[Dixielandjazz] G. William Oakley's Bio

[G. William Oakley]

Like my predecessors,  I too have enjoyed reading about my listmates, so
here goes the  G. William Oakley story....

I first saw the light of day in Cherokee, Oklahoma.  We headed west for
Colorado when I was 11 and I became a "native"  Coloradoan.  There are
always discussions about what makes a native here.  Regardless of my
qualifications for state citizenship I have spent most of my life here. I
graduated from Southern Colorado State University and set about becoming a
"school marm".  I taught Theater and Speech in Loveland, Colorado for three
years  and then went on to graduate school at Colorado State University.
During this period I spent every summer working at a theater in Manitou
Springs, Colorado.  It was here that I developed a theater style based on
old time melodramas and vaudeville that would change the direction of my
life.  One evening a lady came up to me after the show and asked if I would
like to do the show in Denver in Larimer Square.  I said yes and the rest is
history.  This led to an opportunity at Heritage Square in Golden  and soon
we were building a magnificent new theater to be called the Heritage Square
Opera House.  It was imminently successful and this led to discussions with
Frank Pierson who owned the Goldenrod Showboat in St. Louis.  I took over
the showboat in 1975 and discovered that I had inherited  something that I
knew nothing about,  the St. Louis Jazzfest. We developed a quick learning
curve and the first one I produced went well.  They improved each year both
artistically and financially until they were a major summer event in St.
Louis.  It was during the 1976 Fest that I met Turk Murphy and we became
friends and collaborators.  We began discussions about a jazz musical and in
1983 it became a reality with a showcase production of Storyville at the
Hyde Street Theater in NYC.  It received .terrific reviews from everyone
except the most important reviewer,  the New York Times.  That killed its
chances of going on to Broadway as all of my investors left in droves.
That's the nature of the game in The Big Apple. The show was produced one
more time in Denver at the Bonfils Theater and again garnered great reviews
from the Denver press.  People in San Francisco were interested in trying to
do something with it but we just never could put the money together and
finally the project died.  A number of the tunes in the show are still being
played by various Trad Jazz groups about the country.
I have done other things in NYC (a writer for the Broadway production of
"Whoopee and an involvement with Torch  Song Trilogy) and I also produced
and directed the national touring company of "Whoopee" with Imogene Coca.
I retired in 1988 and have spent the ensuing years doing an occasional
consulting job on entertainment projects but mostly I am into all of the
traveling I never got to do when I ran two theaters and produced and
directed a killer schedule of shows.  That's why I retired young so I could
get old.