Harvey Returns! Welcome to The Return of special new series on BroadwayWorld.com - four time Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein's personal MySpace blog about the journey of his new musical A Catered Affair and more. We'll be exclusively picking up Harvey Fierstein's blog as he shares his first hand reports from rehearsals to the upcoming closing night on July 27th and beyond.
I wrote the following about ESTELLE GETTY for today's edition of the NY POST but just in case you missed it...
At
the height of "The Golden Girls" popularity, there was no more
beloved character on television than Sophia Petrillo. Estelle Getty,
who brought Sophia indelibly to life, was awestruck: "What the hell is
going on? I have the highest TVQ of any woman on television?"
It
was true. For several years, Estelle Getty, formerly Estelle Gettleman
of Bayside, Queens, was the most popular, likable and bankable star on
any network. She was bigger than Carol Burnett, more salable than Mary
Tyler Moore, and surer to deliver viewers than Cher. Still, the day
after she won the Emmy, she told me she'd trade it and her Golden Globe
for a Tony.
Estelle Getty was, despite all of the glamour, glory and gold of television fame, a theater creature.
Along
with her husband, Arthur, and friends Anne and Jules Weiss, she was a
fixture at La Mama ETC and other Off-Off Broadway venues. Working as a
bookkeeper by day, this semi-pro actress haunted the East Village by
night supporting experimental theater.
In 1978 when we
produced the first of the plays that would become "Torch Song Trilogy,"
Estelle chided me: "Listen, Mr Big Shot playwright. Why don't you write
the role of your mother and I'll play it opposite you?"
Just
picturing this 4-foot-8-inch fireball playing the mother of a
6-foot-tall drag queen made me giggle. The following year, when she
came to see the second of the trilogy, she challenged me again and this
time I took the bait. I went home and created Mrs. Beckoff for Estelle.
From the first reading through seven years of productions here
and on the road, the marriage of actress to role was remarkable. There
was simply nothing like seeing Arnold's front door open and this henna-
wigged tornado dressed in a turquoise suit and carrying a raffia purse
arrive onstage to announce, "I'm the mother."
So great was her
performance that almost every audience member identified with my
character. You read that right: Estelle's Mrs Beckoff was so
identifiable that everyone claimed her as his or her mother. And if she
were their mother, then they were a 6-foot drag queen. It was magic.
The
thing about Estelle was that you could not catch her acting. She was
being. If her character was supposed to be angry, Estelle got angry. If
her character was broken hearted, the actress was broken hearted. On
stage there was simply no deception. It all felt real.
Acting
opposite her was an absolute pleasure and complete challenge. She
demanded the same truth from the rest of us that she was delivering.
And when we'd fool around onstage, as actors in long runs are apt to
do, she would berate us, even hit us, and then join in the laugh.
Popular
thinking is that by creating Mrs. Beckoff, I launched Estelle's career.
But it is just as true that when Estelle inspired that character, she
gave me mine.
Without the mother, "Torch Song Trilogy" would
never have achieved its universal popularity and might not have reached
further than La Mama. But with the mother the play was, and remains, a
force not to be denied.
And so, hand in hand in hand, Estelle, Mrs Beckoff and I marched our way to Broadway and theater history.
Still,
with Estelle's triumph in the show came disappointment, When the Tony
Award nominations were announced for 1982, Estelle was somehow
overlooked. We were all stunned. How could anyone who'd witnessed that
performance overlook the achievement?
The only explanation I
could muster was that she was so natural in the way she inhabited the
role that people couldn't see how hard she was actually working. She
made it all look effortless when it was anything but.
Estelle
was dealt another blow four years later when she wasn't cast in the
film version of "Torch Song." Although we never discussed it directly,
I knew how much that hurt her. (Recently, I've come to know exactly how
she felt — know what I mean?)
Estelle and I remained friends
and supporters of each other's efforts for more than 30 years. I'm
proud to say that her last professional job was voicing a character for
my HBO family special, "The Sissy Duckling." I take comfort in knowing
that the world will always have a part of her in those endless "Golden
Girls" reruns.
But only the theater audiences who saw her onstage have any idea who we really lost this week.
