Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Then you were listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. My guests today are two
Speaker 1: of my all time favorite musical theater actors, Ken Paige
Speaker 1: and Betty Buckley, and there are parallels to their stories.
Speaker 1: Both grew up dreaming of performing on Broadway. Ken in St. Louis,
Speaker 1: Betty and fort Worth both were cast in the original
Speaker 1: Broadway production of Cats, Ken as Old Deuteronomy and Betty
Speaker 1: as Guizzabella, for which she wanted Tony. Both became key
Speaker 1: figures in the vibrant community that transformed musical theater over
Speaker 1: the past several decades. In addition to being the voice
Speaker 1: of Broadway, Betty Buckley's acting chops earned her roles as
Speaker 1: the step mom on the hit TV series Eight Is
Speaker 1: Enough and in films including Carrie, Tender Mercies, and Frantic.
Speaker 1: But first, I'm talking with Ken Page. You may know
Speaker 1: him as the voice of Bogie Boogie in The Night
Speaker 1: There Before Christmas. In his breakout role on Broadway, he
Speaker 1: played Nicely Nicely Johnson in an all black revival of
Speaker 1: Guys and Dolls in nineteen seventy six. He went on
Speaker 1: to perform as the Lion in the Whiz and in
Speaker 1: the original cast of Ain't Misbehavior. Ken Paige was drawn
Speaker 1: to musical theater early. Yeah, it was my life blood.
Speaker 1: It was the thing that got me out of where
Speaker 1: I was to where I went. It was the thing
Speaker 1: that kept me going through years of up and down
Speaker 1: childhood things. But it was always musical theater and all
Speaker 1: of that related world that got me through. I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember being ten and eleven, of course, watching Barbara
Speaker 1: strei Sen's TV special going I Am Barbara Streisand and
Speaker 1: I would go to the library in St. Louis, the
Speaker 1: big Public Library, and in the basement they had a
Speaker 1: section of LPs, and I would thumb through all of
Speaker 1: these Broadway cast albums. I would read the line of notes,
Speaker 1: and this one lady when I first couple of times
Speaker 1: that came, she was a little triviuted, like what are
Speaker 1: you doing in here? And she saw, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: be sitting on the floor reading Broadway cast album liner notes,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure she thought, is this child from Mars?
Speaker 1: Or was was the deal? But I started to educate
Speaker 1: myself that early about musical theater because it just fascinated me.
Speaker 1: And of course the own two only things that I
Speaker 1: really saw was the Tony Awards once a year, and
Speaker 1: I would see all the shows and I was fascinated
Speaker 1: by it. And we had this grand outdoor theater still
Speaker 1: have in St. Louis called at that time it was
Speaker 1: the Municipal Opera and now it's called the Muni, so
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the business know the Muni.
Speaker 1: And that was the first time I saw a live
Speaker 1: production on stage. It was Oklahoma with Robert Horton as
Speaker 1: Curly and he came out on a real horse. And
Speaker 1: all those people in Missouri demand no less, they must
Speaker 1: have a real horse. That's right, show me to show
Speaker 1: me state. So he came out on a horse, and
Speaker 1: of course when you see something like that, you fall
Speaker 1: in love with it. And subsequently it's a lot of shows.
Speaker 1: And it was the theater that made me really fall
Speaker 1: in love with musical theater because I could see it.
Speaker 1: And then it was the theater that inspired me to
Speaker 1: move to New York. And when did you study voice acting?
Speaker 1: I did acting school. I did. I went to two
Speaker 1: years at Fontbonne University in St. Louis in a scholarship.
Speaker 1: I like to say this because now I'm over fifty.
Speaker 1: I can brag right. I received a scholarship in art
Speaker 1: music for vocal performance and theater, and I chose theater subsequently.
Speaker 1: At the same time those two summers, I did seasons
Speaker 1: at the Muni in the ensemble I started when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, those two shows of the Muni. With those
Speaker 1: your first two shows you did. Had you been doing
Speaker 1: shows when you were younger? When did you start performing
Speaker 1: in front of people? In front of people? Really sixth grade,
Speaker 1: I was part of a thing here in Saying. It
Speaker 1: was called the Bellerman's Speech League, which my cousin had
Speaker 1: been in, but it was one of those competitive citywide things.
Speaker 1: So that was really the first time I stepped in
Speaker 1: front of people performing ring. And then of course in
Speaker 1: high school I did your usual high school musical's Funny Girl, Oliver, Hello,
Speaker 1: Dolly Fitler on the Route And it was that that
Speaker 1: led me to audition for scholarship or college, which I got.
Speaker 1: I wish at the time I'd known about Juilliard and
Speaker 1: Goodman and schools like that, but they really didn't promote
Speaker 1: it because the idea was stay here and go to school,
Speaker 1: and St. Louis has a very home grown mentality that way,
Speaker 1: and it really wasn't promoted to me to audition for
Speaker 1: The Goodman, which was only in Chicago, and certainly not Juilliard,
Speaker 1: which was New York. And I think, not to be egotistical,
Speaker 1: but I think I might have really been able to
Speaker 1: to get into those schools and for so for you,
Speaker 1: I wonder it's it's like, and again I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: this eleven times during the course of this interview, but
Speaker 1: you're so talented. I mean, you are so talented. You
Speaker 1: like the male musical theater, Annie Oakley, boom boom boom.
Speaker 1: Anything you can do, I can you can do better than.
Speaker 1: But if you've gone to those Nancy schools, what would
Speaker 1: have changed everything? You think? So everything? Oh? Sure, Because
Speaker 1: first of all, to go to any of those schools,
Speaker 1: you're living away from home. So that's the first big change,
Speaker 1: which means you explore your life, never mind the education,
Speaker 1: you explore your life differently. For me, I think being
Speaker 1: away from St. Louis would have made a big difference
Speaker 1: in how I explored what I was doing. My mentor,
Speaker 1: God Bless and rest him, Don Garner, when I realized
Speaker 1: that I wanted to go to New York, I went
Speaker 1: to him and I said, look, I think I want
Speaker 1: to go to New York, and you shut the door
Speaker 1: to his office. He says, all right, I didn't say this,
Speaker 1: but I think you will learn in the next two
Speaker 1: years in New York what you would It would take
Speaker 1: you six years here to learn if you go and
Speaker 1: apply yourself and really do what I think you would
Speaker 1: do or will do. And indeed, by the two years
Speaker 1: when my class graduated, I was in my first Broadway show,
Speaker 1: which was an all black revival of Guys and Dolls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how long did that run? Not long? Now? What
Speaker 1: what do you attribute that too? Well, it was very
Speaker 1: controversial because at one it was an all black version
Speaker 1: of something, and then this is minus nineteen seventies six,
Speaker 1: so things hadn't moved quite nearly as far as they
Speaker 1: have come to thus hard. And also it was Guys
Speaker 1: and Dolls, which is a sacred musical theater piece. And
Speaker 1: there were people who were pro because you know, pro
Speaker 1: Bailey's version of Hello Dolly had already happened, and people thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that was wonderful, so dusk Guys and Dolls.
Speaker 1: But I think because Hello Dolly is such a the
Speaker 1: whole from Thornton Wilder on it's such an open book
Speaker 1: of who these people are. Guys and Dolls was a
Speaker 1: very specific New York Jewish idiom. So there were people
Speaker 1: who thought we had no business tampering, tinkering, tooling with
Speaker 1: guys and dolls. And then there were other people who thought,
Speaker 1: thank god, there's some different energy on it and our production,
Speaker 1: the the arrangements, since we couldn't change a note of
Speaker 1: the music. But that's all another story. The arrangements had
Speaker 1: a sort of a wa waca waca disco kind of
Speaker 1: thing running under and when you hear the Broadway cast
Speaker 1: album now, it's really very electric and alive. People loved it.
Speaker 1: Those who loved I remember, may I say Rex Read
Speaker 1: said something about saying that songs sit down, you're rocking
Speaker 1: the boat, and he said I turned it into a
Speaker 1: gospel stomp and it was just terrible. Oh, Rex was
Speaker 1: unkind to you, I'd say, yeah, but he was unkind
Speaker 1: to everybody, but he was specifically. But it was interesting
Speaker 1: because I always remember thinking, even then, at twenty one,
Speaker 1: I thought, what didn't Frank Lesser write a gospel number?
Speaker 1: Isn't that what this is supposed to be? These people
Speaker 1: in the Savus all mission and its gospel tinge and
Speaker 1: so all we really did was took it the next
Speaker 1: step towards what he was writing to begin with, which
Speaker 1: I think the last eight measures of the song go
Speaker 1: sit down, you're rocking, Sit down, sit down, sit down,
Speaker 1: you're rocking the boat blah blah blah blah. Were they
Speaker 1: allowed us to change that to the devil drag you under.
Speaker 1: It was so so heavy you never bloat, sit down,
Speaker 1: sit down? Is it down? Sit huh? Which took it
Speaker 1: in another direction. Well that was successful in uf that
Speaker 1: the audience would scream and carry on and they loved it.
Speaker 1: So then they wrote an encore which is completely new,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the encore would get two and three renditions
Speaker 1: a night. Thank god I was twenty one, you know,
Speaker 1: because the people dream and they'd applaud and they go
Speaker 1: on and Joe Marshall, God Resting was our drummer. It
Speaker 1: was really he who decided he'd listened to the crowd
Speaker 1: and he looked at me, and he listened to the crowd,
Speaker 1: and then he'd hit the drum field but had a dream.
Speaker 1: And the more the people screamed, of course, we do
Speaker 1: it again and again again. So I'm saying that to
Speaker 1: say that was one of the things out of that
Speaker 1: show that kept it going, frankly, because people came to
Speaker 1: see what was new in Guys and Dolls. You weren't
Speaker 1: in The Whiz prior to Guys and Does No. I've
Speaker 1: seen that written a few places, and I always try
Speaker 1: to correct it because Guys and Dolls was nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six and I didn't go into The Whiz until late
Speaker 1: seventy almost seventy seven. So you go from one adaptation
Speaker 1: of a sacred musical to another adaptation of someone. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you also were impersonating in the bathroom with a
Speaker 1: brush in your hand, Judy Garland, when you go do
Speaker 1: the Whiz? Was it a different bowl of wax there?
Speaker 1: And the way you were treated with adapting Wizard of
Speaker 1: Us with a podcast, Oh god, because The Whiz was
Speaker 1: unapologetically black, even though based on L. Frank Baum's in
Speaker 1: the music and so forth. But the Whiz open and
Speaker 1: that was a blockbuster. It wasn't at first they actually
Speaker 1: had the closing notice up, and then Ken Harper went
Speaker 1: to twenty Century Fox. They invested in a TV commercial
Speaker 1: and it was so great, and then they went to
Speaker 1: the churches in Brooklyn. Stephanie Mills belonged to the biggest church,
Speaker 1: African American church in Brooklyn. They went to them. They
Speaker 1: then went to Sister brother churches. All of these people
Speaker 1: started buying tickets and came in bust loos and we
Speaker 1: know the dollar rules. So as long as there were
Speaker 1: people there, the show was going to keep running by
Speaker 1: virtue of its staying where it was. The word of
Speaker 1: mouth picked up and then other people started coming. Finished
Speaker 1: that story to say that by the time it got
Speaker 1: around to the Tony Awards, they were nominated for eleven
Speaker 1: Tony Awards. I think they won six. So guys and
Speaker 1: Dolls nicely, nicely, the Lion and the Whiz and these
Speaker 1: are not lead roles. You're playing more supporting roles. And
Speaker 1: the next thing is ain't misbehavior and correct and when
Speaker 1: you do that, you get a lead role in Ain't Misbehaving? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it's interesting because the five characters,
Speaker 1: if you will, and amos behavior, we're all supporting people.
Speaker 1: So the five of us really were the leads, but
Speaker 1: we were used to being supporting people, so we supported
Speaker 1: each other in the way that we had supported other people.
Speaker 1: In productions, which made it a very powerful ensemble. When
Speaker 1: did you notice that you walked in the room and
Speaker 1: everybody sat up and they were like, it'sken, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like you really the town started to
Speaker 1: adopt you, that you were part of a business in
Speaker 1: an industry in New York. That was the blessing of
Speaker 1: guys and dolls is that I did a beloved role
Speaker 1: and by me having some sort of a personal signature
Speaker 1: on it, it separated me from the great stu w k.
Speaker 1: So Broadway sort of said who is this I remember
Speaker 1: Clive Barnes. I didn't know who he was at the time,
Speaker 1: but he wrote a sort of love letter in The
Speaker 1: Times and saying who is this guy? Where did he
Speaker 1: come from? People calling me up saying did you read
Speaker 1: that thing at the Times this morning? Clive Barnes wrote
Speaker 1: you a love letter? And I'm like, well, who is
Speaker 1: Clive Barnes? First of all, they're like, okay, letters, he
Speaker 1: writing me love letters. But what it did was it
Speaker 1: opened the door to Broadway and it said this guy
Speaker 1: is Broadway caliber. Wherever he came from, welcome dot dot dot.
Speaker 1: So it sort of sucked me right into the center
Speaker 1: of the Broadway community immediately and then they get to
Speaker 1: do The Whiz behind it, which was a huge, huge,
Speaker 1: huge hit and still very much at the top of
Speaker 1: the list of appreciate it shows. I'll tell this story
Speaker 1: and I think you'll know what I mean. I had
Speaker 1: done a club act at Leemouche. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a big disco, but it was also a big club
Speaker 1: there too. I did a tribute it to all of
Speaker 1: the black shows who were running abroad WITHY at the time,
Speaker 1: and there were many at the time, and I sort
Speaker 1: of linked them. I didn't songs from Raisin and the
Speaker 1: Whiz and of course Guys and Dolls and a couple
Speaker 1: of and I would link them together with He's on
Speaker 1: down the Road, Okay, let's go on, we go, He's
Speaker 1: on down He's on down road to raise it and blow.
Speaker 1: And some of the people from the Whiz came to
Speaker 1: see my show because I was in Guys and Dolls
Speaker 1: and they heard so they called me in shortly after
Speaker 1: Guys and Dolls closed, and I had auditioned for The
Speaker 1: Whiz before, and I just knew I was perfect for
Speaker 1: it because I had seen the out of town tryout
Speaker 1: in Detroit, and I went in and I sang men
Speaker 1: no line and they said, thank you, that's it. I
Speaker 1: know I'm right for this put How damn you say
Speaker 1: that like that? So when it came back around, my
Speaker 1: agents said, well, you know, they want to see you
Speaker 1: at the Majestic you know, And I said, hih auditioned
Speaker 1: for the Whiz they didn't like me. He said no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think you understand. They saw your club act.
Speaker 1: They want to see you at the Majestic Theater. They're
Speaker 1: not having auditions, they're auditioning you. So I said, oh ship.
Speaker 1: So I went in and Ken Harbor indeed was there,
Speaker 1: and I sang the songs and he walked down to
Speaker 1: the edge of the stage and he shook my hand
Speaker 1: and he says, are you busy for the rest of
Speaker 1: the afternoon? And I said no. He said good, then
Speaker 1: go down and get your costume measurement. And it took
Speaker 1: me a minute to understand that mean I got the part.
Speaker 1: I was like, why, how what do you want? I wonderful? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said. So in answer to your question, I would say,
Speaker 1: that's the first time people sat up when I walked
Speaker 1: in the room. But it was still different because they
Speaker 1: invited me into the room Broadway star Ken Paige. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy listening to conversations with the grades of musical theater,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out my conversation with another Broadway star,
Speaker 1: Kelly O'Hara. Even after hos a week, I find myself
Speaker 1: kind of dealing with all of this, all of my
Speaker 1: innards out there. It's how I filter, it's how I process,
Speaker 1: I think, and it's why I'm not quite tired of it.
Speaker 1: For the most part, I find that I go inside
Speaker 1: it as opposed to just dealing with it all out here.
Speaker 1: You're more of my conversation with Kelly O'Hara that Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. After the break, Ken Paige talks
Speaker 1: about learning comedic timing from some of the best in
Speaker 1: the business. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing I dream last night. I got on the
Speaker 1: boat to Heaven and by some chance I had brought
Speaker 1: my das along and there are start and someone fade me.
Speaker 1: But the acid test they do right from wrong. All
Speaker 1: the people all sends it up. Sit down on your
Speaker 1: rocket boat. Yes, people all sence it out. Sit down.
Speaker 1: That's Ken Paige performing sit Down You're rocking the Boat
Speaker 1: from the nineteen six Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls.
Speaker 1: During his tenure on Broadway, Ken Paige would often perform
Speaker 1: solo in smaller clubs. Oftentimes, his cast mates and other
Speaker 1: performers were his best audience with the Broadway community, especially
Speaker 1: back then. You were in that show at that time,
Speaker 1: but you were still part of a larger community at large.
Speaker 1: However long you've been around, chances are you'd worked with
Speaker 1: just about anybody or everybody at some point. So there
Speaker 1: was a serious sense of community, that support of people,
Speaker 1: knew people. I can't even tell you. I remember doing
Speaker 1: again Guys and Dolls A Burrows, who of course was
Speaker 1: a towering figure in the musical theater him teaching me
Speaker 1: about comedy timing. He said, look, these jokes are funny,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I said, well, I assume him,
Speaker 1: but you got to do a three rhythm thing for
Speaker 1: him to work. If you break the rhythm, they're not funny.
Speaker 1: And my example was I came out with a sandwich
Speaker 1: and Nathan says, hey, nicely, where you've been, And I'd
Speaker 1: say I had to get something to eat. I felt
Speaker 1: a little faint and I would just say the line crickets.
Speaker 1: You could hear not spart. It was that quiet, you know.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, no, no, hey, you gotta
Speaker 1: take two beats before you speak, take a bite of
Speaker 1: the sandwich, and then you say the line with your mouthful.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. Thought, well, that's very specific. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I don't want to do that. Hey,
Speaker 1: he wrote it. He ought to know, right, So I
Speaker 1: did it. He says, hey, nicely, where have you been?
Speaker 1: And I stopped and I took a bye to the sandwich.
Speaker 1: I would all heard a good trouperty. I felt a
Speaker 1: little faint roaring laughter. So you know what I mean? Right?
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, learn, learn, learn. Is people
Speaker 1: were generous, not only in the production, but they were
Speaker 1: generous to tell you things. So getting into that whole
Speaker 1: thing of like, you start to feel more, uh, emboldened. Sure.
Speaker 1: I think with each show successively, you become more and
Speaker 1: more aware of what you have that's yours, that is
Speaker 1: applicable to whatever situation you're in. But it takes. It's
Speaker 1: a process to you get that sort of confidence that
Speaker 1: while I'm gonna sing this song, there's something I do
Speaker 1: with my boys, with my intention with this that that
Speaker 1: is particular to me, that's gonna make this sing, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And with a mis behaving. Of course,
Speaker 1: the opportunity was golden because there was nothing. Hello, There
Speaker 1: was a stack of Xerox music that Fats Roller and
Speaker 1: other people wrote. And then that was it who shaped that?
Speaker 1: Who was responsible for shaping that? Uh? Well, we all were.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that now on record, because Richard Mulby
Speaker 1: was a wonderful director in many ways, and he certainly
Speaker 1: put us together. Murray Horowitz who was the jazz aficionado,
Speaker 1: and Arthur Farria, who was our choreographer. It was really
Speaker 1: this combined effort of everybody. Needless to say, five African
Speaker 1: American performers brought much of what you saw from our
Speaker 1: own selves. There was no written characters, There was no
Speaker 1: scenario that we were following. It was just a matter
Speaker 1: of you walk in the door and she walks over
Speaker 1: to you and she sayings, baby, baby, what is the
Speaker 1: matter with you? Well, you gotta know who you are,
Speaker 1: what your intention is, what you're trying to do. All
Speaker 1: that had to be provided by the actor who was
Speaker 1: us right, And that was the way the show really
Speaker 1: was created. I mean, you know it was set up
Speaker 1: so a misbehaving and then you go into Cats. Now,
Speaker 1: you were in the original company of Cats, the original
Speaker 1: Broadway cast. Yes, you were in the original You were
Speaker 1: in the original Broadway company of Cats. American Daughters in
Speaker 1: Buckley and Harry groner Man, Terry Man amazing, Betty Buckley,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So how did that come together? Well,
Speaker 1: we want to say first, it was a huge hit
Speaker 1: in London, so it had it had already sailed the seas.
Speaker 1: It was just coming in our direction. But that was
Speaker 1: part of what made it such a big deal for Broadway.
Speaker 1: It's because it was such a huge hit in London
Speaker 1: and they were going to do the American production, and
Speaker 1: how do you get summoned to that? Well, weirdly, because
Speaker 1: they were seeing people for six months for this show.
Speaker 1: Everybody who could crawl on four legs was there auditioning.
Speaker 1: And I didn't think there was anything in the show
Speaker 1: for me. I just thought it was a dance show
Speaker 1: and it was about people in leotard's not me. And
Speaker 1: I know I didn't paid any attention. And I went
Speaker 1: to the closing performance of Ain't misbehavior on Broadway. I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the show by that point, but I went
Speaker 1: to the closing performance and Bernard Jacobs, Bernie Jacobs was
Speaker 1: there and he came up to me and said, Kenny,
Speaker 1: have you been seen for Cats? And I said, no, no,
Speaker 1: I haven't. He says, I want you to go in.
Speaker 1: I want you to blah blah blah, so oh Deuteronomy.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good role for you. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about it. He said, go up to Benny
Speaker 1: Lifts office and get the music and I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: them call you in now. Footnote. They had not called
Speaker 1: me in, and I was certainly someone who was on
Speaker 1: the scene well enough by that point, but I guess
Speaker 1: they did not see me the way Bernie summy. But
Speaker 1: he says, that's it. You're gonna go in, and that's
Speaker 1: what it's gonna be. Right. So I am. They're learning
Speaker 1: the addressing of Cats. I'm going over the song. I
Speaker 1: had to audition for the show and Armelia, my late dear, dear,
Speaker 1: dear friend of me, it was in the room next
Speaker 1: to me, and she said, i'd hear you in the
Speaker 1: shower page that you've heard of said kind. She said,
Speaker 1: I would think, okay, not so good yet, but but
Speaker 1: it'll get there. That it was great, so we come back.
Speaker 1: I go in and by this point it's the last
Speaker 1: week of the auditions and they were really calling a
Speaker 1: lot of people's names and thrown them around. So I
Speaker 1: go in on Monday. I sang and they said okay, great.
Speaker 1: So they said come back on Friday and could you
Speaker 1: possibly said could you possibly learn a dramatic monologue? I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: f me from the show or from some other source,
Speaker 1: something anything, just a monologue, And I think, or not
Speaker 1: to be yes, I'm thinking, ain't it a musical? So
Speaker 1: I go I learned I luckily had done this monologue
Speaker 1: and a show I did about Louis Armstrong. I played
Speaker 1: the character Joe Oliver, his mentor. So I had a monologue. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I come back. I do the monologue again. Trevor
Speaker 1: comes in the stage after monologue and he says, your
Speaker 1: talents are many fold and manifest. I thought, well, if
Speaker 1: that wasn't a kiss of death, I think I was like,
Speaker 1: thank you for playing the British way of saying thank you,
Speaker 1: you know. So I go out Fire Island for the weekend.
Speaker 1: They're announcing it on Monday, and this is Friday, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm out of the city. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be here. So I get back Monday morning. The
Speaker 1: phone rings and it's Tyler Getchell and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: Ken Rage is Tyler Gatchell. I said, yes, Tyler, good morning,
Speaker 1: how are you? I was it? Tell funk around to
Speaker 1: tell me what's up. I said, I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 1: He goes, well, we were wondering here in the office
Speaker 1: if you'd like to play old Deuteronomy and cats for us,
Speaker 1: and you know you're not feeling when your heart like
Speaker 1: sinks and rises at the same time. And I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: yes I will, I would please, Yes, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: How long did you do the show? Two years? Did
Speaker 1: you find that? You know? Two years? I mean, my god,
Speaker 1: two years of your life? Every night? What happens during
Speaker 1: the ark of the two years? Many things. The beginning,
Speaker 1: of course, is exciting because it's the opening and it's
Speaker 1: this and the energy and that carries you almost a year.
Speaker 1: Then it settles in like, okay, now they're coming to
Speaker 1: see what they've heard about, which means second phase. You've
Speaker 1: got to deliver the show. It's not just a matter
Speaker 1: of coming out there on the energy of being fabulous
Speaker 1: and amazing. Now you've got to deliver them to show
Speaker 1: that they have paid this high price ticket to see
Speaker 1: that they've heard is amazing. I like to say that's
Speaker 1: the second phase. You've got to You've got to meet
Speaker 1: the standard of the show, not just your own standard.
Speaker 1: And then the third phase is where I think it
Speaker 1: becomes a matter of being a professional, where you you
Speaker 1: know what you're supposed to do, you know the temperature
Speaker 1: of the show, you know what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1: If you know what I mean and you do it,
Speaker 1: it isn't always inspired, because some nights you do not
Speaker 1: feel it, but you have po road marks that you
Speaker 1: hit that gets you through the show, and your technique
Speaker 1: will carry you the performer. The show will carry everyone,
Speaker 1: but your technique will carry you personally. And I think
Speaker 1: also it has a lot to do with how you
Speaker 1: were trained and you know how you came through the
Speaker 1: ropes as to how you do that. I came from
Speaker 1: the old school of you know, you give it your all,
Speaker 1: you hit it, and if you're doing that, you're not
Speaker 1: even conscious of it being maybe boring or a little
Speaker 1: wrote because you always find yourself in the doing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're considered one of the great great performers in the
Speaker 1: musical theater, and you walk into the room. What does
Speaker 1: the director have to offer you? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: will use someone as an example. It's Michael Griff, who
Speaker 1: directed many wonderful things, but Rent was among them. And
Speaker 1: I've worked with Michael twice. We did a production of
Speaker 1: Brandy Newman's Faust. I love Michael Griffe because he's one
Speaker 1: of the and I I you know, I admit I'm
Speaker 1: not easy because I've been around a long time. So
Speaker 1: if you don't know something, you better know something. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm leading to. Yeah, And my feeling is if
Speaker 1: you know something, I'm down with it. Tell me what
Speaker 1: you know. But if you don't know anything, you cannot
Speaker 1: fake it out with me because I see you. As
Speaker 1: my grandmother said, I knew where you were going before
Speaker 1: you knew where you were going. It's real, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Michael Griff is one of those directors
Speaker 1: where and he's so like open and interested in what
Speaker 1: you think, and not in the sense of you get
Speaker 1: to do whatever you want. That's not it at all.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, let's talk about what is it that
Speaker 1: you think. There's no bad ideas. There's no bad ideas,
Speaker 1: so there's no bad idea. And I did another show
Speaker 1: with him called Most Wanted, a musical which was Believing
Speaker 1: or Not, a musicalization of the Kunanan murder. It was
Speaker 1: really actually very very good and dark and so forth.
Speaker 1: It was too dark for people. This is before the
Speaker 1: TV movie and all that sort of stuff, and people
Speaker 1: were freaked the funk out. You get a musical about that, Yes,
Speaker 1: a wonderful musical. And of course Rosashi was the end
Speaker 1: of his murdering spree. What was the name of the show,
Speaker 1: post Wanted? Oh my God? And what year was this produced?
Speaker 1: Oh god, about fifteen years ago at Lahoya Playhouse. And
Speaker 1: it didn't transfer, It didn't go anywhere. They talked about it.
Speaker 1: We did another reading thing of it in New York.
Speaker 1: I played a drag queen named Stormy Leather. Oh God,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I had this great song called I Never Saw It Coming,
Speaker 1: which was about how you do these things in life
Speaker 1: and you never see it coming. You think you're gonna
Speaker 1: do this, you're gonna be that, You're gonna do, and
Speaker 1: then something else happens and you never see it coming.
Speaker 1: And the first line of the song was I met
Speaker 1: a bit the boy, which gives you a set up.
Speaker 1: I knew a bit the boy had it all class, money,
Speaker 1: everything and so and so forth. Very deep, very dark show. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Michael says to me. And I'm doing the thing and
Speaker 1: it's working. You know, it's doing well, I said, Michael,
Speaker 1: I keep having this feeling. I said, would you mind
Speaker 1: if I can I smoke? And this is the example
Speaker 1: of Michael Grive And he looked at me as only
Speaker 1: he kidding. I wish you would please do? I said yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And it changed the whole feel of it, because one
Speaker 1: the lighting and the cigarette smoke and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And it gave me something to start with. And I
Speaker 1: exhaled on the first note, you know, all that kind
Speaker 1: of should you do? And it made it a thought
Speaker 1: rather than a delivery of a thought. It was a
Speaker 1: Burrows in the sandwich all over again. That's right. Hey, Hello,
Speaker 1: if I could take an inhale on this cigarette and
Speaker 1: exhale and go, I met a boy, bitch had it all.
Speaker 1: It's set up a whole different thing. You know now
Speaker 1: l a New York L, A New York L A
Speaker 1: New York St. Louis. How did the Great Ken Page
Speaker 1: decide St. Louis is where I need to be in
Speaker 1: this point in my life. Well, other than your mom,
Speaker 1: Well that's kind of I mean, if it were only
Speaker 1: you know, it was my mom, my stepdad. I have
Speaker 1: two aunts, one of whom I'm in charge of her
Speaker 1: care now she's in a facility. But I knew like
Speaker 1: that they were all getting older. And the older I got,
Speaker 1: the more I started to understand they weren't these wizard
Speaker 1: people that I thought they were when I was young.
Speaker 1: They were vulnerable. There were needs that they had that
Speaker 1: they didn't even know how to be in to address,
Speaker 1: and as they got older, they couldn't, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of jockey their way through it. It was becoming more
Speaker 1: of an issue how to dot dot dot and not,
Speaker 1: you know, to put it all on them. It was
Speaker 1: easy as easier to be here. And I did a
Speaker 1: calculation of could I still work from here? And I
Speaker 1: had initiated a show that I do called Page by Page,
Speaker 1: which is a autobiographical two hour one hand and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and I went all over the country with it.
Speaker 1: That's how I kept my bills paid. I took I
Speaker 1: got on the road like an old actor does, and
Speaker 1: I sang my songs and I got my check and
Speaker 1: I touched a lot of people. But I could do
Speaker 1: that from St. Louis. Of course, show business, whether it's sports, music, entertainment,
Speaker 1: the African American performer gets into the same limo. He's
Speaker 1: picked up to go to the show. He's got the
Speaker 1: star dressing room. Everything is when you're making money for them.
Speaker 1: Everything is as fluffy and as comfortable for the white
Speaker 1: or the black performer. But whoever roadblocks for you in
Speaker 1: that area getting all the time. It's a constant that
Speaker 1: I can say that, and I don't mean that to
Speaker 1: be evasive. It's a constant from the time. I think
Speaker 1: of when I started in seventy six with guys and dolls,
Speaker 1: where people would say, to my face, how dare you
Speaker 1: that'st w K's role, And I'm thinking, but I'm up
Speaker 1: there eight times a week. I'm doing it on on on,
Speaker 1: through many things. Cats. When I was casting Cats, there
Speaker 1: were people black and white who just we're not having it.
Speaker 1: The white continuency thought someone why you should of course
Speaker 1: been cast. Why did they cast me? My brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters were like, well, you've gone over to the enemy,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But mind you, any one
Speaker 1: of them would have certainly been happy to have the part.
Speaker 1: So it's a constant in Hollywood. It was very difficult.
Speaker 1: There were many auditions. I went on Alec where they
Speaker 1: just wanted me to just be more urban, which was
Speaker 1: a code, you know. I did one show where I
Speaker 1: played the owner of a diet company. Okay, that's funny enough.
Speaker 1: I'm a big guy. But as the progression of the
Speaker 1: rehearsals went on, they said, well, you're gonna come in
Speaker 1: eating a candy bar. I thought, come on, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny enough, you don't have to put a candy bar.
Speaker 1: By the time we got to filming, they gave me
Speaker 1: a giant, oversized hershey bar that I was to walk
Speaker 1: in with, and those kinds of things. That's just sort
Speaker 1: of on the one side, but it it is a constant,
Speaker 1: and it continues, you know. And because I have been
Speaker 1: around a long time and I am sixty seven years
Speaker 1: old as of yesterday, you know what I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: know what's up. And people try to bullshit you with
Speaker 1: stuff that they're trying to veil, or you know, they're
Speaker 1: really being racial, or they're being prejudicial. My generation, we
Speaker 1: were the beneficiaries of the idea of we better do
Speaker 1: the right thing because people are watching. The generation before
Speaker 1: us was we can do anything we want because nobody's watching.
Speaker 1: You know, my kids are obviously going through the catalog
Speaker 1: of films and they wanted to start watching Nightmare before Christmas.
Speaker 1: And of course there's nothing more thrilling in my life
Speaker 1: than them being captivated by a performance of you as
Speaker 1: Boogie Boogie and me sitting there on a couch with
Speaker 1: my kids and going, I know him, I know him.
Speaker 1: And then my kids are gonna be like, oh please,
Speaker 1: I've never seen night there before Christmas, and I see
Speaker 1: it like six months ago, and we watch it. You know,
Speaker 1: the kids want to watch every movie twenty times, and
Speaker 1: so we watch it. It's very inventive and inside of
Speaker 1: that song, it defines your talent. You do so many things.
Speaker 1: What makes you one of the greatest performers in the
Speaker 1: history of the musical theater ever is the acting inside
Speaker 1: the singing. How did that go down? As a child?
Speaker 1: Like I said in my room, playing cast albums and
Speaker 1: being everybody on the album and so forth. That was
Speaker 1: the beginning of all that for me, because you know,
Speaker 1: for me, I wasn't seeing anything. I was only hearing
Speaker 1: it right. So when Nightmamber four, Christmas came around, I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm gonna get to do what I've
Speaker 1: been tipping around for years. Man, do you ever, man?
Speaker 1: Do you ever? You feel that song you've got There's
Speaker 1: so much great acting inside that song, and the and
Speaker 1: the and your vocalizing. I produced you in a show
Speaker 1: one time. Yes, And I think the deepest I ever
Speaker 1: fell in love with another man, I'm a straight guy.
Speaker 1: But the deepest I've ever fell in love with the
Speaker 1: man was when he sang are you with me? We're
Speaker 1: gonna sing one phrase of this ready whispering above Tam
Speaker 1: Tammy ties in love. You sang that song and I
Speaker 1: melted in the I thought, this guy is the most
Speaker 1: beautiful soul. And you are of the people I've known
Speaker 1: in this business, one of the most beautiful souls I've
Speaker 1: ever met. My laugh here so talented, Well, that is
Speaker 1: beyond kind. I love you, and I love your talent.
Speaker 1: I'll love you back. Actor and singer Ken Paige. Betty
Speaker 1: Buckley grew up dreaming of singing her heart out and
Speaker 1: in the stuff of legend. On her first day in
Speaker 1: New York City, Betty Buckley landed a part in the
Speaker 1: Broadway musical seventeen seventy six. That early success gave her
Speaker 1: a chance to prove to herself and the folks back
Speaker 1: home she was ready. My mom had been a singer
Speaker 1: dancer growing up, and she was very good, very talented,
Speaker 1: but my father, when he married her, told her she
Speaker 1: couldn't do that anymore. My father was a lieutenant colonel
Speaker 1: in the Air Force. When I was in the fifth grade,
Speaker 1: he retired and he became a college professor. He was
Speaker 1: a really brilliant guy, but he was very opposed to
Speaker 1: show business. And my mother had this extensive cast album
Speaker 1: collection and all the great singers and everything, and she
Speaker 1: sang around that house all the time. So I was
Speaker 1: exposed to all that very early on and loved it
Speaker 1: from and she took me to see my first musical,
Speaker 1: which was Pajama Game with the original Bob Fossey choreography,
Speaker 1: when I was eleven, and when the number steam heat
Speaker 1: and I remember where I was sitting in the theater,
Speaker 1: and there was this energy that just went up to
Speaker 1: my head. What I've learned as an adult was an epiphany.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like boom that that's what you're
Speaker 1: going to be doing for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: So then from age eleven, I became fixated on that.
Speaker 1: What did you do with that fixation? Well, I listened
Speaker 1: Bye Bye Bertie all the time, and I told my mother,
Speaker 1: you know, I could play one of the teenagers in that,
Speaker 1: and when she was mad at me, I would run
Speaker 1: down the hall into her room and slide in on
Speaker 1: my knees and do the whole speech that the kid
Speaker 1: does to Conrad Bertie, tell us a beautiful one. Tell
Speaker 1: us how you make that glorious? Sala looked around my
Speaker 1: house for years. My mother would go, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do you homework? I go, baby, really sublime. I
Speaker 1: mean I knew that song exactly. That was his junior
Speaker 1: high talent show that I wanted to be in. But
Speaker 1: I was really short forever. I was like four ft
Speaker 1: eight inches tall for m and I grew all at
Speaker 1: once in one summer, I thought I would be short forever,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, thought, well, maybe I'll be the
Speaker 1: first girl jockey, you know. But anyway, there was this
Speaker 1: talent show and I came home and I knew they
Speaker 1: would never ask me to be in it. But I'd
Speaker 1: studied dance with my aunts since I was three. She
Speaker 1: was a dance teacher and my grandmother, so I had
Speaker 1: these two very powerful female role models that were performers
Speaker 1: and artists. And I told my mother I wanted to
Speaker 1: do Steam Heat and the Junior High Talent Show. And
Speaker 1: my mother was like, oh, that's interesting because the guys
Speaker 1: who were the choreographer and the director of that just
Speaker 1: opened a dance studio in Fort Worth. I will call them.
Speaker 1: So she called them and said, my daughter wants to
Speaker 1: learn and Steam Heat and they said, well, can she sings?
Speaker 1: And I was like yeah, because I sung in the
Speaker 1: church choir, but they always put me in the back
Speaker 1: road and told me to blend in, you know. So
Speaker 1: I sang and they said no, no, Betty, sing as
Speaker 1: loud as you can. So I knew I had this
Speaker 1: giant voice. When did you know you had a giant voice? When?
Speaker 1: Because I was constantly singing with all the great lady
Speaker 1: singers in my bedroom to their albums and basically imitating them,
Speaker 1: and I knew I had this like sound, and but
Speaker 1: I didn't know its value because our choir teacher would
Speaker 1: always put me on the back road and really get
Speaker 1: annoyed because my voice cuts through, you know, and and
Speaker 1: I was trying so hard to sing soft, but it
Speaker 1: still has this resonant edge. So so they told me
Speaker 1: to sing as loud as I could. So I did,
Speaker 1: and I just felt unleashed, and they were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. And they those guys made me realize I
Speaker 1: had this unique voice. So they gave me the original
Speaker 1: Fosse choreography, and I got in the Junior High Talent
Speaker 1: show and I brought the house down. They all went nuts,
Speaker 1: and from that time I was like little bitty Betty
Speaker 1: Buckley with this giant voice. Then my mother became this
Speaker 1: like huge stage mother, and she was constantly entering me
Speaker 1: and everything, and my father was going nuts about it.
Speaker 1: And then I got my first professional job when I
Speaker 1: was fifteen. I played the role of Dainty June and
Speaker 1: Gypsy at our local theater and I joined Equity and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and then I worked there every summer,
Speaker 1: and so I had a lot of experience. By the
Speaker 1: time I got to New York. What got you to
Speaker 1: New York? Well, I I was recruited to enter the
Speaker 1: missful Worth pageant. I hated beauty pageants. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to say all that, because I have friends and
Speaker 1: beauty pageants and I won a lot of scholarships, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't for you. Shall we say? I was this
Speaker 1: budding young feminist. I was. I was a charter subscriber
Speaker 1: to Miss magazine. In glorious Tina gave me words for
Speaker 1: all these feelings of inequity that Gloria Steine. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. I'll take that. But you didn't want that, No,
Speaker 1: I was embarrassed by it. I remember once I won
Speaker 1: the missfoot Worth pageant, because I was basically recruited to
Speaker 1: do that. And then I was in the Miss Texas pageant.
Speaker 1: I didn't win the talent competition, which was really strange.
Speaker 1: So I was runner up to Miss Texas, I think
Speaker 1: second runner up or something. But the producer of the
Speaker 1: Miss America pageant was there, and I was invited the
Speaker 1: following year to be a guest entertainer at the Miss
Speaker 1: American pageant. And this agent saw me on television singing
Speaker 1: dance and they asked me to fly to New York
Speaker 1: right after the Miss American pageant audition for them. So
Speaker 1: it was Ashley Famous Agency, which became my CM. And
Speaker 1: there was a very famous agent named Eric Shepard who
Speaker 1: I sang for these like eleven or twelve agents, and
Speaker 1: he just stood up and said signer and he walked
Speaker 1: out of the room. So this responsible agent, roder Has
Speaker 1: who went on to become a big Broadway producer. He's
Speaker 1: a really nice, wonderful guy, still a great friend. He said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? And I said I
Speaker 1: have to go back and finish college or my father
Speaker 1: will kill me. And so he he was like, okay,
Speaker 1: do that, and when you finished college, you'll come to
Speaker 1: New York. And you did finish TCU for journalism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Why why journalism? Because my mother had been a journalist.
Speaker 1: My dad thought that being a journalist was a complimentary
Speaker 1: profession for a wife and mother to the husband. But
Speaker 1: that my purpose in life, as all young women should have,
Speaker 1: he thought, was to be married and have children. But
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: to New York and and I knew what my voice
Speaker 1: would sound like, and I knew how it would affect people.
Speaker 1: And then when I was thirty five and I was
Speaker 1: in my dressing room at the Winter Garden, they brought
Speaker 1: in my recording of memory after we'd made the record,
Speaker 1: and I heard the recording and that vision flashback of
Speaker 1: when I was thirteen, and I was like, oh, he
Speaker 1: took from age thirteen to thirty five, but there it is.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this agent kept calling me after college and
Speaker 1: asking me to come to New York and I was
Speaker 1: at that point I was really experiencing I think PTSD
Speaker 1: because I'd been with Miss America on a USO tour
Speaker 1: and Miss America and I and one other girl went
Speaker 1: into all the intensive care units and all the hospitals
Speaker 1: in Japan, and we also toured all the military bases
Speaker 1: in Korea. I was like, my dad is wrong. War
Speaker 1: is not noble. You know. My father was a real
Speaker 1: hawk and he really believed in the nobility of war
Speaker 1: and stuff. And I I came back really changed, and
Speaker 1: we were in a consistent debate about the validity of
Speaker 1: a show business career, which he thought was beneath me.
Speaker 1: And I was very confused about it all. And I
Speaker 1: was also in love. When I was in a senior
Speaker 1: with this Dallas cowboy quarterback, and he turned out to
Speaker 1: be he broke my heart. So when I came back,
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, forget my show business aspirations. Because I
Speaker 1: was a journalism major and I'd written for this newspaper
Speaker 1: quite at I even had a team page when I
Speaker 1: was in college for the Fourth Press, so I had
Speaker 1: a job there and I thought, Okay, that's it. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna do this. And so the agent kept calling
Speaker 1: and he got me to come see this show in
Speaker 1: Dallas with my mother, which was an industrial show that
Speaker 1: Flip Wilson, the comedian was doing with a band called
Speaker 1: Your Father's Mustache. So they called me up on stage
Speaker 1: and had me sing. And the only song I knew
Speaker 1: my key and was You Made Me Love You. So
Speaker 1: I sang it and the audience went nuts, which was great.
Speaker 1: And then Rogers talks to the buyer and they offered
Speaker 1: me a job to put me in this show but
Speaker 1: to pretend I'm an audience member in all these different cities.
Speaker 1: And they offered me a lot of money. It was
Speaker 1: way more than I was being paid at the Fourth Press.
Speaker 1: So my father couldn't deny the job the money, and
Speaker 1: so he reluctantly. Let me do that. When I think
Speaker 1: of you, I think of the acting and the singing,
Speaker 1: and the acting is in the singing. Thank you. When
Speaker 1: you teach people, you teach acting or singing. I've taught
Speaker 1: for the Terry Schriber School for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: and I used to teach scenes study and song interpretation.
Speaker 1: And I was teaching these five day workshops maybe three
Speaker 1: times a year for them whenever I was in New York.
Speaker 1: And what do you teach them about how the acting
Speaker 1: influences the singing? Well, that's complicated. I was really fortunate
Speaker 1: that in seventeen seventy six I worked with all these
Speaker 1: incredible actors. They were like thirty men and two women,
Speaker 1: and they really mentored me, and they were like, set
Speaker 1: me down when I was twenty one, and I've gotten
Speaker 1: that show my first day in New York City because
Speaker 1: of this wonderful agent, Roger Hess, who got me to
Speaker 1: New York and shepherd me into that. And so I
Speaker 1: got that audition, which was amazing. So they sent me
Speaker 1: down and said, look, Betty, this is what you're good at,
Speaker 1: this is what you've got talent wise, and this is
Speaker 1: what you need to learn. Go here, go there, do this,
Speaker 1: and so I did because I loved musical theater. I
Speaker 1: love but it used to be called musical comedy, right,
Speaker 1: So there was like a dancing chorus in a scene
Speaker 1: in chorus, and you know, everything was separate, and everything
Speaker 1: was like that, you know, shove is And so I
Speaker 1: wanted I really My favorite actresses were Kim Stanley and
Speaker 1: Geraldine Page and later on General Rowlands, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what it must be like to have
Speaker 1: that skill heavy duty dramatic act to do like really
Speaker 1: psychological portraits, to like bring raw truth to uh theater
Speaker 1: and film. And you know, I wanted to be that
Speaker 1: skilled and I wasn't. So I was really lucky that
Speaker 1: in that time period I did some Broadways shows. And
Speaker 1: then I got that TV show eight is Enough and
Speaker 1: not eight is enough. I went to my dailies and
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, I get I see
Speaker 1: ten seconds of good work over there when I'm in
Speaker 1: the doorway. Why can't I bring that same quality to
Speaker 1: the same work? Right? What's wrong with me? And I
Speaker 1: was also studying with Stella Adler. I never put my
Speaker 1: work in front of her. I took her acting class.
Speaker 1: I took her script analysis class in New York, and
Speaker 1: I took her script analysis class again in l A
Speaker 1: while I was on eight Enough. I knew I wasn't
Speaker 1: a good enough actress to keep my sense of self
Speaker 1: respect or whatever, you know. If she gave me her
Speaker 1: like Syrian critiques, I wasn't ready, So that was okay.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot in the back road, taking copious notes.
Speaker 1: But that TV show was great because I really was
Speaker 1: able to see what worked and why you were on
Speaker 1: there for two seasons, three seasons? How many? For four
Speaker 1: seasons Dick Van Patten. Yeah. And then on the heels
Speaker 1: of It is Enough, I got the wonderful classic American
Speaker 1: film Tender Mercy, starring Robert Duval with a Horton foot
Speaker 1: script directed by Bruce Beresford, and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, she's an alcoholic country western singing. It was
Speaker 1: like written for me. It was amazing, and I learned
Speaker 1: so much working with Duval and Wilford Brimley and Ellen Barkin.
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't let me see my dailies until I
Speaker 1: finished the job. And then they brought me in on
Speaker 1: a Saturday and had me sit down and look at
Speaker 1: my scenes. Back to back, and I sat there in
Speaker 1: that little screening room and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I know how to do this. Now when you're there,
Speaker 1: You're in Los Angeles. Is enough? Was what the late seventies,
Speaker 1: mid seventies to eight one. So when you're out there
Speaker 1: doing you shot out in California. And when you're out
Speaker 1: there and you go from a show that I recall
Speaker 1: was a successful show that was a hit show, huge,
Speaker 1: Why don't you just stay out in California and camp
Speaker 1: out there and pursue movies and television? Well, were you
Speaker 1: just addicted to singing on Broadway? Well? I knew I
Speaker 1: was going to sing on Broadway, and I had this
Speaker 1: brilliant teacher and I was flying back to work with
Speaker 1: him every six weeks, which the heads of eight is
Speaker 1: enough mocked me for I remember this guy passed me
Speaker 1: in the parking lot and I was driving a Bundy
Speaker 1: rental wreck and he had a black Porsche and he
Speaker 1: but sleek, black hair and wore black clothes and he's like,
Speaker 1: where are you going? And I'm like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: New York for my voice. Listening goes, you have such
Speaker 1: delusion of grander Betty, you'll be lucky if you play
Speaker 1: American Mothers the rest of your life. And I was like,
Speaker 1: we'll see, Greg, will see. Isn't that horrible? They were
Speaker 1: really weird guys, I mean, and they were mean, really mean.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I survived all that, and so I got
Speaker 1: this Tender Mercy and then I got Cats that following
Speaker 1: on the heels of that. Tender Mercies was actually released
Speaker 1: in the winter that Cats opened in October. But is
Speaker 1: that what you want? To go? From Tender Mercies to
Speaker 1: the next movie. Yeah, that would have been great. But
Speaker 1: my dream was to bring like really that authenticity to
Speaker 1: the musical theater to originate, right, And so those of
Speaker 1: us who were fortunate enough to work in the musical theater,
Speaker 1: we changed the face of the musical theater in that
Speaker 1: time period, you know, with Sondheim, foss All that it
Speaker 1: evolved from musical comedy to musical theater. And Grizabella in
Speaker 1: in Cats Senior Memory was my first opportunity to bring
Speaker 1: that level of dramatic intensity to the musical theater stage.
Speaker 1: And I knew it was my turn, and I knew
Speaker 1: I was ready to do that. So, had you been
Speaker 1: offered an attractive role in a film on the heels
Speaker 1: of tender mercies. You would have passed because Kat's was
Speaker 1: what you wanted to do. That well, I think that's
Speaker 1: a weird exercise. Would I have passed? I don't know
Speaker 1: everything I'm sharing with you. I learned in retrospect and
Speaker 1: but honestly, growing up, I didn't think I was beautiful,
Speaker 1: and I aspired to the musical theater. That I met
Speaker 1: Brian de Palma and auditioned for his film Phantom of
Speaker 1: the Paradise. He didn't cast me, but several months after
Speaker 1: that he took me to dinner and gave me the
Speaker 1: book Carrie and said, read this book. I want you
Speaker 1: to play the gym teacher. Awful gym teacher. She was
Speaker 1: a great character. So that was a great film debut
Speaker 1: that he gave me the opportunity to do. And then
Speaker 1: from that movie I got eight is enough now? It
Speaker 1: is enough? Was at the time I thought I'd made
Speaker 1: a horrible miss day taking a job. Why because I
Speaker 1: was like working in a factory and in retrospect only
Speaker 1: it was where I needed to be to learn the
Speaker 1: next thing. Well, no, Cats, I mean there's not much
Speaker 1: to say about Cats. I think that hasn't been said. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's this iconic and your performance and there's a song
Speaker 1: which we don't need to go into now that you're
Speaker 1: sing that is this kind of dream state everybody goes
Speaker 1: into when they sing this song. Good description, that's accurate,
Speaker 1: a dream stay, and I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: the music and Cats is a dream state. It's really
Speaker 1: it's just you have to suspend. It's moving art. It's
Speaker 1: like an art installation. Yeah, you can't have any preconceptions
Speaker 1: of what, just to sit there and go with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's like and when I think about that,
Speaker 1: what I think about is you work hard in the theater.
Speaker 1: People work hard. Did you have any ongoing injuries pains?
Speaker 1: Did you suffer physically from your years of working in
Speaker 1: the theater. Yeah, my knees were shot after two of
Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard, running up and downstairs twelve times a night,
Speaker 1: and then repetitive choreography. I had a shoulder replacement in
Speaker 1: my right shoulder was replaced in September, which I'm really grateful.
Speaker 1: I did. It's and then the surgeon was great and
Speaker 1: that apparatus is great. I'm really grateful. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to have a knee. Probably both kneeds replaced, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start with one. But you have to be in
Speaker 1: a process either with a great osteopath or chiropractor or
Speaker 1: the other. Thing. I found out recently that's very disturbing
Speaker 1: to me, as I've had because of working in these
Speaker 1: dusty old theaters that they never keep clean and mold
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere and stuff. I've had repetitive bouts of
Speaker 1: bronchitis for years now and it's created a kind of
Speaker 1: asthmatic lung condition that I have to work with now,
Speaker 1: which is not nice. Singer and actor Betty Buckley be
Speaker 1: sure to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast
Speaker 1: when we come back. Betty Buckley talks about the challenges
Speaker 1: of playing Norma Desmond and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Betty
Speaker 1: Buckley worked with famed British director Trevor Nunn twice, first
Speaker 1: in Cats In two, then again in Sunset Boulevard. In
Speaker 1: in the intervening years, Betty Buckley's confidence in her own
Speaker 1: vision grew. First of all, he's a genius in the
Speaker 1: way he directed us in Cats, and the way he
Speaker 1: put all that together was really unbelievable. I mean, no
Speaker 1: other Cats company had that kind of amazing bond. We
Speaker 1: did improv workshops, theater games and at least a month
Speaker 1: of rehearsals and a couple of weeks on our hands
Speaker 1: and kneeses Cats, but just incredible Grotowski theater games and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. What does he have to offer you
Speaker 1: when you do Sunset? Well, it was interesting because they
Speaker 1: flew me to London and my audition took an hour.
Speaker 1: I've never auditioned that long in my life. They brought
Speaker 1: me in a week in advance and taught me all
Speaker 1: the songs and then told me I had to sing
Speaker 1: them in Glenn close his keys, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I won't be singing them in Glenn close his keys,
Speaker 1: And so the music director was a little in flams
Speaker 1: about that, and then he kept coming up on stage
Speaker 1: directing me and directing me. And I'm a meditator, so
Speaker 1: whatever they threw at me, I just stayed in my
Speaker 1: focus and did what they said. And then when I
Speaker 1: got the part, I was then back in London in
Speaker 1: this rehearsal process, and I was like, okay, So I
Speaker 1: brought in mythological references the Greek drama Medusa media and
Speaker 1: he was interested in that. And then he would listen
Speaker 1: really closely and then he say, okay, show me, and
Speaker 1: then I would show him what I meant, and gradually,
Speaker 1: over a six week rehearsal process to eight weeks, I
Speaker 1: saw him liking what I was doing right, and I
Speaker 1: and then he gave me rain to interpret it that way.
Speaker 1: You earned the right to do it your way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so then we opened and it was like a
Speaker 1: huge success, and I was just like, oh, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: So then I got New York and they were very
Speaker 1: nervous because the New York Times they followed me around
Speaker 1: to do this big feature in the Arts and Leisure section,
Speaker 1: and it was really nice. This writer was really great,
Speaker 1: but the angle the editor wanted was is she a
Speaker 1: big enough star to replace Glenn Close. So they were
Speaker 1: really nervous that my interpretation because it was so vastly
Speaker 1: different from what Glenn Close had done. It was vastly
Speaker 1: different from what any of them had done, and so
Speaker 1: they got nervous. And he was very nervous Trevor None, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I one day in rehearsal, he was very nervous
Speaker 1: and very upset, and I was like, what, what's going on?
Speaker 1: And so I started crying because I couldn't understand what
Speaker 1: he wanted. And when I was crying, he said this, this,
Speaker 1: This is what's missing. And I was I said what what?
Speaker 1: And he goes this and I was like wretched because
Speaker 1: I felt wretched. He goes wretched and I said oh,
Speaker 1: and then I just stopped crying. I said, why didn't
Speaker 1: you just tell me that? Where do you want wretched?
Speaker 1: And so I got really calm and he goes okay.
Speaker 1: And then we went through the whole script and he
Speaker 1: goes here, here, here, and here, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I said, I saw all you gotta do. Just tell
Speaker 1: me what you need now, Betty Buckley, I want to
Speaker 1: get to something else. The power of your voice and
Speaker 1: the uniqueness. Where does the power come from? Can I
Speaker 1: just share with you a moment I had with you
Speaker 1: when we were younger. We were at a big public
Speaker 1: theater benefit years ago and you were part of it too,
Speaker 1: and I sang Aquarius and it was a very powerful
Speaker 1: performance and you were watching me, and and you just
Speaker 1: like shook your head, and I was like so touched
Speaker 1: by that because I felt so seen and cherished and
Speaker 1: valued by you than you. So you ask where my
Speaker 1: power comes from. It comes from a spiritual connection, right,
Speaker 1: It's like I believe that essence, all human beings are connected.
Speaker 1: Like I have a heart that's beting that wants to
Speaker 1: love and be loved. You have a heart that's being
Speaker 1: that wants to love and be loved. At that essence,
Speaker 1: we are entirely the same. Our stories are different, but
Speaker 1: that I am no, that essence is the same. Since
Speaker 1: my since I was like twenty six years old, and
Speaker 1: I've been on this quest, thought there has to be
Speaker 1: a handbook. And I found that there's like this core
Speaker 1: body of truth in every religion, in every major philosophy
Speaker 1: on the planet. So I found meditation. While I was
Speaker 1: on Ati Is Enough. I went my ex husband Peter Flood,
Speaker 1: took me to a meditation class after my first season
Speaker 1: on It Is Enough. And then I learned that I
Speaker 1: could use meditation in my work and that there was
Speaker 1: this higher consciousness in me that was the creative force
Speaker 1: that if I made myself an instrument of that good
Speaker 1: things happened, and I was a witness about that as
Speaker 1: surely as the audience was. And I learned how to
Speaker 1: do that before Cats and before Tender Mercies, and then
Speaker 1: my work just changed and every everything opened up. And
Speaker 1: the power that I was able to access as an
Speaker 1: instrument of that consciousness, that's where it comes from. Is
Speaker 1: I'm meditating my way through that. And it's like being
Speaker 1: away on Mr. Toad's wild ride, right, because when you
Speaker 1: have a part like Norma Desmond that you can go
Speaker 1: all out, full tilt boogie to quote Janis Joplin, then
Speaker 1: this it's like holding to this mantra, holding to this
Speaker 1: like focus point and then let everything happen. That's how
Speaker 1: I work. You are on island of your own in
Speaker 1: terms of your talent and your uniqueness. It's just as unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable you, Alec. I feel humbled by your compliment.
Speaker 1: Thank you well. Listen, um, we interviewed Ken, my old
Speaker 1: friend Ken, and the thing the two of you also
Speaker 1: have in common other than cats, as you both went
Speaker 1: home can move back to St. Louis. Yeah, he moved
Speaker 1: back to take care of his mom, isn't he the
Speaker 1: greatest guy ever. He and I had addressing room right
Speaker 1: next to each other at the Winter Garden, so we
Speaker 1: were really close pals. He's a lovely, lovely man. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this one more question, which is,
Speaker 1: if I'm on iTunes, which of these albums would you
Speaker 1: say is not your favorite? Which one you're particularly fond of?
Speaker 1: Ghost Like the two bum Burnett produced is a beautiful
Speaker 1: album that's very haunting, and the Tibon and I grew
Speaker 1: up together and forth and he made the first recording
Speaker 1: of my voice when we were both like seventeen, but
Speaker 1: so ghost Light. And then my recent stuff that I
Speaker 1: really love is story songs and hope. Thank you for
Speaker 1: taking the time to do this. My love to you, Aleck,
Speaker 1: thank you, good luck down there. I adore you and
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to connect with you. Thank you, My
Speaker 1: thanks to Broadway legends Betty Buckley and Ken Paige. I'll
Speaker 1: leave you with Betty singing as if we never said
Speaker 1: goodbye from Sunset Boulevard Live at Carnegie Hall. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the thing from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: The Whispered Conversations, an old cloud of so much to say,
Speaker 1: not just today, bottle well, wellness well, the body in
Speaker 1: the making. Guess everything's as if never sad boy. Everything says,
Speaker 1: if we never said good bye, we taught the world
Speaker 1: you waste too dream