March 13, 2001
HARRY GROENER
by Mara Bushansky mailto:bushansky@fynsworthalley.com
Harry Groener has one of those faces that you've got to recognize, because he's everywhere. You may have seen him in the original casts of Cats and Crazy For You, or perhaps you watched him on television in Dear John or Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And, of course, if you know the music in our catalog, you've surely heard his appearances on fourteen of our albums, from the very first (Unsung Sondheim ) to the very recent (Cole Porter's You Never Know ).
MB: Did you start your career on TV or on the stage?
HG: On the stage. The first show goes back to when I was 13 or 14 and I was doing stuff in grammar school. The first professional job was at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, but I’ve been doing plays and working in the theatre since I was 12 years old. I started out in a ballet company - I wanted to be a dancer, so I started taking jazz classes, but my mom and dad said that if I wanted to be really good as a jazz dancer I needed some basic training, which was, of course, ballet. So I joined a ballet company in San Francisco, and I was with them for a while, and then I got disinterested, and I got back into regular jazz and musical theatre, because around that same time I was also in the drama department in junior high school. So, theatre and dance were taking parallel roads, and I was just going back and forth, doing plays and musicals, and then just doing that for a while until I got into TV and film. I think the first episodic [TV show] was Remington Steele, in the early ‘80’s. I had done a couple of little things when I was in New York... do you remember the Captain Kangaroo show?
MB: Oh my God, yes!
HG: Well, I remember watching it as a kid, so then I got to New York and my agent said “Do you want to do a couple of episodes of Captain Kangaroo?” and I said “Are you crazy?” I thought that would be absolutely wonderful - I got to do three of them, and it was so great, because Bob Keeshan was still Captain Kangaroo, there was still Mr. Greenjeans, and the guy that did Grandfather Clock and Bunny Rabbit was still there, and this guy looked like he was somebody on The Sopranos, and he talked like somebody on The Sopranos! I had a wonderful time - we did all kinds of crazy sketches... I was an alien at one point who disappeared and popped back in again, I was the curator of a numbers museum, and I would make my entrance on a pogo stick, and Bob Keeshan and I had this one bit that was simply about getting dressed! It was almost like a commedia piece, it was just about getting dressed. It was just divine--I had a ball.
MB: So, you’ve originated a role, in Crazy For You, and you’ve stepped into one, in Sunday in the Park With George - do you find one more difficult to do than the other?
HG: It’s hard - they’re both different problems to solve. The first one, you’re there from the very beginning, and so you have all the regular rehearsals, but you have all the changes that are being done... When we were in Washington with Crazy For You, every day we’d come in and we’d have a pile of different changes here and there - not only script changes, but “try this piece of costume, let’s change this dance and do this and do that...” and you’re constantly working on it. When you’re going into a show like Sunday in the Park... first of all, I loved that show, so it was really a labor of love. I couldn’t believe I got it and that they’d be brave enough to take a chance with me, because I’m not a trained singer the way Mandy [Patinkin] is, and I don’t have Mandy’s voice. They really took a chance, and I thought this might be the one show that I physically can’t do because I’m just not the type to be able to [sing it]. Well, it worked out differently, thank God! For three weeks I worked with just the stage managers, and they were extremely thorough and very exact, so that when I finally got onto the stage and worked with the company and orchestra - only once! - it went like clockwork. The night that I went on for the first time, I really wasn’t scared at all. I was in heaven, because I got to do this show. But going into a role, you don’t have the advantage of working with all the other cast members - you’re only working with a few people. And James Lapine wanted me to go a little bit toward Mandy’s interpretation of the part, to be a bit more cut-off and a bit more cold, and Stephen [Sondheim], I think, liked what I was doing, and so I didn’t get a lot of pressure to do it like Mandy. I did some of the things like Mandy, I guess, but not really like Mandy, and I didn’t get too much pressure to change, so it seemed to be working. But no, between creating a role and stepping into one, I don’t find one more difficult than the other.
MB: You were with Cats from the beginning in the US - did you have any idea it was going to be such a phenomenon?
HG: Yeah, everybody knew that Cats would be the show of the year, and that it would probably run forever - every year there’s a show that everyone gets the feeling of “Well, this will be the hit.” Whether it’s going to run forever you don’t know, but it’s going to be the hit of the season, and we had that feeling with Cats. Because of who was putting it together and how they had produced other shows, we had a sense that it was one of those shows that was going to run for a very, very, very long time, and that anyone who did Grizabella would get a nomination for a Tony, and all that stuff. That’s natural, we all knew that.
MB: So its success wasn’t a surprise.
HG: No, but it was still very exciting! You don’t know that as an absolute - you have a sense, you’re pretty sure that that’s what’s going to happen, because of the word on the street and the way the box office is selling, and all that, but at the same time, it still could turn on you. The critics weren’t that crazy about it - of course it didn’t make any difference, because they had an advance of a zillion dollars or something. It was truly amazing. Like The Producers is now - it’s in Chicago, and there are lines around the box office in New York, and by the time they get in [to Broadway], they’ll have probably around a $10 million advance on those tickets. It doesn’t matter what the critics say - and that’s kinda good, I like that.
MB: Is there any stage role, dramatic or musical, that you’d still like to tackle?
HG: I’ve been asked this question a number of times, and I’ve always tried to think after the interview, and I’d always go “Is there really a part that I want...?” I know when I was younger I wanted to do parts, and of course I don’t remember what they are now (laughs) ...but I know that I had a passion to do a part or I really wanted to do this, or I heard about that, and I would love to do that... I don’t really have that feeling anymore, and I’m kind of sad that I don’t have that feeling.
MB: Well, once you’ve been on Captain Kangaroo, what else is there?
HG: (laughs) That’s true... you know, it’s downhill from there!
MB: So, besides that, on TV you’ve done Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, which is a drama, relatively speaking, and you’ve done Dear John, which was a sitcom - is there one format you prefer over the other?
HG: I prefer the hour shows over the sitcoms. Sitcom schedules are 9 to 5. When I got Dear John, that was the first time that my wife and I had ever had that kind of schedule, where you actually do have a 9-5 job and you’re home at 5 or 6, and you say “Well, let’s go to a movie or something.” You don’t have to go to the theatre. Your weekends are off, and then the holidays come and you have a week off for Thanksgiving, and you have two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s, and you actually have a week off every three weeks... it’s an insane schedule, it’s just so wonderful. There are so many people who have done these hour shows forever and ever and ever who just long to do a sitcom because you have a life! The difference is that with the hour shows, the work can be so much better... sitcoms, you know, there are very few that are any good. I’m just not a sitcom fan. I think Will and Grace is good, I think Friends is good, but I’m just not crazy about [sitcoms]. They’re all the same to me, and they’re all sort of... there are too many sitcoms that have that stereotypical “the husband’s the idiot and the wife is just angry at her idiot husband” - I can’t stand that. I like the hour shows, but of course if you’re the lead, you really have to stay there the whole time, from 10-14 hours a day. It can really kill you - especially if you have a wife and child.
MB: So, which medium do you prefer, stage or television?
HG: You know, theatre is my first love, but the thing about working in front of a camera is that there are new tasks and new problems to solve, and I’m really enjoying that. Even though I’ve done over 50 television shows - when I count them down I can’t believe that there were so many! I go “Oh my God!” It’s just little episodic things here and there, and then the series, and it’s just a lot! And I’m starting to do more film, but at the same time, it’s still new to me, and it’s still a new way to tell a story that I find challenging. I enjoy being in front of an audience, I mean there really isn’t anything to compare to that kind of experience, but at the same time, the kind of work that you have to do in front of the camera, especially doing a one-hour drama, there’s much more of an observation of human behavior that you have to do for that than you do for the theatre. You do have to observe human behavior and try to make it natural, so that we believe that you are that character, but in front of the camera, we as an audience can really pick out when something is fake. You know, because you’re so close, and the audiences are becoming so much more sophisticated that you’ve got to be much better at creating that character, or creating a scene that is absolutely believable, and that comes down to learning and observing and understanding and recreating human behavior, down to its tiniest little detail. It’s the kind of detail you can’t pick up in the theatre because it’s just so small, and I really like that kind of work.
MB: So, let’s get to the important question here: How did you meet Bruce?
HG: I think we probably met in New York when we did the first CD, the Unsung Sondheim CD. I think he said “I want you to do [That Old Piano Roll] with Lynette,” and I said “Great,” and we did that, then one after another, and I think that’s how we met, because he wanted me to do that one CD.
MB: So, he just approached you after seeing you in something?
HG: Yeah, I think I was doing Crazy For You. And all those other CDs were just great: Lost In Boston, and Unsung Musicals, too...
MB: Have you ever come to Bruce with song suggestions, or does he just pick a song for you?
HG: I remember once I said “There was a musical that I did and there were some really fun songs in it, that I did a long time ago,” but I didn’t have any of the music, and he certainly knew [the show]-it was a musical called Back Country that would’ve been my first Broadway musical had it come in [to New York], but it didn’t, it closed in Boston. It was a musical version of Playboy of the Western World based in Kansas. It was a fun piece, but it was flawed and problematic - but had it come in, it would’ve been extremely good for me. I played the sidekick, and I had great bits and wonderful solos, and you could tell the audience was extremely responsive to what I did, and so I said to myself “This would be really good for me,” but it never went in - it died a big death. However, Bruce said the music was kind of cool, but “Yeah, I’ve heard it and I’m not interested.” But no, I’ve never gone to him and said “I’d really would like to do this album or let’s do this album” - I just don’t do that!
MB: How did you get involved with You Never Know?
HG: I think they came to me and said “Do you want to play this part?” and I listened to the music, and Paul Lazarus said David Garrison was going to be in it, and I love David Garrison, so I said “Oh my God, I just adore him!”
MB: So, that was enough for you?
HG: Yeah, that was enough for me. And it was really good timing - I think that when it happened at this point was, shortly before I started rehearsals on You Never Know I got a call from my agent that said “Well, the good news is that [Dear John] has been picked up - the bad news is that you haven’t.” They decided not to keep my character, which was just foolish on their part. The networks certainly had the option to do whatever they want, but in this particular case I didn’t think that they showed any respect for the audience - they didn’t write him out, they didn’t explain his not being there, and then the next season no one ever talked about it. He just wasn’t there - and that’s just not good storytelling. The audiences just turned off - Judd [Hirsch, the star of Dear John] was incensed. No one knew about it - he called Warren Littlefield [then-president of NBC], Warren said he didn’t do it, he called this other guy who was second to Warren who said he didn’t do it, and [Judd] said, “Well, if no one did it, then why doesn’t Harry have a job?” It was just dumb. But in retrospect, in the big cosmic scheme of things, it had to happen, because right after that, Crazy For You happened. Once Crazy For You happened, I said “Ah, that’s why that had to happen, because I had to do Crazy For You,” that had to be in my life. But it was before that I was at the Pasadena Playhouse doing You Never Know and Mike Ockrent and Susan Stroman and Paul Gemignani and all those people who were with Crazy For You came out here for auditions and came to see You Never Know. They flew me into New York to read with various women for Crazy For You and they offered me the part. But I didn’t have to audition for You Never Know, thank God, because I don’t audition well for musicals - for plays it’s fine, but for musicals I just don’t audition well. I don’t like it, I don’t have a prepared set of songs - I did have a song or two that I always would use - because I just can’t stand doing it.
MB: Was it hard for you to step back into the character for You Never Know for the recording, 10 years after you performed it onstage?
HG: No, actually. It was interesting - David and I sort of picked up where we left off, it was funny. It was great, it was nice to revisit [our characters] for a short time. It was nice to come back and play and have most of the cast [from the Pasadena Playhouse] there. And Kristin [Chenoweth] was a good addition. I’m sorry that Megan [Mullally] couldn’t do it, but Kristin was wonderful - she’s just a great gal and has a fabulous voice.
MB: So, what are you working on now?
HG: There are a lot of things I’ve done that haven’t aired. I’ve done a bunch of episodics-I did a series for the WB Network that I think is a mid-season replacement called Dead Last. I did an episode of that, but I don’t know when it’s going to air or if it’s going to air, depending on whether they like the series or not. There’s another series that’s been on about a year and a half on the TNN Network called 18 Wheels of Justice that is going to air - I don’t know exactly when, though. It might be in a few weeks. I did an episode a couple of weeks ago of Boston Public, and at the moment there are two films I’m working on. One is a Tom Hanks film called Road to Perdition that Sam Mendes is directing - I just went to Chicago for the read-through, and Paul Newman is in it, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh... it’s a wonderful story. And I leave today to go to Omaha to do a read-through of a movie called About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. I’m glad that I’m starting to get some of these films - I’ve done a bunch of independents. There are two independents that I did that we haven’t seen yet-there’s one called Manna From Heaven that is at a film festival now, and that was a lot of fun. It was a fabulous cast of people and we shot it a year ago in Buffalo. There’s a lot of stuff in the chute, but I’d like to get a little more of a steady gig here-I’d like to get a series. At this point, I probably would do a sitcom if it was fairly good and not too stupid, but we don’t know with this [impending actors’] strike and things what’s going on and what will happen. I think everybody should get as much work as they can.
This article originally appeared on the Fynsworth Alley website.