The Back Story

Frank B. has been the president of the Sam Bass Board of Directors for several years now. This time. He has been giving us his time and talent for quite a few years as director, actor and Board member. And his talents, like his person, are considerable.

Years ago, he asked me to costume his "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof." His vision intrigued me, as he saw each of the characters as a representation of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Maggie is Lust, Brick is Sloth, etc. I did that for him, and, since, he has asked me to costume several shows.

In "Moon Over Buffalo," he needed a pair of "slops" for a scene in which he is Cyrano de Bergerac. The pair that the costumer had made for him shattered on stage during rehearsal because they were too small and the fabric was too thin and the construction too shoddy. There needed to be two similar pairs--one with velcro fastening them together, because they got torn in two by tug-o-war. I stayed up all night making him the pants in time for opening night. I even made the velcro ones so they worked better than those the costumer had built.

When he asked me to costume "The Women," I was over the moon! All those women! All those costumes! All those 1930s ball gowns! Several of those women were Austin actresses, drawn to us by their acquaintance with Frank through his work in Austin theaters. I got crosswise with some of them because I grumbled about tattoos in places that would give fits to make up people and certainly gave me fits. I still don't understand why a person who intends to be an actress feels the need to have tattoos on her shoulders, forearms, ankles, etc. It makes my job more difficult, and, when I have 19 women in 35 roles, some of whom with as many as seven costumes each, I don't need the extra stress. Particularly when I am one of the 19, with three roles of my own.

He played Teddy in "Arsenic and Old Lace," where I was Martha. He spelled my MIL's name wrong in the program, in fact, gave her an entirely different name, when writing of the scholarship she funded, and I told him she was going to come back and haunt him. He accused me of sabotaging his performance. That stung, after all my efforts, over the years, to make him look good by building costumes to adequately cover a physique more suited to the skills of Omar the Tent Maker.

I had pre-cast him in "All My Sons," and he bailed on me without notice. The result was that I got to cast a fabulous Kate, and got a comic actor for Joe. He did very well in the long run, but it wasn't really his cup of tea. Joe is a role that Frank would be very good in.

Right after the end of "All My Sons" run, he rounded up all the Board members and got them to vote me off, in a particularly humiliating manner. He sat there at the meeting with his back to me, while the Vice President told me that I was no longer an asset to the theater, that I needed some sort of "help," and that I needed to turn in my key and vacate the premises. Lies were told about the incident that putatively caused this, and I was not given an opportunity to refute the charges.

When Jim shot himself, Frank was the one and only Board member who did not send a card, an email, a call...nothing. Neither did he show his face at the gathering at the theater or at the memorial.

Cold day in Hell, indeed!