Friday, February 23, 2007 10:50 PM CST
For 50 years, Guy Little Jr. has been the man behind the curtain
By KATE HENDERSON, Staff Writer
khenderson@jg-tc.com
Being friends with the Wicked Witch of the West isn’t something everyone can claim.
But that’s not the point of this story.
The point is that one man followed his own Yellow Brick Road, only his storybook tale wasn’t a dream. It actually happened.
In order to know his story, one must first be sure not to “ignore the man behind the curtain.” That man is Guy Little Jr., and his dream was and is the Little Theatre on the Square in Sullivan.
Now, 50 years after his dream came true, Little still contends there always was no place like home.
Born and raised in Sullivan, Little started his theater career at age 3. His debut, he said, came at the First Christian Church.
“Up into a cherry tree, who would climb up there but me,” the now 72-year-old sang in his mesmerizing tenor voice to demonstrate his very first performance.
At age 5, Little was introduced to theater by his mother, Inis, an English teacher who also directed plays. Soon, Little’s love for theater grew and his father, Guy S. Little, a cattle farmer, built him a marionette theater where he was able to present shows for his classmates and friends.
“I was producing ‘Hansel & Gretel’ at age 8 in my backyard,” Little said.
At 16, Little made his way to Keene, N.H., where he made his debut in equity theater. He later returned home to act in high school plays, but went back east to Somers Point, N.J., where he earned his Actor’s Equity card at age 18. An Actor’s Equity card is a card given by the Actor’s Equity Association, a union representing more than 45,000 stage actors and managers.
Soon after earning his card, Little went to the University of Miami in Florida on an opera scholarship. He earned his degree in three years, graduating in 1953 and moving to New York City where he worked on his master’s degree at Columbia University.
Little married his wife, Gerili, a singer and actress, in 1954. Together they sold curtains and draperies in the city. They had two children, Sean and Vanessa.
But Little said it was always his desire to come back to Central Illinois and open a theater, so at age 21, he looked for locations in Decatur, Champaign, Bloomington and Peoria with little luck.
“Nobody was very interested in having a young person take over a theater,” Little said.
Little said at the time, movie theaters were in decline so he approached the Grand Theater in Sullivan, which showed silent films, about leasing it for a summer. The owner had a drive-in theater he concentrated on during that time.
Little produced and directed nine musicals in nine weeks that summer; something the area had never seen.
“We did ‘Brigadoon,’ ‘Roberta,’ ‘Song of Norway,’ ‘Kiss Me Kate,’ ‘Guys and Dolls,’ etcetera,” Little still remembers. “I worked nearly 24 hours a day directing, producing, scene building, doing costumes and props.”
After selling out the last production of his first season, Little decided he had an incentive to do a second and in 1957 the Little Theatre was born. It was in 1961 when Little officially purchased the building that now bears the name of The Little Theatre on the Square.
“The theatre was little, my name was Little and still is Little,” he said of the theatre’s name.
Leonard Anderson, Little Theatre executive director, said what Little created wouold be impossible for someone to start in a small town again.
“What he had already was members of the Actors Equity Association when he started,” Anderson said. “He paid his dues and made connections on the East Coast.”
Little said his mother worked in the cramped box office and his father took care of payroll and other business to get him off the ground.
Little used his contacts out east to cast hundreds, 300 to his count, of big-name stars over the years and still does.
Little lists Anna Mary Dickey, a metropolitan opera star, Margaret Hamilton, the “Wizard of Oz” Wicked Witch of the West, Ruth Warrick, best known as Phoebe Tyler Wallingford on “All My Children,” Ann B. Davis, who played Alice on TV’s “The Brady Bunch,” and hundreds of others with fantastic credits as those he worked with at the Little Theatre over the years.
In 1978, Little left the Little Theatre to produce in Milwaukee.
“It was time to move on,” he said. “I’d booked every star that could be booked from Betty Grable to Caesar Romero to Ann Miller and etcetera.”
For the theatre’s 50th year, however, Little has been invited to cast “Follies,” Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical masterpiece -- produced on Broadway in 1971, starring, among others, Dorothy Collins, who starred in Sullivan in 1968.
Little has contacted many of The Little Theatre’s stars of the past for the performance and said the casting is progressing well.
“He saw ‘Follies’ in New York two times and, hopefully, he’s got some finds there,” said John Stephens, Little Theatre marketing director.
Many stars who sold out The Little Theater over the years like Colleen Zenk Pinter of “As The World Turns,” Bill Hayes and his wife Susan Seaforth Hayes from “Days of Our Lives,” Ann B. Davis of “The Brady Bunch,” Mark Pinter whose credits include rolls on “Law & Order” and “All My Children,” and Anna McNeely, who created the role of Jennyanydots on Broadway in “Cats,” will be returning.
Little will also be performing the roll of Dimitri Weismann. The show is scheduled for four performances to kick off the 50th year of the Little Theatre June 1-3.
Little said he always knew the theater would last this long. Even when he sold the theater 10 years ago after leasing it for $1 a year, he was confident it would continue drawing audiences.
“What he created was a one-of-a-kind thing,” said Stephens.
The theater, which is now a non-profit facility, is the only equity theater between Chicago and St. Louis.
“I wanted to do it all and I did,” Little said. “This was my vision and it’s wonderful that it has been here for 50 years.”
Little said he is “hopelessly stage struck” and when he’s not in Sullivan, he travels following the theater.
His vision proves that “somewhere over the rainbow,” dreams can come true.
Contact Kate Henderson at khenderson@jg-tc.com or 238-6858
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 Ken Trevarthan (JG/T-C)
Little Theatre on the Square founder Guy Little Jr. sits surrounded in his gallery of stars on the wall of his den at his home in Sullivan.
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Stephen wrote on Jul 17, 2006 8:22 AM: