Mike Moser "I Say" Published Nov. 18, 2005

Mary was one of Crossville's finest treasures

Mary Crabtree used to scare me.

Her mere presence in a room with me, meeting in the bowels of the Cumberland County Playhouse in a narrow passageway, or walking into the rehearsal hall, eyes peering over those black-framed glasses, used to intimidate me to the point I would hardly look up.

Crossville's First Lady of Theater died one week ago and the community has truly lost a treasure.

I am sure she is chuckling at the thought of that right now and is quite puzzled about my reaction to being in her presence. I had good cause.

This was the woman who had gone to New York with $75 in her pocket and made the big show. The woman who modeled for a top fashion company of the day and then made the leap to stages in the Big Apple.

She knew the thrill of being married to a very successful actor, script and screen writer, director and producer whose work often drew rave reviews.

She rubbed elbows with Arthur Treacher, Gloria Swanson, Bea Lillie, Gypsy Rose Lee, Claudette Colbert and Robert Cummings at the theater in Palm Beach.

This was the woman who knew the late great actress Helen Hayes well enough to have the stage star write a letter of reference for Mary's daughter to gain a scholarship to attend a prestigious school.

This is the woman who Bing Crosby asked to join in an impromptu sing along when he "dropped in" at her home following a golf outing.

I was just a reporter in a play acting like I was an actor. She was the real McCoy.

She so intimidated me that for years when she would see me at the Playhouse, she would call me "Jeff," and I never corrected her. I couldn't.

She had me confused, as have others, with Jeff Mosser, a photographer who was in Crossville in the 1970s and early 1980s and moved away the year I came here.

During tech week for the opening of the first run of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Mary met me in the aisle of the theater and once again called me Jeff, asking me something about my costume. I answered politely but Abby, who was directing the show, was standing nearby and she suddenly interjected, "Mother, why did you call him Jeff?"

Mary looked at her incredibly and said, "Well, that's his name!"

Abby looked incredibly back at Mary and said, "No, his name is Mike!"

Then they both looked at me. Abby chuckled. Mary looked over those glasses of her. I melted like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

Mary was flabbergasted that I had never corrected her. I was stuttering up some excuse as to why I had not. And it made Mary smile for quite some time when we would pass at the costume shop.

It gives me some form of satisfaction that I did make Mary laugh with some of the antics on stage. My appearance as half camel, half bad guy in Joseph comes to mind. I suppose the vision of my torso protruding from the waist up out of the hump of a camel is enough to make anyone laugh.

The Playhouse will go on and will have great successes and part of that will be thanks to Mary.

It will never be quite the same not seeing her sewing in the costume shop, or standing there with tape measure during the parade of costumes, or seeing her standing in the back of the house on opening night.

Mary Crabtree truly was a Crossville treasure. Our community is a better place because of the vision she shared with her late husband, Paul. Thousands of school children each year are exposed to the arts, thanks to the Playhouse. It is an opportunity that many would not have were it not for Mary and Paul.

Many of us enjoy the benefits that the Playhouse has provided by making Crossville a tourist destination.

We have truly lost a gem and I know I will miss her gaze from over those black-framed glasses. And miss the challenge of making her laugh.

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Mike Moser is the editor of the Crossville Chronicle. His column is published periodically on Fridays.