Philip Bosco
Your Captain Shotover beard is very impressive!
Well, you have to play this part with a beard; it's required. It's supposed to make you look like Bernard Shaw, which means quite an extensive beard. Heartbreak House was his favorite play, by the way, of the 45 or so he wrote. Most everything in his plays reflects his views on life, but he was particularly invested in this character. Anyway, it's really difficult to wear a false beard [onstage]; it always comes loose so you have to glue it on almost to the point that you can't get it off at the end of the day. Before rehearsals began, I decided to see how much I could grow. It's not as long as I think it would be traditionally, but it serves its purpose.
Does your family like it?
They're mystified by it, particularly the grandchildren. They really can see the old Grandpa in me now. But it's a hell of a lot better than pasting it on, so I put up with it.
Did you have a point of view about this production, having done the play before?
I've noticed.
What's wrong with that?
You don't necessarily pick up on the political aspects of the play—that the family is sitting around their estate while war looms—until the end.
I read in one source that you've done eight Shaw plays and in another source that you've done 12.
And you got a Tony nomination for that, as you did for your first production of Heartbreak House.
Although you starred in Threepenny Opera 30 years ago, you're not known for musicals. Did you enjoy your recent experience in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
Even though you've excelled in leading roles, you also seem to feel very comfortable as part of an ensemble, as in Twelve Angry Men.
Let's go back 50 years. How did you decide you wanted to become an actor? You weren't from an artistic family, were you?
When you were a young father of seven kids working in non-profit theaters, did your wife ever turn to you and say, "Your acting career really isn't working for our family. Go get a real job."
Working in the theater, you were probably able to be a very involved father, right?
How about the secret to your stamina? Not that many stage actors over 75 are still working constantly the way you are.
You have the voice and demeanor of someone much younger.
And you're still up for eight shows a week, even of a long Shaw play?
See Philip Bosco in Heartbreak House at the American Airlines Theatre.
That was a good production. The part I played, Boss Mangan, is the best part in the show. The only problem—and you wouldn't have known it unless you were there every day—was that Rex Harrison, who was quite elderly at that time, began to lose his awareness of the script; he'd go in and out. When he was on, he really was dynamite. But very often he would get flummoxed and flustered, and it was painful to see.
I'm kind of a stickler for faithfulness to Shaw's text. You don't need to juice it up or modernize it or have someone drive onstage in a Cadillac or some cockamamie idea. I'm a purist, as I am about Shakespeare. Of course, Shaw's plays inevitably have to be cut. Genius that he was, he goes on and on and on. [Director] Robin [Lefevre] trimmed a great deal. The character of the Burglar is gone, but you probably have never seen him because it was also cut when we did the Harrison and Harris production. You must understand that in not-for-profit theaters like Roundabout, the subscribers are generally made up of older people…
You've noticed, right. [laughs] It's like going to the opera; you hardly ever see any young people. It's all the gray-haired and balding set. When you go beyond a certain time in the evening, these people get antsy because they have to get buses, they have to get trains, they have to get home to take their medication, etcetera. [laughs] Well, it's true. And when the show doesn't allow them to do that, they get up and leave. The last thing you want is a flock of people leaving before the curtain. And in this play, you have plots and subplots and subplots in the subplots; it gets very confusing unless you trim the text carefully. Remember, as in all Shaw, it's nothing but dialogue.
A lot of people [in the audience] are waiting for the robber in the closet. Where's the plot twist? There isn't any. It's nothing but wonderful dialogue, line after line after line. I consider Shaw a genius, probably the greatest playwright in the English language after Shakespeare. He certainly thought that! [laughs] He said it on any number of occasions.
In the preface to the play, Shaw himself calls it a "fantasia in the Russian manner." He openly imitated Chekhov, particularly The Cherry Orchard, in portraying the idle rich. The world is falling around their ears, as in pre-revolutionary Russia, as in our society today. Remember that Shaw wrote this before and during the start of World War I, but he chose to keep it from production until the firestorm had settled a year after the Armistice in 1918.
I've done 11, four of them more than once. I would say my favorite work in the theater is the body of Shaw that I've done. I've played five or six really marvelous leading roles: Tarleton, the underwear maker in Misalliance; Undershaft, the father in Major Barbara; General Burgoyne in The Devil's Disciple. I've done Saint Joan twice. My first professional job, when I got my Equity card in summer stock in 1955, was as the Waiter's son, Bohun, in You Never Can Tell. One of the actor-proof parts in dramatic literature is the Waiter in You Never Can Tell, which I played at Circle in the Square about 30 years later. Again, it's a character that is supposed to be Shaw; he just drops in with pithy, wonderful comments. Everyone else is acting their brains out and he comes in and gets all the laughs.
I should have had a couple more for Shaw, but much of my career in the early days in New York was in three not-for-profit theaters. I've done 13 or 14 shows at Roundabout, 12 or 13 at Circle in the Square and seven seasons at Lincoln Center back in the '60s and '70s. For most of those years, those theaters were not eligible for Tonys. I played a lot of good roles and would probably have gotten a lot more attention if they had been eligible.
Comedy. You know that apocryphal story about John Barrymore, who supposedly said on his deathbed, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard"? Well it's true. Comedy is terribly dependent on timing, and I've experienced that in this show. I have a number of laugh lines, and they almost always work when the timing is right. But if your tongue doesn't work and it comes out a beat off, the laugh is gone. It really hurts! You know you could have gotten it right and you think, "Aw, can I do that again?" [laughs]
To be honest with you, musicals are not my cup of tea. I do not feel comfortable in them. My agent and my wife are forever chastising me about it because I've had offers to do a couple of things, but I'm not a trained singer and I feel awkward doing it. But the [Chitty] producers were very generous, and I must be honest and say that's what persuaded me to do it. It was a beautiful evening and I loved doing it because I made a great deal of money and made some very good friends, but the actual performing? I didn't enjoy it. It's not that I sloughed it off and walked through it—I did my best—but I don't feel at ease in musical comedy. It's not my domain.
That was one of my favorite experiences ever in the theater. Not only was it beautifully acted and beautifully directed, but something magical happened to that cast. We've become almost like a family. We've had six or eight reunions since the show closed; another one is coming up in a couple of weeks. It's something very unusual! This show is turning out to be very much the same way. Not quite as emotional as the other one, but everything has worked out beautifully.
Not at all. I grew up in the carnival business; my dad was a carny. I suppose you can make a strained analogy that working in the carnival is like being on the tail end of show business in the sense that you're in front of people. My mother's older sister, whom my mom looked up to very much, saw me in a show when I was a kid and said, "Make sure Philly-Boy gets a good education." She persuaded my mother to send me to a place where I might be able to flower. I was lucky enough to go to St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City, where a dramatic coach named James Marr, an old gent who had been in the theater for most of his life, took me under his wing. He persuaded me to go to the drama department at Catholic University of America, where I met my wife and two or three other strong influences. But without Mr. Marr, I wouldn't be here.
Never, ever, ever. She never even hinted at it. My wife was totally behind me at every moment. She might have questioned my choice of a role, but that's it. I was very lucky. Nancy is an unusual person. She had studied dance since she was a little girl and had every intention of pursuing a career in dance until she met me in college. Then by the time we were married for three years, we had four children, including a set of twins. That kind of put the kibosh on her dancing career.
I'm afraid that's not true, not in the early days. I was lucky enough to be working constantly, and I had to because I wasn't making any money. Nancy took care of the family. I was always rehearsing during the day and playing at night and on weekends and stuff like that, so I never fully appreciated my children in the first six, seven, eight years of our marriage. My wife had the burden of bringing them all up, pretty much by herself.
Marry a good woman. I got a wonderful girl. Not only was she beautiful and all that, but she's about as good a wife as you could imagine. We've had our arguments, but not much anymore; we've mellowed. We've pulled it off. You know, she used to keep a journal of how much she'd spend. We barely had the money to pay the rent, and if she spent 15 cents for something she would write it down. She's also a great mother. Her children will go to the wall for her.
I suppose it's partly genetics; my mom lived to be 84, but my dad, who was a smoker, died far too young of cancer. But mostly it's luck, and doing what I would do even if I weren't being paid for it. Acting is not a job for me. It's a career. That plus the fact that I have total support from my family. I've been lucky health-wise. I've had a couple of minor things, but nothing serious.
I still have a lot of energy. I had my physical the other day and the doctor said, "You're in good shape." I said, "Yeah, I know." He said, "I think it's because you like what you're doing." That confirmed my views. When you're doing what you love and you have a happy life like I have with my wife and kids and my 15 grandchildren… we're sitting on top of the world.
Yup. Absolutely. I'll keep doing it until I can't do it anymore. I hate the word "retire." Truly I do. I think it's terribly destructive. I don't think anyone should ever retire. Change careers if you want to do something new. What I am going to do, sit down and wait for the grim reaper? I told my wife, ideally—and I hope it's when I'm 97 or something—I wouldn't mind dying right on stage, as long as it's a good show. [laughs]. The third curtain call.