Julia Heflin
Encyclopedia
Julia Dorn Heflin was a journalist, a theatre producer and a teacher. The Washington Post
aptly called her "a firebrand." In the 1930's, with an English-speaking cast, she staged an incendiary production of the Clifford Odets
play Waiting For Lefty on a truck-bed in a Moscow
street -- where perhaps the only words understood by the Russians who gathered to watch were "Strike! Strike!" which brought clamorous cheers from the comrades. She was still making sparks in 1977 when, at the formal ceremony marking her retirement from Mount Vernon College
in Washington, DC, she chided the administration for insufficient support of the theatre curriculum.
As a Phi Beta Kappa, fresh from Smith College
and Columbia University
, Julia joined the Hedgerow Repertory Theatre, where she acted and was assigned to the production office. She worked briefly on Broadway before heading to the Soviet Union. She was one of the first Americans to work in the theatre there before World War II
. She was a Reggisseur Practicant at the Meyerhold and Vahktangov theatres, and helped workers on a collective farm produce the opera, Quiet Flows the Don.
Deploying her formidable curiosity, Julia became an interviewer and free-lance European/Soviet feature correspondent for Stage Magazine and the old New York Herald Tribune
, first abroad, and later when she returned to the United States. She interviewed Nemirovitch-Danchenko, who, with Konstantin Stanislavsky, founded the Moscow Art Theatre
. Among many others, she also interviewed actor-singer-activist Paul Robeson
, stage director Max Reinhardt
, film director Sergei Eisenstein
and playwright George Bernard Shaw
.
Returning to New York, Julia staged a play with boisterous boys at a public works settlement house, and, with Lee Strasberg
, taught acting in evening classes at the Laboratory Theatre in Manhattan
.
She worked for Broadway producers Eddie Dowling
, Oscar Serling and Lewis Gensler, and assisted Theresa Helburn at The Theatre Guild http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=94319. She was co-founder, with St. John Terrell, the Bucks County Playhouse
and served there as co-producer and director.
She then began a career in radio with CBS
as a staff researcher, writer and interviewer for the popular We, the People series. Her interviews with such theatrical luminaries and popular cultural icons as Charlie Chaplin
, Salvador Dali
, Bette Davis
, Helen Hayes
, John Huston
, Gene Kelly
, Sinclair Lewis
and Walt Disney
provided her with incomparable primary source materials which shaped her subsequent work on the stage and in the classroom.
Julia married journalist and public relations advisor Martin Heflin, whose brother Van Heflin
and sister Frances Heflin
, were both film and Broadway actors. Julia's daughter, Marta Heflin has appeared on Broadway and in Hollywood films, and continues her career as a cabaret singer in New York. When Julia moved to Washington, D.C., to be with her husband, she began her academic career as teacher and director, first at Mount Vernon Seminary and subsequently at Mount Vernon College. During almost 30 years as a demanding teacher, she brought wide experience, insight and passion into the classroom, and onto the stage in the direction of scores of plays she directed at the schools.
She was a member of The College of Fellows of the American Theatre
.
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
aptly called her "a firebrand." In the 1930's, with an English-speaking cast, she staged an incendiary production of the Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, socialist, and social protester.-Early life:Odets was born in Philadelphia to Romanian- and Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Louis Odets and Esther Geisinger, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high...
play Waiting For Lefty on a truck-bed in a Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
street -- where perhaps the only words understood by the Russians who gathered to watch were "Strike! Strike!" which brought clamorous cheers from the comrades. She was still making sparks in 1977 when, at the formal ceremony marking her retirement from Mount Vernon College
Mount Vernon College for Women
Mount Vernon College for Women was a private women's college in Washington, D.C. It merged with George Washington University in 1999 and is now known as the Mount Vernon Campus of The George Washington University....
in Washington, DC, she chided the administration for insufficient support of the theatre curriculum.
As a Phi Beta Kappa, fresh from Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Julia joined the Hedgerow Repertory Theatre, where she acted and was assigned to the production office. She worked briefly on Broadway before heading to the Soviet Union. She was one of the first Americans to work in the theatre there before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. She was a Reggisseur Practicant at the Meyerhold and Vahktangov theatres, and helped workers on a collective farm produce the opera, Quiet Flows the Don.
Deploying her formidable curiosity, Julia became an interviewer and free-lance European/Soviet feature correspondent for Stage Magazine and the old New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
, first abroad, and later when she returned to the United States. She interviewed Nemirovitch-Danchenko, who, with Konstantin Stanislavsky, founded the Moscow Art Theatre
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...
. Among many others, she also interviewed actor-singer-activist Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, stage director Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
, film director Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
and playwright George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
.
Returning to New York, Julia staged a play with boisterous boys at a public works settlement house, and, with Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...
, taught acting in evening classes at the Laboratory Theatre in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
.
She worked for Broadway producers Eddie Dowling
Eddie Dowling
Eddie Dowling was an American actor, screenwriter, playwright, director, producer, songwriter and composer....
, Oscar Serling and Lewis Gensler, and assisted Theresa Helburn at The Theatre Guild http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=94319. She was co-founder, with St. John Terrell, the Bucks County Playhouse
Bucks County Playhouse
The Bucks County Playhouse is the State Theater of Pennsylvania, and is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.When the Hope Mills burnt in 1790, the grist mills were rebuilt as the New Hope Mills by Benjamin Parry. ....
and served there as co-producer and director.
She then began a career in radio with CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
as a staff researcher, writer and interviewer for the popular We, the People series. Her interviews with such theatrical luminaries and popular cultural icons as Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
, Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
, John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
, Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
and Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
provided her with incomparable primary source materials which shaped her subsequent work on the stage and in the classroom.
Julia married journalist and public relations advisor Martin Heflin, whose brother Van Heflin
Van Heflin
Emmett Evan "Van" Heflin, Jr. was an American film and theatre actor. He played mostly character parts over the course of his film career, but during the 1940s had a string of roles as a leading man...
and sister Frances Heflin
Frances Heflin
Mary Frances Heflin was an American actress.-Life and career:Heflin was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the daughter of Fanny Bleecker and Dr. Emmett Evan Heflin, a dentist. She was the sister of Academy Award-winning actor Van Heflin...
, were both film and Broadway actors. Julia's daughter, Marta Heflin has appeared on Broadway and in Hollywood films, and continues her career as a cabaret singer in New York. When Julia moved to Washington, D.C., to be with her husband, she began her academic career as teacher and director, first at Mount Vernon Seminary and subsequently at Mount Vernon College. During almost 30 years as a demanding teacher, she brought wide experience, insight and passion into the classroom, and onto the stage in the direction of scores of plays she directed at the schools.
She was a member of The College of Fellows of the American Theatre
College of Fellows of the American Theatre
- Origin :The College of Fellows of the American Theatre is an honorary society of outstanding theatre educators and professional theatre practitioners. The organization was formed in 1965 as a project proposed by members of the American Theatre Association...
.