Homer Curran
The evening of September 11, 1922 was one of the most memorable of Homer Curran's life. On that night the theatre bearing his name gave its premiere performance. Refusing to take the limelight no matter how much society coaxed, Homer Curran was content with enjoying the applause for his beautiful theatre. When Homer Curran died in 1952, the San Francisco Chronicle called the Curran a monument to his memory. In a sense it is. But, as he demonstrated on opening night, it is also something more. With all the emotion and applause, bows and roses, and even the boredom, missed lines, chewing gum and silent curses which fill a theatre over the years, the Curran - like any good theatre - almost has a life of its own.
The Shuberts
The Curran theatre was born of a conflict between two rival New York theatrical corporations. Starting in 1910, Sam S. and Lee Shubert, Inc. mounted a determined effort to overcome the monopoly of theatre productions and bookings held by the aptly named Theatrical Syndicate. To break the Syndicate, the Shuberts had to build a nationwide chain of theatres which could be booked from their offices in New York.
The Partnership
For a San Francisco theatre the Shuberts entered into a partnership with Homer Curran. They could not have chosen a better man. Curran knew San Francisco and its theatrical likes and dislikes, was an able manager, and was dedicated to maintaining high dramatic standards. For his part, he was lucky to have the Shuberts in his corner. They helped him raise the $800,000 necessary to construct the Curran theatre. And more importantly, as a member of the Shubert chain, he could obtain New York and European productions which would not have made the long trek to San Francisco just to play in a single theatre.
Opening Night
When San Francisco's "radiant maids and matrons, smartly frocked, and their masculine escorts, faultlessly attired" came out to welcome the Curran at its opening, they were not merely grasping at the first bit of New York glitter which drifted through town. They were celebrating the birth of a showplace tailor-made for a city which always loved to bask in its own elegance and sophistication. The theatre itself was beautiful. With its rose, tan and blue interior, its twenty rows of brown leather seats, its four hundred light crystal chandeliers, its embroidered blue and purple velvet curtain, and its pastoral murals by Arthur Matthews, the Curran was called the "handsomest theatre on the coast."
The Early Years
Throughout the Twenties, San Franciscans filled the Curran to see light dramas and musical comedies such as The Cat and the Canary, Coquette and Patsy. No, No, Nanette was the City's favorite when it opened in 1925. However, these "tabloid operas" were not the only shows applauded at the Curran. Classical music and dance also held an important place in the theatre's repertoire.
In The Thirties
In tune with the changing mood of the city, the plays presented at the Curran in the 30's became more serious. The Abbey theatre Players came from Ireland with the plays of J.M. Synge in 1935 and 1938. In 1936, Nazimova starred in Ibsen's G. This abundance of seriousness did not mean that comedy was dead at the Curran. But the comedies that were shown tended to be more moral and more satiric than the carefree musicals of the twenties, such as Shaw's Candida and Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet and Will Rogers' premiere performance as a legitimate actor in Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness.
The Independent Curran Theatre
In the spring of 1939, Homer Curran's agreement with the Shuberts ended; but the flow of plays into the Curran did not. In fact, the theatre, then under the joint management of Curran and Louis Lurie, showed a great variety of excellent productions. Before 1942, the theatre presented the Lunts in The Taming of the Shrew, Rodgers and Hart's musical I Married An Angel, Raymond Massey in Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois, H.M.S. Pinafore and Ingrid Bergman in O'Neill's Anna Christie.
Managed by Homer Curran and Louis Lurie, the Curran became even more a part of San Francisco than it had been as a member of the Shubert chain. Louis Lurie was known to be a soft touch for tickets to otherwise sold out performances. And Homer Curran, freed from the necessity of showing Shubert booked productions, organized the San Francisco Civic Light Opera to produce locally the "top rate dramatic entertainment" which formerly had had to be imported from New York. The SFCLO kept the Curran filled by presenting everything from Noel Coward and Gilbert & Sullivan to Show Boat and Desert Song.
The Fabulous Forties
After the war, New York and European productions returned to the Curran. The San Francisco Light Opera continued to show regularly. But the Curran was also brightened by Eddie Foy, Tallulah Bankhead, Ed Wynne, Gertrude Lawrence, Spike Jones and Maurice Chevalier. The theatre sparkled with stars; and San Franciscans flocked to see them. A 1946 presentation of Oklahoma saw box-office lines stretching one and one-half times around the block.
Although Homer Curran died in 1952, the Curran never left the theatrical trail he had blazed. In one year alone, Curran audiences saw Katherine Hepburn in As You Like It, Guys and Dolls, Vincent Price in T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party and Ballet theatre (the precursor of American Ballet Theatre.) And in 1959, they saw both Carol Channing in Show Business and the Lunts in The Visit.
The Curran Theatre Today
After extensive renovations in 1993 - made to accommodate the five year engagement of Andrew Lloyd Webber's mega hit musical, The Phantom of the Opera - the Curran Theatre continues to thrive under the direction of Carole Shorenstein Hays and Scott E. Nederlander. Their Best of Broadway series brings the highest quality musical theatre productions and award-winning plays to the Bay Area. Over the years, Best of Broadway subscribers have enjoyed everything from the Tony Award-winning plays Fences and Proof to the spectacular historical musical Les Miserables, as well as pre-Broadway productions of Boaz Luhrman's production of Puccini's La Boheme and Wicked.
This year the Curran will host the pre-Broadway engagement of the new musical, Lennon; Dame Edna's newest Pre-Broadway show Back With A Vengeance; the 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, I Am My Own Wife; Shakespeare's Comedy As You Like It, directed by Sir Peter Hall; and the new Holiday Musical Irving Berlin's White Christmas.