Kevin Lane Dearinger - On Stage with Bette Davis: Inside the Famous Flop of Miss Moffat

The author wishes to thank his biological and theatrical families for their support and for listening to some of these stories for five decades. If age and stage fright have made him seem cranky, he remains grateful for all the love, here and there, then and now.

With a lifetime of gratitude to John Arthur and Anna Louise Lane Dearinger, Pam Dearinger Hutton, David Bernard Dearinger and Darrell Ung, Arnetta Winkfield Hill, Anne Rogers and Mike Hall, F. Kathleen Foley Herder, Celia Tackaberry, Ken Billington, Maria Blazer and Judith Blazer Kaufman, Shirley Brown Pierce, Andy Sandberg, and always Danny Mizell.

Thanks, too, to Linda Lane Haynes, Alan Gooch, Gail Kennedy, Jimmy Brown, Anthony Smallwood, Maureen Linehan, Christine Bramble, Gerry Protheroe, John Brian Quinn, David Elledge, Lydia and June Ooghe, Bobby Wilson and Andy Gale, Christopher Molanphy and his families, all the Hals family, Kathleen Hebert, John Kirby, Jamie Dee Howe Nichols, Sue Dearinger Howell, Loralie Dearinger Howe, Ruth Ann Dearinger Snyder, Christine Lane McDonald, Minnie Lane Nelson, Mary Baker Flynn, Donna Gardt, Jim Jansen, Mark Sendroff, Jack Feldman, the incomparable John Fricke, Harry Woolever, Jacqueline Roberts, Felix Knight, Marge Rivingston, Toni Hoffman Scofield, Andy Greenhouse and Frank Guliani, Michael Newton-Brown, Ron Plotkin, Robert Smallwood, Russell Jackson, Stephen Gill, Dorothy Bednorowska, Uli Knoepfelmacher, Gay Reading and John Martin, Jerry Stone and Mary OBrien, Cody and Cameron Taylor, who know their theatre history, Jeromy and Lyndy Franklin Smith and the Lexington Theatre Company, especially Brock Terry and the full companies of West Side Story and Newsies , the jolly crew at Cornerstone Pharmacy and the Two Sisters Caf, and all my former students and student-actors, who allowed me to tell my stories when the mood was on me.

With additional thanks to Harry Keyishian, Erin Chandler, Michael Courtney at the Black Swan Book Shop, Dr Person and the staff at McFarland for their professional support and encouragement.

With thanks, as well, to Third Street Stuff, Lexington, Kentucky, and to Starbucks, various, in Manhattan and Kentucky, especially my Lexington friends at Ashland and East High, for offering strong black tea with refills and a friendly space to write.

Lyrics and dialogue from Miss Moffat used by permission of the estate of Emlyn Williams, Alan Brodie Representations, Ltd., London. With thanks to Mr. Brodie, Ginny Sennett, Katie Butler, and Alison Lee.

Miss Moffat poster art reproduced by the kind permission of the estate of Michael Vollbracht, Tracy L. Moore, representative.

All rehearsal and production photographs reproduced by permission of the New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Division, the Friedman-Ables Collection.

I am grateful.