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Sharon — who met her husband at a summer theater program — saw this as an opening: They’d get set up in California and use the movie as leverage to get Keke more work.

In 1956, when he was 30 and working as a press agent for a summer theater in Camden, Maine, Mr. Atlee began what became more or less a behind-the-scenes gig, even for a press agent accustomed to operating backstage.

He worked for many years as a private detective, served as a photographic safari guide in Kenya and directed summer theater in Oxford, England, to name a few.

“We were down in a warehouse by the water. The focus was on preparing us for the business part of acting. I was there for three years. I feel like I barely saw the city, because I was either working or in class or rehearsing, and in the summers I’d work in summer theater.”

The theater was poised to close until Andrew Russell, then an Intiman associate director, proposed to the board that the company reconfigure into a stripped-down summer theater festival under his leadership.