History on Stage: The Detroit Players, Prohibition, and the Great Depression

Abstract

History on Stage: The Detroit Players, Prohibition, and the Great Depression by Marijean Levering Nov. 26, 1918:Meeting of theBoard ofGovernors of 'ThePlayers" was called to orderbyVice-President Weeks (accent on theVice).... Player Standish waspenalised a bottle ofScotchfor beingabsent without leave. Jan. 14, 1919:After a discussion as to whether or not impeachment proceedings would lie against President Standish for failure topay the fine assessed against him for absencefrom a Board Meeting earlier in the season, themeeting adjourned. Feb. 4, 1919: Upon motion of the entireBoard, President Standish's impeachmentproceedings were dropped, thefine remitted and the off-set tendered,accepted} This is how the board of governors of The Players, a private, all male social club that produced theatrical presentations, responded to prohibition?with humor (Michigan instituted statewide prohibition in 1918, a year and a half before national Prohibition).2 This is also how The Players would confront the Depression, if at times the humor was a litde grimmer. Examining The Players provides not only an opportunity to look at a private club inmore depth than is offered by most scholarly accounts of individual clubs, but also a chance to study an elite group during two periods of significant change in American history. What ismost striking about this group's records is how clearly they exhibit two distinct attitudes at Players, one political and one personal. The first attitude is demonstrated most clearly in the group's This article includes excerpts from Marijean Levering's recendy published book, Detroit on Stage: The Players Club, 1910-2005 (August 2007). Reprinted with the permission of Wayne State University Press. For more information, please visit http://wsupress.wayne.edu. 1Board of Governors Meeting Minutes, November 26,1918; Players Minutes, January 14; February 4, 1919, both in Players Archives, Players Playhouse, Detroit, Mich. (Players Minutes are bound sequentially and dated, but they have no other reference numbers.) 2This article capitalizes Prohibition as a national event and uses lower case when referring to state prohibition or when the term is generic. Michigan Historical Review 33:2 (Fall 2007): 47-79 ?2007 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 48 Michigan Historical Rxview plays: a recurrent theme was that government needed to stay out of everyone's business, whether economic or private. The second attitude, though found in the plays, is also scattered throughout the minutes of the group's board meetings: men must take personal responsibility and meet their obligations. If the government was not supposed to interfere in people's lives, then men had to take care both of themselves and of those people for whom they were responsible. The first attitude in particular seems almost contradictory considering that at least a few members of The Players were themselves prominent government officials during the early twentieth century. In that sense these men were the government. James Couzens was both the mayor of Detroit from 1919 to 1922 and a U.S. Senator from 1922 to 1936. Truman Newberry was also a U.S. Senator, and other members of the group held Detroit city offices. Admittedly, it may also be true that the perspective gained from their positions of power convinced them that the government should, ideally, stay out of people's private lives. One of the club's more active members, Robert M. Toms, was a judge who prosecuted bootleggers even while his club enjoyed the fruits of their labor, and he could not have been ignorant of the presence of alcohol at the club.3 Having changed their minds about prohibition, some club members worked to resolve this inconsistency. Several members of The Players, such as Henry B. Joy, Emory W. Clark, and Frederick M. Alger, who had been avid "drys" (even though their club was most definitely "wet"), became vocal advocates in the movement to repeal Prohibition. Joy, Alger, and a former Player, Sidney T. Miller, were directors of the Michigan Committee of the National Association against the Prohibition Amendment.4 This also reflects the desire of many Players' members to keep government out of what they saw as a private matter. Before examining The Players in depth during the 1920s and 1930s, itwould be helpful to describe in...