Don on Broadway
After spending so much time in the standing room section making sketches, Don once got the chance to be on the Broadway stage himself! William Saroyan and Don were good friends. Saroyan wrote in a special part in his play The Beautiful People just for Don. This photograph on the cover of the June 1941 issue of Theatre Arts magazine shows Don playing trumpet in The Beautiful People. The actors are: Eugene Loring (just to the left of Don looking up at him) in the part of Owen Webster, “poet and scientist” and Betsy Blair (to the right of Don). (I do not know who the actor standing on the left is.)
In this issue of Theatre Arts the critic writes:
“Don Freeman, forsaking his sketching board to make his debut in the ‘legitimate’, impersonates the elder brother, who is known chiefly as an offstage tune on the cornet until, at the last minute, he makes an impressive entry, to end the play by reuniting the adoring family - as the cover of this issue illustrates.”
Another anecdote:
“Saroyan told this to Cecilia Agar of PM [Magazine]: “If Mr. Freeman is to play a muted trumpet backstage,” Cecilia asked, “how do you know his notes will carry?” … Saroyan suggested that they go to the artist’s apartment, and make the test. And then they visited Freeman in his home on Columbus Circle - but the artist was too bashful to play the trumpet then… Saroyan and Mrs Agar left, and walked to the Hampshire House, where Saroyan lived. And all during that walk, in the dusk of that Sunday afternoon, they heard Don Freeman - sitting before his open window - playing his trumpet solo, clear across Columbus Circle.”
