From the Vineyard Gazette edition of July 12, 1946:

The season at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse on East Chop has begun this week with Arthur J. Beckhard’s revival of his success, Goodbye Again, which is to open in New York in the fall. Roger Pryor is seen in the leading role, originally played by Osgood Perkins.

Goodbye Again is a comedy in a lighter vein by Alan Scott and George Haight, first produced in 1932. It has in it some inspired fooling, a slight mixture of bedroom farce, and ample opportunity for Mr. Pryor and, to a lesser degree, for other members of the company. Some of its happiest moments are silent, when nothing is being said, with Mr. Pryor, Flora Campbell and Walter Greaza carrying on in expressive pantomime. Mr. Beckhard’s direction is shrewd and happy.

The play is a good choice for the opening of a summer season, for it taxes neither the powers of attention nor the thought processes, but provides laughs and effortless entertainment. The story is not an imposing one. The action takes place in a hotel bedroom in Cleveland, and Roger Pryor and Flora Campbell are introduced in the characters of a lecturing author, something of an egoist, madcap and wolf, and his secretary-mistress.

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Mr. and Mrs. I. R. Edmands left yesterday to accompany Dr. Seth Milikens on his big yawl Thistle, in which he hoped to catch up with the cruising fleet of the Eastern Yacht Club. The Thistle was taken by the government during the war, and the changes necessitated by her return delayed Dr. Milikens’s start on the cruise. The Thistle, often at Edgartown in seasons past, is one of the largest and most beautiful yachts of her class.

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The three up-Island homes opened to members of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club on Tuesday presented in interesting contrast, a new house built faithfully along colonial lines, a 19th century farmhouse remodeled and enlarged to conform to modern living, and a country home of the pre-Civil War period maintained more or less unchanged amid a remarkable grove of recently imported trees.

The attractive residence of General and Mrs. Preston Brown at the half-moon turn on the Lambert’s Cove Road, with its hollyhocks, its box and the vast array of climbing roses on the roadside stonewall, has such a look of permanence and authenticity that it might well have stood there for 200 years or so. And just inside the stone wall is such a perennial garden as would have been grown by flower lovers in that earlier day, save that many of the varieties are improved and hence more luxuriant.

Blue veronica and delphinium blend with the soft yellow of primroses, columbine and nicotania and peonies elbow each other, regal lilies lend a touch of austerity and fragrance, and hemerocallis flourish like a bit of transplanted sunlight. The interior of the house, with its accumulation of antique family pieces and rarities picked up around the world by General and Mrs. Brown, is reminiscent of the traditional homes of whaling captains. Old mahogany and family portraits, rose medallion china from Canton, a Korean money chest, repousse silver and thick-piled oriental rugs all blend comfortably into the simplicity of the low-posted rooms with an air reminiscent of the days of gracious living.

Kapigan, as Colonel and Mrs. Edward Roth have named the old George Norton house on the North Road in Chilmark which they have remodeled, is an excellent example of what can be done with a middle-aged house of no architectural distinction. Practically the only line remaining of the old place is the eastern end, which is behind the house to the colorful strip of perennials, tansy, beebaum, feverfew, batchelors buttons, Chinese forget-me-nots, poppies, marguerites and delphinium, snapdragons, lupine, galardia and ruffled petunias. It is easy to believe Mrs. Roth when she says, “I just plant and everything grows.”

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Book Review Club will be organized and carry on for five Monday evenings, at Oak Bluffs Methodist Church, from July 29th to August 26th inclusive, if sufficient interest warrants. The course tickets will cost $1.00. The reviewer will be Rev. Karl Nielsen of Vineyard Haven. If you wish to join, call V.H. 525 or notify Miss Elaine Stevens, Oak Bluffs, Mass.

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Gardens by the Sea will be the subject of a talk by George Graves at the meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club scheduled for July 16 at 3 p.m. at the clubhouse in West Tisbury.

Mr. Graves, who returns to the club a second year by popular request, is associate editor of Horticulture and well known as a radio garden expert, author and lecturer. Educated at Harvard and the University of Edinburgh, he has made a special study of plantings suitable for the Northeastern states and has recently published a book on the subject. Not the least of his interests is the beach plum, on which he has done special research which won him the Jewett award for 1945, presented by the Arnold Arboretum for outstanding work on the subject.

Compiled by Alison Mead