“100 million voters made a huge impact on the last election.

They didn’t vote.”

Kenneth Cole, 2004

It’s 2008. Leap year = presidential election. I’d say on the whole things are worse than before. We should all get out there and do our part. I don’t care who you’re voting for; it’s none of my business. Just do it! It doesn’t take much, and it actually makes you feel good, if only for a brief moment, about the democratic republic in which we live. (Yeah, franchisement!!) Just remember to register on time, if you aren’t already.

>”100 million voters made a huge impact on the last election.

They didn’t vote.”

Kenneth Cole, 2004

It’s 2008. Leap year = presidential election. I’d say on the whole things are worse than before. We should all get out there and do our part. I don’t care who you’re voting for; it’s none of my business. Just do it! It doesn’t take much, and it actually makes you feel good, if only for a brief moment, about the democratic republic in which we live. (Yeah, franchisement!!) Just remember to register on time, if you aren’t already.

(Where, Where, Where, Where) Where Is She?

This interview isn’t new (it took place in 2002), but it’s a fascinating read about one of the most unique and most enigmatic Broadway stars. She had quite a string of successes on both stage and screen, making a name for herself as a quirky comedienne who could act and sing. She earned several Tony nominations (one win – The Apple Tree) and an Oscar nomination. However, Barbara Harris virtually disappeared from the public eye, becoming disinterested in acting and taking refuge in Phoenix, Arizona – far from the lights of either Hollywood or Broadway (and likely to never return to either). Harris spoke with Robert Pela of the Phoenix New Sun in an interesting and candid interview, in which she provides interesting comments about Mike Nichols, Alfred Hitchcock, musical comedy, acting and as you will learn from the interview’s title, politics.

Though Harris’ Broadway musical career was rather short-lived (two starring roles back to back in 1965 and 1966), her contribution is enormous. The role of Daisy Gamble in the poorly conceived On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (Lerner & Lane) is probably to be forever eclipsed by the leaden film adaptation made in 1970 starring Barbra Streisand. While Harris doesn’t have the voice Streisand has, her charm, quirkiness and warmth make the Clear Day cast album definitive. (She had me at the lead-in to “Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here!” – her first song in the show). Her inspired star turn in The Apple Tree, three linked one-act musicals by Bock & Harnick, carried the show. As she played a feisty, spirited but loving Eve to Alan Alda’s Adam in act one (her “What Makes Me Love Him?” will never topped) to the raunchy, half-crazed seductress in the second act adaptation of “The Lady and the Tiger, to the third act fairy-tale-turned-on-its-ear “Passionella.” Interestingly enough, both shows were built around the uniqueness of Harris, whose comic persona and look, especially in Freaky Friday, is reminiscent of Madeline Kahn. Both shows received revivals at the City Center Encores!, with Kristin Chenoweth taking the reigns both times. All due respect, she’s got nothing on the one of a kind Barbara Harris.

One note to the author of the piece: Walter Kerr labeled Miss Harris “the square root of noisy sex” for her star turn in The Apple Tree. Sandy Dennis portrayed Barbara Markowitz for the entire original run of A Thousand Clowns; Barbara played the role on screen.

Barbara Harris Knew That Bill Clinton Was White Trash
Robert L. Pela

Thespians, take note: Barbara Harris has moved to town, and she’s hung up her teaching shingle. Local acting students could do worse; Harris’ brief but notable Broadway career snagged her a Tony Award for The Apple Tree in 1967, and she was nominated for her role in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Her more memorable films include Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot (1976), and a turn as Jodie Foster’s mom in Freaky Friday (1977) — all three performances nominated for a Golden Globe — and her Oscar-nominated spin in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971).
We met for drinks at Mancuso’s at the Borgata, where our sniffy waiter served Miss Harris a whisper of white wine and a whole lot of attitude, and where I tried and failed to convince her that she is some kind of a legend.

New Times: So, what’s a famous actress doing in Scottsdale?

Barbara Harris: I knew you’d ask that. I’m teaching acting classes. I had been based in New York, and maybe I should have stayed. I mean, I like it here, but it’s very conservative, isn’t it? I was talking to this man the other night, and he was ranting about people who come here from the East and wreck the state by voting Democrat. Hey, how would you vote on Prop 202?

NT: That’s the Indian gaming prop.

Harris: The commercials are hysterical! All that carrying on about how Indians are being greedy, but the commercials never once tell you anything about the proposition itself. So you end up having to read the Republic or some other piece of nonsense. But since I’m one of those nasty Easterners, I’ll probably vote straight Democrat. It’s just how it goes. I didn’t want to vote for Clinton, but I had to — even though I figured he was white trash.

NT: You have a pretty distinctive voice and personality. Do you get recognized in the grocery?

Harris: No, thank goodness. I don’t usually mention that I have been in movies, because I’m afraid people will say, “Well, I don’t watch black-and-white films.” Most people don’t know who I am.

NT: Come on. You’ve starred in some pretty well-regarded movies.

Harris: I used to try to get through one film a year, but I always chose movies that I thought would fail, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the fame thing. I turned down Alfred Hitchcock when he first asked me to be in one of his movies.

NT: But you eventually appeared in Hitchcock’s Family Plot.

Harris: Yes. Mr. Hitchcock was a wonderful man. He always wanted emotionless people in his movies. There was a scene in our film, where Karen Black was acting, acting, acting — all that Lee Strasberg human-struggle stuff. And it took her so long to get those tears going, and Mr. Hitchcock turned to the cameraman and said, “We will just photograph the actors’ feet in this scene.” He wanted a beautiful woman who wasn’t showing her life’s history in a scene.

NT: In his review of A Thousand Clowns, theater critic Walter Kerr described you as “the square root of noisy sex.”

Harris: He did? My goodness, mathematicians are going to be furious! By the way, I called a friend of mine in New York and had him read me some of your reviews. Why did you write that A Thousand Clowns is dated?

NT: Well, a story that condemns socialism was more relevant in the early ’60s. And the notion of a single-parent household isn’t all that shocking today.

Harris: I wish you’d written that.

NT: So, now you’re teaching acting. But I thought all actors wanted to be directors.

Harris: I’m much more interested in what’s behind acting, which is the inquiry into the human condition. Everyone gets acting mixed up with the desire to be famous, but some of us really just stumbled into the fame part, while we were really just interested in the process of acting.

NT: I can see the joy of appearing on Broadway or in a big Hollywood film, but where’s the joy in teaching people how to cry?

Harris: Who wants to be up on the stage all the time? It isn’t easy. You have to be awfully invested in the fame aspect, and I really never was. What I cared about was the discipline of acting, whether I did well or not.

NT: Still, you did pretty well.

Harris: Well, sometimes. People always want to talk about the ones that won you awards, but I have a better memory of my first part, which was Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The critic for the Chicago Tribune wrote, “Will someone please get rid of Peter Rabbit?” I was crushed, and after that I had to be pushed out on stage. Of course, I had made my own costume. That may have been a mistake. But anyway, we weren’t up there on that stage for any reason other than the process of acting. We certainly weren’t making any money back then, my friends and I. Elaine May was eating grapefruit rinds.

NT: Your friends were a rare group.

Harris: Yes. Mike Nichols was a toughie. He could be very kind, but if you weren’t first-rate, watch out. He’d let you know. Elaine May read Molière night and day.

NT: You seem completely unimpressed with your own celebrity.

Harris: I’m a has-been!

NT: Does that mean you’ve left acting?

Harris: Well, if someone handed me something fantastic for 10 million dollars, I’d work again. But I haven’t worked in a long time as an actor. I don’t miss it. I think the only thing that drew me to acting in the first place was the group of people I was working with: Ed Asner, Paul Sills, Mike Nichols, Elaine May. And all I really wanted to do back then was rehearsal. I was in it for the process, and I really resented having to go out and do a performance for an audience, because the process stopped; it had to freeze and be the same every night. It wasn’t as interesting.

NT: You were also in the Compass Players, the first improvisational theater troupe in America. You’re acknowledged as one of the pioneering women in the field of improv, and scenes you created with the Second City and Compass companies are still studied as masterpieces of the form.

Harris: Boy, you really did your homework. Uh, yes. We were the first to do improv, and it was hard, because improv was new and no one had come before us.

NT: You starred in Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad and Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?. Do you enjoy selecting films with long-winded titles?

Harris: That’s a very silly question. Well, you writers do like words, don’t you? And so those titles must have been written by writers. No, there wasn’t a great deal of design to the path of my career. I was a small-town, middle-class girl who wore a cashmere sweater very nicely and ended up on Broadway because that’s the way the wind was blowing. I didn’t have my sights set there. When I was at Second City, there was a vote about whether we should take our show to Broadway or not. Andrew Duncan and I voted no. I stayed in New York, but only because Richard Rodgers and Alan Jay Lerner came and said, “We want to write a musical for you!” Well, I wasn’t big on musical theater. I had seen part of South Pacific in Chicago and I walked out. But it was Richard Rodgers calling!

NT: You stayed, and you ended up with a Tony. Speaking of theater awards, I heard you’re a Zonis judge. Say it isn’t so!

Harris: I am now. They rejected me, at first. I filled out the application, and they just never called. (Arizona Jewish Theatre artistic director) Janet Arnold, who’s a real sweetheart, called and told them, “Hey, it’s Barbara Harris! Call her back!”

NT: You’re a famous actress living in Scottsdale, so you’re probably hanging out with Marshall Mason and Dale Wasserman, our other resident theater legends.

Harris: I wish I knew Marshall Mason. I didn’t know Dale Wasserman lives here, too. So, you see? Famous theater people are everywhere in this town. You just don’t see us because we’re hiding under things.

Addendum: Harris briefly resurfaced on XM Satellite radio in a guest appearance for the Radio Repertory Company of America’s broadcast of Anne Manx on Amazonia in 2005. She is still living in a delicious reclusivity, enjoying every minute of it and hasn’t taken on any other acting work since (most definitely our loss).

"Pirate Jenny" – Lotte Lenya

Lotte Lenya recreates her legendary “Pirate Jenny” from The Threepenny Opera, for which won a Tony in 1956 (which gives her the added distinction of being the only performer honored by the Theater Wing for what was officially an off-Broadway performance). For anyone who didn’t see Lovemusik last season, Lenya was married to Weill until his death in 1950. She was one of the great artistic influences in his life, and very quite possibly the definitive interpreter of his songbook. She withdrew from the stage after the poorly received The Firebrand of Florence in 1945, but after Weill’s death she was coaxed back to star in a new translation of Threepenny penned by Marc Blitzstein. She starred in the production with Jo Sullivan (Loesser), Beatrice Arthur, Charlotte Rae and others at the Theatre dy Lys, where it would prove a smash hit, racking up 2,707 performances. Lenya’s forays into film included an Oscar nominated turn in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and quite memorably as the Bond villain Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love.

This is apparently from a 1966 Boston TV special “The World of Kurt Weill,” the same year she added a considerable air of Weillian authenticity to the original production of Cabaret.

Happy "August: Osage County" Day!

Mayor Bloomberg has officially proclaimed today “August: Osage County Day” in NYC in honor of its 300th performance, being accorded to today’s matinee.

As per the proclamation, the play has “yielded tremendous cultural and economic benefits for” New York City and has “reaffirmed New York’s proud heritage of welcoming the world’s boldest, most powerful works of art.”

However, the powers that be are cheating a little. According to the tally at ibdb.com today’s matinee is the show’s 282nd, meaning they are counting the 18 previews. There is a reason there is an official opening night. Or is there anymore? Oh well. I’m just truth-telling… 😉

Also here is a great profile on the great Amy Morton who is still giving NY audiences her powerhouse performance as Barbara Weston Fordham in the acclaimed hit (but only for a little while longer, folks. Soon the original cast will be off to London for its UK premiere at the National in the fall).

The quote of the day, from Ms. Morton:

“It’s like when you open up Long Day’s Journey Into Night or some great American play, and you see the original cast listing, and you go, ‘Wow, that must have been something.’ I get to have my name in there! I’m never going to get a part like this again in my life. I mean this in the most positive way: It’s all downhill from here.”

"Bounce" retitled "Road Show"

The little Sondheim musical that could, Bounce, is being resurrected in a yet another revision that will play the Public Theatre fall under the title Road Show (the book is from the pen of John Weidman). The show (which is on its fourth title; early workshops include Wise Guys and Gold!) is now under the direction of Tony-winner John Doyle and will star Sondheim regulars Michael Cerveris (Assassins, Sweeney Todd) and Alexander Gemignani (Assassins, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park With George). Tickets go onsale to the general public on October 12, with a first preview date set for October 28 and an opening night of November 18. The show will run at the Public’s Newman Theatre through December 28.

In an exclusive commentary with Playbill.com, Mr. Sondheim explains the dramaturgical reasons behind the new title. It sounds very interesting to hear the gestation process of this long-in-development musical. It’s also great that New York will be getting its first fully original Sondheim score in 14 years.

Quote of the Day

From Charles Isherwood’s piece in today’s Times about movie musical adaptations (more specifically, his reactions to Mamma Mia!):

“And, most promisingly, a small movie coming out of nowhere managed to make the old-school conventions of musical theater bloom naturally in a strictly realistic, indeed even grungy environment. The indie movie “Once,” which ultimately won an Oscar for best original song this year, depicts a romance between two street musicians in Dublin. The scruffy Irish protagonist and his Czech girlfriend glide into their music with the ease of Fred and Ginger wafting onto the dance floor, reminding us that at its best, onstage or at the movies, the marriage of music and drama feels not just natural but inevitable.”

I have to agree. For my money, Once is the best new movie musical I’ve seen in some time.

"Ethel Mae Potter… we never forgot her"

This is a clip from one of my all-time favorite episodes of “I Love Lucy.” The fourth season of the classic sitcom dealt with Ricky getting a movie deal with MGM and driving out west to Hollywood for his big screen debut. The season opened up a great many guest spots to the likes of John Wayne, Van Johnson, Rock Hudson, Harpo Marx and probably most infamously, William Holden (and the legendary burning nose moment). This episode has the gang driving to Ethel’s home town of Albequerque, New Mexico (which incidentally was Vivian Vance’s real home town). When they arrive, the town believes that Ethel is the one going out to be a movie star. She lets it get to her head, so much so that in a rare moment, Lucy schemes with Ricky and Fred to teach her a lesson during her recital (which also allowed Vance, a Broadway performer with credits including the original productions of Music in the Air, Anything Goes, Red Hot and Blue and Hooray for What!, the opportunity to display her considerable vocal talents). The hilarity follows:

A Little Love on the Way

Call me Uncle Lindsay. In one of the happiest posts I think I’ll ever make, I am thrilled to announce that I am going to become an uncle for the first time early next year. So come winter time, I hope I can finagle myself into a trip to the Philippines for the joyous event.