Reminisce: Local talent at the Omaha Community Playhouse

Henry Fonda was born to William and Herberta Fonda in the bedroom of a one-story, six-room cottage in Grand Island, Nebraska, on May 16, 1905. But he lived in the house only six months before his family moved to Omaha, where Fonda grew up and began his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

The theater's name fluctuated over the years: Community Playhouse, Omaha Playhouse and now Omaha Community Playhouse. But the mission has remained the same: to present quality theater performed almost exclusively by nonprofessional local actors.

Fonda's acting career began in 1925 with the juvenile lead in "You and I," the first show of the Omaha Community Playhouse's second season. It was Dorothy Brando, Marlon's mother, who enticed Fonda to try acting at the Playhouse. He loved it.

Although painfully shy, once on stage, the 20-year-old Fonda was hooked. He was at various times the playhouse assistant director, scenery designer and painter, purchasing agent, and designer of the program. Fonda is one of the few actors to have had simultaneously successful screen and stage careers. He said he preferred the electric feeling of performing before a live audience.

In 1941, Fonda and Dorothy McGuire, who also started her stage career at the Playhouse, agreed to lend their names to the theater's top annual acting award. The Fonda-McGuire Award goes to the best actor and actress of each Playhouse season.

The Playhouse has become a success in the past 100 years because it has always had enough people of talent and leadership to make it a go.

Say cheers to an army of thousands: volunteers, artists and generous benefactors who have sustained this institution.

Let's reminisce on just a few of the local actors and actresses who have graced the stage of the Omaha Community Playhouse.