MEMBER HIGHLIGHT:
Jeanne Tufts Cassidy
by Nancy Burkholder
Spending time with Jeanne Tufts Cassidy is always such fun. A raconteur par excellence, Jeanne always entertains with humor and delight.
Jeanne Tufts Cassidy was the youngest of four children, Molly, Sonny, David and Jeanne, born in Winchester, Massachusetts. Her father was a banker in Boston who commuted daily by the Boston and Maine Train. Her mother, a Smith graduate, encouraged the family in the arts.
Jeanne says she always painted as a child. She remembers her first oil painting was of the Brewsters, a series of rocks in the ocean, which she painted at their summer home in Hull. Her father commuted summers taking the Nantasket Steamer from the Boston docks to the Pemberton Land Spit.
When she was 12 years old, she joined a small group of youngsters who met on Sunday afternoons to study theatre with a lady who taught the Stanislavski Method of acting. When asked what exactly is the Stanislavski method, Jeanne said it emphasizes working from the inside out–using real feelings instead of fake ones.
Certainly, Jeanne’s love of theatre must have been in her genes. Her older brother, Sonny–yes, the famous Hollywood actor, Sonny Tufts–performed summers at the Dennis Playhouse on Cape Cod when Jeanne was a teenager.
When she was sixteen she was involved with a group who loved poetry and play reading. She said they read plays that were forbidden by their parents, such as Ibsen’s “Ghosts” which involved the horrors of syphilis. The play could not have been too bad, said Jeanne, since it was on the summer reading list of the excellent public high school in Winchester.
Later, at sixteen, Jeanne wanted to study at a school which had an inspiring painting and drama department. Her father had passed away but her mother said she could attend Beaver Country Day if she could find a group of four to commute to the school in Chestnut Hill. That is where Jeanne met the three Coffin sisters, Ruth, Barbie and Dodie, lifelong friends.
Jeanne spent two summers in high school as an apprentice at the Russian School of Acting in Mount Kisco, New York. She learned her craft there by doing everything; upholstery, costumes, some technical help, and painting scenery. She says she was always cast in the crowd scenes! But she really learned theatre and much about acting, and about painting. She remembers one summer when Henry Fonda was playing in “The Virginian” in MT Kisco. The lights went out during a horrendous thunderstorm, and Fonda charmed, calmed and entertained the audience by playing his guitar. In later years, when Fonda was playing in “The First Monday in October”, Jeanne asked him after the play if he remembered her, and he said, “Yes, you were a Villager.” Jeanne laughed and said she was always in the group scenes.
When asked what exactly is the Stanislavski method, Jeanne said it emphasizes working with imaginary articles. The actor must make the article or situation real to themselves and to the audience. They cannot use any props, but must act out the scene using body movements along with emotions, and dialogue to convey the scene to the audience. A typical Stanislavski lesson would be for a student to act out without props the news your parents are visiting your apartment in 10 minutes.
After high school, Jeanne went to New York City to try her hand at the theatre. She was in off Broadway plays with actors such as Horton Foote but she found she needed to eat. The family helped her enroll in Columbia University and she later earned her masters from Sarah Lawrence with a certificate to teach. Jeanne said she shared her apartment with three women. One was going to the New York University School of Medicine to be one of the 8 women enrolled out of the 200 men. Jeanne never knew what would be in the refrigerator–an ear or another body part!
In 1946, Jeanne was offered a chance to avoid starvation again. Jeanne says the New England Conservatory of Music directors decided they needed to help the singers learn how to perform in a more natural manner. She was offered the job of opening a drama department at the Conservatory.
Jeanne met her husband Frank sometime after when he was playing in summer stock on the Cape. It was not long after they came to Westport Point and Jeanne discovered the Westport Art Group. Frank got a job as director at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The Cassidys moved there and Jeanne took a job teaching English and Theatre Arts at American University.
Many happy summers have been spent on Macy Lane with family and friends.
Jeanne said she did whatever needed to be done during her many years on the WAG Board. She was in charge of the craft element of the shows for a number of years. Jeanne spent countless hours creating signs inside and out. One of my favorites is the front hall sign with the old-fashioned diver bent over with the saying “Take a plunge! Join the Westport Art Group.” She also was a record keeper. There are show records that Jeanne kept in her neat pen. I particularly appreciate the one-day children’s Community Show and art class she created with art teacher Carol Duby. The children would paint their impressions of the show, and then Carol and Jeanne would have “the line up” just for the children.
Jeanne has painted with the Thursday group for many summers and during winters since she retired. Jeanne’s distinctive style, whether in watercolors or oils, is relaxed but precise. My favorite painting is her oil of square dancers at the Point Church on summer Saturdays. She says she learned a great deal from her years painting at WAG especially from Steve Orlowski classes.
When I think of Jeanne and want to thank her for contributions to WAG, it is of memories of “Entertainments” for the various functions such as the Valentines Teas. What humor we enjoyed–sly, subtle and hilarious. It was fun to see the sister act of Jeanne’s old friends Ruth and Barbie and Dodie from Beaver Country Day reading excerpts with devilish delight from Thurber’s “Fables of Our Time”, or Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth”. The Thursday painters got into the act one year with “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” What a surprise when the artists turned forward to face the audience, their paintings hitherto hidden from view, and their caricatures were presented.
Such a hoot!
Jeanne is retired now but loves visitors to sit with her over a glass of ice tea and remember happy stories of WAG and the theatre while looking out at her lovely pasture.