Pine Brook Country Club

Image:John Garfield in Gentleman's Agreement trailer.jpg from 1947's
Gentleman's Agreement movie trailer]]

Image:Harry Morgan (ITW trailer).jpg from 1960's Inherit the Wind]]

Image:Lee_j_cobb_on_the_waterfront_3.jpg from 1954's
On the Waterfront movie trailer]]

Pine Brook is best known for having been the 1936 summer rehearsal headquarters of what some {{according to whom|date=September 2022}} regard as the most important experiment in the history of American theatre.Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years. New York: Hill and Wang, 1945. 1968 ed., p. 36, p. 172 The Group Theatre (New York) was formed in New York City in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg and was made up of actors, directors, playwrights and producers.Elia Kazan:A Life, Elia Kazan, Da Capo Press, 1997, p. 152 [https://books.google.com/books?id=R7wKgsVUDUYC&dq=elia+kazan+pine+brook&pg=PP1]The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties, 1975, p. 184A Gambler's Instinct: The Story of Broadway Producer Cheryl Crawford, p. 52 During this summer the artists "sang for their supper" while taking classes, attempting to reorganize their structure, and beginning rehearsals on Johnny Johnston, their next Broadway production.Smith, pp. 264-65.

During the summer of 1936, Paul Green, Cheryl Crawford, Kurt Weill and Weill's wife Lotte Lenya rented an old house at 277 Trumbull Avenue located two miles from Pine Brook in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was here that Green and Weill wrote the play and music for the controversial Broadway play Johnny Johnson (musical), which was titled after the most frequently occurring name on the American casualty list of World War I. It was also during this time that Lotte Lenya had her first American love affair with Paul Green. Speak Low (when you speak of love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya A Southern Life: Letters of Paul Green, 1916-1981, p. 258

Including and in addition to the Group Theatre, some of the artists who are known to have spent the summer at Pine Brook at one time or another were: Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Carol Channing, Montgomery Clift, Lee J. Cobb, Imogene Coca, Betty Comden, Howard Da Silva, Frances Farmer, John Garfield, Betty Garrett, Michael Gordon (film director), Will Geer, Adolph Green, Paul Green (playwright), Judy Holliday, Lena Horne, Elia Kazan, Arthur Laurents, Canada Lee, Lotte Lenya, Robert Lewis (actor), Sanford Meisner, Harry Morgan, Clifford Odets, Luise Rainer, John Randolph (actor), Jerome Robbins, Irwin Shaw, Anna Sokolow, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, Franchot Tone, Nancy Walker and Kurt Weill.Pinewood Lake website retrieved on 2010-09-10 [http://www.pinewood-lake.org/]Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life, p. 345Clifford Odets: American Playwright: The Years from 1906 to 1940, p. 410Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940, p. 212Paul Green, Playwright of the real South, p. 162

In 1944 Pine Brook went into receivership and was sold, reorganized and chartered as the Pinewood Lake Association, a private lake association. Images of America, Trumbull Historical Society, 1997, p. 123

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Category:Trumbull, Connecticut

Category:Buildings and structures in Fairfield County, Connecticut

Category:History of theatre