October 23, 2025 • 56 mins
We're heading back to Rydell High with "Doody" from Grease!
Barry Pearl joins Jenna and Kevin to chat about one of the most iconic musical films ever! He takes us back to the early days of the stage production of "Grease," his journey to auditioning for the movie, and the 'perfectly timed' gag that got him the role right on the spot! Plus, he spills on what the cast really thought about each other, the co-stars he still keeps in touch with, and gearing up for the film's big 50th anniversary!
For fun, exclusive content, and behind-the-scenes clips, follow us on Instagram @andthatswhatyoureallymissedpod & TikTok @thatswhatyoureallymissed!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And that's what you really missed with Jenna.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And Kevin and iHeartRadio podcast. Welcome to and that's what
you really missed. I feel like I'm cheating on Jenna
by saying that, But here we are today. We have
one of the og Grease cast members, Barry Pearl, who
played Duty, one of the original t Birds. He also
(00:26):
was in the stage show before. We talked about all
of that, talk about his incredible career child actor, everyone
child actor, and he turned out. Okay, he is great.
He's a sensational storyteller. We get to hear all about.
You know what I was fascinated going into this was like,
how did this really come about? Like when you're around,
(00:46):
you know, we've been in the entertainment business forever, you
hear about projects coming up, and I wanted to know, like,
if you're there on the ground in the late sixties,
early seventies, what was this about. So Barry gives us
all all the pearls of wisdom.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I hate myself.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Okay, this is very Pearl.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Oh my gosh, it's so nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yes, thank you so much for joining us. This is
very exciting.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Chris, Thank you guys for making that donation to Owen
J's Wellness Center.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That is respect Thank you for asking for that. That
was great of course. Do you want to tell us
about the work they.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Do well, they're allied with the Austin Health I've been
there actually I took a tour Toddy Goldsmith, who is
Olivia's niece from Rona who is her sister. I had
gone over to do what is tantamount to our comic
cons in Australia. They're called supernova's.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So yes, I've done one, you have yours. We did
it in Sydney, Sydney. Yeah, I've done Sydney.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Perth, Melbourne and gold Coast. I was, I guess in Melbourne.
They had me over to the to the center and
gave me a tour. And it's her research facility that
is funded you know by private donors. That's how they
stay afloat. It is that center that's exceedingly special because
(02:18):
that's again where all the research is done to come
up with but they need to to battle this this
cant cancer all together. Yeah, so that's that, and so
the donation goes to to this, to that part of
the center, that part of her center, and you walk
downstairs down the stairs from floor to floor and as
(02:42):
you walk down, instead of a wall there, it's an
open it's a huge window, so you can see the
trees and yeah, or the patio park area that they
have for people to sit and relax and whatever. They
have rooms and music rooms and it's again a whole
(03:03):
a holistic approach to healing the cancer, you know, and
body spirit. So it's it's quite it's quite something.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah sounds like.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, especially you got to go see it in real life.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was pretty terrific.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Well, we're curious to hear of it. We just watched Greece.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Again watching.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
But uh, it's such an iconic piece of history.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Is one of the most arguably the most popular and
defining musical movie of all time, and it must feel
pretty special that you were a part of that, and
long before that the stage production as well, but also
like seeing Greece live on in today and you know,
(04:01):
for these younger generations that are still discovering and doing
this in schools, et cetera. So I'm just curious to
hear like what that journey has been like for you
and seeing all these different inceptions and being part of
the very original kind of start of it all.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
First, I'm blessed to say the least as are each
of us, that we're a part of that phenomenon. We
do not take it for granted, and there really isn't
anything like it. And at the same time, it's funny.
It's so monumental, it's such a legacy. But I don't
(04:40):
wake up every morning with it in my eye, if
that makes sense. Yeah, I'm aware of it. When I'm
aware of it, I don't. I certainly don't laud it
over people, and I'm I've always been exceedingly willing to
talk about it with everybody. Friends and fans of like
friends have had enough of it, believe and I often
(05:05):
worry about that because I think that I don't want
them to think that I'm full of myself with it.
And I'm certain there are folks out there, oh Barry, Yeah,
if I hear Greece one more time, you know, and
I guess that will just be what it is, and
so be it, because there are vast numbers of folks
(05:25):
out there who, like yourselves, are very taken with what
this experience is like for them and must be like
for us. And we take it in stride again, we
feel blessed? Do we feel special as much as I
(05:46):
feel as special as I allow myself to feel without
being conceited about it, without again, like I say, lauding
it over anybody, or just having there about it. Because
a lot of luck went into and and always goes
into anyone who works a lot of talent, a lot
(06:07):
of perseverance, and an element of luck. So yeah, we
just don't take it for granted, if you know what
I mean. Definitely, So as much as I don't think
about it every day, it's with me every day that
I'm blessed.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Yeah, Yeah, And when these kinds of.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Things come up, we love telling the stories. I mean,
you're probably going to ask me questions that I've answered many, many,
many times, So forgive me if I'm repeating myself. Folks
who are watching this, I don't know that you're going
to learn anything necessarily new. It's not going to be
so revolutionary. And if you've heard it before, you're going
to hear it again, I guess, and the new the
(06:45):
new folks out there, you know, strap In.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think it's a really important point you bring up
about because I think it happens to us and we're
much earlier in the journey of being a part of
something that went on to mean more than we could
have ever imagined to people. And obviously, you know, I
think being a musical musicals connect on a whole different level,
I think than other forms of TV and film. Sure,
(07:12):
And I think your distinction between talking about it because
you're so proud of it and blessed to be a
part of something that meant so much to you and
so much to other people, and then the difference between
that and the ego and being conceited about it and obviously,
speaking to you now for what less than ten minutes,
(07:33):
clearly it's you know, the former. And I think where
I struggle with that and think about that in my
personal life too, when I'm talking about it and I'm
not bragging about something I did, you know, fifteen years ago,
but especially for you, where this has a real, deep,
(07:54):
deeply ingrained legacy in so many people and it is
something you should be so proud of.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, uninevitable, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, absolutely, Like it is so rare that you get
to be a part of that, any of us, and
so to be a part of and yours is such
a singular thing. Yeah, because it was. I mean it
was beyond like the numbers. Yes, it was the biggest
grossing until like what last year like that, like that,
(08:23):
nobody else can say that.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Generation after generation. Yes, and we see I mean literally
we will see grandmothers sometimes great grandmothers, the grandmothers, the mothers,
the children and the children's children. It's it blows us away.
We were just Jamie Donnelle plays Jan and Michael Tucci
plays Sonny, and Larenzelamis plays Tom Chisholm and myself. We
(08:50):
often get taken for for weekends in different parts of
the country to do events, and we've done several drive ins.
Oh wow, So I'm driving up to this driving in Litchfield,
MISSOURIUS and this is where my career has come to
a drive in getting around Well, let me tell you,
over nine hundred people stood in line from five pm
(09:13):
to eight thirty pm after the movie started to get
our autographs and take photos with Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So it's huge in that way and I don't I'm
not diminishing it in any way. And yet at the
same time I'm signing autographs that to drive in Well, yeah, yes,
those folks go to the drive in to be entertained
and then to meet they're the icons, the ones they've
(09:41):
grown up with and connection with it. You're talking about
how special it is, and we stop and we talk
with every single person who comes by, whether they're coming
by for an autograph or passing me up to get
Jamie's autograph. They're in line and we're schmoozing. And they
stood there in the heat and the wind all that
time to have some fellowship with us. And yeah, we
(10:08):
we've been to these comic cons and we have seen
lines around the room for the bigs like the William
Shatners and and uh, the casts of of what can
I think of Star Trek, you know, for instance, and
TV shows like of What's Happening and Vicky Vicky Lawrence. Yeah,
(10:30):
and it goes on and on. Marty Cove from Cobra Ka,
Cobra Kai around the block they go, and so they
certainly have their place, you know. And to even be
a part of that culture is a is a gift
and a blessing and we don't take we don't take
(10:51):
for granted there there really isn't anything very much like that.
You're absolutely right. We're gathering the proverbial rosebuds while we can,
and you know, we got the fiftieth coming up, so
that should provide us with a whole bunch of other events.
I'm thinking, you know, paramount of course stuff in the
works definitely and we'll see what happens. So we're looking
(11:14):
forward to being alive for that.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Jenna mentioned, you know at the beginning of this that
you do have a such a deep history with the show,
because I mean, you went to school, you went to
school for performing arts, musical theater.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I went to Professional Children's School, which was different from Performing.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Artshame was model.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, so with performing arts, which I actually lived across
the street from the original and forty six between Broad
six and then it moved, i want to say, across
to the north and further further west. That was a
conservatory of sorts where they taught the arts, and one
(12:07):
it was not supposed to work while going to that school.
Now PCs Professional Children's School was designed for kids that
were in the business or who and or whose parents
were and traveled with their parents so they they had
tutors and worked through correspondence. So that's with that school.
It was for the professional child. If you will and yeah,
(12:31):
so I go way back and Jeff may he rest
in peace conaway. He went to one of the rival schools, Quintanos,
which wasn't as strict as PCs. It was kind of
you know, you phoned in. It was crazy. And my
dear dear friend k Cole, who played Maggie and chorus line, Oh,
I was just with just a couple of hours ago.
(12:52):
We're doing a project together. She went to Quintanos. She
got by by the skin of her teeth too, And
it was very tough. They they were very hard on
us and as they prepared us for college and and
I actually then went to college. I gra In fact,
I graduated a year late because I thro the course
of four years, I had failed a history course, an
(13:12):
English course, in geometry course course. So I basically had
to take my senior year over again, or I took
my junior No, it was a senior year exactly over again.
So but I did graduate, and uh and got into
Carnegie Mellon University and the class of seventy three it
started out with sixty five people and only four of
(13:33):
us graduated, so that was also wow school to go to.
And and still uh, so I wanted that. I wanted
that sense of formal education. I wanted to be completion.
Not not that that necessarily helps you get the gig,
but it's just nice to have that for yourself. Yeah, exactly,
to have that cheap skin for myself. So but yes,
(13:56):
I I you know, I've been doing it since I
was the kid, since I was eleven years years old,
and I was active in community theater in my hometown
in Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And in fifty nine I had
done a production of Dark at the Top of the Stairs,
playing Sunny Flood in that play, and there was an
aspiring playwright from New York by the name of Charles E.
(14:18):
Miller Chuck Miller, who, because he was a playwright, he
needed to pay the rent. He came to the Fulton
Theater where the play was being done to run lights
because I had to make a living. He took a
liking to my mother and myself, and he told my
mom that one day he was going to get me
on Broadway. And I was always looking for daddy because
my parents were separated and divorced, so I would latch
(14:41):
onto any.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Male mailing area.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
And two years later, summer sixty one, Chuck was friendly
with the secretary of the producer of Bye Bye Birdie,
the first rock and roll musical, and Chuck became aware
of the fact that the young boy playing Randolph McAfee
and by by Bertie Johnny Borden was leaving to do
a new play called Milk and Honey with Molly Pecan,
(15:07):
and so that role was going to become available, and
Chuck told this secretary, Bob Fagan said, I got the
guy for you. So called my mom. In the next day,
I took a train into New York and I never
went home. I auditioned for the piece and then went
to work right away. That was a Wednesday, and I
went on like that following Saturday. Actually, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
In fact, it was.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Supposed to be that following Monday, and my mom went
home for that weekend. And that that's when I started
the professional career. And I do this because professional is
really not whether you're being paid, in my estimation, whether
you're mad or have an agent or have union representation.
It's how you behave on the field. So but my
(15:51):
my anniversary, my sixty fourth year anniversary of being a
member of Afters Equity was this past September. First Wow,
I had joined the cab in August to buy by
Bertie in August of that year, and then got my
equity card and went on the road. Did the last
month on Broadway, and then went on the road with
Bertie and with Kate. That's how I met ky Cole.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
She was in the show and that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We finished the first national tour and then did the
Vegas Company summer set of sixty two, and then that
fall I had auditioned for Oliver, which was coming into Broadway.
I had a broken arm fell off my cousin Shetlin
writing Bareback, so but I auditioned with a broken arm,
didn't get the gig. However, about two months later they
(16:37):
were replacing two of the kids pre Broadway. I auditioned
again after having gotten the role of Tom, who appears
at the end of Camelot, and that was going out
on tour. I had actually gotten that gig and had
a call back for Oliver, and I convinced my mom
to let me go to that callback because it was
coming back into New York. It was going to be
(16:58):
a Broadway show. Okay, there you'll go. And I got
that gig. It turned down the role of Tom and
Camelot and they flew me to Detroit, and then from
Detroit we did Toronto. This is before Davy Jones got
into the show. Wow, I was in Toronto, that's when
Davey joined, and then we came into New York January
(17:20):
sixty three. Laid it to the end of till about
September of sixty three. I left the show to understudy
Barry Gordon in the National two or thousand Clowns. And
had I not left the show Oliver at the time
that I did, I would have accompanied my Oliver buddies
(17:42):
that February of sixty four onto the Ed Sullivan Show
that the Beatles first appeared.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Oh my myself, there's not enough foresight in the world.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
No, no, you can't. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
When you say you started young, like you were just
gig after gig after gig, No, what are you failed
worth of?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I as show business.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I spoke the same friend.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, yeah, you didn't have time for school. You're an entertainer.
You wouldn't get it.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Unbelievable. Wow, what a career, even pre Grease Yes, oh.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, yeah, which also brings me we'll get there. Just
how good every single person is in Greece. But it's
like just your your journey alone getting there shows why,
like the caliber of talent, how stacked that cast was,
every which way the camera looked. You're going to be
(18:56):
seeing somebody who is so good at what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah, like I said, Jeff and I grew up together,
he was.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
He was.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
In fact when I first saw the show. That's a
whole other story. He was playing Zuko. He was the best.
He was an amazing because he was Zuko in real life.
He really was. And so the first time I saw
it was blown away and Jeff and I, like I said,
growing up, he was kind of a bad boy, and
I kind of envied him and was angry with him
(19:24):
because he was so wonderful and good looking and played
the guitar and not fair.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's not fair.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Not fair. And then we wound up becoming fast and
famous friends when we did. But also we had actually
done the show together. I think I did it with him. Yeah,
I did do it with him, uh for a while,
and then he left when I had first done the show. Yeah,
he was. He was playing Zuko, and I came in
to replace Michael Lembeck who was playing Sonny who had
(19:53):
broken his ankle. And I was only there for a
short time, and then they laid me off in the
end of that summer. I then rejoined the cast, replacing
Michael when when the show came out here to California
for the last ten and a half months. But but
getting back to what you had said about the caliber
folks not only from the movie. And you got Jamie
Donnelly who was like Rocky Horror Picture Show, George m
(20:16):
Michael who at fact Michael had joined the cast of Grease.
He was an understudy for the last month or two
in Toronto when I was doing the show there. And
Uh Kelly Ward, whose parents were in the business and
and and were wonderful dancers and producers and directors. And
(20:36):
like I say, Jeff and Johnny two who had been
on Broadway a bunch of time, played duty in the
first national trope. But but and you had the Barry Bostwicks,
and you had the uh Eileen Grafts and h who
played Walter Bobby and Jerry Zachs and and and Adrian
(20:56):
Barbou who did the stage play, who also had of
incredible histories in the theater, film, and television. So it's
been packed through the years with those that kind of
caliber in all the companies that have been produced, all
the professional companies right and even beyond you know, so
(21:18):
just say even like some blischool productions are yeah, like
the talent, the caliber of talent.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I'm wondering if you remember because you were in trench
in the theater community pre Greece happening when you hear about,
you know, a new show being done or there's workshops
going on, Like what is your first memory of hearing
about Greece the stage show this production?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Sure, so in the summer of seventy two when Greece
Greece had started Kingston minds in Chicago actually, and it
then moved off Broadway and then on to Broadway. Just
occurs to me. Actually Chicago plays heavy in this because
in the summer of seventy two, it was my the
summer before my senior year of college, and my girlfriend
(22:03):
at the time and I got jobs with the Chicago
Free Street Theater, and the Street Theater brought live theater
into neighborhoods, into affluent to squalid neighborhoods all up and
down Illinois amazing. From Winnetka down to East Saint Louis.
We would travel in this show mobile. It was a
(22:26):
huge semi opened up and then we the actors would
erect the stage, no, do two original gigs that we
wrote musicals, unfold and go to another gig. So I
did that for the summer of seventy two.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
What a great experience truly.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
But then into Europe during the fall we were sponsored
by the Bograd International Theater Festival in Yugoslavia, toured all
over Yugoslavia the Bograd Pierre Cardan sponsored us in Paris
at his theater, the espos Kardan, and then we did
a week in Brussels. And for that that that period
(23:04):
of time, Carnegie Mellon gave me credit for the work.
So I didn't have to go to my.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
N some history classes you were not going to pass.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yes, right exactly, and so and so in that company,
the Street Theater Company, I befriended a fellow by the
name of John Lansing, And after we came back from Europe,
they took us down to Rockford, Illinois. I want to
say that December, part of that January to teach theater
arts to certain targets in Rockford, Frozer behinds off in
(23:39):
teaching theater arts.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
And then I went back to school. So I go
back to school for the second semester, and I had
a bunch of friends of mine who had been to
school out here in California and had transferred to Carnegie,
and they kept telling me how much I reminded them
of their friend Michael Lembeck. Looked like we did the
same shows, the same roles in the same shows. Okay,
(24:04):
So Grease now comes through Pittsburgh on tour, and my
friend John Lansing is now one of their understudies. He
understudies Zuko teen Agel and Roger those two or three,
Vince Fontete, whoever. And he calls me, and this is
before cell phones. I don't know how we got in
(24:25):
touch with it, but I do have an image of
myself on the phone downstairs from the gym where the
entire student body would meet every morning for a class
called dynamics. It was yoga and voice, and then we
would all go off our different disciplines. And I remember
being on the phone talking. He says, you got to
come down and see this play. Grease. Okay, So I
(24:46):
go down and see this play Grease, and out on
the stage backwards comes Michael Lembeck and he turns around
with the first Sonny's first line, son of a bitch.
I got old lady Lynch for English, and he hates
my guts. And I look at this guy and it
was like watching myself. My friends were right, I do
(25:10):
look like this guy. He was brilliant, brilliant. Sonny got
on the phone with my agent the next day. I said, listen,
they're going to be other companies, they're gonna be replacements.
I have to have a general audition for this within
a period of time a week, two weeks. I remembered
it one way, and then recently came across ticket stubs
and play bills from the actual time. And I go
(25:34):
down and see the plays. And I called my agent
the next day after having seen it. I told him
that within like two weeks or so, they I get
a call, You're going in for a general audition. So
I booked a flight because when it was thirty five
dollars a flight from Pittsburgh to Laguardi or JFK, wherever
it was. And I go in for a general audition.
(25:55):
That's a whole other story in and of itself. And
I auditioned for Pat Birch and Folks and Pat Pat
and I had worked together in sixty seven and sixty eight.
She cast me as Schroeder and you're a good man,
Charlie Brown form this.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, yeah, so she knew my work.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So I did the general, went back to school, and
then got a call a couple of weeks later. They
want to see you back again for a callback because
Michael Lenbeck at the end of Act one has broken
his ankle. They need to replacement. Immediately. I go in
for the callback, I get the gig. They want to
take me up to Toronto right away again with Toronto
and Detroit. This is it. So I said, look, I
(26:40):
got two weeks of school to finish my senior years. Okay,
back and finished. We're gonna put our understudy on Tommy Gerard.
You go back and finish school, and then we'll have
you come up to Detroit where the production will be
at the time, and you'll take over. You'll you'll understudy
the understudy. Basically, fine, go up there and for three
weeks I'm studying the role of Sonny because if anything
(27:02):
happens to anybody else, Tommy would slip into that role whatever,
and then I'd go on as Sonny. So now in
this production you have Mary Lou Henter playing Marty, Johnny
was playing Duty, Jerry Zachs, the very successful famous Broadway director,
he was playing Kinicki, Jeff was doing Zuko, Ellen Marsh
(27:24):
was playing Marty. Let you know, uh, and others.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
So I'm working backstage. I'm doing the numbers and the wings,
and I go to Jerry Zach's. At one point I say, hey, Jerry,
is it possible for you to feign illness so that
Tommy Gerard can go on as Kanicki and I can
slip into the roles. I just want to play it once.
He said, well, let me ask the stage managers if
(27:53):
that if they'd be up for it. Well, I knew
that wasn't going to happen, And surely he came back
and he said and they said, no, okay, I got it.
About three days later, May nineteenth of nineteen seventy three,
I get a phone call in my hotel room from
Hal Halverson, the stage manager. Jerry zax is sick.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
You're going on his Sonny.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Now I contend that it was probably set up, but
they didn't want me to be bruise. So I step
on stage at the Fisher Theater in Detroit, May nineteenth,
nineteen seventy three, and four years to the day later,
May nineteenth of nineteen seventy seven, I get the role
(28:38):
of duty in the movie. Wow, that's how that story ends.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Crazy.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
So then, what, like I said before, after the three weeks,
I was laid off because Michael came back, and now
I went back. Oh, they actually let me go back
before that to partake in my graduation ceremonies.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
That's so nice of them to tell you that ever happened.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Now now negotiates for stuff like that, but this was
just that they were really great and they appreciated I
guess what I did, and they were you know, they
gifted me that. So then I was laid off. I
had three hundred dollars to my name. My girlfriend, who
wasn't given that work study went back to the Chicago
Street Theater and that particular year she sort of said,
(29:24):
you know, I think I want to spend the summer
by myself. And so I was heartbroken. Went back to
New York where my mother lived in a one bedroom
apartment that I had left, you know, four years before.
But thank God for her because she was my my net,
my cushion. Had been with my mom in a one
bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, And until I was able
(29:46):
to kind of get on my feet, took a job
as a a a in an answering service stand by
answering service.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Had to make a buck, right, yep, survival, that's right.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Until the end of that summer, I got two summer
stock gigs at the Effort to Star Playhouse and near
my hometown of Pennsylvania, did what the Butler saw and
butterflies are free. And while I was there again another
phone booth, I get a call from Hal Halverson. The
(30:18):
States were saying, Michael Lembeck is leaving the show in
LA and we want you to come out and finish
the tour.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
So they flew me out to California to do the
last matinee at the Schubert Theater of the show and
in the audience that day was a friend.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Of Mary lou Henterers who took slides, remember slides of
the entire show and then sold them to us. I
bought an entire carousel slides, not only of me, but
of the whole show. So I've got these amazing side
with playing Rizzo and Bostwick playing playing because they flipped.
You know, the deal was that Boston would come out
(30:57):
to La with which happens we went to New York
for that time, and and Jimmy Canning, who was the
original duty had come out to LA. So I've got
all these wonderful slides Jerry, Lou Mary Low and Jerry
and Johnny and Roger, great great slides. And in fact
that you get think Indeedie's book Frenchy scrap Book, there
(31:21):
might be some of those photos there. I know there
were some in Randall's book, the Director's Notebook on on
on the movie, and and so just in just that.
So I then replaced him, did the last ten ten
and a half months, and that was from the end.
They wanted me to do a summer stock production of it,
(31:42):
which then ended up to be an extension of that
that tour. Instead of doing it myself and the guy
that played Vince Fontagne at the time, my friend Barry Vaigon,
we decided to take another show together, El Grande de
Coca Cola, which we did, which is it's a spooful
on Latin American cabaret where this character Papa Peppe hernandez
(32:07):
off his relatives as different acts from South America costumes,
and it was really seedy and grungy, like you would
find in a real city American cabaret. But they had
done this originally at Plaza Plaza nine, which is a
little theater underneath the Plaza Hotel the park, and it
(32:29):
starred Ron Silver and and and Jeff Goldblum who was Meatloafs,
one of Meatloafs singers, and some others, and we decided
to take it, but they took us down to Mexico
to do it. This this guy Sergio, who Mexico on
(32:53):
its ear. It was like selling ice to the Eskimos
over their head or they were offended. Some month Mexico
and then we're gonna close us down. But then they
decided to take us to Acapulco for a month. Oh
my god, Oh that didn't work there, But then everybody
else was out on tour with Greece. But it was
kind of a kind of a cool break.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So at what point were you did you hear they're
making a movie and like, you know, was it an agent? Oh,
you have an audition for this? Were they auditioning everybody
who had been in a company of Greece.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
They didn't want to see any of us from the
play You're too old. Oh, so we kind of put
that to rest until we got.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Auditions right right, And.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
I went into audition and the role of Duty, I thought,
I'm not Duty, I'm sunny if anything. Well, the way
it turned out is in the film, Duty is really sunny. Uh,
Sonny is really Roger and interesting, really Duty.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
So how did that happen? Do you know why they
liked the name?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Putsy and Bronte Woodard me he rest in peace wrote
it that way, and that's just the way it rolled out,
got it, you know, the Roger character. We also didn't
sing the songs now as Duty in the movie. I
wouldn't have sung magic changes in the play. He does.
The magic changes is in the film. It's in the
background during the dance contest. Mooning wasn't wasn't played either.
(34:31):
It was that's Roger's song that was also used as background.
And Freddie My Love, which Marty sings is not in
the in the film either, although again in the background somewhere,
but so we were told we weren't going to and
then all of a sudden we had these auditions, and
so remember we sang, and I remember I sang blue
(34:53):
Swede shoes and did it the way I had done
it for my audition for the play. Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And how many people in that room were the same
people you had auditioned for if any? I mean there
were obviously that the play.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
No nobody, well Jim, I don't know if Jim Jacobs
is in a room or not, because maybe by that
time there was like a split between Alan Carr and
those guys.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, got it, okay, And so there was really no
Pat pat pitch right.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Okay, choreographed She she was, she was in the room.
And so we sang, we read, and then they brought
us together to read and sing together, and I remember,
I think I remember reading with Dedie. And then the
last thing we had to do, this is kind of cool.
The last thing we had to do was they lined
(35:47):
up the guys on one side of the room and
the women on the other side of the room, and
our task was the guy had to come out to
the center and the girl had to come out and
you had to dance with her and woo her off
the stage, off the blank space. So in the play
(36:08):
of Greece, Sonny again, the role that I played and
that I am body in the film, doesn't sing a
song and he doesn't dance. As I understand it, the
fellow who actually played Sonny originally Jimbarelli, wasn't a great singer,
wasn't a great dancer, but he was a great type
and great type. He was a real wonderful Sonny. So
(36:31):
during the dance contest in the play, he sits off
to the side and gets drunk, and then he collapses
at the end of the play, at the end of
the scene, and then stumbles up the stairs. Now put
that aside for a second. In the play, don't know
if you know this, cha cha who in the movie
(36:53):
was a hot latina played by our dear late Annette Charles.
Right in the play, she's not a hot latina. She
is a young girl of size, not very good looking,
with these Dolly Madison curls and a lot of rouge.
Because that's the joke in the end of that one,
(37:15):
when Rizzo and Kaniki have a fight at the park
and Rizzo asks Zuko to the dance when she was
going to be going with Kiniki. Kiniki then is approached
by Sonny, Hey, should we pick up a couple of
girls for the dance? And Zuka says with what a
meat hook? And there's a laugh, and Kiniki says, Nah,
(37:38):
I've got a hot date from across town. She's a bombshell.
That's what we're left with. At two opens up at
the dance, everybody's there. All of a sudden, spotlight hits
Kiniki coming in with his hot date. But she ain't
a hot date. It's the joke. She's later referred to
in the scene as oh, you mean that gorilla there?
(38:00):
The girl put her nose over there. Oh I thought
you was the steam table ladies. So and that's that's
not used in the film, right, it is in the play.
So these days they still cast a hot gal looking
the dancer, which in the play was that she was
the dance captain Kathy moss Man dance cat. She was
a great dancer. She has to be because they still yeah,
(38:23):
so okay, backing up now to the dance contest, and
at the end where Sonny gets dronk, he doesn't dance
and he climbs up the stairs and he's encountered by
this this girl that picked her nose the steam table,
and he takes a look at her at one point,
actually he goes up under her dress. Is he's coming
up because she's standing at the head of the stairs.
It comes up under her dress. Ah, and he runs off.
(38:46):
And then she comes down the stairs and she's encountered
by Eugene and they see each other where everybody is
going off with a couple. There's a moment that they
have and then they each pass by, each passed by
by the nerd. And that's the poignant on a sweet
part Boom. We're seem so at the audition, not knowing
(39:07):
what the screen play was going to be like. At
the audition, they line us up, we each are to
come out, and I hang back, and I hang back
because I'm looking at the girls on the side and
the girl kind of towards the end of the line,
who was not as pretty as the rest of them.
I'm putting it out there. Hang back, baby, hang back,
(39:28):
stay back. I want you to be my partner in this.
I also decided I was going to play like I've
had too much to drink and I grabbed myself. A
styrofoam cup comes down to me and another guy and
a gal and this other, this gal that I'm hoping
will hang back. Sure enough she does. So it's the
(39:49):
two of us with the last to come out, and
I stumble out. I take one last sip of the cup,
and I put the cup in my cuff of my
jeans and say, and I grab her right and now
I'm holding her when we start to dance, and I
moved my hand down to her. I start to pinch
your bum. She takes my hand, She grabs my hand
(40:12):
and brings it around and puts my hand on my
own bum bum, thinking it's her bum.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Perfect.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
You gotta stand apart, you gotta boat.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Make them remember you, you know, Yeah, exactly incredible.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
So from from the Cassie you met Dedie that day?
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Yeah, I probably I probably met her maybe even a.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Day or so before, okay, or the lad the time.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Before we had we had done. And then the last
thing I remember is that they were all released, The
girls were released, and we were the last. It was Jeff, Kelly,
Michael and myself and the people behind the table, Alan
Carr and Branda and says, you go up there by
the piano just hang out for a little while. So
(41:01):
we went up there and we hung while they were talking.
And the next thing you know, I guess it was
Allan that came by and said, you're our tea, you're you,
you are our t birds. Wow. How special they told
us right then and there a release.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, so nice to know.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
My story was that I had just been written out
of CPO Sharky the Don Rickles show. Wow, the series
I had come out here on speculation, which I contended
I'd never do. But I had done a pilot in
seventy six.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Well that was gonna be my question that you You
were also auditioning and working in TV and film.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
While doing all this theater.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
I was doing a play in New York called Let
My People Come Down at the Village the Village Gate,
which was a poor man's o Calcutta. Are you familiar
with o' calcutta? No? You basically performed in the nude.
Oh wow, And I understudied seven guys.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Oh my god. If I went on, I had this
address that was like Jenna in the Spring Awakening, she
covered four five different parts.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
But this is this is that's classy. This is.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
Yeah, the huge hit.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
And I had first understudied these seven guys and it
was a deal whereby it was a review, so I
could go on for two or three guys at the
same time and I'd get their salary plus mine.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I was making a phone amazing. Yeah, this is an
early and getting compensated for doing all that extra work.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah. So at one point in time, the union said, okay,
you don't have to have understudies apart from the cast.
You can use one of your cast members to understudy
if you want the same little money. So they came
to me, they said, we're either going to fire you
or make you a permanent member of the cast. I said, well,
I'd still want to do it, but you're gonna have
to give me all the comedy numbers and allow me
(42:51):
to stay clad. They let me do that. So I
was doing that gig and I get this pilot or
I auditioned for this pilot called Best Friends that was
directed by Jerry Pass. He was Jerry the dentist on
The Dick Van Dyke Show and subsequently directed every single
episode of Happy Days. Wow. Yeah, huge career. And I
(43:11):
auditioned for it and I didn't get it at first,
And a week later, in the middle of the afternoon,
I get a phone call saying they fired the guy
that they hired. They needed to get on the next
plane out to California. You're replacing this guy.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
How many times does this happen to you?
Speaker 3 (43:26):
A bunch like that? So they're on plane next day. No,
that day, get old plane and did the pilot and
it didn't sell. But Jerry Paris said, look, come out here.
You can stay with me and my family in the
Palisades and until you get on your feet, because you'll
work out here.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I'd met a couple of casting directors when I was
out here at the time doing the pilot. Pilot was
produced by Alan Sack Alan Sachs, who, along with Gabe Kaplan,
produced and developed Cotter these webs that we and so uh,
he said, do that now again. I contended, I shouldn't
(44:10):
do that. I need to have a job, but you know,
it felt right, So I gave up my apartment and
sub led it to my friend Danny Jacobson, who is
responsible for creating and producing little TV shows like Mad
About You, Two Men, a Gallon of Pizza. You know.
(44:31):
He played Kinicki in a Greece company and then went
on to Fame and Fortune and.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
It was like interacted with Greece in some way.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Yeah, they were they were blessed. So I came out
to California and within a week and a half I
went on my first audition, and that was to replace
Jeffrey Kramer, who played the He was the deputy and
Jaws and the first Jaws who throws up on the beach,
and he did the pilot. Then they replay with me.
(45:02):
I did thirteen episodes of Sharky and I was on
top of the world. I mean, the first audition and
I get a gig. But by the end of that
thirteen weeks, I wasn't a happy camper. They weren't writing
for us, and I was really despondent. And so Jeffrey
played an Italian recruit. They replaced him with me an
Italian recruit and the Italian guy. Thing didn't work. When
(45:26):
Don would go down the line and break the Polish
guy and the Jewish guy and the Black guy and
the Norwegian guy, he got laught. He come to the
Italian guy, we weren't getting He said done. I said done.
Say something about my Italian this and he looked at
me and said, hey, I got family a kid, and
(45:48):
I got that. And now on my birthday that year,
we hadn't found out whether we were being picked up
yet or not for CPO Sharky, I get a call
from my agent the show's being picked up, but they're
not picked Can.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
You hasn't that?
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (46:04):
On my birthday and I was that night and the
producer's son came walking in because he was in the
in the in the in the series. I said, your
dad gave me a really nice birthday gift today. So
I go running down to Jerry Paris, who was at
Paramount at the time doing Blansky's Beauties television series with
my pal Karen Kay who had gone to college with
(46:26):
Carnegie with actually, and I cried on his shoulder and
he said, look, you know, when I was a kid,
I was doing The Untouchables with Robert Stack long before
your time. Guys. They wrote me out and I was devastated.
But had that not happened, I wouldn't have gotten a
job on the Dick Van Dyke Show as a regular,
which led to my directing career. Because Sheldon Leonard, the
(46:48):
producer gave him a gig directing, and the rest with
him was history, because he wound up directing every episode
of Happy Is And I said, yeah, but you know,
at that time, the light at the end of the
tunnel looks like a truck coming at you. Yeah, consolation,
no council. But had that not happened, had I not
been written out of Sharky, I wouldn't have been available
to do Greece of the Door Closes the Door Open.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Did you guys know that when Greece was happening, when
you guys were filming the movie, that it was going
to be such a sensation?
Speaker 4 (47:24):
Did you have any kind of not a clue?
Speaker 3 (47:26):
Now, we knew that the play had become the longest
running play in Broadway history at the time. Yeah, so
we knew we had a great template, if you.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Will right, No one knew it worked like the people
loved the music, the show was great, like.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Yes, and then it's pa part of the chemistry of
your cast and the talent that was there, and like
it was just so electric to watch it.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
I can imagine that while filming it, it felt like that.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Whether it was a hit or not, you know, the
the journey you guys said was probably incredible.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
You hit upon something that I I'll tell you I've
contended for quite some time. First of all, well, you know,
along with what the piece was originally is to play.
The music was wonderful. Pat's dance was great. You love
John and you loved looking at Olivia. The camera loved them.
So I contend that one of the reasons why folks
(48:16):
not such as yourself, who are sort of savvy to
the elements that can make for a success John Q
public who knows that they liked the singing, they liked
the dancing like looking at John, Olivia, etcetce, but can't
fully articulate something else about it that they like. They
can't fully let what it is, I think is the camaraderie.
(48:40):
It's why you say, the the the the way we
got along with each other like Grandma lamalama.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Kad yes exactly.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
That spills over and people watching love to see people
getting along. They love to see the rockets kick in
time they add applause. I think that element helps to
preserve to keep all of us and the piece relevant
through the.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, because you can feel that as an audience member,
as if you were regardless of when you're encountering this film, right,
you feel and it felt like you could speak to this,
but that you all did have a great time with
each other. You all were having the best time of
your lives. We juste you were together making this thing.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
We did and we still do. And you know when
we go out and these signing gigs, it's like, you know,
reunion time. There's nothing like it. Yeah, all still get
along and we're sad at those those that we have lost,
but hope that they're looking down on this blessing us
as we go and we're savoring every every single moment.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Yeah you can.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
We always ask people on the podcast who were involved
with Glee, of course, which we did Greece on the
show as well, what is what is the feeling that.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Lee leaves you with? But you're remiss not to ask
you what is the feeling that Grease lys you it?
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Grateful and blessed? As I said, sometimes I sometimes it's
a little surreal, and sometimes I still kind of don't
get it. I mean in terms of shouldn't it be impact,
shouldn't be feeling it even more in my skin?
Speaker 1 (50:20):
It's hard to absorb something so much bigger than you yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah, it truly is much bigger than just me pod cast.
It really does kind of oscillate and move as an
entity in and of itself, and we're sort of entire
inside that nucleus, you know it. Just again, it leaves
me very thankful that I have. This is my legacy,
(50:47):
and you know, and then I'm doing okay. Oh look
I got my We all have our aches and pains,
but that I'm still doing okay. And you know, my
wife is She's a huge contribution to not only my heart,
but to our home economics. You know that has helped us.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
You know, look, folks, we eat and sleep and poop
just like the rest. We do. Just happen to have
this fang that attached itself to us. YEA, yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
And we're all better for it. We're all better for
it all you're you're right, we're all better that. You know.
You your group landed at the same time, all together,
in the same space to make that thing. Because as
we've seen and you've seen as other musicals are made
or TV show, whatever it is, people can try their
(51:41):
hardest to make something. You just never know, and you
never know if you're getting the right people at the
right time, and Greece is still so important and incredible
because everybody was locked in and clocked in at the
exact right time to make this special thing. And I mean, yeah,
it's not very many things that I can say, you know,
(52:03):
we're so formative to I guess my life and career,
and it's like Michael Jackson and Greece, like yeah, it's
like those are the things that informed us. And I think,
you know, for us, and it's small. I'm not comparing
us to Greece, but like in a small way, like
(52:23):
you mentioned, like we can't feel what the show meant
to people on the scale that it did, but we
but we know how it our relationships feel to one
another and what and that's what the show means to us,
and that's what it's so special. And it's so heartening
to hear you speak of Greece in a similar way
(52:44):
because you know, I know we're going to feel that
down the line as well and and continue to be
proud of something that we were part of.
Speaker 6 (52:55):
And yeah, you yes, Beatles, uh ultimately Greece, but it
was Beatles and West Side Story and sound music on
the roof Forest.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Line you know, for me the musicals in my life. Yeah,
west Side Story, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
Groundbreaking Yeah, and you're a part of that now history
for people because you're in that list.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
Here we are again, I Kevin. I don't go around with.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
That in my mind, of course, not that you remind.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Me of that. You guys remind you that.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, it's good. Probably it's
healthy for you not to go around with that in
your head.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
But I think to be reminded of it, you know,
it's a accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
You have those things that mean that to you, and
that's what Greece means to other people. So it's like
that's the only way to maybe sort of understand.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, when I fan boy out on people, I I
have that experience that you guys are talking about having
with this project. Yeah, you know I I who do
I bump into? That makes me? Well Shatner, I have
a whole it's like too long, but it's kind of
Yang and Yang. It's crazy, but but he's one U
(54:20):
gosh who else? H Well? Even John to this day,
we you know, we text each other, we talk, we
see each other occasionally, but even him and his journey,
I am so enamored with his career, with the way
he comports himself. He truly walks to talk. He's a
very ethical guy. So when Olivia was alive, I so
(54:42):
humbled myself. Even though we were buddies, she's still she
just represented something on a on a higher level of being.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
If you will, you have people that mean that to you.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
What mean yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
We have taken so much of your time. Thank you
so much, so.
Speaker 1 (55:03):
Nice to meet you, Barry. It is really wonderful hearing
you just reminisce about everything. It's so special and so
grateful on you. Whenever you allow us to, yes, we
will do it.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
I will, and please feel free to reach out again.
Maybe my other I said our Dedy and out my
other Greece compadres to Yes, that would be so grateful, Yes,
in the fashion you do, and we'll take care of that,
will do.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Thank you so so much. It was a pleasure to
meet you.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
So nice to meet you.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Welcome, great, Thank you too. Thanks, Thank you is the word.
Bye everybody.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Bye, what a man, Barry Pearl, Thank you so much, seriously,
thank you so much for joining us. I have a
million more questions and so we may have to have
him back and d and maybe we're just going to
interview all of them if he's willing to help us
out and get every single person, like, what a career,
(55:58):
what a life? With a storyteller Greece just means the
world to us. So thank you so much for joining us.
I hope all of you enjoyed that, because we obviously
did very much, and that's.
Speaker 4 (56:08):
What you really missed.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Thanks for listening and follow us on Instagram at and
that's what you really miss pod. Make sure to write
us a review and leave us five stars. See you
next time,
And that's what you really missed with Jenna.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And Kevin and iHeartRadio podcast. Welcome to and that's what
you really missed. I feel like I'm cheating on Jenna
by saying that, But here we are today. We have
one of the og Grease cast members, Barry Pearl, who
played Duty, one of the original t Birds. He also
(00:26):
was in the stage show before. We talked about all
of that, talk about his incredible career child actor, everyone
child actor, and he turned out. Okay, he is great.
He's a sensational storyteller. We get to hear all about.
You know what I was fascinated going into this was like,
how did this really come about? Like when you're around,
(00:46):
you know, we've been in the entertainment business forever, you
hear about projects coming up, and I wanted to know, like,
if you're there on the ground in the late sixties,
early seventies, what was this about. So Barry gives us
all all the pearls of wisdom.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I hate myself.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Okay, this is very Pearl.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Oh my gosh, it's so nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yes, thank you so much for joining us. This is
very exciting.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Chris, Thank you guys for making that donation to Owen
J's Wellness Center.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That is respect Thank you for asking for that. That
was great of course. Do you want to tell us
about the work they.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Do well, they're allied with the Austin Health I've been
there actually I took a tour Toddy Goldsmith, who is
Olivia's niece from Rona who is her sister. I had
gone over to do what is tantamount to our comic
cons in Australia. They're called supernova's.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So yes, I've done one, you have yours. We did
it in Sydney, Sydney. Yeah, I've done Sydney.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Perth, Melbourne and gold Coast. I was, I guess in Melbourne.
They had me over to the to the center and
gave me a tour. And it's her research facility that
is funded you know by private donors. That's how they
stay afloat. It is that center that's exceedingly special because
(02:18):
that's again where all the research is done to come
up with but they need to to battle this this
cant cancer all together. Yeah, so that's that, and so
the donation goes to to this, to that part of
the center, that part of her center, and you walk
downstairs down the stairs from floor to floor and as
(02:42):
you walk down, instead of a wall there, it's an
open it's a huge window, so you can see the
trees and yeah, or the patio park area that they
have for people to sit and relax and whatever. They
have rooms and music rooms and it's again a whole
(03:03):
a holistic approach to healing the cancer, you know, and
body spirit. So it's it's quite it's quite something.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah sounds like.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, especially you got to go see it in real life.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was pretty terrific.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Well, we're curious to hear of it. We just watched Greece.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Again watching.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
But uh, it's such an iconic piece of history.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Is one of the most arguably the most popular and
defining musical movie of all time, and it must feel
pretty special that you were a part of that, and
long before that the stage production as well, but also
like seeing Greece live on in today and you know,
(04:01):
for these younger generations that are still discovering and doing
this in schools, et cetera. So I'm just curious to
hear like what that journey has been like for you
and seeing all these different inceptions and being part of
the very original kind of start of it all.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
First, I'm blessed to say the least as are each
of us, that we're a part of that phenomenon. We
do not take it for granted, and there really isn't
anything like it. And at the same time, it's funny.
It's so monumental, it's such a legacy. But I don't
(04:40):
wake up every morning with it in my eye, if
that makes sense. Yeah, I'm aware of it. When I'm
aware of it, I don't. I certainly don't laud it
over people, and I'm I've always been exceedingly willing to
talk about it with everybody. Friends and fans of like
friends have had enough of it, believe and I often
(05:05):
worry about that because I think that I don't want
them to think that I'm full of myself with it.
And I'm certain there are folks out there, oh Barry, Yeah,
if I hear Greece one more time, you know, and
I guess that will just be what it is, and
so be it, because there are vast numbers of folks
(05:25):
out there who, like yourselves, are very taken with what
this experience is like for them and must be like
for us. And we take it in stride again, we
feel blessed? Do we feel special as much as I
(05:46):
feel as special as I allow myself to feel without
being conceited about it, without again, like I say, lauding
it over anybody, or just having there about it. Because
a lot of luck went into and and always goes
into anyone who works a lot of talent, a lot
(06:07):
of perseverance, and an element of luck. So yeah, we
just don't take it for granted, if you know what
I mean. Definitely, So as much as I don't think
about it every day, it's with me every day that
I'm blessed.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Yeah, Yeah, And when these kinds of.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Things come up, we love telling the stories. I mean,
you're probably going to ask me questions that I've answered many, many,
many times, So forgive me if I'm repeating myself. Folks
who are watching this, I don't know that you're going
to learn anything necessarily new. It's not going to be
so revolutionary. And if you've heard it before, you're going
to hear it again, I guess, and the new the
(06:45):
new folks out there, you know, strap In.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think it's a really important point you bring up
about because I think it happens to us and we're
much earlier in the journey of being a part of
something that went on to mean more than we could
have ever imagined to people. And obviously, you know, I
think being a musical musicals connect on a whole different level,
I think than other forms of TV and film. Sure,
(07:12):
And I think your distinction between talking about it because
you're so proud of it and blessed to be a
part of something that meant so much to you and
so much to other people, and then the difference between
that and the ego and being conceited about it and obviously,
speaking to you now for what less than ten minutes,
(07:33):
clearly it's you know, the former. And I think where
I struggle with that and think about that in my
personal life too, when I'm talking about it and I'm
not bragging about something I did, you know, fifteen years ago,
but especially for you, where this has a real, deep,
(07:54):
deeply ingrained legacy in so many people and it is
something you should be so proud of.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, uninevitable, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, absolutely, Like it is so rare that you get
to be a part of that, any of us, and
so to be a part of and yours is such
a singular thing. Yeah, because it was. I mean it
was beyond like the numbers. Yes, it was the biggest
grossing until like what last year like that, like that,
(08:23):
nobody else can say that.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Generation after generation. Yes, and we see I mean literally
we will see grandmothers sometimes great grandmothers, the grandmothers, the mothers,
the children and the children's children. It's it blows us away.
We were just Jamie Donnelle plays Jan and Michael Tucci
plays Sonny, and Larenzelamis plays Tom Chisholm and myself. We
(08:50):
often get taken for for weekends in different parts of
the country to do events, and we've done several drive ins.
Oh wow, So I'm driving up to this driving in Litchfield,
MISSOURIUS and this is where my career has come to
a drive in getting around Well, let me tell you,
over nine hundred people stood in line from five pm
(09:13):
to eight thirty pm after the movie started to get
our autographs and take photos with Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So it's huge in that way and I don't I'm
not diminishing it in any way. And yet at the
same time I'm signing autographs that to drive in Well, yeah, yes,
those folks go to the drive in to be entertained
and then to meet they're the icons, the ones they've
(09:41):
grown up with and connection with it. You're talking about
how special it is, and we stop and we talk
with every single person who comes by, whether they're coming
by for an autograph or passing me up to get
Jamie's autograph. They're in line and we're schmoozing. And they
stood there in the heat and the wind all that
time to have some fellowship with us. And yeah, we
(10:08):
we've been to these comic cons and we have seen
lines around the room for the bigs like the William
Shatners and and uh, the casts of of what can
I think of Star Trek, you know, for instance, and
TV shows like of What's Happening and Vicky Vicky Lawrence. Yeah,
(10:30):
and it goes on and on. Marty Cove from Cobra Ka,
Cobra Kai around the block they go, and so they
certainly have their place, you know. And to even be
a part of that culture is a is a gift
and a blessing and we don't take we don't take
(10:51):
for granted there there really isn't anything very much like that.
You're absolutely right. We're gathering the proverbial rosebuds while we can,
and you know, we got the fiftieth coming up, so
that should provide us with a whole bunch of other events.
I'm thinking, you know, paramount of course stuff in the
works definitely and we'll see what happens. So we're looking
(11:14):
forward to being alive for that.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Jenna mentioned, you know at the beginning of this that
you do have a such a deep history with the show,
because I mean, you went to school, you went to
school for performing arts, musical theater.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I went to Professional Children's School, which was different from Performing.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Artshame was model.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, so with performing arts, which I actually lived across
the street from the original and forty six between Broad
six and then it moved, i want to say, across
to the north and further further west. That was a
conservatory of sorts where they taught the arts, and one
(12:07):
it was not supposed to work while going to that school.
Now PCs Professional Children's School was designed for kids that
were in the business or who and or whose parents
were and traveled with their parents so they they had
tutors and worked through correspondence. So that's with that school.
It was for the professional child. If you will and yeah,
(12:31):
so I go way back and Jeff may he rest
in peace conaway. He went to one of the rival schools, Quintanos,
which wasn't as strict as PCs. It was kind of
you know, you phoned in. It was crazy. And my
dear dear friend k Cole, who played Maggie and chorus line, Oh,
I was just with just a couple of hours ago.
(12:52):
We're doing a project together. She went to Quintanos. She
got by by the skin of her teeth too, And
it was very tough. They they were very hard on
us and as they prepared us for college and and
I actually then went to college. I gra In fact,
I graduated a year late because I thro the course
of four years, I had failed a history course, an
(13:12):
English course, in geometry course course. So I basically had
to take my senior year over again, or I took
my junior No, it was a senior year exactly over again.
So but I did graduate, and uh and got into
Carnegie Mellon University and the class of seventy three it
started out with sixty five people and only four of
(13:33):
us graduated, so that was also wow school to go to.
And and still uh, so I wanted that. I wanted
that sense of formal education. I wanted to be completion.
Not not that that necessarily helps you get the gig,
but it's just nice to have that for yourself. Yeah, exactly,
to have that cheap skin for myself. So but yes,
(13:56):
I I you know, I've been doing it since I
was the kid, since I was eleven years years old,
and I was active in community theater in my hometown
in Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And in fifty nine I had
done a production of Dark at the Top of the Stairs,
playing Sunny Flood in that play, and there was an
aspiring playwright from New York by the name of Charles E.
(14:18):
Miller Chuck Miller, who, because he was a playwright, he
needed to pay the rent. He came to the Fulton
Theater where the play was being done to run lights
because I had to make a living. He took a
liking to my mother and myself, and he told my
mom that one day he was going to get me
on Broadway. And I was always looking for daddy because
my parents were separated and divorced, so I would latch
(14:41):
onto any.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Male mailing area.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
And two years later, summer sixty one, Chuck was friendly
with the secretary of the producer of Bye Bye Birdie,
the first rock and roll musical, and Chuck became aware
of the fact that the young boy playing Randolph McAfee
and by by Bertie Johnny Borden was leaving to do
a new play called Milk and Honey with Molly Pecan,
(15:07):
and so that role was going to become available, and
Chuck told this secretary, Bob Fagan said, I got the
guy for you. So called my mom. In the next day,
I took a train into New York and I never
went home. I auditioned for the piece and then went
to work right away. That was a Wednesday, and I
went on like that following Saturday. Actually, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
In fact, it was.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Supposed to be that following Monday, and my mom went
home for that weekend. And that that's when I started
the professional career. And I do this because professional is
really not whether you're being paid, in my estimation, whether
you're mad or have an agent or have union representation.
It's how you behave on the field. So but my
(15:51):
my anniversary, my sixty fourth year anniversary of being a
member of Afters Equity was this past September. First Wow,
I had joined the cab in August to buy by
Bertie in August of that year, and then got my
equity card and went on the road. Did the last
month on Broadway, and then went on the road with
Bertie and with Kate. That's how I met ky Cole.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
She was in the show and that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We finished the first national tour and then did the
Vegas Company summer set of sixty two, and then that
fall I had auditioned for Oliver, which was coming into Broadway.
I had a broken arm fell off my cousin Shetlin
writing Bareback, so but I auditioned with a broken arm,
didn't get the gig. However, about two months later they
(16:37):
were replacing two of the kids pre Broadway. I auditioned
again after having gotten the role of Tom, who appears
at the end of Camelot, and that was going out
on tour. I had actually gotten that gig and had
a call back for Oliver, and I convinced my mom
to let me go to that callback because it was
coming back into New York. It was going to be
(16:58):
a Broadway show. Okay, there you'll go. And I got
that gig. It turned down the role of Tom and
Camelot and they flew me to Detroit, and then from
Detroit we did Toronto. This is before Davy Jones got
into the show. Wow, I was in Toronto, that's when
Davey joined, and then we came into New York January
(17:20):
sixty three. Laid it to the end of till about
September of sixty three. I left the show to understudy
Barry Gordon in the National two or thousand Clowns. And
had I not left the show Oliver at the time
that I did, I would have accompanied my Oliver buddies
(17:42):
that February of sixty four onto the Ed Sullivan Show
that the Beatles first appeared.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Oh my myself, there's not enough foresight in the world.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
No, no, you can't. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
When you say you started young, like you were just
gig after gig after gig, No, what are you failed
worth of?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I as show business.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I spoke the same friend.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, yeah, you didn't have time for school. You're an entertainer.
You wouldn't get it.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Unbelievable. Wow, what a career, even pre Grease Yes, oh.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, yeah, which also brings me we'll get there. Just
how good every single person is in Greece. But it's
like just your your journey alone getting there shows why,
like the caliber of talent, how stacked that cast was,
every which way the camera looked. You're going to be
(18:56):
seeing somebody who is so good at what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah, like I said, Jeff and I grew up together,
he was.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
He was.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
In fact when I first saw the show. That's a
whole other story. He was playing Zuko. He was the best.
He was an amazing because he was Zuko in real life.
He really was. And so the first time I saw
it was blown away and Jeff and I, like I said,
growing up, he was kind of a bad boy, and
I kind of envied him and was angry with him
(19:24):
because he was so wonderful and good looking and played
the guitar and not fair.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It's not fair.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Not fair. And then we wound up becoming fast and
famous friends when we did. But also we had actually
done the show together. I think I did it with him. Yeah,
I did do it with him, uh for a while,
and then he left when I had first done the show. Yeah,
he was. He was playing Zuko, and I came in
to replace Michael Lembeck who was playing Sonny who had
(19:53):
broken his ankle. And I was only there for a
short time, and then they laid me off in the
end of that summer. I then rejoined the cast, replacing
Michael when when the show came out here to California
for the last ten and a half months. But but
getting back to what you had said about the caliber
folks not only from the movie. And you got Jamie
Donnelly who was like Rocky Horror Picture Show, George m
(20:16):
Michael who at fact Michael had joined the cast of Grease.
He was an understudy for the last month or two
in Toronto when I was doing the show there. And
Uh Kelly Ward, whose parents were in the business and
and and were wonderful dancers and producers and directors. And
(20:36):
like I say, Jeff and Johnny two who had been
on Broadway a bunch of time, played duty in the
first national trope. But but and you had the Barry Bostwicks,
and you had the uh Eileen Grafts and h who
played Walter Bobby and Jerry Zachs and and and Adrian
(20:56):
Barbou who did the stage play, who also had of
incredible histories in the theater, film, and television. So it's
been packed through the years with those that kind of
caliber in all the companies that have been produced, all
the professional companies right and even beyond you know, so
(21:18):
just say even like some blischool productions are yeah, like
the talent, the caliber of talent.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I'm wondering if you remember because you were in trench
in the theater community pre Greece happening when you hear about,
you know, a new show being done or there's workshops
going on, Like what is your first memory of hearing
about Greece the stage show this production?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Sure, so in the summer of seventy two when Greece
Greece had started Kingston minds in Chicago actually, and it
then moved off Broadway and then on to Broadway. Just
occurs to me. Actually Chicago plays heavy in this because
in the summer of seventy two, it was my the
summer before my senior year of college, and my girlfriend
(22:03):
at the time and I got jobs with the Chicago
Free Street Theater, and the Street Theater brought live theater
into neighborhoods, into affluent to squalid neighborhoods all up and
down Illinois amazing. From Winnetka down to East Saint Louis.
We would travel in this show mobile. It was a
(22:26):
huge semi opened up and then we the actors would
erect the stage, no, do two original gigs that we
wrote musicals, unfold and go to another gig. So I
did that for the summer of seventy two.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
What a great experience truly.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
But then into Europe during the fall we were sponsored
by the Bograd International Theater Festival in Yugoslavia, toured all
over Yugoslavia the Bograd Pierre Cardan sponsored us in Paris
at his theater, the espos Kardan, and then we did
a week in Brussels. And for that that that period
(23:04):
of time, Carnegie Mellon gave me credit for the work.
So I didn't have to go to my.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
N some history classes you were not going to pass.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yes, right exactly, and so and so in that company,
the Street Theater Company, I befriended a fellow by the
name of John Lansing, And after we came back from Europe,
they took us down to Rockford, Illinois. I want to
say that December, part of that January to teach theater
arts to certain targets in Rockford, Frozer behinds off in
(23:39):
teaching theater arts.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
And then I went back to school. So I go
back to school for the second semester, and I had
a bunch of friends of mine who had been to
school out here in California and had transferred to Carnegie,
and they kept telling me how much I reminded them
of their friend Michael Lembeck. Looked like we did the
same shows, the same roles in the same shows. Okay,
(24:04):
So Grease now comes through Pittsburgh on tour, and my
friend John Lansing is now one of their understudies. He
understudies Zuko teen Agel and Roger those two or three,
Vince Fontete, whoever. And he calls me, and this is
before cell phones. I don't know how we got in
(24:25):
touch with it, but I do have an image of
myself on the phone downstairs from the gym where the
entire student body would meet every morning for a class
called dynamics. It was yoga and voice, and then we
would all go off our different disciplines. And I remember
being on the phone talking. He says, you got to
come down and see this play. Grease. Okay, So I
(24:46):
go down and see this play Grease, and out on
the stage backwards comes Michael Lembeck and he turns around
with the first Sonny's first line, son of a bitch.
I got old lady Lynch for English, and he hates
my guts. And I look at this guy and it
was like watching myself. My friends were right, I do
(25:10):
look like this guy. He was brilliant, brilliant. Sonny got
on the phone with my agent the next day. I said, listen,
they're going to be other companies, they're gonna be replacements.
I have to have a general audition for this within
a period of time a week, two weeks. I remembered
it one way, and then recently came across ticket stubs
and play bills from the actual time. And I go
(25:34):
down and see the plays. And I called my agent
the next day after having seen it. I told him
that within like two weeks or so, they I get
a call, You're going in for a general audition. So
I booked a flight because when it was thirty five
dollars a flight from Pittsburgh to Laguardi or JFK, wherever
it was. And I go in for a general audition.
(25:55):
That's a whole other story in and of itself. And
I auditioned for Pat Birch and Folks and Pat Pat
and I had worked together in sixty seven and sixty eight.
She cast me as Schroeder and you're a good man,
Charlie Brown form this.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, yeah, so she knew my work.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So I did the general, went back to school, and
then got a call a couple of weeks later. They
want to see you back again for a callback because
Michael Lenbeck at the end of Act one has broken
his ankle. They need to replacement. Immediately. I go in
for the callback, I get the gig. They want to
take me up to Toronto right away again with Toronto
and Detroit. This is it. So I said, look, I
(26:40):
got two weeks of school to finish my senior years. Okay,
back and finished. We're gonna put our understudy on Tommy Gerard.
You go back and finish school, and then we'll have
you come up to Detroit where the production will be
at the time, and you'll take over. You'll you'll understudy
the understudy. Basically, fine, go up there and for three
weeks I'm studying the role of Sonny because if anything
(27:02):
happens to anybody else, Tommy would slip into that role whatever,
and then I'd go on as Sonny. So now in
this production you have Mary Lou Henter playing Marty, Johnny
was playing Duty, Jerry Zachs, the very successful famous Broadway director,
he was playing Kinicki, Jeff was doing Zuko, Ellen Marsh
(27:24):
was playing Marty. Let you know, uh, and others.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
So I'm working backstage. I'm doing the numbers and the wings,
and I go to Jerry Zach's. At one point I say, hey, Jerry,
is it possible for you to feign illness so that
Tommy Gerard can go on as Kanicki and I can
slip into the roles. I just want to play it once.
He said, well, let me ask the stage managers if
(27:53):
that if they'd be up for it. Well, I knew
that wasn't going to happen, And surely he came back
and he said and they said, no, okay, I got it.
About three days later, May nineteenth of nineteen seventy three,
I get a phone call in my hotel room from
Hal Halverson, the stage manager. Jerry zax is sick.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
You're going on his Sonny.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Now I contend that it was probably set up, but
they didn't want me to be bruise. So I step
on stage at the Fisher Theater in Detroit, May nineteenth,
nineteen seventy three, and four years to the day later,
May nineteenth of nineteen seventy seven, I get the role
(28:38):
of duty in the movie. Wow, that's how that story ends.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Crazy.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
So then, what, like I said before, after the three weeks,
I was laid off because Michael came back, and now
I went back. Oh, they actually let me go back
before that to partake in my graduation ceremonies.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
That's so nice of them to tell you that ever happened.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Now now negotiates for stuff like that, but this was
just that they were really great and they appreciated I
guess what I did, and they were you know, they
gifted me that. So then I was laid off. I
had three hundred dollars to my name. My girlfriend, who
wasn't given that work study went back to the Chicago
Street Theater and that particular year she sort of said,
(29:24):
you know, I think I want to spend the summer
by myself. And so I was heartbroken. Went back to
New York where my mother lived in a one bedroom
apartment that I had left, you know, four years before.
But thank God for her because she was my my net,
my cushion. Had been with my mom in a one
bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, And until I was able
(29:46):
to kind of get on my feet, took a job
as a a a in an answering service stand by
answering service.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Had to make a buck, right, yep, survival, that's right.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Until the end of that summer, I got two summer
stock gigs at the Effort to Star Playhouse and near
my hometown of Pennsylvania, did what the Butler saw and
butterflies are free. And while I was there again another
phone booth, I get a call from Hal Halverson. The
(30:18):
States were saying, Michael Lembeck is leaving the show in
LA and we want you to come out and finish
the tour.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
So they flew me out to California to do the
last matinee at the Schubert Theater of the show and
in the audience that day was a friend.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Of Mary lou Henterers who took slides, remember slides of
the entire show and then sold them to us. I
bought an entire carousel slides, not only of me, but
of the whole show. So I've got these amazing side
with playing Rizzo and Bostwick playing playing because they flipped.
You know, the deal was that Boston would come out
(30:57):
to La with which happens we went to New York
for that time, and and Jimmy Canning, who was the
original duty had come out to LA. So I've got
all these wonderful slides Jerry, Lou Mary Low and Jerry
and Johnny and Roger, great great slides. And in fact
that you get think Indeedie's book Frenchy scrap Book, there
(31:21):
might be some of those photos there. I know there
were some in Randall's book, the Director's Notebook on on
on the movie, and and so just in just that.
So I then replaced him, did the last ten ten
and a half months, and that was from the end.
They wanted me to do a summer stock production of it,
(31:42):
which then ended up to be an extension of that
that tour. Instead of doing it myself and the guy
that played Vince Fontagne at the time, my friend Barry Vaigon,
we decided to take another show together, El Grande de
Coca Cola, which we did, which is it's a spooful
on Latin American cabaret where this character Papa Peppe hernandez
(32:07):
off his relatives as different acts from South America costumes,
and it was really seedy and grungy, like you would
find in a real city American cabaret. But they had
done this originally at Plaza Plaza nine, which is a
little theater underneath the Plaza Hotel the park, and it
(32:29):
starred Ron Silver and and and Jeff Goldblum who was Meatloafs,
one of Meatloafs singers, and some others, and we decided
to take it, but they took us down to Mexico
to do it. This this guy Sergio, who Mexico on
(32:53):
its ear. It was like selling ice to the Eskimos
over their head or they were offended. Some month Mexico
and then we're gonna close us down. But then they
decided to take us to Acapulco for a month. Oh
my god, Oh that didn't work there, But then everybody
else was out on tour with Greece. But it was
kind of a kind of a cool break.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So at what point were you did you hear they're
making a movie and like, you know, was it an agent? Oh,
you have an audition for this? Were they auditioning everybody
who had been in a company of Greece.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
They didn't want to see any of us from the
play You're too old. Oh, so we kind of put
that to rest until we got.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Auditions right right, And.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
I went into audition and the role of Duty, I thought,
I'm not Duty, I'm sunny if anything. Well, the way
it turned out is in the film, Duty is really sunny. Uh,
Sonny is really Roger and interesting, really Duty.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
So how did that happen? Do you know why they
liked the name?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Putsy and Bronte Woodard me he rest in peace wrote
it that way, and that's just the way it rolled out,
got it, you know, the Roger character. We also didn't
sing the songs now as Duty in the movie. I
wouldn't have sung magic changes in the play. He does.
The magic changes is in the film. It's in the
background during the dance contest. Mooning wasn't wasn't played either.
(34:31):
It was that's Roger's song that was also used as background.
And Freddie My Love, which Marty sings is not in
the in the film either, although again in the background somewhere,
but so we were told we weren't going to and
then all of a sudden we had these auditions, and
so remember we sang, and I remember I sang blue
(34:53):
Swede shoes and did it the way I had done
it for my audition for the play. Uh.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And how many people in that room were the same
people you had auditioned for if any? I mean there
were obviously that the play.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
No nobody, well Jim, I don't know if Jim Jacobs
is in a room or not, because maybe by that
time there was like a split between Alan Carr and
those guys.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, got it, okay, And so there was really no
Pat pat pitch right.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Okay, choreographed She she was, she was in the room.
And so we sang, we read, and then they brought
us together to read and sing together, and I remember,
I think I remember reading with Dedie. And then the
last thing we had to do, this is kind of cool.
The last thing we had to do was they lined
(35:47):
up the guys on one side of the room and
the women on the other side of the room, and
our task was the guy had to come out to
the center and the girl had to come out and
you had to dance with her and woo her off
the stage, off the blank space. So in the play
(36:08):
of Greece, Sonny again, the role that I played and
that I am body in the film, doesn't sing a
song and he doesn't dance. As I understand it, the
fellow who actually played Sonny originally Jimbarelli, wasn't a great singer,
wasn't a great dancer, but he was a great type
and great type. He was a real wonderful Sonny. So
(36:31):
during the dance contest in the play, he sits off
to the side and gets drunk, and then he collapses
at the end of the play, at the end of
the scene, and then stumbles up the stairs. Now put
that aside for a second. In the play, don't know
if you know this, cha cha who in the movie
(36:53):
was a hot latina played by our dear late Annette Charles.
Right in the play, she's not a hot latina. She
is a young girl of size, not very good looking,
with these Dolly Madison curls and a lot of rouge.
Because that's the joke in the end of that one,
(37:15):
when Rizzo and Kaniki have a fight at the park
and Rizzo asks Zuko to the dance when she was
going to be going with Kiniki. Kiniki then is approached
by Sonny, Hey, should we pick up a couple of
girls for the dance? And Zuka says with what a
meat hook? And there's a laugh, and Kiniki says, Nah,
(37:38):
I've got a hot date from across town. She's a bombshell.
That's what we're left with. At two opens up at
the dance, everybody's there. All of a sudden, spotlight hits
Kiniki coming in with his hot date. But she ain't
a hot date. It's the joke. She's later referred to
in the scene as oh, you mean that gorilla there?
(38:00):
The girl put her nose over there. Oh I thought
you was the steam table ladies. So and that's that's
not used in the film, right, it is in the play.
So these days they still cast a hot gal looking
the dancer, which in the play was that she was
the dance captain Kathy moss Man dance cat. She was
a great dancer. She has to be because they still yeah,
(38:23):
so okay, backing up now to the dance contest, and
at the end where Sonny gets dronk, he doesn't dance
and he climbs up the stairs and he's encountered by
this this girl that picked her nose the steam table,
and he takes a look at her at one point,
actually he goes up under her dress. Is he's coming
up because she's standing at the head of the stairs.
It comes up under her dress. Ah, and he runs off.
(38:46):
And then she comes down the stairs and she's encountered
by Eugene and they see each other where everybody is
going off with a couple. There's a moment that they
have and then they each pass by, each passed by
by the nerd. And that's the poignant on a sweet
part Boom. We're seem so at the audition, not knowing
(39:07):
what the screen play was going to be like. At
the audition, they line us up, we each are to
come out, and I hang back, and I hang back
because I'm looking at the girls on the side and
the girl kind of towards the end of the line,
who was not as pretty as the rest of them.
I'm putting it out there. Hang back, baby, hang back,
(39:28):
stay back. I want you to be my partner in this.
I also decided I was going to play like I've
had too much to drink and I grabbed myself. A
styrofoam cup comes down to me and another guy and
a gal and this other, this gal that I'm hoping
will hang back. Sure enough she does. So it's the
(39:49):
two of us with the last to come out, and
I stumble out. I take one last sip of the cup,
and I put the cup in my cuff of my
jeans and say, and I grab her right and now
I'm holding her when we start to dance, and I
moved my hand down to her. I start to pinch
your bum. She takes my hand, She grabs my hand
(40:12):
and brings it around and puts my hand on my
own bum bum, thinking it's her bum.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Perfect.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
You gotta stand apart, you gotta boat.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Make them remember you, you know, Yeah, exactly incredible.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
So from from the Cassie you met Dedie that day?
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Yeah, I probably I probably met her maybe even a.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Day or so before, okay, or the lad the time.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Before we had we had done. And then the last
thing I remember is that they were all released, The
girls were released, and we were the last. It was Jeff, Kelly,
Michael and myself and the people behind the table, Alan
Carr and Branda and says, you go up there by
the piano just hang out for a little while. So
(41:01):
we went up there and we hung while they were talking.
And the next thing you know, I guess it was
Allan that came by and said, you're our tea, you're you,
you are our t birds. Wow. How special they told
us right then and there a release.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, so nice to know.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
My story was that I had just been written out
of CPO Sharky the Don Rickles show. Wow, the series
I had come out here on speculation, which I contended
I'd never do. But I had done a pilot in
seventy six.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Well that was gonna be my question that you You
were also auditioning and working in TV and film.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
While doing all this theater.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
I was doing a play in New York called Let
My People Come Down at the Village the Village Gate,
which was a poor man's o Calcutta. Are you familiar
with o' calcutta? No? You basically performed in the nude.
Oh wow, And I understudied seven guys.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Oh my god. If I went on, I had this
address that was like Jenna in the Spring Awakening, she
covered four five different parts.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
But this is this is that's classy. This is.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
Yeah, the huge hit.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
And I had first understudied these seven guys and it
was a deal whereby it was a review, so I
could go on for two or three guys at the
same time and I'd get their salary plus mine.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I was making a phone amazing. Yeah, this is an
early and getting compensated for doing all that extra work.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah. So at one point in time, the union said, okay,
you don't have to have understudies apart from the cast.
You can use one of your cast members to understudy
if you want the same little money. So they came
to me, they said, we're either going to fire you
or make you a permanent member of the cast. I said, well,
I'd still want to do it, but you're gonna have
to give me all the comedy numbers and allow me
(42:51):
to stay clad. They let me do that. So I
was doing that gig and I get this pilot or
I auditioned for this pilot called Best Friends that was
directed by Jerry Pass. He was Jerry the dentist on
The Dick Van Dyke Show and subsequently directed every single
episode of Happy Days. Wow. Yeah, huge career. And I
(43:11):
auditioned for it and I didn't get it at first,
And a week later, in the middle of the afternoon,
I get a phone call saying they fired the guy
that they hired. They needed to get on the next
plane out to California. You're replacing this guy.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
How many times does this happen to you?
Speaker 3 (43:26):
A bunch like that? So they're on plane next day. No,
that day, get old plane and did the pilot and
it didn't sell. But Jerry Paris said, look, come out here.
You can stay with me and my family in the
Palisades and until you get on your feet, because you'll
work out here.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I'd met a couple of casting directors when I was
out here at the time doing the pilot. Pilot was
produced by Alan Sack Alan Sachs, who, along with Gabe Kaplan,
produced and developed Cotter these webs that we and so uh,
he said, do that now again. I contended, I shouldn't
(44:10):
do that. I need to have a job, but you know,
it felt right, So I gave up my apartment and
sub led it to my friend Danny Jacobson, who is
responsible for creating and producing little TV shows like Mad
About You, Two Men, a Gallon of Pizza. You know.
(44:31):
He played Kinicki in a Greece company and then went
on to Fame and Fortune and.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
It was like interacted with Greece in some way.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Yeah, they were they were blessed. So I came out
to California and within a week and a half I
went on my first audition, and that was to replace
Jeffrey Kramer, who played the He was the deputy and
Jaws and the first Jaws who throws up on the beach,
and he did the pilot. Then they replay with me.
(45:02):
I did thirteen episodes of Sharky and I was on
top of the world. I mean, the first audition and
I get a gig. But by the end of that
thirteen weeks, I wasn't a happy camper. They weren't writing
for us, and I was really despondent. And so Jeffrey
played an Italian recruit. They replaced him with me an
Italian recruit and the Italian guy. Thing didn't work. When
(45:26):
Don would go down the line and break the Polish
guy and the Jewish guy and the Black guy and
the Norwegian guy, he got laught. He come to the
Italian guy, we weren't getting He said done. I said done.
Say something about my Italian this and he looked at
me and said, hey, I got family a kid, and
(45:48):
I got that. And now on my birthday that year,
we hadn't found out whether we were being picked up
yet or not for CPO Sharky, I get a call
from my agent the show's being picked up, but they're
not picked Can.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
You hasn't that?
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (46:04):
On my birthday and I was that night and the
producer's son came walking in because he was in the
in the in the in the series. I said, your
dad gave me a really nice birthday gift today. So
I go running down to Jerry Paris, who was at
Paramount at the time doing Blansky's Beauties television series with
my pal Karen Kay who had gone to college with
(46:26):
Carnegie with actually, and I cried on his shoulder and
he said, look, you know, when I was a kid,
I was doing The Untouchables with Robert Stack long before
your time. Guys. They wrote me out and I was devastated.
But had that not happened, I wouldn't have gotten a
job on the Dick Van Dyke Show as a regular,
which led to my directing career. Because Sheldon Leonard, the
(46:48):
producer gave him a gig directing, and the rest with
him was history, because he wound up directing every episode
of Happy Is And I said, yeah, but you know,
at that time, the light at the end of the
tunnel looks like a truck coming at you. Yeah, consolation,
no council. But had that not happened, had I not
been written out of Sharky, I wouldn't have been available
to do Greece of the Door Closes the Door Open.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Did you guys know that when Greece was happening, when
you guys were filming the movie, that it was going
to be such a sensation?
Speaker 4 (47:24):
Did you have any kind of not a clue?
Speaker 3 (47:26):
Now, we knew that the play had become the longest
running play in Broadway history at the time. Yeah, so
we knew we had a great template, if you.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Will right, No one knew it worked like the people
loved the music, the show was great, like.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Yes, and then it's pa part of the chemistry of
your cast and the talent that was there, and like
it was just so electric to watch it.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
I can imagine that while filming it, it felt like that.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Whether it was a hit or not, you know, the
the journey you guys said was probably incredible.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
You hit upon something that I I'll tell you I've
contended for quite some time. First of all, well, you know,
along with what the piece was originally is to play.
The music was wonderful. Pat's dance was great. You love
John and you loved looking at Olivia. The camera loved them.
So I contend that one of the reasons why folks
(48:16):
not such as yourself, who are sort of savvy to
the elements that can make for a success John Q
public who knows that they liked the singing, they liked
the dancing like looking at John, Olivia, etcetce, but can't
fully articulate something else about it that they like. They
can't fully let what it is, I think is the camaraderie.
(48:40):
It's why you say, the the the the way we
got along with each other like Grandma lamalama.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Kad yes exactly.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
That spills over and people watching love to see people
getting along. They love to see the rockets kick in
time they add applause. I think that element helps to
preserve to keep all of us and the piece relevant
through the.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, because you can feel that as an audience member,
as if you were regardless of when you're encountering this film, right,
you feel and it felt like you could speak to this,
but that you all did have a great time with
each other. You all were having the best time of
your lives. We juste you were together making this thing.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
We did and we still do. And you know when
we go out and these signing gigs, it's like, you know,
reunion time. There's nothing like it. Yeah, all still get
along and we're sad at those those that we have lost,
but hope that they're looking down on this blessing us
as we go and we're savoring every every single moment.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Yeah you can.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
We always ask people on the podcast who were involved
with Glee, of course, which we did Greece on the
show as well, what is what is the feeling that.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Lee leaves you with? But you're remiss not to ask
you what is the feeling that Grease lys you it?
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Grateful and blessed? As I said, sometimes I sometimes it's
a little surreal, and sometimes I still kind of don't
get it. I mean in terms of shouldn't it be impact,
shouldn't be feeling it even more in my skin?
Speaker 1 (50:20):
It's hard to absorb something so much bigger than you yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah, it truly is much bigger than just me pod cast.
It really does kind of oscillate and move as an
entity in and of itself, and we're sort of entire
inside that nucleus, you know it. Just again, it leaves
me very thankful that I have. This is my legacy,
(50:47):
and you know, and then I'm doing okay. Oh look
I got my We all have our aches and pains,
but that I'm still doing okay. And you know, my
wife is She's a huge contribution to not only my heart,
but to our home economics. You know that has helped us.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
You know, look, folks, we eat and sleep and poop
just like the rest. We do. Just happen to have
this fang that attached itself to us. YEA, yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
And we're all better for it. We're all better for
it all you're you're right, we're all better that. You know.
You your group landed at the same time, all together,
in the same space to make that thing. Because as
we've seen and you've seen as other musicals are made
or TV show, whatever it is, people can try their
(51:41):
hardest to make something. You just never know, and you
never know if you're getting the right people at the
right time, and Greece is still so important and incredible
because everybody was locked in and clocked in at the
exact right time to make this special thing. And I mean, yeah,
it's not very many things that I can say, you know,
(52:03):
we're so formative to I guess my life and career,
and it's like Michael Jackson and Greece, like yeah, it's
like those are the things that informed us. And I think,
you know, for us, and it's small. I'm not comparing
us to Greece, but like in a small way, like
(52:23):
you mentioned, like we can't feel what the show meant
to people on the scale that it did, but we
but we know how it our relationships feel to one
another and what and that's what the show means to us,
and that's what it's so special. And it's so heartening
to hear you speak of Greece in a similar way
(52:44):
because you know, I know we're going to feel that
down the line as well and and continue to be
proud of something that we were part of.
Speaker 6 (52:55):
And yeah, you yes, Beatles, uh ultimately Greece, but it
was Beatles and West Side Story and sound music on
the roof Forest.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Line you know, for me the musicals in my life. Yeah,
west Side Story, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
Groundbreaking Yeah, and you're a part of that now history
for people because you're in that list.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
Here we are again, I Kevin. I don't go around with.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
That in my mind, of course, not that you remind.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Me of that. You guys remind you that.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, it's good. Probably it's
healthy for you not to go around with that in
your head.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
But I think to be reminded of it, you know,
it's a accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
You have those things that mean that to you, and
that's what Greece means to other people. So it's like
that's the only way to maybe sort of understand.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, when I fan boy out on people, I I
have that experience that you guys are talking about having
with this project. Yeah, you know I I who do
I bump into? That makes me? Well Shatner, I have
a whole it's like too long, but it's kind of
Yang and Yang. It's crazy, but but he's one U
(54:20):
gosh who else? H Well? Even John to this day,
we you know, we text each other, we talk, we
see each other occasionally, but even him and his journey,
I am so enamored with his career, with the way
he comports himself. He truly walks to talk. He's a
very ethical guy. So when Olivia was alive, I so
(54:42):
humbled myself. Even though we were buddies, she's still she
just represented something on a on a higher level of being.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
If you will, you have people that mean that to you.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
What mean yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
We have taken so much of your time. Thank you
so much, so.
Speaker 1 (55:03):
Nice to meet you, Barry. It is really wonderful hearing
you just reminisce about everything. It's so special and so
grateful on you. Whenever you allow us to, yes, we
will do it.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
I will, and please feel free to reach out again.
Maybe my other I said our Dedy and out my
other Greece compadres to Yes, that would be so grateful, Yes,
in the fashion you do, and we'll take care of that,
will do.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Thank you so so much. It was a pleasure to
meet you.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
So nice to meet you.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Welcome, great, Thank you too. Thanks, Thank you is the word.
Bye everybody.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Bye, what a man, Barry Pearl, Thank you so much, seriously,
thank you so much for joining us. I have a
million more questions and so we may have to have
him back and d and maybe we're just going to
interview all of them if he's willing to help us
out and get every single person, like, what a career,
(55:58):
what a life? With a storyteller Greece just means the
world to us. So thank you so much for joining us.
I hope all of you enjoyed that, because we obviously
did very much, and that's.
Speaker 4 (56:08):
What you really missed.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Thanks for listening and follow us on Instagram at and
that's what you really miss pod. Make sure to write
us a review and leave us five stars. See you
next time,
Host
Jenna Ushkowitz
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!