By Arline A. Fleming/Special to the Independent
Thursday, June 9, 2011 12:07 PM EDT
SOUTH KINGSTOWN - Tommy Brent, longtime producer of Theatre By The Sea, had been feeling ill, and so the 88-year-old Matunuck resident apparently drove himself to a Providence hospital last week to meet with doctors who had treated him in the past.
Though he returned to his colonial-era Matunuck home after being checked out at the hospital, Brent died there sometime between Friday and Saturday, when he was discovered by longtime friends who had been attempting to reach him. He was scheduled to attend the season opener post-show party at Theater By The Sea with South Kingstown resident Gloria Jobin on Friday night, as well as a surprise party for the pastor of his Wakefield church, the Rev. Nicholas Smith of St. Francis of Assisi.
Jobin said Brent left a message on her answering machine Thursday saying he would be unable to attend either of these events with her, that he felt too sick and would be going to the hospital.
"It's a tremendous loss," said Jobin, who said she was shocked to hear the news.
Actor, press agent, director and producer, Brent took over the aging barn theater on Card's Pond Road in 1966, saying in an interview with the South County Living magazine last spring that he saved the theater not once, but twice.
"I saved that theater two times," he said, "that's the story nobody knows," and it's a story that was almost not told. Brent didn't want to have his photo taken and cancelled the interview - only to later reschedule, reluctantly agreeing to a photographer, who in the end got along famously with him, and he with her.
During that interview, he told the story of his long life in show business, producing a photo of a much younger Tommy in a movie scene with Harpo Marx.
"I had hair then," Brent said, laughing at himself.
But when it came to his beloved Theatre By The Sea, the barn theater located a few miles from his home, he was all business, predicting that the beach house-like shingled building would not have survived had he not come to its defense first in the 1960s, and again in recent years.
Brent said that the first time he saved the theater was when he stopped what appeared to be impending demolition in the 1960s. Agreeing to produce there, he cleaned the closed-up, crumbling building, replacing "165 windows. There was garbage all over the place. It was terrible, yet I did it," he recalled last spring in a porch-side interview.
He produced more than 100 musicals, plays and children's shows during the ensuing years until 1988, when his lease was not renewed and the theater was taken over by FourQuest Entertainment, a group that included the niece of the property's owners.
On his last day as producer that September, he still answered the telephone himself, working at a desk overflowing with papers. When the final curtain came down on that 1988 version of the musical "42nd Street," he told the audience wistfully that he would miss the young, aspiring actors cast in the many musicals he brought to the tight stage.
"I see your faces shining out here every day and night," he told the cast. That night, he was given a proclamation by the South Kingstown Town Council, presented by Barbara Hackey, who told him he was "a Matunuck institution" and declared it Tommy Brent Day. After 22 years, his life at Theatre By The Sea closed.
Though the new producers spent 15 years operating the landmark straw-hat operation, they, too, closed the place in 2004 and it remained dark.
Brent said he saved the theater a second time when, worried that the property would become derelict or turned into house lots, he contacted today's owner Bill Hanney to encourage him to buy it.
"Yes, he did call me personally and basically said the theater was closed," recalled Hanney on Monday. "That started the whole thing going." Hanney credits Brent for bringing it to his attention, and in recent years, the theater owner made sure complimentary theater tickets awaited Brent for each opening.
"There's no one who loved Theater By The Sea like Tommy Brent did. We've lost an institution," said Hanney, adding that Brent's death is a reminder that "we often say 'Let's get together' with someone but time has a way of escaping us. I'm sorry that I didn't get together with Tommy, but I did spend a wonderful day with him last summer," Hanney said, recalling how Brent showed him his lifetime of theater artifacts.
Hanney said he does not want Brent's legacy to be forgotten and he hopes to arrange at some point a celebration of his life.
Though he worked there only during the summer of 1980, Broadway press agent Peter Cromarty maintained contact with Brent, talking to him as recently as 10 days ago "and he certainly seemed to be himself." Cromarty described Brent as being "an astute producer and a marketing genius. At Matunuck, he created a special formula, where he fought very hard to be the first theater to acquire the producing rights of shows directly from Broadway. This was not only a magnet at the box office but also an enticement for the best young talent who wanted to perform roles, design sets, create costumes, and orchestrate music for these recent hits and add the impressive credits to their resume."
Former Providence Journal Arts Writer Jim Seavor, who knew Brent for many years, said as a theater producer, "Tommy knew what would sell." Seavor said in an interview last year that Brent "kept the place alive for years." On Monday, after learning of Brent's death, he wondered if after years of fighting for the Theatre By The Sea, if Brent "had finally let go. But the old barn will never let go of Tommy. His presence has become part of the building; as much a part as any seat, rope, curtain or wagon wheel chandelier."
Thomas Brent Cheseldine, who turned 88 last October - hosting a party for himself at a Wakefield restaurant - was one of six children who grew up in the Washington, D.C., area during the Great Depression. He would skip school to attend vaudeville shows on Fridays.
"That's how I fell in love with the theater," Brent said.
He would go on to board a Greyhound bus for New York with $6 in his pocket, two cardboard suitcases in his hands, and one big plan in mind: Broadway.
Many jobs followed, from work as a typist to being cast as an extra in the 1943 movie "Stage Door Canteen." He followed theater work throughout the East Coast, finding himself in Matunuck for one night in the late 1940s as an assistant director for a movie that documented "star theaters" throughout New England. Ten years would pass before he returned to Matunuck, working in many places in the meantime, including as a press agent in Boston, handling publicity for The Beatles, he said last year, grasping a yellow piece of paper listing every job he could recall ever having. By the time he read to the end of that paper, his voice was raspy.
New York actor Gary Lynch, who says he got his start at Theatre By The Sea when Brent cast him in several shows right out of college, called Brent "an icon and a mentor. He had a knack for casting," said Lynch, who is still acting in the New York area, as well as in various tours and in Hanney's North Shore theater, where last summer Brent traveled to see him appear in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," which he also appeared in at Matunuck.
"Tommy told me 'You were good, Gary, but I think our production was better,'" Lynch recalled.
Not one to mince words, Brent was known to walk out of theater productions he deemed dreadful, but on the other hand, was so impressed by several shows at Hanney's Theater By The Sea that he telephoned people and advised them not to miss out, and with his trademark theatrical voice identifying himself as Tommy Brent, never Tom or Thomas.
In addition to his love of theater, he held a fondness for books and newspapers, and for his garden, which was cared for in earlier years by JoAnn Woods of Wickford, who became such close friends with Brent that she invited him to her home for the holidays when he didn't spend them with his Maryland family. He was always a wonderful guest, she said.
"He just cared for people, he really did. He really wanted to know what was going on in your life." Woods said he never arrived empty-handed, often bringing presents for young children. Without a family of his own in Rhode Island, he created one, staying connected to a cherished core of people. She said Brent had undergone medical tests during the previous weeks, visiting the hospital several times.
Debra Hinson-Joyner, granddaughter of Brent's sister Edna, said her Uncle Tommy "always looked forward to his family tradition of spending Christmas Day at my parents' home in Fairfax Station, Va." She said he would converse with all the young offspring, asking questions about their interests. She said he would be buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Maryland. Arrangements were still being made Tuesday.
"He was a classic eccentric," said Sam Stowell of South Kingstown, who was a caretaker at one of Brent's properties and guided him through learning how to use a computer. "He was a father figure to me. We had a symbiotic relationship. He helped me and I helped him." In the end, it was Stowell who found Brent on Saturday and called 911, he said.
In an interview for South County Living magazine last year, Brent said he had more than 45 nieces, nephews and grand-nieces and -nephews, was continuing to improve his computer skills, and had donated much of his Theatre By The Sea memorabilia to the University of Rhode Island Special Collections room, happy to know it would be cared for after he was gone.
Brent maintained a New York apartment up until recently, traveling into Manhattan to see Broadway shows. Contacted in early spring at his Matunuck home, Brent said the weather was especially tough on him this past year, and that he intended to spend future winters in Florida.
Tommy Brent was preceded in death by his parents, Mary Lewis Cheseldine and William Dent Cheseline and five sisters and brothers, Evelyn Cheseldine, Joe Cheseldine, Madeline Florence, Edna Sesso and Theresa Saylor. He is survived by more than 45 nieces and nephews. He will be buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Maryland in his family plot.
