c/o Susan Smith Agency
121 N. San Vicente Blvd.
Beverly Hills, Calif. 90211 Jim Coughlin wrote a wonderful career study on Harry in 1985, which makes this look like a cereal box. :)
Go here to read it, it's great!!
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So
who is Harry Groener, and why do we love him? Simply put, he's awesome. He is
literally one of the hardest working actors in show business, with scores of
Broadway, TV and film credits, yet most people remember him only as "that guy,
from that TV show, you know...." "That guy" could be anyone from his brilliant
performance as the villainous Mayor Wilkins on Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, or his three year run as Ralph Drang on NBC's Dear John, or
his great one-shot guest appearance as the tortured telepath Tam Elbrun on
Star Trek: The Next Generation. No matter what he does, Harry has an
intense screen presence, a certain something that appeals to us fans.
He can wring chilly subtext from the most innocent of dialogue, he can make a
meglomaniacal mayoral demon-wannabe sympathetic, he can be silly and charming
and vulnerable all at once. He's a fantastic dancer, and he's got a seriously
great singing voice. He is multitalented and overlooked, and he just rocks.
He's also very kind and generous in real life.
Harry's first success came on the stage. His breakthrough role came in
1979 as cornbread Will Parker in the original cast for the Broadway revival of the
musical 'Oklahoma!'. He also appeared as Munkustrap in the original Broadway
run of the show that wouldn't die, 'Cats', and played song and dance man Bobby
Child for a staggering 1000+ performances in 1992's 'Crazy For You'. He has
been nominated for three Tony awards, for 'Oh Brother', 'Crazy For You' and
'Cats', respectively. Some of his sparkly song and dance talent was displayed
in the Oct. 10 1998 episode of Cupid on ABC, when he played a
compulsively singing, dancing businessman who must win back his exasperated
wife.
In 1988, Harry landed a supporting role of nerdy Ralph on the Judd
Hirsch sitcom Dear John, a comedy about a support group for divorcees.
The show ran for three years, although the character of Ralph was inexplicably
dropped from the show at the end of the third season. In 1997 Harry appeared
on Mad About You in the recurring role of mayoral candidate/ prosac
trainwreck Lance Brockwell, whose campaign Jaime was working on when she
became pregnant. Harry took over the role from Alan Ruck (Spin City)
and played Brockwell for 4 episodes.
The one role of
Harry's that really grabbed my attention was his one-shot appearance as the
Smiling Man on the ill-fated sci-fi series Sleepwalkers. The basic plot
of this 1997 show was a team of doctors helping people by entering their
dreams. It starred Bruce Greenwood, whose doctor character was haunted by his
best friend's death and by his wife, trapped in a coma, whom he regularly
visited in her dreams. In the second episode we were introduced to the Smiling
Man, an evil trickster who first showed up in a young boy's dream but who
might have been the ghost of Bruce's dead friend, back for revenge -- or at
the very least Bruce's guilt feelings in a dream form. Groener was
satisfyingly creepy in this role, kind of a cross between the Joker and Jim
Carrey's Riddler, and he might have given the X-Files' Cancer Man a run
in the villains department if the show had lasted. In a later episode, which
only aired in California, the Smiling Man returned in a brief cameo -- he came
to collect Bruce's character during a near-death experience. You just know
they were going to bring this ghouly villain back to torment Bruce in future
plots, and it would have been interesting to see where this sparring match
led. This is still my sentimental favorite, Harry is just scary as hell in
this, with that maniacal laugh, and that grin....yikes. :) He just rocked. You
can find a complete episode guide (with pictures) at my brand new and improved
Sleepwalkers tribute
page!
During
the 1998/1999 TV season, Harry appeared as another good baddie, the evil Mayor of Sunnydale
on the WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not much more than a cameo in the
first few episodes, Harry's role as Mayor Richard Wilkins III was expanded to
a slightly larger cameo over the course of the season. A deliberately
mysterious character, his cheery upstanding-citizen facade hid a sinister
ambition -- to become an immortal demon and destroy Sunnydale, and probably
the better half of Southern California. It was impossible not to feel sympathy
for this particular baddie, however, above all the other "big bads" in the
Buffy pantheon. In the end he's defeated by Buffy only because he lets himself
be "human" -- because he allows himself to care for Faith, the evil Slayer
that he adopted as a surrogate daughter. Faith later sells him out to Buffy,
for no reason that's ever really explained. The Mayor's story arc was brought
to a boil in the first half of the season finale, which set up his Ascension
to full demonhood. Unfortunately, due to the real-life schoolyard shooting
tragedies across the country, the second half of the finale was shelved until
a later date, leaving Buffy fans all over the US hanging. The second half
finally aired on July 13, and the episode saw the Mayor's transformation into
a demonic thirty-foot snake and his fiery end in the high school library. The
Mayor briefly returned the following year, in the episode "This Year's Girl",
communing with Faith via dreams and videotape. He also appeared along with a
bevy of other Buffy baddies at the end of the season seven premiere "Lessons".
Harry has been in tons of theatre productions. In addition to
being part of the original casts for Oklahoma! and the immortal
Cats, probably Harry's triumph so far was the 1992 smash musical
Crazy For You, a romantic comedy centered around a retrospective of
Gershwin standards. In the show Harry plays Bobby Child, a banker who dreams
of being a song and dance man. Fleeing his overbearing mother and fiancee, he
travels to Dead Rock, Arkansas where he falls for the town postmistress, Polly
(Jodi Benson, who was also the singing voice of Disney's the Little Mermaid).
Even if you know nothing about theater, this CD is probably the perfect
primer, many of the songs have been used in TV themes and commercials and
such. One song, "They Can't Take That Away From Me," was reprised by Harry
when he appeared on Cupid in 1998. Check out our humble Crazy For You tribute page.
Harry's film roles, though scattered, are definitely out there. In 1980
he made his big screen debut alongside Robert Redford, no less, in the prison
drama Brubaker. He was directed by Steven Spielberg as a captain in the
slave-ship chronicle Amistad, harrassed Robin Williams in the biopic of
Patch Adams, cowered before gangsta Tom Hanks in the Prohibition film
Road To Perdition, and got to strut his stuff (albeit in the role of
the "bad dancer") in the Vanessa Williams vehicle Dance With Me. More
recently, he drove a Winnebago alongside Jack Nicholson in the Oscar-nominated
drama About Schmidt.
In
1977, Harry married fellow actress Dawn Didawick. The couple have been very
happily married for 30 years! Dawn has appeared in many stage productions
and TV shows, most recently starring as Rosalind the secretary in the hit
Julia Roberts film Erin Brockovich and in Christmas With The Kranks. The couple continue to star together in various plays with their theatre troupe, the Antaeus Project.
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Broadway’s
Brubaker (1980)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 4