- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJohn Kremchek
- Stage producer John Kenley was born John Kremchek in Denver, CO, in 1906. His parents owned saloons, and later moved the family to Cleveland, OH. In the late 1920s he traveled to New York City in search of a career on the stage. He got a job with John Murray Anderson's "Greenwich Village Follies" in a dancer/acrobat act with Martha Graham (it was Anderson who suggested he change his name from Kremchek to Kenley).
In 1928 he went to work for the Shubert brothers, who were major Broadway producers. He stayed with them for ten years, mainly as a reader--he would receive plays from writers and agents, and recommend to the Shuberts whether they should e produced or not. During World War II he served as a pharmacist's mate in the US Merchant Marine. After the war he moved to Deer Lake, PA, a resort town favored by the wealthy elite who ran the state's coal industry. There he bought an abandoned church, converted it into a theater, and staged his own productions, naming it the Kenley Players. He built that into a chain of theaters in the Pennsylvania/Ohio area. Eventually, he moved his operation to the 3000-seat State Theatre in Cleveland. He was renowned for persuading major film and TV stars to appear in his productions., such as Joan Fontaine, Bert Lahr, Signe Hasso, Sylvia Sidney, Gloria Swanson, Buddy Ebsen, Bela Lugosi, Kay Francis and Glenda Farrell, among many others.
He died in Cleveland, OH, in 2009.- IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com
- For more than fifty years, Kenley's summer stock productions became what Variety called the "largest network of theaters on the straw hat circuit". His Kenley Players company brought popular shows and celebrities to Ohio, in Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Warren. Many of the shows also played in Flint, Michigan. Kenley often rode his bike backstage through the large theaters and was known for putting make-up on his dog, Sadie. He often came up with gimmicks to market and sell tickets.
- Purser-Pharmacist's mate Kremchek participated in a number of harrowing exploits including the support of Allied landings in Southern France. When a convoy of 30 ships came under attack, he was aboard one of only eight that remained afloat.
- He produced The Barretts of Wimpole Street played at the Barnesville theatre in 1950 starring Susan Peters as the invalid Elizabeth Barrett. Peters was a former MGM starlet who had been paralyzed from the waist down in a hunting accident. Peters delivered her lines from a sofa which was repositioned in every act to give the illusion of movement. When he took the show to Washington DC, he became the first producer to desegregate live theater there.
- His family had moved several times ahead of the spread of prohibition, finally settling in Erie, Pennsylvania.
- After the war, Kenley was unable to find stage work in New York and began producing summer stock in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
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