» PHOTOS: The Kenley Players brought stars to Dayton each summer
John Kenley
John Kenley is a theater legend in Dayton.
He began his show business career in 1924 as a dancer-acrobat in the “Greenwich Village Follies” and then became a chorus dancer on Broadway.
When the Great Depression struck, Kenley went to work with the Shubert brothers, who were famous theater owners and producers.
In 1940, Kenley started his own summer stock theater in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, and the Kenley Players acting company was born.
After a stint with the U.S. Merchant Marines in the late 1940s, Kenley re-formed the Kenley Players and took them on tour.
Dayton became part of a three-city Ohio circuit that included Akron and Columbus.
During the summer theater season, Kenley routinely sold out Memorial Hall several nights a week into the early ‘80s.
Between 1940 and 1995, he produced more than 500 plays and musicals, which featured a constant rotation of well-known entertainers.
Kenley charged ticket prices that the average person in the community could easily afford. Kenley is credited, in part, for the robust arts and theater scene in Dayton. By making professional theater accessible, people who may have never otherwise seen a stage production got hooked on live theater.
In a 1979 Dayton Daily News interview, Kenley said, “I have no personal life in the summer. I’m at the theater 14 hours a day. But it’s not boring. It’s my social life, it’s my business and I like it. I’ve always liked it. In fact, I can’t think of any other kind of life.”
The Players
In his staggeringly long career (he died in 2009 at the age of 103), John Kenley managed to bring some of the biggest stars of TV, stage and film to Dayton and other towns in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Comedic actor Paul Lynde was considered by many to be the most popular performer with the Kenley Player over the years. Lynde was a cast member of the TV show “Hollywood Squares.”
A short list of other well-known performers who starred in Kenley Players productions includes:
⋅ Florence Henderson
⋅ Mickey Rooney
⋅ Dom DeLuise
⋅ Joan Rivers
⋅ Barbara Eden
⋅ Zsa Zsa Gabor
⋅ William Shatner
⋅ Jerry Stiller
⋅ Desi Arnaz Jr.
⋅ Sally Field
⋅ Vincent Price
⋅ Henry Winkler
⋅ Sonny Bono
⋅ Betty White
⋅ Billy Crystal
⋅ Rosemary Clooney
⋅ Robert Goulet
According to the Dayton Daily News archives, season tickets in 1982 and 1983 ranged from $80 to $100 for 10 shows.
Lowering the curtain
Financial difficulties forced one of the country’s oldest summer-stock companies to lower the curtain after the 1983 season. The Kenley Players attempted a comeback in 1995, but that only lasted one season.
Marion’s Piazza in Dayton has several black and white photos of Kenley Players stars on the restaurant’s walls.
A 1971 Dayton Daily News article said, “Each Wednesday, the troupe traipses out to Marion’s Piazza, on Patterson Road, for a funsies pizza-and-vino party.”
A website for the Kenley Players lists every Kenley production at Memorial Hall from 1966 to 1983, with the added bonus of 1995, and the show’s headliner.
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