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DIVA TALK: Chatting with Diahann Carroll Plus LuPone's "The Lady With the Torch" CD
By Andrew Gans
07 Apr 2006
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Tony Award winner Diahann Carroll.
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News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.
DIAHANN CARROLL
Diahann Carroll's career is filled with an impressive list of firsts: She was the first African-American actress to have her own television series ("Julia"), the first black actress to star in Aaron Spelling's nighttime serial "Dynasty" (as Dominique Deveraux) and the first woman of color to portray silent-screen star Norma Desmond (in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard). And, Carroll may be the first singing actress to bring eight musicians to the intimate stage of Feinstein's at the Regency.
Beginning April 18, the multitalented performer — backed by conductor Lee Norris and that eight-piece band — will offer The Life and Times of Diahann Carroll at the famed New York nightspot. "I don't know how we're going to do this," Carroll says with a laugh. "I think we're going to sit in each other's lap!" The Feinstein's engagement marks fairly new territory for the versatile actress, who has triumphed on the Broadway stage (a 1962 Tony Award for her performance in No Strings), on television (an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe Award for the ground-breaking series "Julia") and on screen (a 1974 Oscar nomination for her work in "Claudine"). Yet, despite acclaimed performances on concert stages around the country, Carroll has done little work in the smaller clubs and cabarets. "I think when I was very young, [I may have played] the Blue Angel, but I'm not even certain if I played it. If I did, it was once."
About her upcoming Feinstein's stint, Carroll admits, "It's very much so a new challenge for me. I don't think I have any familiarity in my history with the physicality of Feinstein's. So, we'll experience something new, and that's always a double-edged sword — it's fearful, yet you're excited." Audiences can expect to hear several classic songs, perhaps something from Sunset Boulevard and, possibly, a Joni Mitchell tune or two. "I've just been introduced to the brilliance of Joni Mitchell," Carroll explains. "She's really an amazing poet."
Carroll spoke a bit about her theatrical background and her musical theatre influences. "I think the first person that I saw in the theatre," she says, "was Ethel Merman in Annie Get Your Gun, and I was very young, and I thought I'd never seen anything so magnificent in my life as this strong woman singing and acting. But then there were others that I saw on Broadway that were very important for me to see. I liked musicals, of course, very much so at that time, so naturally I saw Julie Andrews when she did My Fair Lady, and she was wonderful, and Rex Harrison was unbelievable.
"The dramas [also] had an effect on me," Carroll continues, "so the theatre was very much my beginning. I'm a New York lady, born and raised, and [was] exposed to everything this wonderful city had to offer, and my mother enjoyed exposing me to all of it."
As for her own musical theatre experiences, Carroll recalls working with Richard Rodgers on No Strings, which featured Richard Kiley as her co-star. Carroll says Rodgers, who wrote both the music and lyrics for No Strings, was "a task master and a brilliant, brilliant man who seemed not always to be happy — not that one can be happy always. He seemed to be dealing with very deep, profound unhappiness. It was strange to me that he wrote all this beautiful music and seemed to be so unhappy, but I later learned that was not only my observation. There were many who shared that observation. But," Carroll adds, "it was very important for me to work with Richard Rodgers, particularly so young, because of his work ethic. It helped to hone my own work ethic."
Carroll's most recent musical theatre outing was the Canadian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, where she received wonderful notices and had the chance to wrap her rich, dark alto around such Lloyd Webber gems as "With One Look" and "As If We Never Said Goodbye." "I really loved it," says Carroll. "It's very physical, but it was that wonderful woman that I fell in love with many years before I had the opportunity to actually play her. I thought the examination of the silent-film actress trying to make her adjustment to the fact that talkies had come along — Billy Wilder's perception of that — was just brilliant, so I was very honored to be given that opportunity to do Norma Desmond. There are so many stories like the Norma Desmond story, maybe not ending in murder, but the sadness. I'm sure there were many people who were in recovery from all sorts of problems trying to make that adjustment [to talkies]."
Would Carroll like to return to Broadway? "Absolutely not," she laughs. "I think it's a wonderful thing to do and to have as a memory, but no." The veteran actress, however, would relish the chance to work more in film. "I enjoy film very much," she says, "and it's not the backbreaker that eight performances a week is. I'm not saying that the hours aren't long, but you can make a 'mistake' and have the opportunity to correct it. The exactness of theatre is one of the things that makes it such a challenge. Everyone wants to do it to find out what is your mettle, what are you really made of. But I, at this point, would really like to do some film."
Among Carroll's film credits are "Eve's Bayou," "The Five Heartbeats," "Paris Blues," "Carmen Jones," "Porgy & Bess," "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and "Claudine," which brought her an Oscar nomination. Although she lost the Academy Award to Ellen Burstyn, Carroll's barrier-breaking performances were remembered in Halle Berry's own Oscar acceptance speech in 2002. Carroll says she screamed when Berry referenced her work: "I burst into tears. I was thrilled that she decided to make that [remark]. . . . I think so many people in the audience were unaware of how important that award was or is. I saw the camera as it panned around in the audience, and I was [thinking], 'Isn't that amazing so many actors there who do not understand really what she's doing and why she's trying to pay tribute to those who tried to do it before her?' I thought it was so gracious of her to do that. I think it was lost on an awful lot of people who don't know anything about [African-American] history in terms of our creative juices, in terms of television and film. It's been a long, very hard road, and we haven't really done it, but we're certainly doing it to a greater extent [than] in the past, thank God."
When asked whether she has had the career she would have liked, Carroll openly says, "No, most certainly not. I would have loved more opportunity to do film. It's a work process like everything, and it takes time to hone your craft in front of that camera, and I'm so jealous that more often than not that kind of career is offered to white actresses. . . The older I got the more I realized most of it has to do with money. The world is not as aware as they have become now and probably will continue to become of the black American. So when one begins to put a project together, the first thought is, 'What will it earn?' and 'What will it earn worldwide?' And that's why it's important for us to keep pushing that door [open, so] the world knows more about African-Americans. It's very important that we have people like Denzel Washington, who is really one of the finest actors we have in America, and it's very important for the world to see what he does."
For now, however, Carroll is concentrating on her upcoming Feinstein's engagement and the possibility of playing other clubs around the country. "I want to find out how do I feel [performing in a cabaret setting]. I think I'll go to the islands [after]," Carroll says with a big laugh, "and sit down and say, 'What have I done?'"
[Diahann Carroll will play Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue at 61st Street, April 18-29. Show times are Tuesday-Saturday evenings at 8:30 PM with late shows Fridays and Saturdays at 11 PM. There is a $60 cover charge and a $40 minimum for all shows; call (212) 339-4095 for reservations.] Continued...
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