Speaker I met Jerome Robbins under very funny circumstances. He was directing this play the first time he’d ever directed a play as opposed to a musical. Oh, Dad, poor dad. Mama’s hung you in the closet, and I’m Feeling So Sad by Arthur Kopit, which had been produced up at Harvard in the undergraduate theater there. Arthur Arthur. It was an undergraduate at Harvard. Amazingly, when he wrote that play and the play, unlike any other play of of the time of the new plays at the time, had actually been printed. It had been, it was in print. And I got a hold of a copy of it because I had heard so much about it and I read it. I thought, you know, I could play that part. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but I thought, you know, if I auditioned for that part, I could get that part.

Speaker So it was about to be done in New York. And I went around some agent’s office and said, why don’t you get me an audition for this? And they said, we have no idea who you are. Finally, a wonderful agent who I then was with for many years afterwards by the name of Deborah Coleman. She agreed to support me to the casting director who and she got me an appointment with the casting director, who was this sweet lady named Terry Faye, one of the big ones of that time, the early 60s. This was. And I saw Terry Faye at the end of a Friday afternoon in December, and it was dark out. And she had that look that I came over the years to associate with people who were casting shows for Jerry Robbins because he just he couldn’t make up his mind and he would see people over and over and over again and he would get excited about somebody and kind of not excited. And she just looked exhausted and she said, well, what have you done? And I said, well, I was an apprentice at the Williamstown at the Williamstown Theater Festival, as it’s now called. And I get in all the plays in college, you know, and she said, well, you know what? And she, like, rubbed her eyes and she said, we might as well see you, you know, because they hadn’t been able to find what they were looking for. And they were saying, I heard who all they they were seeing the best young actors in New York, actors who, as it happened, were much more accomplished than I was. And but he wasn’t. There was a thing Jerry wanted. So this was kind of late on a Friday afternoon. And so she said, OK, come by the theater. It was the auditions are being held in a Broadway theater. The show was ultimately an off Broadway show. Come by the theater where we’re auditioning it, I think like three, 15 on Tuesday. So that was the weekend coming up. And into Tuesday, I called up a couple of actresses I knew like and I made them a tag team. I rehearsed it all weekend. I learned all the lines.

Speaker I it was like I was going into a show, you know, like saying you have to open on Tuesday night. So I went to the theater, I went through the stage door and I got there like half an hour early.

Speaker And actors I knew for all the for all the parts, for the part of the mother, for the part of the girl, for the part of the guy were coming in and out of there, sometimes looking quite upset. And 315, which was my time, came and that was four o’clock and five. And they just kept not calling me. And finally at six o’clock, the auditions were ending and I was still seated on the steps there. Where would you go? Up to the dressing rooms back there. And this guy came out who who proved to be Jerry’s assistant on the show was William Daniels. He said, Who are you?

Speaker I said, I. And I said my name.

Speaker I said he said, why are you here to audition or what? I said, Well, actually I was supposed to audition at 315. It’s not six o’clock. He said, Oh. And he looked, oh, my God, we just forgot. He said, we forgot. He ran out to the stage and he said, oh, and he came back, said, well, Arthur, companies had to leave. He’s he’s already gone. But Jerry is just putting on his coat, you know, Jerry Robbins. But he’ll see you for a couple of minutes. I mean, we don’t want you to have sat here for no reason. And he was awfully sweet, but he was saying, in effect, you know, this isn’t a serious issue that’s about to happen. But you have been here for three hours and we don’t want you to.

Speaker So I went out and indeed, Jerry was in the middle of putting on his coat, and he was very funny and very sweet and apologetic. And he left. He apologized profusely. He was not insensitive to the moment at all. And he said, just just read a couple pages of the first long scene with the girl. The that ultimately was played by Barbara Harris. So I read it opposite. Opposite William Daniels. We sat on the set of the play that was playing in this theater and we just started to read and it’s and he said, just read the first two pages. The scene is 20 pages long. Well, he didn’t stop me.

Speaker And we got through the whole scene.

Speaker It went on for almost half an hour, and he had his he had he would he’d been putting on his coat and I kept thinking, well, you know.

Speaker I’m a star, you know, and he said that that was that was incredible and he was very, very he said that was great. And he asked me just a couple of questions about my background. Then he said, we’re going to have you come in on Friday so Arthur Cockpit can see you. So on Friday, I came in again and it didn’t work.

Speaker It just didn’t work, I had no craft at that point.

Speaker I didn’t know how to, although even now that I’ve acquired some craft that, you know, that often happens at a callback, a callback of the first audition is gone really well, sometimes it just doesn’t work. So that that night after the callback, I went out with friends and I got drunk as much as you can get. I mean, crawling finally around the floors of bars at 2:00 in the morning saying, I don’t care.

Speaker So I didn’t get the leads in the new Geria. I would say it doesn’t matter, you know, and I got something else and, you know.

Speaker And so. That was Friday and I was half the night Friday night drinking, and then on Saturday I took my my laundry to the laundromat. I thought, you know, why are you there something you got upset about here? I mean, it was like, you know, maybe this woman who submitted me for this will not submit me for something else or something like that. And I just you know, and I came back to the apartment, the phone rang and it said, is Austin Pendleton, this is Jerome Robbins.

Speaker Would you come over to my apartment? I want to talk to you. So I went over to his apartment and across town and I he said, look, it didn’t work yesterday. It was so great on Tuesday and didn’t work yesterday. And Arthur, the playwright, didn’t doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but I have a feeling that it might be. So why don’t you come in again? And he talked to me a lot about the part and what he needed to see in the part. And he gave me directions that I still am receiving from other people. I guess somehow every actor has their own unique way of going wrong. Yeah. And so I. And you maintain that over all the years, no matter all you think about your whatever you think about your development and growth, you have the same problems inherently. So he talked at length about that and he was very, very nice. But he was very firm about the fact that it hadn’t worked the day before.

Speaker Well, OK, make a very long story short now. I auditioned like four or five times. I finally went home for Christmas and then I get a call at home in Ohio from from the agency saying, can you come in tomorrow? I was planning to stay the whole holidays. So I flew in and I read again. This was the sixth time now. And I read with Barbara Harris. And then I got the part, as did she. She, too, it turns out, had read a few times and he couldn’t quite make up his mind about her. And he was he was frustrated about me because I didn’t any in any of the auditions. Except for the one except for the one with Barbara. I didn’t come at all up to.

Speaker What I’ve done on the first one, so that’s how I met him. What was your impression of him? I liked him.

Speaker He was nice. And then we went into rehearsal two weeks after that, after I got the part. And at that point, they still hadn’t cast the mother. And finally they announced it was going to be Jo Van Fleet.

Speaker I read someplace that Sheldon said that you remind you, Jerry, he thinks that you remind Jerry of himself as a young man to ever tell you that.

Speaker No, no, I’ve heard that. I’ve read that in a book, I think somewhere. But I know and I knew Jerry for years. I knew him, you know, like ever after that. And and we would we would talk. We would we would. We would you know, he he would come and see shows I was involved with over the years sometimes like off off, off off Broadway shows. He was very loyal. And I tried, of course, to see a lot of his work and and we would talk sometimes we have lunch and stuff like that. But he never got close to anything like that. And I never felt. Well, I mean, how do you say to Jerome Robbins, hey, I hear that I read in a book that you think I remind you. So I don’t I don’t know that that may have been a communication between Jerry and Sheldon.

Speaker You know, I’m going to call up Sheldon and ask him about that.

Speaker Yeah, tell me about the play. Um, what was it? Comedy. Drama? What was it? What was it about? It was a very unusual piece, as I understand it. So tell me about it as if I know nothing, which I almost do. And you mean. Oh, Dad. Oh, Dad. Yeah.

Speaker Oh, Dad. Poor Dad was a play at that time. It was.

Speaker It was a very peculiar play. It’s a terrific play. It had defeated the only other attempt to produce it before then. There was a production with American people in it involved with it had open open in London a few months before that was supposed to come to New York. And some really good people worked on it and it was a flop. So they didn’t bring it to New York. Who knows? Had they brought it and fixed it, it could have been great. I don’t know. But so then Jerry picked it up and then he I repeat, he had never, ever directed a play before. He directed, oh, two musicals at least that were had extremely sophisticated librettos that were practically plays in themselves like, you know, Gypsy and West Side Story. But he’d never directed a play.

Speaker And the thing about Old Dad is, was a parody of absurdist theater. But at the same time, it had a. You had to take it seriously, that you had to believe these were real people, and so it was very tricky to find the tone of it. And Jerry was insecure about his ability to work with actors because that because he had come up, you know, he had he had had primarily worked with dancers. So when he began to direct the musicals, that that required a lot of acting, such as Gypsy and West Side Story, where the books for those shows are so amazing, probably that they the high watermark of book writing, musical theater, those two books.

Speaker But Arthur Laurents, he would he he Jerry would hire somebody.

Speaker As an assistant to work with the actors on the scenes, and that’s that was that was the use of Bill Daniels with his dad, who was him, who is himself an actor, a superb actor, he he originated one of the roles not long before that in the zoo story and stuff like that. Of course, since then, he’s had an amazing career as an actor anyway.

Speaker So he would direct the scenes between me and Barbara Harris. He would work and work, and then Jerry would come in and see the work we had done. We would do a run-Through of a scene sometimes, as I say, like a long scene, almost a half hour scene. And he would watch it. And he had this unerring eye about what needed to happen into the scene to make the play completely clear. And so he would give us a whole bunch of notes, some some to us directly and some behind our back to Bill Daniels. And we would often rehearse, like off the books in the evenings. We would come, we would we would go out for dinner with Bill Daniels and Barbara Harris, and then we would come back in the evening and we would we got obsessed with it.

Speaker And three quarters of what I learned about acting, I learned from Bill Daniels during those rehearsals and from Barbara Harris, who is a genius.

Speaker And then Jerry would come in and he would.

Speaker Contribute his eye for what was needed, for the clarity of the piece, which was fantastically clear, but he knew himself well enough that he didn’t know the acting lingo that can help actors and he didn’t know how to act to avoid the kind of talk that can get an actor all confused actors.

Speaker We’re all crazy, you know, and we we can’t be talked to a certain way or we freeze up, you know? I mean, we’re like that.

Speaker I mean, partly because we were a little what we are, but also because there is a technique to acting and you have to go about it a certain way or the court doesn’t fully come alive, you know, and he was aware of that, you know, unlike a lot of people who actually direct plays all the time and who who are not aware that they don’t know how to talk to actors. And I’ve worked with some of those. And so I really always appreciated that. Jerry understood that.

Speaker That he needed help, but he would always contribute the final say, and often he would he would then provide the blocking for the scenes, he’d provide the movement.

Speaker And that, of course, was superb, but he would he would allow us to develop with Bill Daniels what we were going to do, and we went down path after path after path with Bill Daniels.

Speaker Trying to find the kind of life in the scenes that would that would that would work for it.

Speaker So what you’re describing is really more do you want to take a drink? No, no, no. What you’re describing is really more of an editing function in a way, a very astute editor.

Speaker It’s a bit more than that. It was it was like an overview. And then he would be in the other room and he would be working with Jo Van Fleet and he would be working with all with all the bellboys and all the all the intricate work with that with with the staging of those scenes. Then he would come in sometimes two or three times a day and he would watch us, you know. And see what we were up to with Bill, and then he had a person on Fiddler on the Roof to.

Speaker Richard Aultman.

Speaker Before we get off of that, yeah. Can you tell me just I know it had you talked about it as a parody of an absurdist.

Speaker Yeah, but it can’t be finally dismissed as a parody.

Speaker It tells a very strong. Tail that play, I mean, you have to get emotionally involved with it or it doesn’t work. So it’s not just a parody of an absurdist play, although it is also that. So it’s. You know, you can go wrong with that play, which is true of a lot of good plays. Tell me a little bit more about the play, the plays about a mom who appears by any standard I can think of is out of her mind. And she she and she lives in a hotel. She goes from hotel to hotel around the world. She she tends to stick to hot climates, it looks like. But anyway, she she arrives at a particular place somewhere in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean or something. I think as I remember, it’s unspecified and she always has whether the coffin of her dead husband. And then she takes the body out of the.

Speaker When she arrives, she takes the body out of the coffin and hangs it up in the closet, and she has a boy, me, who is that is maybe 18 or 19 or 20, but he’s actually like eight.

Speaker But he’s not because he’s you know, he’s hormonal and he and who is fascinated with girls but is afraid to tell his mother because she’s keeping him utterly protected and away from the world and away from girls. So he meets a girl, the part played by Barbara Harris.

Speaker Who seduces him and he freaks out and he kills her?

Speaker And that’s the story of the play, and then he continues to live with his mother.

Speaker But tell me exactly how it is. How does he kill her?

Speaker He smothers her. She she gets him into the in. She she lures him into the bedroom, the girl. And while she’s in the middle of seducing the boy, the corpse of his father falls across the bed. Well, to see what Barbara Harris what she did with that, all of which she found at the technical rehearsal, it’s the only trap and the only transcendent performance that I know of that was found at the tech rehearsal. I mean, it was just and it was like almost midnight, almost the end of the day of the rehearsal, you know, and she just started to find all this stuff with the corpse that was utterly inspired. And I remember Jerry was running up and down the aisle and everybody was laughing. He was so excited because he knew the play was coming together. And in rehearsal, the play looked very flat. We we would have run through and Arthur’s agent would come either under the carpet, of course, himself would come and the producers would come. And everybody always looked worried. As well, they should have it just there was something we weren’t finding exactly that, but what she found and it was a result of all these weeks of work, it finally came to fruition at the technical rehearsal when she had the prop of the corpse. And she it was terrifying and it was absolutely hilarious and it was real.

Speaker And it was. It was amazing.

Speaker Did he ever tell you what his personal attraction was to this material?

Speaker Jerry didn’t talk about his personal. Response to material, he just he knew he had material that he liked, he liked, oh, dad, he liked the courage, he like Gypsy, he liked Fiddler on the Roof.

Speaker He talked about about Fiddler on the Roof to a certain degree because of his family and his ancestors and all that. But he he would never talk for the deeper for.

Speaker The reasons of a personal nature he would involve on a play, but you felt it, you felt he I mean, you felt he really had a strong a strong emotional response to whatever material you were working on.

Speaker You talked before a little bit about how he staged it, and I read someplace that he actually had sort of choreographed it like a dance. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker Well, he he choreographed the scenes with the bellboys. He didn’t exactly choreograph it. But I mean, very, very intricate movement and intricately timed. And but in the scenes between in the scenes between Barbara Harris and me, it wasn’t like that. It was just he he had a real eye for where people should be in relation to each other on the stage in order to tell the story. He would say he would come in and he would he would look at the at the work we’ve done with Bill Daniels, he said, I think that moment is terrific, but I think it would be even clearer if she were a little closer to him here or if if he were more if he were unable to get up off the sofa or something like that. And he just had an uncanny eye. And so and he would be right. We would try it and like instantly it would be clear and would be easier to play. He had as good an eye about that kind of thing as any director I’ve ever worked with. So it didn’t have to be choreography, it could just be the movement of two people with relation to each other on the stage.

Speaker I understand that the atmosphere director said is so important. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Did he foster a kind of creative atmosphere among the cast?

Speaker He did not foster a creative atmosphere among the cast, no.

Speaker If he came back today, Jerry, and he said, I’m going to do 10 shows. In three years, and I want you to be in all of them, and Samuel played, you know, like a good part and somebody played a small part. And I and I know everything I know now, I know how difficult it would be because it was I would say I’m their. I would do them all. I’d say I’ll do all 10 shows, I would I would sign a piece of paper saying I’m going to do so, even though in the first three we had an awful time together, I would still be available for the other shows because he didn’t exactly foster a creative atmosphere. He was a man in torment when he directed. He was so frustrated all the time with it, not with trying to find exactly the moment.

Speaker And he would he would beat himself in the head. No, I don’t think he actually did that gesture. But it was as if he were doing that. He was so frustrated and you’d get halfway through trying something he said. And no, no, he got no, no, no. What is it? What is it? What is it? And and he was so and so you didn’t feel. You didn’t feel. You didn’t feel released. Let’s put it that way. He was always eaten up by a lot of a whole lot of doubt, particularly doubt of himself, but this will spill over onto the actors. And he was incredibly impatient. But you always knew see, I’ve worked with other directors who are like that, but it’s not because they have a vision of anything, it’s just that they’re cranky, you know, but. But with Jerry. Yeah, he was cranky. Yes, he was. But he was you knew that whatever he saw, what he was trying to crystallize in his eye was so extraordinary and original that if you just kept at it and it was hard, it was as I say, the first things I ever was was in in New York were things he directed.

Speaker And so. And you’re insecure. Well, I mean, one is still insecure, but you’re insecure.

Speaker You’re completely insecure. And so you at the end of each rehearsal day, you feel it’s never going to come together. I’m no good. It’s not, you know, but he didn’t. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but I don’t know of him ever having fired anybody. I’m sure he did. But but he didn’t do it a lot like some directors do. And you would get into rehearsals when some actor was, like, really in trouble, but they wouldn’t get fired. He would he would just it was almost like he communicated we we’re in the middle of a tunnel and it’s hot and we can’t find a way out of the tunnel. But we’re just going to keep picking away at the walls until we find a way out of this was the atmosphere. It wasn’t it was kind of terrifying, actually. And you always felt his unhappiness and his frustration, but then all of a sudden something would happen.

Speaker And that would then it would have been worth all of that and the reason those things would finally happen, like the thing with Barbara Harris, but all kinds of things like that. Hers was one of the most spectacular examples of it I ever saw. But.

Speaker The reason those things were the absolute terrific thing would finally happen is because everything else had been tried. Everything I read, everything sometimes would happen just by default, the actor just to have to have a persistence and an openness and just saying, OK, that’s no good, that’s no good.

Speaker He’s having trouble. He’s having trouble trying to articulate to himself or to us what he sees or to clarify even what in his eye he sees, even to himself. And I’m inept.

Speaker But that’s just the way it is, we have to somehow we have to we have to get through this somehow.

Speaker And you were always afraid you were going to be fired. But you always hope that if you were, you would have deserved it. You know what I mean? Because he saw magnificent things in his imagination. How did you know that you just knew? He just said, well, first of all, you’d seen his earlier work, but even if, you know, I think even if I’d never heard of him, even if I’d never seen West Side Story or Gypsy or any of that stuff or the king and I you know, if I even if I hadn’t seen any of that, I think I think you just knew.

Speaker Because he had a he was like a creature from the medieval times, like a like in some kind of religious fervor, religious, he had he was a visionary. He had he had actual visions, I think. But he didn’t know what they were composed of. He didn’t know what would release them and make them come come alive. And he didn’t know. He couldn’t articulate them. He was like he was like a painter who will begin a painting and then that’s all wrong and paint over it and then no, that’s all wrong and just go crazy and and throw and throw the paint brush around and do all. He was like that. But you knew. And then everything is certainly the two shows I worked with him on. And, you know, and I didn’t ever everything I ever saw of his I thought was wonderful.

Speaker Even some of the ones that were somewhat somewhat reviled, I thought were wonderful. And often the actors would just I mean, you’d go backstage and the actors would be like.

Speaker They would look.

Speaker Yeah, yeah, and but you’d say no, I say this is great, I don’t care what anybody says. This is beautiful.

Speaker This is so rare. What’s going on on stage and. But that’s how he achieved it.

Speaker He didn’t horse around and he didn’t settle. And you knew he was being at least as hard on himself as he was on you.

Speaker I understand he had I don’t know if it’s faith in Barbara, but he to aerospace.

Speaker Yeah, well, he one thing that Jerry had was in I, I mean. She’s one of the great artists, you know. She Barbara Harris is one of the great artists, and he he has had an eye for things like that, I think he gave her room because he didn’t know what she was doing. She had never worked with anyone who was like her. She came from a school of improvisation. She’d hardly been in any actual place. She’d been in a few. But her main gift at that time that people were aware of was improvisation. And she did some of the finest improvisations and shows that I’ve ever seen. You know, and she. And so I think he was in all of that with all of that, with Barbara Harris and he he so he didn’t know where it was coming from. It wasn’t any technique he ever had had known anything about. But and then occasionally he would he wouldn’t know where she would she wouldn’t ever do the same thing twice now to a choreographer. Of course, that’s completely bewildering and frightening. She would do something that would blow you away and then she would do the scene again and she wouldn’t do any of those things. You do other things. And that turned him on artistically. But it also frightened him. And I remember that night at the tech rehearsal when she when she began to achieve the whole final scene of the play and then she began to change it. And I remember he ran down. It was like five to 12.

Speaker And he said, no, Barbara, please don’t change it. Please don’t change it, please.

Speaker And we all laughed, you know, but I think he was in awe of her. I mean, he wasn’t in awe of me and he wasn’t involved Jo Van Fleet, because we worked in a more conventional way than Barbara Harris. But so he although he never had direct actors that much, he sort of knew the techniques we were using. And Joe Van Fleet was extremely accomplished with those. And I was a beginner, but but they were techniques that he knew. But where is Barbara Harris coming from? And then he used her again in Mother Courage, in which she was again, extraordinary. About I’d say we opened somewhere around the 1st of March. And in the middle of June. I decided I couldn’t we run an off Broadway contract where you could quit, you know? And I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I’m so I spent all day and anxiety, I had no craft and also the roll contained elements which were very personally hard for me. And I had I didn’t have any kind of a craft. And I mean, those on the one hand were where sometimes the wind in my sails and on the other times they were a pretty strong headwind. And I never knew from night tonight. And it got worse and worse and worse. The performance kept improving and then it would also get worse.

Speaker And I never knew what was going to happen on any given night. And I was I would spend all day and great anxiety. And it was just it was becoming and I thought I was really doing the play a disservice and I was personally embarrassed and everything. And I the cast was terrific. Barbara Harris in particular was very sweet, very, but I just couldn’t handle it. So I think it was in June and I was like, OK, maybe as early as the enemy anyway. At that time, Jerry lived in an apartment two blocks away from where the theater was on the east side, Upper East Side, so I lived on the west side and I and I told the stage manager who was terrific, he was at that time a very young guy named Tom Thomastown. And I said, you know, I don’t I got to quit this thing, I can’t I just can’t do it.

Speaker And and Tom didn’t know what to say because he knew. I mean, he was he was there every night, he saw what was going on then every once in a while I’d do like a few performances. No, that would just eight times as good as the ones I’d done before when I was good. And so it was very I mean, and everybody would breathe a sigh of relief. And then Awam, I would hit a brick wall again. So now I was in the middle of a brick wall this particular time. So I get this call from I think from Jerry or his assistant saying on your way to the theater tonight, would you stop at my place? So I did. He said, I hear you’re thinking of quitting. I said, I got to Jerry. I just have to. I just can’t I can’t do it anymore. I’m not I can’t handle it, I can’t control it. I can’t. It’s terrible and it’s terrible for the show. I think I even said, Jerry, it has your name on it. And it’s not what you directed. And he said. Well, he said, I can’t prevent you from quitting because because you have a two week out, but.

Speaker I’m telling you, you’re not going to quit.

Speaker I said, well, what do you mean is this is it’s ridiculous. He says, no, if you quit this, first of all, you probably won’t get hired in the industry again. But even if they do, you won’t be able to go back on the stage. This could it would could end your career. You yourself will end it. You won’t want to go back on the stage. And you’ll be afraid to you have to get through this somehow. If there’s anything I can do to help, but you have to get through it because I don’t, I want you to have a career as an actor.

Speaker So I stayed. That’s the story.

Speaker There was a physical component to it, wasn’t there speech?

Speaker I couldn’t talk now the character’s not supposed to you know, he’s supposed to have a lot of trouble, but I mean, it was like now I’d acted a lot before, but I’d never played a part before that had that component in it. And indeed, in rehearsal, all the times I kept saying, why don’t you have more trouble with, like the character’s supposed to and go, oh, I will, I will, I will.

Speaker But but in my heart, I thought, I’m not going to do that because it’ll get out of control.

Speaker And I went into acting to not do that, you know, and and and but he said.

Speaker But I couldn’t control at certain times I would be almost completely without it, almost two completely without it for the moment, but I didn’t mind that at all. Sometimes it would be just right. And then sometimes it was I’d tell you it was awful.

Speaker I know what you’re talking about, but you didn’t actually say.

Speaker I stuttered and so did the character.

Speaker But like any art, you can’t just go on and be unable to say a word and and there was there were performances that were like that. However, the really interesting thing is that in the first part of the play, he has this problem, the character. Then he he figures everything out. And he had the whole long final scene with the girl that he’s he’s written completely fluent and not once in the entire run was anything but fluent in that scene. But it was that earlier scene, which is the better scene. Which is a great scene, the scene I had auditioned with where he’s he has trouble talking, but then he gets fluent and then he gets back into trouble. And it’s all very beautifully, like, orchestrated in the writing. Well, I had no control over that orchestration. There were a whole lot of performances where I would hit it enough and then somewhere I just wouldn’t have any trouble at all. And you wonder what the problem was so that in its end that in its way was also a problem. And if I wasn’t having any problem, I wasn’t about to engineer one. And then it then but there were some performances and they would and you never knew when they were going to happen where that whole long first scene with her, which is I mean, the first scene with her, which is scene two of the play, which is I say is I’ll put it this way, the scene as, say, a 25 minute scene.

Speaker Sometimes it would be well over half an hour. I don’t know how to put it any clearer than that. It wasn’t fun to watch. And how Barbara Harris was able to maneuver around that, I have no idea. But she did. She’s an artist and she had that background in improvisation.

Speaker And Tom Stone would call me in to help out sometimes with rehearsals, with with the different actresses who came and went who were her understudies.

Speaker And he would try all kinds of things with me, which would help. He would he would reblock the scenes just this afternoon. Let’s reblock the scene, how this was supposed to help the new understudy, I don’t know. But, you know, let’s just reblock the scene. And I would totally open me up. And then for a few nights, that would be great. But it was very you know, you couldn’t tell couldn’t. And I was going to leave. And I’m sure I’m sure Jerry’s right. I’m sure if I had left, I wouldn’t ever have gone up for another part. And I and probably I wouldn’t gotten hired either.

Speaker I mean, word gets out, you know, he said, no, you’re going to stay. I said, well, I don’t know what to do. He says, I don’t either, but you’re going to stay. I said, and I repeat, I said it says, Directed by Rob Robards. He says, I’ll take that risk.

Speaker That’s extraordinary. Now, just to be clear.

Speaker This was an issue that you had previous to I’d had it all my life up until that point, that problem stuttering But but I would act in the school plays and I would act in all the plays. At Yale, where I was an undergraduate, I wasn’t in the drama school, but in all the undergraduate plays. And pretty much I was I was almost completely free of it. That’s why I went into acting. Now, this whole thing is coming. So I’m having I’m in my first play in New York and it’s a hit and now is there for everyone to see. It was like it was a nightmare.

Speaker And so in this, it was. You’re describing the car, right? Yes. Actually required that you stutter in that scene.

Speaker It was required that I stutter in the whole first part of the play scene, one where I hardly had anything to say with, which is with the mother in the bellboys. And then scene two with Barbara, which is a very long, brilliantly written scene. Brilliantly written scene and but and but it’s very carefully orchestrated in the writing of that first long scene with Barbara Harris. Where I’m fluent, where I’m not.

Speaker All that would go out the window on a bed, it was just half an hour of me trying to get to get words out.

Speaker It’s hard even to think about 10 years after that I was asked to do that scene in some kind of evening about the Phoenix Theatre would produce the play and they would do an evening of scenes from their greatest hits. So I did the scene this time with with an actress who was a replacement for Barbara at the end of the run, Alex Elias, who was also very good.

Speaker It all came back. The problem all came back, and I was comparatively free of the problem by then. I had a lot of training and speech and voice by that point, and I had slowly gotten, you know, a pretty good amount of control over it. It all came back. I thought, I’m never going to appear in public in this material again. I’m just not going to do it. But it wasn’t as out of control as the horrible nights had been, but it was not pleasant. And people said, oh, that was great, you ought to do this play again. I said, if my career depended on my doing this play again, I would not do it.

Speaker I just let’s just let’s move on. I thought I had moved on, so let’s just keep moving on.

Speaker It was really hard.

Speaker It was hard. But it’s extraordinary in your career that that launched your career.

Speaker Yes. And I think I learned a lot about acting from the struggle with it that year. If I what I learned ultimately from this is all because Jerry made me stay in, it is the only way to to meet of fear as an artist, I suppose this is true in life, too, is to head right into it. And I think the reason I’d been in such trouble in some of those performances was I was trying to avoid it, but I wouldn’t. I was trying to avoid it as the reality of the scene. And I think if I had and I gradually learned on some subconscious level just by being in the play every night for a year. Because he told me to stay on, I was in for a year, I gradually learned that just. Allow that to be the reality and it will start to shape itself artistically, don’t.

Speaker I think a lot of actors, we go into acting in order to hide certain things about ourselves, we’re ashamed of.

Speaker Now, now those things are the gold in any way you have to have them under control, but what is controlling control means you’re using them to create something larger than that. But what you’re going through it, you’re not going around it and you’re not concealing it.

Speaker And and in at the same time, you have to continue to work on the problem, but the anxiety about the problem is real and it’s part of you, even if it doesn’t ever manifest itself. And that I don’t think if I’d had that extraordinary year and I didn’t even fully begin to comprehend all that.

Speaker For some years after that, as I got increasing control of the problem through work with a lot of excellent people on the problem, but on the speech problem, I mean, people in speech and voice and I learned how to sing in order to be in Fiddler on the Roof and I and all that helped, you know, and but you have to your your fears.

Speaker I teach this now at HP. You’re your fears. A part of your equipment is in your fears about yourself. The things you’re ashamed of in yourself are part of what your your.

Speaker What you have to contribute as an actor, they can’t be. Swept under the rug.

Speaker And that’s what I learned because Jerry made me stay on. And I’m still kind of learning it, but that was such a dramatic illustration of it. Am I being clear?

Speaker Absolutely, and causes me to ask you if you think the same could be said of director.

Speaker Is it true that what makes a good director is the director?

Speaker Is always is that a good director was always in touch with the thing that they’re afraid of or ashamed of in themselves? Oh, yes, I never thought of that. But yes. And and Jerry was plenty ashamed of a lot of things.

Speaker But, you see, so is everybody. But with Jerry, it was right out there. He wouldn’t articulate them, but, boy, was it there.

Speaker That’s I think probably if you look through everything he ever directed, there are certain thematic lines. I don’t know what they are, but but there are these work is very, very personal. And I think that that’s the there’s isn’t and I mean, his work is incredibly accomplished and realised, but it’s not slick. Because I think he’s right in touch with the things that he’s troubled about in himself.

Speaker In his work.

Speaker And so here’s here’s the man I learned from. You know, so so you not only learn a lot of craft from him, but you learn that, too. You learn about being in having your hands, like having keeping your hand on the on the hot stove or.

Speaker Before we get off our dad, is there anything else that you would like to tell me about it?

Speaker Well, it shaped me, oh, dad poured out, it shaped me, it I it practically killed me. It was the it was the ultimate example in artistic terms in my own life and the artistic part of my life. It was the ultimate example of what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, which is what he was telling me when he said, stay in the show. You have two options. It’ll kill you or it’ll make you stronger, is what he was saying. I think Jerry knew all about that. That’s what I think. And although I knew him for years, I never got to know him, like real real close. He wasn’t the kind of guy you sit and have a beer with and learn everything, you know. But you knew that that he had his life made him stronger and it didn’t kill him.