- 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.
- His father, a Slovakian saloon owner, baptized him as Russian Orthodox.
- In 2004 he was made an Honorary Life Member of Actors' Equity for his contributions to American theater.
- In 1950, he was the first producer to desegregate live theater in Washington, DC.
- With the signing of his first performance contract John Kremchek became known as John Kenley.
- He was an American theatrical producer who pioneered the use of television stars in summer stock productions.
- He played the vaudeville circuit throughout the 1920s, dancing, singing, and doing impersonations of Al Jolson, Maurice Chevalier, Ethel Barrymore, and Beatrice Lillie.
- Well-known film and TV actors appeared in his productions, also to sell tickets; Kenley was one of the first to use this concept.
- Kenley made his stage debut singing in church in both Russian and English, and was given a solo part at age 4.
- His first theater was converted from a Greek Byzantine church in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania and his second a new theatre in Barnesville, Pennsylvania.
- From 1928 to 1940 Kenley worked as an assistant to producer Lee Shubert. He estimated he read 1000 scripts during that period and discovered William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life and Lillian Hellman's first play, The Children's Hour.
- His Kenley Players company was described by Variety as "the largest network of theaters on the straw-hat circuit.".
- After graduating high school at 16, he moved to Cleveland and despite his lack of training worked for a burlesque show as a choreographer. According to Kenley, "I taught the girls silly simple routines. As I taught them, I got pretty good.".
- He moved in 1925 to New York and landed a part as an acrobat in John Murray Anderson's Greenwich Village Follies.
- At birth, he was intersex (individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals).
- During World War II he joined the Merchant Marines and served aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth. His practical jokes and quirky humor aboard ship earned him the nickname, "The Storm Petrel of the Merchant Marines".
- Kenley is credited with introducing professional live theater to the Midwest, laying the groundwork for national tours of Broadway productions.
- During the TV version of The Odd Couple (1970 TV series), stars Jack Klugman and Tony Randall recreated their TV roles in Neil Simon's original play. Jayne Mansfield played in Bus Stop, Bobby Rydell appeared in West Side Story, Merv Griffin was cast in Come Blow Your Horn, Rock Hudson in Camelot, Karla DeVito in Pirates of Penzance and Robby Benson in Evita. More traditional Broadway stars also appeared regularly, such as John Raitt in Man of La Mancha, Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam and Tommy Tune in Pippin.
- From 1940 to 1995, in towns and cities across Pennsylvania and Ohio, the company presented over 500 productions, most of which were headlined by stars of stage and screen.
- In 1950, he broke the color line in Washington DC, bringing a production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street to Washington and advertising that all seats were "available to any paying customer, without regard for race." Washington was at the time "without professional theater because, in response to segregationist seating policies, the Actors Equity union would not allow its members to perform there," and police showed up on opening night expecting a riot. After a sold-out, trouble-free two-week engagement, Kenley was "feted in the local media, with civil-rights pundits lauding the nobility of his groundbreaking production.".
- In a 1950 interview with The Washington Post, Kenley described the summer theater he ran in Lakewood Park., Pa., where theatergoers, many of them coal miners and their families, saw stars such as Gloria Swanson and Lizabeth Scott. "I only charge $1.50 top, which makes some of the other summer managers livid," he said. "I'd rather have full houses every night than be stuck with a batch of empty seats.".
- Dorothy Kilgallen in 1964 devoted a The Voice of Broadway column to the Kenley Players, writing that Broadway producers should spend "a few pleasant days in Warren, Ohio. ... There is a man out there who knows how to get people into the theater-and in show business, that's Trick 1." He "pioneered the notion of putting TV stars in summer stock years before everyone started doing it.".
- In 1995 at the age of 89 he was still producing summer shows in parts of Ohio.
- Barbara Eden recalled him confiding in her that his parents had concluded: "it would be easier for him to go through life as a male rather than as a female." And that he spent the theater season in Ohio and the off season living in Palm Springs as a woman named Joan.
- In 2004, Actors' Equity awarded Kenley an Honorary Life Membership, calling out his "extraordinary contribution to the American theater" and describing him as having "refined and ultimately defined the golden days of Equity Summer Stock.".
- In his unpublished memoirs, Kenley writes, "People have often wondered if I am gay. Sometimes I wished I was. Life would have been simpler. Androgyny is overrated.
- His formula was to attract big stars with big money and pack the seats by selling tickets at moviehouse prices. A headline in the theater publication Variety described his tactics as "circusing show biz." He'd fill 3,000-seat houses with paying customers, in some cases boosting capacity by setting up folding chairs and selling the stairs.
- In a Chicago Tribune interview in 1977, he recalled finding Debra Paget, a 1950s star appearing in a production for him, rehearsing all alone when he went back to the theater late one night to pick up something. "These stars work hard," he said. "They're an amazing ilk. ... There was a reason why they were stars in the first place.".
- Anita Dloniak, a Cleveland press agent who handles national Broadway tours, considers Kenley a mentor. "John was summer stock," says Dloniak, who attended Kenley Players productions as a child in Warren.
- Kenley gave the actor-singer Robert Goulet one of his early bookings in the United States. Goulet was in Cleveland, starring in a touring production of "Show Boat" that stopped at Playhouse Square and told: "I appeared in three leads for the Kenley Players in Warren, Ohio, a few years before I went to Broadway with 'Camelot,' " said Goulet. "After the first night, John came to my dressing room and said he was going to give me a raise. "I said 'Oh, you don't have to do that!' " he recalled. "He said, 'I want to - because I'll never be able to afford you again.' And he was right.".
- The who's-who of Kenley alums includes Gypsy Rose Lee, Arthur Godfrey, Burt Reynolds, Ethel Merman, Mae West, Billy Crystal, William Shatner, Betty White, Florence Henderson, Mitzi Gaynor, Mickey Rooney, Ann Miller, Roddy McDowall, Marlene Deitrich, Jayne Mansfield, Rock Hudson and Robby Benson.
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