Betti Brown, Bonnie Nelson Schwartz, and Mickey Berra at the 2012 Helen Hayes Awards Nominations Announcement

Shannon Finney Photography

Helen Hayes and Betti Brown at the 1988 Helen Hayes Awards

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Betti Brown, Mitchell Shear, Karen Akers, Bonnie Nelson Schwartz, and Victor Shargai at the 2011 Helen Hayes Awards

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Henry Schalitzki, Bonnie Nelson Schwartz, and Arlie Schardt

Shannon Finney Photography

If you speak with Bonnie Nelson Schwartz and Betti Brown, the two women most instrumental in the founding of the Helen Hayes Awards thirty years ago, all they want to talk about is a third—Helen Hayes herself. “It was [producer] Arthur Kantor who first asked me, ‘If you had something like the Tony Awards in Washington, what would you call it?’” Schwartz remembers. “It was a no-brainer. I told him we’d call it the Helen Hayes Awards. Arthur just said, ‘Let’s go up to Nyack and ask her.’”

For those knowledgeable in American theatre history of the last century, the word “Nyack” has a special ring to it. Helen Hayes, playwright husband Charles MacArthur, and their children—including actor James MacArthur—built a home on the banks of the Hudson that was both a personal retreat and a gathering place for fellow artists.

“She was wearing a pin,” Schwartz recalls of their first meeting, “with the word ‘No.' on it. She told me, ‘My son Jamie gave it to me so I wouldn’t say yes to everything that was asked of me.’ Well, I just swallowed hard and asked what I was there to ask.”

Brown, whom Schwartz recruited as the organization’s first executive director, names her friendship with Hayes as one of the important threads in her life. “I had ten years with Helen,” she says. “I have the memory of getting to know her, of us being in each other’s lives. She was very proud of the awards and she wanted to keep being proud of them, so she stayed involved—in talking about the future, in staying true to the original mission.”

Schwartz remembers the initial press conference, held in the Helen Hayes Lobby of the National Theatre. “Helen had already had all kinds of things named after her,” she explains. “I’ll never forget her standing there and saying, ‘I’m a lobby, a hospital, an actor, and now I’m an award.’ She was so pleased and so proud. She came to the awards every year, as long as her health allowed.”

That commitment from Hayes, and her ongoing involvement, meant a lot in the early years, when the organization was finding its feet. “We started with nothing,” Brown points out. “We bartered for office space, which meant a cubicle, and we had a coral Selectric typewriter that Bonnie got from a friend. I’d go to meetings at the offices of new board members, and leave with my bag stuffed full of office supplies to take back with me.”

First on the new organization’s agenda was the engagement of the theatre community, which then consisted of just 12 professional theatres. “They were asking, quite rightly, ‘Is this a good idea?’” Brown remembers. Under discussion then, as now, was the system of adjudication. “We also wanted to make sure we didn’t fundraise from the same sources,” Brown says, “that we weren’t in competition—and we never were.”

“We needed some pillars of the community to demonstrate that they were seriously considering our proposal,” Schwartz adds. “Tom Fichhandler from Arena was one of the first, then Bill McSweeney, David Loyd Kreeger.”  Brown adds, “We talked a lot and we listened a lot. Theatre people are never shy to voice an opinion. All of that elevated the conversation.”

To help garner national attention, theatre celebrities participated in the early awards presentations. “The first few shows were laced mightily with big names,” Schwartz recalls. “Helen Hayes, of course, but also Carol Channing, Mary Martin, Julie Harris, Vincent Price. Each of them already had a relationship with Washington.”

Brown explains, “A lot of them performed here when it was a troubled place. And Helen, of course, grew up here. There were theatres she had refused to play, because they were segregated. She saw the awards as a way to move forward.”

Nevertheless, those first steps were hesitant ones. “In the beginning no one knew how this would benefit the community economically or professionally,” Schwartz points out.  “There was some initial fear from the theatres, of the cross-pollination that the awards promoted,” Brown adds, “which was entirely reasonable. They were afraid they’d lose their core audience. But all the boats rose together. After four or five years we could look at each other and think, “This might be helping.”

“A good idea is a good idea,” says Schwartz, “but you need people who can carry it out. The Helen Hayes Awards declares theatre in Washington as one of the most important pieces of our community.” Hayes made her last appearance at the awards in 1992, at the age of 91. “I think she left us pleased to feel a brotherhood and sisterhood with her profession,” Brown says, “and with her city.”

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