Speaker 1: Hey, it's Alec. On September thirtieth, the Great White Way
Speaker 1: lost one of its brightest stars, the legendary Ken Page.
Speaker 1: The actor, singer and drama desk winner was known for
Speaker 1: his booming baritone and commanding presence in shows like Cats,
Speaker 1: the Whiz and Ain't Misbehavin And no one can forget
Speaker 1: his iconic portrayal of Oogie Boogie in the Nightmare Before Christmas.
Speaker 1: I wanted to take a moment to remember my dear
Speaker 1: friend Ken and the joy and charisma he brought to
Speaker 1: each and every performance. Ken, you are deeply missed. Here's
Speaker 1: my twenty twenty one conversation with two of my favorite
Speaker 1: musical theater performers, the late Ken Page and Betty Buckley.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from iHeart Radio. My guests today are two of my
Speaker 1: all time favorite musical theater actors, Ken Page and Betty Buckley,
Speaker 1: and there are parallels to their stories. Both grew up
Speaker 1: dreaming of performing on Broadway. Ken in Saint Louis, Betty
Speaker 1: and fort Worth both were cast in the original Broadway
Speaker 1: production of Cats, Ken as Old Deuteronomy and Betty as Guizabella,
Speaker 1: for which she wanted Tony. Both became key figures in
Speaker 1: the vibrant community that transformed musical theater over the past
Speaker 1: several decades. In addition to being the voice of Broadway,
Speaker 1: Betty Buckley's acting Chops earned her roles as the stepmom
Speaker 1: on the hit TV series Eight Is Enough and in
Speaker 1: films including Carrie, Tender Mercies, and Frantic. But first, I'm
Speaker 1: talking with Ken Page. You may know him as the
Speaker 1: voice of Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas. In
Speaker 1: his breakout role on Broadway, he played Nicely Nicely Johnson
Speaker 1: in an all black revival of Guys and Dolls in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. He went on to perform as the
Speaker 1: Lion in The Whiz and in the original cast of
Speaker 1: Ain't Misbehavior. Ken Page was drawn to musical theater early.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was my lifeblood. It was the thing that
Speaker 2: got me out of where I was to where I went.
Speaker 2: It was the thing that kept me going through years
Speaker 2: of up and down childhood things. But it was always
Speaker 2: musical theater and all of that related world that got
Speaker 2: me through. I mean, I remember being ten and eleven,
Speaker 2: of course, watching Barbara Streisen's TV specials going. I am
Speaker 2: Barbara Streisen, and I would go to the library in
Speaker 2: Saint Louis, the big public Library, and in the basement
Speaker 2: they had a section of LPs and I would thumb
Speaker 2: through all of these Broadway cast albums. I would read
Speaker 2: the liner notes. And this one lady when I first
Speaker 2: couple of times that came, she was a little trevitas, like,
Speaker 2: what are you doing in here? And she saw, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd be sitting on the floor reading Broadway cast album
Speaker 2: liner notes, and I'm sure she thought, is this child
Speaker 2: from Mars the deal? Right? But I started to educate
Speaker 2: myself that early about musical theater because it just fascinated me.
Speaker 2: And of course the own two only things that I
Speaker 2: really saw was the Tony Awards once a year, and
Speaker 2: I would see all the shows and I was fascinated
Speaker 2: by it. And we had this grand outdoor theater still
Speaker 2: have in Saint Louis call At that time it was
Speaker 2: the Municipal Opera and now it's called the Muni, so
Speaker 2: a lot of people in the business know the Muni.
Speaker 2: And that was the first time I saw a live
Speaker 2: production on stage. It was Oklahoma with Robert Horton as curly,
Speaker 2: and he came out on a real horse, and all.
Speaker 1: Those people in Missouri demand know less, they must have
Speaker 1: a real horse.
Speaker 2: That's right, show me, show me state. So he came
Speaker 2: out on a horse, and of course, when you see
Speaker 2: something like that, you fall in love with it. And
Speaker 2: subsequently I saw a lot of shows. And it was
Speaker 2: the theater that made me really fall in love with
Speaker 2: musical theater because I could see it. And then it
Speaker 2: was the theater that inspired me to move to New York.
Speaker 1: And what did you study voice acting?
Speaker 2: I did? I did. I went to two years at
Speaker 2: Fontvon University in Saint Louis in a scholarship. I like
Speaker 2: to say this because now I'm over fifty, I can brag, right.
Speaker 2: I received a scholarship in art music for vocal performance
Speaker 2: and theater, and I chose theater subsequently. At the same
Speaker 2: time those two summers, I did seasons at the Muni
Speaker 2: in the ensemble I start when I was eighteen.
Speaker 1: Those two shows at the Muni were those your first
Speaker 1: two shows you did? Had you been doing shows when
Speaker 1: you were younger? When did you start performing in front
Speaker 1: of people?
Speaker 2: In front of people? Really? Sixth grade, I was part
Speaker 2: of a thing here in Saint It was called the
Speaker 2: Bellerman Speech League, which my cousin had been in, but
Speaker 2: it was one of those competitive citywide things. So that
Speaker 2: was really the first time I stepped in front of
Speaker 2: people performing. And then of course in high school I
Speaker 2: did your usual high school musical's Funny Girl, Oliver, Hello Dolly,
Speaker 2: Fiddler on the Root. And it was that that led
Speaker 2: me to audition for scholarship or college, which I got.
Speaker 2: I wish at the time, I'd own about Juilliard and
Speaker 2: Goodman and schools like that, but they really didn't promote
Speaker 2: it because the idea was stay here and go to school,
Speaker 2: and Saint Louis has a very home grown mentality that way,
Speaker 2: and it really wasn't promoted to me to audition for
Speaker 2: the Goodman, which was only in Chicago, and certainly not Juilliard,
Speaker 2: which was New York. And I think, not to be egotistical,
Speaker 2: but I think I might have really been able to
Speaker 2: get into those schools.
Speaker 1: And so for you, I wonder it's like, and again
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this eleven times during the course
Speaker 1: of this interview, but you're so talented. I mean, you
Speaker 1: are so talented. You're like the male musical theater Annie
Speaker 1: Oakley like boom boom boom.
Speaker 2: Anything you can do, you can do better than him.
Speaker 1: But if you'd gone to those fancy schools, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: would have changed everything? You think?
Speaker 2: So everything? Oh sure, Because first of all, to go
Speaker 2: to any of those schools, you're living away from home.
Speaker 2: So that's the first big change, which means you explore
Speaker 2: your life, never mind the education, and you explore your
Speaker 2: life differently. For me, I think being away from Saint
Speaker 2: Louis would have made a big difference in how I
Speaker 2: explored what I was doing. My mentor, God bless and
Speaker 2: rest him, Don Garner, when I realized that I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to New York, I went to him and
Speaker 2: I said, look, I think I want to go to
Speaker 2: New York. If you shut the door to his office,
Speaker 2: he says, all right. I didn't say this, but I
Speaker 2: think you will learn in the next two years in
Speaker 2: New York what you would It would take you six
Speaker 2: years here to learn if you go and apply yourself
Speaker 2: and really do what I think you would do or
Speaker 2: will do. And indeed, by the two years when my
Speaker 2: class graduated, I was in my first Broadway show, which
Speaker 2: is an all black revival of Guys and Dolls. Ah
Speaker 2: ta da ta da.
Speaker 1: Yeah? And how long did that run? Not long?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: What do you attribute that to?
Speaker 2: Well, it was very controversial because one it was an
Speaker 2: all black version of something, and then this is mine
Speaker 2: you'se nineteen seventy six, so things hadn't moved quite nearly
Speaker 2: as far as they have come thus. And also it
Speaker 2: was Guys and Dolls, which is a sacred musical theater piece.
Speaker 2: And there were people who were pro because you know,
Speaker 2: pro Bailey's version of Hello Dolly had already happened, and
Speaker 2: people thought, oh my god, that was wonderful, So dus
Speaker 2: Guys and Dolls. But I think because Hello Dolly is
Speaker 2: such the whole from Thornton Wilder on, it's such an
Speaker 2: open book of who these people are. Guys and Dolls
Speaker 2: was a very specific New York Jewish idiom. So there
Speaker 2: were people who thought we had no business tampering, tinkering,
Speaker 2: toeling with Guys and Dolls. And then there were other
Speaker 2: people who thought, thank god, there's some different energy on
Speaker 2: it and our production, the arrangements, and we couldn't change
Speaker 2: a note of the music. But that's all another story.
Speaker 2: The arrangements had a sort of a a disco kind
Speaker 2: of thing running under it, and when you hear the
Speaker 2: Broadway cast album Night, it's really very electric and alive.
Speaker 2: People loved it. Those who loved I remember may I
Speaker 2: say rex Read said something about saying that thongs stood down,
Speaker 2: you're rocking the boat, and he said, I turned it
Speaker 2: into a gospel stomp, and it was just terrible. Oh
Speaker 2: Rix was unkind to here, I'd say, yeah, oh God,
Speaker 2: but he was unkind to everybody, but he was specifically.
Speaker 2: But it was interesting because I always remember thinking, even
Speaker 2: then at twenty one, I thought, we didn't Frank Lesser
Speaker 2: write a gospel number. Isn't that what this is supposed
Speaker 2: to be, these people in the Saber Soul Mission and
Speaker 2: its gospel tings. And so for all we really did
Speaker 2: was took it the next step towards what he was
Speaker 2: writing to begin with, which I think the last eight
Speaker 2: measures of the song go sit down, you're rock and
Speaker 2: sit down, sit down, sit down, you're rocking the boat,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. Well they allowed us to change
Speaker 2: that to the Devil drag you under socie you never
Speaker 2: blow sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, which
Speaker 2: took it in another direction. Well, that was successful enough
Speaker 2: that the audience would scream and carry on and they
Speaker 2: loved it. So then they wrote an encore, which is
Speaker 2: completely new, and sometimes the encore would get two and
Speaker 2: three renditions a night. Thank god I was twenty one,
Speaker 2: you know, because the people would stream and they'd applaud,
Speaker 2: they go on and Joe Marshall, god Resten was our drummer.
Speaker 2: It was really he who decided. He'd listened to the
Speaker 2: crowd and he'd look at me and he'd listened to
Speaker 2: the crowd, and then he'd hit the drum bill. But
Speaker 2: DA had a dream, and the more the people screamed,
Speaker 2: of course we'd do it again and again again. So
Speaker 2: I'm saying that to say that was one of the
Speaker 2: things out of that show that kept it going, frankly,
Speaker 2: because people came to see what was new in Guys
Speaker 2: and Dolls.
Speaker 1: You weren't in the Wiz prior to Guys and Does No.
Speaker 2: I've seen that written a few places, and I always
Speaker 2: try to correct it because Guys and Dolls was nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, and I didn't go into the Whiz until
Speaker 2: late seventy six, almost seventy seven.
Speaker 1: So you go from one adaptation of a sacred musical
Speaker 1: to another adaptation of someone. I'm sure you also were
Speaker 1: impersonating in the bathroom with a brush in your hand,
Speaker 1: Judy Garland, when you go do the Wiz, was it
Speaker 1: a different ball of wax there? And the way you
Speaker 1: were treated with adapting Wizard.
Speaker 2: Of Oz with a plodcast, Oh god ya Goodias because
Speaker 2: the Wiz was unapologetically black, even though based on L.
Speaker 2: Frank Baums and the music and so forth. But the
Speaker 2: Wiz open and that was a blockbuster. It wasn't at
Speaker 2: first they actually had their closing notice up and then
Speaker 2: Ken Harper went to twentieth Century Fox. They invested in
Speaker 2: a TV commercial and it was so great. And then
Speaker 2: they went to the churches in Brooklyn. Stephanie Mills belonged
Speaker 2: to the biggest church, African American church in Brooklyn. They
Speaker 2: went to them. They then went to Sister brother churches.
Speaker 2: All of these people started buying tickets and came in bustlows.
Speaker 2: And we know the dollar rules. So as long as
Speaker 2: there were people there, the show was going to keep running.
Speaker 2: By virtue of it staying where it was. The word
Speaker 2: of mouth picked up and then other people started coming.
Speaker 2: It finished that story to say that by the time
Speaker 2: it got around to the Tony Awards, they were nominated
Speaker 2: for eleven Tony Awards. I think they won six.
Speaker 1: So guysendals nicely, nicely, the Lion and the Wiz, and
Speaker 1: these are not lead roles. You're playing more supporting roles.
Speaker 1: And the next thing is Ain't Misbehaved in seventy eight?
Speaker 2: Correct? Right?
Speaker 1: And when you do that, you get a lead role
Speaker 1: in Ain't Misbehaving?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, you know, I mean it's interesting because the
Speaker 2: five characters, if you will and am misbehavin were all
Speaker 2: supporting people. So the five of us really were the leads,
Speaker 2: but we were used to being supporting people, so we
Speaker 2: supported each other in the way that we had supported
Speaker 2: other people in productions, which made it a very powerful ensemble.
Speaker 1: When did you notice that you walked in the room
Speaker 1: and everybody sat up and they were like, it's ken,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like you really the town
Speaker 1: started to adopt you, that you were part of a
Speaker 1: business in an industry in New York.
Speaker 2: That was the blessing of Guys and Dalls is that
Speaker 2: I did a beloved role and by me having some
Speaker 2: sort of a personal signature on it. It separated me
Speaker 2: from the great WK. So Broadways sort of said, who
Speaker 2: is this I remember Clive Barnes. I didn't know who
Speaker 2: he was at the time, but he wrote a sort
Speaker 2: of love letter in The Times and saying who is
Speaker 2: this guy? Where did he come from? People called me
Speaker 2: up saying, did you read that thing at the Times
Speaker 2: this morning? Clive Barnes wrote you a love letter? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, who is Clive Barnes? First of all,
Speaker 2: They're like, okay, why is he writing me love letters? Why?
Speaker 2: Why is he writing me love letters? But what it
Speaker 2: did was it opened the door to Broadway and it
Speaker 2: said this guy is Broadway caliber. Wherever he came from,
Speaker 2: welcome dot dot dot. So it sort of sucked me
Speaker 2: right into the center of the Broadway community immediately, and
Speaker 2: then to get to do the Whiz behind it, which
Speaker 2: was a huge, huge, huge hit and still very much
Speaker 2: at the top of the list of appreciated shows. I'll
Speaker 2: tell this story and I think you'll know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I had done a club act at Le Mouge. You know,
Speaker 2: it was a big disco, but it was also a
Speaker 2: big club there too. I did a tribute to all
Speaker 2: of the black shows that were running on Broadway at
Speaker 2: the time, and there were many at the time, and
Speaker 2: I sort of linked them. I did a number songs
Speaker 2: from Raisin and The Wiz and of course Guys and
Speaker 2: Dolls and a couple of and I would link them
Speaker 2: together with He's on on the road, Okay, let's go on,
Speaker 2: we go, He's on down, He's on down, rude to
Speaker 2: raise it and blow it. And some of the people
Speaker 2: from The Wiz came to see my show because I
Speaker 2: was in Guys and Dollars and they'd heard, so they
Speaker 2: called me in shortly after Guys and Dolls closed, And
Speaker 2: I had auditioned for The Wiz before, and I just
Speaker 2: knew I was perfect for it because I'd seen the
Speaker 2: out of town try out in Detroit, and I went
Speaker 2: in and I sang men O line and they said,
Speaker 2: thank you, that's it. I know I'm right for this.
Speaker 2: Put How dam you say that like that? So when
Speaker 2: it came back around, my agent said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: they want to see you at the Majestic Theater and
Speaker 2: I said, I auditioned for The Whiz. They didn't like me.
Speaker 2: He said, no, no, I don't think you understand they saw
Speaker 2: your club act. They want to see you at the
Speaker 2: Majestic Theater. They're not having auditions, they're auditioning you. So
Speaker 2: I said, oh shit. So I went in and Ken
Speaker 2: Harper indeed was there, and I sang the songs and
Speaker 2: he walked down to the edge of the stage and
Speaker 2: he shook my hand and he says, are you busy
Speaker 2: for the rest of the afternoon? And I said no.
Speaker 2: He said, good, then go down and get your costume measurement.
Speaker 2: And it took me a minute to understand that. Men
Speaker 2: I got the part. I was like, why, what do
Speaker 2: you want? How wonderful? Yeah, he said, So in answer
Speaker 2: to your question, I would say, that's the first time
Speaker 2: people sat up when I walked in the room. But
Speaker 2: it was still different because they invited me into the room.
Speaker 1: Broadway star Ken Page. If you enjoy listening to conversations
Speaker 1: with the greats of musical theater, be sure to check
Speaker 1: out my conversation with another Broadway star, Kelly O'Hara.
Speaker 3: Even after eight shows a week, I find myself kind
Speaker 3: of dealing with all of this, all of my innards
Speaker 3: out there. It's how I filter, it's how I process,
Speaker 3: I think and It's why I'm not quite tired of it.
Speaker 3: For the most part, I find that I go inside
Speaker 3: it as opposed to just dealing with it all out.
Speaker 1: Here hear more of my conversation with Kelly O'Hara that
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, ken Page
Speaker 1: talks about learning comedic timing from some of the best
Speaker 1: in the business. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing.
Speaker 2: I dream last night. I got on the boat to Heaven,
Speaker 2: and by some chance I had brought my dicilong and
Speaker 2: there I stood, and I hollowed. Someone faid me, bought
Speaker 2: the passage. Stay to right from raw for all the
Speaker 2: people all sense it. Sit Down, you're rocking the boat, Yes,
Speaker 2: rocking the boat.
Speaker 1: That's Ken Page performing sit Down, You're rocking the Boat
Speaker 1: from the nineteen seventy six Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls.
Speaker 1: During his tenure on Broadway, Ken Page would often perform
Speaker 1: solo in smaller clubs. Oftentimes, his castmates and other performers
Speaker 1: were his best audience.
Speaker 2: With the Broadway community, especially back then. You were in
Speaker 2: that show at that time, but you were still part
Speaker 2: of a larger community. At large. However long you'd been around,
Speaker 2: chances are you'd worked with just about anybody or everybody
Speaker 2: at some point. So there was this serious sense of
Speaker 2: community that supported people new people. I can't even tell you.
Speaker 2: I remember doing again Guys and Dolls eight Burrows, who
Speaker 2: of course was a towering figure in the musical theater.
Speaker 2: Him teaching me about comedy timing. He said, look, these
Speaker 2: jokes are fun you know what I'm saying. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I assume here, but you got to do a three
Speaker 2: rhythm thing for him to work. If you break the rhythm,
Speaker 2: they're not funny. And my example was I came out
Speaker 2: with a sandwich and Nathan says, hey, nicely, where you been,
Speaker 2: And I'd say I had to get something to eat.
Speaker 2: I felt a little faint, and I would just say
Speaker 2: the line crickets. You could hear NAT's fart. It was
Speaker 2: that quiet, you know. And he said to me, no, no, a,
Speaker 2: you got to take two beats before you speak, take
Speaker 2: a bite of the sandwich, and then you say the
Speaker 2: line with your mouth full, and it's funny. And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: that's very specific. I don't know, you know, maybe I
Speaker 2: don't want to do that. Hey, he wrote it. He
Speaker 2: ought to know, right, So I did it. He says, hey, nicely,
Speaker 2: where are you been? And I stopped and I took
Speaker 2: a bite of the sandwich. I would I heard a
Speaker 2: good trummery eat. I felt the little faint roaring laughter,
Speaker 2: So you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And I thought to myself.
Speaker 1: Learn, learn, learn, Isn't it true?
Speaker 2: People were general, not only in the production, but they
Speaker 2: were generous to tell you things.
Speaker 1: So getting into that whole thing of like, you start
Speaker 1: to feel more emboldened.
Speaker 2: Sure, I think with each show successively you become more
Speaker 2: and more aware of what you have that's yours, that
Speaker 2: is applicable to whatever situation you're in. But it takes.
Speaker 2: It's a process to you get that sort of confidence
Speaker 2: that while I'm going to sing this song, there's something
Speaker 2: I do with my boys, with my intention with this
Speaker 2: that that is particular to me, that's going to make
Speaker 2: this sing, you know what I mean? And with amous
Speaker 2: behavin of course, the opportunity was golden because there was nothing. Hello,
Speaker 2: there was a stack of Xerox music that Fats Rolla
Speaker 2: and other people wrote, and then that was it.
Speaker 1: Who shaped that? Who was responsible for shaping that?
Speaker 2: Well, we all were. I'm going to say that now
Speaker 2: on record, because Richard Maltby was a wonderful director in
Speaker 2: many ways, and he certainly put us together. Murray Horowitz,
Speaker 2: who was the jazz afficionado, and Arthur Fario, who was
Speaker 2: our choreographer. It was really this combined effort of everybody.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, five African American performers brought much of
Speaker 2: what you saw from our own selves. There was no
Speaker 2: written characters. There was no scenario that we were following.
Speaker 2: It was just a matter of you walk in the
Speaker 2: door and she walks over to you and she sayings, baby, baby,
Speaker 2: what is the matter with you? Well, you got to
Speaker 2: know who you are, what your intention is, what you're
Speaker 2: trying to do. All that had to be provided by
Speaker 2: the actor who was us right, And that was the
Speaker 2: way the show really was created. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it was set up.
Speaker 1: So A'm misbehavin and then you go into Cats. Now,
Speaker 1: you were in the original company of Cats, an original
Speaker 1: Broadway cast. Yes, you were in the original You were
Speaker 1: in the original Broadway company of Cas.
Speaker 2: I was and our American Daughters in nineteen twenty six. Yes,
Speaker 2: betdy Lynn Buckley and Harry Groener.
Speaker 1: Oh amazing, Eddie Buckley, Oh my god. So how did
Speaker 1: that come together?
Speaker 2: Well, we want to say first, it was a huge
Speaker 2: hid in London, so it had already sailed the seas.
Speaker 2: It was just coming in our direction. But that was
Speaker 2: part of what made it such a big deal for Broadways,
Speaker 2: because it was such a huge hit in London and
Speaker 2: they were going to do the American production.
Speaker 1: And how do you get summoned to that?
Speaker 2: Well, weirdly, because they were seeing people for six months
Speaker 2: for the show. Everybody who could crawl on fore legs
Speaker 2: was there auditioning. And I didn't think there was anything
Speaker 2: in the show for me. I just thought it was
Speaker 2: a dance show and it was about people and leotards,
Speaker 2: not me. And I went out and paid any attention
Speaker 2: and I went to the closing performance of Ain't Misbehaving
Speaker 2: on Broadway. I wasn't in the show by that point,
Speaker 2: but I went to the closing performance and Bernard Jacobs,
Speaker 2: Bernie Jacobs was there and he came up to me
Speaker 2: and said, Kenny, have you been seen for Cats? And
Speaker 2: I said no, no, I haven't. I He says, I
Speaker 2: want you to go in. I want you to blah blah, blah,
Speaker 2: so oh Deuteronomy. I think it's a good role for you.
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about it. He said, go up
Speaker 2: to Vinnie Lift's office and get the music, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to have them call you in now. Footnote. They
Speaker 2: had not called me in, and I was certainly someone
Speaker 2: who was on the scene well enough by that point,
Speaker 2: but I guess they did not see me the way
Speaker 2: Bernie saw me. But he says, that's it. You're going
Speaker 2: to go in and that's what it's going to be. Right.
Speaker 2: So am there learning the addressing of cats. I'm going
Speaker 2: over the song. I had to audition for the show,
Speaker 2: and Amelia, my late dear dear friend Amelia was in
Speaker 2: the room next to me, and she said, i'd hear
Speaker 2: you in the shower page. You've heard of Sek, she said,
Speaker 2: And I would think, okay, not so good yet, but
Speaker 2: it'll get there right.
Speaker 1: Work on that.
Speaker 2: It was great, so we come back. I go in
Speaker 2: and by this point it's the last week of the
Speaker 2: auditions and they were really calling a lot of people's
Speaker 2: names and throwing them around. So I go in on Monday.
Speaker 2: I sing and they said okay, great, So they said
Speaker 2: come back on Friday, and could you possibly he said,
Speaker 2: could you possibly learn a dramatic monologue?
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, f me from the show or from
Speaker 1: some other source.
Speaker 2: Something anything, just a monologue, and I or not to
Speaker 2: be here. Yes, I'm thinking, ain't it a musical? So
Speaker 2: I go. I learned I luckily had done this monologue
Speaker 2: and a show I did about Louis Armstrong. I played
Speaker 2: the character Joe Oliver, his mentor. So I had a monologue. Okay,
Speaker 2: so I come back. I do the monologue again. Trevor
Speaker 2: comes in the stage after the monologue and he says,
Speaker 2: your talents are many fold and manifest. I thought, well,
Speaker 2: if that wasn't the kiss of death, I was like
Speaker 2: thank you for playing game in the.
Speaker 1: British way of saying thank you.
Speaker 2: You know. So I go out Fire Island for the weekend.
Speaker 2: They're announcing it on Monday, and this is Friday, and
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm out of the city. I don't want
Speaker 2: to be here. So I get back Monday morning. The
Speaker 2: phone rings and it's Tyler Getchel and he says, oh,
Speaker 2: Kendage is Tyler Gotchel? I said, yes, Tyler, good morning.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 2: I want to say, tell fuck around, just tell you
Speaker 2: what's up? I said, I'm good. I'm good. He goes, well,
Speaker 2: we were wondering here in the office if you'd like
Speaker 2: to play old Deuteronomy and cats for us, and you know,
Speaker 2: you not feeling when your heart like sinks and rises
Speaker 2: at the same time. And I thought, yeah, yes I will,
Speaker 2: I would please, Yes, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: How long did you do the show?
Speaker 2: Two years?
Speaker 1: Did you find that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Two years? I mean, my god, two years of your life.
Speaker 1: Every night? What happens during the arc of the two.
Speaker 2: Years many things. The beginning, of course, is exciting because
Speaker 2: it's the opening and this and the energy and that
Speaker 2: carries you almost a year. Then it settles in like, okay,
Speaker 2: now they're coming to see what they've heard about, which
Speaker 2: means second phase, You've got to deliver the show. It's
Speaker 2: not just a matter of coming out there on the
Speaker 2: energy of being fabulous and amazing. Now you've got to
Speaker 2: deliver them the show that they have paid this high
Speaker 2: price ticket to see that they've heard is amazing. I
Speaker 2: like to say that's the second phase. You've got to
Speaker 2: meet the standard of the show, not just your own standard.
Speaker 2: And then the third phase is where I think it
Speaker 2: becomes a matter of being a professional where you know
Speaker 2: what you're supposed to do, you know the temperature of
Speaker 2: the show, you know what it's supposed to do. If
Speaker 2: you know what I mean and you do it, it
Speaker 2: isn't always inspired, because some nights you do not feel it,
Speaker 2: but you have posts road marks that you hit that
Speaker 2: gets you through the show, and your technique will carry
Speaker 2: you the performer. The show will carry everyone, but your
Speaker 2: technique will carry you personally. And I think also it
Speaker 2: has a lot to do with how you were trained
Speaker 2: and you know how you came through the ropes as
Speaker 2: to how you do that. I came from the old
Speaker 2: school of you know, you give it or all you
Speaker 2: hit it. And if you're doing that, you're not even
Speaker 2: conscious of it being maybe boring or a little rote,
Speaker 2: because you always find yourself in the doing.
Speaker 1: You know, you're considered one of the great great performers
Speaker 1: in the musical theater and you walk into the room.
Speaker 1: What does a director have to offer you?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I will use someone as an example,
Speaker 2: Michael Griffe, who directed many wonderful things, but Rent was
Speaker 2: among them. And I've worked with Michael twice. We did
Speaker 2: a production of Brandy Newman's Faust. I love Michael Grife
Speaker 2: because he's one of the and I you know, I
Speaker 2: admit I'm not easy because I've been around a long time.
Speaker 2: So if you don't know something, you better know something.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm leading to. Yeah, And my feeling is
Speaker 2: if you know something, I'm down with it. Tell me
Speaker 2: what you know. But if you don't know anything, you
Speaker 2: cannot fake it out with me. Because I see you
Speaker 2: as my grandmother. You say I knew where you were
Speaker 2: going before you knew where you were going. It's real,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Michael Grif is one of
Speaker 2: those directors where and he's so like open and interested
Speaker 2: in what you think, and not in the sense of
Speaker 2: you get to do whatever you want. That's not it
Speaker 2: at all. It's like, well, let's talk about what is
Speaker 2: it that you think.
Speaker 1: There's no bad ideas. There's no bad ideas.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's no bad idea. And I did another show
Speaker 2: with him called Most Wanted, a musical, which was believe
Speaker 2: it or not, a musicalization of the Kunanan murder. Oh God.
Speaker 2: It was really actually very very good and dark and
Speaker 2: so forth. It was too dark for people. This is
Speaker 2: before the TV movie and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: and people were freaked the fuck out.
Speaker 1: This is the VERSACEI murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you did a musical about that, Yes, Holy,
Speaker 2: a wonderful musical. And of course Persashi was the end
Speaker 2: of his murdering spree. What was the name of the show,
Speaker 2: post wanted?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? And what year was this produced?
Speaker 2: Oh god, about fifteen years ago at La Joya playhouse.
Speaker 1: It didn't transfer, it didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 2: They talked about it. We did another reading thing of
Speaker 2: it in New York. I played a drag queen named
Speaker 2: Stormy Leather. Oh God, thank you, thank you. I'm here
Speaker 2: all week. Yeah. And I had this great song called
Speaker 2: never Saw It Coming, which was about how you do
Speaker 2: these things in life and you never see it coming.
Speaker 2: You think you're going to do this, you're going to
Speaker 2: be that you're going to do and then something else
Speaker 2: happens and you never see it coming. And the first
Speaker 2: line of the song was I met a bitch the boy,
Speaker 2: which gives you a setup. I knew a bitch. The
Speaker 2: boy had it all class, money, everything and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. Very deep, very dark show. Anyway, Michael
Speaker 2: says to me, and I'm doing the thing and it's working.
Speaker 2: You know, it's doing well. I said, Michael, I keep
Speaker 2: having this feeling. I said, would you mind if I
Speaker 2: can I smoke? And this is the example of Michael
Speaker 2: Grive And he looked at me as only he can.
Speaker 2: He goes, I wish you would please do? I said yes, yes,
Speaker 2: And it changed the whole feel of it because one
Speaker 2: the lighting and the cigarette smoke and the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And it gave me something to start with. And I
Speaker 2: exhaled on the first note, you know, all that kind
Speaker 2: of shit you do. And it made it a thought
Speaker 2: rather than a delivery of a thought.
Speaker 1: It was a Burrows and the sandwich all over again.
Speaker 2: That's right. Hey, Hello, if I could take an inhale
Speaker 2: on this cigarette and exhale and go I met a boy,
Speaker 2: oh baby, bitch had it all? It set up a
Speaker 2: whole different thing, you know.
Speaker 1: Now, La New York, LA New York, LA New York.
Speaker 1: Saint Louis. How did the Great Ken Page decide? Saint
Speaker 1: Louis is where I need to be in this point
Speaker 1: in my life?
Speaker 2: Well, other than your mom, well that's kind of I mean,
Speaker 2: if it were only you know, it was my mom,
Speaker 2: my stepdad. I have two aunts, one of whom I'm
Speaker 2: in charge of her care now she's in a facility.
Speaker 2: But I knew Alec that they were all getting older.
Speaker 2: And the older I got, the more I started to
Speaker 2: understand they weren't these wizard people that I thought they
Speaker 2: were when I was young. They were vulnerable. There were
Speaker 2: needs that they had that they didn't even know how
Speaker 2: to be yen to address. And as they got older,
Speaker 2: they couldn't, you know, sort of jockey their way through
Speaker 2: it. It was becoming more of an issue how to dot
Speaker 2: dot dot and not, you know, to put it all
Speaker 2: on them. It was as easier to be here, and
Speaker 2: I did a calculation of could I still work from here?
Speaker 2: And I had initiated a show that I don call
Speaker 2: Page by page, which is an autobiographical two hour one
Speaker 2: hand and blah blah blah, and I went all over
Speaker 2: the country with it. That's how I kept my bills paid.
Speaker 2: I took I got on the road like an old
Speaker 2: actor does, and I sang my songs and I got
Speaker 2: my check and I touched a lot of people. But
Speaker 2: I could do that from Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: Of course, show business, whether it's sports, music, entertainment, the
Speaker 1: African American performer gets into the same limo. He's picked
Speaker 1: up to go to the show. He's got the star
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: Oh are you getting all the time? It's a constant.
Speaker 2: I can say that, and I don't mean that to
Speaker 2: be evasive. It's a constant from the time. I think
Speaker 2: of when I started in seventy six with guys and dolls,
Speaker 2: where people would say to my face, how dare you
Speaker 2: that's wk's roll? And I'm thinking, but I'm up there
Speaker 2: eight times a week. I'm doing it, on on on,
Speaker 2: through many things Cats. When I was casting Cats, there
Speaker 2: were people black and white who just were not having it.
Speaker 2: The white continuency thought someone white should have, of course
Speaker 2: been cast. Why did they cast me. My brothers and
Speaker 2: sisters were like, well, you've gone over to the enemy,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. But mind you, any one
Speaker 2: of them would have certainly been happy to have the part.
Speaker 2: So it's a constant. In Hollywood. It was very difficult.
Speaker 2: There were many auditions. I went on Alec where they
Speaker 2: just wanted me to just be more urban, which was
Speaker 2: a code. You know. I did one show where I
Speaker 2: played the owner of a diet company. Okay, that's funny enough.
Speaker 2: I'm a big guy. But as the progression of the
Speaker 2: rehearsals went on, they said, well, you're going to come
Speaker 2: in eating a candy bar. I thought, come on, you know,
Speaker 2: it's funny enough, you don't have to put a candy bar.
Speaker 2: By the time we got to filming, they gave me
Speaker 2: a giant, oversized hershey bar that I was to walk
Speaker 2: in with, and those kinds of things. That's just sort
Speaker 2: of on the one side, but it is a constant
Speaker 2: and it continues, you know. And because I have been
Speaker 2: around a long time and I am sixty seven years
Speaker 2: old as of yesterday. You know what I'm saying, I
Speaker 2: know what's up. And people try to bullshit you with
Speaker 2: stuff that they're trying to veil, or you know, they're
Speaker 2: really being racial, or they're being prejudicial. My generation, we
Speaker 2: were the beneficiaries of the idea we better do the
Speaker 2: right thing because people are watching. The generation before us
Speaker 2: 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 being captivated by a performance of you as Oogie
Speaker 1: Boogie and me sitting there on a couch with my
Speaker 1: kids and going, I know him, I know him, And
Speaker 1: they're like, my kids are gonna be like, oh please,
Speaker 1: I never seen night Before Christmas and I see it
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: As a child, like I said, in my room, playing
Speaker 2: cast albums and being everybody on the album and so forth.
Speaker 2: That was the beginning of all that for me, because
Speaker 2: you know, for me, I wasn't seeing anything. I was
Speaker 2: only hearing it. Right, So when night Member Before Christmas
Speaker 2: came around, I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: to do what I've been tipping around for years.
Speaker 1: Man, Do you ever? Man? Do you ever? You feel
Speaker 1: that song you've got there's so much great acting inside
Speaker 1: that song, and and and you're vocalizing. I produced you
Speaker 1: in a show one time. Yes, And I think the
Speaker 1: deepest I ever fell in love with another man, I'm
Speaker 1: a straight guy. But the deepest I've ever fell in
Speaker 1: love with the man was when he sang you with me.
Speaker 1: We're going to sing one phrase of this ready whispering
Speaker 1: bo temy Ta in love. You sang that song, and
Speaker 1: I melted in the earth. The sky 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 in my life. You're so talented, well that
Speaker 1: is beyond kind. I love you, and I love your talent.
Speaker 2: I love you back.
Speaker 1: Actor and singer Ken Page. Betty Buckley grew up dreaming
Speaker 1: of singing her heart out and in the stuff of legend.
Speaker 1: On her first day in New York City, Betty Buckley
Speaker 1: landed a part in the Broadway musical seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 1: That early success gave her a chance to prove to
Speaker 1: herself and the folks back home she was ready.
Speaker 4: My mom had been a singer dancer growing up, and
Speaker 4: she was very good, very talented, but my father, when
Speaker 4: he married her, told her she couldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 4: My father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force.
Speaker 4: When I was in the fifth grade, he retired and
Speaker 4: he became a college professor. He was a really brilliant guy,
Speaker 4: but he was very opposed to show business. And my
Speaker 4: mother had this extensive cast album collection and all the
Speaker 4: great singers and everything, and she sang around the house
Speaker 4: all the time. So I was exposed to all that
Speaker 4: very early on and loved it. And she took me
Speaker 4: to see my first musical, which was The Game with
Speaker 4: the original Bob Fosse choreography, when I was eleven, and
Speaker 4: when the number steam heat and I remember where I
Speaker 4: was sitting in the theater, and there was this energy
Speaker 4: that just went up to my head. What I've learned
Speaker 4: as an adult was an epiphany, you know, and it's
Speaker 4: just like boom, that that's what you're going to be
Speaker 4: doing for the rest of your life. So then from
Speaker 4: age eleven, I became fixated on that.
Speaker 1: What did you do with that fixation?
Speaker 4: Well, I listened to Bye Bye Bertie all the time,
Speaker 4: and I told my mother, you know, I could play
Speaker 4: one of the teenagers in that, And when she was
Speaker 4: mad at me, I would run down the hall into
Speaker 4: her room and slide in on my knees and do
Speaker 4: the whole speech that the kid does to Conrad Bertie,
Speaker 4: tell us, oh beautiful one, tell us how you make
Speaker 4: that glorious salady?
Speaker 1: One less kiss?
Speaker 4: Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: I worked around my house for years. My mother would go,
Speaker 1: when are you going to do your homework? I go, baby, well,
Speaker 1: kiss really sublime mold. I mean, I knew that song exactly.
Speaker 4: That was his junior high talent show that I wanted
Speaker 4: to be in. But I was really short forever. I
Speaker 4: was like four feet eight inches tall forever, and I
Speaker 4: grew all at once. In one summer, I thought I
Speaker 4: would be short forever, and I thought, well, maybe I'll
Speaker 4: be the first girl jockey, you know. But anyway, there
Speaker 4: was this talent show and I came home and I
Speaker 4: knew they would never ask me to be in it.
Speaker 4: But I'd studied dance with my aunt since I was three.
Speaker 4: She was a dance teacher and my grandmother, so I
Speaker 4: had these two very powerful female role models that were
Speaker 4: performers and artists, and I told my mother I wanted
Speaker 4: to do Steam Heat and the Junior High Talent Show.
Speaker 4: And my mother was like, oh, that's interesting because the
Speaker 4: guys who were the choreographer and the director of that
Speaker 4: just opened a dance studio in Fort Worth. I will
Speaker 4: call them. So she called them and said, my daughter
Speaker 4: wants to learn Steam Heat and they said, well, can
Speaker 4: she sing? And I was like yeah, because I sung
Speaker 4: in the church choir, but they always put me in
Speaker 4: the back row and told me to blend in, you know.
Speaker 4: So I sang and they said no, no, Betty, sing
Speaker 4: as loud as you can. So I knew I had
Speaker 4: this giant voice.
Speaker 1: When did you know you had a giant voice? When?
Speaker 4: Because I was constantly singing with all the great lady
Speaker 4: singers in my bedroom to their albums and basically imitating them.
Speaker 4: And I knew I had this like sound, but I
Speaker 4: didn't know its value because our choir teacher would always
Speaker 4: put me on the back row and really get annoyed
Speaker 4: because my voice cuts through, you know, and I was
Speaker 4: trying so hard to sing soft, but it still has
Speaker 4: this resonant edge. So they told me to sing as
Speaker 4: loud as I could, so I did and I just
Speaker 4: felt unleashed, and they were like, oh my god. And
Speaker 4: those guys made me realize I had this unique voice.
Speaker 4: So they gave me the original Fosse choreography and I
Speaker 4: got in the Junior High Talent show and I brought
Speaker 4: the house down. They all went nuts, and from that
Speaker 4: time I was like little bitty Betty Buckley with this
Speaker 4: giant voice. Then my mother became this like huge stage mother,
Speaker 4: and she was constantly entering me and everything, and my
Speaker 4: father was going nuts about it. And then I got
Speaker 4: my first professional job when I was fifteen. I played
Speaker 4: the role of Dainty June and Gypsy at our local
Speaker 4: theater and I joined Equity and all that stuff, and
Speaker 4: then I worked there every summer, and so I had
Speaker 4: a lot of experience by the time I got to
Speaker 4: New York.
Speaker 1: What got you to New York?
Speaker 4: Well, I was recruited to enter the Miss for Worth pageant.
Speaker 4: I hated beauty pageants. I mean, I'm sorry to say
Speaker 4: all that, because I have friends and beauty pageants and
Speaker 4: I won a lot of scholarships.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't for you. Shall we say?
Speaker 4: I was this budding young feminist. I was a charter
Speaker 4: subscriber to Miss magazine, and Glorious Steinham gave me words
Speaker 4: for all these feelings of inequity that.
Speaker 1: Ethel Merman meets Gloria Steinem that's a good one.
Speaker 4: I'll take that. But you didn't want that, No, I
Speaker 4: was embarrassed by it. I remember once I won the
Speaker 4: Miss for Worth pageant, because I was basically recruited to
Speaker 4: do that, and then I was in the Miss Texas pageant.
Speaker 4: Didn't win the talent competition, which was really strange. So
Speaker 4: I was a runner up to Miss Texas, I think
Speaker 4: second runner up or something. But the producer of the
Speaker 4: Miss America pageant was there, and I was invited the
Speaker 4: following year to be a guest entertainer at the Miss
Speaker 4: America pageant. And this agent saw me on television sing
Speaker 4: and dance, and they asked me to fly to New
Speaker 4: York right after the Miss America Pageant to audition for them.
Speaker 4: So it was Ashley Famous Agency which became ICM, and
Speaker 4: there was a very famous agent named Eric Sheppard. I
Speaker 4: sang for these like eleven or twelve agents, and he
Speaker 4: just stood up and said signer and he walked out
Speaker 4: of the room. So this responsible agent, Roger has who
Speaker 4: went on to become a big Broadway producer. He's a
Speaker 4: really nice, wonderful guy, still a great friend. He said, well,
Speaker 4: what do you want to do? And I said, I
Speaker 4: have to go back and finish college or my father
Speaker 4: will kill me. So he he was like, Okay, do that,
Speaker 4: and when you finish college, you'll come to New York.
Speaker 1: And you did finish TCU for journalism. Yeah, why why a.
Speaker 4: Journalism because my mother had been a journalist. My dad
Speaker 4: thought that being a journalist was a complimentary profession for
Speaker 4: a wife and mother to the husband. But that my
Speaker 4: purpose in life, as all young women should have, he thought,
Speaker 4: was to be married and have children. But I didn't
Speaker 4: want to do that. I wanted to go to New York.
Speaker 4: And I knew what my voice would sound like, and
Speaker 4: I knew how it would affect people. And then when
Speaker 4: I was thirty five and I was in my dressing
Speaker 4: room at the Winter Garden, they brought in my recording
Speaker 4: of memory after we'd made the record, and I heard
Speaker 4: the recording and that vision flashed back of when I
Speaker 4: was thirteen, and I was like, oh, it took from
Speaker 4: age thirteen to thirty five but there it is. So anyway,
Speaker 4: this agent kept calling me after college and asking me
Speaker 4: to come to New York, and I was at that
Speaker 4: point I was really experiencing I think PTSD because I'd
Speaker 4: been with Miss America on a USO tour and Miss
Speaker 4: America and I and one other girl went into all
Speaker 4: the intensive care units and all the hospitals in Japan,
Speaker 4: and we also toured all the military bases in Korea.
Speaker 4: I was like, my dad is wrong. War is not noble.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: My father was a real hawk and he really believed
Speaker 4: in the nobility of war and stuff. And I came
Speaker 4: back really changed, and we were in a consistent debate
Speaker 4: about the validity of a show business career, which he
Speaker 4: thought was beneath me. And I was very confused about
Speaker 4: it all. And I was also in love when I
Speaker 4: was a senior with this Dallas cowboy quarterback and he
Speaker 4: turned out to be he broke my heart. So when
Speaker 4: I came back, I thought, okay, forget my show business aspirations.
Speaker 4: Because I was a journalism major and I'd written for
Speaker 4: this newspaper quite a lot. I even had a teen
Speaker 4: page when I was in college for the Fort Worth Press.
Speaker 4: So I had a job there, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 4: that's it. I'm just going to do this, and so
Speaker 4: the agent kept calling and he got me to come
Speaker 4: see this show in Dallas my mother, which was an
Speaker 4: industrial show that Flip Wilson, the comedian was doing with
Speaker 4: a band called Your Father's Mustache. So they called me
Speaker 4: up on stage and had me sing. And the only
Speaker 4: song I knew Mike key and was You Made Me
Speaker 4: Love You. So I sang it and the audience went nuts,
Speaker 4: which was great. And then Rogers talks to the buyer
Speaker 4: and they offered me a job to put me in
Speaker 4: this show but to pretend I'm an audience member in
Speaker 4: all these different cities. And they offered me a lot
Speaker 4: of money. It was way more than I was being
Speaker 4: paid at the Fourth Press. So my father couldn't deny
Speaker 4: the job the money, and so he reluctantly let me
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: When I think of you, I think of the acting
Speaker 1: and the singing, and the acting is in the singing.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: When you teach people, you teach acting or singing.
Speaker 4: I've taught for the Terry Shribers School for years and
Speaker 4: years and years, and I used to teach scenes, study
Speaker 4: and song interpretation. And I was teaching these five day
Speaker 4: workshops maybe three times a year for them whenever I
Speaker 4: was in New York.
Speaker 1: And what do you teach them about how the acting
Speaker 1: influences the singing?
Speaker 4: Well, that's complicated. I was really fortunate that in seventeen
Speaker 4: seventy six I worked with all these incredible actors. There
Speaker 4: were like thirty men and two women, and they really
Speaker 4: mentored me, and they were like, set me down when
Speaker 4: I was twenty one and I'd gotten that show my
Speaker 4: first day in New York City because of this wonderful agent,
Speaker 4: Roger Hess, who got me to New York and shepherd
Speaker 4: me into that and so I got that audition, which
Speaker 4: was amazing. So they sent me down and said, look, Betty,
Speaker 4: this is what you're good at, this is what you've
Speaker 4: got talent wise, and this is what you need to learn.
Speaker 4: Go here, go there, do this, And so I did
Speaker 4: because I loved musical theater. I loved but it used
Speaker 4: to be called musical comedy, right, So there was like
Speaker 4: a dancing course and a singing chorus and you know,
Speaker 4: everything was separate, and everything was like you know, SHOWBZ,
Speaker 4: and so I wanted. I really my favorite actresses were
Speaker 4: Kim Stanley and Geraldine Paige and later on Rolands, and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god, what it must be
Speaker 4: like to have that skilly dramatic actions. Yeah, to do
Speaker 4: like really psychological portraits, to like bring raw truth to
Speaker 4: a theater and film, And you know, I wanted to
Speaker 4: be that skilled and I wasn't. So I was really
Speaker 4: lucky that in that time period I did some Broadways shows.
Speaker 4: And then I got that TV show eight Is Enough
Speaker 4: and not eight is Enough. I went to my dailies
Speaker 4: and I was like, wait a minute, I get I
Speaker 4: see ten seconds of good work over there when I'm
Speaker 4: in the doorway. Why can't I bring that same quality
Speaker 4: to the scene work right? What's wrong with me? And
Speaker 4: I was also studying with Stelle Adler. I never put
Speaker 4: my work in front of her. I took her acting class,
Speaker 4: I took her script analysis class in New York, and
Speaker 4: I took her script analysis class again in LA. While
Speaker 4: I was on It Is Enough, I knew I wasn't
Speaker 4: a good enough actress to keep my sense of self
Speaker 4: respect or whatever, you know. If she gave me her
Speaker 4: like searing critiques, I wasn't ready. So that was a Okay.
Speaker 4: I learned a lot in the back row taking copious notes.
Speaker 4: But that TV show was great because I really was
Speaker 4: able to see what worked and why you were.
Speaker 1: On that for two seasons, three seasons? How many?
Speaker 4: Four?
Speaker 1: Four seasons? Dick Patten.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And then on the heels of Eight Is Enough,
Speaker 4: I got the wonderful classic American film Tender Mercy starring
Speaker 4: Robert Duvall, with a Horton foot script directed by Bruce Beresford,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh my god, she's an alcoholic
Speaker 4: country western singing show.
Speaker 2: General.
Speaker 4: It was like written for me.
Speaker 1: There's your chance.
Speaker 4: It was amazing, and I learned so much working with
Speaker 4: Duval and Wilford Brimley and Ellen Barkin. And they wouldn't
Speaker 4: let me see my dailies until I finished the job.
Speaker 4: And then they brought me in on a Saturday and
Speaker 4: had me sit down and look at my scenes back
Speaker 4: to back. And I sat there in that little screening
Speaker 4: room and I was like, oh, okay, I know how
Speaker 4: to do this now when you're.
Speaker 1: There, you're in Los Angeles. Eight is Enough was what
Speaker 1: the late seventies, mid seventies.
Speaker 4: Was seventy nine to eighty one.
Speaker 1: So when you're out there doing you shot it in California.
Speaker 1: And when you're out there and you go from a
Speaker 1: show that I recall was a successful show that was.
Speaker 4: A hitch the show it's 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?
Speaker 4: Well? I knew I was going to sing on Broadway,
Speaker 4: and I had this brilliant teacher and I was flying
Speaker 4: back to work with him every six weeks, which the
Speaker 4: Heads of eight is enough mocked me for I remember
Speaker 4: this guy passed me in the parking lot and I
Speaker 4: was driving a Bundy rint Wreck and he had a
Speaker 4: black Porsche A he sleek, black hair and wore black
Speaker 4: clothes and he's like, where are you going? And I'm like,
Speaker 4: I'm going to New York for my voice lessen. He goes,
Speaker 4: you have such delusion of grandeur, Betty, You'll be lucky
Speaker 4: if you play American Mothers the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: And I was like, we'll see, Greg, We'll see.
Speaker 1: Isn't that horrible?
Speaker 2: God?
Speaker 1: That makes me?
Speaker 4: They were really weird guys, I mean, and they were mean,
Speaker 4: really mean, But anyway, I survived all that, and so
Speaker 4: I got this tener Mercies and then I got Cats.
Speaker 4: That following on the heels of that Tener Mercies was
Speaker 4: actually released in the winter. That Cats opened in October.
Speaker 1: But is that what you want to go? From Tender
Speaker 1: Mercies to the next movie?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that would have been great, But my dream was
Speaker 4: to bring like, really that authenticity to the musical theater
Speaker 4: to originate, right, and so those of us who were
Speaker 4: fortunate enough to work in the musical theater, we changed
Speaker 4: the face of the musical theater in that time period,
Speaker 4: you know, with Sondheim, Fosse, all that. It. It evolved
Speaker 4: from musical comedy to musical theater. And Grizabella in Cats
Speaker 4: Singing Memory was my first opportunity to bring that level
Speaker 4: of dramatic intensity to the musical theater stage. And I
Speaker 4: knew it was my turn, and I knew I was
Speaker 4: ready to do that.
Speaker 1: So had you been off an attractive role in a
Speaker 1: film on the heels of Tender Mercies, you would have
Speaker 1: passed because Kats was what you wanted to do.
Speaker 2: That's what I think.
Speaker 4: That's a weird exercise. Would I have passed? I don't
Speaker 4: know everything. I'm sharing with you. I learned in retrospect
Speaker 4: and but honestly, growing up I didn't think I was beautiful,
Speaker 4: and I aspired to the musical theater. Then I met
Speaker 4: Brian de Palmer and auditioned for his film Fandom of
Speaker 4: the Paradise. He didn't cast me, but several months after
Speaker 4: that he took me to dinner and gave me the
Speaker 4: book Carrie and said, read this book. I want you
Speaker 4: to play the gym teacher.
Speaker 1: Awful gym teacher.
Speaker 4: She was a great character. So that was a great
Speaker 4: film debut that he gave me the opportunity to do.
Speaker 4: And then from that movie I got it is enough
Speaker 4: Now it is enough. Was at the time I thought
Speaker 4: I'd made a horrible mistake taking a job. Why because
Speaker 4: I was like working in a factory and in retrospect
Speaker 4: only it was where I needed to be to learn
Speaker 4: the next thing.
Speaker 1: Well, no, Cats, I mean, there's not much to say
Speaker 1: about Cats. I think that hasn't been said obviously. It's
Speaker 1: this iconic and your performance and there's a song which
Speaker 1: we don't need to go into now that you sing
Speaker 1: that is this kind of dream state everybody goes into
Speaker 1: when they sing this song.
Speaker 4: Good description that's accurate a dream state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that a lot of the music and
Speaker 1: cats is a dream state. It's really it's just you
Speaker 1: have to suspend.
Speaker 4: It's moving art. It's like an art installation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't have any preconceptions of what, just to
Speaker 1: sit there and go with it. Yeah, And it's like
Speaker 1: it's like and when I think about that, what I
Speaker 1: think about is you work hard. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 4: Yeah, My knees were shot after two years of suns
Speaker 4: at Boulevard, running up and downstairs twelve times a night,
Speaker 4: and then repetitive choreography. I had a shoulder replacement in
Speaker 4: my right shoulder was replaced in September, which I'm really
Speaker 4: grateful I did it. Then the the surgeon was great
Speaker 4: and that apparatus is great. I'm really grateful. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: have to have a knee, probably both needs replaced, but
Speaker 4: I'm gonna start with one. But you have to be
Speaker 4: in a process either with a great osteopath or chiropractor
Speaker 4: or the other thing. I've found out recently that's very
Speaker 4: disturbing to me. Is I've had because of working in
Speaker 4: these dusty old theaters that they never keep clean and
Speaker 4: mold in the atmosphere and stuff. I've had repetitive bouts
Speaker 4: of bronchitis for years now and it's created a kind
Speaker 4: of asthmatic lung condition that I have to work with now,
Speaker 4: which is not nice.
Speaker 1: Singer and actor Betty Buckley be sure to follow Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts when we come back. Betty Buckley
Speaker 1: talks about the challenges of playing Norma Desmond and Andrew
Speaker 1: Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Betty Buckley worked with famed British director
Speaker 1: Trevor Nunn twice, first in Cats in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: then again in Sunset Boulevard in nineteen ninety four. In
Speaker 1: the intervening years, Betty Buckley's confidence in her own vision grew.
Speaker 4: First of all, he's a genius and the way he
Speaker 4: directed us in Cats, and the way he put all
Speaker 4: that together was really unbelievable. I mean, no other Cats
Speaker 4: company had that kind of amazing bomb. We did improv workshops,
Speaker 4: theater games and at least a month of rehearsals and
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks on our hands and kneess cats,
Speaker 4: but just incredible Grotowski theater games and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: What does he have to offer you when you do Sunset?
Speaker 4: Well, it was interesting because they flew me to London
Speaker 4: and my audition took an hour. I've never auditioned that
Speaker 4: long in my life. They brought me in a week
Speaker 4: in advance and taught me all the songs and then
Speaker 4: told me I had to sing them in Glenn closest
Speaker 4: keys and I was like, no, I won't be singing
Speaker 4: them in Glenn closest keys, and so the music director
Speaker 4: was a little floxed about that, and then he kept
Speaker 4: coming up on stage directing me and directing me. And
Speaker 4: I'm a meditator, so whatever they threw at me, I
Speaker 4: just stayed in my focus and did what they said.
Speaker 4: And then when I got the part, I was been
Speaker 4: back in London in this rehearsal process and I was like, okay.
Speaker 4: So I brought in mythological references the Greek drama Medusa Medea,
Speaker 4: and he was interested in that, and then he would
Speaker 4: listen really closely, and then he'd say, okay, show me,
Speaker 4: and then I would show him what I meant, and gradually,
Speaker 4: over a six week rehearsal process to eight weeks, I
Speaker 4: saw him liking what I was doing right, and and
Speaker 4: then he gave me rain to interpret it that way.
Speaker 1: You'd earned the right to do it your way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so then we opened and it was like
Speaker 4: a huge success, and I was just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know. So then I got New York and they
Speaker 4: were very nervous because the New York Times they followed
Speaker 4: me around to do this big feature in the Arts
Speaker 4: and Leisure section, and it was really nice. This writer
Speaker 4: was really great, but the angle the editor wanted was
Speaker 4: is she a big enough star to replace Glenn Close?
Speaker 4: So they were really nervous that my interpretation because it
Speaker 4: was so vastly different from what Glenn Close had done.
Speaker 4: It was vastly different from what any of them had done,
Speaker 4: and so they got nervous. And he was very nervous.
Speaker 4: Trevor None, Yeah, and I one day in rehearsal, he
Speaker 4: was very nervous and very upset, and I was like,
Speaker 4: what's going on? And so I started crying because I
Speaker 4: couldn't understand what he wanted. And when I was crying,
Speaker 4: he said this, this, this is what's missing. And I
Speaker 4: was I said what what? And he goes this and
Speaker 4: I was like wretched because I've felt wretched. He goes
Speaker 4: wretched and I said oh. And then I just stopped crying.
Speaker 4: I said, why didn't you just tell me that? Where
Speaker 4: do you want wretched? And so I got really calm
Speaker 4: and he goes okay, and then we went through the
Speaker 4: whole script and he goes here, here, here, and here,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, okay, I said, that's all you got
Speaker 4: to do. Just tell me what you need.
Speaker 1: Now, Betty Buckley, I want to get to something else.
Speaker 1: The power of your voice and the uniqueness. Where does
Speaker 1: the power come from?
Speaker 4: Can I just share with you a moment I had
Speaker 4: with you when we were younger. Yes, we were at
Speaker 4: a big public theater benefit years ago and you were
Speaker 4: part of it too, and I sang Aquarius and it
Speaker 4: was a very powerful performance and you were watching me
Speaker 4: and you just like shook your head and I was
Speaker 4: like so touched by that, like because I felt so
Speaker 4: seen and cherished and valued by you. Thank you, So
Speaker 4: you ask where my power comes from. It comes from
Speaker 4: a spiritual connection. Right. It's like I believe that at essence,
Speaker 4: all human beings are connected. Like I have a heart
Speaker 4: that's beating that wants to love and be loved. You
Speaker 4: have a heart that's beating that wants to love and
Speaker 4: be loved. At that essence, we are entirely the same.
Speaker 4: Our stories are different, but that I am no, that
Speaker 4: essence is the same. Since since I was like twenty
Speaker 4: six years old and I've been on this quest, I
Speaker 4: thought there has to be a handbook. And I found
Speaker 4: that there's like this core body of truth in every religion,
Speaker 4: in every major philosophy on the planet. So I found meditation.
Speaker 4: While as Enough, I went my ex husband Peter Flood,
Speaker 4: took me to a meditation class after my first season
Speaker 4: on Eight Is Enough, And then I learned that I
Speaker 4: could use meditation in my work, and that there was
Speaker 4: this higher consciousness in me that was the creative force
Speaker 4: that if I made myself an instrument of that, good
Speaker 4: things happened. And I was a witness about that as
Speaker 4: surely as the audience was. And I learned how to
Speaker 4: do that before cats and before tender mercies and then
Speaker 4: my work just changed and everything opened up and the
Speaker 4: power that I was able to access as an instrument
Speaker 4: of that consciousness, that's where it comes from. Is I'm
Speaker 4: meditating my way through that, and it's like being in
Speaker 4: a way on mister Toad's wild ride, right, Because when
Speaker 4: you have a part like Norman Desmond that you can
Speaker 4: go all out, full tilt boogie to quote Janis Joblin,
Speaker 4: then this it's like holding to this montra, holding to
Speaker 4: this focus point and then let everything happen. That's how
Speaker 4: I work.
Speaker 1: You are on an island of your own in terms
Speaker 1: of your talent and your uniqueness. It's just it's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: It's Unbelievaikia Alec, I feel humbled by your compliment. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well. Listen, we interviewed Ken, my old friend Ken, and
Speaker 1: the thing the two of you also have in common
Speaker 1: other than cats is you both went home. Ken moved
Speaker 1: back to Saint Louis. Yeah, he moved back to take
Speaker 1: care of his mom.
Speaker 4: Isten't he the greatest guy ever. He and I had
Speaker 4: a dressing room right next to each other at the
Speaker 4: Winter Garden, so we were really close pals. He's a lovely,
Speaker 4: lovely man.
Speaker 1: Well, 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 ones you're particularly fond of?
Speaker 4: Ghostlight, the two bone Burnett produced is a beautiful album
Speaker 4: that's very haunting. And Teabon and I grew up together
Speaker 4: in fourth and he made the first recording of my
Speaker 4: voice when we were both like seventeen. But so ghost Light,
Speaker 4: and then my recent stuff that I really love is
Speaker 4: Story Songs and Hope.
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the time to do this. My
Speaker 1: love to you, Ali, thank you, and good luck down there.
Speaker 4: I adore you and I'm so happy to connect with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, My thanks to Broadway legends Betty Buckley and
Speaker 1: Ken Page. I'll leave you with Betty singing as if
Speaker 1: we never said goodbye from Sunset Boulevard Live at Carnegie Hall.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio.
Speaker 4: The Whispered Conversations.
Speaker 2: In Old the clouded Halloway.
Speaker 4: So much to say, not just today, bottle.
Speaker 2: Well, madness, Well, body.
Speaker 1: May guess everything says if we never said about.
Speaker 2: Yes, everythings, as if we never said good.
Speaker 4: We taught the world
Speaker 2: You waste to dream,