Help SGT write our next chapter!
Academy Award winning actor Tom Hanks is passionate about typewriters. Fortunately for Shattered Globe, he is also passionate about supporting the arts! Hanks worked on Broadway with SGT Ensemble Member Joe Forbrich and, to add a little celebrity power to SGT’s 30th anniversary year, Hanks donated a gleaming 1930’s Corona typewriter with pharmacy keys for a special raffle. Forbrich added a special touch by crafting a wooden folding table to display the amazing gift.
Especially this year, the name Corona has lasting meaning!
The raffle winner will also get the typed message Hanks included with the typewriter, complete with one-of-a-kind typos!
Raffle tickets to win this vintage Corona typewriter autographed by Tom Hanks and the original Joe Forbrich table are $50 each!
How did this typewriter come to be? Read below for Joe Forbrich’s story about working with Tom Hanks!
My friendship with Tom Hanks began with a leap of faith. He always showed up early to the Broadhurst Theatre, where we were both making our Broadway debuts, he as the star, and me as the understudy. And on that day, I got there early too. I needed to ask him a favor. I hardly knew him.
I could hear the clacking of his vintage Corona typewriter as I approached his dressing room. Whereas the other dressing rooms line the stairwells of the theatre, some of them six floors up, the “star” dressing room is the largest, and about ten feet from the stage. But Hanks took the smallest, making it clear he was just another ensemble member. I knocked. My hands were shaking.
He opened the door.
“Hey, man!” He’d been typing a letter back home to his wife.
“Hey…”
“What’s up? How you doing?”
“Great. Uh…I was just asking around, the people in the cast, I’m doing a reading of a play Monday night, The Whaleship Essex, and, since you play captains a lot, I was wondering if you wanted to read the part of the captain of the ship, it’s a true story, it happened in the early eighteen hundreds, you don’t have to, a couple other people in the cast are doing it — “
“Pencil me in!” he said, rescuing me from my babbling.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Pencil me in. I’d love to.”
“What’s that?”
“Who’s the playwright?”
“Oh. I am — “
“Terrific. Why didn’t you say so? You buried the lede!”
“Burying the lede” is a newspaper term meaning the reporter didn’t include the most important part of the story in the first paragraph. It was all so apropos, as he was playing Mike Macalary, famous newspaper columnist. The manual typewriter in the background and all.
“Don’t you want to read it first?”
“Sure. But I know it’ll be great.”
I handed him the script, thanked him, and walked away. No. I floated away. And he was as good as his word. The reading was attended by over 100 people, and generated enough enthusiasm to culminate in a workshop production in New York City. Hanks donated money. Then I got a part in his next movie. Then he invited me to the opening at Lincoln Center. Then he almost showed up at Shattered Globe’s opening of The Whaleship Essex. Then he — God, he’s done so much. So it was with only slight trepidation that I emailed him and asked him for the latest favor:
“Sir — I know a big part of your heart is live theatre, which gives me the courage to ask: could you send along a supportive selfie video for Shattered Globe’s virtual benefit? And even if you can’t, I sure would like to return a favor to you someday. I happen to be a skilled craftsman, furniture and stuff. Just putting that out there cause it’s hard to think of how I can give back to people like you.”
“Joe — rather than another head-shot of my mug, let me send an autographed typewriter you guys can auction off, eh? Might make a few bucks and I’ll include a letter. What if you built a typing table to go along with it? Shattered Globe? Great name.”
I floated away from the computer and down to the wood shop. I built a folding table so it would mail easier from New York to Chicago. Sure enough, the typewriter shows up at Shattered Globe, along with a letter. My table followed soon after. He was as good as his word.
Shattered Globe Theatre is partially supported and funded by generous grants from The Bayless Family Foundation, The Shulman-Rochambeau Charitable Foundation, Brenda and James Grusecki, Carol P. Eastin, a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Daniel Cyganowski, The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and The Saints.