STAGE TO SCREENS: Chats with Jeffrey Tambor and Frederick Weller
By Michael Buckley
31 Jul 2005
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Jeffrey Tambor as George Bluth, Jr. in Fox's "Arrested Development"
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This month we speak to Jeffrey Tambor and Frederick Weller, two of the stellar cast of Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's award-winning (Drama Desk, Best Ensemble; Tony Award, Best Revival) vitriolic valentine to real-estate salesmen.
On August 28, the drama completes its limited engagement at the Bernard Jacobs (formerly Royale) Theatre.
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"It's everything I wanted it to be — and more," enthuses Jeffrey Tambor of his current experience. "Doing Mamet is working without a net. He's so delicious. I knew he was great, but I did not know that by doing him, you get him. It's like hearing an overture in a musical. There isn't an ounce of fat on this thing. It's great!"
In the play, Tambor's character of George Aaronow is encouraged by Dave Moss (Gordon Clapp) to join him in robbing the real-estate office and selling its leads for sales to another firm. "Gordon and I run our scene every night [prior to the performance], just to get the cadences. I don't think Gordon would mind my telling you that."
I congratulate him on the cast's (non-competitive) Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble. "They called me that morning, and told me we had won. I said, 'Don't you mean that we were nominated?' That night, when we came offstage, [director] Joe Mantello said some very nice things to us. It was a real lift." Adds Tambor, "I love this company. I don't know how it was selected. It's a bunch of machers [a Yiddish term for important people]. They mean business."
Tambor's character on the ABC-TV sitcom "Arrested Development" is also named George (Bluth, Jr.), and he's just received his second consecutive Emmy nomination for the role. He had spent part of the day selecting two tapes for voters' consideration. "[The Emmy] should be an ensemble award, too. I kept howling at everyone else's performances. This whole thing about winning and losing is muddy waters. But I can remember, as a young actor, just walking around this city and not being able to get arrested. As my manager says, 'These are wonderful problems.'
"When I got this role [his second on Broadway], my daughter Molly [a history teacher] said, 'Dad, you've come full circle,'" referring to Tambor's 1976 Broadway debut in Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox. "All these years later, and I've moved one block up," from 44th Street's Broadhurst Theatre. In the Gelbart comedy, based on Ben Jonson's Volpone, Tambor understudied two roles and played the servant to Foxwell J. Sly, portrayed by George C. Scott.
"My part had three lines. I said, 'You look wonderful, sir,' three times. All my friends said, 'Do not take that role — and do not understudy. You'll regret it the rest of your life.' I did both of those things, and I've never regretted it once."
One of his Sly Fox memories is "watching Jack Gilford, who was my floor mate [backstage], and Gretchen Wyler work out their scene every night — meticulously [before the performance]. I was watching china — very rare and very beautiful.
"And I'd watch Scott from backstage. He was one of my mentors. The night I went on for Hector Elizondo [as Simon Able], if it hadn't been for [Scott], I wouldn't have made it through. He was so beautiful! It led to great things. I took over the role after Hector vacated it, and played opposite Bob Preston [who succeeded Scott]. We had a wonderful time!
"Preston was also a mentor, a great, great man — very spontaneous. He was a real theatre actor. No one gave a matinee [performance] like he did. He was full-bore [at maximum effort] all the time. He shone on the stage!"
Commenting that Kim Hunter had told me that Robert Preston taught her everything she knew about comedy triggers another memory. "I remember going to his dressing room because I was losing a laugh — as you do in a long run. 'What am I doing wrong with this line?' He said, 'Give me the script.' He went back three pages: 'That's where you're going off the road.' That's comedy. It's never the line itself; it's in the foundation.
"Those guys [Scott and Preston] had professionalism, with a capital P. It's a bygone era. I'm getting emotional talking about them." Tambor recalls Scott being thrilled that he liked Walter Huston, and I remark that among Huston's many credits (including an Oscar-winning role in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre") was my favorite movie, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," in which he played the father of James Cagney.
"Cagney," observes Tambor, "had physical grace. Alan [Alda] has it; Liev [Schreiber] has it. All the good actors in this cast have it. They're almost dancers in their acting."
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Actors first tripped the light fantastic into Tambor's life in his native San Francisco. They'd set up shop in a theatre across the street from where young Jeffrey lived, and he'd sit in on rehearsals. "They were working on Home of the Brave — deconstructing it, putting it together. I kept coming every day to watch. It seemed beautiful. I loved the gentlemanly way they treated each other. It was unlike anything I was used to. I started helping them strike the set," and, at 11, began taking acting classes privately.
Eventually, Tambor's interest led to a 15-year background in repertory theatre. "My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act. I like having to audition. It's nice to do rehearsals. But it's with an audience that you get to love it!
"I came to New York late; I was already past 30," and, besides acting, had directed and taught. (A graduate of San Francisco State, Tambor earned a Masters in theatre at Detroit's Wayne State University.) "My first play here was Measure for Measure, at the Delacorte [in Central Park] — a great experience with a spectacular cast: Sam Waterston, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, Lenny Baker, Michael Tucker, Judith Light, Howard Rollins, Jay Sanders. . .
"Now, I probably have as many TV hours as I do theatre hours. When I first started doing [Glengarry], Joe [Mantello] did say, 'You're going to have to speak up,' because I'd gotten used to [not projecting] for television. But that was not a problem."
Among his credits are many films, numerous episodic-TV appearances and several series, including "The Ropers" (a spinoff of "Three's Company"), "Hill Street Blues," "9 to 5," "Mr. Sunshine" (in which he starred as a visually impaired English professor), "Max Headroom," "Studio 5B," "American Dreamer," "Everything's Relative" and "That Was Then." Tambor's favorite role, which earned him four Emmy nominations, is Hank Kingsley, the host's sidekick ("Hey now!"), in the 1992-98 cable comedy "The Larry Sanders Show," starring Garry Shandling. Continued...
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