User:Jconty77/sandbox

Henry Calvert was born in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois to a Polish family. He was the youngest of three children. He spoke Polish and German until he was six. Then he learned English when he started going to school. He enjoyed reading. He also lived in a very bad neighborhood where some of Al Capone’s gang hung out. Some members of the gang wanted him to become a member and would say to him, “Henry, why are you always reading those books?” He would respond by asking if they wanted to hear what was in those books. So Henry would read to them. They were amazed about how interesting the books were. When Henry was 14 his father wanted Henry to quit school and go to work as a boiler maker. So Henry decided to write to President Franklin Roosevelt and ask him in a country like this why he would have to leave school. Roosevelt was impressed by his letter and forwarded the letter to Francis Perkins, Secretary of Labor. People were sent to Chicago to interview Henry. It was decided that Henry was very intelligent. So his parents were given a stipend so Henry could finish High School. He became President of his high school graduating class. After graduating he worked for a while at Marshall Field’s. Then he opened an Off Broadway theater which he built on the near North Side of Chicago. He got an agent right away, William Morris who sent him to read for a lead in Golden Boy. He didn’t get it. But he kept pursuing theater. Finally, he enlisted in World War II and was sent to Europe where he put up the telephone wires in England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. In Germany he was able to join an acting company with James Mason. When he returned from the war he studied theater in NYC at the New School with Irwin Piscator. After that he did road shows and summer stock where he met his wife Mary who studied at Goodman Theater in Chicago. They settled in NYC where Henry opened an Off Broadway theater called The Green Room Studio at 145 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. They had the rights to O’Neill plays. Brook Atkinson from the New York Times reviewed Henry’s shows. He won an Obie for producing Miss Julia (Miss Julie). Henry had one daughter, Josephine and went to work at FAO Schwarz as manager of the train department to support his new daughter. However,Henry kept on doing Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. In 1965 He did Strindberg’s “The Credtora”, with Al Pacino. Then in 1966, he got into the Off Broadway hit “America Hurrah” by Jean Claude van Italia at the Pocket Theater. He also toured with the show and went to London to do it. Afterwards, he did many other plays. He acted with Richard Dreyfuss in “Whose Little Boy are You.” He worked for Norman Lear later on doing some “Maude”show and later played Gordon in “Hot L Baltimore”. He also play Bernard Barker in the Watergate break in, in “All The President’s Men”. He did other work but in 1983 he had a heart attack and was unable to work. He did in April of 1992.