Blog

Remembering Bettie Steele: Wheeling Community Theater Icon

Oglebay Institute’s Towngate Theatre presents a staged reading of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at 7pm September 29. This special program takes place in memory of Bettie Steele—a longtime community theater actor and director and one of Towngate’s founders—who died in February of 2023.

Bettie was instrumental in the development of Towngate, both the physical space and the magic that happens onstage. It was Bettie who first envisioned how the historic Zion Lutheran Church, located in the Centre Market area of Wheeling, could be transformed into a performing arts center. She influenced the Towngate artistic director at the time—the late Hal O’ Leary—to pursue the endeavor. She is also credited with naming the theater.

Towngate’s Original “Maggie The Cat”

Bettie starred as “Maggie the Cat” in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Towngate’s first ever production in 1969. She went on to perform in 17 Towngate productions from 1969-2004, as well as many special events. She also directed many Parcel Players productions, most notably “Runaways” in 1977.

Bettie Steele and Peter Whitaker in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1969 at Towngate Theatre. This was the first performance to take place on the Towngate Theatre stage.

“Bettie had a tremendously positive influence on making Towngate a top-notch, legitimate theater where great plays by great playwrights were produced,” said Towngate Theatre director Tim Thompson. “She helped educate Wheeling residents on what good theatre is. Bettie was a major influence on young actors, me included.”

He added, “Bettie was incredibly talented, creative, smart, and passionate about her work. She never took a play or role lightly. She gave her heart and soul and time to make it as good as possible.”

In the late 1960s, Bettie and husband Joe moved to Wheeling from Pittsburgh. Bettie soon met Hal O’Leary and became involved in the Wheeling theater scene.

Historic Church Becomes Community Theater Treasure

Prior to the purchase of Towngate Theatre, Oglebay Institute theatrical productions took place at a variety of venues throughout Wheeling including the Carriage House Barn (which burned down in 1965) and Mansion Museum in Oglebay, and the former Pennsylvania Railroad Station, which was located along the waterfront in downtown.

In 1968, the Pennsylvania Railroad Station was destroyed by fire. Wheeling actors were without a place to perform.

“Bettie approached Hal and told him there was a church for sale in Centre Wheeling. Hal refused at first, but after touring the space, realized it was perfect for a theater, as well as a space for classes, rehearsals, costume and scenery storage, and more,” explained Thompson. “Hal convinced Oglebay Institute to rent the space for one year, for the sum of $1. Then, after a very successful season in 1969-70, the Institute purchased the building.”

Wade Hamlin, Hal O’ Leary, Bettie Steele, and Augusta Evans in 1969 in the Zion Lutheran Church, imagining how it will be transformed into Towngate Theatre.

“If not for Bettie, this space may have never been discovered. Along with Hal, Augusta Evans, Wade Hamlin, Susan Greer, and Snookie Nutting, we have Bettie to thank for having such a treasure like Towngate in our community.”

Thompson said that offstage, Bettie was also a very supportive patron of Towngate. “She will be remembered and loved at Towngate forever as one of our co-founders and kindred spirits.”

Towngate’s 2023-24 main stage season is dedicated to Bettie Steele.

Bettie’s Towngate Theatre Performances

1969  “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”
1971   “Juno and the Paycock”
1972  “Oedipus the King”
1975   “Dylan”
1976   “Inherit the Wind”
1978   “Saratoga”
1979   “The Night of the Iguana”
1980   “The Norman Conquests”
1985   “Foxfire”
1990   “Broadway Bound”
1991   “Road to Mecca”
1992   “Something’s Afoot”
1995   “Lost in Yonkers”
1999   “Steel Magnolias”
2000   “A Man for All Seasons”
2004   “Pound”

Bettie Steele and Hal O’Leary in “Pound” in 2004. This was Bettie’s last role on the Towngate stage.

Get Tickets

Tickets for the reading of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” are $5. Purchase online, by calling 304-242-7700, or at the door, if available. Box office opens one hour prior to curtain.

Cast

The reading is directed by Dennis Fox. Cast members include Skyler Dye as Lacey, Makayla Carney as Sookey, Gretchen Schneider as Maggie, Alexander Hill as Brick, Rachel Thompson as Mae, Vince Marshall as Gooper, Dee Gregg as Big Mama, Tim Thompson as Big Daddy, Bob McCoy as Sonny, Rylee McCoy as Trixie, Lyric Hill as Dixie, Dennis Fox as Rev. Toker, John Reilly as Dr. Baugh.

More About Towngate

In addition to community theater, Towngate offers children’s theater, ballet, improvisational comedy, and live music. Towngate is also a single screen cinema, offering movies on select evenings and features changing art exhibitions in The Gallery at Towngate. Theater classes are also offered year-round.

Towngate is in Wheeling’s historic Centre Market District. This church-turned-theater is one of several Wheeling venues operated by the non-profit Oglebay Institute. Other OI facilities include: The Stifel Fine Arts Center and School of Dance on National Road, the Mansion Museum, Glass Museum and Schrader Environmental Education Center in Oglebay.

Uncovering the Life & Works of Jeanie Caldwell Dougherty

By Phyllis Sigal

Like teen sleuth Nancy Drew, Kara Yenkevich cobbled together bits and pieces of the life of Jeanie Caldwell Dougherty to create an impressive exhibit of the Wheeling native’s paintings.

“Jeanie’s World: The Art and Travel of Jeanie Caldwell Dougherty,” on display at Oglebay Institute’s Mansion Museum, explores the life of a talented, independent female artist.

Through postcards, a diary, newspaper clippings, conversations with Jeanie’s great niece, and the artwork itself, Yenkevich curated a fascinating glimpse into Jeanie’s world.

Still missing, though, are many facts about the prolific artist’s life, as well as a number of her works of art. “I wish she would’ve helped me out and dated her paintings more. Maybe she wanted it to be a mystery?” Kara joked.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT JEANIE

Jeanie (pronounced JENnie) left Wheeling at the age of 15 when her father was appointed the U.S. consul to the Hawaiian Islands by President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s. She met her husband, Thomas Templeton Dougherty, who served as vice-consul to Hawaii under her father. The two married when Jeanie was 19, but his early death left her a widow at the age of 30.

At that time she embarked on her life of independence, travel, and painting.

Photograph of Jeanie Caldwell Dougherty courtesy of Margaret Dakin.

The young widow “saw an opportunity and latched onto it, then hit the ground running,” Yenkevich said.

Kara admitted that she is a little jealous of Jeanie’s exotic and interesting life.

“I do think she was living this very unusual life for a woman of that time,” Kara noted.

As a widow with means, she lived this life she desired.

Jeanie never remarried and spent much of her life traveling with her sister, Eleanor. Eleanor, who remained single, also studied art but then shifted to writing at some point in her life.

NOT JUST A ‘SUNDAY PAINTER’

Jeanie was quite prolific and living as a “working artist” during her lifetime. With “serious aspirations,” she wanted to be more than a “Sunday painter.” Many women of the time took up painting merely as a hobby.

In the late 1870s after her husband’s death, she began to paint seriously. A classically trained artist, she studied in the areas of realism, pen and ink drawing, portraiture, nudes — all in the pursuit of being a well-rounded artist, Kara said.

She was also very interested in politics, “a citizen of the world … living a very global life, interested in what’s going on around her,” Kara discovered.

Fine Arts Building of the California Mid-Winter International Exhibition, 1894. One of Jeanie’s paintings was displayed in the exhibition.

And, as a woman, she worked to find “the closest thing to equality that she could’ve,” Kara explained. She surrounded herself with people who valued her as an equal.

At several times in her life — in San Francisco and then in Italy — she studied under Frederick Yates, a well-known portrait artist who accepted both male and female students.

When she arrived in Paris, she approached Académie Julian — the only academy to admit women as well as international artists. She also submitted works to the Paris Salon, the largest exhibition in France.

Photo of a women’s class at the Académie Julian, c. 1885.

A talented portraitist, she focused on people and everyday life.  She captured a Shakespearean actor, a Vatican guard, an organ grinder, a gondolier, showing her belief that “people are the best way to capture the culture and the setting of a place.”

The Trio. Oil on Masonite. From the collection of The Museums of Oglebay Institute. Gift of Robert C. Mead.

DIGGING (IN) THE DIARY

Kara gives “many thanks” to Margaret Dakin, Jeanie’s great niece, who provided her with photos and postcards, as well as a copy of the treasured diary that spanned the years from 1886-91.

Serving as a travelogue of sorts, the diary detailed where she was living, what she was painting, and who she was meeting, “so we get a sense of her in her own words,” Kara said.

Jeanie and companions photographed in Paris, c. 1890.

Jeanie writes about leaving San Francisco where she lived and worked for some time, going to New York — to see the Statue of Liberty that had been recently unveiled — before traveling to Italy. She then went from Rome to Paris, where she spent most of the time detailed in the diary.

TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD

She also wrote about her travels during those five years — to Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, London, and the French countryside. She wrote about the museums she visited. Jeanie called painter J.W.M. Turner (the forefather of Impressionism) a “revelation.” She talked about Monet, whose work she had mixed feelings about, calling him a bit “odd.” She admired American painters John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler — both of whom “she rhapsodized about in her diary,” Kara shared.

France, 1897. Oil on artist’s board. From the collection of The Museums of Oglebay Institute. Gift of Robert C. Mead.

Westminster Abbey, one of the few famous locations she captured, was described in her diary. She shared information about the cast of characters she met; an elderly artist who wouldn’t tell where the other painters stored their paint; a police detective who noted her absence one day; and a host of tourists who passed through the building while she painted.

Westminster Abbey. Oil on canvas board. From the collection of T.W. Phillips Library, Bethany College.

The diary documents her work on a particular painting of an organ grinder: a struggle with her concierge about allowing the man into her apartment; going to the Botanical Garden to get a monkey; painting a fountain at the Tuileries; adding a dog, taking the dog out; how she puts it all together; and finally, getting a frame for it. We get a “complete sense of her process,” thanks to the diary.

PAINTINGS COME HOME

In the mid-1940s, well-known Wheeling photographer George Kossuth bought the Caldwell family home in North Wheeling, where Jeanie’s father and brother lived when they returned to Wheeling after the father’s stint as U.S. Consul to Hawaii ended. (It ended in scandal, but that’s another story … one mentioned by Mark Twain in one of his travel journals of the day.)

He discovered some of Jeanie’s paintings in the home’s attic, and he turned the discovery into a newspaper event.

On July 9, 1944, the Wheeling News Register published this article:

“Unreal as a fairy tale come to life is the story behind the rare collection of Jeanie Caldwell Dougherty paintings, hidden for half a century in a Wheeling attic, [and] which will be shown at an exhibit at the Oglebay Park Mansion-Museum, opening Wednesday, July twelfth. But even more fantastic is the unusual story of their uncovering and restoration by George J. Kossuth, prominent Wheeling photographer, who has spent four years restoring forty-five of the original two hundred and is still working on the remainder.”

“[Kossuth] was maybe the first advocate of her work — that she was talented, and her works were worth preserving,” Kara noted.

The pieces in the attic — apparently 200 of her favorite paintings — had been sent home to her family for safekeeping. (With all the traveling she was doing, “what was she doing with those paintings?” Kara wondered.)

WHERE ARE THEY NOW

“This is just a small sampling,” Kara said of the prolific artist’s work, many pieces of which are missing.

In 1957, Kossuth presented 13 restored paintings to Bethany College. Oglebay Institute’s Mansion Museum also became a recipient of two of her paintings, while some were sold to the Four Seasons Galleries of Wheeling. In 1995, more than 50 years after the discovery of Jeanie’s paintings, Kossuth’s daughter, Mary Kossuth Shumate, donated 25 pencil sketches, and a palmbook containing 42 pages of field notes and sketches, and 37 paintings and drawings, to Bethany College.

In 2021, Bob and Amy Mead donated 31 of Jeanie’s paintings to the Mansion Museum. Bob Mead is related to Jeanie through her niece — the daughter of her brother, Alfred Caldwell, married into the Mead family.

A PERFECT MARRIAGE

Interestingly, the current exhibit reunites pairs of paintings. For example, Bethany owns one of a set of paintings of a baby — baby eating, baby sleeping —  while the Mansion Museum owns the other.

The Mansion Museum houses the aforementioned painting of the organ grinder. A painting of just the organ grinder’s head resides in Bethany’s collection.

The Organ Grinder, 1890. Oil on canvas. From the Collection of The Museums of Oglebay Institute. Gift of Robert C. Mead.

Kara expressed her gratitude to Bethany College for loaning Jeanie’s works for the exhibit, which Kara believes is the “biggest retrospective of her work ever.”

“I really want people to learn about her,” Kara said. While there are a lot of talented unknowns from Wheeling, “I think she’s the most prodigiously talented unknown in Wheeling,” Kara said.

Jeanie was “artist, traveler, observer, all at the same time, and her body of work shows that.”

DETAILS

View more than 50 works of art and Jeanie’s own words that detail her life in the Sauder Gallery at the Mansion Museum through Nov. 1. Visit online for viewing hours and more information .