(upbeat music) - Thank you to the people of the city of Troy.

You know, it's my hometown.

- On this special episode of "AHA!," we look back at the life and career of actress Maureen Stapleton.

- So what was it like growing up with Maureen Stapleton, this icon, as your mother?

- Somehow I thought you were gonna ask that question.

(laughing) - Funding for "AHA!"

has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - I'm Matt Rogowicz, and this is "AHA!

A House for Arts," a place for all things creative.

100 years ago, a star was born in Troy, New York.

She appeared on the stage and screen garnering an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Awards.

And through all of it, she never forgot where she came from.

Of course, I'm talking about none other than Maureen Stapleton.

Today's episode, produced in collaboration with film critic Jackson Murphy, is dedicated to the life and memory of this legendary actress.

- This short paragraph's at the beginning of Maureen's autobiography, "A Hell of a Life," written with her and Jane Scoville.

And when I think of Maureen Stapleton, I can't think of a better opening paragraph for a book about Maureen Stapleton.

"There's a place called Troy on the east bank of the Hudson River.

If you want to know me, you have to know where I come from, and Troy is my hometown.

I still feel more welcome here than any other place on earth.

Troy's kind of faded now, but it was once big in the iron and steel industry, and later became a manufacturing center for clothing, and especially men's shirts.

Troy is also home to some pretty fine schools, like Rensselaer Polytechnic, Russell Sage College, and the Emma Willard School for Girls."

(upbeat music) - Maureen is probably one of the most exciting people, native of Troy, to certainly capture everyone's imagination.

She was a wonderful actress, born in 1925, and lived in this amazingly ethnic neighborhood within shouting distance of her house were three synagogues, a French church, a German church, a Irish church, all these different neighborhoods, and bakeries, and little stores.

And at the time that she was born in the 1920s, Troy had this just amazingly vibrant population, and she just inhaled all those personalities.

- I became interested in Maureen Stapleton on March 29th, 1982.

It was the night she won the Academy Award, and I was a huge movie fan.

Henry Fond and Catherine Hepburn were my heroes at that point.

My grandmother lived across the street from us, and we talked earlier in the week about the upcoming Oscars, and how the girl from First Street was nominated.

I think it was the first award of the evening, and she won, and she got up and she said, "I'd like to thank Troy, New York."

And I just thought, we're the most famous city in the world.

That was the greatest thing, and I was just fascinated by that someone from Troy was an actress who made it out.

- So Maureen lived on First Street, just slightly north of Adams Street, which was really coming out of the very high residential neighborhood, and going into more working class neighborhoods.

So very near some of the factories that were around, but yet very close to where the hyperloy were living as well.

And she had the accessibility of getting to 13 theaters that were here in Troy.

And probably the two most predominant ones that she attended were Procter's and the Troy Theater.

And of course, at that time, you could go into Procter's and sit down at three o'clock in the afternoon and stay until nine o'clock at night.

Movies keep running over and over again.

She went to Catholic Central High School.

And at that time, Catholic High was at the head of Fulton Street on 8th, which is now West Hall for RPI.

And so that's her high school.

And right after high school is when she leaves and goes to New York City.

(upbeat music) - It was a very active place for theater, for sure.

It was a golden age of playwriting, which she was definitely on the ground floor of, working with playwrights like Tennessee Williams, later Neil Simon.

She did works by Arthur Miller very early in her career and his.

So as an educator, for me, it's very exciting to be able to talk about these playwrights with my students and be able to have someone who lives in Troy actually originated roles, who was actually a part of that movement.

- 1950, '51 was the big year for her because Tennessee Williams had written a play called "The Rose Tattoo" for an Italian actress, movie actress named Anna Mignogna.

And she couldn't do it because her English was absolutely horrible.

So Maureen was 25 and she landed it.

So here she was headlining Tennessee Williams' play after he'd come off "The Glass Menagerie", "Streetcar Named Desire".

I mean, he was one of the biggest playwrights in the country at the time.

So this was big, it was big stuff.

- To find somebody to play that role, who could bring the tragedy to it, out of something that's ultimately going to be happy, really speaks to the kind of veins of emotion that she had.

- Because Serafina's quite a fiery character, lots of loss, lots of frustration.

- Yeah, I made her a name on Broadway.

She won the 1951 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress.

She starred in, I think, six Tennessee Williams Broadway productions, originated I believe three or four Tennessee Williams characters.

- She served his material very well.

And it seemed that they personally understood each other.

I think they were both people who were hurt in some ways.

There were people who were sensitive in other ways, and understood that about one another.

- She was a leading lady in the American theater.

Television and film, she was more of a character actress, pretty much from day one.

She made her film debut in 1959 in a film called "Lonely Hearts", with her friend Montgomery Clift.

If you look at the timeline of her career, it's almost like three sections.

There was some time she got to, she made it to New York City, the Tony, the Oscar nomination.

And then in the early '60s, she had a period of six years where I think she had some personal struggles.

Between '66 and 1982, she was back with a vengeance.

- When you watch her movies, and you see some of the character, like she plays Michael Keaton's mom in "Johnny Dangerously", this is crazy Irish woman, and there is this entire Irish neighborhood that's there.

And so you just think about from the time that she was a little kid, it's hearing all those voices on the streets.

You have to kind of imagine how busy the streets of Troy were, and every single little store that you went into, and they're all mom and pop.

And she channels every one of them.

Emma Goldman in "Breads".

I can just see, I can see in her mind that she's going, "Oh, this was so-and-so "that lived down the street, "and she talked like this, and had those mannerisms."

And she would just, she channeled all that into these roles that she played.

- She was recognized in her time as, you know, a great artist by other artists, which I think speaks volumes about her talent.

And if she was in a good movie, she made it better.

- Toward the end of her life, a friend of hers contacted me and said, "Would you like to meet her?"

I said, "Sure."

So I went over to meet her, and it was towards the end of her life, and she was pretty ill.

And the first thing she said to me was, "You're from Troy."

I said, "I am, Second Street."

And she says, "Oh, high class."

I go, "No, not in the least."

And then, at the end, her assistant came in and said, "Maureen, one of your films is on Turner Classic Movies."

So I'm sitting there having a glass of champagne with Maureen Stapleton watching "Bye Bye Birdie."

(laughs) It was just one of those moments where you're like, what is, how did I, how did this happen?

It was just surreal.

It was surreal.

- I hope it inspires my students that Maureen Stapleton was from Troy and returned to it so often.

It's not that, you know, she left Troy and never came back, but, you know, maintained a real connection with the people who lived here.

- We have so many talented people.

You know, we talk about Rensselaer County as being such a resourceful area, and we sometimes think about all the industries and, you know, education that comes out of it, but we look at the popular culture and she's at the top of the list.

She's a homegrown.

- Katherine and Dan Allentuck are two people who know Maureen Stapleton very well.

They're her children.

Film critic Jackson Murphy recently had the chance to speak with them about Maureen's life and legacy.

Dan and Katherine Allentuck, Maureen Stapleton's children, welcome to "AHA!"

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Jackson.

- So what was it like growing up with Maureen Stapleton, this icon, as your mother?

- Somehow I thought you were gonna ask that question.

- We certainly didn't think of her as an icon, and I think everyone who would say, who grew up in a slightly different household would just say, well, that was just, it seemed normal to us.

However, there's no doubt that there were certain parts of growing up that were not normal or were not what were going on in other people's households.

However, children are amazingly adaptable, and if they have, if they feel, which I know I did, and I think I could speak for Dan, if they feel safe and secure, you can put up with a lot.

And I always did feel safe and secure.

So for example, even as a working mom, which she was, she wasn't always able, let's say, to come to any of my, all of my school plays or my assemblies or whatever it was, but she always made sure that there was somebody there, somebody from the family, even a family friend.

But it was a great message to me.

It was like, I may not be able to be there, but this is important.

And it just goes a long way.

So when you say what was like, she maneuvered and she made it work, I thought, in a really pretty well-balanced way.

- And she was a working mom, but her day started at eight o'clock at night with the curtain.

- In the theater.

- In the theater.

So that's what we were geared to.

We were used to that.

- The nightlife for her.

- Exactly.

- Did she talk about Troy a lot when you were young?

- Oh, absolutely.

i- Oh my God, yeah.

- What are your standout memories of her thoughts on Troy?

- Well, she often talked about going to the theaters, the movie theaters after school.

- Wow.

- She would go to Procter's and any of the other theaters that were playing a double bill that interested her.

And she would literally stay until they stopped showing the movie at usually 10 or something at night.

And that was her pattern for years and years and years.

She just lived in the movie theaters.

- She was very connected to Troy.

There was no question.

I mean, as we were growing up, we would, whenever we would be up at the lake, she would, we would always drive through and stop and see our grandmother and our Uncle Jack.

And she also had two friends from high school that she was still very close with throughout her life, throughout all of their lives.

And, you know, it just, it made sense to me, going, oh, those were her girlfriends.

Those were her high school girlfriends.

And they just happened to be from Catholic Central High.

- Catholic Central.

Hudson Valley Community College in 1981 names their theater after Maureen in December, right around the time of the release of Reds.

That had to be a special day when that occurred.

- That was very exciting.

I know she was particularly excited.

And I think Eli Wallach, her dear friend, came and gave some introductory remarks.

- Yeah, I bet she was thrilled to have something like that happen.

- And I think that a lot of her friends and colleagues were really knocked out.

They were like, okay, we've all had a lot of, you know, accolades in maybe different careers.

But having the theater named, and it meant, of course, a great deal to her that it was from her hometown.

- It's incredible, it's a staple of this area.

Anytime you come to Detroit, you gotta see that.

We all got to do that last year.

You were part of a celebration.

We all were for her being honored, which is just so wonderful.

So then a few months later, March 29, 1982, she wins Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards after four nominations in that category.

Finally, she wins for Reds.

Where were you on Oscar night?

- Well, we were trying to remember that recently.

I know where I was.

Dad was there, our father.

We were watching at home at 17th Street.

We were watching the television at home.

But I don't think I realized, I think my father realized more, what a huge thing it was, just in terms of her career.

I just thought, oh, isn't this great?

I'm so happy for her.

But he really saw a larger picture, like, this is really great for your mom.

Like, this is a really big thing.

I was like, oh yeah, I guess it is.

- Yeah, you're part of movie history forever.

- And she famously made that comment about, I wanna thank everybody I ever met in my entire life, which I think was a line she had in mind for many years, 'cause you'd watch the Oscars, and people would start to thank this person or that person, and it would go on and on, and they would forget who they wanted to thank, and they would take the paper out.

She just said, I wanna thank everybody I ever met in my entire life.

- And she mentioned Troy in her acceptance speech.

I remember that, yeah.

- And then the next night on Johnny Carson, do you remember watching that as well?

Her with Roger Moore?

- Yes, yes, I have seen a rerun of it recently.

It was pretty funny.

- It is very funny.

And the mayor of Troy had that letter, and yeah, Roger Moore sitting next to her, and Johnny was the host that night at the Oscars as well, and icon, and so that was very cool.

Yeah, it's on Antenna TV, I believe, all the time, yeah.

- I think you're right.

And you know, she and George Scott, I think what happened was Johnny Carson saw "Plaza Suite," and he loved it, and he then started having Maureen and George as guests.

They were on more than once, and they did like the "Mighty Carson" art players, all routines with them.

- The best.

- Hysterical.

- They did a special with Johnny Carson where they acted, they did takeoffs of Tennessee Williams, got a hot tin roof, George was brick.

It was very funny.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

So later in life, Maureen comes back near this area in Lenox, Massachusetts.

How were her later years, your conversations with her, and her wanting to come back around here to the Capital Region?

- Well, it's interesting.

She loved being so close to Troy, and family could come visit, and they did often.

She really enjoyed not working finally, I think, at the end.

I think she was really, I don't need to say, not emotionally exhausted, but I underestimated.

She had a really close friend, Elizabeth Wilson, an actress, Elizabeth Wilson.

And I think when she had moved up to Lenox, people would call her from time, "Oh, please come and do this or do this."

She rarely did.

And I don't even remember what the offer was, but somebody called, it was some sort of job offer.

And I thought it just sounded great.

I was like, "You know, Mom, why don't you wanna do this?"

She was like, "Mm, nah, I don't wanna do it."

So I mentioned that to her friend, Liz Wilson, and I was like, "I don't understand, you know, "they're calling Mom, they want her to do this."

And Liz looked at me, and I want you to know, I loved Liz, and she loved me.

But she took a tone with me, it was like, "You underestimate how hard your mom worked."

And I was like, "Oh, I guess you're right."

She worked really hard.

And if she wants to pass on a few jobs that you think sound like fun, she's entitled.

And it reminded me of just how hard she worked when she was on stage eight days, eight times a week, for years and years and years, and how much she gave.

And the reason that her performances are as memorable as they are is how hard she worked.

- Film, theater, television, she did so much.

She did so much.

And this year, you got to do something very special because this is her 100th birthday year.

You took a trip.

- We did.

- You wanted to take, and this occasion, tell me about that.

- Ooh, that was exciting.

We finally went back to Ireland with Katherine's son, Max.

- The son, Max.

- Who did all the driving, he was great.

But it was a reprise of a trip that we had taken with Maureen almost 50 years ago to the day.

- Wow.

- 1976.

She was in London doing "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with Sir Lawrence Olivier, who she called Sir Lord God, to his face.

And when the shooting stopped, she, on the spur of the moment, decided that we should all go to Ireland together.

And as I recall, Katherine was not so keen to go.

She wanted to go home.

She had been in London with Mom for quite a while.

But Mom was adamant, and we eventually, we went.

And it was a famous disaster because she had made no effort to contact relatives or find out where we should go.

She just, we're gonna go to County Mayo where her grandparents came from, and that's all she knew.

And she just got strangely more and more depressed with every passing hour.

Neither of us had seen her.

- Yeah, she really wasn't.

- In a state like that.

- If I can interrupt in terms of how she felt about Troy when she was so down when we were over there.

I really had never seen her like this.

So finally, I was like, "Mom, where do you wanna be?

"How can we fix your feeling like this?"

And she just looked up and she said, "First Street and Troy."

And I looked at Dan.

And I remember thinking, "Well, we can't arrange that at the moment, "but perhaps we can."

So we ended the trip a little sooner.

I think it was complicated how she felt about going home and how she felt about Ireland.

I think it was more complicated than she expected it to be.

- Interesting, but this time you gathered your whole family.

- We met at least 10 cousins.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it was very exciting.

They were wonderful.

- And we were with them the day of her actual centennial on June 21st.

- Right, we toasted her in Dublin.

- At Johnny Fox's at a pub in Dublin.

And it was lovely.

It was really lovely.

- Fantastic.

Happy 100th to Maureen.

- Absolutely.

- My goodness.

And I went to First Street and Troy recently to see the plaque.

- Did you?

- Have you been to buy the plaque?

- Oh, yes.

- Oh, yes, yes.

- It's fantastic.

Not everyone gets to have something like that at their childhood home.

Look at that.

It's wonderful.

- And when you think of how many of her relatives were living there in that tiny little house.

- Yeah, there was a lot of them.

- There was 10 or 12 of them altogether.

- Wow.

- All her aunts and uncles.

- Yeah, and I love what it says.

It says like, because Maureen Stapleton and she who never forgot her hometown or something.

- Correct.

She never forgot Troy.

We will never forget her.

Catholic Central.

Class of 1942.

- Oh, my gosh.

- Oh, you have it.

- My grandmother graduated as well.

- That's right, you met Denise.

- Joan Cooley.

So here's Maureen.

So I want you to take a look at this picture of Maureen.

And I want you to tell me what you think when you see that picture of her.

- I don't see her as particularly promising fodder for the Hollywood dream track based on this photograph.

She looks a little grim.

I noticed every other girl in the picture, except for this one, is smiling.

- Oh, that's true.

- Mom is not smiling.

- Not much of a smile.

- But that picture must mean a lot to you.

That legacy of Catholic Central must mean a lot.

- Oh, no question.

- And her interest was defense work, which was true, 'cause she took a job at the Watervliet Arsenal.

- Wow.

- A clerical job for a year.

- Right after graduation?

- Saved her money to come to New York City, yeah.

- That's amazing.

- Is your mom on this picture?

- My grandmother is somewhere, yeah, yeah.

She's in here somewhere, we'll find her.

Yeah, Joan Cooley is in here somewhere.

But yeah, it's great.

It's great to have these memories.

- Absolutely.

- To remember someone so special and means the world to everyone.

How do you think that Maureen would feel about an episode of "AHA!"

with the focus being on her?

What would she think of all of this?

- I think she would be okay with it, especially if she wasn't here.

I think she would be fine with any connection for her life connected to Troy.

I think that really meant, was important.

- You told me before we started, she wouldn't like being in here with the lights, right?

Something about that.

- No, that's what I mean.

That was what I was implying when I said, if somebody else could come, because she really was, she was a fearful person.

She had many, many, many fears.

And despite that, talk about being a fear, getting up in front of an audience, it seems like something that a fearful person would have a hard time with.

That was a different area for her.

But day-to-day living, walking from one place to another was difficult for her.

She was easily, easily traumatized by really the slightest thing.

But I kind of, you know, a lot of people grow up with that in their family.

I don't know.

I just kind of got used to it.

- A fearful person, but yet doing something so brave.

- Exactly.

- Being up on the stage, putting yourself out there, giving these unbelievable comedic and dramatic performances.

- And what we're talking about, like what you have to, how much of yourself you have to put out there to be a successful and powerful actress on the stage.

It's a chunk of yourself.

And the idea that you're fearful of like, that the lights are gonna fall down on you, and yet you're willing to share that part of yourself.

It's an interesting combination.

- She had a bunch of phobias, right?

- Oh, airplanes were, you know, we never, never flew anywhere.

She flew like once or twice in her young life.

- Well, you know, Jackson, lots of people are afraid of airplanes and many people are not flyers, but she took it a step further.

If a plane, if she saw a plane five miles high, she would go into panic attack that it was gonna fall down on our heads.

- Oh yeah, she was very, very phobic of everything.

- And you had part of airport and all of that.

- I know, and then she spent all that time, yeah.

- Oh yeah, it's funny you should mention that because there was a publicity picture that she had on her bureau that they had taken of the entire cast of airport and they were in a mock fuselage of a plane, a mock fuselage.

I could tell from her expression, she was terrified to be in the mock fuselage.

- Yeah, it was amazing the amount of fear that just was an everyday part of her life.

She just was a naturally fearful person.

- As Katherine said, she channeled it.

- She somehow, yeah, made it work.

- So she will always be Troy's most famous resident next to Uncle Sam, right up there.

But for you two, how do you want her to be remembered?

- I personally think, and I think she is remembered, we haven't really used those.

She just had an amazing talent.

She was really gifted at what she did.

And I also love the fact that she was so close and loyal to her friends and loyal to her hometown.

Those were the things that kind of, despite all of her ups and downs in her life and her fears, all of which she was trying to manage along with her career and being a mother, those are the things that really kind of kept her together.

They did.

- For you?

- Well, certainly through the work.

It's a shame that her theatrical performances weren't captured on film.

I know there was one play was filmed, "Juno and the Paycock."

She did a revival in 1974 to drop a name, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.

- There you go, what a duo.

- That was at the Amundsen Theater in Los Angeles.

And I think that was one of the greatest performances I ever saw her gave.

And in fact, Sean O'Casey's widow, Eileen, said it was the best performance of the play that she had ever seen.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- So it's the work for you.

- It's the work for me, yeah.

- And the loyalty.

- Loyalty matters.

I think when it applies to entertainment, show business, and just in life, it matters.

- It was very important and it was in everything that she did.

- I would really think so.

And I feel that it kind of seeps down.

I feel like I have very close friendships.

I'm still very close with Roberta Wallach, for example, who I've known my entire life.

- Wow.

- Mommy knew Annie Wallach from when they were teenagers?

Early 20s?

- No, they were on the road in play.

- Barrett's at Wimpole Street.

- Yeah, but they go back, they went back a long way.

She went back a long way with some people and she really never, never forgot.

- Amazing.

- Yeah.

- It's true.

- Katherine and Dan Allentuck, Maureen Stapleton's children.

We celebrate her 100th birthday year and we thank you for being here today on "AHA!."

- Jackson, thank you so much.

- Thank you, Jackson.

This was lovely, thank you.

- It means a lot.

- Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmhd.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "AHA!"

has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.