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Paid to Dream
All Content appearing on "Paid to Dream" is Copyright © 2011 Foo Dog Productions.
"Your references span a great breadth of this business and life in the arts. It's been a great pleasure." - Dan Aykroyd
"Charles is my muse. He's just so damned entertaining that I love to be around him." ---Bryan Cranston
" I wish I had your voice, Charles. I could have been a Contenda! It was a lot of fun and you are a lovely soul to make us feel comfortable!" ---Bill Pullman
For those who would like to visit the Paid to Dream blog hosted by Charles Dennis, please click here.
Charles Dennis is an author-actor-playwright-filmmaker-journalist. He began his career as a radio actor in Canada at the age of 8, had his own newspaper column at 17, authored 11 published novels, had his plays produced in New York and London, was a villain on “Star Trek”, voiced numerous video games, wrote and directed the nutty noir film “Hard Four” and writes the blog “Paid to Dream”. He appears on Criterion’s new special edition BluRay DVDs of Samuel Fuller’s classic films “The Naked Kiss” and “Shock Corridor” interviewing Constance Towers. Dennis is married to filmmaker Kim Eveleth and they live in Los Angeles with their daughter Ethne Bliss.
Is there a female comedy gene in Michigan? What makes Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner and Rose Abdoo so damned funny? Rose delighted Second City audiences in Chicago for years. Her film credits include Good Night and Good Luck, My Best Friend's Wedding and Bad Teacher. TV viewers have delighted in her comedic talents on Curb Your Enthusiasm, as Gypsy on Gilmore Girls and Senorita Rodriguez on That's So Raven Her one woman shows have included Who Does She Think She Is? and Get to the Part About Me. I was privileged to have her appear in my play Tolstoy Was Never There. That performance led me to cast her in the pilot for my animated series The Bunnymooners, where she channeled Audrey Meadows like nobody's business.
Hailed by Pauline Kael in 1981 but shunned by audiences at the time, the Criterion Collection returns Brian De Palma's Blow Out in all its BluRay glory to a receptive and appreciative audience this week. And I welcomes its radiant star NANCY ALLEN, who talks about Blow Out, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, 1941,I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Robocop and her inspiring work with the weSPARK Cancer Support Center.
Born in Germany, Nicole Ansari knew at five that she wanted to be an actress when she saw Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. The film became an annual event in the Ansari household and years later Nicole would work with Curt Bois, the delightful pickpocket who warns the tourists "that there are thieves everywhere". As a young actress she saw Brian Cox on tour playing King Lear and thought him the greatest actor she'd ever seen. Ten years later she married Cox and bore him two sons. She also appeared in the West End and on Broadway with Cox in Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll. The two also appeared together in HBO's Deadwood. Nicole just produced the movie Passing Harold Blumenthal starring Laila Robins, Fred Melamed and... Brian Cox.
If you're a movie buff, the Criterion Collection is your home away from home and in your home. Susan Arosteguy, one of the top in-house producers for the company, talks to Charles Dennis about Criterion - past, present and future.
Edward Asner is an American icon. Both a consumate actor and a tireless political activist, he was best known to a generation as Lou Grant in both a half-hour sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and a one hour dramatic series, Lou Grant. To my daughter Ethne's generation, he is best known as Carl Fredricksen in Up and Santa Claus in Elf. He was the President of the Screen Actors Guild. His Broadway appearances include Peachum in The Threepenny Opera and Harry Brock in Born Yesterday. My favorite performances of his are Axel Jordache in Rich Man, Poor Man and Jacob Ascher in Daniel. I had the great pleasure of directing Ed as Golden Hand Segal in my film Hard Four. He also played Jakov Rosenthal in my play The Alchemist of Cecil Street.
Dan Aykroyd truly is a ghostbuster. Lorne Michaels introduced me to this multi-faceted, multi-talented man 40 years ago and he's been entertaining me and the world ever since as an an actor, writer, musician,Oscar nominee and entrepreneur extraordinaire. He's a fascinating man to talk to and talk we did about things worldly and otherworldly including his mystical dentist great-grandfather, his father's new book History of Ghosts, The Blues Brothers, Driving Miss Daisy and Crystal Head Vodka .
Bob Balaban is an actor, director, producer and author. He was nominated for an Oscar for producing Robert Altman's "Gosford Park". His New York stage career was launched playing Linus in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". He was later nominated for a Tony as Osip in "The Government Inspector". As an actor he has appeared in such films as "Midnight Cowboy", "Catch-22", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Waiting for Guffman". His directing credits include "Parents", "The Last Good Time", "Bernard & Doris" and "Georgia O'Keefe". He is the author of "McGrowl" a series of children's books about a bionic dog.
Elya Baskin ( born 11 August 1950) is a Latvian actor. Baskin was born in Riga, the son of Frieda and Zalman Baskin. He attended Moscow's prestigious Theatre and Variety Arts College and won a Festival of Young Actors Award at the Moscow Comedy Theatre. Baskin immigrated to the United States in 1976. He has built a considerable career in TV and movies including Moscow on the Hudson, The Name of the Rose, October Sky, and Spiderman 2 and 3. Baskin is often cast as a Russian, due to his ancestry and accent. He has ultimately become one of the most popular choices whenever a Russian is needed in a TV-episode or a major movie production. He is also a regular on the long-running Internet program "Outlaw Radio" hosted by Matt Alan, where he makes amusing commentary on contemporary topics, and does comedic interaction with fellow actor Richard Tyson and author Burl Barer, among many others.
Sir Alan Bates thought it "the height of lunacy" for Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival to open three plays at once when he appeared there as Richard III in 1967. But that's the way they've always done it. And last week a new Richard opened at Stratford with an actress, Seana McKenna, playing the eponymous role on the thrust stage for the first time. Bates was 33-years-old when he played Richard and I talked to him extensively about the role. The interview is being heard for the first time ever on PAID TO DREAM. Bates also played Ford in Merry Wives of Windsor that summer and was at the height of his film career having starred in A Kind of Loving, Whistle Down the Wind, The Caretaker, Nothing But the Best, Zorba the Greek, Georgy Girl and Far From the Madding Crowd. Bates left the season early to film John Frankenheimer's The Fixer, which earned him his only Oscar nomination. He died in 2003.
Ed Begley Jr. has been my friend for over 25 years. We have directed each other as actors and co-produced my play "Significant Others" together at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. His work as an environmentalist has been inspirational and was indirectly kindled by his father, Broadway star and Oscar-winning actor Ed Begley. He discussed all of this with me in this lively and entertaining interview.
Ross Benjamin is the son of Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin. An actor-producer and Harvard graduate, Ross and I first worked together when he was 15 and his mother and I were rehearsing The Guardsman. [For more details, see the Paula Prentiss interview on PAID TO DREAM.] Ross starred in and co-produced my film Hard Four. He also appeared in my plays The Alchemist of Cecil Street, Tolstoy Was Never There and The Sheer Force of Will. His other film credits include Primary Colors, The Shrink Is In and Made in America.
When I think back to New York in the 60s and covering "the Broadway beat" for the Toronto Telegram, some of my fondest memories are of Heshie Bernardi and the many kindnesses he showed me Born into a celebrated Yiddish Theatre family on October 20, 1923, Heshie was a kid actor in Edgar Ulmer's Yiddish language films shot on Long Island. Blacklisted in the 1950s, Blake Edwards made Bernardi a household name by casting him as Lt. Jacoby in his hip detective series Peter Gunn. Heshie was also the king of voice-overs (Charlie the Tuna, Jolly Green Giant etc.). He was the third Tevye on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof and, for many of us, the best of the bunch. He spoke to me about the show backstage at the Imperial Theatre in 1966.
George Bloomfield passed away on May 13, 2011. He was my first mentor. Born in Montreal, Quebec in 1930, he began his career as an actor and went on to become one of the stellar directors of the CBC's Golden Age of Television directing such memorable productions as "Heloise and Abelard" with Susan Clark and "A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers" with Colleen Dewhurst. He taught at the National Theatre School in Montreal and directed the world premiere of George Ryga's landmark Canadian play "The Ecstasy of Rita Joe". He directed the first two seasons of "SCTV" as well as diverse TV fare such as "Fraggle Rock", "La Femme Nikita", "Nero Wolfe" (starring his nephew, the late Maury Chaykin) and "Due South".
Patricia Bosworth's father defended the Hollywood Ten against the charges of the HUAC witch hunters. She appeared on Broadway with Paul Muni and on screen with Audrey Hepburn. But her talent as a writer brought her lasting fame beginning with her stunning, in-depth biography of Montgomery Clift and later her bio of Diane Arbus. Now, a new biography of her old friend Jane Fonda is about to be published. Listen to this fascinating woman's wonderful stories.
Jeffrey Byron's mother, British actress Anna Lee, was a member of John Ford's famous movie stock company: beginning with How Green Was My Valley through Fort Apache right up to his last film Seven Women. Ford was Jeffrey's godfather and gave his godson his first screen role at the age of seven in Donovan's Reef starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin. Jeffrey retired at 11 then returned to the screen as a young man in two Peter Bogdanovich films and gave Tatum O'Neal her first screen kiss in International Velvet. He continues to act - appearing most recently in the new J.J. Abrams' Star Trek - and is busy managing the literary estate of his late step-father Robert Nathan. Jeffrey is presently producing three screen adaptations of Nathan's work.
David Burns was one of the great messhuganehs of the 20th Century. He appeared on Broadway in the original productions of The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Music Man, A Hole in the Head, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Hello Dolly and, his last great triumph, Arthur Miller's The Price. I caught up with him - but never pinned him down - when he was playing Horace Vandergelder to Carol Channing's Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly in 1966.
An entire generation of young men went to bed dreaming about Colleen Camp's French maid in the movie version of Clue. I met her back in the Seventies before she disappeared into the Phillippine jungle for a year to make Apocalypse Now. When she finally returned to civilization, I wrote the screenplay and co-starred with her in an ill-fated comedy called Screwball Academy. Colleen has a unique comic talent and great singing voice - never on better display than her amazing performance as Christy Miller in Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed. A very successful producer today, Ms. Camp and I still dream of being reunited in a new comedy.
Cayle Chernin passed away on February 18, 2010. Cayle Chernin and I were friends for fifty years. We were children together. She lived five houses down the street from me in Toronto. I called her my square root: her birthday was December 4th; mine the 16th. She was a year younger than me. Raised in the Canadian Maritimes, she wore little white gloves when she arrived at our elementary school.
Candace June "Candy" Clark (born June 20, 1947) is an American film and television actress, well known for her role as Debbie Dunham in the 1973 film American Graffiti, which garnered her an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, a character she reprised in 1979 for the sequel More American Graffiti. Her other well-known films are The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Big Sleep (1978), Blue Thunder (1983), Cat's Eye (1985) and At Close Range (1986).
Brian Cox and I are the same age. We led parallel lives on both sides of the Atlantic - he in Scotland and I in Canada. When we finally met in London in 1969, he was appearing in David Storey's play In Celebration with Alan Bates (whom I'd worked with at Stratford, Ontario two years earlier). Brian went on to have a major theatrical career both in the West End and on Broadway. He made his film debut as Trotsky in Nicholas and Alexandra and went on to appear in such films as Manhunter, X-Men, Troy, The Bourne Conspiracy. L.I.E. and, most recently, Coriolanus. He won the Emmy for his performance as Hermann Goring in Nuremberg. He is presently starring on Broadway as The Coach in the revival of That Championship Season.
Bryan Cranston and I met in Waikiki in 1990 when he was a guest star on Jake and the Fatman. It was the start of a beautiful friendship. I was around as Bryan went from unsold pilot to unsold pilot every year until he finally hit the jackpot with Malcolm in the MIddle. Then Bryan was cast in Breaking Bad and well-deserved stardom was finally his - as well as 3 Emmys in a row for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series. Bryan always found time in the middle of these shows to work for me: first as Lt. Bryce Baxter in my film Hard Four and as Moran the Chauffeur in my play The Alchemist of Cecil Street opposite his beautiful and talented wife Robin Dearden.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: “A friend is a gift you give yourself.” So it’s a double treasure when a friend gives you another friend. That was the case when Ian McShane brought Neil Dickson to my home in 1989. Like Bogart said in Casablanca, it was the start of a beautiful friendship. This marvelous English actor has delighted both West End audiences in The Gay Lord Quex and moviegoers in Biggles: Adventures in Time. His TV credits include The Winds of War, AD, She Wolf of London, and, most recently, Mad Men. I directed him in the short film The Favour of Your Company in which he played Nigel Shepherd, a role he continued in my play Magi at The Actors Studio. He is presently being heralded for his performance in Stephen Wyatt's play The Standard Bearer and is riveting as fugitive hit man Clive Atwill in my web series Atwill.
Rebecca Eaton is the Emmy, Peabody and Golden Globe winning producer of the series Masterpiece and Mystery on PBS. She is also a child of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Her mother, Katherine Emery, created the role of Karen on Broadway in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour then came out to Hollywood where she appeared in three of my favorite films of the 1940s: Isle of the Dead, The Private Affairs of Bel Ami and The Locket. A self-described “bookworm with a penchant for English literature”, Rebecca is also a wonderful story teller. Her latest show, Downton Abbey, just won Emmys for best mini-series, best writer (Julian Fellowes) and best supporting actress (Maggie Smith). It returns to PBS in January 2012.
Joe Franklin (born Joseph Fortgang on March 9, 1926, Bronx, New York) is an American radio and television personality. From New York City, Franklin is sometimes credited with hosting the first television talk show. The show began in 1951 on WJZ-TV (later WABC-TV) and moved to WOR-TV (later WWOR-TV) from 1962 to 1993.
Known as "the king of nostalgia" (he claims having invented the term), Franklin's highly-rated television and radio shows, especially a cult favorite to cable television viewers (WOR/WWOR was a superstation during the latter part of his tenure) and his long-running "Memory Lane" radio programs, focused on old-time show-business personalities.
I always dreamt of addressing someone as Mr. President. So I was thrilled when my friend Sid Ganis became the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after years as a Hollywood producer, studio boss and publicist extraordinaire. Born in Brooklyn, Ganis started off as an office boy for Broadway publicist Lee Solters delivering items to legendary columnists like Walter Winchell, Dorothy Kilgallen and Earl Wilson. When Solters told him he was never going anywhere in the business, that was all the challenge Ganis needed to make his way to the top. If it sounds like the beginning of a classic Harold Robbins novel....well, it is. Listen to Sid Ganis's amusing and inspiring story.
Bruce Greenwood (born August 12, 1956) is a Canadian actor. He is generally known for his roles as the President of the United States in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film.
Greenwood is known in the United States for his appearances in Star Trek, I, Robot, Double Jeopardy, The Core, Thirteen Days (in which he played president John F. Kennedy), Capote (in which he played Jack Dunphy, Truman Capote's lover), Eight Below (in which he played Professor Davis McClaren) and Firehouse Dog.
Nicholas Guest is an Anglo-American actor born in New York City. Best known for his role as the Headmaster on the USA Network's "U.S.A. High", he also appeared in the feature films "The Long Riders" as Bob Ford opposite his own brother Christopher Guest, who played his brother Charlie Ford. Other film roles include Todd Chester in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", Harry in "Trading Places" (Guest also co-authored with Robert Curtis Brown the song which they sang in the famous tennis club sequence). His theatre credits include Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady" opposite Maureen Stapleton and directed by Anthony Perkins; RFK and other roles in Ed Begley Jr.'s musical "Cesar and Ruben", and, most recently, in the world premiere of "The Quarry" at Los Angeles's Moth Theater. He is married to actress Pamela Guest and they have three children.
Martha Henry was the first actress I ever saw perform on the stage of the Stratford Festival Theatre. She played Miranda to William Hutt’s Prospero in The Tempest and, when she opened her mouth to speak, I fell totally under her spell. In 1968 she blew me away with her performances in Tartuffe, The Three Musketeers and A Midsummer Night’s Dream - she was the sexiest Titania ever. On New Year’s Eve of that year, I found myself at dinner with her. She was living in England at the time but had returned to Canada to appear in the TV production of The Three Musketeers recreating her deliciously evil Milady de Winter. She talked to me about life in London and was one of the three people (Jimmy Blendick and Lorne Weil were the other two) that night who persuaded me my future lay there. A week later I was in London and Martha was my constant theatre companion that first year. (Her then husband, Douglas Rain, was busy every night starring in Hadrian the Seventh.) The Brits soon found out about Martha and she played the lead role in a BBC mini-series of Daniel Deronda. She also appeared in the West End in a whodunnit with Honor Blackman. Returning to Canada and Stratford, she went from triumph to triumph and became a director as well. She conquered film and TV - winning 4 Genies and 3 Geminis - Canada’s equivalent of the Oscar and the Emmy. She’s back at Stratford again this season.
Geoffrey Richard Holder (born 1 August 1930) is a Trinidadian actor, choreographer, director, dancer, painter, costume designer, singer and voice-over artist. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad of African descent, Holder is known for his towering height, heavily accented deep basso voice and hearty laugh. With that and his appearance in the 7 Up Uncola advertising campaign, Holder's image quickly became recognizable. He played Baron Samedi in the James Bond film, Live and Let Die. He also played Punjab in John Huston's film of "Annie" and narrated Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". He directed, designed and choreographed the Broadways musicals "The Wiz" and "Timbuktu". He is married to Carmen de Lavellade, whom he met when they were both appearing in Harold Arlen's musical "House of Flowers" on Broadway.
Discovered by the legendary Nina Blanchard while walking down the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Brent Huff went on to become one of the top male models of the 1980s appearing in ads for Versace, Armani and Calvin Klein. He was cast as Willard, the rugged male lead in the French adventure epic The Perils of Gwendoline. He then went on to become a B-movie action hero for a number of years before he wrote and directed the film, We the People, starring James Brolin. Brent has been traveling round the world ever since making his own films including Serbian Scars and Cat City. Recently, he has turned his attention to documentary films and has made Chasing Beauty (about aging supermodels) and Behind the Orange Curtain (a harrowing look at teenagers hooked on prescription drugs).
Cecil Humphreys was a Broadway luminary from his debut in 1914 until his death in 1947. Humphreys mad e occasional excursions to Hollywood - most famously as the Holy Man in the 1946 adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. His Grandson was named after him and enjoyed success as an actor both as Cecil Humphreys and later as Chris Humphreys. But it's as novelist C.C.Humphreys that he's made his chidhood dream come true. Taking the character of Jack Absolute, whom he loved playing in Sheridan's The Rivals, he turned the beloved rascal into the hero of a trilogy of historical spy novels. His latest book, Vlad: The Last Confession, has just been published.
When I was 18, my editor at the Toronto Telegram sent me to interview Anne Jeffreys, who was starring in Kismet at the O'Keefe Centre. Anne Jeffreys! Be still my heart! She had played that sexy ghost Marian Kirby opposite her handsome husband Robert Sterling on the TV series of Topper. Onstage, she was even sexier as Lalume opposite Alfred Drake. Anne Jeffreys was a delightful Southern lady from Goldsboro, North Carolina and while we chatted her two little sons scampered around the suite. Years later, I would see her fleetingly at various Hollywood events - still beautiful, still delightful, still Southern. We finally got to speak at length today about Nelson Eddy, Lawrence Tierney, Kurt Weill, Cole Porter and Leo G. Carroll.
Christina Jennings
Raised in England, Malaya and Canada, Christina Jennings is now the Empress of Canadian Television. When I met her in the 1980's, she had left a career in city planning to open a restaurant on Toronto's trendy Queen Street with her sister. Ten years later she had produced the feature film, Camilla, starring Jessica Tandy and Bridget Fonda. Today she runs Shaftesbury Productions and produces such international hit TV series as Re-Genesis (which she created), The Listener, The Murdoch Mysteries, Life with Derek as well as many award-winning TV movies and mini-series. This beautiful and vivacious woman is someone, who has truly been paid to dream. Listen to her inspiring story.
Alex Karras was my friend and neighbor for several years. Born in Gary, Indiana, he followed his older brothers into a football career playing defense for the Detroit Lions. He played himself brilliantly in the film version of George Plimpton's book Paper Lion. Other memorable roles were Mongo in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles ad Squash Bernstein in Blake Edwards's Victor Victoria. Alex met his wife, Susan Clark, on the movie Babe where they played George Zaharias and Babe Didrikson. They later starred together on the long-running TV series Webster
Whether or not he would accept the fame (or blame) for these raunchy, mainstream blockbusters, there can be no doubt that what Kaufman has achieved is enormous. In 30 years, Kaufman, along with Yale friend and partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a young company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to legendary status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true independence, and the world's greatest concentration of camp. Among Troma Entertainment's library of over 1,000 movies are the early performances of such stars as Kevin Costner, Billy Bob Thornton,Samuel L. Jackson, Robert DeNiro, Dennis Hopper, Dustin Hoffman, Fergie (Black Eyed Peas) and countless others! As a filmmaker, Lloyd Kaufman has accumulated a remarkable list of credits, as well as a more extraordinary list of debits to loan sharks and pawn shops across New York.
My daughter Ethne and Tom Kenny's son Mack played on the same soccer team when they were little. I had no idea who Sponge Bob was. Tom just looked like a guy who'd be perfect to star in The Harold Lloyd Story. Those glasses! But he is now in the pantheon of great voice artists like Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Jack Mercer and Jim Backus - all of whom we discuss in this lively interview. Also his life-long friendship with Bobacat Goldthwait. In addition to Sponge Bob, Tom is also voicing the newest Transformers movie and is Rabbit in the new Winnie the Pooh.
Margaret Ruth "Margot" Kidder (born October 17, 1948) is a Canadian actress, best known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve. Her other films include "Gaily, Gaily", "The Amityville Horror", "Willie & Phil." She produced and starred in a TV production of "Pygmalion" playing Liza Dolittle opposite Peter O'Toole's Henry Higgins.
Michael Laskin was a gift to me from Jeffrey Tambor. This native of Duluth, Minnesota is a bright, ebullient, dynamic actor as well as one of the best acting coaches in Los Angeles. Or, as he describes himself, "not a guru but a sherpa". He has appeared Off-Broadway, the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, The Actors Theatre of Louisville and The Seattle Repertory Theatre. Michael was awarded the prestigious Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival for his hilarious performance as Richard Nixon in Dick and Jerry. The show later transferred successfully to the Roundhouse Theatre in London. He has appeared in such feature films as Passion Fish, Eight Men Out, Disclosure, Other People's Money, The Grifters and Iron Will. His TV appearances include Medium, Seinfeld, Winchell, Poodle Springs and From the Earth to the Moon.
Damian Lee is a true original. A self-styled "warrior-priest", he has been making movies in Canada on a regular basis against all odds. A champion competition skier, he branched into sports TV and eventually film-making. I directed my first film, Reno and the Doc, for him in 1983. It was one of the great adventures of my life and my most vivid memory was skiing down a mountain in Whistler, British Columbia on Damian's back. His conversations are peppered with extraordinary classical references and I invite you to spend some time in his company.
Loren Lester, a native of Los Angeles, began his career as a teenager and has accumulated more than 30 years of film, stage and television credits. In his early years, he played the evil hall monitor "Fritz Hansel" in the cult classic film Rock n Roll High School (1979) and he recurred for five seasons as Roy on The Facts of Life(1979) opposite 'Nancy McKeon.
Since then. Loren has appeared in more than 200 episodic TV shows including Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Closer, Undercovers, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, Castle and Two and a Half Men.
He is now recurring on the HBO hit comedy series Hung and the Nickelodeon series Victorious. He is married to actress Kelly Lester and they have three talented daughters.
Jerry Levitan was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 for his animated short I Met the Walrus. It was inspired by an audio interview he did in Toronto with John Lennon in 1969 when Jerry was 14. The year before that I hired Jerry to play the boy in the Canadian premiere of Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy. Later that year he worked as a p.a. on my first produced play Everyone Except Mr. Fontana Jerry did nothing with his Lennon tape for 30 years but left it in a drawer like Peter Pan's shadow until one day.... But listen to Jerry tell his story. Talk about paid to dream!
MLH, as I always refer to Michael Lindsay-Hogg, came into my life 35 years ago when the CBC was searching for a director for my play "The Alchemist of Cecil Street". That production was sabotaged by John Hirsch - which is an entirely different story - and was never produced. But Michael and I became fast friends and have remained so ever since. He wears so many different hats and does so brilliantly. The father of the music video, MLH directed the legendary British music series Ready, Steady Go! and later directed the Beatles last film Let It Be. He co-directed and cast the original mini-series of Brideshead Revisited. On Broadway, he directed Whose Life Is It Anyway? and Agnes of God. His memoir, Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York and Points Beyond is being published by Knopf on September 27, 2011. Sit back and enjoy MLH as he talks about John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, his mother Geraldine Fitzgerald, and a host of other great artists and entertainers.
Joe Liss is a comic genius. I’ve described him as Danny Kaye channeling a leprechaun on acid. This veteran of the Chicago Second City comedy troupe’s mind goes to weird and wonderful places. I had the great pleasure of working on stage with him this year in a hugely successful revival of Room Service in Los Angeles where he played Harry Binion and I played Gregory Wagner. I never knew what bit of inspired comedy he would come up with from night to night. Joe co-starred in and co-authored The Bicycle Men which won Best Production at the New York Fringe Festival as well as starring in his own one man Joe Show. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joe Liss.
Gene Mack came into my life in 1983 when I directed my first film Reno and the Doc. Gene was from West Texas and was a linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings before he came north to join the Toronto Argonauts. When this genial giant walked into my rented apartment to see about a job as a grip, I thought it was Rex Ingram come back from the dead - he reminded me of the genie in The Thief of Baghdad. His personality was so charismatic and larger than life, I knew he had to appear in the movie. He played Stan Kukamunga - the adopted son of a tribe of B.C. natives. Later he worked for me again as Howler McNeill in the CBS TV series Adderly. His other film appearances include Against the Ropes, Good Fences, Down the Road Again and the remake of A Raisin in the Sun.
Paul Mazursky was born in Brooklyn in 1930. He appeared in Stanley Kubrick's first film Fear and Desire in 1953. Two years later he went to Hollywood and appeared with his Paul Mann class mate Vic Morrow as one of the juvenile delinquents in Richard Brooks' The Blackboard Jungle. In 1968 - with Larry Tucker - he co-authored the screenplay I Love You Alice B. Toklas which starred Peter Sellars. This paved the way to Mazursky directing his next screenplay, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice for which he received the first of his four Oscar nominations. His subsequent films include Alex in Wonderland, Blume in Love, Harry and Tonto, Next Stop Greenwich Village, Moscow on the Hudson and Enemies, A Love Story.
Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill
Elliott Gould introduced me to Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill 30 years ago. But I needed no introduction to the famous comedy duo, who followed in the footsteps of Burns & Allen, Stiller & Meara and Nichols & May. They met in Jerry Lewis's short-lived Comedy Workshop on the Paramount lot and played clubs all over the country. Then they got their big break: the Ed Sullivan Show. They shared the bill with an unknown - to grownups - British rock group called the Beatles and....But let Mitzi and Charlie share this hilarious story with you.
I fell in love with Patty McCormack when I was 8-years-old - although I didn’t know her real name at the time. To me she was Cousin Ingeborg on the Friday night CBS series Mama, based on the Broadway hit and movie I Remember Mama. Many years later, my friend Avery Schreiber got me a ticket to se him perform in a revival of “Strike Up the Band” at the Music Center in Los Angeles. He told me I’d be sitting with Patty McCormack. By that time I knew she had played Rhoda in The Bad Seed. She was there with her nephew Freddy and we struck up a conversation and became friends. It was only months later when she mentioned having appeared on Mama that I realized I’d finally been reunited with Ingeborg. Patty is a wonderful actress, who has never stopped working. Most recently she played Pat Nixon in Frost/Nixon and appeared on The Sopranos and Entourage.
Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009) was a marvelous actor-director-writer best known for his TV work as the creator-star of "The Prisoner" as well as his previous series "Danger Man" (known as "Secret Agent" in the U.S). But he was also a man of the theatre who performed in 200 plays and was a movie star ("All Night Long", "Ice Station Zerbra", "Braveheart"). His daughter, actress Catherine McGoohan, shared memories with me of her father on the eve of what would have been his 83rd birthday.
Seana McKenna got out of the shower one morning a few years ago and her husband, director Miles Potter, commented that she looked like Laurence Oilivier as Richard III. The seed was planted in this incredible actress's mind. And this summer, under Potter's direction, she plays a dazzling Richard at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada. Over the past twenty years at Stratford, Seana has starred in Dangerous Liaisons, Medea, Phedra, Noises Off, Private Lives, Fallen Angels and Private Lives. In one of her rare excursions on the big screen, Seana won the Genie Award for her performance in The Hanging Garden.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1940, Peter Medak survived the Nazi and Communist regimes in that country and made his way to England as a teenager where he entered the British film industry. He went on to direct such celebrated films as "The Ruling Class", "The Changeling", "The Krays" and "Romeo is Bleeding."
When my wife, Kim Eveleth, went to the all female Smith College, she would often perform in plays with the men at Hampshire College. It was here that she met Fred Melamed. Through the years, she would happily point to the TV or movie screen and announce: "There's Fred!" Thank God, he was a good actor! A wonderful actor, in fact. And Fred's role as the unctuous wife-stealer Sy Abelman in the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man was a delight and raised him from the anonymity of the many Woody Allen films in which he appeared into the much-deserved pantheon of character actors working today.
"He knew I had pretty big boobs. He was trying to get them to sit up." And that line should get anyone to sit up. It's a typical comment from the actress born Dorothea Moore to a legendary Canadian theatre family. She toyed with the idea of Darcy Mavor as a stage name but finally settled on Tedde Moore. What the Tony is to the American theatre, the Dora is to the Canadian - in honor of her incredible grandmother, Dora Mavor Moore. Her father, Mavor Moore, was one of the original stars of the Stratford Festival, started CBC TV drama, founded the Charlottetown Festival and the St. Lawrence Arts Centre. It's been an incredibly busy year for Tedde: she played Mrs. Shaw in the History Channel's notorious mini-series, The Kennedys; appears in her husband Don Shebib''s film Down the Road Again and stars as Mrs. Santa Claus in Hallmark's Mistletoe Over Manhattan. She's a great gal and a great conversationalist.
Patricia Morison (born March 19, 1915) is an American stage and motion picture actress and singer. She made her feature film debut in 1939 after several years on the stage. During her time as a screen actress she was lauded for her patrician beauty, with her blue eyes and extremely long, dark hair among her most notable physical attributes. During this period of her career she was often cast in unsympathetic roles as a femme fatale or a haughty "other woman." It was only when she returned to the Broadway stage that she achieved her greatest success as the lead in the original production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate.
Josh Mostel is five days younger than me. Both our fathers were named Sam. He’s not only a great actor but also an extraordinary painter, chess expert and haiku master talent and I’ve treasured him as a friend for 25 years. We first met when I saw him portray Norman Bulansky, a middle-aged retarded man, in Tom Griffin’s wonderful play The Boys Next Door. Norman worked in a doughnut shop and carried around a huge collection of keys. He had a girlfriend Sheila, who was likewise mentally challenged. For one brief moment at the end of Act One, we were allowed to see this couple behave “normally” as they danced with absolute abandon. Josh’s performance as Norman is one of my favorite theatrical memories and his chirpy “Oh, Boy!” became my mantra for years. He is one of the few actors whose stage performances never cease to delight and astonish me with their originality, hilarity and depth of soul. He has also appeared in many films including Sophie’s Choice, City Slickers, Windy City, Harry and Tonto, Wall Street, Jesus Christ Superstar, Radio Days, Matewan, Billy Madison, Great Expectations and State of Play.
John O'Hurley fills the void left behind by both Leslie Nielsen and Jack Cassidy and does it with great success. He has Nielsen's gift of self-deprecation and Cassidy's engaging narcissism matched with a wonderful singing voice. After years on daytime drama and episodic TV, O'Hurley made it big as J. Peterman on Seinfield (and eventually became a partner in the real company). He went on to become the host of To Tell the Truth and Family Feud. Recently he starred as King Arthur in the Las Vegas production of Spamalot and on Broadway as Billy Flynn in Chicago.
Ron Orbach came into my life when I saw him play Ira on Broadway in Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor". He stole the show from its star Nathan Lane's Max Prince. Orbach later went on to play as Max Prince in the national tour. He has starred in recordings of two of my plays "The Alchemist of Cecil Street" and "Tolstoy Was Never There". He played Hans Schneller in my short film "The Favour of Your Company". He just finished directing me in the critically acclaimed revival of "Room Service" in Hollywood.
Earl Pomerantz was born in Toronto, Canada where for two years, he wrote a weekly column for the Toronto Telegram. After coming to Los Angeles on April 12, 1974, a Friday, he went on to receive two Emmy Awards, plus four other nominations, a Writers’ Guild Award, the Humanitas, a Cable Ace award, and some other award he can’t find. Earl created three network television series, Major Dad, Family Man andBest of the West, and wrote scripts for such shows as The Mary Tyler Moore Show,The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, Cheers, Newhart, The Cosby Show and many others. He has also delivered several commentaries on NPR’s All Things Considered.
Paula Prentiss was born Paula Ragusa in San Antonio, Texas. Discovered by a talent scout while attending Northwestern University in 1958, she was signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and renamed Paula Prentiss. She teamed with Jim Hutton in a string of comedies beginning with "Where the Boys Are". She rapidly became one of the best American comediennes of the 1960s. With her husband, Richard Benjamin, she starred in the TV series "He & She". Her best known films are "The World of Henry Orient", "Man's Favorite Sport", "Catch-22", "In Harm's Way", "What's New, Pussycat?", "The Stepford Wives", "The Parallax View" and "The Black Marble". She returned to the screen in 2007 with her son, Ross Benjamin, and daughter, Prentiss Benjamin, to appear in Charles Dennis's nutty noir "Hard Four".
Bill Pullman has starred in such films as Independence Day, Spaceballs, Lost Highway, Accidental Tourist, Liebestraum and the new BBC/Starz TV series Torchwood. His Broadway credits include Edward Albee's The Goat opposite Mercedes Reuhl and David Mamet's Oleanna opposite Julia Stiles. His father-in-law, Al Hurwitz, was one of the founders of the Off-Broadway theatre movement in 1947 and went on to become a champion of Arts Education in this country. His book, Children and their Art, has become a classic and is now in its 9th edition.
Eli Rill changed my life. When I was fifteen, the beautiful Sharon Acker took me to meet Eli Rill, who was a teacher at The Actors Studio in New York. He commuted to Toronto every weekend to conduct marathon classes. He felt I was too young to be exposed to the Method and the scenes that were being studied there. But Sharon persisted and I became his youngest student. He was a brilliant and inspiring teacher, who had worked with Humphrey Bogart, Eli Wallach, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger etc. He assigned me the exercise of adapting Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye which I subsequently - and illegally - produced and directed in Toronto, thus beginning my career as a playwright. Years later Eli introduced me to Martin Landau and Mark Rydell, who invited me to join The Playwrights Unit of The Actor Studio. My first play The Studio did was Brakeman's Reader - starring Eli Rill. He is the author of a wonderful new novel called A Penny for the Violin Man.
Laila Robins and I bonded sixteen years ago when we spent a week rehearsing my play Going On as a command performance for Lucille Lortel in her suite at the Sherry Netherlands. Ms. Robins has been heralded by no less a critic than John Simon as “our finest actress”. She made her Broadway debut replacing Glenn Close in The Real Thing and has wowed New York audiences ever since in Tiny Alice, Mrs. Klein, The Merchant of Venice, Frozen, Heartbreak House and many other plays. HBO fans will know her from The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Too Big to Fail, In Treatment and Bored to Death. On the big screen, she has appeared in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, An Innocent Man, True Crime, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, Multiple Sarcasms and Passing Harold Blumenthal.
"I don't know why anyone hired me. I had a blank face and no talent whatsoever." Pay no attention to Barbara Rush's self-deprecating remark. It's just classic Barbara Rush. For the record, the lady starred with Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, James Mason, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Paul Newman, Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson in such classic films as "The Young Lions", "Bigger Than Life", "The Black Shield of Falworth", "The Young Philadelphians", "Magnificent Obsession", "Strangers When We Meet", "Come Blow Your Horn", "Hombre" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods". She's a wise and witty woman with some terrific tales of Hollywood.
Join Mark Rydell in a three part interview as he talks about John Garfield, Steve McQueen, Teddy Wilson, Wally Cox, Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, James Caan, James Franco and the real James Dean. Mark is one of my heroes. An actor, director, teacher, jazz musician, he runs The Actors Studio in Los Angeles with Martin Landau. The films he’s directed include On Golden Pond, The Cowboys, The Fox, James Dean, The Rose, The Reivers and, his personal favorite, Cinderella Liberty. As an actor, Rydell appeared on Broadway, off-Broadway, starred on As the World Turns for six years and returned triumphantly to the screen as one of the funniest and scariest villains ever opposite Elliott Gould's Phillip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s quirky adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.
Julian Sands is the quintessential journeyman actor and proud of it. The Yorkshireman's astonishing list of films include A Room with a View, Gothic, Impromptu, Siesta, Warlock, The Phantom of the Opera, Arachnophobia, Naked Lunch, Leaving Las Vegas, Ocean’s 13, Golf in the Kingdom and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. His TV series have included 24, Bollywood Jungle and Lipstick Hero. Julian just returned from the the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a subsequent tour of England where he performed A Celebration of Harold Pinter directed by John Malkovich. He is directing Neil Dickson in The Standard Bearer which opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 19.
Alan Scarfe is one of the most intelligent actor/writer/directors I know. Born in England, he came to Canada as a child - first to Winnipeg, then on to Vancouver. At 17 he starred in one of the first Canadian feature films, The Bitter Ash. He later starred at the Stratford Festival throughout the 1970s. He later went on to Broadway where he appeared as Macduff in the infamous Macbeth starring Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson. He starred in numerous TV series including Seven Days, Mysterious Island and Kingdom Hospital. His first novel was A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane: the autobiography of Jack the Ripper as revealed to Clanash Farjeon. As Clanash Farjeon, Scarfe wrote the Vampire Trilogy of which the most recent if The Vampires of 9/11. Scarfe is married to actress/writer Barbara March and they live in British Columbia.
I first saw Augie Schellenberg on the other side of a very crowded kitchen at a party in Stratford in 1967. He was wearing a pink shirt and gesticulating like crazy. I assumed he played for the other side until I drew closer to where he was holding court and heard the voice and language of a stevedore. This Montreal street kid and ex-boxer seemed to be the reincarnation of John Garfield and I wrote a play for him that summer inspired by that tragic actor’s life. (The play was later produced on the BBC and eventually became my novel Bonfire.) Augie is a Swiss-Mohawk, who, once he embraced his native roots, went on to world-wide acclaim in such films as Black Robe, the Free Willy series and as an unforgettable Sitting Bull in HBO’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (for which he received an Emmy nomination).
Victoria Tennant
Who didn't fall in love with Victoria Tennant's Pamela Tudsbury in the epic TV mini-series The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance? The daughter of ballerina Irina Baronova and British uber agent Cecil Tennant, Victoria made her film debut in The Ragman's Daughter and went on to co-star with Steve Martin in All of Me and L.A. Story. Listen to her fascinating stories of her own reluctant ballet training and the ten week marathon gin rummy game with Steve Martin, Carl Reiner and Lili Tomlin. Also how she persuaded Robert Mitchum to rehearse with her on his day off.
Arthur Treacher, Charlie Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton were The Three Musketeers. What that trio didn’t know about comedy! (Ironically, they only appeared in one movie together, Frank Borzage’s Hearts Divided, but remained devoted friends and admirers throughout their long lives.) In the 1940s and 1950s, they delighted summer stock audiences across North America with their deft, seemingly effortless performances in various drawing room comedies and farces. I remember as a kid seeing the trio on the cover of a Christmas edition of Theatre Arts magazine. Treacher had been Jeeves to David Niven’s Bertie Wooster in a few Fox quickies in the Thirties and went on to play comic butlers forever after. Merv Griffin gave him a whole new career in the 1960s as his announcer/family retainer on Griffin’s New York-based talk show, which is where I met him.
Beverly Washburn (born November 25, 1943) is an American actress who appeared as a young girl in NBC's The Loretta Young Show and as an older teenager in Loretta Young's 1962-1963 CBS family drama, The New Loretta Young Show. In between, Washburn was cast as Lisbeth Searcy in the 1957 Walt Disney film Old Yeller, the story of a beloved dog, starring Fess Parker, Dorothy McGuire, Tommy Kirk, Kevin Corcoran, and Jeff York, in the role of Lisbeth's father, BudSearcy. Washburn appeared once on NBC's Star Trek in the role of Lieutenant Arlene Galway in the 1967 episode "The Deadly Years".
Cissy Wellman is the daughter of legendary film director William "Wild Bill" Wellman, whose extraordinary list of films include Wings (the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar), Nothing Sacred, A Star is Born, Beau Geste, The Ox-Bow Incident, Battleground and The High and the Mighty. An actress herself, Cissy's films include The Outlaw Josey Wales, Play Misty for Me, Redline 7000 and The Disorderly Orderly.
Kenneth Welsh is a Genie and Gemini award winning actor, who played Hamlet and Benedick at the Stratford Festival in Canada. Off Broadway, he created the role of Johnny opposite Kathy Bates in "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" and his own play "Standup Shakespeare". On Broadway he appeared in "The Little Foxes", "The Real Thing", and "Whose Life is it Anyway?". His feature films include "The Aviator", "The Day After Tomorrow" and 'Legends of the Fall". He appeared as Wyndham Earl in David Lynch's cult TV series "Twin Peaks". He directed me in my play "SoHo Duo" at New York's West Bank Theater and I directed him in my film "Reno and the Doc".
Born in Wales, Geraint Wyn-Davies moved to Canada as a child. He is dazzling Stratford, Ontario audiences this summer as King Arthur in Camelot and Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor in this his eighth season with the company. On Broadway, he played Edmund opposite Christopher Plummer's King Lear. He played Cyrano in Washington D.C. where he not only met his future wife, Claire Lautier, but was sworn in as a U.S. citizen by no less than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Familiar to TV audiences for his starring roles in Forever Knight, 24, and Slings and Arrows, Geraint has the Welsh gift of making the simplest of statements sound like poetry.
Louis Zorich is best known to TV audiences as Paul Reiser's father, Burt Buchman, on the sitcom Mad About You. His Broadway credits include Death of a Salesman, Follies, They Knew What They Wanted, Hadrian VII and She Loves Me. His movie roles include Fiddler on the Roof, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and, most recently, Detatchment. He edited the book What Have You Done, a collection of hilarious stories about auditioning. He has been married to Olympia Dukakis since 1962.
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