03/02/2024
We made the headlines in Boomer Magazine's Spring issue (on the stands now)!
>>Stevie Vallance didn’t set out to write a
musical r***e about the night iconic
Canadian bandleader, Guy Lombardo,
performed with his orchestra at a dance pavilion
in Southampton back in the ‘30s, but once she learned this did indeed happen, she knew the story had to be told.
It all started with a door frame.
An accomplished actress from the age of 11,
Stevie spent a career moving between Toronto
and Los Angeles, appearing in movies and
TV series such as Three Men and a Baby, Road
to Avonlea, Knot’s Landing, The Ropers, and Night
Heat. She even won an Emmy for her work on Disney’s animated series Madeline.
When she retired several years ago, it was the small
town of Southampton that called to her.
“It’s not Mendocino or Carmel-by-the-
Sea,” she laughed, “but Southampton has
always pulled at my heart strings. My Dad purchased the heritage-home I now live in back in 1972 and I have wonderful memories of spending summers here
with my family. It’s my Brigadoon!”
Of course, her Brigadoon needed some work. So, during the first
COVID lockdown in 2020, Stevie began renovating the
family-cottage-turned-home. Crowbar in hand, she pried
the top piece of a door frame loose and discovered something interesting. Scrawled across
the underside of the framing was a signature – Mrs. Eliza Knowles.
“I had no idea who Eliza was, so I sent a photo of the
mysterious inscription to the Town of Saugeen Shores Municipal Heritage Committee.” Stevie said. “They got back to me with the fascinating story of the Knowles family.” Credited with bringing tourism to Southampton, Eliza and her husband William built the Parkside Hotel & Resort and later they built almost 20 cottage rentals — including their first house where Stevie now resides — on the shore of Lake Huron, in the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th Century.
When William died in 1918, Eliza pushed on running the resort with the help of her children, while also expanding it, eventually
building a Dance Pavilion and bringing famous big bands to this area to entertain locals and visitors alike.
When Stevie dug a bit deeper into the Knowles family,
she learned that Arlene Letheran (née Knowles), Eliza’s
granddaughter, was still alive. So she reached out to her.
“Arlene was 92 at the time and a few minutes after our meeting Arlene was telling me how after WW1 her grandmother and her father had brought Guy Lombardo to Southampton to perform in the Dance Pavilion they built.” And that’s when the idea for the play, The Night Guy Came to Town, was born.
“It’s a story about a colourful period in Southampton’s
history during the Great Depression,” Stevie recounts.
“About Eliza Knowles and her family and how they brought big band music to this area during the Depression so that people could forget their worries for a night and just dance. It was a time not unlike our own where people are unsure about the future and it tells how the community all came together to produce this incredibly uplifting event in spite of all. Having Guy and his orchestra show up in the small town of Southampton in the middle of the Great Depression was a really big deal!”
A native of London, Ont., violinist and bandleader
Lombardo formed the Royal Canadians orchestra
in the early-1920s with his brother Carmen. Known
for playing the “sweetest music this side of heaven,”
the Royal Canadians became the top dance band in
North America. They played inaugural balls at the
White House and are responsible for making Auld
Lang Syne the definitive song of New Year’s Eve.
Excited to get underway, Stevie pitched the idea to
Charlie Bell, co-founder of the Canadian Big Band
Celebration held annually in Saugeen Shores and
a bandleader himself, who she thought might be
interested in the project. “I barely got the concept for a musical r***e based on Guy’s visit to Southampton out of my mouth, before Charlie was all in,” Stevie said. “His immediate
reaction was, ‘We’ll kick off the 2023 Canadian Big
Band Celebration with it!’ Then in his next breath,
he committed to looking after the music!”
Now all Stevie had to do was write the play.
“I have never thought of myself as a writer,” Stevie
confessed. “Even though I have developed several
outlines for movie and TV show pitches, designed
exercises for animation acting workshops I created,
and, from the ages of 15 to 50, written every day in
a journal, I still consider the script for ‘Guy’ to be
my first time working as a ‘for-real’ writer. I had to
think about formatting lines of dialogue into skits; about actor’s entrances and exits; about musical cues, and over-all timing… it was a significant undertaking.”
But she persevered and the end result was a book
of scripted pages – now registered with the Writer’s
Guild of America – which guides actors, musicians
and stage-managers through the telling of The
Night Guy Came to Town.
“My dad was a writer,” she said with a wistful smile,
remembering her late father. “I think he would have
been proud of my first scripted play.”
Of course, no significant piece of writing is done
in isolation so Stevie worked with local historian
Bill Streeter to research the Knowles family, the
Dance Pavilion that Eliza built, and the history of
Southampton in the early-1900s. Though they tried,
the pair were not able to establish the actual date
that Guy came to town – no ticket stubs remain of
that famous night – but based on local stories passed
down through generations, and Newspaper articles they
discovered in the Bruce County Archives,
they settled on the date Aug. 1, 1935.
“The specific date doesn’t really matter. The Night
Guy Came to Town seeks to recapture the life and
feeling of a ‘dance night’ in Southampton back in
the mid-30s.”
To help recapture that feeling, Stevie needed 14 cast
members – a tall order. Undaunted, she reached out
to the local community and was overwhelmed by
the response. Actors from The Roxy Theatre
in Owen Sound jumped on board, including award-winning
Matthew Evans, who played Eliza’s son
Biscuit, who helped his mother bring Lombardo to
town. Grammy-nominated jazz violinist and vocalist
Drew Jurecka stepped into the role of the big band
leader, while Stevie took to the stage as Eliza Knowles.
It didn’t stop there. With Bill’s help, Stevie tracked down 20 descendants, whose actual grandparents or great-grandparents would have been at Guy’s dance in the 30s. She then met with each of them to see if they would be interested in playing
their ancestors in the play. Six of them said they would.
“Support just fell into place, without me even pushing
it that much,” Stevie said. “People just wanted to get
involved, and not just in the acting roles either. The local
Canadian big band musicians all stepped up to portray actual musicians
in the Royal Canadians; people volunteered for stage
management & marketing; and wardrobe was donated by The Roxy.
It was like the story had a life of its own!”
With the cast in place, the rehearsals began. Under
Stevie’s direction, the actors memorized monologues
they would use to introduce themselves in the play.
They studied ‘character dossiers’ and ‘research packs’
that Stevie and Bill had prepared, so that every cast
member not only knew the character they were
playing, but they also had an understanding of what
was going on locally and around the world in 1935.
Most importantly, Stevie held classes for those cast-members new
to acting to help them find a voice for their role,
to teach them how to stay in character,
and in addition, because the play involved live interaction with the
audience, to give them a crash course on improvisation.
“The Night Guy Came to Town is set at a big social
dance, not unlike a Speak Easy, so I wanted the cast not only to interact with
each other, but with the audience as well,” Stevie
explained. “To prepare them, I would toss out
random questions, or describe situations, and tell
them to respond in character. I even taught them
slang from back in the ‘30s so that when they spoke
they would sound authentic. Words and phrases like
‘swell,’ ‘shake a leg,’ and ‘buck up,’ which means be
cheery,” she laughed. “It got pretty hilarious at times,
but they all rose to the challenge.”
In the end, without any dress rehearsal, and with
only one complete run through of the play, without
the entire cast and band present, The Night Guy
Came to Town held its triumphant opening night at
Southampton Town Hall on Sept. 14, 2023, with a
full house in attendance, “who by the way, all came dressed in 1930’s garb!”, Stevie boasts. The actors stayed true to their Southampton roles, and mingled with the
audience, answered questions about local life during
the ‘30s, and, most importantly, they all danced their
hearts out to the incredible music of the Royal
Canadians.
Under the guidance of Charlie Bell, the band
performed 16 big band arrangements obtained from
Lombardo descendant, Gina Lombardo.
“The music was incredible,” Stevie said. “It mimicked
exactly the way Guy and his band would have played
back then and the musicians each played a member of the Royal Canadians! They dyed their hair, wore outfits from the 1930s, and even mingled with the audience
during intermission. Some of them were having so
much fun, it was difficult to get them back on stage
for the second act!”
Stevie couldn’t have been more pleased with – and
humbled by – the success of her first play.
“A talented and dedicated group of people all came
together to tell the story of Eliza Knowles and her
family – and the night they brought North America’s
greatest big band to Southampton,” she said. “And
when it was done, the audience left feeling ‘swell.’ I
feel honoured to have been part of such a magical event.”
Doug Archer is a local writer who enjoys celebrating the multifaceted
lives of the 50-plus generation. He is also the author of
three locally set mystery-adventure novels.
Bruce County Museum Canadian Big Band Celebration The Night Guy Came To Town
