It was like if I was good enough for the Crabtrees, then maybe I could go to New York and make a life out of this.

Narrator: On Broadway, Bob won Tony nominations as Juan Peron in Evita and again in the title role of Sweeney Todd.

A bona fide star, Bob was lure to Hollywood to act in over two dozen television titles and 60 film roles, including Warden Samuel Norton of "The Shawshank Redemption," consistently ranked as one of the Top Ten films of all time.

Gunton: And the Cumberland County Playhouse, taught me, "Yeah, you can do that.

Sure."

Crabtree: A lot to my surprise, I got into the Yale School of Drama, which historically was kind of the place to go.

And I enjoyed reaching college but instead of doing the academic route, I decided I wanted to come back here.

And I began to talk to my mother and asked her if she would like me to come back.

Narrator: By now, the Playhous had scores of successful productions in its wake.

But Crossville, like the rest of the country, was caught in the mid-1970's economic recession.

When Paul took a job directing shows for Nashville's Opryland USA, Mary stepped in as producing director.

In 1976, Jim and Annie rejoined the Playhouse as co-producer and music director.

And by now, the Playhouse was calling to a whole new generation from the surrounding, isolated countryside.

Emery: I was born on a dairy farm.

Barnett: Horses and cows and chickens.

McDonald: In my family you either shoot it, stuff it or marry it and I wasn't interested in any of those things!

Emery: I went as a kid.

I don't remember the first show I saw.

Givens: If it was Peter Pan or if it was the Wizard of Oz.

Barnett: In kindergarten, I went to see my first play at the Playhouse and my cousin, Larry Elmore, was one of the leads.

McDonald: I was in the 5th or 6th grade and walked in and just was literally blown away.

Givens: But I remember it being utterly magical.

McDonald: It became a little bit of my obsession.

I saw Secret Garden probably 14 times.

Brigadoon 17 times.

Look, Homeward Angel like 4 times, Romeo and Juliet 12 times.

This was my place.

Emery: There was a great lack of distraction.

Not a lot to keep you out of trouble.

Barnett: The Playhouse came along at a time that I really could have been getting into some stuff.

I was just at that time, fifteen.

Givens: I definitely got into a lot of trouble the initial years of high school when I had a little bit of freedom.

Emery: the only two things that kept kids out of trouble were sports and the Playhouse.

McDonald: But let's be honest.

If you can't cut the team, if you can't run the laps like the 14 other boys on your team, you're gonna be benched and not play if you make the team.

And in this world of theater, you try your best to take every duckling that comes along and you find something that will make them feel super, super special.

Because if you do that enough, that kid will surprise you.

Givens: They let me sound design a show on my own.

I think was seventeen.

So I made all the sound effects, I set up the sound system, and I operated the whole thing.

So, I felt pretty great about that.

Emery: We got our first drama teacher at the high school and she was on staff at the Playhouse and she heard me sing in the choir and asked me to come audition for one of her plays and I did and I got the part.

And for the first time I had to step inside someone's shoes who I didn't understand and who I was not like.

And the Playhouse changed my life.

Entirely, in every possible way.

Barnett: I was auditioning for "Annie Get Your Gun," the first play I ever did at the Playhouse and I was scared of all of them because I was a hillbilly and not educated and they just seemed so over the top, these thespians, even though they were born and raised in Crossville.

It just made them different.

It made them more worldly.

Gay people were embraced.

Everyone was open, and...no judgment.

I had never seen anything like it.

Hackman: We spend a lot of time pretending to be other people.

And this place accepts you for who you are and what you can bring to the table.

McDonald: I just wonder how many lives the Playhouse has saved.

Including my own.

Because when you're a kid there is nothing worse than not feeling accepted.

Crabtree: In addition to the volunteers in the community, in the beginning my dad hired a few professional caliber ringers, young aspiring professionals.

McDonald: But Mary never wanted to turn it completely pro all the time so that none of the community could be involved because that's just not who we are.

That's not where our heartbeat is.

Crabtree: Community theaters build walls to keep professional actors out so that the community people can get the good roles.

And professional theaters seem to build walls to keep volunteers out.

McDonald: If there were five other theaters set up in our same model of a hybrid, I would be shocked.

We operate like a Broadway theater would operate where we hire a company and we rehearse for five weeks.

Uh, they're all trained singer, dancer, actors from all over the U.S.

But then we supplement that with really strong volunteers that are part of an education program that we run.

Webster: So about 1000 classes a year we teach - 41 classes a week for 12 weeks in the fall, and 41 classes for 12 weeks in the spring.

Plus our summer program.

McDonald: So they get like this free master class for two and a half months of being in a show and we treat them like professionals.

They have the same call times, they're held to the same standards.

Webster: A lot of our graduates from the program either go on to be doctors or pharmacists, teachers... McDonald: Because they've had training their entire life to be responsible enough to be in a play that runs for eight weeks, anywhere from three to four to five times a week.

And juggle your schoolwork and juggle if you have another job.

Narrator: Beginning with blind organist Johnny Bridgeforth, the playhouse opened its doors and the community.

Importing talent from beyond the plateau brought diversity.

Bryce: I met Jim Crabtree in Memphis, TN where my theater was founded.

And lo and behold, his mother showed up.

Crabtree: And my parents were, if you'll pardon the expression, liberals.

Bryce: And she went back and said, "It looks like he's doing the kind of stuff we need."

Barnett: There were no black people in Crossville, none.

Gunton: And no Hispanic faces.

Bryce: Everybody said, "Well, I don't want to say it but I think you've lost your mind.

That's not where you want to go."

And that's when I was told that it was considered a 'Sundown Town.'

Crabtree: That refers to a sign or just an attitude at the city limits that said, "Don't let the sun set on your head in this town if you are not like us..." Bryce: My first impression was every little town I had driven through over the years where my heart would beat really fast because I didn't know what level of consciousness I was going to encounter about whether I was a complete human being or not.

Bryce: And we decided to do "Ain't Misbehavin'", which is a musical but it doesn't have a lot of hardcore storytelling in it, so everybody's feelings could kind of be on the outside of having fun with this music.

It was the first time that an all African American cast would play on Cumberland County stage.

Emery: It was a big moment.

It was a big deal for them to be even walking around town.

Gunton: Pretty soon people who had never worked with or had much to do with African American people were sitting next to them in the audience and watching them on stage.

It was a very subtle thing, but it was profound.

McDonald: A place that was historically a Sundown Town now has full African American casts that are now immersed into the community, and that's okay.

Bryce: "Oh, you're the same person I saw on stage...!"

And now you are a real person and you have feelings and you get a chance to talk about your own kids and all of that to each other.

So it becomes more livable.

Miles: The concept of Two by Two was to see all of humanity step off the Ark.

We had an Asian person, a Jewish person, somebody who looked like they were from Spain, an African person, a blonde person.

I think our show caught them off guard, but I also think they had been primed in a way.

Almost as if Jim and Abby Crabtree have been preparing their audiences for this kind of show and more!

McDonald: There are themes such as Chorus Line... Actor (Sanders): "I knew she was telling me this because I was such a sissy..." McDonald: The gay theme that's talked about.

Actor (Sanders): "I mean, I was terribly effeminate.

I always knew that I was gay but that didn't bother me.

What bothered me was I didn't know how to be a boy..." McDonald: All the themes that theater and art can open up doors.

People who came out and said, "You talked about a topic..." Actor (Sanders): "What are you going to do with your life?"

McDonald: "...that opened up a conversation with me on the way home with my teenage daughter."

Miles: You've already changed the world, by changing one member of the human race.

That to me is the point of theater.

Hancock: We have been know as Tennessee's family theatre for 50 years, but the idea of family is changing.

Family in 1965 had a different connotation than family does now.

Bryce: So, the "sundown" does not always have to be what it has always been, you know.

McDonald: And I think that there were many visionaries of that original founding family group that knew that this was the way to change the culture of Cumberland County.

Gunton: We walk out of that theater, performers and audience, reassured of our humanity.

McDonald: This amazing group of people who all leapt and jumped and followed their dreams because Jim said, "Go, spread your wings.

Get smarter.

Get stronger.

Come back."

And here we all are now ten years later back together to keep the dream going.

Crabtree: In spite of opportunities and national tours and in New York and on Broadway, they're here because they want to be.

McDonald: I don't know of a life that would have existed without the Playhouse.

And I think that's true for a lot of us.

And I think that's why we keep coming back and why this place means so much to us and the Crabtrees mean so much to us.

Because they took a gamble on all of us and we see kids now today that we'll be in meetings and you'll even hear us say, "I see a lot of myself in that kid.

Let's hold on to that one.

Let's see what we can do for them."

Bryce: A family came together and felt that it was important for this to exist.

It was such an unlikely place but at the same time, art grows everywhere.

[applause] ♪ After all these years, imagine hearing laughter once again ♪ ♪ She's going to meet her family ♪ ♪ Going to meet her family ♪ Any minute ♪ The carriage will be coming, coming, coming, coming... ♪ ♪ Any minute now!

♪ [applause] "Bright Lights, Little City" is available on DVD.

To order, please call 931-528-2222 or visit www-dot-WCTE-dot-o-r-g.

This program is brought to you in part by: Where it all started and never stopped.

The soundtrack of America.

Made in Tennessee.

By Crossville, Tennessee In the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

{Tee Shot Sound] By the First National Bank of Tennessee.

By Rob and Lisa Harrison.

And by these supporters of the creative arts.

And this program A full list can be found at APTOnline.org.

{Sound Effect] [Theme Music]