TOD:
I wrote about this stage flub in my second memoir, LIFE, LIBERTY & THE PURSUIT OF HOLLYWOOD. Since it's a bit involved, here's how I reported it in the book:
"Undoubtedly, the most outrageous stage flub I ever witnessed was in a performance of THE DESPERATE HOURS, presented at an Equity Waiver theater in West Hollywood. This was a play with which I was familiar. Not only had I seen the national company perform it when I was a kid in Seattle, but I am a fan of the 1955 movie that had starred Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March and Arthur Kennedy.
"I was at this new production because one of my publicity clients, Larry Pennell, was playing the Arthur Kennedy role.
"Based on a true story, THE DESPERATE HOURS by Joseph Hayes is about a trio of escaped convicts, led by Bogart in the movie, who take over a suburban household and hold the family hostage, as they plan their final getaway. In the William Wyler-directed film, March played the father and Kennedy was the chief cop trying to catch the criminals.
"In the play’s climactic moments, one of the convicts has been killed, the police have surrounded the family’s home, the wife and grown daughter have been brought to safety, and the father (March) has just forced one of the remaining convicts, played in the movie by Robert Middleton, out of the house into a hail of police bullets.
"As the Middleton character is ejected from the house, he drops his gun inside. The father retrieves the weapon, and then goes upstairs to
confront the Bogart character, who is still holding March’s young son with a gun that he doesn’t know is not loaded.
"I don’t recall the names of the actors who played the convicts in the Equity Waiver production I saw, but the father was Don Dubbins, a skilled performer and a familiar face on episodic television, but perhaps best remembered for a couple of films he made back in the 1950s, TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN starring Jimmy Cagney and THE D.I. with Jack Webb.
"Now, picture this:
"In the performance of the play that I attended, Dubbins forces the convict (the Middleton character) out of the house, but the actor playing
that role neglected to drop his gun. Dubbins, after desperately looking about the stage for the absent prop, now must mount the stairs and confront the Bogart character without a weapon.
"Knowing the play as well as I did and realizing what had happened, I cannot express how badly I felt for Dubbins at that moment. In what
should have been the play’s most intense scene, he was now forced to ask the Bogart character 'nicely' to release his son and get out of his
house.
"I encountered Dubbins at a party a year or two later, and reminded him of that incident, which he said was the 'most painful' moment he’d
ever spent on stage."
