Death Valley's Lady of Broadway

What do you do if you’re a Broadway performer driving through the California desert and your car breaks down near the abandoned town of Death Valley Junction (pop. 2)? If you’re Marta Becket, you decide this is the place for you, you convert a derelict meeting hall into a theater, and for the next 34 years you perform one-woman ballets set to classical music.

Becket, a former Broadway chorus girl who had appeared in Showboat, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, and Wonderful Town, was also trained in classical ballet since age 9. In 1967, she and her husband, Tom Williams, were touring the West performing her one-woman show—a blend of ballet, acting, singing, modern dance, and opera—when the couple found themselves stranded in the desert near Death Valley.

But, says Becket, “We turned our automotive calamity into an opportunity.”

Williams had grown tired of living in New York City, and Becket knew that bookings for her show were getting scarce. In the back of her mind lay the prediction an acquaintance had made not long before their journey west: This would be her last tour, but she would go on to find her greatest artistic fulfillment.

Death Valley Junction was a busy rail junction in 1915 and a center for borax mining, but was a ghost town by the time Tom and Marta arrived. They rented the abandoned meeting hall of the Pacific Borax Co. building for $45 a month. The town had been called Amargosa before the railroad came, after the mountains which separate it from Death Valley, so the couple dubbed their building the Amargosa Opera House to give it an air of elegance.

After extensive repairs, the theater opened for an audience of 12. At a subsequent performance, when nobody showed up at all, Becket realized she needed a dependable audience—so she created one. She painted murals on the walls of the Opera House depicting fans of different eras.

She was not new to art. For years, Becket had supplemented her income by selling paintings and drawings, even having her own shows in New York City art galleries, and her beautiful murals have since become an attraction in their own right. Other paintings of hers recently showed at the Las Vegas Art Museum.

“Eventually, I got help from the Trust for Public Land, and we formed a corporation, Amargosa Opera House Inc.—and we ended up buying the entire town of Death Valley Junction,” says Becket, who still comprises half the town’s population.

Today she has no problem filling the 120-seat theater. Most of her twice-weekly performances are sold out during the tourist season (November to May). Death Valley National Park is a regular stop for tourists, many of whom make the Amargosa Opera House part of their itinerary.

Word of mouth and a highly acclaimed documentary this year about Becket’s work, titled Amargosa, also have helped bring fans to the opera house from around the world. French soprano Chantale Herder, for example, saw the documentary and became one of those in awe of Becket.

“To see a woman like Marta, persevering and performing not only without an audience to begin with, but in the bleakest of locations, it was inspirational,” Herder says. “I honestly don’t think I would have believed Marta’s story if I hadn’t seen it.”

And when Herder told Swiss friend Severine Suter about Becket, Suter altered her itinerary for her upcoming trip to California. “I can skip seeing Disneyland, but I cannot skip seeing Marta,” Suter says.

Currently, she is performing The Good Time Cabaret and The Dollmaker, with Masquerade on deck for her 35th anniversary season in 2002-03.

Becket, whose career began more than 60 years ago, still takes a lesson at the ballet barre every day; still dances on toe, and mesmerizes audiences with her performances—34 years after her car broke down in an abandoned mining town.

Robert Henry is a freelance writer from Los Angeles.

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