Stars, shows and personal experiences, both backstage and in the audience. When we asked readers to share their memories of three-quarters of a century of Matunuck’s Theatre By The Sea — now running The Producers, the last show of its 75th-anniversary season — the e-mails and letters flooded in.

Here are excerpts from some of the most interesting.

Stars

• “After a night on the prowl” in 1953, wrote John Miller of Narragansett, “we would often stop at the Anchor Dairy Bar (now Houston Brothers) on High Street for a snack. A couple of times that summer, Bob Russo, Ray Grimes (who later founded the Rhode Island Lottery), I and our entourage encountered Marlon Brando, who was alone but reasonably friendly.

“In fact, as I recollect, Marlon picked off one of our strays. Of course, he was a good-looking guy who was already a major star of stage and screen.

“Sadly, we missed the Matunuck show; Brando nonetheless performed in a stellar fashion at the Anchor Dairy Bar.”

• “I grew up in Providence,” wrote Rudi Hempe of Narragansett, retired editor of the North Kingstown Standard-Times, “and we lived in a second-floor tenement in the ’40s. One of my friends was a boy my age who lived on the first floor, and for a couple of years, his family would rent a cottage at Carpenter’s Beach for a week and take me with them to escape the city heat. …

“Besides hitting the beach, we caught crabs in salt-water inlets, walked along Matunuck Beach Road to pick wild blackberries, and enjoyed a host of other innocent summer activities. … If we were lucky when we passed the Matunuck Theatre By The Sea, some of the stars booked at the theater would be playing tennis in the rear of the building, where there was an old clay court.

“One day, there was a striking blond lady playing tennis. She was pretty good-looking even to these pre-adolescent eyes. My friend and I positioned ourselves on either side of the court and shagged balls for her and her playing partner. Vivacious and very friendly, she gave us each 50 cents for an hour’s worth of ball-shagging. The money, for those days, was great. Her personality became a life-long memory.

“She was Judy Holliday, the first legitimate star I ever met.”

• “Went to see Edward Everett Horton about 1933,” wrote Mildred Whittier of Narragansett, who couldn’t forget seeing the veteran character actor. “Thrill of my life.

“This was during the Depression; a neighbor gave me this big break. Wonderful show.”

• “Beginning on Aug. 10, 1965,” wrote Norton Chellgren of Wakefield, “we had the pleasure of having Betsy Palmer and her daughter, Missy, as our Green Hill neighbors for 18-plus days.

“Betsy” — a star of TV’s I’ve Got a Secret — “was a charmer. One highlight for me was dancing with her in our bunk house to music played on our old crank phonograph machine. Another was installing an antenna for her in her rented TV set. As a reward, my family received six tickets to see her Theatre By The Sea show The King and I. The seats were excellent!

“What a thrill to have her as our next-door neighbor, a friendly one.”

• Edward O’Neil of Westerly enclosed two playbills, from June 1939 and August 1940, shows that starred Leon Janney — a voice-over regular on the 1930s radio series Gangbusters — and comedienne-impressionist Sheila Barrett. “We also saw William Bendix, Carol Channing and many other stars.”

• Vinnie Joyce, former owner of Matunuck’s Joyce Family Pub, brought in a tattered half-century-old handbill from the theater’s Silver Jubilee season, showing that in successive weeks in July 1958 it had played host to husband-and-wife acting legends Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn; comedienne Dody Goodman, a star of Jack Paar’s red-hot Tonight show; and Burgess Meredith, a Broadway star since the 1930s, who would go on to play such disparate, but iconic, roles as the trainer in the Rocky movies and the Penguin on TV’s Batman.

Joyce said that he had found the handbill around 1975 in one of a number of cottages his father, Vincent Joyce Sr., had owned in Matunuck, and had displayed it in his pub until he sold it this year.

He added a more personal memory of the theater: “I was in Fiddler on the Roof, when I was 10” — that would be around 1968 or ’69 — as a “walk-on. … Yenta the Matchmaker wants to marry Tevye’s daughters off to two boys, and I was one of the walk-ons. …

“I’ve loved theater ever since.”

• “I worked at and later owned the food stand at Roy Carpenter’s Beach in Matunuck during the late ’40s and early ’50s,” wrote Jim Norman, now of Kingston, who would go on to serve the University of Rhode Island as sports information director and assistant athletic director, as well as being the radio play-by-play voice of the Rams. Theatre By The Sea was next door, and Norman’s memories include sharing beach blankets with Brando and TV funnywoman Imogene Coca during separate visits to the theater’s beach, and nearly splattering Judy Holliday, the Born Yesterday star, with bright purple paint when he was hired to paint the window trim on the theater’s dormitory.

But he didn’t have to go to the beach — or the theater — to see the stars.

“The week before TBS’s next performance,” he wrote, “their PR people would come by and put up a publicity poster on one of my stand’s inner walls, most of the time displaying a photo of the star of the show. When they did this, in a couple of days, I’d be so used to seeing it, that I ‘didn’t see it anymore.’ ”

At the start of one week in the 1950s, “a man came up to the stand at about 7 p.m. and asked for a cup of coffee, which he drank, standing at the counter and looking out at the ocean. Shows started at 8:15 p.m. in those days.

“As all of us will do from time to time, we’ll see a person and think that we know them from somewhere, but can’t recall who it is. All of a sudden, it came to me: This is Art Carney! I had been looking at his picture on the poster for the week prior.

“He chatted a bit, asked me my name, said he’d be back ‘tomorrow night,’ finished his coffee, thanked me and headed up the beach toward the theater. I had not let on that I knew who he was.

“The next night, promptly at 7 o’clock, here he was again, saying ‘Hi, Jim!’ and having another coffee. At that point, I addressed him as ‘Mr. Carney’ (I was 18 at the time) and we chatted until he had to go.

“It seemed that regardless of what he was doing — TV, movie, commercial, stage, rehearsal, etc. — about an hour before his scheduled performance, he would always get a cup or two of coffee to relax at bit and get his mind on other things, regardless of where he was. By the end of the week, we were good buddies. He was quite a person, really down to earth and made me feel as if I’d known him all my life.

“As it turned out, on the last day of his TBS stay, it was a particularly beautiful summer evening, with the ocean like a millpond. Carney came to get his coffee as usual, and while he was there, a young mother came up with her daughter, about 4 or 5 years old.

“While their food order was cooking, the little girl pulled at her mother’s dress, exclaiming, “Mommy, that’s Art Carney, that’s Art Carney!’ The Honeymooners TV show was big at the time and the little girl apparently watched it.

“Carney knelt down and talked to her, autographed one of my napkins for her to take home, and told her how he had gotten the part on The Honeymooners. He patted her head, shook hands with her mother and, leaning on the counter, silently watched them walk up the beach into the sunset.

“He turned to me and said,

‘Jim, that’s what it’s all about.’ ”

Shows

• “My father, Fred Wakefield, and I saw Groucho Marx at the theater,” wrote Sally Wakefield Kent of Exeter. “I believe it was the summer of 1958.

“My mom had gone to England to visit family, and my dad was a fan of Groucho and his TV series, You Bet Your Life. So we went to see Groucho in a play called Time for Elizabeth. The premise of the play was the lead character trying to decide if he should retire and move to Elizabeth, N.J. Groucho was resisting, as I remember.

“I can’t forget his running around on the stage in his famous gait. And it was 50 years ago!”

• “Clearly my favorite memory of my 15 years of attending shows at Matunuck,” wrote the Rev. Gerald Beirne, of Narragansett, “is the [1998] presentation of Forever Plaid, particularly the scene in which the four young men stand on stage out to do a song.

“Plaid sashes are worn by three of them across the left shoulder. A minute or so into the song, the fourth young man realizes that his is over the right shoulder, and what to do about it?

“He carried it off so well that I laughed so hard that tears came to my eyes.”

• “Twenty years ago,” wrote Don Fowler of Cranston, longtime theater critic for the Warwick Beacon and Cranston Herald, “Tommy Brent was ‘putting on shows’ at Theatre By The Sea.

“The production was Singin’ in the Rain. A young actor was giving it his best in the popular Gene Kelly role. The big number in the musical was the title song, where he sang and danced along a city street covered with puddles.

“Brent had hooked up a hose from an above-ground swimming pool behind the stage. It didn’t work. The stage was dry.

“The innovative actor started singing, ‘I’m singing in the rain ... puddle, puddle, puddle ...’

“The audience gave him a standing ovation.”

• “My mom and I attended the play The Wizard of Oz as a birthday present to her,” Jeanne M. Verity of Smithfield recalled about the 1993 production. “It was the first time either of us had seen the theater.

“The play was great, the ambience was perfect, and the highlight of the evening was that our beloved Salty Brine played the Wizard! Thanks, Theatre By The Sea!”

Behind the scenes

• “I have lived at Roy Carpenter’s Beach in the summer since 1950,” wrote Judith Lagner of Naples, Fla., “and started working as an usherette at the theater about two or three years later, earning a quarter a performance or the grand total of $2 a week. They had a matinee on Wednesdays and Saturdays for a total of eight performances a week.

“Two of my friends and I worked every performance, leaving the beach to get ‘all dressed up’ (skirt and blouse or a dress) go to the theater, work for about an hour and head back to the beach. It was an ideal summer job for pre-teens and young teenagers. We could cut through the cornfields and be there in no time.

“We could also go to watch rehearsals and had many opportunities to meet the stars. I remember meeting Eva Marie Saint and thinking how beautiful she was, and very nice to a starstruck kid. I also saw Joe E. Brown, Tallulah Bankhead, Barbara Bel Geddes and Marlon Brando.

“I still smile when I think of how much fun we had for those few summers.”

• “When I was 12 years old,” wrote Frances Burrows, 72, of Wakefield, “my parents built a house at Roy Carpenter’s Beach. As a pre-teenager, my girlfriends and I would walk to the Theatre By The Sea and usher at the shows.

“We would also — shame on us — once the show had started, open the upstairs fire doors and let our friends in. After all, our thinking went, a full house is important to theater.”

• “For most of the summers in the 1960s,” wrote Janet Innis of Wakefield, “my family lived in a house behind the theater. Starting at age 13, during the John Holmes era, I apprenticed backstage for three years. Later, when Tommy Brent took over, I worked in the box office for a while.

“While the years John Holmes ran the theater were not always a financial success, I have lots of wonderful memories. I helped build sets, run props and lights for productions of The Fantasticks, Little Mary Sunshine and The Boy Friend, among others. There was a dedicated and talented group of people, both backstage and in front of the audience.

“Some of the actors stayed at Mrs. Champlin’s house next door to ours. My parents invited Walter Matthau (he starred in The Odd Couple and The Matchmaker with Nancy Walker and Sam Waterston), his wife Carol and her two sons from her previous marriage to William Saroyan to our house for cocktails. A family legend was born when the two young Saroyan boys tasted lobster salad for the first time and proceeded to finish the entire bowl before other guests had a chance to have any!”

• “Back in the summer of 1954, when I was 11 years old, I was an usherette at the Theatre By The Sea,” wrote Judi Dawson of North Scituate. “My parents had a beach house at Roy Carpenter’s Beach, and I would walk over to the theater each afternoon there was a show. I can remember how proud I was to have a ‘real’ job, stuffing programs and showing people to their seats.

“Back then, the performances were mostly plays, not musicals. Many famous stars of the day performed there. Claude Rains and Victor Jory are a couple I recall watching perform.

“Funny, I said I ushered each matinee because I can’t seem to remember doing it at night! I doubt my mom would have let me walk back to our beach house at night, either.

“On the other hand, I remember feeling that I was making a lot of money. I know we weren’t paid much; but I felt rich when I went to the store at the beach and spent my ‘salary’ on 10-cent comic books and nickel chocolate bars. Those were the days ...”

• “It was summer of 1954,” wrote Gordon Morrison of Narragansett, “when my close friend and fraternity brother, Jack Evans, and I had returned from ROTC Summer Camp, and were touring South County looking for jobs to last for the remainder of the summer. We had hoped to earn some money prior to entering our senior year at URI. We had no luck until we visited the Theatre By The Sea.

“We interviewed with the manager, George, and were hired as waiters for the resident cast and as busboys in the main dining room. We also sold soft drinks at intermissions.

“The theater, which was owned by two gentlemen from New York, Harold Schiff and Donald Wollin, was doing very well at that time. Famous actors and actresses appeared regularly, for usually one week at a time, for performances. Some would arrive a week early to rehearse for the following week’s show.

“Among those appearing were Uta Hagen, Paul Hartman and Tallulah Bankhead, the unconventional daughter of Senator Bankhead of Alabama. Tallulah loved to shoot craps with the staff on the kitchen steps in the wee hours of the morning. I had the privilege of serving Tallulah breakfast in bed.

“The summer went well until the last show of the season. It was a pre-Broadway play that was in the development stage. It opened on a Monday night and was very long. It ran for about three hours before the curtain came down before the play was over.

“At about that time, 11 p.m., the wind began to pick up considerably. We retired to the bunkhouse, which is directly behind the theater. Early in the morning we knew we were in for a big storm. Little did we know that this was Hurricane Carol.

“The water from the ocean came up the road from the beach to within 50 yards of my car. The upper part of the theater stage was blown across the road and into the cornfield.

“This was quite an unexpected ending to what was, up to that time, an enjoyable summer.”

In the audience

• “Every year, while camping at Fishermen’s Memorial campground, my mother, Gail DeCosta, and I would eagerly wait for our annual visit to Theatre By The Sea,” wrote Loralyn Hynes. “This particular year, we went to see Grease, and boy, was it hotter than ever. The side doors to the theater were left open to let some air in.

“Soon after the show began, we heard grumbling and gasps. We were clueless until we saw the visitor.

“A large skunk had wandered into the theater, walked around, but thankfully found his way out quickly without incident!”

• “In 1985, I took my 8-year-old son to see one of the children’s early-afternoon performances,” wrote Lynne Lawrence of Smithfield.

“While we were standing in line for tickets, a casting director came over the bullhorn asking if any children in this very long line could sing or dance.

“Lo and behold, my son Peter raises his hand and announces that he can do both. I was shocked, because really he could do neither.

“The casting director was excited because not only could my 8-year-old son ‘sing and dance,’ but he was a blue-eyed blond male, which was just what they were looking for. You see, they were trying to cast for Anna’s son in the upcoming production of The King and I.

“So as any mom would do, we went to audition. They quickly realized Peter could neither sing nor dance, but since he was so entertaining they made him up to look Asian, and they gave him a very small part as one of the King’s children.

“Needless to say, our family saw many performances of The King and I that summer.”

• Janet Carpenter Vanderlaan, of Perryville, offered three Matunuck memories:

“#1: During World War II there were no productions at the theater for some of those years, and I remember at least one summer when movies were shown there on Saturday nights. I remember seeing movies like Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. The cost was probably 50 cents or a dollar, and there were very few moviegoers. My sister and I enjoyed having the whole balcony for ourselves.

“#2. Later, when I was a teenager earning money for college, I ran a hot dog stand at Roy Carpenter’s Beach (he was my grandfather). Many of our customers were actors and staff from the theater. There were interesting comments about ‘clam cakes,’ as most of these folks had no idea what clam cakes were.

“#3. I’m not sure of the year, but maybe in the very early 1980s a shaggy dog was needed for the play Camelot. Our daughter, who lived in my childhood home on the Roy Carpenter Farm near the theater, had an old English sheepdog who was big and shaggy.

“Tara performed like a trouper, but unbeknownst to my daughter and her husband, Tara was about to become a mother for the first time and delivered a whole host of puppies on a Sunday.

“She had the day off on Monday, as that was the regular time off for the play, but went on to do her walk-on part the next night. The play must go on!”

And one last bittersweet memory

“My dearest husband of 50 years, Frank Caswell, a longtime Journal advertising department employee, died in October 2006,” wrote Diane C. Caswell of Jamestown. “My grief knows no bounds, but my memories are so sweet.

“In 1993, he entered a contest sponsored by Matunuck, ‘My most memorable moment at Theatre By The Sea was...” The entry was a great surprise to me, and when he won, we enjoyed dinner and theater tickets. Of course, I can’t remember what play we saw in 1993, but I do still remember the one in 1952. …

“Here is his entry as he wrote it.”

A Summer Romance, by Frank Caswell.

It was just a summer romance. It was the summer of 1952 when a nervous art student got up his nerve to ask the lovely freckled-faced teacher-to-be for a date.

This was one of those sophisticated young ladies from out of town, who waitressed at the local hotel that catered to wealthy summer folks. He worked at the local drug store.

To his surprise, she accepted. He suggested the Theater By The Sea. Little did he know that she loved the theater and always would.

The ride from Jamestown was full of nervous laughter as they got to know one each other. The play was Canterbury Ghost with Veronica Lake, known to them both as the “lady with the peekaboo bangs.” (Unfortunately, Veronica was not able to perform that night.)

The seats were in the balcony and there was a spider overhead. But the play was hilarious. On the ride home, they laughed over “poker blots” and other great lines. It was the beginning of a great summer romance, but then she had to return home and he had to concentrate on another year of school.

But the letters continued the laughter, and the romance continued. Four years later they were married. Now, 41 years after that first date at Theater By The Sea, they still reminisce about their first date.

They still laugh, and they are still in love.

“We were blessed with a wonderful marriage, and raised our five children in Jamestown,” Mrs. Caswell wrote. “I’ve been to Matunuck twice so far this summer — once with one of our cherished grandsons.

“It is such a bittersweet place for me now. Thank you for prompting my search for this cherished memory.”