At a time when the critics and academics were lamenting the death of theater in America, Ruth and Nathan Hale came along and proved them wrong.
And they did it by following a few simple rules of marketing: Give the people what they want, give it to them at a reasonable price and give them a quality product. Today, the Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley City pulls in more than 200,000 patrons a year. Branches of the theater flourish in Utah County and Southern Utah. A fourth is under construction in Arizona.
James Nathan Hale died in 1994.
On Sunday, his wife Ruth, age 94, joined him. And being a couple that never shied away from sentiment, they wouldn't mind us saying they have now taken their show to the Big Time. California had Tracy and Hepburn. Utah had Hale and Hale. Utahns were never interested in a trade.
Ruth Hale wrote nearly 80 plays and performed in countless others. The Hales' most popular play is "Thank You, Papa," a tribute to Ruth's adopted father. Their most enduring work may be "Are the Meadowlarks Still Singing?" a touching look at the life of an LDS returned missionary who falls in love with a minister's daughter. They wrote the play while on an LDS mission in Nauvoo.
Currently, a theater they started in Glendale, Calif., is in its 55th year. Mike Farrell, Connie Stevens, Gordon Jump and several other well-known performers got a leg up in the business there. The couple tried to retire 15 years ago, but it didn't work out. Into her 90s, Ruth Hale could be seen not only on stage, but tooling around town in her pickup truck. She had to give up her motorcycle. You can catch a glimpse of her in the LDS film, "Singles Ward," a movie made by a grandson. Many members of the Hale family are into theater. One son, cheekily called "the black sheep of the family," is a prominent physician in the Ogden area.
In the end, actor Edmund Burke once said, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." Ruth Hale showed that both could be done with grace. She once quipped that she wouldn't mind dying on stage. It would cause a problem, she said, but the cast could work around it.
Her legacy is secure. Finding a fitting tribute may be a problem, however. Often, when guiding lights of the theater pass away, the community will put their names on a theater.
The problem is Ruth Hale has already got a bunch of those.