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Elizabeth Perry, Performer
 Elizabeth Perry (Actor/Playwright) began her career with a Helen Hayes Award Scholarship to the American
Theatre Wing presented by Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur. At a young age she appeared with Paul Muni and Ed
Begley in Inherit the
Wind, was Polly Peachum
in The Three Penny
Opera, created the
role of Catherine Howard in Royal
Gambit, and played
Allison in Look Back
in Anger, and Maggie
in Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof in summer stock
before going to Hollywood, where she starred in numerous TV classics such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Outer Limits,
as well as in the West Coast premieres of The
Great God Brown, The Balcony, The Collection, and Touch
of the Poet. (pictured: Elizabeth Perry as Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.)
On her return to New
York, under the artistic direction of Ellis Rabb and Jack O'Brien, with the APA Phoenix Repertory at New York's
Lyceum Theatre and at the APA base in Ann Arbor, she played Lady Macbeth, The Player Queen in Hamlet, Eliante in The Misanthrope,Verenanda
in Chronicles of Hell, The Little Queen in The King Dies, and Woman in Beckett's Play.
On Broadway, Ms. Perry
played opposite George C. Scott in the hit revival of Present Laughter,
in 84 Charing Cross Road, The
Women, and in The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940. Off-Broadway she played in Isn't it Romantic, A
Perfect Ganesh, The Chairs, and Fefu
and Her Friends, among
many other outstanding productions. Her regional credits include Painting Churches, The Subject Was Roses, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Farm,
Peer Gynt, Glass Menagerie, Steel Magnolias, and On
Golden Pond.
On television she
has played major roles on
Kate and Allie, Another World, As the World Turns, and was Michael Learned's best friend on
the series, Nurse. Ms. Perry is a well-known theatrical coach
and conducts workshops on playwrighting and musical theatre.
She is a winner of the Villager Award for her performance in "A Difficult Borning". She is co-founder with the late Robert Elston of the American Renaissance
Theater Company. 'Sun
Flower' debuted in
Mrs. Stanton's birthplace, Johnstown NY, has played in the Capitol Rotunda, the Senate Building, at Governor Pataki's
Summit for Young Women, at the Washington Arena's Old Vat Theatre, in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the
Homegrown and Houseman Theatres, at the Celebration of Women's Rights in Seneca Falls, and at the invitation of
the White House for the Millennium Celebration in Washington, DC.
She has performed as Elizabeth Cady Stanton on CNN, CSPAN, CNBC, NYI, and NPR She has appeared in 'Sun Flower' from Palm Springs to Alabama. She has even played Carnegie Hall and Vegas!
Philip Rose (Ms. Perry's
manager/producer) made his Broadway producing debut with Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier which won the Drama Critics Award. He also produced
the film. He has been involved as director, producer and/or author of many Broadway plays including The Owl and the Pussycat , Broadway's first venture into non-traditional
casting, Purlie Victorious, and Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? with Al Pacino. Among his musical productions are Purlie for which he received
three Tony's (director, producer, and co-author) and Shenandoah
starring John Cullum which received six Nominations and two Tony Awards. He directed the TV production of Purlie,
receiving the ACE and Silver Awards from the International Film and TV Festival of New York. Mr. Rose was the Executive
Producer of the Disney film, The Cemetery Club starring Ellen Burstyn and the independent film starring F. Murray
Abraham and Eric Roberts,
By the Sword. He recently
has been receiving rave reviews for his theatrical memoir published by Limelight Editions, "You Can't Do that
on Broadway! - Raisin
in the Sun and other Theatrical Improbabilities'. a book "most memorable for his unflagging dedication to the causes he has always
believed in, so often reflected in the plays he produced." Recently he was honored at the Majestic Theatre
for his outstanding contributions to the American theatre and nontraditional casting
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in 1815 and married a like mind, the abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton, in 1841.
While raising seven children, she was a fledgling journalist for Amelia Bloomer's 'The Lily' under the pseudonym
"Sun Flower" and a full-fledged journalist under her own name for Horace Greeley's 'New York Tribune'.
While at the international abolitionist convention in London in 1841, Elizabeth was stunned that her fellow abolitionists
refused to allow women to speak, especially the most admired Lucretia Mott. There the two women formed a friendship
which led to Elizabeth's authoring and delivering The Declaration of (Women's) Sentiments', at the Seneca Falls
Convention in 1848. Elizabeth, her Cousin Libby Smith, and Amelia Bloomer united in popularizing women's trousers,
later called Bloomers. A mentor to Susan B. Anthony, the women formed a lasting partnership for the recognition
of women's rights, the consequence of which resonates into the twentieth century. She died in 1902 never having
achieved her dream of the vote for women. The nineteenth amendment granting women their inalienable right to vote
was finally ratified in 1920 by one crucial vote. A young Senator from Tennessee who was planning to vote otherwise
received a note from his mother which said, "Son, do the right thing."
FAREWELL
TO MY DEAR PHILIP
Philip Rose, Daredevil Broadway
Producer Who Advanced Liberal Causes, Dies at 89
By Robert Simonson
02 Jun 2011
Philip, my dear
friend and producer, died Tuesday May 31st, 2011, and left a big hole in my heart and in the hearts of so many.
What I like best about this article is that it says he was "a gentle man" and strong at the same time...Elizabeth Perry
Philip Rose, a Broadway producer
who bet—and sometimes won—on unlikely theatrical projects, including several works that advanced the cause of African-American
stage artists—most famously the original production of Raisin in the Sun—died May 31 in Englewood, NJ. He was 89.
Small, scrappy and politically courageous,
Mr. Rose's producing ethos was aptly captured by the title of his memoir, "You Can't Do That on Broadway."
Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun made history in 1959 as the first Broadway drama written by, directed by
and mainly starring African-American artists. It astounded the theatre community by becoming a hit and running
more than a year.
He went on to produce Purlie Victorious, a comedy by actor Ossie Davis, about a black Southern preacher in the
Jim Crow South who wants to build a church for his congregation; The Owl and the Pussycat, a romantic comedy by
Bill Manhoff that daringly starred the interracial couple of Alan Alda and Diana Sands; Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?,
a drama that introduced a young Al Pacino to theatre audiences; Purlie, a musical version of Davis' play; and Shenandoah,
a Civil War-set musical that starring John Cullum that ran for more than 1,000 performances.
Short and slight, Mr. Rose was nevertheless
a man of driving confidence. "He never thought of himself as diminutive either in size or in ambition,"
said Merle Debuskey, his publicist of many ventures, including Raisin. "He would play tennis as if he were
Pancho Gonzales and shoot pool with the confidence of Willie Hoppe." A gambler in outlook and in practice,
he would have his stage manager call him at his weekly poker game with playwright Neil Simon to read off the grosses
of whatever show he was producing at the time.
Mr. Rose was a music publisher with
no track record as a producer when he attended a casual reading of Raisin in the Sun in the Greenwich Village apartment of Hansberry and instantly insisted on
bringing the play to Broadway. He had one ace in the hole; he knew actor Sidney Portier, who agreed to take the
lead role. Portier recommended an old acting school friend, Lloyd Richards, to direct. The cast was filled with
actors who would become stars later on: Claudia McNeil, Louis Gossett, Diana Sands, Douglas Turner, Ruby Dee and
Ossie Davis.
Still, theatre owners and backers
wouldn't touch the property. The only African-American shows to succeed at the box office until then had been musicals.
With no theatre to put his play in, Mr. Rose took Raisin out of town. New Haven reviews were positive, and weekend
sales were strong, particularly within the black community. A four-week stand in Philadelphia followed, again with
great notices and strong box office. Yet, Broadway was silent. Finally, the Shubert Organization sent down a emissary,
a man named Jack Small, to check the show out. Backstage, after the show, Small offered Mr. Rose the Barrymore
Theatre, but only after another run at the Shubert Theatre in Chicago. Mr. Rose jumped on the chance. The drama
was later nominated for a Tony Award as Best Play.
Bringing in the longest of long shots,
Mr. Rose was thereafter addicted to taking chances. Often this resulted in a flop. His follow-up to Raisin, a play
called Semi-Detached, ran less than a week in 1960. Also quickly forgotten were 1963's The Heroine and 1964's Nobody
Loves an Albatross.
But when he hit his mark, the results could be memorable. In the late '60s, he decided Purlie Victorious, the Ossie Davis play he had produced in 1961, would make a good musical. He tried to
get Frank Loesser to write the score, but eventually hired one of Loesser's proteges, Peter Udell, and Gary Geld,
with whom Udell had written the pop hit "Sealed With a Kiss." The show opened in 1970, ran for 688 performances,
and made stars of Cleavon Little and Melba Moore, both of whom won Tony Awards.
Geld and Udell also wrote the score
for Shenandoah, which opened in 1974 and was an even bigger
success. Mr. Rose's decidedly liberal bent shown through in most of his productions—many of which he also directed—and
the musical was no exception. Though set in the Civil War, many critics identified its subject as the Vietnam War.
John Cullum played a pacifist Virginian who wants no part of the conflict. Nonetheless, the war tears apart his
family. Cullum won a Tony Award for his portrayal, as did James Lee Barrett, Udell and Rose for the book, which
was based on the 1965 film written by Barrett.
Shenandoah was Mr. Rose's last great success. Kings, The Trip Back Down, Angel, My Old Friends, and Comin' Uptown, all produced in the 1970s, failed to find an audience. Mr. Rose fared no better in the
next decade, with Amen
Corner, Late Nite Comic
and Checkmates all closing quickly. In 1989, he revived Shenandoah, but it ran only a month. After Truly Blessed and The
Cemetery Club in 1990,
Mr. Rose's Broadway activity ceased.
Philip Rosenberg was born Jul 4,
1921, on the Lower East Side of New York to Russian Jewish parents. His family moved to Washington, D.C. during
the Great Depression. There, he began working for many of the local stores in the area, and became acquainted with
the black neighborhoods of Washington.
"I was only 16 with no skills
and took this job of collecting 50 cents or a dollar a week for the credit department stores. They sold to the
black community who lived in slums just blocks from the capitol," he later recalled. "So I ended up going
into people's homes. Where I was born, I never had occasion to meet black people. In Washington, I was scared,
but after a while I was accepted by some of the families and made many friends. I was from a poor background, too—one
of five children—and we had discussions about our lives. I learned so much from them about gospel music and jazz.
Washington was a very segregated city, but we found ways to go out together. That experience changed my life."
The experience would later inform
which plays he chose to back. "Both in the theatre and in real life, Phil fought for what he believed in and
believed what he fought for," said Steven Suskin, a theatre historian who worked as a stage manager on several
of Mr. Rose's Broadway productions. "He was at the same time a fighter and a gentle man."
He moved to New York in 1945. While
acting in a Gilbert & Sullivan company, he met actress Doris Belack, who became his wife. She survives him.
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/151416-Philip-Rose-Daredevil-Broadway-Producer-Who-Advanced-Liberal-Causes-Dies-at-89
For Bookings: ROSALEE
PRODUCTIONS
(212) 877-5538 or (954) 966-8656
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The African American Portrait Gallery was originally written and directed by Elizabeth
Perry for award winning actor Larry Robinson, whose rich base voice is reminiscent of the noted singer/actor/activist
Paul Robeson. The play reaches across ethnic and demographic lines to delight and inform audiences from school-age
children to adults and is now available as a playscript for other performers. In 2007 Mr. Robinson played to enthusiastic
audiences of more than 12,000, sponsored largely by corporations and foundations, especially during African American
History Month performing nearly every day at universities, schools, libraries, churches, and homeless centers from
South Florida to Boston.
