E-mail a friendJohn Lahr
airdate November 15, 2005
The New York Times has called John Lahr "the most intelligent and insightful writer on theatre today." Senior drama critic for The New Yorker, Lahr has also written several bestselling biographies, including one of his vaudeville comedian father, Bert Lahr, and numerous adaptations which have been staged in England and the U.S. In '02, he became the first critic to ever win a Tony for writing the one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty. Lahr was previously drama critic for The Village Voice and Evergreen Review. His new book is Honky-Tonk Parade.
John Lahr
Tavis: John Lahr is the senior theatre critic for 'The New Yorker' magazine. In 2002, he became the only theater critic ever to win a Tony award for the one-woman show, 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' His most recent book is a collection of profiles called 'Honky-Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People.' Among those featured in the book, you can see some of the photos on the cover there, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson. John Lahr, nice to have you on the program.
John Lahr: Nice to be here.
Tavis: Glad to have you. It's a great cover, man. I love...
Lahr: Isn't it beautiful?
Tavis: Did you like it?
Lahr: Paul Davis, he designs all my books.
Tavis: These personalities are fascinating. You've talked to a lot...
Lahr: Well, they're colorful.
Tavis: They are colorful.
Lahr: And they're large. And they're fun.
Tavis: In more ways than one, I guess, for you.
Lahr: Yeah. Fascinating.
Tavis: What's the best thing about having - I get asked periodically what's the best thing about being able to do what I do for a living every day. And I have to always think, 'cause there's so many wonderful things about it, challenges. But wonderful things about it. So you get a chance to actually profile, to your point, these larger than life, fun, colorful people who have made names for themselves on the stage. What's the best part about being John Lahr?
Lahr: (laughs) I guess sitting in my room and writing. And coming to terms always with these really large talents. Somehow, there's something in the activity of writing a profile which always connects me to my own past, to my father Bert Lahr, who was the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz.' There was always a mystery in him to me that I'm still trying to solve. The mystery being that he was huge and vivacious on stage, and when he came off it, he sort of deflated like a tire.
And somehow, I'm very interested in that place where the ordinary citizen becomes the extraordinary performer, and because the public persona that these people have is what they negotiate the world with. It's not who they are. And I like to think that these profiles, which are like mini-biographies, they take about four months to write, are a way of really seeing, trying to find in these people. I only write about people I love, who give me joy or really made me think or feel things. Try to see what it is in them that seeks expression, that makes them obsessed, that drives them, you know?
Tavis: I want to come back to this point you made just now about the people that you choose to write about, those persons, as you mentioned, who you love are the only ones who you decide to write about. Put a pin in it. I wanna come back to that in just a second.
Before I do that, though, you glazed over with a great deal of modesty and humility, went right past your dad who wasn't, again, just an actor, was a larger than life figure himself. Bert Lahr, as you mentioned, was in 'The Wizard of Oz.' Take me back, though, I don't want you to move past that too fast, and tell me what it was like growing up as the child of this guy who really was a legend in his own way.
Lahr: Well, you know, it's hard to explain to anyone. Every child of a famous person like me, when we say hello, we know each other in a way that the world doesn't know. Because we - the hard thing to explain to people is that generally the public gets the best self of a great star, and the family gets the rest.
And that, it's not that one dislikes a parent, but someone who is really greatly talented, like August Wilson, is obsessed, is dealing with ghosts and trying to channel things and express things. So it's hard to reach them because they're in a world of their own, and they're sharing that world with us. And sometimes, I know my sister and I, our father was rather absent. He was there, but he was like an absent presence. Very quiet.
Tavis: A deflated tire, I heard somebody say once. (laughs)
Lahr: Well, yeah, but he would sit in his chair, watch television, listen to the radio, and do his crossword at the same time. He was kind of completely encased. So the person that we carry, is the powerful guy on stage that can - it's an amazing thing to see.
We were the only kids we knew who had a parent who made people laugh for a living. And, you know, it's that prowess, that joy is what, and the ability to reach people and communicate his own existential bewilderment, is what we hold on to. It gives us something.
Tavis: Again, you keep saying things that, which is the mark of a good conversation, I guess, you keep saying things that make me think here. I don't have kids yet, and I've had these conversations with friends of mine who do have kids, 1,001 times. And many of them, I'm sure, are watching right now.
But to your point, if it is your belief that the children of people who are well known have a unique position in that the world, to your point, the world gets the best, the family gets the rest, I like the formulation. I respect the formulation. What's the value, then, of being the child of a famous person? If everybody else is getting the best and you're getting the rest.
Lahr: I mean - I don't think the question pertains. The value is he's your parent, like any parent, and you have to deal with the privilege and neglect that every child has to deal with. It just is larger, and it's harder to rebel against a star, especially a star who creates happiness.
Tavis: But here is the difference, though, respectfully. I don't know that, I can't say that about my parents, though. I cannot say that my parents gave the world the best and me the rest. My parents were not well to do. I like to think that I got the best of what my parents had to offer, because there weren't these divided loyalties between giving the best over here, and us getting the rest of it.
Lahr: Well, you're a lucky man. You have to make of life what - you receive, and I think, I've had a rather raffish pedigree. I mean, my mother was a Ziegfeld Girl and dad was this comedian. And writing these profiles and writing theater criticism is a way you might say of dealing, if you use August's language, with my ancestors. It's my heritage.
And I like to sustain that heritage, 'cause I think it's a great heritage. In fact, to me, as the culture gets more and more corporate and as our entertainment gets more corporate, theater and these kind of great singular individuals are the last sort of, or the most eloquent expression of individualism we have. And I find it extraordinary to chronicle it.
Tavis: Let's talk about August Wilson, then, and the chronicle that you did of him some years back. No question that he obviously was a huge talent. Tell me what you think made him so.
Lahr: Well, he was a majestic man. I'm not idealizing. He was an extraordinary man. And I think what it was, was this. That August spent, let's start by saying this. He has put into the world a cycle of plays, which cover the 20th century of African American culture. No one else has done that. He has done it in a way with such beauty and such eloquence and so much subtlety that these stories will live. Or at least six of the ten plays are, by anyone's standard, great plays.
Eugene O'Neill didn't do that. Eugene O'Neill quit the theater to write a cycle of nine plays, and wrote two. August lived to see the full cycle of plays complete, which is great that he did. He was a man who was called. One of the things I find so eloquent, I learned, I think it's the happy - all these jobs that I do, all these profiles are, for me, exercises in joy. I love them all. But of all of them, I think this particular profile, because I traveled with August, we went down to Pittsburgh where he's from. We walked the hill. I saw him in rehearsal.
All these things, the fact that I walked a mile with this guy in his lifetime is amazing to me, and I wanted to put down, if anybody in the world is interested, about who this guy was, what was on his mind. I like to think that this is a little time capsule. But the thing that's so moving in his plays, which he dramatizes, and it was true to him. You know, Zora Neale Hurston talks about the muteness of slavery. And so much of what he shows and what he did was to find a voice, to assert his voice, to claim not just his own voice, but the culture, the essential ordinariness of African American life.
The games, the songs, the dances, the great vivacity of colloquial speech as poetic and beautiful. And it was a great thing. And the amazing thing is when August started writing plays in 1979, he had never ever read Williams, Miller, O'Neill. Hadn't read The Canon. And I think, when I saw him, of course, he stayed with his plays until they were fully born, that's another discussion, but he'd only seen 12 plays. I mean, he was completely peopled with these stories that he wanted to tell.
And he's the only writer in the 20th century who created a system so that he could be an artist in show business. In other words, he, very much like Chaplin who controlled his studio, thanks to a white producer called Ben Mordecai and Lloyd Richards, the director Lloyd Richards. He created a setup where he would start these plays, and let the characters grow and rewrite them in the series of productions.
So he would get the benefit of seeing the shows, the contributions of an enormous number of actors, black actors who he gave great employment to. And then finally bring a full, totally explored world onto the Broadway stage. No other writer, not Mamet, not Williams, not Miller ever had the opportunity of that long a gestation period. So these things are totally realized works, which is extraordinary.
Tavis: It is a huge endorsement when John Lahr writes a profile of your work and then suggests, as he has just now, how significant that work will be. The life and legacy of August Wilson, I'm certain, is secure, to paraphrase one John Lahr. The new book by John Lahr is called 'Honky-Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People.' The book leads with a profile of August Wilson, but again, a lot of good people profiled in this book, a variety of people on the stage. And it is my pleasure, John Lahr, to have you on the program.
Lahr: Oh. Well, thrill to be here.
Tavis: Glad to have you. Up next, supermodel turned cosmetics mogul, Iman. Stay with us.
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