Where are they now?: January 2008 Archives

I was having a busy day and was annoyed at the early 5 p.m. start time for a Smithsonian event at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood. Well, after the evening I had chatting up the likes of Esther Williams, Carol Channing, Rose Marie, June Lockhart and others,. I realize I would have gotten up at 5 A.M. to make it.

I'll be sharing interview with these grand ladies in the weeks to come but today, I just want to write about the experience of being there and watching the above mentioned ladies as well as Florence Henderson, Julie Newmar, and Tippi Hedren dontate keepsakes to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Phyllis Diller had been set to come and was en-route, but was not feeling well and went back home. Angela Lansbury, who was across the country, sent her regrets.

So, I get there and am allowed into the theater before the show begins and see all the ladies taking their places among the treasures they are donating. JoAnne Worley, so funny and energetic, was one of the hostesses and she was rushing around doing her vocal twirling that I love so much. Her first question: "Where's the Diller?"

Someone then asks Worley a question, I don't know what, but I loved answer: "Yes I dooooooooooo!" At that, the show was about to begin and JoAnne twirled: "Curtain doooooooooooown!" Worley began the show then stopped suddenly and scoded herself: "JoAaaaaaane!" She had forgotten to do a trick with her pearls. She stepped aside from the lecturn and swung the large strands around her neck several times like a hula hoop.

Very cool.

After JoAnne introduced the dudes from the Smithsonian and they did a buncah museum talk, Dick Van Patten came out and served as the mater of ceremonies, introducing each legend before they explained their donations or shared their feelings about becoming a tangible part of American history.

ESTHER WILLIAMS: Her father made giant scrapbooks of her career. When she first saw the size of the first one in its blank state she said: "Daddy, those are too big!" Her father replied: "Fill 'em up!"
"So with that order, I filled them up," Williams said. "Pictures of Johnny Weissmuller. Oh gosh, what a group of leading men. One after another in tiny swimsuits. They're all gone...but I'm still here!"

CAROL CHANNING: The Broadway legend donated the dress she wore in the original production of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" and said: "Tonight is a tremendous night for all of us. We are all historic momuments!"

She then told everyone that the diamond hanging around her neck was worth $40 million: "They just hung it on me before we walked out." She then jumped to another subject before finishing the thought and the audience laughed. Channing stopped and said: "What's so funny? This is terribly serious and exciting...Art is one of the things that keeps the world alive - more than anything."

Channing then mentioned that she is 87 years old and when the audience applauded she stopped and asked: "Oh, is that an achievement?" The diva also used her time to plead for the arts in public schools: "[Students] are bored stiff with the three Rs. That's all they've got. Any art form, it fertilizes your brain." When Channing wondered if she had been talking too much, Rosie Marie - sitting next to her - emphatically nodded her head yes.

ROSE MARIE: The comedy legend, a child star, cast member of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and still a hoot at 85, joked around that Williams was donating "earplugs," Hedren a tiger, and Henderson "one of the Brady kids." For her part, Rosie Marie donated her original trademark bow as well as the shoes she wore in her first short film which was the first sound short and played with Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer."
"To think that I'll be there with Linberg's plane," she said of the Smithsonian. "I'm very honored and proud of my career. I think this is almost like getting the Purple Heart....I love my country and I always have and I'm so glad my country loves me by honoring me."

JUNE LOCKHART: Best known as the mom on "Lassie" and "Lost In Space," Lockhart donated her Tony Award to the Smithsonian and said: "There are nine of us and I think you've put together a Supreme Court."

JULIE NEWMAR: Television's Catwoman on "Batman" donated her Catwoman suit and reminisced at how so many grown men, who were little boys when the series was on, now come up to her and say: "Do you know you were my first turn-on? That delighted me."

FLORENCE HENDERSON: She needs no introduction, obviously. She said: "I've been on television so long...I thought maybe they wanted to put ME in the Smithsonian!" She told how she was the youngest of 10 children up and "I had such big dreams, but never did I think I'd be in the Smithsonian."

TIPPI HEDREN: The star of "The Birds" and "Marnie" donated her original scripts from both of those classic Alfred Hitchcock movies as well as from "Countess of Hong Kong." Said Tippi: "I feel that to be involved with this is like getting an Academy Award. I am thrilled...and empowered by this wonderful award."

After the official program ended, I chatted up actor Bruce Davison (an Oscar nominee for "Longtime Companion") and the talented (and very handsome) artist Glen Hanson who drew caricatures of each of the ladies (I will post the image as soon as I get it). Also in attendance was MGM star Margaret O'Brien who I chatted with in the lobby and she was escorted by Joey Luft, the son of Judy Garland and Sid Luft. At the after-party, I chatted up Kathy Silvers (remember her from "Happy Days"?) and Luke Yankee, the son of Eileen Heckart as well as several of the cast members of "Kid From Brooklyn: The Danny Kaye Story." Star Brian Childers snapped a photo of me and Carol Channing and vice-versa and I promised to see the show which runs through next month at the El Portal.

I remember seeing photos in a magazine, many years ago, of Barbra Streisand attending a singing gig of her little sister, Roslyn Kind, somewhere in LA. But while we have all been keenly aware of Streisand's life in the years since, I was not so sure what had become of her sister who also has a wonderful voice.

Well, I found out recently when I was on the set of "The Florence Henderson Show" and Roslyn was a musical guest. We had a little chat backstage and she was looking forward to her singing dates at the Catalina Jazz Club in LA this weekend: "I'm not a jazz singer (laughs) buy I will be at the jazz club on the ist and second at 8:30 and 10:30! Two shows a night."

"I am coming back," she said. "I went through a bad time. I lost my mom and I was the baby, the youngest, and I oversaw her care when she was going through the worst times. And I lost her. And just two years before I had to put my puppy down which was like my son. I'm very sensitive about those things and I kind of got off the road and it stopped me from doing a lot of things."

"My friends like Michael Feinstein said, 'You've gotta get back! You've gotta get back!' So, little by little, I've been coming back. This is the first time I';ll be in performing in LA in so long. I'm coming back with a vengeance."

What kind of other plans are included in this comeback for Roslyn, a very youthful looking woman who turned 57 a few weeks ago?
Roslyn: "I'm starting to get back on tour so they'll be more and more and more. I have a date in Naples, Florida, I'll be doing San Francisco, I'll be doing Oakland. I'll be doing New York. It's going to start building now....We just did a new pressing of my last CD, "Come With Me," it has new artwork, it has color and there's a bonus track in it called "At Times Like This" and it's about my puppy."

I wanted to know what to expect at her upcoming show: "I love this theatrical piece from "The Baker's Wife" called "Meadowlark," I did it on Broadway (in the musical revue '2 From Brooklyn") and it stopped the show every night so I hope it stops the show here. "Meadowlark" has always been, since I started doing it, a tour-de-force piece. I had so many people say to me, 'You're committing vocal suicide! Do you know how many divas do this in clubs?"

Roslyn has played in some of the most prestigious venues around the world including Lincoln Center, The Greek Theater, London's Café Royal and in 2006, made her debut at Carnegie Hall.
Roslyn began performing in her teens when she released her first album, "Give Me You," and appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" three times." Next came her second album, "This is Roslyn Kind." Her latest CD, "Come What May," gor a rave in the New York Times which proclaimed it "splendid and sizzling."
Her theater credits include the Off-Broadway production of "Show Me Where the Good Times Are," "Leader of the Pack" and "Ferguson the Tailor."

I wondered, "Am I allowed to ask you about your sister?"
Roslyn: "Depends what you want to know."
Greg: Do you all sing together in the car?
Roslyn: Yeah! We do! We just recently did that in London when she was performing in London. We warmed her up in the car. We had a great time."
Greg: So you're both here in LA and you see each other and it's all good?
Roslyn: Oh yeah.
Greg: You seem so much like each other.
Roslyn: Well, we have the same bloodline! (laughs)

For more information about the Catalina gig, other dates and to hear her sing, go to Roslynkind.com.

Alison Arngrim will forever be known to most people as bad girl Nellie Oleson on "Little House on the Prairie."
Now 46, the one-time child star figures if you can't beat the rap, make the most of it. Instead of moaning about how tough it is to transition to adult stardom unless you're Jodie Foster, Arngrim has taken put together an act and taken it on the road.

"I do my stand-up comedy, I do my one-woman show called 'Confessions of a Prairie Bitch' which has become quite successful," she said last week. "The title says it all. show, I do have a facsimile of the wig and we make fun of that and ask,'How do I look now? Do I look the same?' I tell people I had myself laminated in the early 80s."

Even without the wig, the actress hasn't really changed much since those days.

"Unlike a lot of Hollywood, I never had any work done or got a nose job so I just kind of look exactly the same which is a little spooky," she said. "Some days I go out and no one says anything and other days, it's like they put out an APB - I can't go 10 feet without: 'You're Nellie Oleson! what are you doing here?' It's pretty cool."

She has kept busy with her stage act which is popular in France and a lot of other unlikely places: "I'm going to be up with the Vancouver Gay Men's Chorus in February and then I'm doing a prison guard's convention in Las Vegas. I'm sort of all over the map."

She's also kept busy with various television guest appearances and a decades-long dedication to AIDS/HIV activism. I saw her at the recetn Ribbon of Hope Awards where she was part of a dramatic presentation paying tribute to the anniversary of ACTUP. I dunno why, but I thought Alison was there as a lesbian and not as a straight ally. She thought this was funny: "No. I'm married to a guy! I'm sort of a human ally."

But she does have strong ties to the LGBT community and there are deep reasons why.

"A child of the 60s, I was never raised to divide people up into black and white and gay and straight so it was always sort of stunning to me when I grew up and found out that other people really did put people in little boxes and were reallty ugly about it. I've never approved of that. When AIDS hit, my friend Steve Tracy, who played my husband on 'Little House,' died in 1986. I lost a lot of friends. I grew up in Hollywood and it really decimated that entertainment industry and a lot of the people I grew up with. So it was really hard on me and I had to do something so i began volunteering at AIDS project Los Angeles and it really kind of escalated because there really weren't that many people speaking out in 1986. So a lot of people were afraid to talk about AIDS at all and just really didn't want to talk about the issue, for some bizarre reason, were willing to talk about it with someone from 'Little House on the Prairie.' With Nellie Olseon it was OK. So i was able to reach people that other people had trouble reaching. I said, 'Fine, use me, send me. If they won;t listen to you, they'll listen to Nellie. We don't know why but they will."

Arngrin, who appeared in more than 100 episodes of "Little House" between 1974 and 1982, was in the headlines just last month when she made Mr. Blackwell's infamous worst dressed list. This is something else she has a sense of humor about.

"He said I looked like a fashion correspondent for the 1940s Farmers Almanac," she said, laughing. "I kind of had it coming. There was this fabulous event in Tombstone, a 'Little House on the Prairie' cast reunion, and it was a hootenanny which encourage really bad western wear. I did have on a particularly henious outfit involving an orange skirt and a purple top and a cowboy hat., So, yes, I got to be number 10. I was getting calls from every newspaper, every magazine and from friends who were driving down the street and heard it on the radio and nearly totaled the car."