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You Gotta Have Hart
By Monty Arnold
09 Sep 2005
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Linda Hart (right), with Laura Bell Bundy.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Linda Hart draws on her roots and runs the gamut from talk show host to Greek chorus in The Great American Trailer Park Musical.
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If they ever make a country/rock/gospel
version of "The Jazz Singer," it would come out a lot like Linda Hart's
life story. In point of fact, the reason the perky comedienne signed up for The Great American Trailer Park Musical, which has its grand opening this month at
Dodger Stages, is that the part gives her a chance to tug at all three of her musical
roots.
The part is Betty, pure and simple — well,
maybe not so pure. She's a bit blunt and blowsy around the edges, as are most
of the endearing ditzes in Hart's gallery. Betty operates the Armadillo
Acres, the premier trailer park in Starke, Florida — a real place, by the by,
and it is said that book writer and director Betsy Kelso drew some of her characters
from the still-lifes there.
These include a fading beauty named
Jeannie, who, crippled by agoraphobia and OD-ing on "Dr. Phil," hasn't
left her trailer in 20 years, causing her tollbooth-collector husband, Norbert,
to throw his chump-change on the new gal in court, a stripper-on-the-lam named Pippi.
Naturally, she has a boyfriend who won't take this sitting down on his motorcycle.
Betty is the narrator and tour guide
for the ensuing mayhem, treating the audience as if they got off on the wrong exit
ramp ("I can tell by looking at you that you have never been to a trailer park
before"). Along the way, she steps into other roles — a waitress, a talk-show
host who goes into the audience and plays Trailer Park Oprah, even a Greek chorus
with songs by David Nehls and back-up by "Pickles" (who fancies herself
in a perpetual state of pregnancy) and "Lin" (so called because
she was born at home on the kitchen linoleum).
The cast runs a merry gamut from Kaitlin
Hopkins (Bat Boy's mom) to Shuler Hensley (a Tony-winning Jud in Broadway's
last Oklahoma!) to Orfeh (of Saturday Night Fever). But Hart is the
heart of the meshugaas, and the songs are right up her alley. "I get
to use all my upbringing," she trills happily. "How many roles give you
that kind of chance?"
Papa was a preacher — still is,
at a nondenominational church in Detroit — and when she was seven she graduated
from church choir to television studio, joining Mom, Dad and her two brothers in
a weekly gospel series called "The Harts." "Looking back now, I see
how blessed I was with that upbringing. It's made all the difference in my
career. We were like the white Jacksons. Everybody played instruments. Everybody
was multi-talented."
She showed an early theatrical bent
and was a theatre major at Los Angeles City College, but her plans were put on hold
when the family landed a lucrative contract with Columbia Records and moved to Nashville
to record a dozen gospel albums — a few of them Grammy nominees, one a Grammy
winner. It took time to get back on theatrical track, easing out of gospel and into
country.
Her first step in that direction was
The New Christy Minstrels. (She was the only female leader the group ever had.)
ABC-TV's "The Johnny Cash Show" followed, as did opening-act gigs
for Hank Williams Jr., Mel Tillis, Roy Clark, The Oak Ridge Boys, et al. Then, an
ad in The Hollywood Reporter changed everything. Bette Midler wanted to replenish
her back-up act, The Harlettes ("Must sing, dance and have great attitude"),
so Hart answered the ad and got the job, she says, "over 208 girls and two
men-in-drag."
Doing back-up for Bette Midler, off
and on, for two or three years toughens a girl's hide and makes her Broadway-ready.
She came out of the chute, hard as a tack and ready to be loved, in the Tony-winning
Anything Goes, playing a brassy gun moll who blew everyone away belting "Buddie,
Beware." It won her a Theatre World Award as a New Face of '88.
She has also performed the entire musical-comedy
canon of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman — both shows: Livin' Dolls,
in 1982 at Manhattan Theatre Club, and their next, 20 years later, Hairspray,
which is still going strong at the Neil Simon Theatre. She was the Funicello facsimile
in the former, a Beach Party movie send-up, and in the latter she bared fangs as
a Baltimore bigot circa '62. She first met Shaiman when he was Midler's
17-year-old music man, long before he became arranger-to-the-stars and an Oscar-nominated
composer.
The Midler experience, she says, "was
like going to school with the best of 'em," and Midler must appreciate
the association as well since she extended Hart's Harlette duties to supporting
parts in her pictures ("Stella," "Get Shorty") and the CBS "Gypsy." While she was bumping it with a trumpet, she rescued a terrier during an L.A.
earthquake and — at the suggestion of her husband, William Forster — dubbed
the dog "Mazeppa." It's with her still.
Despite (or, perhaps, because of) her spiritual
background, tart is Hart's best suit. She positively revels in raunch — and
gave it full vent in the Second Stage revival of Gemini, playing Bunny Weinberger,
a brazen, cleavage-baring, man-hungry divorcee. The role allowed Hart license
to kill, and kill she did. It's her favorite so far, and, as luck would have
it, she got to reprise it in a musicalized Gemini that tried out at Philadelphia's
Prince Music Theater last fall. The idea of doing this on Broadway has Hart blissed
out. "That part was completely a wild woman out of control, and the songs that
went with it were brilliantly matched to the pitch of the character. I can't
wait to do the part on Broadway."
And, rest assured, her folks will be
in the audience — as always — cheering her on. The one major difference in
her "Jazz Singer" scenario is that they've always been in her corner. "They are incredibly supportive of everything I have done in theatre. They're my biggest fans."
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