Playing It Straight

I never heard of this guy until he stepped into some deep lavender doodoo last week. His name is Ramin Setoodeh, and he writes for Newsweek.com (I don't know if his articles routinely appear in the print edition of the magazine, I let my subscription lapse two years ago, back when the magazine decided the commentary of Karl Rove was worth publishing). He is openly gay, a point about which we might think, so what?, but he's lately been reminding us of the fact at every opportunity.

Last week, he posted an opinion piece (you can read it here) which lamented the "fact" (the quotes are mine, as his facts are NOT mine) that straight actors can successfully portray gay characters, but "it doesn't ever work in reverse." (THOSE quotes are actual. He really wrote that gay people can never play straight roles successfully.) Of course, in his article, he immediately began to qualify that outrageous statement. Two of the most successful out actors in Hollywood, Neil Patrick Harris and Portia de Rossi, play roles which are "broad caricatures, and not realistic characters," according to Setoodeh, so their performances as heterosexuals must be discounted.

He also discounts the success of Cynthia Nixon, suggesting that since her work on Sex and the City occurred before she came out of the closet, her performances of that heterosexual character cannot be judged (he ignores the fact that Nixon has appeared in two Sex and the City movies since coming out, and no one blinks). He goes on to dissect a single scene in the old comedy Pillow Talk, claiming it proves that, now that we know Rock Hudson was gay, he NEVER effectively played a straight character.

And that seems to be the crux of his article (though the author denies it now, more on that in a mo'): once we as the audience are aware of an actor's homosexuality, we are unable to accept him in a heterosexual role. He ignores the fact that Hudson was widely accepted as a masculine leading man throughout his film career; according to this guy, we can not believably accept his work in those roles, now that we know, in hindsight, that he was gay.

Ramin spends a good deal of his article reflecting on what he believes is the failure of Sean Hayes to fulfill the heterosexual requirements of his current role in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises; he also slams the performance of out actor Jonathan Groff as a straight teen on Glee, claiming the performance seems that of a "theatre queen."


Setoodeh ignored two of the most admired actors working today, Ian McKellen, who is a superstar in the fantasy film genre (Lord of the Rings, X-Men) and who continues to play heterosexual characters to great acclaim (I've got news for you, Ramin: King Lear was straight), and Cherry Jones, who is currently winning Emmy awards playing straight on 24. Those actors don't fit into his thesis, so he overlooks them.

This article has stirred up quite a bit of controversy since it hit the web (it is also in Newsweek's print edition currently on the stands). Sean Hayes is widely known from his many years on Will and Grace, playing a flamboyantly gay character, and the actor himself has recently confirmed that he is gay. Despite the fact that Hayes has won a Tony nomination for his current work, Setoodeh believes the performance is stiff, wooden, and, well, queeny. "He looks like he's hiding something," the author notes, "which of course, he is." Now I don't know if Hayes is believable in his current role or not (the Tony nominators seem to think so), and I am not naive enough to suggest that every actor, gay or straight, is appropriate for every role. Casting Hayes (or me, for that matter) as Stanley Kowalski is asking for trouble. I wouldn't cast Brian Dennehy as Quinton Crisp, either. But Setoodeh's insistence that any faults he found with Sean's performance must be laid squarely at the actor's sexual orientation does every actor, gay or straight, a monstrous injustice.

With some righteous indignation, Sean Hayes's costar in Promises Promises, Kristin Chenoweth, wrote a scathing rebuttal to the article (read it here), and many others have jumped on the bandwagon, calling Setoodeh homophobic and self-hating. At a talkback Off-Broadway this week, both Cheyenne Jackson and Michael Urie called the guy "unconscionable" (they also called him an asshole), and the creator of Glee, Ryan Murphy, is calling for a boycott of Newsweek, even as he invited the offensive writer to watch an episode of his show being produced.

In the last few days, out actor Alan Cumming has blogged his reaction, and has reminded us that the world is full of gay people effectively playing straight, only some of whom are actors. Writer Aaron Sorkin has issued an article which I think places the controversial issue into perspective; he urges that we boycott US Weekly, In Touch, and the red carpet, rather than Newsweek, as those bastions supply the endless personal information we all know about celebrities; he claims, quite rightly, that we don't need to know, and in fact shouldn't know, anything about an actor's private life in order to judge an actor's performance.

Setoodeh himself has been backpedaling furiously since his ridiculous comments ignited the uproar, appearing on MSNBC and on Joy Behar's show to explain that his article was actually about the lack of openly gay leading men in the movies. A re-reading of his original article does not support that spin, otherwise he would not have spent so much time slamming a stage performance (Hayes's) and a TV performance (Groff's). It is the author himself who finds it impossible to ignore the personal life of an actor while watching his performance. I don't know if that is self-hating, but it certainly seems like an issue he should be addressing himself, rather than assuming the whole world feels the same.

Friday Dance Party: Britney and Jamie Lynn's Mom Would Be Proud

I had every intention of devoting this week's Dance Party to Lena Horne, but that will have to wait. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Lena will still be dead next week.

But this clip caught my eye yesterday, and in the past 24 hours, has gone so viral that it's been yanked from youtube. It's popped up on news programs and has ignited a debate about how sexualized our young folk have become. Yes, somebody actually thought this clip was something of which to be proud. Even worse, somebody thought this dance routine was a good idea, flattering and educational to the children involved, and worthy of rehearsal, costuming, the works.

What do you think? Keep in mind that somebody gave consent to this routine. It's a tribute to every brainless parent who ever thought this kind of experience would be good for their kid.

The song is instantly recognizable, you couldn't get away from it last year. The original video has been parodied countless times, including that hilarious version from Saturday Night Live starring Justin Timberlake and the gang.

But this version is no parody. If you thought the tune gnawed at your brain before, take a gander at this monstrosity. You won't be able to look away:

These girls are seven years old.

Friday Dance Party: Hey There, Gaynor Girl

I ran across this clip earlier this week, when I was researching the sad story of Lynn Redgrave's death. Lynn's big film break came early in her career, with her starring role in Georgy Girl, a film which I never saw but which is now #1 on my Netflix queue. Apparently, it's now on everybody else's list, too, as Netflix tells me it has a "very long wait." I bet a week ago, I'd already have it in my mailbox.

Whatever. This week's Dance Party is the title tune from Georgy Girl, written and originally performed by an Australian group called The Seekers. It was their biggest international hit, and was also their final recording before they disbanded. The tune was nominated for the Oscar for Best Song, and in the clip below, is being performed by Mitzi Gaynor.

Ms. Gaynor is still with us, and still performing, but is not really on anybody's radar these days. She appeared in a few movie musicals in her heyday, the best known of which is surely South Pacific, in which she played the leading lady, Nellie. She swiped the role from its stage originator, Mary Martin; the film was a popular hit but not a critical success; Gaynor made a buttload of money on the soundtrack album.

In her long career, she has appeared, on stage or on film, with the biggest names in show biz. Frank Sinatra, Donald O'Connor, Gene Kelly, David Niven, and Yul Brynner are just a few of her co-stars. She was basically a dancer who could sell a song, and in the 60s and 70s, she headlined a string of television specials which are still admired today (back then, musical stars who were not interested in weekly series often presented TV specials; Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, Andy Williams, and Julie Andrews all produced more than a few specials during the period. And of course, the most prolific of these folks was Bob Hope).

Our Mitzi's specials were well-known for her dance routines, and for her glamorous costumes (Bob Mackie got some Emmy love for his designs). So, though Gaynor is not nationally recognized today, she was a big enough star in the late 60s to be invited to perform on the Oscar broadcast, singing one of the nominated songs.

The clip below is a bit blurry, but is clear enough to showcase Gaynor's over-the-top charm, as well as her ability to sell a song. And you gotta love the very 60s moves and garb. As I said, this clip came to my attention as I was writing my entry about Lynn Redgrave, who, along with her entire family, was seated in the audience watching the title number from her film being performed live by Mitzi Gaynor.

"Georgy Girl" was a huge hit for The Seekers, but they did not win the Oscar that night in 1967. The award went to John Barry, and his title tune, "Born Free."

Helen Wagner

1918-2010

Wagner's death last weekend at the age of 91 brings an end to the era of the Moral Matriarch of the Daytime Soap. (I just invented that name, but did not invent the phenomenon.)


Born in Lubbock, TX, Wagner was performing some summer stock in St. Louis when Oscar Hammerstein saw her, and advised her to move to New York. She had a small role in the original production of Oklahoma for a time, but actually did not spend much of her career on the stage. She was with Guiding Light when that radio soap made the transition to television in 1952, but left soon afterward. In 1956, she was cast in the role of a lifetime, and that's no exaggeration; she spent the rest of her life (over 50 years) playing matriarch Nancy Hughes on As The World Turns.
She described her character as a "tentpole" role, someone around whom the rest of the drama swirled. I wrote a bit about this type of character a while ago, when Frances Reid, who played a corresponding role on Days of Our Lives, died. Wagner's character on ATWT was never confronted with long lost children, evil twins, or kidnapping plots. Instead, her function was to provide a moral sounding board to the other, more dramatically interesting characters on the show.
Helen is in the Guinness Book of World Records as having played a single character on television the longest time. She uttered the very first words on ATWT ("Good morning, dear") when the show debuted on April 2, 1956, and played the role more or less continuously until her death. She took two breaks from the show, one voluntarily, and one not. About six months into the show's run, creator Irna Phillips fired our Helen, but after several months, rehired her when no one else could be found who could pour coffee on camera quite so lovingly. In the mid 80s, Helen walked away from the show to protest the producers' insistence that the senior members of the ensemble be pushed aside to make way for younger blood. She was back with the show a year or so later, in time to celebrate the show's 30th anniversary on the air.

Wagner got the chance to stretch her chops upon her return, when the show teamed her with an aging police detective (the actor who had played Helen's husband on the show had died, so of course, his character died too. Roles such as Nancy Hughes do not go through multiple marriages as other soap characters do; if they marry more than once, it is because they have been widowed). The writers gave Wagner's new husband Alzheimer's, a first in daytime, and the plotline played out over a two year period (at the time, ATWT had a reputation for moving at a glacial pace). They finally killed the guy off, and Wagner's character remained a widow until her death last week.

If you've never seen a daytime soap in your life, it is likely you have still seen a snippet of Helen Wagner's performance as Nancy Hughes. A clip of one of her scenes is enshrined in the Museum of Television Arts, and in other museums of note, as it was her program which was interrupted by Walter Cronkite on November 22, 1963.

CBS was the only network broadcasting nationally at that particular moment, both NBC and ABC having given the early afternoon hours to their affiliates to program locally. Whenever you see that very famous clip of Cronkite interrupting "regularly scheduled programming" to announce the assassination of John F. Kennedy, it is As The World Turns which is being interrupted, and that is Helen Wagner onscreen at the time. She later reported that the show, which was performed live in those days, continued without the actors being informed of the drama unfolding in Dallas.


Wagner's screen time diminished dramatically as she aged; she appeared only sporadically in recent years. In 2004, along with other long-time players in daytime, she was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Television Academy (she never won nor was nominated for the Emmy). Her most recent (and now final) appearance on the show was April 5 of this year.

There is no doubt ATWT will address Wagner's death at some point before going off the air in September (it was announced several months ago that the show has been cancelled). It would have been a nice touch to have her Nancy Hughes utter the final lines of the series, bringing the 54 year-old show full circle, but Helen Wagner's death last week will make that symmetry impossible.

This Is Living

I bet Vanessa Redgrave has had a lot of memories flooding her brain the last few days. Only a year after losing her daughter in a freak skiing accident, and only a month after losing her only brother, she now has to face the loss of her only sister. This theatrical dynasty can't catch a break.

Lynn Redgrave

1943-2010

I have a hunch one of the memories Vanessa might be cherishing right now is of April 10, 1967. On that night, in Santa Monica, CA, she sat with her father, Sir Michael Redgrave, her mother, Rachel Kempson, her brother, Corin Redgrave, and her little sister, Lynn Redgrave, at the Academy Awards. The show almost didn't go on, or at least, almost was not televised, as AFTRA had gone on strike against ABC two weeks before. It was only three hours before the telecast began that the strike was settled. The whole Redgrave clan was in attendance because both Vanessa and Lynn had received their first Oscar nominations. The elder was up for Morgan, and Lynn was nominated for the title role in Georgy Girl.

I imagine it was a pretty special night, and not just because the phenomenon of two sisters competing for Best Actress had only happened once before (in 1941, when Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine duked it out for the award; Fontaine won). It was a rare glimpse of the theatrical family together in public; in later years, the sisters would have a major falling out over Vanessa's political mouthiness, and Lynn's devotion to her adopted country.

(By the way, neither sister won the Oscar that year; Elizabeth Taylor took it for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf).

Lynn confessed that, in her early life, she felt like the forgotten child of the family, ignored by her parents and excluded by her siblings. Vanessa had the star quality, and Corin the brains. It was only after an equestrian career ceased to be an option that Lynn joined the family business, making a splash as a company member in the first season of the Royal National Theatre in 1963. She was directed onstage by Laurence Olivier and Franco Zefferelli, and Noel Coward cast her in his own Hay Fever. Her fellow company members included Peter O'Toole, Maggie Smith, and her father. Her brother-in-law Tony Richardson gave her a cameo in the film Tom Jones, an appearance which led to Georgy Girl.

Lynn made her Broadway debut in Peter Schaffer's Black Comedy in 1967, and she returned to the stage often throughout her career. She earned three Tony nominations (losing them all), and two Oscar nods (Georgy Girl and Gods and Monsters, thirty years apart), losing those as well. But she won the Golden Globe for both those film roles, as well as kudos from various critics groups along the way. She was nominated twice for the Emmy, and once for the Grammy (for narrating the children's book The Witches; she lost to Marlo Thomas). One of those Emmy nods, for the sitcom House Calls, was bittersweet, as she had already left the show when she was not allowed to breast feed her child in her dressing room on the set. The incident resulted in a lengthy lawsuit.

Lynn did not achieve the superstar status of her sister Vanessa, but she was surely the most "American" of the Redgraves, and not just because she became a naturalized citizen. Vanessa called Americans "imperialist pigs," a slur which so angered Lynn that it caused their estrangement. Lynn loved the States, and her yeoman-like work here made her attractive and accessible to American audiences. She did Shaw on Broadway (I saw her St. Joan, and wrote about it here), and took over for Carol Burnett in Moon Over Buffalo, but she was just as likely to be seen on Fantasy Island or Ugly Betty. She was a working actress, she explained, and she needed to work. A whole generation of Americans know her from her long association with Weight Watchers in the 80s (she was open about her struggles with bulimia); the famous tagline of her numerous commercials for the diet program became a national catchphrase.


I felt very very sad when I heard of Lynn's death a few days ago. She was not only extremely talented, she was also exceedingly brave. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy in 2003, which put her into remission for a bit. In recent years, her cancer returned as Stage IV, when cancer has moved from the original organ and metastasized throughout the body. From that point, the end is clear. Redgrave wrote a book about her medical journey, and included graphic photos of herself (taken by her daughter)undergoing treatment. I can barely look at those pictures, they remind me so strongly of my mother's battle scars.

In recent decades, Lynn turned her complicated feelings about her family into art. She became a playwright, offering several solo shows about her relationships with the other Redgraves. Her most recent, Rachel and Juliet, concerned her mother, actress Rachel Kempson, and her fascination with Shakespeare's teen aged heroine. Nightingale, which Redgrave performed in Los Angeles and New York, grew from a few snippets of information she had about her maternal grandmother. And of course, Shakespeare for My Father, which Lynn wrote and performed in the mid-90s, concerned her distant relationship with Sir Michael.

Ms. Redgrave was still working on Shakespeare for My Father when I had the privilege of meeting and working with her. Lynn loved teaching, and for several years, she offered a Master Class to the younger actors at The Shakespeare Theatre Company. This class was a bit unusual in that the major patrons and donors of the theatre were invited to watch the workshop. On a Monday night in 1995, Lynn met our gang of 8 in the green room of the Shakespeare Theatre, about an hour before the class was to take place. She glanced at the monologues we each had chosen to work on, and raised nary an eyebrow at my edited version of a Cassius speech from Julius Caesar. She understood both the fear and the exhilaration of undergoing an acting class in front of 450 strangers, and did her best to put us at our ease.

Before we moved upstairs to the stage to begin the class, Lynn gathered us all into a huddle. She produced a small book of Shakespeare which had belonged to her famous father. It was a well-worn, cloth-bound book, and she explained that she never went onstage without first handling this memento of the great Sir Michael Redgrave. She offered us all the opportunity to indulge in her own private Redgrave ritual, and, one by one, we passed the book around and stroked its textured cover for luck. Lynn is holding that very book in the photo at left, from the Broadway production of Shakespeare for My Father.

Lynn was a consummate performer and teacher, and turned what could have been an awkward evening of tentativeness into a class in which we each shined. I had a great time working on my piece with Lynn; she was an expert at making her points clear and accessible, and somehow, the presence of the audience only enhanced the experience for me. That evening remains one of the most memorable of any I have had on a stage.

In addition to seeing her in the Broadway St. Joan, I also saw her as Joanne in Sondheim's Company at the Kennedy Center. I wish I had seen one of Lynn's self-written shows (and secretly wish she had had the time or inclination to write one about her sister. THAT would have been volcanic!)

From Joan of Arc and Lady Bracknell to sitcoms and game shows, she never allowed the Redgrave name to inhibit her choices. The clip below is a great example of Lynn's sweet, down-to-earth attitude toward her work; as much as I admire Vanessa, I can't see her spending much time performing with a puppet.

At 7 PM yesterday, I was thinking about that exhilarating workshop at The Shakespeare Theatre years ago. At that moment, all the marquee lights on Broadway were dimmed for a minute, to honor the memory of Lynn Redgrave.

Friday Dance Party: Backwards, And In High Heels

You may not believe this, but Ginger Rogers and I have something in common. We both won Charleston contests. Her win, in 1926 in Fort Worth, Texas, snagged her a spot in Eddie Foy's vaudeville act, which toured the country for several years before landing her in New York, where she was pegged to star in Girl Crazy, along with another unknown named Ethel Merman. MY win, in 1976 in Canoga Park, CA, snagged me 75 bucks and a t-shirt. We're practically twins.

Ginger Rogers met Fred Astaire during her Girl Crazy gig, but did not appear with him until their first film together, 1933's Flying Down to Rio. She was to make a total of 10 musical films with Fred, and they became the preeminent dance team of the 30s musical genre. When interviewed in 1986, Astaire was blunt about Rogers's ability: "Ginger had never danced with a partner before. She faked it an awful lot. She couldn't tap and she couldn't do this and that ... but Ginger had style and talent and improved as she went along. She got so that after a while everyone else who danced with me looked wrong."

Fred was right. Although he partnered with far better dancers than Ginger, he never looked so good as when he was gliding across the floor with Rogers. It may have been that, as an actress who danced (rather than a dancer who tried to act), she recognized that characterization did not stop once the music started. She had an ongoing non-musical career before, during, and after her decade with Astaire. She held her own opposite Katherine Hepburn in Stage Door in 1937, and won the Best Actress Oscar for her dramatic work in Kitty Foyle in 1940. (Here's a fun fact: Rogers portrayed the role of Roxie Hart in the film of the same name in 1942, a role which would later be played by Gwen Verdon, Liza Minnelli, Ann Reinking, Brooke Shields, Melanie Griffith, Bebe Neuwirth, and Renee Zellweger, among many others, in the musical version, Chicago.)

In her later life, Ginger was a prominent Hello, Dolly! replacement, once Carol Channing left the role, and she spent almost two years playing Mame in London, earning more money than any other stage actress had, at the time. She was beloved by Hollywood, despite her Republican leanings and background; her mother, screen writer Lela Rogers, named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Rogers herself remained a staunch Reaganite until her death in 1995.

Our favorite Commie-hater was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 1992, but Astaire's widow demanded more money than CBS was willing to cough up for the rights to include film clips of their work together, so her televised tribute noticeably lacked her most famous dance sequences. Fred and Ginger made nine movies together in the 1930s, and one more a decade later, and those ten films constitute a trove of dancing gems. The clip below, from 1936's Swing Time, is one of my favorites. Our Ginger is a dance instructor in danger of being sacked; Fred comes to the rescue, and shows off a bit for the boss. The sequence is not cluttered up with elaborate sets or costumes, and allows the duo's smooth simplicity to shine.



It was Texas governor Ann Richards who is credited with the famous line regarding our gal: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels." The quote became a motto for a generation of feminists; a musical version of Ginger's life, called "Backwards in High Heels" is currently making the regional rounds.

Ginger Rogers died 15 years ago this week.