018 Tony Randall, Helen Hayes

Bob Smith 0:00
He was there in the early days of television.

Tony Randall 0:03
It was all live, all live and in front of an audience had come to you in the last 10 minutes and say, cut scene 40 Do you just did it. You didn’t even know what they’re talking about. Oh, I it was madness. It was madness. And every show was like that

Bob Smith 0:19
she was there in the early days of cinema. That

Helen Hayes 0:22
was really fun. That was great adventure. I made these for Vitagraph pictures, and they were all made out of doors. We use bank buildings for our homes and all kinds of things. Great, noble, rich people.

Bob Smith 0:36
Coming up today, two of the most interesting characters I ever met actors Tony Randall and Helen Hayes. We remember them on the off ramp with Bob Smith.

Welcome to the off ramp with Bob Smith, the place to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity. If you’re lucky, you get to meet some very interesting characters in life. They come in all stripes, teachers, bosses, co workers, members of your own family. Two of the most interesting folks I ever met were through work. They were well known actors who knew how to tell a great story. They both had their start in life theater. One ended up as a TV star in televisions The Odd Couple. The other the First Lady of the American theater also dabbled in serious films. But to modern audiences she’s best known for a minor comic role apart she milked to perfection outshining everyone else in an all star disaster film in 1970. The actors are Tony Randall and Helen Hayes. Neither is with us today. But they deserve to be remembered. I met both of them as a young radio reporter. I caught up with Tony Randall when he was brought to the rolling hills of Southwest Wisconsin to help open the American players theatre. Today the American players theatre is the second largest outdoor theater devoted to the classics works by the likes of Shakespeare Anton checkoff and George Bernard Shaw. But in 1977, American players theatre was just a dream of its founders, Charles bright, Annie Ochio Grosso and Randall duck, Kim Randall Doug Kim later went on to fame in matrix and John Wick action films. He was American players artistic director for its first 15 years and you’ll hear his voice later on in the feature we’re about to play. Tony Randall was the big name that the founders brought in to help launch their first season. He was known for theater TV music and his comic antics on The Tonight Show. The venue was a press conference at Spring Green, Wisconsin in a restaurant designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, interviewing Tony Randall in that beautiful setting turned out to be something of a minefield for me. Even though I arrived with well researched questions. I soon found myself Tony Randles, comic foil, his punching bag in front of other reporters,

Tony Randall 3:40
all your information is wrong. Everything you’ve got

Bob Smith 3:46
the ribbing was good natured. But it was the only interview I ever left thinking. Well, that was embarrassing. And it’s all on tape. What the heck am I gonna do with this? Fortunately, I think I succeeded in making lemonade out of quite a few lemons. And I hope that you to get some chuckles at my expense, as we remember. Tony Randall. Oh, the perils of interviewing a celebrity to a case in point actor Tony Randall. I had always heard those old stories that you shouldn’t believe everything you read about a movie star or a television personality because too many press agents had been too eager to get their clients names into the newspapers. And to do that they’ve made up stories about them. Before you knew it, the truth was stretched way out of shape. So I’ve always steered away from the fan magazines and the tabloids whenever I’ve prepared questions for a celebrity. For Tony Randall. I wouldn’t trust a gossip magazine or a newspaper tabloid after all. This was Tony Randall, that quick witted star of the stage and screen radio and television. A man who was comfortable doing Shakespeare or being Felix Unger. No, this required some serious research. I may made my way to the public library and found myself staring at a series of imposing volumes called current biography. Surely here I would find what I was looking for that tidbit of information I could use to pry open the mind of Tony Randall. I stayed in the library for some time meticulously copying the more colorful facts from the current biography article, and the Saturday Evening Post and Time magazine. I felt very well prepared as I braced myself and launched the first question at the Tony Randall press conference. I have the truth and I was ready for the actor. My information was solid, trustworthy and dependable. Unfortunately, nothing could have been further from the truth. I understand that apparently you had to acting in your blood a long time ago because a teacher of yours sent a letter to your mother when you were in Tulsa talking about you making faces.

Tony Randall 5:54
Wrong. Wrong. You got that story wrong. That was my sister. That’s the God’s truth. My sister used to go like that. She did. The teacher wrote a letter to my mother that that Edna makes faces she used to stretch her face. No, no. Oh, no. We just won’t believe the biographies from now on. No. Nor the fiction that comes your way.

Bob Smith 6:19
His sister well event strange, those imposing looking volume said it was it was him Tony Randall. I let another reporter ask the next question. And then when I summoned up my courage, I looked down at my sheet and tried again, when you were 18. You’re on Broadway with Ethel Barrymore and the corneas green I understand that must have been quite a large step for you to be rather young.

Tony Randall 6:42
All your information is wrong. Everything you’ve got

Bob Smith 6:48
suddenly all those imposing reference books were looking awful small in my mind, but the inaccuracy was thankfully a minor one and I felt much better when Tony Randall said

Tony Randall 6:58
I wasn’t at 2021 21 I was according to screen. Yeah, yeah, I

Bob Smith 7:05
put my questions from those less than imposing volumes my pocket and proceeded from other sources, and that elusive success I’d been looking for finally came to me I asked Tony Randall about his radio work. In his early days he appeared on such radio soap operas is Reggie and I love a mystery. And we asked him if he likes some other actors looked down on radio drama as a low form of art.

Tony Randall 7:28
I surely did. Yes. What did you do? It was the only game in town so to speak. If you didn’t have a Broadway show, then you had nothing unless you could get a radio show. There was nothing else. Today actors can be an Off Broadway. They can do commercials or other ways that you can prostitute yourself and at least make a living but in those days, there was nothing except the occasional radio show, or the Broadway show. Broadway show generally lasts a week or two weeks most Broadway shows or flops. So unless you had radio to keep you going, you stopped. Tony

Bob Smith 7:59
Randles initial opinion of television wasn’t much higher than his view of radio work, but he became a star on television through his appearances on the Wally Cox program. Mr. peepers, we asked Tony Randall how he took the part of Harvey West get I just

Tony Randall 8:13
was asked, and I tried to get out of it. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. That was the turning point in my life. And I was directing something that at that time, I was very busy directing a little opera off Broadway called down in the valley beautiful opera by Kurt vile. I was just too busy and I asked him to get somebody else for the party, Mr. Bieber’s and Fred Cole refused. He said Now you’re the only one I wanted. It was only a one shot. They liked me and they kept writing it in. That established me as an actor. Tony

Bob Smith 8:42
Randall was busy in the early days of television, he appeared on Alcoa theater, the soap opera, one man’s family. He even acted on the children’s television show Captain video. Another actor on that show was Jack Klugman. And Randall and Klugman later teamed up for the successful 1970 comedy TV series The Odd Couple. But Tony Randall says there was one main difference that made his work in the Mr. peepers series more fun than the odd couple. It was

Tony Randall 9:08
all live, all live and in front of an audience. We had 3000 people in the audience every week. I was younger than during the three year run of Mr. peepers. I did three Broadway shows. I don’t understand how I how did you take? I don’t know how I did it. But we all used to do those things. There was more fun than I’ll tell you that the live TV

Bob Smith 9:32
because of the possibility of errors.

Tony Randall 9:34
That’s exactly right. Yeah. And you had to be good. You didn’t have the tape and all of that. That’s right. And also they never really had the timing of a show. Today they make a show and then cut it to fit whatever the time is, say a half hour shows 26 minutes, let’s say the rest is commercials. But then they were just time to get on the air and they come to you in the last 10 minutes and say cut scene. 40 do it I just did it. You didn’t even know what they’re talking about. You just they realized they were long they had to cut three minutes out of the show, but they wouldn’t realize that the last 10 minutes of the show. Oh, hey, it was madness. It was madness. And every

Bob Smith 10:12
show was like that Tony Randles opinion of television is still not the highest. Following the cancellation of the odd couple. Randall won an Emmy for his portrayal of Felix Unger. And he made one of the shortest and he feels one of the best Emmy Award speeches on record. It was a needling jab at the TV industry. He told the audience, I’m glad I won. And then he added, and I wish I had a job. If you change the subject to the theater, the Shakespearean theatre you’ll find something that Tony Randall seems to love without reservation. The Saturday Evening Post once quoted Tony Randall is saying Shakespeare wrote for a rough audience, a crowd of thieves, murderers and prostitutes. And to keep that audience entertained, he had to inject humor, action and lust. That’s exactly right. Sure. Do you think that audiences today do they realize that when they listen? Well, today, we’re

Tony Randall 11:00
used to even rougher stuff, but only today? For at least 200 years, all the rough stuff was taken out mostly by a man named Bowdler or Bowdler, who will gave his name to the English language burglarizing something, but it was mainly in censoring Shakespeare that this was done, because it really is full of very, very raunchy stuff. Very, very filthy stuff. always gets a laugh. Yes. This was the first time that was ever done. The French never played Shakespeare until about 100 years ago, they hated them because they thought this was impure, that a comedy should be a comedy and a tragedy should be a tragedy. But to have low characters, comic characters in a tragedy was to them, the utmost vulgarity, and by their definition, bad art, and they simply couldn’t understand it. By many standards. It is bad art. But he was Shakespeare. That’s it’s different. He could do anything. And he had a point. Not

Bob Smith 11:54
only was the audience rough in those days, but the theater itself sounds like the kind of place you wouldn’t want to find yourself caught in. They

Tony Randall 12:01
got In for a penny and they stood. If we had to go through what Shakespeare’s audience went through, maybe we wouldn’t go to the theater. In the back of the house, there was a barrel that was for everybody’s use during the performance, that’s the truth. That’s the truth. There was a body time, mind you.

Bob Smith 12:21
When discussing Shakespeare, though, Tony Randall can be quite outspoken, even about as great an actor as Laurence Olivier. His opinion came out when Randall was asked if he would ever want to play Mark Antony and Antony and Cleopatra.

Tony Randall 12:35
Antony No, I entity is beyond my powers. And it’s beyond the powers of almost everybody I’ve ever seen do it. It was one of the few times I thought Olivier was thoroughly bad was it was beyond his powers. Not really, at the time he did it, he was concentrating on the wrong things. He was extremely disappointing. And the real reason was that at that time, his only interest was in presenting Vivian Lee. He was yes, he was determined to make her the greatest actress the world had ever known. Well, that was just not to be. Audiences didn’t want it. And I don’t think she wanted it. I don’t think she had that enormous faith in herself that it takes to become a really great actor, and he wasn’t paying enough attention to his own acting. And it showed we’ll

Bob Smith 13:23
have more of the off ramp with Bob Smith in just a moment. We return now to the off ramp, and our interview with Tony Randall. Even when discussing Shakespeare, Tony Randall, the humorist can come out, Randall was asked to recite some of his favorite lines from Shakespeare.

Tony Randall 13:41
To be or not to be. That is the bear buttered kitten that makes calamity of so long life. For who would fuddled spiritual Burnham would do come to Dunsinane, but that the fear of something after death makes us rather fling the arrows of outrageous fortune. then fly to others. We know not all, some of your listeners and viewers may want to know who wrote a lot as Mark Twain. Mark Twain deliberately butchered a lot of Shakespeare just like

Bob Smith 14:13
something was itching in my pocket. It was those questions, those questions from those biographical books, which by now would be imposing to no one. I had had so much trouble with those questions and so much luck with the other ones that by now I felt daring. I felt brave. I pulled out the list. I found the strangest question I could find. Could it be true? had Tony Randall ever been a secret agent in the service of our government? I have information here that during World War Two you were in the Signal Corps and then you delivered classified documents in Washington DC. Is that true?

Tony Randall 14:47
That’s true. I was a messenger boy. That’s right. I had to run around Washington. Had you had to be a trustworthy person The classified document says that was yeah, that

Bob Smith 15:03
last question seemed to do it for Tony Randall. I don’t know what I did. But someone else said maybe we can have one more question and Tony Randall said no. Maybe after looking at the situation from his point of view, I should have titled this the perils of being a celebrity. Tony Randall A case in point. As they tried to do with most people I met I wrote to Tony Randall After that encounter, sending him a copy of the feature I put together and asking him for an autographed picture. He complied with this humorous note. Dear Bob, thanks for that really funny cassette that’s very thoughtful, and I enjoyed it. But I must tell you, your facts are still not right. I was never in Captain video. Jack Klugman and I first appeared together on appointment with adventurer sometime around 1955. All the best, Tony Randall. Eight days later, I met our next featured guest the late great Helen Hayes. Word came into our radio station that Miss Hayes was on a Mississippi river cruise aboard the historic steamboat, the Delta queen. She was going to be stopping in our city of Dubuque, Iowa the next day to take a look at the town’s pride and joy. The five flags theater the former Orpheum theatre built in the early 1900s by famous theater architects rap and rap. Did the station want to cover it? Well, I volunteered, ran to the library to do some quick research. Then the next afternoon headed to the theater, where I recorded the following feature. I knew Helen Hayes had starred as the little old lady in a recent disaster film airport. And I knew she had a great career in life theater. But until my research, I didn’t know she’d been a child actress in silent films. Today in the 21st century, there’s no one alive who can remember what it was like to make silent movies in 1910. But former child star Helen Hayes could and that memory alone makes this next interview a treasure to me. Great Old theatres are loved by audiences, but they are loved even more by the actors and actresses who perform in them. That truth was evident when the woman known as the First Lady of the American stage, walk through the doors of Dubuque spy flags theater, a former vaudeville house built by theater, I can text wrap and wrap in 1910. You

Helen Hayes 17:32
have to come to the Duke to see a really beautiful theater. Other shows and that astonishing. Turn down so many of our beautiful theaters in New York. This one came close to getting torn. Yes. But somebody here had the interest in civic grandeur,

Bob Smith 17:50
Helen Hayes was in town at a stopover of the great riverboat, the Mississippi queen. And while in Dubuque, the famous Broadway actress and movie star took a tour of the city and the theater. Oh, I

Helen Hayes 18:02
think it’s so beautiful and I’m so proud that I made the acquaintance of Dubuque, because any city that does this for the theater is beloved of me. I can tell you, what a great thing you’ve done. Remind

Bob Smith 18:16
you of the theaters you played when days when Majestics in the Orpheum? Yes,

Helen Hayes 18:19
indeed. I played back and forth across this country so many times. Who knows, but I may have played in this theater. I did get into many one night stand tours. And perhaps I played Dubuque. Does anybody know whether I played you and Victoria Regina and Mary of Scotland or any of those long tours that I had? In 46 weeks of Victoria Regina, we played 75 cities. In the past I played in some very pretty theaters. I don’t think any more beautiful than this. I really don’t remember anything any prettier than this. I wish I could just scoop it up and take it to New York.

Bob Smith 19:00
The tour of the theater prompted memories of her career in show business, a career that started 75 years earlier when she was just five years old, less than nine years old. I think you’re on

Helen Hayes 19:10
Amazon Broadway. For her whole years to get to Broadway.

Bob Smith 19:16
You must have been quite a young sensation at the time, sort of like, like the girl who plays Annie. People like that. Yes, it

Helen Hayes 19:22
was. I really was. Whenever I doubt myself as an actress. In the past when I was more active in the theater whenever I’d have terrible splack doubts of my abilities. I think we’ll look at what happened when you were first starting when you were a child. People recognized something there. So that would heartened me. So even Helen Hayes has doubts. You bet and you look for any straw you can clutch. It

Bob Smith 19:48
was interesting to hear Frank Sladek the five legs theater director and Helen Hayes talk about performing before a live audience. The

Helen Hayes 19:55
poor actors of today really have a hard time they have a hard time They have to use those amplifiers, which are bad for for the sound of the voice. We actors in my day We’re famous for our beautiful voices, people always talk about the voices of all of us. And all voices sound alike. Now, Donald Duck. I agree with you. I agree. I think it’s real problem with American actors in particular. Yes, yes. They were all amplified. Everybody has those little things. Little grasshoppers sitting on the Jets. And I think it’s made them lazy. I tell you who’s got lazy from it. Audiences, they don’t listen so well. And then they complain that they can hear the actors, but it’s because they don’t try enough. However, I think the movies have led us down with the poor fare we’ve had. And television is almost unendurable to the world at large. It really is, you know, people don’t enjoy it anymore. It’s just failed us. So back to the theater.

Bob Smith 20:56
Back to the theater indeed. But as you know, Helen Hayes was in the movies. In fact, she appeared in films and for different periods of her life. Her career as a movie star started in the silent days in a film called gene and the Calico doll, a two wheeler made in 1910. She was nine years old at the time, and already a star, I can

Helen Hayes 21:17
remember that. I remember that was really fun. That was great adventure. Because I made these for Vitagraph pictures, which were made in the east. Over in Fort Lee was the the studio. And they were all made out of doors. The sets were just had no roof, you see, so that the sunlight could delight you. And and then when we had to have location shots, we couldn’t afford, even though they were the great Vitagraph pictures. They couldn’t afford to pay for them, or they wouldn’t pay for them. And I don’t know. But anyway, we’d go and pick a beautiful house. They set up the camera on the tripod, it was one of those hand crank cameras. And this is about 19 910. And they done, the cameraman would rush out and we actors would rush up to the door of this house and come out and be walking away from our beautiful home while they cranked it and then that we get out of there just as the butler or the mayor.

Bob Smith 22:19
Without permission then Oh sure.

Helen Hayes 22:22
We stolen we did this all the time. We were just always scouting around getting all these

Bob Smith 22:26
been graded.

Helen Hayes 22:29
Sure, we use bank buildings for our homes and things are supposed to be great, noble, rich people. Helen

Bob Smith 22:37
Hayes made only a few more silent films preferring to work on the stage instead, her last silent was a 1920 film called Babs. In the meantime, she’d become a superstar on Broadway. In 1928 She married Charles MacArthur, a former newspaperman turned playwright, he signed a contract with MGM and went on to become one of the most successful movie screenwriters of the 1930s. Writing such films as the front page in the 20th century with Ben Hecht, another former newspaperman Helen went with him to Hollywood.

Helen Hayes 23:08
I tried to go back there and be in the films that talkies. When I was too old to learn new tricks, you won an Academy Award on your first talkie film. That’s right. And I did a few others. I did about 10 pictures, but I wasn’t happy when I say it’s too old to learn new tricks. I never liked what I did. On the screen, I was always unhappy about it.

Bob Smith 23:31
She may not have been pleased, but movie fans have fondly remembered some of her MGM films. One person reminded Miss Hayes of a touching emotional scene from Anastasia. But Helen Hayes remembers it differently. I

Helen Hayes 23:44
didn’t really care for that so much because I knew the story behind that scene. Ingrid and I had made that it took us a week to make that scene of bits and bits, little snippets of it, you know, each day over and over and over. And then we were called in and put in a dark room to watch the film being shown and follow our lips and do the sound again, what they call looping in the film. We had to do that whole emotional scene again, sitting in a dark projection room, watching ourselves on the screen and following it. Well, all true emotion was out the window, I assure

Bob Smith 24:24
you 1935 Helen Hayes left Hollywood again. And she had her greatest triumph on the Broadway stage in the mid 1930s. She came back to films again in the 50s and most people remember her as the little old lady in the film airport. She won another Academy Award for that this time for Best Supporting Actress. The year was 1970 Helen Hayes became interested in the part through her friend Laura Mako, a former actress and now interior designer.

Helen Hayes 24:52
She introduced me to the producer Ross Hunter who’s her great friend. I was out there visiting her minding my Business and having no idea of making films. And she put the novel beside my bed to read, and she said, just take a close look at Mrs. Quonset. And I did. And I was gone. I was sunk.

Bob Smith 25:14
She wasn’t in Hollywood when she heard she had won an Academy Award. As a matter of fact, it was a quite different setting. But still, there was a celebration.

Helen Hayes 25:21
I was rehearsing at Catholic University in Washington DC to do was it Long Day’s Journey. And tonight? Yes, the O’Neill play with the drama department over that university. And came word that I had one. It came on the air of course, they were showing it on television. And the whole university came. All the girls in that dormitory. I was living in a dorm. They all came in the dressing gowns or flannel dressing gowns, with Lily Cups full of red wine and whatever, they can look good. And we had a party in the hall, celebrating me winning that was fun.

Bob Smith 26:05
Movies had been fun, but they’ve not been the great love in the life of Helen Hayes. The greatest love has always been the theater, where a performer has an audience, a live audience, and it was a magic moment, in fact, a historic one. When this great actress Helen Hayes climbed to the stage of the Buchs five legs theater and recited to a small audience. Shakespeare This is

Helen Hayes 26:29
from 12th night, and it is dedicated to Dubuque in this beautiful theater, and it’s paraphrased for the occasion I will make me a willow cabin at your gate and call upon my soul within the house, right loyal cantons of contemnor Love and sing them loud even in the dead of night. Hello, your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossips of the air cry out, do you oh you will not rest between the elements of air and earth till you have adopted me.

Bob Smith 27:13
Helen Hayes passed away in 1993. Her career span more than 80 years. She’s one of only 15 actors who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. Six years after that interview, President Ronald Reagan gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. And since 1984, the annual Helen Hayes awards have recognized excellence in professional theater. Tony Randall died on May 17 2004. After a career spanning 60 years. He’s an Emmy Award winner who received six Golden Globe and six Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He was also a mainstay of talk shows on TV, and on the May 9 1990 episode of The Tonight Show, he bragged This is my 95th time on the show. He founded the national actors theatre at Pace University in New York City. Well, that’s today’s podcast. Hope you enjoyed looking back on these two great storytellers Tony Randall and Helen Hayes, and that you’ll join me again next time on the off ramp with Bob Smith.

The off ramp with Bob Smith is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai