Adjusting the Focus: Padua Hills Theatre and  Latino History

matt garcía

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
10 (Winter 1996). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2000, Organization of American Historians
 

From 1931 to 1974, local Mexican American performers presented Spanish-language, Mexican-theme musicals to a mostly English-speaking, white audience.  Located in the college town of Claremont, California outside of Los Angeles, the theater attracted the support of many notable patrons, including local professors, artists, and Hollywood stars.  The theater’s proprietors, Herman and Bess Garner, successfully operated the theater as a non-profit business from 1936 to its close with the expressed intent of forging “intercultural understanding” between European Americans and Mexicans.  Consequently, the Mexican Players’ plays became recognized as much for their ability to defuse prejudice against Mexicans, as for their entertainment quality. 

Admittedly, this intercultural “experiment” had many flaws.  Although the Garners intended to present a positive image of Mexican culture, their strict control over scripts (written by Charles Dickenson, a playwright from Pomona College) and their insistence on appealing to the tastes of white audiences resulted in distortions of Mexican and California history.  Often, the plays tended to substitute old stereotypes of Mexicans for new ones.  Instead of casting Mexicans as thieving, dangerous, or subhuman, the performances depicted them as carefree, docile, or politically benign.  Moreover, management-performer relations reflected the social inequalities extant in the larger society.  As the following quote demonstrates, the Garners occasionally expressed condescending attitudes which patronized the Paduanos and overemphasized their contributions and those of the theater’s trustees:

For children of Mexican parentage it has been an especially significant, a most wonderful experience, often a veritable turning point in their lives. Their simple minds, sometimes tortured with the complexes of a minority group, have suddenly found for themselves an undreamed of background of romance and beauty!  Why should they any longer be apologetic for their parents and grandparents?  Their teachers have told us that this change of outlook has sometimes been little short of marvelous [italics added](2).

Participation in the theater’s performances symbolized a “turning point” in the lives of many Paduanos; however, it did not represent the self-discovery expressed by the Garners.  For several Mexican Players, Padua Hills provided the opportunity to share with white audiences music and dance commonly experienced at community festivals and ceremonies within the barrios (3).  In addition, encounters with European American managers and audiences familiarized Paduanos with life in a white-dominated society. Some players took away from these interethnic exchanges the knowledge to deflect prejudice and to achieve a degree of prosperity in their careers after their retirements from Padua (4).  Last, on a personal level, several Paduanos valued their experiences at the theater for the relationships forged among the players.  Casilda Amador Thoreson commented that the group was “like a family,” while many Paduanos have credited Padua Hills as the reason for meeting their spouses (5). 

The Padua Hills Theatre, therefore, exemplified both the positive and negative aspects of intercultural relations between Mexicans and European Americans in the twentieth century and reflected many of the social conditions of this historical period and place.  One would expect an institution such as this to attract a significant amount of scholarly attention and be the source of considerable intellectual debate, particularly among historians of American culture and entertainment.  However, I found very few publications concerning Padua Hills.  With the exception of Pauline Deuel’s narrative history, Mexican Serenade, and a few local articles, Padua Hills has received minimal attention from scholars of U.S. history (6). 

It seems particularly odd that Chicano theater scholars have excluded Padua Hills Theatre from their studies.  The few that treat this history overlook Padua Hills, or dismiss the institution as not being representative of the genre.  For example, Nicolás Kanellos and Jorge Huerta fail to make reference to The Mexican Players (7).  Another scholar, Roberto J. Garza, commented specifically on Padua Hills and its relationship to Chicano theater when he wrote:

. . . like so many other institutions of this nature which are dedicated to the infusion and diffusion of “culture,” such groups did little to represent the actual existence of the Chicano in the American society.  Their romantic performances reflected nothing of the harsh realities of the oppressed Chicano population.  Worse still, the theater failed to capture and convey that espiritu of La Raza which was about to manifest itself (8). 

Inappropriately comparing the theater and its plays to Teatro Campesino (the Chicano activist theater company founded during the 1960s), these scholars held Padua Hills to the standards of an ethnic nationalist politics, and failed to consider the historic period in which the theater and its players developed.  Unfortunately, these opinions of Padua Hills Theatre and its legacy have continued to the present (9).

The Paduanos, while not conforming to the tenets of the 1960s political struggles, nevertheless shaped intercultural relations between whites and Mexicans in the United States.  Although the Mexican Players may have exercised less autonomy over their productions than other Mexican and Chicano theater groups, their ability to reach thousands of white patrons and alter the prejudices of some audience members deserves recognition.  In addition, the Garners’ investment in the players’ development, while less than perfect, reflected a progressive approach to race relations, particularly during the 1930s when the United States repatriated and deported 500,000 Mexican immigrants.  In a time of immigrant scapegoating and persecution, Padua Hills offered an alternative vision in Mexican and white relations, an important lesson for today’s society.  Last, the Padua Hills Theater spawned perhaps the first generation of “Mexican American” film actors and radio performers, including Mauricio Jara, Natividad Vacio, Manuel Diaz, and Rebecca Romo Wolfe (10).  Performing during a period of persistent discrimination in the entertainment industry, the success of these artists represents significant accomplishments.

The history of Padua Hills Theater problematizes the nationalist approach of some Chicano scholars, and demands a broadening of the focus of current Latino scholarship to include those groups, like The Mexican Players, which were strategically accomodationist.  By including this history, we reflect the more varied nature of the Latino experience which included compromise as well as resistance in confronting discrimination. q

1. matt garcía, “‘Just Put On That Padua Hills Smile’: The Mexican Players and The Padua Hills Theatre, 1931-1974,” California History (Fall 1995): 244-61. 
2. The term “Paduana/o” is used by the Mexican Players to describe themselves.  Padua Institute booklet, A Non-profit Institution Dedicated to Inter-American Friendship: The Educational Phase (Padua Hills, Claremont, Calif., 1936).
3. Cheva García, interviewed by author, 10 February 1993; Christina Pérez, interviewed by author, 26 April 1993; and Daniel Martínez, Jr., interviewed by author, 16 May 1995.
4. Juan Matute, for example, went on to have a very successful career as an executive for Pan Am Airlines.  After their careers at Padua Hills, some Paduanos maintained levels of income that would classify them as part of the “Mexican middle class.”
5. Casilda Amador Thoreson, interviewed by the author, 19 May 1995.  Many Paduanos met and married as a result of working at Padua Hills.  Some of the couples include Alfonso and Conchita Gallardo, Hilda and Mauricio Jara, Porfiria and Enrique Lerma, Juan and Manuela Matute, and José and Ysabel Alba, to name a few.
6. Pauline B. Deuel, Mexican Serenade: The Story of the Mexican Players and the Padua Hills Theatre (Claremont, Calif.: Padua Institute, 1961).
7. Jorge Huerta, Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1982); Nicolás Kanellos, Mexican American Theatre: Legacy and Reality (Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1987); and Nicolás Kanellos, ed., Mexican American Theatre: Then and Now (Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1989).
8. Roberto J. Garza, ed., Contemporary Chicano Theatre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 5.
9. For the most recent example of this phenomenon, see Alicia Arrizon, “Contemporizing Performance: Mexican California and the Padua Hills Theatre,” in Mester 22/23 (Fall 1993/Spring 1994) [special double issue].
10. Rebecca Romo Wolfe went on from the Padua Hills stage to perform opera on the radio during the 1940s and 1950s.  Mauricio Jara, Manuel Diaz, and Natividad Vacio acted in many films, while many other Paduanos performed locally and served as models and spokespeople for the advertisement of Southern California businesses.  In addition, Walt Disney, a friend of the Garners, integrated the players into his film The Three Caballeros, a Latin American theme movie that combined animated characters with live actors.  Rebecca Romo Wolfe, interviewed by the author, 21 June 1994; and Casilda Amador Thoreson, interviewed by the author, 19 May 1995.