To the Editor:
Olive Stanton, my half-sister, was in the original Broadway cast of ''The Cradle Will Rock'' in 1937 and is apparently a major character in Tim Robbins's new film, ''Cradle Will Rock.'' In David Schiff's article ''The Labor Pains of a Leftist Musical in an Angry Era'' [Dec. 5], she is referred to as a ''homeless woman.''
She was probably broke at the time and may not have had her own apartment, but the term homeless, as we understand it today, almost certainly doesn't apply. She had a wide circle of friends in the theater and art world, and her older sister had an apartment in Greenwich Village, so it's unlikely she was sleeping in the street.
Her father (and mine), Sanford Stanton, was the political editor of The New York Journal-American then and for 30 more years, and he was always a soft touch for any of his children when our money ran low.
Toddy, as Olive was known, was never in another Broadway show, but she did various other things, most notably, according to family lore, writing an occasional column in The New York World-Telegram and having poetry published in The New Yorker. Late in life she moved to Mexico, married a Mexican and ultimately drank herself to death.
I saw her when I was 10 to 13 years old, and then only briefly, but my memories of her are of an exotic, flamboyant, witty woman who would materialize at my home infrequently, regale us with great stories, and then disappear.
TED STANTON
Houston
New York Times, December 26, 1999, Section 2, Page 2
This came up around the time of the film in another forum, and someone told the story of Jackie Burroughs, a very well known actress in Canada. She had a habit of working in avant-garde plays--artistically satisfying but which paid little, and at one point she couldn't pay her rent and had to crash with her friends for some months. She never had to sleep rough, she had a lot of friends, but technically she was homeless. Then one of them got her a TV gig in the Avonlea series and she could afford her good bad habit.