Review: ‘Sons of Hollywood’ at Windy City Playhouse is set in film’s silent era — a time Tinseltown suddenly became less accepting
Under the name Ramon Novarro, the Mexican American actor José Ramón Gil Samaniego became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1920s and early 1930s. After the famously handsome actor’s success in “Ben Hur” in 1925, he was widely seen as silent Tinseltown’s leading Latin lover.
Around the same time, the actor William Haines was forging his own career as a leading man: in Haines’ case, as a wisecracking matinee idol. If Novarro was the studio-system prototype for Charlton Heston, Haines was a prototype for Cary Grant.
The struggles of Novarro and Haines make up the main story of “Sons of Hollywood,” a world premiere play with music at the Windy City Playhouse on Chicago’s North Side, penned by Barry Ball and Carl Menninger and expansively directed by David H. Bell. Trey DeLuna plays Novarro, Adam Jennings is Haines and the excellent Abby Lee plays Lucille LeSueur, better known as Joan Crawford, here an affirming, caustic friend of both men.
The work homes in on the homosexuality of Novarro and Haines and argues that once Hollywood adopted the Hays Production Code in 1930, their careers were essentially done in by the studios’ self-imposed homophobia. Gone was the relative tolerance of the prior, mostly silent years. Ball and Menninger cast their two heroes in different roles: Novarro as the deeply repressed Catholic, always praying after sex and peering around corners to see who might be watching, and Haines as a famously open gay man who refused to participate in some kind of sham “lavender” marriage, insisting on living life on his own terms. It eventually cost him his movie career. (He replaced that with a second act as a high-end interior designer).
Ball and Menninger’s play, which will be especially entertaining for those seduced by stories of the so-called golden age of Hollywood, takes us though this history, depicting characters living large in Hollywood only to find themselves progressively pushed ever more firmly back into the shadows by MGM and other studios, which were increasingly intrusive into the private lives of those under contract.
The show is billed as a play with music, which basically means songs between the scenes, some penned by Ball himself and some simpatico hits of the era, such as “Masculine Women! Feminine Men!” and “Let’s Misbehave.”
I think this already quite engrossing piece could have a future: the first thing to be sorted out by the creative team is whether or not they want it to be a musical. Certainly, the imaginative Bell has directed it like one, with apt staging nods on Lauren Nigri’s backlot-like setting to classic Hollywood musicals, so that’s probably the way to go. Thereafter, the piece could use much more urgency and pace and it also needs to lose some of the melodramatic paper-tiger villains in favor of the several well-rounded characters here, such as Haines’ partner Jimmie Shields, nicely played by Kyle Patrick.
Both DeLuna and Jennings are frequently poignant and they could give yet more, if the script allowed. The crew here has caught the expansiveness and fun of the era; if more time was spent on the raw pain in the shadows, the piece would yet further engage.
Review: “Sons of Hollywood”
When: Through April 16
Where: Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Tickets: $55-$75 at windycityplayhouse.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.