Kelli O'Hara Made a Surprise Visit to the Cast of THE GOODBYE GIRL on STARS IN THE HOUSE

Stars in The House, benefiting The Actors Fund, continued Friday night (8pm) with the cast of The Goodbye Girl (Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason and Quinn Cummings).

James kicked off the show with a question to Marcia. "How did THE GOODBYE GIRL come about? Marcia responded, "It's such a convoluted story. Neil [Simon] wrote a script that was not called THE GOODBYE GIRL and we did a reading of it. It was called BOGART SLEPT HERE. Richard and myself and Ray Stark and Neil sat down one day in an office...and we read the script and after it was over, Neil said 'ah I know what's wrong. Give me three weeks or four weeks and I can fix it.' BOGART began where THE GOODBYE GIRL ended. He realized that no one was interested in a story about somebody being successful so he took the characters back to when they were struggling."

Richard then told the story of how he became involved in THE GOODBYE GIRL. "I get a phone call one day and I hear a friend of mine say 'did you hear that Bobby De Niro was fired today?' And I said 'no one's gonna fire Bobby De Niro.' He said 'He just got fired.' And said ok...and then an hour later someone called and said 'Mike Nichols is leaving the project.' I said 'why are you telling me this?' Within an hour I was told that I was replacing Bobby De Niro. They told me how much money I was making. They told me what the show was and it was with Marcia and Neil was writing it...I called Ray Stark and I said 'do you want to talk to me for any reason?' and he said no. I said ok and we hung up. Then about two months later I was at Warner's and Ray said to me in the dining room, we want you to do this movie and I was in the middle of saying no and Ray said 'oh here's Neil and Marsha' and they came over and I'm saying no to Neil Simon and Marsha Mason and Ray Stark and a voice finally got heard in my brain 'shut up you idiot.' So we arranged to have a meeting at Ray's house and we did the reading of BOGART and the minute it ended I went 'I know what's wrong with this. It doesn't matter what terrible things you're talking about. If a guy has lost his children, if his wife has died of cancer, it doesn't matter, if he's a movie star, nobody cares. And that's when Neil said 'I know how to fix this.'

Later, Richard spoke about Quinn's professionalism as a child actor. "One of the greatest performances ever certainly by someone who has not reached puberty, holy crap, and she was not just doing Neil Simon's words, she was fulfilling Neil Simon."

Kelli O'Hara made an appearance to talk about her love of the film. "I grew up on a farm in Western Oklahoma...my mom showed me THE GOODBYE GIRL when I was about the age Quinn was during the film and I proceeded to watch it probably every week for about twenty years. There was something about New York City and the relationships and the man, this actor trying to make it and this woman being incredibly independent and strong."

Click HERE to watch the full episode!

New shows will be produced DAILY at the traditional theater times of 2pm and 8pm ET, featuring performances by stars of stage and screen, in conversation and song with Rudetsky and Wesley.

Current and past episodes can be found on the website starsinthehouse.com, as well as a donate button linking viewers to The Actors Fund.