THE BELLS ARE RINGING The Old Wharf Theater 1960 Edie Karas & Morgan Stock

I met Morgan Stock on what turned out to be his 85th birthday, and we talked about the eight decades that have made him one of the best-known and best-loved names in Monterey County theatre.

When did it all start? "Well, about in the first grade, really," he told me. "I think I held up the sign saying ‘Merry Christmas’ - probably upside down. It was clear even then I liked getting up in front of people.

"Mother and Dad sent my sister and me off for elocution lessons four miles away in Newark, Ohio - only you pronounced it ‘Nerk, Uh-hi-yuh’ if you came from around there. We lived in a farm community where most of the kids quit school at sixteen. But our parents were a bit different. My father was a good musician, and he and mother both seemed to want us to take on board some high culture. So we went to classes where we were taught to recite stuff by that folksy poet - what’s his name? You know, ‘It takes a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a home. . .’ That’s it! Edgar A. Guest. . . My sister got good enough at it to be permitted eventually to recite with a piano background, so it was pretty high culture, I can tell you!

"In seventh and eighth grades I went in for any plays that the school was putting on. I played Scrooge, and then at Granville High School I was end man in a minstrel show. After that we did something called ‘Spooky Tavern’ that was such a hit that we moved it from the Welsh Hills Granary Hall to the Granville Opera House. More high culture!"

Morgan enrolled in a liberal arts course at Dennigan University in Granville, but within a year the chance came for him to go with his father and his younger sister to join the older sister in Hollywood. "We drove from Ohio to Southern California in a Model A Ford in 1935, and I’ve been a west coast man ever since."

John Marshall High School in Los Angeles didn’t offer much scope for budding performers. "It was awful. They didn’t even have an auditorium, but some time during my high school days I remember doing some kind of a one-act in one of the local halls. When I got out of school, I got theatrical work right away - ushering at the the Paramount Theatre in central L.A. I earned enough at that to pay my $600 tuition to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse - with a little help from my family and friends.

"While you were a student at the Playhouse, you spent most of your time studying stuff like theatre history, costuming and lighting. If you appeared in Playhouse shows, it was walkons. . . but once I’d graduated I got a good part in a Barrie play called THE PROFESSOR’S LOVE STORY. That went so well that my friend Jack Joly and I headed east to become Broadway stars. . .Well, I auditioned whenever and wherever I could. Once I tried out for a part in a Broadway revue. Sang a Harry Owens song called ‘Princess Papuli Has Plenty Papaya and She Loves to Give It Away.’ Remember that one? When I asked the piano player how much he’d charged to accompany me, he said, ‘Two bucks.’ I said, ‘I’ve got one.’ He said, ‘Deal!’ but I got nowhere there or at any other venue. Jack and I went east in July and were back in L.A. by November.

Pasadena Playhouse acting class - 1939

"I decided to return to college and picked on Santa Barbara. Got some good parts, one of the best was as the detective in NIGHT MUST FALL - and Antonio in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Then - surprise! surprise! - Greetings in the mail. The U.S. government wanted me for World War II. It was 1941, and I went to Camp Roberts for basic training. While we were there another fellow and I cooked up a show. There were so many wonderful talents floating around in the military in those days. We had a guy who had played piano with Les Brown and his Band of Renown. So we did a variety show with guys singing and dancing and some of the senior sergeants showing off some slick and speedy rifle drill routines.

"A bunch of us decided to try for Officer Candidate School. I got in and went in May of ‘42 to Camp Wheeler. Then I was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina as part of the 118th Infantry Regiment - a National Guard group that promptly got shipped off to Iceland! We took over from the British and spent all our time in the northern part of the country training soldiers and freezing our butts off. Iceland was kind of a key area in the Second World War. It provided a perfect hideout for German U-Boats. . . I skied a lot but never got really proficient."

Morgan’s regiment were eventually sent on to England where they pitched their tents near Warminster in the parklands surrounding the stately home of Lady Sybil Phipps. They were still under canvas in Lady Sybil’s cow pasture on the day Germany surrendered. "We thought we would all be allowed to go off and celebrate, but our C.O. seemed to think we might cut loose and pillage and rape and who knows what if he let us out, so we just spent the day training yet more Yankee recruits. . ."

The very next day - D plus 1 - Morgan relieved his boredom by sustaining his first and only war injury, when a bullet aimed at a target on the rifle range, ricocheted and planted some shrapnel in his right leg. . ."When I phoned from the butts to say I was bleeding, the shavetail at the other end of the phone kept saying,’Wot yer say, Lew-tinnent?’ but he finally got the message, and I spent three weeks in a military hospital waiting for that piece of junk to settle somewhere. . . I’ve got a lump marking the spot to this day."

Transferred across the channel to Chateau Thierry, Morgan got in a bit more overseas showbiz activity while counting the days till his discharge. "I was given the assignment of culling the files for musicians and forming an orchestra to play at dances. We started out only fair. The problem seemed to be everybody expected there to be some guy standing in front leading the musicians.

"Well, I could take a cue and wave a stick as well as the next guy, so that became my job - and I eventually did some singing as well. I can remember lighting into old favorites like ‘Going to Take a Sentimental Journey’ - remember that one?"

Back in civilian life and resettled on the West Coast, Morgan did a succession of jobs including pumping gas and serving on the San Marino Police Force. "I was on graveyard shift starting at midnight, so I had time to try out for some local theatre stuff. I got back to the Pasadena Playhouse. I did such a good job in a Chinese play called LADY PRECIOUS STREAM that a guy walked up to me as I was leaving the theatre and introduced himself as an MGM talent scout. Said they were looking for someone to play a football player in a Peter Lawford/June Allyson picture called 'Good News'."

THE CHERRY ORCHARD Stanford 1950

A trim and muscular 180 pounds, Morgan Stock seemed an ideal choice for the role until the scout looked again and saw the receding Stock hairline. "It looks like you’re going kind of bald," he said. "Hey!" Stock protested, "Bing Crosby wears a hair piece, why can’t I?" But it was no good. "He walked away and there went my film career!"

Brother Jake Stock was laying bricks in the Monterey area, so in 1947 Morgan moved north and started taking night classes at the newly-launched Monterey Peninsula College on Fremont while carrying hods for Jake during the day. After a year of college work, Morgan transferred to Stanford, where he studied drama under Bay Area luminaries like Hubert Heffner, F. Cowles Strickland, Norman Philbrick - "and that powerful Shakespeare lady - what was her name? . . . That’s it: Margery Bailey."

SEPARATE TABLES The Golden Bough Circle Theatre Late 1950s

Out of Stanford with an acting degree, Morgan Stock returned to Monterey, where he founded the MPC Drama Department. The rest - well, like they say, it’s history - and you can read it, in abbreviated form, on the MCTA website (www.mctaweb.org), in the June 2000 "Spotlight On - The MPC Theatre Company."

I asked Morgan how much acting and stage production have changed since he began in theatre. "Very little," he said promptly. "We had a bit of the sort of Stanislavski Method stuff at the Playhouse, but by and large it was and still is a matter of ‘Learn your lines, keep your zipper zipped and don’t bump into anything.’ - that’s Spencer Tracy, not Morgan Stock - but it makes good sense.

"There’s been a lot of copy recently about how Marlon Brando changed American acting. Maybe a bit - but long before Brando - right back to Shakespeare, for God’s sake - you were supposed to look and act natural.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK The Old Wharf Theater 1956

"Every acting class has maybe three or four very good talents, and maybe eight or ten who can get by. The rest are people the Pasadena Playhouse used to advise, ‘Just go get married, dear.’ Me, I’ve never said that. If the student has a real passion for it, I always tell them, ‘Keep trying. Keep on trying.’"

And Morgan Stock, with a lengthy and impressive list of credits plus his name on a local theatre, ought to know about that.