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Passages
Herta Ware: A Light Extinguished
By Michele Johnson
No one who saw her could forget Herta Ware, with her gamine smile, slim figure and flowing silver hair. Former wife and life-long friend of Will Geer and matriarch of Topanga’s beloved Theatricum Botanicum family, she was also a mother figure for all of Topanga. She died peacefully on August 15, of complications of Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 88. Fit and active until late in life, in her sixties she rode her bicycle everywhere in the Canyon and in her eighties would stride along Greenleaf and up Entrada, her favorite Topanga haunts, with her cherished dogs by her side. But she could be most often sighted at her beloved Theatricum, first onstage in dozens of parts, small and large, and later led like a queen to her central seat on the floor, where her delighted smile lit up the place.
She was a strong woman born into a family of strong women. Her grandmother Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor, a union organizer and women’s rights activist, became the first woman to run for public office in Connecticut. She took on the cause of farm workers and coal miners, called for enforcement of child labor laws and helped Upton Sinclair gather information for his muckraking classic on the meat packing industry, “The Jungle.” Bloor traveled all over, often with her granddaughter Herta at her side. Herta was devoted to her grandmother and was inspired by “Mother” Bloor’s activism to become an activist herself.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THEATRICUM ARCHIVE
Herta Ware circa 1995.
Meanwhile, Herta’s mother, who Herta’s daughter Melora Marshall calls “a brilliant violinist,” nurtured her little girl’s musical side. She introduced her to “the erudite music world of Washington, D.C.,” said Melora. Herta studied classical music as a child, then sang and wrote folk songs, accompanying herself on guitar.
As a young woman, Herta moved to New York to find her way as an actress and singer. While performing there for a Maritime Union benefit, she met Will Geer, 14 years her senior and already a successful Broadway actor. They drew close and she joined him on stage, notably in the 1935 leftist play “Let Freedom Ring.” Will and Herta married in 1938 and continued to embrace their mutual concern for the working man.
Studs Terkel, the author who later wrote the classic “Working,” introduced Will and Herta to Woody Guthrie, and the couple soon joined with him and Burl Ives on a tour of migrant camps, entertaining dust bowl refugees. As Will Geer put it in his introduction to “The Woody Guthrie Songbook,” “It was the summer that Hitler marched to Poland….We played in the migratory camps, sang ballads and did sketches. Most of our audiences came from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and roared and slapped their thighs when Woody sang about familiar things in his songs.”
They remained good friends throughout their lives. Woody visited them in New York after Herta had her first baby, Kate. She was singing in clubs at the time. “I was young and had confidence. I loved folk music,” she remembered in a 1999 interview. Woody had hocked his guitar. In a surge of generosity, Herta gave him her much loved Martin and was dismayed to see him walk off into the rain with it without a case. “That was the end of my Martin guitar. I never saw it again.”
In the Forties, Will settled into a lucrative career as a radio star and film character actor while Herta became a full-time mom of daughters Kate and new baby Ellen. By 1950, when they had their third child, Thad, they were living in comfort. “We had a nice house in Santa Monica,” Herta recalled. Will was busy making pictures, including socially aware films like “Broken Arrow” and “Intruder in the Dust.” That all ended when The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), originally formed by Congress to investigate internal fascism, decided to investigate possible communist ties to the entertainment industry. They subpoenaed Will, who traveled cross-country to Washington with Herta and the kids to be heard. He refused to name names and took the Fifth, but not before he laid into the committee: “I believe that [the Communist party is] being persecuted,” he told the Representatives, “Like the Mormons, the Jews, the Quakers, the Masons…even radical Republicans in Lincoln’s day.” Later, Will summed up the experience this way: “We all have to appear in a turkey once in a while.”
PHOTOS BY MARY ANN DOLCEMASCOLO
Herta as the Fortune Teller in “Skin Of Our Teeth”…
Geer was blacklisted and the Santa Monica house was lost. They found sanctuary in Topanga “due to Momma’s foresight,” daughter Ellen, now director of the Theatricum, remembered. Herta quickly put her finger to the wind and realized they needed a refuge. “She saw what was happening,” Melora explained. “I found this place,” Herta said simply a few years ago as she sat near the bust of Will in the Theatricum’s Shakespeare garden. Will and Herta invited other blacklisted friends up to the Canyon, including Pete Seeger and Oscar winners Anne Revere and Gale Sondergaard, and put on Sunday shows to keep their spirits alive. Woody often sang, though as time went on, Herta said, “His disease (Huntington’s Chorea) was beginning to show. He couldn’t hold his guitar.” The Geers offered the itinerant Woody a place to live on the property that is still called “Woody’s Shack.”
On those Sundays, Will would usher an audience in from the road to sit on bales of hay and watch their original folk plays, dances and concerts. After, he would pass the hat. In Herta’s book “Fantastic Journey—My Life with Will Geer,” she described in her sweet and soulful voice what it was like for the blacklisted actor: “Many a blacklisted writer has functioned fully with his blacklisted label covered by a pseudonym…But actors, wholly dependent on their faces, voices and their whole presence, have nowhere to hide. Bravo to those who pushed on through, whose health and libido remained intact and blossomed sweeter than ever through all the manure. Infinite sadness for those who could not. They were cut off in their prime. It is one of many American Tragedies.”
Will and Herta’s marriage couldn’t stand the strain of those days. In 1954, they divorced. Herta married again and had her fourth child, Melora. Meanwhile, they rented out their Topanga home, not returning to it for years. Geer’s stage career was saved when John Houseman hired him for Broadway. Then Otto Preminger ironically cast Geer to play a senator in “Advise and Consent” in 1962 and he was back in business. In 1973, when Herta was single once again and Will was successfully cast as Grampa on TV’s “The Waltons,” Will and Herta reunited and, with their children, moved back to Topanga and formed the Theatricum Botanicum.
Herta was delighted to return. “She loved the Canyon and the people in it,” Melora says. She began doing a lot of what she loved best. She appeared in many Theatricum productions. Two of her favorite roles were as Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie” and the nurse in “Romeo and Juliet.” Her film and TV career took off, too. She appeared in films like Ron Howard’s “Cocoon” and on many TV guest spots, including a memorable role on “ER.” As Melora puts it, “She had a wonderful television and movie career going in her sixties and seventies. She was very unique, very individual in Hollywood. She had such a youthful quality. She was so spry, so spunky, had so much humor and beautiful, flowing hair. She had such a capacity to love and it showed up on screen. Her charm was undeniable.”
and as Lucetta in “Two Gentleman of Verona” in 1993.
That charm enchanted all who knew her. The community appreciated her gifts, calling on her to speak in an unforgettable way, before the County Board of Supervisors to plead for Summit Valley. Susan Nissman described the scene this way in her retrospective for the new edition of “The Topanga Story:” “One of the more profound moments came when Herta Ware, grand matriarch of the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, spoke extemporaneously about how Topanga works successfully as a community. She talked about the Theatricum and the educational programs it provides to thousands of Los Angeles school children each year. She talked about the quality of Topanga Elementary School, the respect for each individual child, the number of artists in the Canyon, the Topanga Artists Co-operative, how the community established the labor exchange which became a model for others, and life along Topanga Creek. ‘We’re nice people,’ she said. After much applause, Richard Wulliger, Chairman of the Planning Commission commented, “You are undoubtedly the spirit of Topanga as well as the poet of Topanga.” In appreciation to all she meant to Topanga, Herta was named Grand Marshal of the Topanga Days Parade.
Most telling of all, Melora says her mother “was very devoted to her children. She understood what they needed and gave them a lot of room to be what they wanted to be. She kept us from straying.” Encouraged by Herta, her family remains in Topanga, keeping the Theatricum strong and supporting the Canyon in a countless ways.
Herta is survived by her children Kate, Ellen, Melora and Thad; her grandchildren Ian Flanders, Kelly Linville, Megan Geer Alsop, Willow Geer Alsop, Benar Geer, Dawn Rose Geer, Orin Geer, Marshall McDaniel and Kellen McDaniel; and her great-grandchild, Liam Flanders.
[not related. Just sharing. Herta was a friend in my childhood]
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