©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Hello, Dolly! Wyndmoor’s 50-year theatrical superstar
by MARY PRICE LEE
and RICHARD S. LEE

Nate and Dolly Schnall, perfect together.

Hello, Dolly! Dolly Beechman Schnall of Wyndmoor, that is. She is an astonishing lady. For a start, she is remarkably self-effacing for someone whose life has been devoted to theater in all its aspects. (There is not a wisp of thee-a-TAH about her!) Her theatrical endeavors include an astonishing mix of acting, directing, playwriting, teaching, ardent support and — it is no exaggeration to say — founding an arts dynasty.

Dolly (real first name, Marillyn — spelling correct) declined to give her age, but when asked if she remembered Pearl Harbor, said, “Oh, yes — all too well.” She grew up on Meehan Street in Mount Airy, and her parents later built a home in Wyndmoor, where they lived for 50 years. Dolly and her husband, Dr. Nathan (Nate) Schnall, also live in Wyndmoor. So, except for several years’ residence in Wesmont, New Jersey, with her first husband, Philadelphia singer-restaurateur Gino Beechman, Dolly’s apple has not fallen far from the tree.

She credits her mother for introducing her to movies, her aunt for fostering interest in Yiddish theater and her father for kindling her lifelong love of the stage. In her teen summers spent at the Jersey shore, that love manifested itself in work as a summer stock apprentice. She would bicycle from Wildwood to the Cape May Playhouse, first for the privilege of cleaning toilets, but later for the joy of playing ingenue roles opposite such stars as Gloria Swanson, Dame May Whitty, Diana Barrymore and Alfred Drake.

Dolly received a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania where she earned her B.A. in Romance Languages and received a coveted Phi Beta Kappa key. Then it was back to the theater, for a dizzying round of acting gigs too varied to cover here.

Dolly Beechman Schnall directed and performed in The World of Carl Sandburg, produced many years ago by the Germantown Theatre Guild. (Photo by Jack Hoffman)

Highlights included live TV, playing multiple characters on WCAU-TV’s Cartoon Corners with Gene London, plus acting roles at LaSalle College Music Theater, several South Jersey theaters and Temple University (where, in her 40s, she earned a M.F.A. in Theater Arts with a concentration in Directing). Plays have included (among many): The Adding Machine, The Glass Menagerie, Funny Girl and Shear Madness. Professionally, Dolly is a member of Actors Equity, Screen Actors Guild, the Actor’s Fund of America and the Edwin Forrest Society.

Like most acting veterans, Dolly has memorable yarns to tell. Here’s one: “I had just gotten my Equity card, so I was a bit nervous. It was opening night of Noel Coward’s comedy, Hay Fever, at Cape May Playhouse. In the play, four beleagurered houseguests do a tiptoe escape, unseen by the battling Bliss family (well named!). The family stops squabbling long enough to notice the guests have escaped when they — and the audience — hear a car driving away. As the daughter, Sorel Bliss, I’m supposed to open the door to make sure they’ve all gone. So I open the door — and there are all the obnoxious guests, mugging and making monkey-gestures at us — and at the audience! I think I was supposed to say, ‘Yes, they’re all gone,’ but I don’t remember what I said! I do remember that I was convulsed inside with laughter but somehow didn’t burst out laughing.”

Dolly Beechman, director, developed an equally fulfilling career in this most demanding segment of theater. (She gives generous credit to Temple University for this, to the point of establishing the Dolly Beechman Schnall Fund. According to Temple, this is a “Lectureship/Workshop by Visiting Artists in Theater Support Fund.”)

“The director must have a total vision of what happens when the curtain goes up, and be able to carry that vision through,” Dolly says. “As a major force, the director must know all phases of a play’s production — lighting, costumes, set design and so forth — in order to interact successfully with the technical people involved.”

Before and after her Temple years, Dolly’s directorial hand has energized countless productions at Temple University, Rutgers University — Camden, Penn State — Abington, Cherry Hill Jewish Community Center, the Cherry Lane Theater in New York, and nearby at the Cheltenham Arts Center, where she directed its first Actors Equity production, Kuni-Leml. For many years, Dolly was also a professor of theatre arts at Penn State/Abington and Rutgers/Camden. She has won the New Jersey Theatre League’s Best Director Award three times, representing Haddonfield Plays and Players. She won for Money (musical), The Apollo of Bellac (drama), and Private Lives (comedy).

Herewith a directing story from the irrepressible Dolly: “I was directing Anastasia. A very impressively built lady was playing the supposed Russian Empress. She’s conducting this inquisition, using a prop cane for emphasis. One night, right on cue, she plops her backside on the sofa, and down it goes with her — kaboom! Somehow, she uses the cane to lever herself out of the sofa and continues the inquisition without missing a beat! To this day, I don’t know how she did it! As the director, I was dying a million deaths in those few seconds!”

Playwriting has been a part of Dolly’s theatrical life from its earliest days to the present. (In fact, all her theater careers run concurrently, not sequentially.) Early efforts included writing Easter and Christmas shows for the John Wanamaker store, and seven yearly Memorial Day employees’ productions for Strawbridge & Clothier. Her play, Sojourner (written with Pat Sternberg), debuted at Washington’s Kennedy Center and toured nationally. Other plays have been mostly on historical subjects. In fact, her latest play, Without the Sainted Father, is being written as the result of a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts playwriting award. This two-person play, a work in progress, according to the author, concerns the lives of Mary Todd Lincoln and her son, Robert, in the years following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Dolly would like a local theater company to produce the play when it’s finished.

Dolly and husband, Nate, are very much a part of Chestnut Hill. They are active supporters of Woodmere Art Museum, Morris Arboretum, the Chestnut Hill Senior Center, and CHCA. Dolly also serves on the board of Ambler’s Act II Playhouse, among others. “I am especially happy to be a part of Act II,” Dolly says. “I like the group’s intimacy, its devotion to the cause of good theater and its respect for actors.”

The Walnut Street Theater, America’s oldest (in continuous operation since 1809), holds a special place in Dolly’s heart. During her 10 years as a board member, she was instrumental in securing a statue of famed actor, Edwin Forrest, for the Walnut. And the Walnut was the venue for two of her daughter, Laurie’s, concert appearances.

Laurie Beechman, who died of ovarian cancer in 1998 at age 43, is best remembered for her Broadway role of the Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award, and for her roles in Les Miserables and Cats. Dolly has further honored Laurie’s memory by endowing the Laurie Beechman Memorial Scholarship in Musical Theater at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.

When not championing causes, writing or directing, Dolly is a devoted swimmer and walker. “These exercises are my form of meditation,” she says. “They have always been a part of my life — and still are.”

Dolly also presides over family — her husband, daughters, and grandchildren. Husband Nate is the former Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Rolling Hills Hospital, where he and his staff used to deliver about 1,500 babies a year. Of retirement, he says, “I’m doing nothing, but taking plenty of time about it,” a typical Nate rejoinder!

Dolly’s elder daughter, Claudia Beechman Cohen, inherited her father’s singing voice, which she channels into French song. In recent times, she has sung cabaret at Chez Odette in New Hope, and with the band, The Hot Club of Philadelphia, at the Sellersville Theater. She studied French and theater during a year in Paris, performed in Jaques Brel... in Toronto and initially was part of Philadelphia’s South Street folk scene.

Jane Beechman Segal may be the youngest daughter, but this Cheltenham elementary school teacher and homemaker is “The mother of us all,” proclaims Dolly, citing Jane’s warmth and nurturing skills. As for the dynasty (our idea, not Dolly’s!), one chance may reside in Jane and Steve Segal’s youngest child, nine year-old Dolly, her grandmother’s namesake. The youngster shows a genuine gift for sketching and painting. Is there a nascent Mary Cassatt in the Beechman clan? Only time will tell!