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Producer John Kenley, who brought stars from Hollywood to Packard, dies at 103
CLEVELAND — John Kenley, a theater producer who ran a legendary summer stock circuit in Warren and other Ohio cities beginning in the 1950s, has died, a family friend said Thursday. He was 103.
Kenley’s productions attracted numerous Broadway and Hollywood stars to Warren’s Packard Music Hall.
He died last Friday at the Cleveland Clinic from complications of pneumonia, said Anita Dloniak, a friend and press agent.
Kenley produced hundreds of plays and musicals. His Kenley Players, a summer stock circuit that began in Dayton in 1957, featured such stars as Arthur Godfrey, Ethel Merman, Mae West, Burt Reynolds, Billy Crystal, William Shatner and Robert Goulet.
He later opened theaters in Warren, Columbus and Akron before moving into the Playhouse Square Center in downtown Cleveland in 1984.
“There was nobody like him,” said David Jendre of Youngstown, an actor who worked with Kenley in the Kenley Players’ heyday at Packard Hall in the 1970s. “He was a real mentor to me.
“I started with him in 1977 or ’78. He cast me as a drunken little dancer busboy in “She Loves Me” and took a liking to me and started giving me parts,” recalled Jendre, a longtime local actor best-known for his work with Easy Street Productions.
“You will never see a guy like that again. He was different because he used his own money to produce shows. It’s impossible to do that today because of the cost. But his shows were comparable to any touring shows because he put everything into them,” said Jendre. “The area was lucky to have him. It was a major event every summer. He brought in people like Ethel Merman, Talullah Bankhead, Joel Grey and Paul Lynde, who would sell the house out.”
Jendre said he stayed in regular contact with Kenley over the years and last spoke with him about six months ago.
Kenley returned to the area in the mid-1990s in a short-lived stint to produce shows in Akron. He retired after that, said Jendre.
J.E. Ballantyne Jr. of Youngstown, another longtime Valley theater veteran, also remembered working with Kenley during the ’90s.
“I worked with John three or four times,” said Ballantyne. “He was a hell of a promoter, and he knew what would sell in this area. He did more for theater in this area than anybody. He gave me an opportunity, and I stage-managed two of his shows in his last season in the ’90s. He was going back and forth between Akron and Dayton — we would do it in Akron and then take it to Dayton.
“He was a great guy and I learned a lot from him.”
Kenley began acting in New York City in the 1920s and once served as an aide to famed producer Lee Shubert. He became a summer theater producer in 1940 in Deer Lake, Pa., and worked in other eastern cities including Washington, D.C.
In a 1950 interview with The Washington Post, Kenley described the summer theater he ran in Lakewood Park, Pa., where theatergoers, many of them coal miners and their families, saw stars such as Gloria Swanson and Lizabeth Scott.
“I only charge $1.50 top, which makes some of the other summer managers livid,” he said. “I’d rather have full houses every night than be stuck with a batch of empty seats.”
By the 1970s and 1980s, he was featuring TV stars such as Pam Dawber from “Mork and Mindy,” who played Eliza Doollittle in “My Fair Lady” for Kenley one summer in Ohio. But the older movie stars also were still active.
In a Chicago Tribune interview in 1977, he recalled finding Debra Paget, a 1950s star appearing in a production for him, rehearsing all alone when he went back to the theater late one night to pick up something.
“These stars work hard,” he said. “They’re an amazing ilk. ... There was a reason why they were stars in the first place.”
XInformation from the Associated Press was used in this story.