Alumni Notes
The Threepenny Opera’s Carmen Capalbo ’48 In 1954, producer and director Carmen Capalbo ’48, who died on March 17, persuaded Lotte Lenya, widow of composer Kurt Weill, to reprise the role of Jenny Diver she created in the original 1928 production of the Brecht/ Weill musical, The Threepenny Opera. She agreed; the New York production earned rave reviews and went on to become one of off-Broadway’s biggest hits. With a cast that included Bea Arthur, Scott Merrill and Jo Sullivan, Threepenny played a record-breaking 2,611 performances at the Theatre de Lys—surpassed only by The Fantasticks—and won special Tony awards for Lenya and for the production itself. After the success of The Threepenny Opera, Carmen directed the original Broadway productions of Graham Greene’s The Potting Shed, William Saroyan’s The Cave Dwellers and Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, starring Wendy Hiller and Franchot Tone. In partnership with Leo Lieberman ’48, Carmen formed the Spur, a repertory company that produced plays at the Cherry Lane Theatre, where he directed Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing. In 1961, he directed the Brecht-Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, with Barbara Harris and Estelle Parsons, at the Anderson Theatre on Second Avenue; it was not a critical success. Carmen’s son Marco has said that his father never recovered from it. Carmen continued to work into the 1980s. He acquired the stage rights to the Nelson Algren novel A Walk on the Wild Side and worked on turning it into a musical, but all that came out of the project was the Lou Reed song. His last project in the theatre was the direction of a musical of The Chosen, from the novel by Chaim Potok. He left the production after two previews. Born on November 1, 1925, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Carmen acted in community theatres as a child. As a high school student, he directed and acted in a local Sunday-morning show, Children’s Playhouse. During World War II, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He was married to and divorced from ballerina Patricia McBride. As a sideline to his work in the theatre, he was an expert on George V stamps issued in Britain during World War I, a hobby that earned him membership in the Royal Philatelic Society. Carmen Capalbo was 84.
An Actor for the Ages Charles Nolte ’46 International stage and screen actor Charles Nolte ’46, who also directed, wrote and taught, died January 14, 2010, in Minneapolis. Born in Duluth, Nolte moved to Wayzata where he was voted “most likely to succeed” by the 1941 graduating class of Wayzata High School. He enrolled at Yale School of Drama after two years at the University of Minnesota and two more in the U.S. Navy. At Yale, he was elected VicePresident of the Yale Dramatic Association. He moved to New York in 1946 and made his debut with Julie Harris in a revival of Tin Top Valley with the American Negro Theatre in Harlem. Soon after that came his Broadway debut in Antony and Cleopatra, with Katherine Cornell and featuring Maureen Stapleton, Tony Randall, Eli Wallach and Charlton
Heston. High points of his Broadway career include Mr. Roberts and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, both with Henry Fonda, and the title role of Billy Budd, an adaptation of Melville’s novel, a role he repeated on television’s Schlitz Playhouse of Stars in 1952. Nolte’s films include War Paint (1953) with Robert Stack and Peter Graves, The Steel Cage (1954) with John Ireland, and The Vikings (1958) with Kirk Douglas and Janet Leigh. He acted on the stage in Europe in the early 60s and when he returned to the States, earned a doctorate at the University of Minnesota, where he joined the faculty. His play Do Not Pass Go was produced off-Broadway. He also wrote libretti for two operas by Dominick Argento: The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe and Valentino. As Professor Emeritus, Nolte donated his journals to the University of Minnesota, which named a theatre space after him in 1997. Nolte’s last stage appearance was in the 2008 production of Exit Strategy by Bill Semans and Roy M. Close at Mixed Blood Theatre. According to friends, Nolte died while listening to a recording of Bellini’s Norma, one of his beloved operas. He was 87 years old.
A Home for Artists Helen Hurwitz ’51 It’s a long way from a farm in Iowa to Yale School of Drama, but Helen Trilhus Hurwitz ’51, who died on February 2, was determined to make the journey. She was a graduate of Luther College in Decora, IA, where she majored in drama and music. Called Tula in those days, she taught speech and English in Iron Mountain, MI, before moving East to act in summer theatre in Plymouth, MA, Saranac Lake, NY, and Cooperstown, PA. In 1948 Helen Trilhus met Al Hurwitz ’49 at Yale School of Drama, where they were both students, Helen an acting major, Al receiving an MFA in general theatre studies. They married and moved to Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village and were active in the off-Broadway theatre scene of the early 1950s. When they relocated to Miami, Helen appeared at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in a play with Imogene Coca. With the birth of their three children she became a serious cook and won a trip to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as a Pillsbury Bake-off finalist. In the 1960s Helen and her family moved to Newton, MA, where she studied at the Al Saxe Acting Studio and led workshops in theatre games for Newton’s Arts Six Project. Due to her involvement in local theatre, the Hurwitz home became a gathering place for artists, actors and educators from around the world. Helen was 86 when she died at her home in Chilmark, MA, surrounded by her loving family. To honor her, the Helen Trilhus Scholarship Award in Art Education was established at Maryland Institute College of Art.
YSD 2010–11
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