On two cold February days (the 16th and the 17th) in 1949 , the senior-year girls from Williamsburg High School gave a Wednesday matinee and Wednesday and Thursday evening performances of the comedy “The Clue of the Red Ribbon” at the Williamsburg Town Hall auditorium. Tickets sold rapidly!
Ferron, Ruth Merritt, Dorothy Golash, Esther Loomis, Theresa LaCourse,
Ann LeDuc, Mary Sroczek, Nancy Dunphy, and Arlene Sears.
This was a real community enterprise. The director was Leo Parent from Florence. Mrs. Francis Grinnell was the faculty advisor. Properties were the charge of Esther Loomis, Howard Tiley and Frank Vaillancourt. Arrangements were taken care of by Ann LeDuc and Theresa LaCourse. Doris Shumway, Jeannette Baldwin, and Ruth Merritt handled the tickets and program. The
Grange male quartet of Fred Cobb, William Culver, Roy Leonard, and Charles M. Damon provided intermission entertainment.
“The Clue of the Red Ribbon: A Three-Act Comedy for Teenage Girls” was written by Robert Forbes (the pseudonym of Roland F. Fernand) and published by the Dramatic Publishing Company in 1946. The characters in the play are Janet, the hostess; Carol, her best friend; Sissy, Mary Beth, Angy, and Jerry, her guests; Mandy and Jane, her cousins; and Miss Summers, the chaperone. The play is set at Janet’s parents’ summer cottage on the shores of a small lake where she has invited the girls to come for two weeks. The plot concerns the disappearance of Miss Summers’s engagement ring and the comedic trials and tribulations of the nine characters as they try to recover the stolen ring!
Of course, it is the red ribbon of the title that provides the clue to the real thief. A good time was had by all! The play was performed two more times, the last performance on the evening of March 25, 1949.
Photographer Herrick took this photograph in the “Tattler” that also appeared in the local newspaper, a clipping from which can be found in the 1949 “Williamsburg/Haydenville News” volume that is part of Dr. Charles H. Wheeler’s 15 scrapbooks of local events compiled mostly during the 1940s and 1950s. Preservation copies of all of Dr. Wheeler’s scrapbooks are part of the Local History Collection in the Meekins Library.
You can also come to the Meekins to browse copies of the “Tattler”, the Burgy High yearbooks preserved in the Local History Collection or connect
to the “Tattlers” via Meekins online. Enjoy visiting with every graduating class and reading about their activities reported in the “Tattler” over the years. Daria D’Arienzo, Meekins Archivist. #throwbackthursday; #tbt.
Posted to Facebook 1/25/2024