This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Kevin David Thomas: Hey listeners, Kevin and I need your help.

[0:02] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, we need your help.

[0:03] Kevin David Thomas: Please, please, please.

[0:04] Robert W. Schneider: We need your stars.

[0:06] Kevin David Thomas: We need your reviews, you guys, on iTunes, so we can start to climb those iTunes rating charts.

[0:11] Robert W. Schneider: It's simple. Open iTunes, click on the iTunes store, search for Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[0:19] Kevin David Thomas: Then click on ratings and reviews.

[0:21] Robert W. Schneider: Under the customer reviews, click Write a Review, and then let us know what you think from one to five stars.

[0:29] Kevin David Thomas: If you need some help, think of one star being CAROL Channing and Paul Lynn in the road company of The Last Five Years, and five stars being free front row tickets to Hamilton.

[0:38] Robert W. Schneider: Although when you think about it, I actually would give five stars to the road company of CAROL Channing and Paul in The Last Five Years, because I think that would be awesome.

[0:45] Kevin David Thomas: I would love to hear.

[0:46] Robert W. Schneider: Can I hear moving too fast as Paul?

[0:49] Kevin David Thomas: That's the really that's the one I really want to do.

[0:51] Robert W. Schneider: Jesus Shakespeare, Erica Schwartz and Danica Weiss.

[0:58] Kevin David Thomas: And the Handleman twins.

[1:00] Robert W. Schneider: So there you go. You can also leave a comment if you like your reviews.

[1:04] Kevin David Thomas: Send us your reviews, friends.

[1:06] Robert W. Schneider: Thank you.

[1:06] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider.

[1:07] Kevin David Thomas: And I'm Kevin David Thomas.

[1:09] Robert W. Schneider: And this is Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[1:12] Kevin David Thomas: Don't forget to follow us on Twitter at Broadway Curtain and on Instagram at Broadway Curtain Podcast.

[1:19] Robert W. Schneider: And make sure to join our Facebook page at Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[1:23] Kevin David Thomas: We are also excited to announce that you can listen to us on Broadway Radio.

[1:28] Robert W. Schneider: Ooh.

[1:29] Robert W. Schneider: Today's Living Legend is the reason many of us fell in love with Broadway.

[1:34] Robert W. Schneider: Originating one of the most iconic roles in musical theater, our guest's voice first gave life to such songs as "I Feel Pretty," "Tonight," and "Somewhere."

[1:43] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[1:44] Robert W. Schneider: But originating the role of Maria in West Side Story is only one of this great lady's many accomplishments.

[1:51] Robert W. Schneider: She was also in eleven other Broadway shows, including I Do! I Do!, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Saratoga, which is actually one of my favorites, and Plain and Fancy.

[2:01] Kevin David Thomas: Plus, she's the author of two books, including CAROL LAWRENCE: The Backstage Story, and I Remember Pasta, a celebration of Food, Family, and Friends.

[2:10] Robert W. Schneider: Love that title.

[2:10] Kevin David Thomas: I remember Pasta.

[2:11] Robert W. Schneider: I remember Pasta.

[2:13] Robert W. Schneider: To tell us what it was like to work with such legends as Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Paul Lynn, here is the former Carolina Maria Laria, or better known to us as Tony Nominee, CAROL LAWRENCE.

[2:26] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, CAROL. This is Robert W. Schneider from Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends. How are you today?

[2:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: I'm terrific. How are you doing?

[2:33] Robert W. Schneider: Good. I wanted to introduce you to my co-host, Kevin David Thomas.

[2:37] Kevin David Thomas: Hello there, CAROL. How are you today?

[2:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: Couldn't be better, Kevin.

[2:40] Robert W. Schneider: So our first question is how did a girl from Melrose Park fall in love with musical theater?

[2:46] CAROL LAWRENCE: Well, it wasn't musical theater because I was in a little hometown called Melrose Park, Illinois, which is about twenty miles due west of Chicago.

[2:57] CAROL LAWRENCE: And excuse me, I've got a little frog in my throat.

[3:01] CAROL LAWRENCE: But unless you were downtown at the Chicago Opera House, or you were at the Chicago Theater, which took an hour pretty much to get to, one did not see theater.

[3:14] CAROL LAWRENCE: So my musical theater exposure was really movies.

[3:20] CAROL LAWRENCE: My mother was an avid moviegoer, and she loved to sing and dance.

[3:27] CAROL LAWRENCE: She should have been in the business, but her father was exceedingly Italian, old world, could neither read nor write, and he had six daughters, and the idea of one of them wanting to be in show business was not allowed.

[3:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: He kept saying, "No, no, no, you'll just be a Bhutan," and that's a hooker, you know that.

[3:50] CAROL LAWRENCE: So with that kind of faith in your talents, one does not get to go into show business.

[3:57] CAROL LAWRENCE: So my mother was a bit of, I guess, really interested in being in show business, but totally forbidden.

[4:06] CAROL LAWRENCE: So when I came out singing and dancing and running and jumping, she told me that when I was just a baby in my crib, as soon as I could lift myself to the rung that you hold on to and there was music playing in the house, I was dancing.

[4:23] CAROL LAWRENCE: Well, I was jumping up and down, you know, to the music.

[4:25] CAROL LAWRENCE: And for her that was good enough.

[4:28] CAROL LAWRENCE: So I do believe that my mother encouraged me as any Italian mother does for whatever the child is doing.

[4:36] CAROL LAWRENCE: That was a given.

[4:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: She was my cheerleading section and I truly owe my love of music and dance to her.

[4:46] Robert W. Schneider: Did they sing in the household or did you hear a lot of music, even Italian music or opera or anything like that, while you were growing up with them?

[4:54] CAROL LAWRENCE: No. Parents were very, very poor.

[5:19] CAROL LAWRENCE: My father was born in Italy in a little town called Trivigno, Three Vines, and it is very, very n well, it's seventeen miles from Potenza, which is the capital of Basilicata, and that is the poorest province in all of Italy.

[5:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: It sits around the ankle bone.

[5:19] CAROL LAWRENCE: If you look at your left foot as Italy, right where your ankle bone is the highest is where my father was born in the mountains of a very medieval little town called Three Vines, Privigno.

[5:36] CAROL LAWRENCE: I went back to see it and it's as poor as it gets, but as magnificently beautiful as a postcard.

[5:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: I grew up in a tremendously Catholic old world protected atmosphere of church and holidays and rules and nuns and rulers and punishment.

[6:01] CAROL LAWRENCE: You know one, yeah, the reason Italians and Jews are such good friends is that they're absolutely the same people.

[6:11] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's exactly the same format.

[6:14] CAROL LAWRENCE: And all that Oyez Mir what did you do to me God bless you God bless and it's but it's in Italian and I always say being born into an Italian family is like living at dress rehearsal for the Metropolitan Opera.

[6:32] CAROL LAWRENCE: Everybody is truly hell bent on getting that curtain up no matter what you've done and whether you have to kill somebody to make it happen, it's part of the game.

[6:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: And it's all excusable.

[6:46] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's all forgivable and it's done every day.

[6:50] CAROL LAWRENCE: So and what the best part of Rob is that once you have said to somebody I don't want you ever to say that to me again is that clear and they say, "Oh, okay, I didn't know it was going to bother you that much, but okay, I won't say it anymore."

[7:06] CAROL LAWRENCE: And it's over.

[7:07] CAROL LAWRENCE: It is over.

[7:08] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's now kissing and loving and hugging and feeding.

[7:11] CAROL LAWRENCE: They love to feed you.

[7:13] CAROL LAWRENCE: That's how Italians say I love you and thank you.

[7:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I'm really sorry I hit you so hard.

[7:20] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's just that's what happened.

[7:23] CAROL LAWRENCE: And that's what I grew up in and with and my family, my immediate family was very small because my father was so hellbent on giving me the education he never got.

[7:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: So when I won a scholarship, my father happened to be raised by a very sad, I guess abused child, and I don't know what his father did because nobody has any records.

[7:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: The little town in which my father was born, Cavigno, had not a school, a hospital, a doctor, a nurse.

[8:06] CAROL LAWRENCE: Nothing but the square where the church was, the city hall, and where all the feasts, you know, Festa Madonna, Fest and Gitape.

[8:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: All of those things happened around the church and happened musically and festively and tons of food and who was gonna outdo the ravioli recipe of Mrs. Scargios.

[8:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: And if my mother was maybe the best cook I've ever known in my life.

[8:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: I've written a book of her recipes that she gave to nobody but me complete, and I call it I Remember Pasta because my mother was just about the best.

[8:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: Well, every Italian person thinks their mother is the best.

[8:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: It is true, and it's probably a given and I don't fight it at all that I was always allowed by my grandmother to do whatever made me the happiest or whatever would make people laugh or make the party more fun.

[9:13] CAROL LAWRENCE: That's what she was about.

[9:15] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I think that's what theater is.

[9:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's telling a story and making it understood and felt and a lesson for tomorrow.

[9:25] CAROL LAWRENCE: I think that's what Socrates wanted it to be.

[9:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: He always said you entered the theater in one condition and leave it better off.

[9:35] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[9:37] CAROL LAWRENCE: And so I think that's what West Side Story was trying to do.

[9:42] CAROL LAWRENCE: I think that's what Hamilton is still doing.

[9:45] Kevin David Thomas: And you saw the Tonys last night, right?

[9:48] CAROL LAWRENCE: Oh yeah, yes, we did.

[9:50] CAROL LAWRENCE: Weren't they wonderful?

[9:51] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, we thought they were fantastic.

[9:53] CAROL LAWRENCE: We thought they were absolutely fantastic.

[9:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: It was like a throwback.

[9:57] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[9:58] CAROL LAWRENCE: It was.

[9:58] CAROL LAWRENCE: I said it was one of the best Tony performances I've seen in years.

[10:01] CAROL LAWRENCE: I think that it was like a throwback, like you were saying.

[10:04] CAROL LAWRENCE: Shall I tell you why it was exactly that?

[10:06] CAROL LAWRENCE: It was an old-fashioned theatrical live theater, not with so many gimmicks, not with people running in from the audience and hopping all the way down.

[10:16] CAROL LAWRENCE: I mean, Hugh Jackman is a fabulous human being, but you know, if you can't do a dance number, you just have to hop through the whole thing in order to get attention.

[10:27] CAROL LAWRENCE: There's something wrong with you or you're a rabbit.

[10:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: I don't understand what it is.

[10:33] CAROL LAWRENCE: We thought last night was beautiful and we thought it was really touching.

[10:33] Kevin David Thomas: It was.

[10:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: Yeah.

[10:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: When they brought on all the young children at the beginning and said, you know, this could be your future, this could be you in a few years.

[10:45] CAROL LAWRENCE: We thought that was really moving.

[10:49] Kevin David Thomas: And so I have to ask you, you know, you said that your mother was your greatest asset.

[10:53] Kevin David Thomas: Was she the one who took you to dance classes?

[10:58] CAROL LAWRENCE: Absolutely.

[10:59] CAROL LAWRENCE: You know that I came from a very small town, Melrose Park, Illinois, maybe had twenty thousand people in the whole city, and it was about twenty, twenty-five miles due west of Chicago, of the loop of downtown of Lake Michigan.

[11:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: And when you went into the city, it was an event.

[11:21] CAROL LAWRENCE: You went in to see a show or you went, you know, I eventually began studying there.

[11:27] CAROL LAWRENCE: But my first lessons were in a local studio like every other little kid that you've ever known.

[11:34] CAROL LAWRENCE: And we were looking at movies of Shirley Temple and Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly.

[11:40] CAROL LAWRENCE: Tap dancing was a big deal.

[11:43] CAROL LAWRENCE: Today not so much.

[11:45] CAROL LAWRENCE: And if you were ever to audition for West Side Story, you never said you could tap dance because Jerry Robbins hated hoofers.

[11:53] CAROL LAWRENCE: He just hated them.

[11:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I don't know why, because I think some of the greatest dancers in the world were tap dancers.

[12:00] CAROL LAWRENCE: Fred Astaire, Ginger, Eleanor Powell, Gene Kelly, all began rhythmically.

[12:07] CAROL LAWRENCE: And so that's how I began learning to dance.

[12:11] CAROL LAWRENCE: My mother put those little patent leather shoes on.

[12:14] CAROL LAWRENCE: Only she was so theatrical.

[12:16] CAROL LAWRENCE: Everybody else had black satin ribbons, you know, and across the instep.

[12:21] CAROL LAWRENCE: Mine were red satin.

[12:23] CAROL LAWRENCE: I don't know why they were red satin, except that my mother said black was uninteresting.

[12:28] Kevin David Thomas: Made you stand out.

[12:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: That's right, Mom.

[12:30] CAROL LAWRENCE: Got it.

[12:32] CAROL LAWRENCE: Did you—

[12:33] Kevin David Thomas: Oh yeah?

[12:33] CAROL LAWRENCE: I walked out on that floor and the teacher said, "Sha full, hop, slap," whatever it was.

[12:40] CAROL LAWRENCE: We were looking at the mirror, never saw that before, and making noise, just like Shirley Temple.

[12:48] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I thought, My goodness, I'm a tap dancer.

[12:52] CAROL LAWRENCE: I'm already a tap dancer.

[12:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I was so thrilled.

[12:56] CAROL LAWRENCE: I went home, walked directly to the kitchen where I knew there was linoleum and I could make noise.

[13:04] CAROL LAWRENCE: And so I started doing it, and my mother looked down and she said, "Oh my, stop. Okay, that's enough."

[13:10] CAROL LAWRENCE: Because I was making black marks on my mother's immaculate linoleum book.

[13:16] CAROL LAWRENCE: And that is not allowed in any Italian household.

[13:20] CAROL LAWRENCE: So my mother said, "Whoa, that's not gonna work. You're gonna practice, we know that. But I'm gonna pull the stove away from the wall just a little, and you're gonna go behind the stove and you're gonna practice to your heart's content."

[13:36] CAROL LAWRENCE: You can do it.

[13:37] CAROL LAWRENCE: So I had two feet square behind the stove.

[13:42] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I literally wore away the linoleum pattern to the black asbestos, and I wore out the name of the taps on my little steel front of the taps, you know, of the shoe.

[13:56] CAROL LAWRENCE: And it used to say Max Taps, and now it says Max Tap.

[14:04] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I still have them because my mother saved them.

[14:08] Kevin David Thomas: Oh wow, that's special.

[14:10] CAROL LAWRENCE: Bless your mother.

[14:11] Kevin David Thomas: And the next act that I will do at eighty-three is gonna be called From Behind the Stove.

[14:18] CAROL LAWRENCE: Because people always ask, "Well, where did you get started?"

[14:21] CAROL LAWRENCE: From behind the stove.

[14:22] CAROL LAWRENCE: I came out.

[14:24] CAROL LAWRENCE: And by that time I was tap dancing because my mother gave me all the time I wanted.

[14:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: She always came in and listened and said, "Oh, that sounds good."

[14:35] CAROL LAWRENCE: That's b that's better now. That's wonderful. And she encouraged me and she'd try to do it with me. I'd say that that's not quite the way you do it, Ma, but it's all right. Keep trying. I just yeah. Did you have to lie did you have to lie about your age in order to get a a work permit? When you were yes, of course. I was only thirteen when I had my own nightclub act. What? And we said I was sixty. Well, by that time, you see, I had gone to the local studio. It w it was called uh Georgine Ray, R A E. And she was a tap dancer, and she tapped at the Chicago Theater. That's how good she was. She was a professional tap dancer. But she didn't do ballet. I mean, she did a little ballet, and she taught me a little ballet, but it wasn't great.

Her forte was tap dancing, and she gave me an incredible basic knowledge of really difficult tap steps because she was a professional, that's how she earned her living. Well, didn't up to pop put the buck book at the Chicago Theater? And she taught in Maywood, Illinois, which was the next little town next to Melrose Park, Illinois. Then there was Elmwood. Then there was Elmhurst. Then there was Oak Park. Until you get to Chicago and you take a train and then it becomes an elevated and it goes around the loop and then it turns around and comes back home again. But um I never my mother always drove me to the local dance studio because I was I was five when I began. Excuse me. And uh I stayed there till I was about nine and then she decided my mother, having done some research, she was always looking for the better place for me to learn how to do whatever it was.

And she found a ballet teacher who taught toe dancing, you know, in these beautiful pink slippers. And so I would be going for tap class at like nine o'clock in the morning, and then I would go at eleven o'clock to my toe class with Dorothy De Houghton. And so I was always in two recitals. I got to do my tap solo and then I got to do the ballet. But they seldom you see, at that time ballet dancers didn't know tap dancing. It was two camps that were very, very um competitive. And so if you were a tap dancer, didn't mean that you were a great toe dancer, and vice versa. You could always tell a ballet dancer when they be would try to be tapped because their feet would turn out.

[17:33] Kevin David Thomas: Carol, h how did you get from Illinois to New York City then?

[17:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: Okay. I was um in all these recitals and then my mother heard or read or or saw something in the n the Tribune about Edna McCrae School of the Dance. Whoever of that and so she found out that they did scholarships 'cause my father did not want me to be in the business. He was very much like my father, my mother's father who said, you know, you're just gonna be a hooker at the end of this whole thing, so I'm not gonna allow you to do that. My father would not contribute a penny towards my con my dancing, except in a local, you know, every everybody in in Melrose Park took tap dancing. There was nothing wrong with that. But when you wanted to go downtown on Michigan Avenue in Chicago in the loop, that's an hour's travel before you even get to class.

So now I was about oh nine, eleven. No I was eleven and I went to uh compete and I didn't I didn't make the first no I did make the first excuse me. I competed in tap and I won the tap scholarship which put me in with the professional uh students but I did not qualify in ballet. So I was in a beginner's ballet class at the Edna McCrae School of the Dance and I was I was in the professional with all the grown up forty year olds who were dancing at the Chicago Theater. Oh wow and yeah uh that's how how good a tap dancer. I am basically a hoofer. Never tell Jerry Robbins because I could never get the part of Maria. Never. And uh the the point is that I would be in the professional tap class and Edna McRae would hire those professionals to teach me the tap routine and then I would write it out and teach it to her so that she could teach the next group of tap dancers coming in. You see what I'm saying?

[19:57] Yeah.

[19:57] CAROL LAWRENCE: So put me put me in a very strange position with her because I was her teacher in tap and she was my disciplinarian Hitler in ballet class. I mean she taught with a cane in her hand. She hit you when you didn't do it right. So she was old Russian school and that's pretty much what what ballet choreographers are that's what Jerry Robbins was when he directed West Side Story. He didn't know how to direct. He had never acted in his life he did not know that telling a person they are the stupidest idiot that ever lived put your hands in your pockets you don't know how to use them. Jer Larry Kurt in the first six months of Westside never took his hands out of his pockets unless they were around me. Wow. Yeah and that's sad. That's really um it not acceptable today. He would never get away with what he did to us in Westside.

[20:59] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah and I I wonder if it 'cause you know, usually when with theater when you're rehearsing you want to have a nice healthy rehearsal room. You want everyone to feel a little positive so they can get their best work done. Now everyone did do amazing work when you did Westside, but I imagine that that you're talking about two thousand sixteen.

[21:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: I'm talking about sixty years ago. No talking about it. It's gonna be sixty years next year. And that was another another world, truly. What he got away with in his uh and everybody will say, Oh, but look at what he created. Look at West Side Story, look at Gypsy, look at look mom dancing, look at Fiddler on the Roof. You wanna name a few hundred hit. Yeah. You talk about Jerry Robbins. But he was brutality personified. And he did get incredible results. But can you imagine what he would have gotten having said just once that was magnificent? Oh my goodness. The way Jerry Robbins I mean, Leonard Bernstein uh was the antithesis of Jerry Robbins. He took my face once in his hand and he said, Oh Carol, I never knew it could sound that beautiful.

But if it doesn't feel good in your mouth, tell me and I'll change it. Oh wow. Now would you ask Leonard Bernstein to change a grace note? No, no way. He but he was a teacher. He was a mentor. He was my mentor. He was the person who gave me the courage to suggest things, th to say, can I try it like that? And he said, Please be my yes, of course. And Jerry, you just you had to get away when when they were ready to do the ballet in West Side Story, um, you know, Jerry Robbins gets tremendous credit and for what he did, he deserves every ounce. But the fact that in West Side Story was the first time the leads sang and danced and acted. I mean, we were the leads in the ballet. In in Oklahoma, Curley and and Laurie are replaced by dancers, like ballet dancers who were doing lifts and throws and catches and all that nonsense.

Well, I've danced all my life and on my bio for which m Mr. Robbins received one, I did thirteen auditions for West Side Story. I did two other Broadway shows in the interim of the two and a half, almost three years it took for him to cast it. Wow.

[23:44] Kevin David Thomas: Wha what was that? Can you tell us a little bit about the audition process then? I mean uh thirteen times is too many, but Jerry Robbins, I don't think anybody's ever done thirteen.

[23:53] CAROL LAWRENCE: There is a law in equity. And when uh they found out after the show had opened, I was doing an interview and they said, Well, how many times did you have to audition for Mr. Robins? I said, actually it was thirteen and they said, Really? And I said, Well yeah. Equity found out and they brought me up on charges uh which said you should never have auditioned that many times and I said if Jerry Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Lawrence, you know, Hal Prince, all these people want you to audition for the equivalent of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in a modern day Shakespearean play set, you know, in an operata, uh, then would you not audition another time? And they said, Well, not that many. I said, Well, I would do it fifty eight times.

I don't care how many times h it takes him to make up his mind whether you're right. I just want to be right. When he began to rehearse to create the ballet on the stage, I went to him because he brought on two ballet dancers from ballet theater that he had hired to do Tony and Maria and I said, uh, Jerry, would you allow Larry and me to learn the the parts of ballet? And he said, Well, you don't dance and I said, Y yeah, I wanted to say w if you read any of my bios, you would have seen that I'd been dancing from the time I was five. But he n he didn't. And neither would he let me audition as a dancer. Every audition I would say, and I also dance, Mr. Robins. And he would always say, Of course you do.

Next He never ever wanted to see if I were telling the truth. And so he said, You do? I said, Yes. He said, Well he can't, pointing to Larry, he can't even walk straight. He ja he put Larry down every chance he got. I said, Well just would you just let us we'll go way in the back and learn it. And if you don't think we can cut it, you know, we don't do it. And he said, Well, I don't want to see you learning. Get in the wings. Get in the wings, I don't want to see you. So we got in the wings. Well, you can't learn it sideways. So I went way upstage as far as I could, and then I came on the stage just a little and as he saw us in the corner that we were doing it, he said, Okay, Tony and Maria because he never called you by anything but your character name he never ever called me CAROL never and okay Tony Maria get to the center way upstage yes stay right there we did and then later on he said Tony and Maria come downstage come down come down and as soon as I got center stage I did not relinquish it and that's why we did the ballet.

Fascinating I'm gonna go back just a tiny bit um is it true that when when you came to New York City for the first time you went to an audition and you got you got the job at the first audition you ever went on in New York?

[27:09] CAROL LAWRENCE: Very first, yes. And I wasn't really allowed to audition my father told me uh he he only came and brought us to the New York uh area because I had a full scholarship to Northwestern University and I didn't want it. I said I am seventeen at sixteen you peak. You know that a dancer's life goes down after sixteen and up until that point I had always planned on going to Broadway. My father wanted me to be the lawyer he could never be and I I said please let me he said no you're only seventeen and you're still a minor and I get to tell you what you can or cannot do and you will go to Northwestern and on a full scholarship. And so I said well this year instead of taking us to Yellowstone Park or wherever for the two weeks so that we could do extracurricular uh reports, you know, that he was academia personified.

And uh I said, at least then I can see what an audition looks like and I can prepare for it. Do you understand? I guess he could not resist the logic of a lawyer arguing like that. We arrived at 42nd Street where there is a huge newsstand, and I bought a uh trade paper called Show Business, and in it was an open audition, very much like all that jazz, and uh it it was at the Wintergarden Theater, and we were staying somewhere on 42nd Street. So I said, I'm gonna go and see what this audition is like. And I went into the door, the stage door, and I said, Excuse me, but is it possible for me to audit the audition? Do what? I said, you know, just watch. Can I just watch it and take some notes?

[29:08] CAROL LAWRENCE: And he said, either you put on your leotard and your shoes and get in line over there or get out of my face.

[29:15] CAROL LAWRENCE: And so I went back to the hotel and got my leotard and my shoes, and I came back.

[29:24] CAROL LAWRENCE: I stood in line, and you know, it was uh you do kicks, then you do turns, and as the line breaks, at each end, each wing is somebody who says, You can stay, you can say thank you very much, thank you.

[29:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I did all of the routines, I did the combinations, and by the end of the day I was in a Broadway show.

[29:46] Kevin David Thomas: What was that show, CAROL?

[29:49] CAROL LAWRENCE: Okay, you ready?

[29:50] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[29:51] CAROL LAWRENCE: Called Borscht Capades, B.

[29:54] CAROL LAWRENCE: O.

[29:54] CAROL LAWRENCE: R.

[29:54] CAROL LAWRENCE: B-O-R-S-C-H-T.

[29:56] CAROL LAWRENCE: H T, and it was a Catskills review starring Joel Gray.

[30:01] CAROL LAWRENCE: Oh his father Mickey Katz and his orchestra, Phil Foster, Gene Barry, the Barry Sisters, and every Jewish comic you've ever seen in the Catskills.

[30:15] CAROL LAWRENCE: And me being uh I was in the dancing chorus.

[30:20] CAROL LAWRENCE: And but I got to do the curtain speech with another girl.

[30:23] Kevin David Thomas: Wanna hear it?

[30:25] CAROL LAWRENCE: Yes.

[30:25] CAROL LAWRENCE: Goes like this.

[30:27] CAROL LAWRENCE: Now you have to figure I'm because Mickey Katz was from California, he's in his white chaps.

[30:34] CAROL LAWRENCE: I'm in a little short suede with the fringe, a cowboy outfit with a six-gallon hat and a uh a wonderful boots trying to look California-ish.

[30:46] CAROL LAWRENCE: And it goes like this Shalom from California Land of Palms and Bates Home with the Michigoyam.

[30:52] CAROL LAWRENCE: You'll see in Borscht Capades.

[30:54] CAROL LAWRENCE: The Borscht is bubbling over hold on to your hats here comes that little mozzik presenting Mickey they die they die and how he comes and that was my that was my first show.

[31:10] CAROL LAWRENCE: And we were it was a hit we were hit oh yes we played for a long time it was wonderful I got to do all the solos because I had long black hair and I was Italian so I looked Jewish and I got to pray over the candles.

[31:27] CAROL LAWRENCE: I didn't know what I was doing.

[31:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: I got to be a little housey dick bride.

[31:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: I I got all the solos.

[31:33] CAROL LAWRENCE: And they said the only shiksa in the group, and she's doing the solos.

[31:37] Kevin David Thomas: So why is that?

[31:40] CAROL LAWRENCE: They did not like it, not at all.

[31:43] CAROL LAWRENCE: But I got to meet Joel.

[31:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: We're good friends to this day.

[31:46] Kevin David Thomas: Oh.

[31:47] CAROL LAWRENCE: And uh Phil Foster.

[31:48] CAROL LAWRENCE: Do you remember Phil Foster from uh Shirley and Laverne?

[31:51] Kevin David Thomas: Laverne.

[31:52] CAROL LAWRENCE: Yeah, he was he was Laverne's dad on Laverne and Shirley.

[31:54] Kevin David Thomas: That's right.

[31:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: And he was adorable.

[31:56] CAROL LAWRENCE: He was so funny.

[31:58] Kevin David Thomas: Now, CAROL, I forgot to ask you earlier, before your name was CAROL LAWRENCE, what was your birth name?

[32:03] CAROL LAWRENCE: Okay, you got a pencil?

[32:05] Kevin David Thomas: Got it, we're ready.

[32:07] CAROL LAWRENCE: Carolina, C-A-R-O-L-I-N-A means little CAROL, because I was very always tiny, skinny.

[32:13] CAROL LAWRENCE: I never liked to eat, and I was always dancing.

[32:16] CAROL LAWRENCE: So I was very, very thin.

[32:18] CAROL LAWRENCE: Carolina Maria, which is my real middle name, Laraya, L A R A I A.

[32:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: And when I was uh thirteen, and my teacher by this time said you're a wonderful tap dancer and you should be doing your own nightclub act because only in front of a paying audience do you get the truth.

[32:45] CAROL LAWRENCE: And she's right.

[32:46] CAROL LAWRENCE: You know, everybody at the recital, your relatives want you to be terrific, so they're all gonna say, Yay, oh, that was great.

[32:54] CAROL LAWRENCE: And everybody in class will never tell you you're worth anything because they're competing with you.

[33:00] CAROL LAWRENCE: But in front for three shows every night and four shows on Saturday, the fourth show began at 3:45 a.m.

[33:09] CAROL LAWRENCE: for the four drunks who didn't want to go home to their wives.

[33:12] CAROL LAWRENCE: Oh and they sat and you know, they were mostly bombed and drunk, but you did your entire show, and then you went home as the sun came up.

[33:23] Kevin David Thomas: Wow.

[33:24] Kevin David Thomas: And who said you should be CAROL LAWRENCE?

[33:28] CAROL LAWRENCE: Well, Carolina is, you know, that's that's too funny.

[33:32] CAROL LAWRENCE: Uh on a marquee and in a program.

[33:35] CAROL LAWRENCE: So CAROL uh was what I was called always at school.

[33:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: Nobody ever called me Carolina.

[33:41] CAROL LAWRENCE: That was what I was called at home.

[33:43] CAROL LAWRENCE: And my grandmother, Carolina, and you know, she uh that was my name, Little Carol.

[33:50] Kevin David Thomas: Now, when you were auditioning for musicals, did you have a standard audition song that you would always use?

[33:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: I did.

[33:57] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's called When Does This Feeling Go Away.

[34:00] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's from Make a Wish by Hugh Martin.

[34:03] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yeah.

[34:04] CAROL LAWRENCE: Does this feeling go away?

[34:06] CAROL LAWRENCE: Why does it dream in?

[34:08] CAROL LAWRENCE: A lovely, sweet little ballad that nobody ever knew.

[34:11] CAROL LAWRENCE: I never liked to sing anything that everybody did.

[34:14] CAROL LAWRENCE: That was one of the trademarks.

[34:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: I always wore the same pink shirt waist to my West Side auditions, all thirteen.

[34:23] CAROL LAWRENCE: So they could remember the pink shirt waist with the ponytail.

[34:27] Kevin David Thomas: That was amazing.

[34:29] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[34:30] Kevin David Thomas: Now, how did New Faces of 1952 come about for you?

[34:35] CAROL LAWRENCE: Well, by that time, I had uh done my fabulous Borscht Capades.

[34:42] CAROL LAWRENCE: I was then doing commercials.

[34:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: I was uh whatever was going around television, you could do uh if you weren't in a Broadway show, you could be in a television show.

[34:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: I I can't remember what the names of them were, but they all had dancing choruses.

[35:00] CAROL LAWRENCE: If if you can remember that far back.

[35:02] Kevin David Thomas: This is the beginning of television.

[35:04] Kevin David Thomas: I have to ask you, in New Faces of 1952, you got to work with uh two of our favorites, Alice Ghostly and Paul Lynde.

[35:11] Kevin David Thomas: Do you have any memories of working with them?

[35:18] CAROL LAWRENCE: Oh my god, yes.

[35:19] CAROL LAWRENCE: We were only seventeen in the entire company.

[35:22] CAROL LAWRENCE: So everybody understudied everybody else.

[35:25] CAROL LAWRENCE: And it was a very close, close company.

[35:28] CAROL LAWRENCE: Um Dick Barstow was the choreographer.

[35:32] CAROL LAWRENCE: He taught me my tap routine in a pair of gum sold uh sneakers.

[35:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: So I I kept thinking, is that a shuffle?

[35:42] CAROL LAWRENCE: Is is that a cramp roll?

[35:43] CAROL LAWRENCE: Of course it is.

[35:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: Can't you hear it?

[35:45] CAROL LAWRENCE: Well, not in rubber on the floor.

[35:47] CAROL LAWRENCE: Not really, but he he was on the he and his sister, uh, Evie, uh, were the choreographers and Leonard Stillman was a uh a Christian scientist.

[36:00] CAROL LAWRENCE: And so nobody could get sick.

[36:03] CAROL LAWRENCE: You he said, J just go right through it, just play right through it.

[36:09] CAROL LAWRENCE: And you couldn't breathe.

[36:10] CAROL LAWRENCE: You know, you had the flu and you were coughing and throwing up.

[36:14] CAROL LAWRENCE: You're fine, you look great.

[36:16] CAROL LAWRENCE: Until he got sick.

[36:18] CAROL LAWRENCE: Then he'd say, Get me an ambulance, I'm dying.

[36:21] CAROL LAWRENCE: And they'd say, What happened to that Christian science nonsense you keep shoving down our throats?

[36:26] CAROL LAWRENCE: No, it was a wonderful company, and Paul Lynde and Alice were one person.

[36:32] CAROL LAWRENCE: If if you know you never saw the show, did you?

[36:36] Kevin David Thomas: No, no.

[36:37] CAROL LAWRENCE: Oh my god.

[36:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: Ronnie Graham was the uh the writer and the narrative.

[36:43] CAROL LAWRENCE: And uh it was a review, and we opened he said, We're we're voting down to the bare bare minimum minimums, and tonight we're going to have an actor reading a review.

[36:58] CAROL LAWRENCE: And he began, and as he read, of course, the cast came out and we populated what he was saying.

[37:05] CAROL LAWRENCE: But when you want Alice and Paul Lynde, it was Alice's innuendos and speech patterns that Paul Lynde imitated.

[37:19] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I can tell you that now because they're both gone.

[37:22] CAROL LAWRENCE: But I would sit and watch them in the wings because theirs was a lesson in timing.

[37:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: And uh I I would watch Bee Lily uh in my bathrobe and she would see me and finally she got tired of it because peripherally you can see somebody sitting in the wings, and one day she was doing her kabooski uh thing where she plays the Japanese I don't know that terrible sounding stringed instrument that looks like a long guitar and she said, Darling, why don't you just come out here on the stage where you could see me more clearly and she I said no I d I don't have any clue.

[38:02] CAROL LAWRENCE: She said, That's all right.

[38:03] CAROL LAWRENCE: She sat me right in front of her while I stopped sitting in the wings.

[38:08] CAROL LAWRENCE: Yes, she was she was heaven in a pair of wooden shoes.

[38:11] CAROL LAWRENCE: God, she was brilliant.

[38:13] Kevin David Thomas: Oh brilliant, yes.

[38:15] CAROL LAWRENCE: And that's where I learned my comedy timing was from watching the very best.

[38:19] CAROL LAWRENCE: Billy DeWolf and Bee Lily.

[38:23] CAROL LAWRENCE: And uh I I would watch Barbara Cook, I was in plain and fancy and she was uh the soubrette, and she was always brilliant.

[38:35] CAROL LAWRENCE: I don't know where sh her the sound that comes out of her head to this day uh was made in heaven.

[38:41] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[38:41] Kevin David Thomas: Mm-hmm.

[38:42] CAROL LAWRENCE: She's just brilliant, and the sweetest, the sweetest southern lady you'd ever know.

[38:48] CAROL LAWRENCE: And that's I think that you truly do um learn the m I learned the most playing West Side Story for two years.

[38:59] CAROL LAWRENCE: Literally uh uh doing it exhausted, doing it sick, doing it in front of an audience that couldn't care less.

[39:07] CAROL LAWRENCE: You just you dig deeper and you find ways of making it work.

[39:13] CAROL LAWRENCE: And um that's that's what I miss so terribly in today's world.

[39:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's all gimmicks, it's all green screen, it's all uh blow 'em up, kill 'em, violence and and horrific.

[39:26] CAROL LAWRENCE: There there are no stories to be told in I mean you do find them in the room and uh the ones that are really loved today, if you look at what's successful for me for me are are the stories that touch your heart and deal with family and deal with love and uh I'm gonna cry in a minute.

[39:47] CAROL LAWRENCE: But the the kind of thing that happened yesterday with the shooting and the horrific stupidity that is still reigning in today's world.

[39:58] CAROL LAWRENCE: We as the populace have to survive it.

[40:03] CAROL LAWRENCE: How can we survive it without the kind of thing that we saw last night on the Tony's and that says that creativity and love and truth and honesty and never stopping to seek what that is.

[40:19] CAROL LAWRENCE: Will win.

[40:20] CAROL LAWRENCE: Not the blowing up.

[40:22] CAROL LAWRENCE: Not I just forgive me for touting, but uh, it just breaks it breaks my heart.

[40:22] CAROL LAWRENCE: It breaks my heart.

[40:29] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[40:29] CAROL LAWRENCE: And we need that.

[40:30] CAROL LAWRENCE: We need that art because that's how we heal.

[40:33] Kevin David Thomas: Exactly.

[40:34] CAROL LAWRENCE: And when are they going to realize it has to come back into our schools?

[40:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: When are they going to realize that we are killing our literally killing ourselves?

[40:43] CAROL LAWRENCE: Because nobody has any compassion.

[40:45] CAROL LAWRENCE: Nobody has any understanding.

[40:47] CAROL LAWRENCE: Nobody has any hope.

[40:49] CAROL LAWRENCE: We don't have hope.

[40:50] CAROL LAWRENCE: I always knew as a child, from my mother encouraging me and saying, yes, that sounds great.

[40:58] CAROL LAWRENCE: Could do that, that I could always earn a living.

[41:02] CAROL LAWRENCE: I could always touch people, that I was never going to uh starve.

[41:06] CAROL LAWRENCE: Uh nobody was ever going to oppress me because I could somehow look to a future that held me doing what I loved doing more than anything in life, and that is performing.

[41:18] CAROL LAWRENCE: And we don't have that in schools anymore.

[41:21] CAROL LAWRENCE: We just don't.

[41:22] CAROL LAWRENCE: So um find me a platform and let me scream.

[41:28] CAROL LAWRENCE: Say because we must get back to it.

[41:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: We somehow we have to um encourage what you do uh in your school to happen m more widely, more universally.

[41:41] CAROL LAWRENCE: We have I don't know how we get into the Muslim schools.

[41:44] CAROL LAWRENCE: I don't know how we we teach people that it doesn't matter, but that you cannot just want to kill people because they're Christians or they're homosexuals or they're whatever they are.

[41:55] CAROL LAWRENCE: You can't do that.

[41:56] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's gotta be stopped.

[41:57] CAROL LAWRENCE: It's gotta be stopped.

[41:59] Kevin David Thomas: That's right, so you know, going off of that point, when you were doing West Side, when you were doing West Side Story, was that important for the cast and the creatives as well, which was to have the audience change their perspective.

[42:15] CAROL LAWRENCE: Absolutely.

[42:16] CAROL LAWRENCE: Absolutely.

[42:17] CAROL LAWRENCE: Jerry's mission was that what we are portraying on this stage is not acceptable.

[42:26] CAROL LAWRENCE: It is not allowed, and we've got to stop it.

[42:30] CAROL LAWRENCE: That was his message.

[42:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: We haven't gotten to that point.

[42:34] CAROL LAWRENCE: But I do believe that the people, like opening night, when when that curtain came down and they had witnessed the leading man dying in my arms and a funereal procession walking off to the strains of somewhere, that that they had seen what they had seen.

[42:53] CAROL LAWRENCE: The audience just looked it up in total silence.

[42:57] CAROL LAWRENCE: It it was so scary that I thought, Oh dear God, all the critics were right.

[43:03] CAROL LAWRENCE: We are a bomb.

[43:05] CAROL LAWRENCE: They don't accept it or they don't get it, or they don't want it.

[43:09] CAROL LAWRENCE: And I began to cry again.

[43:11] CAROL LAWRENCE: And then it is as if it were a choreographed Rob.

[43:15] CAROL LAWRENCE: They all jumped to their feet and began screaming, Bravo, yes, and applauding and stamping their feet.

[43:25] CAROL LAWRENCE: I have never heard that combination of applause before.

[43:31] CAROL LAWRENCE: And it really shook us and it went on and on and on.

[43:35] CAROL LAWRENCE: I think we did seventeen, twenty curtain calls.

[43:38] CAROL LAWRENCE: At the end of which Lenny came all the way backstage and he was in the wings and he walked over to me, and we were both sobbing, put his arms around me.

[43:49] CAROL LAWRENCE: And yeah, and I said, Oh, Lenny, it worked. We've got him. And he said, Thank God. Thank God. So that was opening night. And uh I think we touched them, and I think that the show has life together. Well, it lives today because of that score and because of what it says and because of the book. But I I think that it's a universal lesson that keeps being reiterated in our high schools. You know, every young person that I've ever met says, you know, I played you. I've already done West Side Story in high school. And even in even in penitentiaries, I went to a juvenile delinquents um penitentiary. Nuns asked me, would you come and sing for them because you did West Side and I said yes. And I opened the session with Officer Krupsky.

Well the guards didn't like it very well, but they laughed. And they would come up to me, these little babies. These are sixteen, twelve year olds who have killed, who have been in gangs, and said, Oh, I played Gino. I was I was Bernardo. No, I did Bernardo, no, you didn't do it. And they all understood it because they could do it in their high school show. And they were the right cast, the right age, the right perfection in in casting. And I think that it lives on because it touches the truth. It's telling the best love story that ever lived, but it's enhanced with today's music, and that's what Hamilton does. He has Lynn has broken that um barrier that used to exist between young people and the rap and the funk and the punk and the junk that they call music today is all in Hamilton.

Yeah. And uh so all we have to do is continue to reach people, but we do need the skills. We do need to be taught from a very early age that we can stand up on a stage and sing and dance and communicate the truth in the most enjoyable fashion. And that's what theater is.

[46:02] Kevin David Thomas: Carol, was your father still alive to see you perform in West Side Story?

[46:09] CAROL LAWRENCE: Yes. He actually he never approved. My father uh was one of those very stubborn old world Italians. He could never tell me that I uh because I I stayed, you know. He when I came back from that audition for Borscht Capades, I said, You won't believe it was the end of the day, it was like six o'clock. It took all day, and I said, I I'm in a show. I'm in a Broadway show. He said, Oh no, you're not. That was not our agreement. You were to go and merely observe. That was what we prom you promised me. And I said, But I've got a a little bird and it's in my hand, it's not in the bush, and you're not gonna take it out of me. I can't, I can't give up. And we argued for three hours. I cried, I begged, I could and finally he said to me, and he became very British whenever he had to give in.

If you insist upon this folly, folly, I didn't even know what he was talking about. If you insist upon this folly, and I came to see you and you were starving in the gutter, I would not throw a penny your way. Oh wow. That's what my father said. And he never did approve of what I did. Opening night of Westside, he came to our dressing room because Cheetah and I shared the lead dressing room. And of course her family were there. They had they lived in Washington DC, which was where we opened. So they had seen the show and Lola was there and Armando and Julio and her mother and all all these wonderful Hispanic people are there and were drinking champagne because the show, you know, at least the audience loved it.

We didn't know if the critics are going to. And so my my mother came to the door and uh she was still crying, but my mother had to do her scene. And she said, Oh, CAROL, oh, she threw her arms around me. She said, That was so magnificent, and the costumes and the lights. She had all the right words. She by now she really knew about show business. And so she said, and the last scene where he you're holding him in your arms and he's dying and all, and then you went off and I'm still crying from that. She said, But the greatest most exciting thing is that you came from me. Oh wow. And everybody sort of went, Oh oh my God. I think that's why she'd go cry. And I I said, Oh, Mom, thank you very much.

Now my father walked in and he walked directly to Cheetah and in his best English accent, he said, Miss Rivera, I'm Michael Loria. I'm CAROL's father. And I want to tell you, my dear, that you are by far the best performer I have ever seen in my life. And I've seen many. I've been to Broadway before, and you're when you're on the stage, dear, no one else exists. You might as well just forget about showing up. Because your magnificent talents reach across the footlights and touch every heart. Is this your mother? Ah, may I kiss your hand? You have given birth to one of the most talented geniuses in the world and we are debit indebted to you forever and ever. God bless you. Thank you so much. And he turned to me and I'm just standing there waiting for him to at least say you were all right or it was okay and he took my hand in a very formal way and he said CAROL, it was a fine production.

Oh and nobody could speak. I mean it was just dead silence. And I said thanks What are you gonna say? What are you gonna say? Yeah. No, he was Italian You have to know that he would have had to admit that he was wrong and that I he couldn't do that. And he never never told me I was okay, good, bad or indifferent. It was a fine production.

[50:25] Kevin David Thomas: As as good as it gets uh after after Westside's story opened and you were known as Maria, did your auditioning life change a little bit? I mean now you're you're no longer a chorus girl you're you're definitely never gonna go back there again.

[50:41] CAROL LAWRENCE: Um and so I'm eighty three. I'm eighty three and I'm working on a show to be done at the Elport Hall right now. I don't think I'll ever I might die on stage. Who knows? No my granddaughter is here and and she said, No you won't the the point is once I got out of Westside, it was if anybody cried easily or was Latin or had that kind of I would have a a crack at I did a view from the bridge which is the movie version. It's it's on Broadway today and it it won uh Yeah yeah that's it won all kinds of Tony's I can't wait to go and see it. Um no I literally got pigeonholed into nobody would let me be funny and basically that's what I was all my life even when I was just a kid I would keep my cousins entertained while everybody else was having dinner.

They say, Oh go CAROL will tell you a story, go in the living room and I took them off their hands, you see and I I can always uh have fun making up a story, you know, just uh the gloomiest, most horrific um horror thing. But as I got out of Westside, I wanted to be funny. I just wanted to have a crack at it. And they would inevitably if they couldn't get uh me to do it they would get they'd say oh well then get Cheetah Rivera uh she she looks the same and we all had the same hairdo that Gina Lola Bridges a sort of short Bob black hair and uh and they say oh if you can't get cheated then get Rita Rita Marina. She has this Latin lecturer and so I wanted to break out of that trio and I cut my hair off and dyed it red.

Oh for the longest bright red, yeah, and then I was taken for Lucille Ball. But it was okay. But she's funny historically funny. And then Lee Goober, who was married to uh Barbara Walter and had his own circuit of uh Summerstock theaters. He had two. He had one that was in uh on proscenium and the other in the round. And when you would take out like Funny Girl, I would do eighteen weeks of it. Wow. In summer stock. And those were the most incredible learning schools that ever lived because you were playing to North and South and Florida and California, Colorado. You would do the entire United States. And he's he sent me Funny Girl. And I said, Oh Lee, I'm sh I'm I s I saw uh Barbara Streisand do it and I I thought it was all right.

And and he said, I think you'd be a wonderful funny girl. I said, No, I'm not and he said, Will you read it? And I read it and I listened to the album and then I added dance. In Private Schwartz, she tap dances. In the uh thing where she's learning how to to dance for for Mr. Keeney, the first audition, I made up a whole bunch of of funny little things. When she puts on the girls the the show girls headdress, I would fall instead of falling into the wings, I fell onto the stage and then couldn't get up. And it it I I said that to Larry Fuller, who did a visa, who was the director of a visa, and I said, Why why don't I fall on the stage? And he said, uh and then just never be able to get up, you know, just keep struggling with the headdress.

And he said, You think that's funny? I said, Well, if they laugh, it'll be f you know, we'll keep it in. And if if it isn't, then we won't. And so um we did, and it was very funny, and I had had to put on a full hockey belt, elbow and knee pads because I was wrecking my joints. I was born like a clown, like a clown. And um I actually did that on the tonight show and split my lip wide open, and Red Skelton sent me sent me a telegram that said, I'm the clown that does the Pratt fault, not you, sweet. So it it was funny.

[55:06] Kevin David Thomas: That's um I guess what happens. You you break the mold by learning new skills and then delivering.

[55:10] CAROL LAWRENCE: Delivering. Delivering. We broke every existing box office uh attendance in when I did Funny Girl. I still hold those records. Bobby and I hold the uh the record at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for Camelot. Oh, that's right. That together Oh y yes, y uh now how often did you appear uh opposite each other? You did uh Camelot together?

[55:39] CAROL LAWRENCE: For about fourteen years, yeah. Oh wow, everything. Yeah. Because the kids would travel with us, you see. And uh and it was a wonderful double bill because when we got married, we were those d dolls on the boarding cake. Everybody had known us from television. We met Caftus, husband and wife, doing um a wonderful two-hour special called The Enchanted Nutcracker. And the book was written by Salmon Bellis P. Wack, who wrote um uh God. Kiss me Kate. Yes.

[56:13] Kevin David Thomas: And then and and very quickly, CAROL, just for our listeners so they know who you're referring to. Our young ones, too.

[56:18] CAROL LAWRENCE: So you you were married to Robert Goulet, uh, who was Lancelot and Camelot for quite some time.

[56:24] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[56:24] CAROL LAWRENCE: Yes, of course. Camelot, yes. Oh, he was a brilliant, brilliant singer. Perhaps the most beautiful human being I've ever met. And um he he just I kept trying to get him to dance. I kept trying to get him to act. I kept trying to bring him to, you know, um, just to expand. He had such a magnificent base upon which to build his talent. And he was happy singing, and um he felt intimidated when dancing with me. And I guess that's okay. But that's okay. Yeah, we tal talented man. Two two gorgeous sons, Christopher and Michael Goulet, who sound exactly like him and choose not to sing. You know, they've been they've been to all the bad uh shows and uh you know the room service that never comes and the airplanes that never land, and uh they they are both nurses. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, they they love helping people, they they can sing the pants off of anybody on Broadway and uh choose not to. And that's their choice.

[57:32] Kevin David Thomas: Well, CAROL, thank uh you know, I hope you'll join us again. Uh because we would love to so much more to talk about. You're so fascinating and you're so wonderful. Uh but from the bottom uh the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much for your generosity with us today. Join us next week when our guest is theater historian and critic Peter Felicia.