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Interview with Gary Carden

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Item 1 - Interview with Gary Carden

Interview with Gary Carden

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Item 2 - Interview with Gary Carden

Interview with Gary Carden

HL_HIST474_Lindler_Carden_2009-10-19

Interview with Gary Carden

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  • Gary Carden, who first met Josephina Niggli as a student in the theatre department at Western Carolina College in the 1950’s, discusses his impressions of her personality, her work, and the ways the theatre department changed after her arrival.
  • Hilary Lindler: My name is Hilary Lindler and I am interviewing Mr. Gary Carden on October 19t\ 20091 Gary Carden: Yes. HL: And Mr. Carden can you please spell your last name? GC: I'm Gary Carden. I have a middle name- Neil. N-E-1-L. Carden. C-A-R-D-E-N. H L: Ok, and do you know that you are being recorded? GC: I know I'm being recorded. HL: Would you please let me know how you knew Josephina Niggli. GC: How I met Josephina Niggli. l was a student at Western Carolina. I think I started in '53, and I gravitated toward the Theater Department At that time it was run by Mable Krum2 who was the head of the English Department. It was a sort of a happy-go-lucky free for all. We ad an awfully good time. There was an old English professor named Doc Deans who built all the sets. He lived, literally, behind the stage in a little room that he had fixed up back there, and we would build sets and grill cheese sandwiches and so forth. When Josephina arrived, to great fanfare, all that changed, and it was sort of brutal. I had been in theater a year with Ms. Krum and just had an awfully good time, and it did wonders for me. I was such a backward youngin', and oh my God. I was Tiresias from Oedipus Rex, and Reverend Hale in The Crucible, and something else. I forgot what. But anyway, Ms. Niggli arrived, and when she arrived there was radical changes right away. I remember when we met her she was a highly intimidating woman. Looked like a big Chessie Cat with those big glasses and that eternal thermos bottle that she carried with her everywhere she went. HL: Do you know what was in the thermos bottle? GC: No. I always suspected that it was not all coffee. [cough] She, ah, she drank a great deal and she talked constantly. She had an amazing persona through the ... she had an act of talking where she made you listen by withdrawing from you. Quite a cleverl technique. What it amounted to was she would start talking in a normal voice and she would get softer and softer while she was talking to you, 'til she was down so that you could barely hear. 3 For years I didn't According to the file information from the data recorder, tltis interview took place on the 17'h of October and not the l9tl'. The file data on all the other sound files created by this machine were accurate for the duration of this project so for all intents and purposes tltis interview took place on the 17'h and not the 19'h. 2 Possibly "Crumb"' and not "'Knun" realize that it was an intentional thing, but she got tremendous delight out of seeing people do this. 4 HL: Leaning forward. GC: Leaning forward. Straining to hear her. She told us a great deal about herself, and of course you know she was an incredible gossip. She loved to tell old Hollywood stories, old movie stories, and she let us know very quickly that she had written for the movies. I had seen Mexican vlllage, you know when it came around, and I remembered Jose Greco.5 In fact I went to go see it three times just to watch him! HL: Now you're talking about the play or are you talking ... GC: The movie version. HL: The movie version. Ok, so Sombrero. GC: [unintelligible] Mexican Village. She had written three dramas as well. She's written for oh ... oh gosh ... Paladin, Wagon Train, various other tv shows she'd do a segment here or there, and then she'd tell us stories that amazed us because she would always do this. She would say "I remember on occasion I was sitting in a small cafe talking to Hank. And Hank said ... oh you don't know who Hank is do you? Henry Fonda. And Henry said, Hank said ... [laugh] and then Larry laughed- Lawrence Olivier"6 She did that. Name dropping. Name dropping non-stop. But beneath all ofthat, sooner or later, it had to get down to some kind of instruction. Seemed like for the longest time all that we did was listen to her talk and she was mesmerizing. The strange thing she did then is she pulled about thirty or forty old plays from her drama classes at Chapel Hill, and they were Fred Koch plays. She proceeded to do a bill ofFred Koch plays. I think she did about fifteen of them and they were easy to do. They were remarkably very bad plays, but nobody cared,. They were plays, and I just about went out of my mind over them. After that I was always hooked on the whole concept of folk drama, what folk drama was and how it worked. Ms. Niggli wanted to move on ot other things, and of course one of the things that bothered her was diction. She said that she had a great deal of trouble listening to us talk. 3 Mr. Carden mimicked Josephina Niggli's speech technique, speaking gradually quieter and quieter while discussing Ms. Niggli's tendency to to the same thing. 4 Mr. Carden leaned forward from the waist and craned his neck. 5 Jose Greco played the role of Gitanillo de Torrano in 5iombrem ( 1953) 6 Starting here, and throughout the rest of the interview, Mr. Carden adopts an peculiar quasi-British accent \vhen speaking in the voice of Josephina Niggli. We had classes where we did nothing but walk back and forth across the stage, and quote Three Blind Mice. She'd make us enunciate7 you know. Three. Blind. Mice. Then very slowly, very slowly. And I don't know if it was genuine, or if it was pretense, but she would pretend to be outraged by our performance. We were so poor. She wold tells us, you know, "This is hard for me to take. Anyone who has had special training that I've had, and I love the English language. It bothers me so much to hear you people butcher it." You know. And I don't remember what we did. I know she overhauled the drama department, and she ran about fifteen of us off. She said that she understood that we had a click, and there would be no • clicks while she was there. There was some justice in the way she felt, but what she discovered was the "click" was it. So she put up auditions and posted for a play and three or four people showed up. What she had to acknowledge was we were it- the people that she ran off. So, to her credit sh asked us to come back. [laugh] HL: Now when you mean you were "it," you were ... what exactly do you mean by that? GC: Click? HL: Yes. GC: There were a bunch of us, of course that I think I about found that out after I became a theater person and taught theater in high schools and colleges for a good hunk of my life. People who are misfits .. many often times people who are what we call "geeks" now or "nerds" migrated to the theater. HL: Ok, ok. GC: We all came there and it was like a family. It was wonderful. That was a place we had to go at night when the rest of the alive with the social life ... the newspaper was doing tis, the photography club was doing this, and they were all this campus politics things and movers and shakers. We were in the theater, and we were with out friends, and I loved it. After I became a drama instructor I felt exactly the same way. I remember once when I was at [unintelligibleV The president of the college, they had presidents up there, called me in once and said he wanted to express his concern that everyone who was a trouble maker on campus was in my theater department, and that he had a distinct feeling that I was creating dissension, disrespect for authority and so forth. I had to tell him that they were that way before they came to the Drama Department. They came to the Drama Department because that was the only place ... that's their 7 He enunciated the word '"enunciate" for emphasis. 8 Sounded like Lison Cre, Lisa and Cre}~ Lisa and Craig, Lison Creek. A google search for schools and colleges with even remotely similar names came up empty. home. In effect I felt that he should be glad I was there because God knows what they would be doing if we didn't have a Dra -[laugh] a Drama Department for them all to go and meet and stay. HL: If you don't mind real quick, I'm going to check to make sure that this is actually playing back ... [Due to our positioning near the front door of the Dillsboro Chocolate Factory. and more ambient noise than anticipated, we both felt it was a good idea to ensure that our conversation was audible amidst it all.] [End Recording Part I] [Begin Recording Part 2] HL: Ok. We are good to go. GC: Ah, one of the people at the Drama Department at that time, who was a misfit and an awesomely talented person who was very unhappy and very lonely, was Heddie West. HL: Now when you say "this time," what year range are we talking about? GC: We're talking '54, '55, '56. Right in there. HL: Ok, ok. GC: And I won't go off on a bender about Hedy, but Hedy was for the longest time about the most famous person ever went to Western and she denied having attended it. She despised Western after she got away from it. I talked to her shortly before she died. I tracked her down. You know she had made all these records, gone off with Alan Lomax, and studied Leder in Germany, and she was famous. Knew Joan Baez, Pete Seger and sung in a Scottish accent in New York. I said ... I mentioned Ms. Niggli to her and she says "I hate her. I hate her. I saw through her the moment I saw her. My daddy told e how to see through people like her." And I said "Why do you hate her?" "She kicked me out of a place where I was comfortable.'' and I don't know why, but I told her a lie. "Well Ms. Niggli regretted that. She told me she regretted that." "Well I don't give a damn." The weird thing was, until she said that, I had forgotten it. I did not remember. I remembered Hedy, and remembered her being in the Drama Department, remembered her being in a play I'd directed, and then she was gone. HL: How do you spell her name? GC: It's H-E-D-Y. It's sort for Hedwick, and her last name's West. German of course. Her daddy was a troublemaker, a very famous troublemaker. Labor organizer. Klan tried to lynch him -burned his house poisoned his cattle, shot at him. Yeah. He's an interesting fellow, and Hedy was a lot like him. Hedy was non-conformist. She was very intelligent. She constantly questioned authority. She had a bad habit tat none of us did. We ... this was a period when you had ultimate respect for instructors. What they said you wrote down. Hedy would have immediately said, "Uh beg your pardon, I'd like to question that." She would! And she would sometimes tell people that "you don't know what you're talking about," and she became very unpopular with instructors. [laugh] but anyway, she left. I don't think she graduated. She went like three years. It was almost like she wanted to make a point by it. To my knowledge, when it came time to for her to graduate she just vanished. Then she sought [unintelligible] up in, gosh I don't know, Cambridge or someplace. Got a masters up there and went on. All after that when I'd buy her records, where there'd be that little biographical sketch on the back, she'd skip ... [made a hand motion]. HL: She'd skip Western. GC: She'd skip Western. [laugh] Now she came back and gave a concert and did renew old acquaintances, which astonished me when people told me that because that's not what she told me. She said that there were exceptions. She's talked about Dr. Wrenthrow,9 how much she admired him and he was a music teacher there. I asked Harden Cole, who was president of the student body once, I said "What do you remember about Hedy?" and he says "Oh Gosh! I remember Hedy was in the the First Baptist Church choir in Cullowhee." "I think you're kidding. Hedy?" He swore it was the music. She loved the music. She always brought a novel through and read through the sermon. [laugh] I like that. [laugh] But anyway, she went on without u. You kow wrote Five Hundred Miles. In my opinion, I highly respected and very ... she was sort of venerated. There's still a sort of cult out there. You can go on the internet and put "Hedy West" on Google and you'll find her right quick. HL: I'll do that this afternoon. GC: Ok [laugh] I had a crush on her, but I had a crush on anything that would walk so but yeah . . . I had a crush on her for the strangest reason. She didn't shave her legs. She was the only girl that I knew at Western that did not shave her legs. She didn't play games. It was fascinating. [laugh] She uh ... she tolerated me you know and that's about it. She just tolerated me. She had bigger plans, bigger things on her mind than me. HL: So she really just did not care for Ms. Niggli ... GC: No she did not care for Ms. Niggli. She said that she was a manipulator, she was able to control people, and that it amused her to control people ... She says" I will not play her games." HL: Now you were telling me that Ms. Niggli left Western for a while.10 GC: Ok. 9 Possibly "'Winthrow" HL: When did Ms. Niggli leave Western? You said that she left the Theater Department for a little while? GC: Yes, she left the first year. She finished a year and she was gone. So they advertised the position and got Charles Berry, who was a Carolina Playmaker had fantastic credentials. He'd been down playing Sir Walter Raleigh in The Lost Colony. He was a nice guy and was strikingly handsome. Not very handsome now. I saw him not too long ago, works with the State Department in Raleigh now. But, he came and he really intended to stay for the rest of his life. He was married, had a child. I remember he rented a home in Webster, and he did good theater. • He did have one problem. He couldn't stay out of the play. He would always take a part, and frequently the lead. HL: So he was both directing and being part of the play? GC: He what?. HL: So he was both directing and part of the play? GC: Oh yes. He would always apologize, say "I'm sorry, I need to tell y'all," he'd tell the class, "I just don't see any of you doing" like in Inherit the Wind" I just don't see any of you doing Matthew Harris Brady." Oh he had a point, you know. None of us were as sixty-five or seventy yeas old and bald-headed and we couldn't fake it very well. He says "I'll do it." [laugh] "I'll sacrifice it. I'll do it." I think he did, ifl remember correctly, maybe he did [mumbling] and he did good theater. It was impressive. Gotta love it. HL: Now you say he was from the Playmakers. Was he in the Playmakers with Josephina Niggli at the same time? GC: No, they did not know each other. He was much younger. She had been gone from Carolina for years. Use to, when I went to Chapel Hill, there was a store on Main Street that sold marzipan. I used to go in there and buy marzipan. They had a huge picture of Josephina. Well they had the famous graduates. They got Thomas Wolfe, Josephina, Lilly Smith, Paula Green, you know were lined up up there. I always went "I know her" [laugh] That was important. I knew somebody that was that famous that was up there like that. When I went back to Chapel Hill recently I tried to find that store, of course it was long gone. Chapel Hill's unrecognizable. It was a concrete labyrinth of some kind. But, she told me stories about Chapel Hill. She told me about Thomas Wolfe. He was in her class. [whispers] Thomas Wolfe was in her class. HL: Really? I 0 Mr. Carden began talking the moment we met before I could get the recorder set up and settle in without coming across as rude. During tl1is time he mentioned that Josephina had been at Western. left after only a short time. and then retumed soon there after. GC: Yes. I don't know whether she made that up or not, but it's a good story. She said that he brought a play to play writing class, they were in graduate division then and all of them writing plays. And the guy ... , now I've forgot his name. Who was it that started the Playmakers and uh HL: It escapes my memory now too. I know it ... GC: Well anyways, he said "Now Thomas? You've got too many people. You've got fifty people in the play. You're going to have to cut some of them out." and that Wolfe with otT and came back with seventy-five instead offifty. And he says" I'm sorry, I can't control it. Ifl could I'd • write a play and put an entire town in it." Of course you know that Wolfe's first choice was to be a playwrite. He tried so hard and wrote terrible plays. I've got them. I've got them all. I'm a Wolfe fanatic. HL: So they've been published. GC: Oh yes. A lot ofthem was sort of an honorary thing you know when he became famous and all they went back and dug em up or some ... I think there's one called Manor House. There's some bad stuff back there. He did one of the one acts that we did that was called The Return C?f Buck Gavitt and I'll never forget that. [laugh] And lo and behold, she pulled out and says "Gary, guess what I have here?" And it was a Jackson County story, because what he did ... professor him ... his name I've got it, it will come in a minute. Is he told his students to go back to their room and write him a play about their county or their town. And that's where Ms. Niggli started, you know, that's Thoth or Shave, and that's Sunday Costs Five Pesos, and so forth. She started writing about the village where she grew up in. Well all these North Carolina kids were going home, were going back to their room and writing about the local legends, and one of them ... , the famous one here in Jackson County is that Abraham Lincoln, his father was an old mountain man named Enlow that lived in Jackson County. HL: Named Enlow? GC: E-N-L-0-W. Yeah. And I was an mvfitl play. You know, it had structure, and it moved to a climax, and gosh it was hokey. It was terrible. I was in it. I played Abraham Enlow. It was called Leavings, only with out the "g" so it would be mountain speech. HL: So Leavins GC: Yeah. I think now it is called, if you go down to Chapel Hill and try to find it, it's got another name. It's called Nancy Hank's Bondslt'oman. But there was one of Nag's Head. Ms. Niggli sort ofliked it that I remember. Which was about the Dosia Burr drowning off the coast of ... that whole myth that grew up around a panting of some little fishing village in North Carolina has that they thought was Dosia Burr's face. The Lowry place, you know about the Lowry's, they were outlaws in Lumberton County and they were good material for a play and so Paula Green wrote one and several other students who lived in Lumberton wrote one. Ms. Niggli admired those plays and she would hold them up as representative of theater structure. One was called Last of the Lm-1-'lys, one was called Shovel 7bwn Outlaws but I remember every one of them vividly. Memory with me is both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes I wish I did not ... I wish I remembered less accurately. But anyway, that's probably what made me a drama major was reading those plays, Carolina Playmakers. Koch! Fred Koch. HL: That's right. • GC: Fred Koch HL: That's right. GC: I tried to start a movement recently based on what he did and I couldn't do it. I couldn't get enough interest. It's killing me to drop it. I want to do all that again. I want to go back into the school system again and tell kids, "Go home and write me a play about your home town." I want to do it with high school kids, you know. And the same thing Koch said, he says, "They are going to learn self confidence, they're gonna be proud of what they did, they're actually going to learn a little history. This is gonna have a profound effect on every kid that does it. He was right. Theater has sort of dropped out of the curriculum in the school systems I think. I don't see any evidence of it anyway. HL: As far as I know it is usually a choice, like it's a elective and you can take it in high school and that kind of thing. GC: It gets ... you know it's eliminated with a vengeance in the mountains. Now I'm sure in Charlotte and Shelby or Raleigh and places like that that actually have theaters ..... But, I did absorb all of that, and if she's in way responsible for that then that shaped me. I don't remember her ever teaching me anything because she refused to teach me. She never taught me anything about acting because of the same thing. She did not like me as a actor. She would devote all her time ... I remember her pets. They were all tragic people. She made them believe that they were going to fly and most of them come to a bad end. Not everybody wants to hold Josephina responsible for that and I don't ... [laugh] What do you do when she tells a kid like Bill Stone, "Bill you have some promise. I really think you might make it. It's unfortunate that you're married." He left his wife, went to New York, and he you know came back with his tail between his legs. That got to become a very common story, but she had that much control. She could make you do things like that. That must be a terrifying power ... to manipulate people like that. But, when I got out and became a theater person, she was never interested in me. She was all the others. She had pictures of them up in her office and so forth. I went down to Georgia, [unintelligible] the Theater Department, went into competitions, won competitions, won the state. None of it impressed her. HL: You told me, before we started recording, that you won her award twice- a Niggli award or an award ... what GC: Yeah. There was no certificate, no frame, anything like that, but when she had people in her theater class who directed then they had a night of plays that were directed by Ms. Niggli's students and you picked the best play, the one that demonstrated the best direction. I directed a . play called Theater of the Soul, and she went to considerable trouble to get that play for me. It was a Russian play and was hard to get, but I had seen it in Cherokee one night at a party down there. Unto These Hills, they had canteen night and they did it. It blew me out of the water, and I told Ms. Niggli. She says, "Darling, I'll get it for you," and she did. I directed, Hedy West was in it, and it won but we didn't really [unintelligible]. HL: Do you remember what year that was? GC: That wold have been, oh gosh, that would have been ... Be a Earl 11 would know. She was in in my class. Matt Grey, 12 he carne to see me this weekend, he might know. I would guess '58. I'm just guessing. If it's not '58, it's '57. About when I came back, this time somebody else was directing ... no ... yeah, somebody else was directing. I acted and I got the acting award, so te next thing was to go to Chapel Hill. Didn't go. It was Twenty-Seven Wagons Full. HL: That was the one you acted in. GC: Yes. I as Jake, and the girl was Betty Cooper ... Betty Collins ... and I know her now. Can tell you exactly where she is. She loves Ms. Niggli, just adores her. You should talk to her and you should talk to her husband. She's in Atlanta, and has anybody ever said anything to you about a woman at Western named Lillian Hurt? HL: No, no one has. GC: Well, Lillian Hurt was the Public Relations person at Western for years and she had two sons- David and I can't remember the other one. Betty married one boy who was killed in a car wreck, and then after that (I can't remember if he was married or engaged to her) [mumbling] then she married David and both she and David are what you would call "Nigglites." They live in Stone Mountain, and she's a playwright. She's trying very hard to write a play. She's losing her sight, but I've got her address. Something like B. Harmony or something like that. It's an easy address to remember. ll That is what the name sOtmded like 12 Possibly "'Gray" HL: If you want to e-mail it to me I'll see if 1 can ... GC: Ok. Well anything I say that you want later just let me know. HL: Ok. Great. GC: Ok. HL: Now just real quick, we were talking a minute ago about how Ms. Niggli left Western for a year J guess. Do you know where she went or what she did? GC: Yea it was like ... it was like Baylor or someplace. lfit;s not Baylor, it's one like that. think it was in Texas. She had some kind of contacts in Texas because that's where she got hung up on outdoor drama. She was going to do The Alamo as an outdoor drama, and she was going to take the cast from Western. She was going to hand pick them and we were all going to get in cars and drive in a great cavalcade and drive from Cullowhee to Texas and do The Alamo. But, I think she went tot Baylor but I got to, since we weren't getting along anyway, I was a part of the thing. She would still tell me "Gary I need to go to Sylva. You know your way around. Go with me and help me find so and so," and I'd go. I'd ask her pretty pointed questions. I got to where I just didn't care and so I asked her. I said, "Why did you come back. It's obvious you didn't care for us when you left. Why did you come back?" She says, "Darling, I got out there and there were four Josephina Nigglis out there." She said, "I came back here because I'm the only one." [laugh] She was very candid. [laugh] That was about the same time, I remember Jimmy Dean was in a movie in Sylva and we were past the marquee. She says ... I was crazy about Jimmy Dean13 and I adored him. ''Why are you fascinated by Jimmy Dean? I don't understand that." It's funny, sometimes we went off like that, but it ceased being an instructor and a student. We became some sort of friends or something. Some sort of detant, you know. We got along off campus. She had me take her to other plays. She embarrassed me very badly one night at Flat Rock. The play was so bad she said, "Darling, I can't stand this." I said, "You wanna leave?" She says, "no no no no no no." She fired up a cigarette, you know she smoked constantly, got up and turned her chair backwards. See they weren't ... you could pick the chairs up at Flat Rock then. They were all director's chairs at the time, and she sat backwards to show her contempt of that play, the whole audience looking at her. [laugh] It was like Three Sailors and a Girl or something that was a musical and it was silly. [laugh] HL: She sounds like she was a character. GC: Yeah, yeah. She would make a great character. I've always thought that somebody ought to put her in a book, but I don't think that I would want to do it. You'd have a terrible responsibility of living with what you end up with, especially if it was unfair. 13 No doubt he meant James Dean instead of Jimmy Dean HL: Now you mentioned a couple times obviously that you were in the Theater Department and she taught in theater. Do you remember any specific courses you took with her, like what they were? GC: Oh she took pictures endlessly, and lots oftimes she would just create a course. You know, "next time w are going to ... I'm going to teach a class on design on the stage - actors' design. Who attracts attention, how you attract attention ... " She would just sort of make up rules and dictate them, and sometimes it bothered me. Like, you know, it would come off the top of her head. But, we took them all as scripture and wrote them down like she said "take endless · pictures." She'd sit at home and photograph her own television constantly, just click click click click click click click click. Soap operas, nighttime dramas, anything to illustrate a point. We'd come into class and she'd flash those picture up at you. She says, "who's dominant in this picture? The man that's standing up. That's how you get attention. You stand up. If you want to lose attention, you sit down. Ifyou want to lose everybody, lay down." You know, and that sounded good. We'd go write it down, and then she'd say "Alright, George get on the stage. Benny, you get on the stage. Alright, both of you walk around," and so they'd walk around. They're self-conscious and so forth. She'd say, "Now I'm going to show you something." She says "George come here." George comes down [makes whispering sounds], whispers in his ear. They go back up there, just "Ok, walk around the stage." George walks around with great confidence and looks at us and smiles. Benny's still awkward, don't know what to do. She says "What is the difference? The difference is what I told him. Do you know what I told him? I gave him something to do. I told him ," and then she gave him a song lyric or something you know and he just said it over and over and over as he walked. She just "and he moves with purpose," and we're writing it down. We're writing it down. But time and time again I sometimes wondered about will this stand the test of time. I know, see I write dramatic monologues now. She told a class once, "Never put anybody on the stage and let them talk for more than four minutes. The audience will not tolerate it." But there's no way that you can devise a speech that somebody will be interested in for more than tour minutes, and I immediately thought, "Well now, I don't buy that.'' And of course that's what I do. I do dramatic monologues for an hour ten, and hour twenty minutes. [laugh] And that's when 1 began to think beware of any drama person, or story teller person, or anybody in the position of authority who uses "never." As soon as they say that word they've lost me because there's no such thing as never. Anything's possible, [laugh] but I remember writing tat down when she said it. She even did it to me, it was My lhree Angels, and it had a scene in it that just fascinated her. She liked to experiment with things, so I did become a guinea pig for her. So she's sitting up thre with that thermos on the back row. When you'd look out there, that's what you'd see, her glasses, and sometimes she's come charging down that aisle just as hard as she could. She was still very agile, l remember, in the Niggli Theater of her putting her foot up on the stage. One foot on the floor and the other foot up on the stage and going up on the stage. Of course she lost that ability but it was just good God she was that healthy, you know, that robust making a point. Then she'd jump off the stage and go back to her seat. She had me set a table, in My Three Angels, it was a minor scene and should have taken thirty seconds but she kept me setting that table for three minutes before the play started. The scene opened with me setting the table. 1 had to put down every plate, the silverware, the water glass, everything, go and come and you're thinking, "Oh God oh God oh God oh God, how long is this going to go on." And she was giving me things to sing and think as I did that, so the audience would start saying ... start clapping '"'Hey get on with it!" [laugh] before the first character enters on the stage. You know that illustrated some precept of the Niggli Philosophy whatever that ... I don't know what it was. She told me once, it's one of my favorite things she told me. I don't know how we got on the subject, but we were talking about fundamentalist religion, Pentecostals, and of course we were always full of that here in this region. She says "Darling, do you know who Amy Simple McPherson was?" and I said, "Yes mam I do." That always made me very proud when I knew what she was talking about. That was an evangelist that had a fanatic following of ... was like Billy Graham. She says," Well Amy Simple McPherson is responsible for my first appearance on the stage." She says, "She gave me ... she came to Monterrey and she was doing incredible things. She would ride on the stage on a motorcycle. She'd come on stage with a frying pan and beat it on the floor while she was talking. She decided she wanted three hundred angels to back her up. There were three hundred angels that stood behind her while she preached, and we all had little wings. 1 was an Amy Simple McPherson angel. I was standing back there with my little wings [mumble] 14 and I liked that. I decided I'd be a theater person." [laugh] That's a good story. [laugh] HL: That is a good story. GC: [laugh] But in the long range, did we mean anything to her? l think, l feel like we meant very little to her. I think that to a great extent she saw herself virtually as her life was over because, well, it's just like the book- the biography ofher. 15 Have you seen that thing? HL: I started reading it, but I haven't finished it yet. GC: 1 don't like that book. The reason I don't like it, is we're not there. HL: You're talking about the one by Martinez? GC: The one they on Ms. Niggli, that is one ofthe the foremost Mexican writers of the twentieth century. It, ah, has her in a Mexican costume, big straw hat. 16 14 Sounds like '"dowtt up, down, up. down. up" 15 Josefina Nigf!./i, Mexican American Writer: A Critical Biography by Elizabeth Coomod Martinez? Did you know she was married once? HL: I did not. No. GC: I could be wrong, but a lot of people that was close to her, and this is somebody you need to talk to a long time now. Somebody who is much fairer than I am [laugh] Dwayne Oliver. You need to talk to him soon, he is not in good health. She loved Dwayne, everybody did, he was just lovable and I think we would maybe have differnet opinions than l do about that. But, it bothered me that we're not in the book. Western's a footnote, and she doesn't mention anybody • that touched her life in any meaningful way after she got to Cullowhee, except Dwayne. She may mention Joe Walters, because Joe, he practically became a servant when she got in bad health and would stay up there. He'd cook and you know she had those three little dogs l remember Beth told me once that she had left instructions to put all three of them down when she died. That's what you do with dogs I guess. Cats you can just open the door. [laugh] I remember the bookcases. She had beautiful bookcases and they were full ofbooks, and they were great books. I love books too, and I remember the last months that l went to see Ms. Niggli, she was giving those books away. They were empty spaces, you know, just three or four books on this shelf, six or seven on this shelf. She was giving stuff away ah ... making some sort of departure. HL: Like she knew she was going to go? GC: I guess. I'm sure she got to the point where she wasn't .... It is, to me, very affecting to think of that old woman sitting alone in that empty house where she had once sat like a queen on a throne with forty kids on the f1oor all vying for her favor. That's gone. Nobody there. That's a cruelty ... well I'm fond of saying that's the cruelty of Western, WCU, but it may happen to you anywhere. HL: Why do you say it's a cruelty ofWCU? GC: I think that if somebody gives their whole life to an institution, then that institution is in some way obligated to make their life enjoyable in some way. Visit them, have them down to a performance of a play, let them give a lecture, let them do things right up until they keel over. Western does not do that. It is cold hearted, brutal and she'd not the only one. I've seen it so many times. I'm so glad I don't work there, live there, and expect anything from them. This is another thing. They've got a ... well I won't use any names so that will make it alright. HL: Ok. 16 The Martinez biography pictures Ms. Niggli on the cover in a Mexican outfit but not a straw hat. As far as I know. it is the only biography that has been written on Josephina Niggli to date. GC: When Ms. Niggli knew she was dying, some officials from the college went over and talked her into leaving that house to the university. About five years after she died., I was a member of an Appalachian writers conference and I started a scholarship named after Ms. Niggli. I wanted them to give an award every year for a one act play somebody had writ and call it the Niggli award. I solicited a little money, they told me I didn't need to get much ... you get three or four hundred dollars and it'll take care of itself after that. I went to go see Bill Paulk 17 , I went to see people I knew who admired her. [muttering] I can't remember who all they were now. They all gave money and I turned it over to Appalachian Writers and they established the thing. I guess they still got it. I hope they do anyway. But anyway, when they met at Western, the AWA • decided to hold an annual conference at Western, I decided that we needed to honor Josephina. People seemed to have virtually forgotten her. Now all that's changed. I went over and talked to the guy in archives, wonderful fella, and he let me see all the stuff they had. All the photographs, all the pictures, so on and so forth. I said, "Can I get this?" He said, "Get you a display case and you can have all this." I went tot he same administrator who had talked to Ms. Niggli about giving her home to the college, and he turned me down. That's Western. That's the way I feel about it too. I mean they gave me an honorary Doctorate, but that don't mean a damn thing. Cold-hearted folks. Bill Paulk, about the same way. George Herring, about the same way. Damn, I'm gonna give my life to somebody that will atleast come and sit by the bed and visit me once or twice. They don't do that at Western. HL: Now you mentioned, before we started running the ... GC: [laugh] HL: [laugh] You mentioned that your relationship with her changed after you left the university and after she retired and her health started failing. Will you talk a little bit about that again so ... GC: Weill think it was after I left Lisa McRae. I was out ofwork for a long time. Well, not a long time, seems like a ling time. But when I stopped teaching theater at Lisa McRae, I came back to Sylva and move into my great-grandad's old house, because it was abandoned, and she heard I was back. Joe Walker, who at that time was teaching at Western, he called me and he says, "Let's you and I go up and see Josephina." So that started. We would go up and see her. HL: What year did you move back here? GC: I was, gosh I'm not good on years, I think it was '70, '72 or somewhere in there. So we would go and see her, and that's when I became aware of what I'm talking about. She was sitting there, it was after Mama died and she was there alone in that house. One of the things, you know she evicted Doc Deans from that little room he had backstage. 17 What the name sounds like. Alternately it could be "Poulk" or ''Polk" HL: I did not know that. GC: Yes. That really messed poor Doc up, but there's to sides to that. Of course she really wanted it for her office and she got it for her office, but she made a bitter enemy out of Doc Deans. Well long after she retired, she was living by herself I went up once to see her. Maybe it was to unload the groceries or something I don't know, but she came in, sat down, an had that little mischievous grin. She says, "Look what I've got," and it was this huge bowl of strawberries. l thought, "Wow. Those are wild strawberries. They didn't come from a store." She says, "Who do you think gave them to me." I said, "I haven't the vaguest idea." She says, • "Doc Deans. He came to the door." HL: So they must have patched things up. GC: Yeah, they must've had. George Herring always adored her because she was as eccentric as he was. She got away with it. George didn't always ... [laugh] And she was kind to the misfits on the faculty too. They gravitated to her. She frequently put them in the plays. Tony Brown was in an awful lot of her plays so was Homer. Homer Nicholson who was a Rhodes Scholar and we all knew he was doomed because he was blatantly gay that it was not good to be blatantly gay. [unintelligible] got killed, clipped it up walking around the campus at night. [laugh]. He's a wonderful fellow. He had a very pronounced Southern drawl, it's a Rhodes Scholar. She made him a [unintelligible] 18 in, I guess, My Three Angels. Was that what it was? Yeah. [laugh] HL: Can you tell me again ... you started to tell me about her house. You told me how she had the chair just for her and no one else. 19 GC: Yeah HL: You were also hinting that there were stories about her house being haunted? GC: Yeah, when I heard the story I was fascinated and I called, "Hey." I called somebody and,"What's this about Josephina's house being haunted?" He said, "Weill heard it trom so and so." I said, "Well tell him to call me," and the kid called me and he's a student at Western. I said, "I can't hear well. Come here and tell me this." I gave him directions to the house. He came to my house, sat on the porch, and he said, "Ok, I'm not comfortable with this, but I'll tell you what I know." The theory is that Josephina is upset about what became of her house. It's being used by a church now. It's a church that Josephina would not have approved of. [mumbled Spanish]"11 I said, "Well what does she do?'' He said," Well she doesn't do anything. There's just a powerful odor of wine everywhere, and" [laugh] "doors slam on account of the ... urn ... ham 18 Possibly "director"? 19 Mr. Carden began speaking the minute I introduced myself or could officially start the recorder/inten·icw. This was mentioned at that time. bam! Doors open on account of the uh ... " I said, "Well nobody's seen Josephina." "No. No, " he says," but several of my friends told me that they can smell that wine." [laugh] HL: I had never heard that. GC: Ahl See if you can track it down. I'd like to know whether it just popped up and died, or whether it is still somewhere out there in the folklore, 'cause Western has some folklore. The University has one. All oftheir sins have come back to haunt them in folklore. I've always thought ... Do you remember Cooney? Did you ever know about Cooney? HL: [shakes head "no"] GC: Cooney was mentally challenged, that's the correct term now isn't it, fella who lived off campus who for some reason had carle blanche at Western. He could go and come anytime he wanted to, and he skated on the edge of disaster a great deal. He would do things, you know, like I can remember being in a town house when it was a student hang-out and somebody putting him up to going over and trying to kiss a cheerleader who got hysterical and had to be carried out of the place. Cooney was sort of a frightening looking guy anyway. I'll not go into who Cooney was and where he came from, but long ... the last ten or fifteen years of Cooney's life he stepped down. He drove a rider mower on campus. HL: Rode a what on campus? GC: A rider mower, like a lawnmower. HL: Yeah. GC: And he considered himself the official greeter for people- visitors. He would ride up to you and say, "Where d'ya wanna go? What do ya wanna see?" 21 and he would take you round to the library, to the gym and he'd tell you about all the places. It alarmed some of them; it upset some of them, but generally they left him alone. I've always thought ... It got to be kind of the "thing" to do for a while, particularly with schools like Western and Appalachian and East Carolina and East Tennessee to do a theater production about the history of the college. The university in a sense. Ifl did one ofWestern, I would have Cooney as chorus. [laugh] He would be on that rider mower [laugh] and he would talk to the audience just like chorus, and you would go ofT and you would see the next thing and then Cooney would come back. [laugh] HL: He sounds like he was an interesting person. GC: She had a servant at her house, Josephina did. 20 Sounds like ''Los Casa del Sol" 21 Spoken in a nasally southern accent HL: Someone hinted at that. GC: I love to hear Josephina saying her name. I don't know why but the hair would sand up on my ... Josephina's voice was wonderful. She sa- ... her name was Blika. HL: The servant's name. GC: Yeah. Right. Was a black girl. "Blika dear, I need some more coffee." Blika. My God, I love that. [laugh] I wrote the stories where I named characters Blika just because I love that. That's the way she said it. "Blika"22 HL: Like 8-L-I-C-K-A? GC: I think it was B-L-I-K-A. HL: K-A GC: Yeah. Blika. Blika. Whoever she was, she certainly adored Josephina. I once ... she's somewhere in the black community up at Western. HL: Now did she come here with Josephina of did Josephina hire her after she moved here? GC: She hired her after she got here. I don't know how she got her, but she was ideal for her. She stayed in the kitchen. She cooked when company was there. When she was there, you know, she kept the coffee, the cokes, the cookies, whatever going. Joesphina went through a stage once. That's probably one of the fact that we got pretty close. She got interested in the occult and 1 was interested in the occult. She read a tremendous number ofbooks, and at that time they were hard to come by. The best ones were published by Grove Press. Now, she'd struck a deal with me. She says, "Why don't you join my book club and we'll swap books. You get the ones that I don't get. I'll tell you what I order, you tell me what you order," and we started ordering occult books. She was fascinated, and I am too, again I can't ... this is certainly not critical of Josephina because I'm up to here [motions above head] with this sort of thing. She was ;' · -.. ;:.- · ~ :::i f_~: ·: ·: :. Supposed to have killed several thousand children. She was collecting books on him. There's a famous one called Las Bas. 1 remember she, "Gary I'm getting Las Bas. What are you getting?" [laiugh] But as you see it, it was a strange relationship. HL: Was that also later in her life or was she still a teacher at Western then? GC: That was pretty close .... That was probably when I was in graduate school. HL: Ok, and what ... 22 Gary Carden pronounced it "BLl-ka" GC: 70s. HL: :Ok. [laugh] GC: Yeah, yeah. But I remember when we would talk about Gilles de Rais and Joan of Arc. There was a famous book that had come out that compared, you know, Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais as being opposites of the same coin. That he killed, and she was a force for good, loved people. Sort of the divine thing. But, that they had a great deal in common, and I don't remember what they had in common now, but the whole book was built around that. She was . interested in Black Masses. Tun the cross upside down and all that sort of .... She was interested in Lester Crowly, the guy that would file all his teeth 'til they were needle points and then he'd bite you. HL: Well since we are sort of on the subject. Do you know if she adhered to one particular religion? Was she religious or spiritual? GC: I would have always said that she was Catholic. H L: Do you know how closely she followed that? GC: No I don't. I don't. That was one thing that we never talked about. I don't remember ever talking about that, but she would sometimes say something that like, "When we moved to Monterrey," or something, "there had been" some kind of political revolution and her father had gone to Monterrey and seems like she would say things about book ... the school. I got the impression that it was a Catholic school with nuns and the whole business. HL: Were you still here when she passed away? GC: Yes. HL: So what do you remember about when she passed away or if it affected the local area or the university or any of that. Are you aware of any ... GC: I think she died at C.J. Harris. She was in the hospital when she died. I knew nothing about a funeral. I don't know whether she was buried or cremated or her body went back to Mexico or whether she's buried here. It'd be interesting, I'd like to know that myself Where is she? You know. Yeah that's right. I have no idea, and of course I made no attempt to go to any kind of funeral or anything because I felt like that was a part of her life that had nothing to do with me. I knew nothing about relatives or family, but I am curious as to whether it was true that she was married once. It was like one of these deals that lasted a week or something. HL: Well, what have you heard? You say that it was a rumor. You just know the rumor that she was married or do you know any ... GC: Yeah. Kids would make cracks about her like, "Well it's no surprise that her marriage opnly lasted a week." You know. Where did they get that? Where did they get that? She told me once, when I said something about I had been obsessed with Jose Greco a Spanish Dancer. One of those guys, you know, thunderous flamenco. She said something that implied, and that was so rare, that she had actually been romantically interested in Jose Greco. That would be interesting to know. I don't know anything, but have you ever seen Mexican ~71/age ?23 H L: I have not. I know that the university has been trying to get a recording of the movie version. GC: Yeah, that's what I mean. HL: Yeah I know that they're trying to get their hands on a copy o that, but it's rather difficult. I think somebody found a copy of it on the Turner Classics Channel. GC: [laugh] Yeah, she's got a play or two that I never read. Seems like there's one about a general. Seems like it has a title like Death comesfor General So and So or something like that. HL: Do you have a specific play or novel that she wrote that you enjoy? GC: I have Step Down Elder Brother someplace and I have Mexican Village someplace. HL: Is there one that you really like or that you connect with in any way? GC: No. HL: No. Not really? GC: Mexican Village I connected to, because to me A1exican Tillage was just a novel extension of the same thing that Rick Koch did. She took a whole village and told you a story about everybody in the village, and then had them interact you know. So I like that, and I understand that they were both Book qf the Month Club selections one time. I do remember that, but that's about it. Seems like some of her gossip was about Richard Boone who played Paladin. Little stories, I don't remember any of them now that she told about him. Seemed like it's may have been good friends with Lillian Smith who did Tree that Grows in Boorklyn, and maybe out in Carolina Playmakers in Koch's class. HL: So she did talk about the Playmakers some. GC: Oh yeah. She held them up as something we should all aspire to, and that was one message I bought. I agree totally. That was very much, you know, my culture, my state, my mountains, my people, all of that. That got to me. That was unusual for her too, because I didn't see an 23 He means the movie .Sombrero which was based on Josephina Niggli's book Mexican Ill/age. awful lot of respect for mountain culture in Josephina. I think she actually had an interview once over at the Asheville tv channel where she said the same thing. Just unabashedly said, "Well I just can't stand the way you people talk." [laugh] HL: WeH I do want to ask you something, and it's sort of an odd question, but I asked somebody else who was in the art department this who had known her and they said, "Oh you should ask that to everybody." GC: llaughj • HL: So I am. I've been asking people, when you think about Josephina Niggli is there a specific color that you would associate with her? GC: A color? HL: A color. GC: [contemplative sigh] HL: Or an impression. A tinted hue. GC: WelL she'd have to be red and I've always associate Persian cats with her. HL: Why would you say red? GC: There's an energy ... something that's bright. almost garish, demands attention. HL: So it's like her personality? GC: Yeah. [laugh! I took my class from charter school to sit in on one of her classes and it was a drama class. She got up on the stage, sat there, and started talking to the students. She said, ''And if you arc thinking about becoming teachers one of the things you should consider." and her voice started getting low What it ended up was, " If you take dran1a. If you can stand on this stage and command attention of an audience for fifteen minutes, you can command an audience in a classroom with a great deal more ease. This is a perfect training for you," she'd say, "You learn to get people to pay attention to what you say, just like you're listening to me now." [laugh] There they all were with their little heads stuck forward. [demonstrates leaning forward as if to hear something better] [laugh] But somehow, we were diffcrnct creatures. I didn't meld like everybody else did to her. HL: Yet even though you mention that you didn't meld with her, as you say, I find it interesting that you still managed to be in touch with her later on. What do you account for that? GC: I don't know. I've wondered myself Was I the only thing left? You know. She tried numerous other people and they had turned their back on her or they just vanished or they just weren't there anymore? And I thought of literally hundreds of kids, you know, that they became an irritation to her. She would have to say,'' No Darling, no. Please don't come up here. I've just had too much." Mohs of kids going up that mountain t to sit in her living room, and then go to nothing. I \vonder became of the ones like, I remember she had a very intelligent, I would say gifted, and flamboyantly gay man in her class that hated her. They screamed and yelled at each other and fought almost l unintelligible] in her office and his name was PC Roberts. I'd like to know if you can find him, ifhe's still alive, you know. There was an actor that adored her, that she told him that he was bound for glory, named, oh gosh what was his name, Dwayne Oliver would kno,-.. this. Bill Smith. Simple. Bill Smith, and I think he's maybe a drama director in a girls school someplace now. There is one named John ... these are the people that she had pictures on her wall or that she admired . . . John, what's his name, John. , I cannot think of it. He was around a great deal. Came back after he graduated and was, he was in her home a great deal. It's like Valance or something like that. Again, Dwayne Oliver would kno\v. About the time that Bill Shaun: 1 , Bill Shaun Smith, that's the way to identify him, ''Bill Smith'' is too ordinary. Bill Shaun Smith, and I remember he played Freud inA Foreign Countr_v. (laugh]. Man. Probably ifl thought about it I could think of a great deal more but I fell that you should definitely talk to Betty, \:vho married a guy in Atlanta, Betty Cooper or Betty Collins, but she married David Hurt an I've got those phone numbers. There's others just not coming to me. And of course, Lillian adored her and probably started, initially, the first little website that was devoted to Josephina. Have you nm into a woman up at Westem, that's just not my cup of tea, Barbara, she's in a wheel chair now ... HL: No I don't think so. GC: She sta.rted a full blown website. A great deal of personal detail, I don't think I ever read it, but I visited it and it was huge. It may still be up there, I don't know. But where there's a website for Josephina now on YouTube. You know about that don't vou? HL: No I don't. [laugh] GC: Yeah.llaughl HL: I 'm clearly ... GC: Her very own website. HL: (laugh] GC: Yeah.Ah, Oh Gosh. Ifl thought about it I could think of many more names of students, you know, but I think once you touch on somebody like Dwayne Oliver you end up talking to anybody. You'll get all that. HL: Is there anything else that you can think ofthat you want to address. I can only think of certain things, but I didn't know her. GC: Yeah. HL: So, is there anything that you can think of that you think really reflected who she was as a person or the kind of things she did that I haven't touched on? GC: There \verc quotable Niggli statements. They were usually when she'd shock people sometimes. They were an observation on something that they didn't even think she had an opinion on. but none of 2-l I did not ask for spelling clarification. Could be "Shawn" instead of "Shaun." them arc coming to me right otT. Somebody told me one two weeks ago and it was some local rag or somebody and he had gone to her house with someone else and they knocked on the door and they \vcrc both drunk. She never came to the door, and one of them was over in the corner urinating against the wall and she opened the door and she said, "'Young man if you're through pissing on my flowers, you can come inside." [laugh] Who was that \vho told me that two weeks ago'? I don't remember who it was. I wondered if Mama drank. HL: Now when you say "Mama" you mean her mother? GC: Yeah. Her mother. HL: Did you have a chance to meet her mother? GC: Yeah, she was there. Sometimes when we would go she would come out briefly and be entertaining and say witty things and talk, and then she'd vanish. HL: Did she ever come to any of Josephina's classes? GC: [shakes head I HL: No. GC: No she never did. She didn't come to anything. I don't think she came to the plays or an)thing like that. I remember some people that \vere lifelong enemies for whatever reason, you know, I don't know why that is. There was an English teacher that despised her and used to say scathing things about her in class to his students and I thought, '"Well that's gonna catch up w·ith him sooner or later." Huguelet. HL: When you say "her," you mean her or her mom? GC: Her. Ms. Niggli. He really hated Ms. Niggli. HL: You said Huguelet was his last name? GC: Hm? HL: You said Huguelet was the last name? GC: Yeah. He was an English teacher. I asked him once, this was \hen I was in graduate school, I said, ··Why do you hate her so much?" He said, '"She's done total damage to students here, because she openly advocates that students who come here to become teachers drop out of the education courses. Ms. Niggli says they are doing more harm than they're doing good. They should just take their degree without the education courses and go on." And of course, I was one of them that she did that to, and it did hurt. It cost me about a thousand bucks a year until I went back to graduate school and got my education courses that I had, because she said that they are a waste of time. She was right. They were a waste of time, but the thing was it hurt people economically. You know it was set up o acknowledge that you had qualified to be a teacher, and if you refused education courses you hadn't qualified according to the state. Ms. Niggli was right. Those courses were a waste, they really were. When I went back and took them they \verc even more worthless, but then I got the money see. I don't know who's right in a thing like that. HL: Now what course did you say this Professor Huguelet worked in? GC: He \vas English, and he was very snobbish English. He ,,.-ould ahvays talk out ofhis nose too though,:' but he was a good teacher. I took a lot o graduate work under him. Took a lot of graduate work under a wonderful teacher by the name ofRorebacker. [unintelligible], but frankly most of my teachers were mediocre or less. There was no charisma about ... maybe that is why people liked Ms. Niggli charm and George Herring ... George, you know people will talk about George. They're still talking about him, and he's been dead fifteen years now on May 20. They will be talking about him another twenty years. He is quotable, and maybe that is why I ... that great vapid, bland nothing at Western, you know, here's a fresh [unintelligible mumbling]. [laugh] llive to find out, I'm much more tolerant of Ms. Niggli's flaws no\v than I was say ten years ago, because I'm a lot like her. You know I see things that maybe arc a great deal like Ms. Niggli. I get drunk on attention too. I'm a storyteller. The only thing I'm pretty sure I don't do, and I try to watch it and be sure I don't, is manipulate. You know·, '"Why don't you do so and so. Why don't you jump off that building over there.'' [laugh] HL: Ohman, well this has been fascinating. I have really really enjoyed this. GC: Ok. HL: I've got for you ... I'm going to turn this off if that's ok with you. [End Transcript] Date: 17 October 2009 Begin Time File 1: 10:15 AM EST Begin Time File 2: 10:26 AM EST Length File 1: 9 minutes 44 seconds Length File 2: 1 hour 13 minutes 48 seconds Location: Dillsboro Chocolate Factory- Dillsboro, North Carolina Equipment: Olympus Digital Voice Recorder VN-41 OOPC 25 Demonstrdted talking out of his nose.
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Oral Histories of Western North Carolina

These interviews document the communities and culture of Western North Carolina. Topics include the building of the Fontana Dam, the history of WCU, stories from local veterans, integration of the...

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