Biografía

For more than fifty years, Kenley's summer stock productions became what Variety called the "largest network of theaters on the straw hat circuit". His Kenley Players company brought popular shows and celebrities to Ohio, in Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Warren. Many of the shows also played in Flint, Michigan. Kenley often rode his bike backstage through the large theaters and was known for putting make-up on his dog, Sadie. He often came up with gimmicks to market and sell tickets.

Purser-Pharmacist's mate Kremchek participated in a number of harrowing exploits including the support of Allied landings in Southern France. When a convoy of 30 ships came under attack, he was aboard one of only eight that remained afloat.

He produced The Barretts of Wimpole Street played at the Barnesville theatre in 1950 starring Susan Peters as the invalid Elizabeth Barrett. Peters was a former MGM starlet who had been paralyzed from the waist down in a hunting accident. Peters delivered her lines from a sofa which was repositioned in every act to give the illusion of movement. When he took the show to Washington DC, he became the first producer to desegregate live theater there.

His family had moved several times ahead of the spread of prohibition, finally settling in Erie, Pennsylvania.

After the war, Kenley was unable to find stage work in New York and began producing summer stock in Pennsylvania and Ohio.