Bill Sommerfield: Washington's alter ego

If the basic spousal relationship is sound, my therapist often observes, everything else will follow. In 1965, for example, a young American book publishing executive married a dainty but strong-willed young woman from the London suburbs and eventually moved with hjis work to Philadelphia. It was the second marriage for both, but notwithstanding their different backgrounds and the burdens of raising five children from previous marriages, with each other's encouragement Bill and Pam Sommerfield soon began indulging their taste for amateur theatricals.

In the late "'70s, Pam assembled a group of local Britons— of whom there are more than you might suspect— into "The Royal Pickwickians," a musical comedy troupe dedicated to the audaciously refreshing proposition that Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde are still very much alive.

At first the Pickwickians performed mostly at private parties, but in 1982 they began their practice of taking over some appropriately quaint Center City theater (first Plays and Players, then Mask & Wig) once a year to recreate a turn-of-the-20th Century Victorian Music Hall, complete with bad jokes, bawdy songs laced with sexual double entendres, hecklers in the audience, an emcee who insulted the hecklers, and a light supper afterward where audience and performers shared mutual good fellowship.

These evenings constituted more than mere entertainment; they were also (is anyone in the audience cared to notice) carefully researched sociological journeys back into a lost age. Satirical songs like "They're Moving Father's Grave to Build a Sewer" or "Did Your First Wife Ever Do That?" offered comic commentary about pressing issues of that age— in this case, respectively, the advance of industrialization and the high mortality rate among young wives.

The dependable straight man

At these performances Bill Sommerfield rarely functioned as more than a sturdy and dependable straight man to a procession of outlandish soloists, of whom the most alluring was his wife. Even well into her 60s Pam Sommerfield possessed an uncanny ability to convince otherwise skeptical audiences that she was a 17-year-old music student eagerly awaiting daily ravishment by her piano tuner, or even an eight-year-old brat abusing her pet cat because "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow."

But the audience for British nostalgia was limited and shrinking as Americans grew increasingly multicultural, and the Sommerfields soon branched out into providing plays, programs and actor/interpreters for stateside historical figures like William Penn, Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross. As serendipity would have it, about this time the fledgling National Constitution Center— a real estate project already blessed with well-heeled boosters— was searching for programming that would legitimize the Center's quest for a building on Independence Mall. The Sommerfields' troupe— soon rechristened the American Historical Theatre— proved a perfect fit.

Up from Elbridge Gerry

Over the next quarter-century this group developed a theatrical niche that hadn't previously existed. Its performers weren't merely actors appearing in historical plays, pageants or parades; they were self-taught scholars who researched their characters so thoroughly that they became those characters in conversation with school classes or passersby on the streets of Society Hill. Under the Sommerfields' parental guidance, aspiring actors broke in as minor historical characters (Elbridge Gerry, say, or James Wilson) and subsequently worked their way up to the big leagues of Abigail Adams, James Madison or General Sir William Howe. Eventually the troupe broke out of its Colonial box to embrace historical characters stretching from Galileo to Sojourner Truth to Eleanor Roosevelt. These figures, let us hope, inspired historically-challenged Americans to pay more attention to the past.

In retrospect it seems inevitable that Bill Sommerfield would assume George Washington's role within this constellation. He possessed Washington's height, build, white hair and dignified comportment. Most of all, he exuded Washington's indefinable yet magnetic air of self-deprecating dignity. Just as Washington was surrounded by brilliant cabinet members (Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison) who nevertheless instinctively deferred to his judgment, so Bill Sommerfield's Washington-like prudence and caution beckoned to bright and talented people trying to make a living in the dazzling but unpredictable world of the stage.

On trial for treason

During the last 15 years of his life, which ended last week at the age of 79, Bill Sommerfield devoted himself full-time to the study of Washington's life, the better to emulate his general. Eventually he all but morphed into the general himself. In his Washington persona Sommerfield made some 200 appearances each year throughout the U.S. and Europe. He performed and interacted regularly with audiences at Washington's home at Mount Vernon. In 1989 Chief Justice Warren Burger chose him to play Washington for the Bicentennial re-creation of Washington's inaugural ride from Mount Vernon to New York to be sworn in as the first president.

In some respects Sommerfield out-Washingtoned Washington. For one thing, he outlived the general by 12 years. For another, he returned to England— as Washington, of course— to defend himself (successfully) at a mock treason trial broadcast by the BBC.

The moral of his story seems clear: History isn't just important; it's fun, too. Also, it helps to hook up with the right life partner.

At a memorial party this week— surely the most exuberant life sendoff I've ever attended (and my experience includes a celebrity-laden memorial for my cousin, the film director Alan Pakula)— one of Bill's performers recalled Sommerfield, dressed in his full Washington costume and regalia, partaking one of those hasty complimentary breakfasts in a hotel lobby prior to a show. Inevitably, a hotel guest approached him to remark, "You look just like George Washington."

"Madam," Sommerfield replied, looking up from his granola, "I am George Washington." No doubt he relished such moments, because he'd spent his life preparing for them.♦


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