Broadway Babylon (22 page)

“Remember, you are speaking of the man I love!”—F
RANK
F
AY
to a drunk who came up onstage and told him he stank

“There’s only one animal that throws a scent.”—F
RANK
T
INNEY
to a customer who threw a penny at him while performing

“Please, lady, would you like it if I came over where you lived and turned off your red light?”—J
ACK
W
HITE
to a female heckler

“Won’t someone please get the poor girl a lawyer?”—visitor P
ETER
U
STINOV
, after watching acting coach Lee Strasberg criticize and harangue Geraldine Page for an hour

“I had an acting coach who would yell at me every time she thought I was acting. She got me very confused. ‘Don’t act, just
be
!’ I think she got used to or enjoyed yelling at me. Then I got very despondent. I even pondered
giving up acting. But somehow or other I made a smart move, a crucial one: I instead gave
her
up.”—A
NITA
M
ORRIS
(
Nine
)

“The theatre is a powerful sexual stimulant, but when its power is not misused it is a powerful awakener of other ideas.”—stage director S
IR
T
YRONE
G
UTHRIE

“Acting is like sex. You should do it, not talk about it.”—Oscar winner J
OANNE
W
OODWARD
, who prefers stage to screen

“I was at an interview the other day in Los Angeles, and this guy came up to me and said, in front of a lot of people who were sitting around, ‘Oh, I saw your Hamlet.…’ And I was quite pleased, and everyone looked up from their newspapers, and I thought, well, good, now they know I’ve played Hamlet. And then he completed the sentence: ‘… the night your codpiece fell off.’ That’s the worst.”—R
OGER
R
EES
, Tony winner for
Nicholas Nickleby

“If actors need to brag now and then to hold up their self-esteem, let them. It is a very de-nuding profession, and of little respect. Up until not so long ago, the Church routinely excommunicated dead actors. Many were dumped into unmarked lime pits.… In Voltaire’s
Candide
, when he goes to the theatre he asks how actresses are treated in France. ‘Adored when they are beautiful, and thrown into the gutter when they are dead.’ ”—French stage and screen star J
EAN
M
ARAIS

“What actors need more than anything else is persistence. Just hanging in there. Looks and talent get judged and misjudged by all sorts of people and fads and biases. You must hang around until your chances present themselves. You can’t play if you’re not at the table.”—B
ARNARD
H
UGHES
(
Da
)

“When opportunity knocks, you better be prepared, honey. It don’t knock often, and you better have taken enough lessons, polished your product, and be ready to show up responsible and on time!”—N
ELL
C
ARTER
(
Ain’t Misbehavin’
)

“For a lot of actors, being in therapy is the flip side of getting up and nightly baring your insides to strangers. Therapy is trying to get your insides back, but in better order. That is, unless your therapist screws you up—a lot of them need therapists too.”—E
LLIOTT
G
OULD
(
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
)

“Acting can’t be taught, but I think experiences can be shared. And you can advise to a certain degree. But as Sandy Meisner says, ‘The bottom line is talent.’ ”—actor-teacher V
ICTOR
G
ARBER
(
Deathtrap, Sweeney Todd
)

“Most people cannot believe I’ve done Shakespeare.… People tend to forget that no matter what an actor is famous for, he is or was an actor first and wanted to play diverse parts. I’ve done accents from German to English to hillbilly, but it’s the casting people that ultimately decide how to categorize you—and how to limit you.”—J
IM
V
ARNEY
, best known as Ernest P. Worrell (“know-whut-I-mean-Vern?”)

“Sometimes your image of yourself doesn’t jibe with what others see. I never was Minnie Pearl, though I did soon grow to love her. Also I grew to love laughter.… With a middle name of Ophelia and my love for the legitimate stage, my original big-time goal was Broadway. I was going to be a dramatic actress. I thought Minnie was just a comedy character part, but after I introduced her at the Grand Ole Opry, she sort of took over my career, if not my life.”—S
ARAH
O
PHELIA
C
OLLEY

“An audience’s laughter is easily obtained, and the comedian often mistakes it for affection or approval.”—N
ANCY
M
ARCHAND
, star of stage and of TV’s
The Sopranos

“To me it’s funny, I mean unusual, that so many people find it
funny
when a married couple play two characters who court and reject each other and argue and make up, then argue even more heatedly. But it’s because we’re married and as married people go through all that off the stage that we can play it so well.”—J
ESSICA
T
ANDY
, who costarred with Hume Cronyn in
The Gin Game
(1977)

“Young lady, if you want reality, go out into the street and observe a fist fight. This is theatre and the theatre is not reality. Shall we press on?”—director T
YRONE
G
UTHRIE
to an actress questioning the reality of a scene

“The special effects, the pyrotechnics, all the money they were pouring into these things. I had to learn everything all over again, which is one of the things that makes acting so exciting.”—T
OM
B
OSLEY
(TV’s
Happy Days
), who after twenty-four years returned to Broadway in 1995, as Belle’s father in
Beauty and the Beast

“[Theatre] is not a profession in which people, generally speaking, grow old gracefully. In part because it’s so marginal. It’s all sort of by the seat of your pants and the economics of it are so shaky. There is no tenure and there are no pensions. You can be sixty and still facing a life of insecurity after having done a life of good work.”—playwright T
ONY
K
USHNER
(
Angels in America
), a 2006 Oscar nominee for screenwriting

“A short run on Broadway has happened to everyone, even the biggest stars. Which hardly makes it any less humiliating.”—C
AROL
B
URNETT

“The question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night. But God knows the answer to that is, ‘Don’t we all anyway—might as well get paid for it.’ ”—writer E
LAINE
D
UNDY

“Drama [is] what literature does at night.”—critic G
EORGE
J
EAN
N
ATHAN

“I write plays to find out why I’m writing them.”—E
DWARD
A
LBEE
(
The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?
)

“The one-man show evolved in Britain long ago, contrary to current Broadway thought or assumption. It had to come about, because actors were limited as to where, not only what, they could perform. Only two theatres in London were licensed by the crown—plays couldn’t take place anywhere else. So an enterprising actor would put on a solo performance at the theatre in the daytime—when they didn’t have plays—or at a private club, and invite friends, and that way he—and I do mean
he
, only—could get around the Licensing Act.”—P
AULINE
C
OLLINS
, who won several awards for her performance in the one-woman show
Shirley Valentine
(its film version earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination)

“The intensity of a role is magnified in a one-person show.… For
Lillian
[Hellman], I underwent deep loneliness … even morning sickness. It had to do with being the only actor … it had to do with Lillian being a very difficult person, somebody I resisted letting inhabit me, but of course had to.”—Z
OE
C
ALDWELL

“It’s hard when you’re out there all by yourself. They think that’s what an actress loves. What I love is to be with an ensemble, to work with other actors. But listen, I’m not knocking being out there alone. It’s just a hell of a lot of responsibility. You’d better keep moving, I’ll tell you that. Because it’s not easy to entertain an audience solely, talking about yourself for two-and-a-half hours.”—E
LAINE
S
TRITCH
, whose
At Liberty
won a Tony in 2002

“I heartily recommend a bit of honesty and eccentricity to keep one fresh in a stale part. It also keeps an audience from taking one for granted if one isn’t born with the form divine.”—S
IR
R
ALPH
R
ICHARDSON
, who once stopped a show cold by suddenly peering into the audience and asking, “Is there a doctor in the house?” and then questioning the man, “Doctor, isn’t this play awful?”

“I don’t try going on the stage because it’s hard to find the part for me that’s right, and if it’s a drama I don’t think I can keep it from being comedy.”—performer turned politician (redundant?) A
RNOLD
S
CHWARZENEGGER

“One can play comedy; two are required for melodrama; but a tragedy demands three.”—writer E
LBERT
H
UBBARD

“A farce or a comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”—A
BRAHAM
L
INCOLN
in 1863 after a performance of
The Merchant of Venice
starring Edwin Booth; two years later, while attending a comedy performance, he was assassinated by Booth’s younger brother

“The pleasure and thrill of acting on Broadway is mitigated by having to perform chiefly for the critics. At the outset, they have to approve your show or it may not last, which is outrageous, really. Once you’re running, then you can enjoy the acting, because then it’s for the audience, as it should be.”—F
AYE
D
UNAWAY
(
Hogan’s Goat
, Off-Broadwy)

“Every once in a while I inadvertently curse Mrs. Dorothy Brando, who got me into this. She was active in the Omaha Community Playhouse.… I’d come home to visit from college. Mrs. Brando telephoned one day. They’d lost their male lead … she said I’d be perfect for it. I was flabbergasted. I reminded her I couldn’t act … [but] the notion of it, and the glamour, seduced me. I wound up doing three years at the Playhouse, and I did act opposite Mrs. Brando [who] was very good indeed. If she’d had more ambition or if she hadn’t had kids, she could have made it on Broadway.”—H
ENRY
F
ONDA
(Brando’s daughter Jocelyn and son Marlon became professional actors)

“Milton Berle was not a hit on Broadway. He thought he was funny, which is death for a comic actor. Theatregoers like to
discover
you’re funny, not be told about it. By contrast, Berle was a hit on television … on the other hand, in those days you had only two or three channels, and none were twenty-four hours.”—C
HRISTOPHER
H
EWETT
, stage (
My Fair Lady
), film (
The Producers
) and TV (
Mr. Belvedere
) actor

“I was friends with a very amusing American actor who went to play one of his comedy hits in Melbourne, known as the most English and reserved of Australian cities. He was astonished and disheartened by how little mirth his performance elicited. Until afterwards, when several members of the audience informed him that the play and he in it had been so hilarious that they’d had trouble in not laughing.”—R
ICHARD
B
URTON

“In spite of her imposing manner on stage, the great Edith Evans was a shy person. Even though she’d love to have become a Broadway institution as well, the fact is she was shy of American audiences—found us rather frighteningly aggressive. She once told me, ‘They will clap so loudly, won’t they?’ ”—V
INCENT
P
RICE
, who in later years returned to the stage to portray Oscar Wilde

“If we have a deficiency, it is definitely in vocal training. The English stress that. They can always ‘do’ us, but for us it’s more difficult. When it isn’t impossible. I did an entire picture where my character thought he was Sherlock Holmes (
They Might be Giants
, 1971). It was damned hard, and I did not sustain [the accent] consistently.”—G
EORGE
C. S
COTT

“First wipe your nose and check your fly.”—S
IR
A
LEC
G
UINNESS
, on preparing as an actor

“I go over and over the script [to prepare]. But actually, I think about the hair. I say, ‘What kind of hair does this guy have? Is it long, short, curly, straight, combed, parted on one side or in the middle, smooth or jagged?’ And when I find the hair … that starts the basis of my character.… Once the hair comes in, everything else falls into place.”—S
AB
S
HIMONO
(
Mame, Pacific Overtures
)

“It’s often smart to approach a comedic part from a dramatic point of view, and approach a dramatic role from a comedic point of view. It’s surprising how often this works so well.”—S
TOCKARD
C
HANNING
(
Six Degrees of Separation
)

“It’s wonderful to have talent. It’s far more wonderful to develop it.”—A
NGELA
L
ANSBURY

“I would never do another play. What if it’s a hit? Long runs bore me.”—B
ARBRA
S
TREISAND
in 1987

“During a long run, you lecture yourself this way: ‘So what if you don’t want to go on tonight; remember the days you used to walk the street and say, “My arm, my leg, you can have it, if only I could be up there.” ’ ”—C
OLLEEN
D
EWHURST