‘Mother’ Revives Pioneer Spirit of ‘Mission Play’

John Steven McGroarty is no longer a household name, but 50 years ago he was one of the most famous people in Los Angeles outside the movie business.

He was the U.S. representative from the Verdugo Hills area, a Los Angeles Times weekly columnist, a real estate developer and the poet laureate of California. His poem “Just California” was required fare for grade-school children in the 1930s.

He even named Tujunga, his relatives say.

But perhaps McGroarty’s biggest claim to fame was as the author of “The Mission Play,” a huge outdoor pageant first staged in 1912 and which, by his own figuring, was seen by more than 2.5 million people during his lifetime.

The performances of this drama, which depicted the rise and fall of California missions, ended shortly after his death in 1944.

Tonight portions of the pageant, and in a sense McGroarty himself, will be back. “Our Mother--The Earth,” a new play based on “The Mission Play,” will debut in Tujunga at his former home, now the McGroarty Arts Center. There will be 12 performances in what used to be his living room, with the last one on Aug. 18.

“I thought it would be an incredible thing for this area to bring the play back,” said Joan de Bruin, director of the arts center, which is funded and operated by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. “There was no major festival or event that celebrated the history of this area. We needed something that was all ours.”

De Bruin began working on the project late last year, soon after she was named director of the center, which hosts public arts shows and arts and exercise classes. The wooden house, built by McGroarty in 1923 and purchased by the city in 1953, still contains some of his furniture, artifacts and papers.

“I started to read about this incredible play he did,” De Bruin said, standing in McGroarty’s former library amid several black-and-white photographs of “The Mission Play” productions. “I knew we had to do something with it.”

After a quick look at the manuscript, she realized that the original play was impractical to stage today because it lasted nearly three hours and required a 100-member cast.

She also saw that it was outdated. “You just would not want to do it, today,” De Bruin said. “There were racial stereotypes in it that would be very upsetting for Native Americans. For example, Indians are referred to as savages, and it suggests that they are less than human.”

One of the center’s volunteers suggested that De Bruin contact Leonard S. Smith Jr., a former actor and stage manager living in Tujunga.

“I had never heard of McGroarty when she called me,” said Smith, 66, who worked on Broadway as a stage manager and understudy on “Mr. Roberts.” In television he won an Emmy in 1962 for a documentary he directed on alcoholism, and he was an assistant director on “M*A*S*H.”

Smith had retired from production work and was interested in pursuing writing and directing for the stage, so he took the job. “I started to do research on the man and it was just fascinating,” he said. “He was a great man, an unsung individual who did so much during his life it was unbelievable.”

Smith cut the play down, taking out much of the factual material that McGroarty had included about the history of the California missions. Then he set it as a play within a play, with McGroarty as narrator.

“I wanted to show what his views might be if he were alive today, looking back on what had happened since his death,” Smith said.

Smith updated “Our Mother--The Earth” to modern times and wrote a prologue that depicted a small troupe of actors getting ready to read through “The Mission Play.” The actors make fun of the stilted dialogue and turgid melodrama until the ghost of McGroarty arrives on the scene to admonish them for laughing.

McGroarty then directs the actors in several scenes from the play, pointing out the spiritual themes he had in mind when writing it.

With the cast down to seven and the length cut to about one hour, De Bruin received a grant from the Cultural Affairs Department for almost $15,000 to put on “Our Mother--The Earth.” She hopes it’s not a one-shot deal.

“I hope this is the kind of event we can have every year, a new tradition,” De Bruin said. “Maybe it won’t run as long as the original, but we can at least start it.”

“Our Mother--The Earth” opens tonight at the McGroarty Arts Center, 7570 McGroarty Terrace, Tujunga. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, with a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee, through Aug. 18. Tickets are $10.50 general and $7.50 for seniors and teen-agers. Call (818) 352-5235.