Swaggart’s Woes May Again Help ‘Gantry’ at Box Office

If there is one person who appreciates television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, it’s Frankie Childers Hewitt, executive producer of the Ford Theatre in Washington.

Swaggart’s 1988 revelation of sexual indiscretions (he was caught with a New Orleans prostitute) came one day after the 1988 premiere of “Elmer Gantry” at the Ford Theatre. The show is a musical based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1927 novel about a lustful, ambitious preacher and a female evangelist he falls in love with.

“Elmer Gantry” broke box office records at the Ford, running for five months as people flocked to see the lead actor play Gantry like Swaggart himself.

Now, Swaggart is back in the news, allegedly being caught with a prostitute again, this time in Indio, just in time for the opening of a reworked version of “Elmer Gantry” at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre on Sunday.

“I swear to God Jimmy Swaggart is trying to help me out,” Hewitt said with a laugh from her La Jolla hotel room. “I don’t know why he’s helping me out here; it’s bizarre. Actually, my timing is sort of a joke in Washington. A couple of theaters accused me of turning him in.”

While the Ford Theatre has an interest in the show along with the Playhouse, it is Hewitt and producer Joseph Cates who own the future rights to the show. Cates brought the project to her in 1986 after his 1970 Broadway production of the musical (with a different script, music, lyrics and cast) closed after just four performances.

Hewitt took on the task only after Cates agree to scratch everything and start fresh.

Hewitt’s hopes are high that the show will return to Broadway. But, as of Monday, she had not seen the show in La Jolla and would not say if this would be the one to go to New York.

“I’m going to be as surprised as the audience . . ., which is very nerve-racking,” she said. “It’s my baby, and it’s tough to turn it over to someone and step back, but that had to be the case here.”

Hewitt, despite the Washington success, felt the musical needed more work to get to Broadway. She had seen “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” directed by Des McAnuff at the Playhouse last year and was “impressed with the set and the flow of the piece. I thought it worked very well.” So to bring “Elmer Gantry” closer to Broadway, she brought the project west to the Playhouse, which is fixing it up under McAnuff’s direction with $475,000 in enhancement money from Hewitt and Cates.

Hewitt, who was once married to “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt, is a onetime Capitol Hill staffer who worked on John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. She got involved in the 700-seat Ford Theatre in 1965 and was instrumental in keeping it a live theater when many wanted to convert it to a museum commemorating the site where Abraham Lincoln was shot. She took over as executive producer in 1971 after she lost confidence in the artistic staff.

“The point I decided I could do it as well or better than they was when they did a Greek tragedy at Christmas. I kept having to raise money and explain their failures, and I felt I would be better off explaining my own.”

But, instead of explaining failures, Hewitt has had an impressive record of successes including the world premieres of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” in her very first year of choosing a season and “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God.” She also produced “Forever Plaid” (which had its West Coast debut at the Old Globe) in late February, in a presentation that so captivated President Bush that he had the cast perform for a Cabinet dinner and later at a state dinner in Kennebunkport, Me., where the Bushes have a family retreat.

Hewitt doesn’t have or want a subscription audience. She said that would be too artistically confining, and she prefers to sell each of her four to five shows individually to different segments of the Washington population. She seems to be making it work. Ticket sales account for 60%-65% of the $4 million-plus budget. And the Ford Theatre is, as she describes it, “very well in the black. I try to raise the money before I spend it, which is unique.”

And more good timing for Hewitt. Pat Conroy, the writer who is now hot for having written “Prince of Tides,” a movie starring Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte, is also the writer of a new musical Hewitt is producing called “Conrak.” The show, based on Conroy’s novel, “The Water is Wide,” was made into a movie also called “Conrak.” Don and Bonnie Ward, artistic directors of Starlight Musical Theatre, already have expressed interest in the show, Hewitt said.

After a June youth theater show to be announced later, the Moonlight Amphitheatre’s 1992 season opens with “Mame,” July 8-19 and continues with “Pirates of Penzance,” July 29--Aug. 9, “The Sound of Music,” Aug. 19-30 and “A Chorus Line,” Sept. 9-20.

PROGRAM NOTES: Pay What You Can tickets for “Elmer Gantry” go on sale at 11 a.m. Saturday at the La Jolla Playhouse box office until all are sold and at the Educational Cultural Complex 11 a.m.-2 p.m. for the Oct. 26 matinee at 2. . . .

Dan Chumley, a 20-year-member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and director of “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle,” which opened at the San Diego Repertory Theatre on Wednesday, will teach acting classes Oct. 26 through Nov. 9. The $75 class cost includes two free tickets to “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle.” For information, call Sophie Anderson at 231-3586. . . .

Sneak preview tickets for $5 apiece are available for Sheri Glaser’s one-woman show at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s Hahn Cosmopolitan Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the Times Arts Tix at Horton Plaza Park Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. The show, a comedy in which Glaser impersonates a father, mother, two sisters and a grandmother, officially opens Oct. 31. . . .

Half-price tickets of $8.50 each are available for seniors age 60 and over for the Old Globe’s Saturday matinee of “The Show-Off” starring Sada Thompson. Tickets can be purchased at the Senior Center, City Administration Building at 202 C St.