Some folks may only remember Sally Struthers as Archie Bunker’s daughter, Gloria, on TV’s All in the Family in the ’70s or for her commercials on behalf of impoverished children in developing countries.
Film fans will remember her from two ’70s films: Five Easy Pieces opposite Jack Nicholson and The Getaway with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw.
But unlike a lot of people in showbiz, Struthers has been working steadily for more than 40 years.
Well, that doesn’t count the month off for the holidays between the two legs of the current touring production of Hello Dolly!, in which Struthers, 66, plays matchmaker Dolly Levi, and which is bringing her this week to the stage of Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall.
“I’ve been in six television series, two or three cartoon series; I’ve been in musicals,” Struthers says.
“I’ve been in plays on Broadway; I’ve been on tour. I’ve sung for the USO, I lifted Bob Hope on a TV special and went to the hospital to see if I had a hernia.
“I’ve just never stopped working, and I know that very few people in the industry can say that. I’ve never had to get a secondary job; just one thing after another keeps happening. I know that’s highly unusual and I’m humbled by it.”
It may also come as a surprise that Struthers, who got her start on TV as the one and only dancer for The Tim Conway Comedy Hour - in a 2012 interview she said being let go from that job freed her up to read for All in the Family - has been making a lot of her career in musical theater, including featured roles in Broadway productions of Grease and Annie, and she played Miss Hannigan in that show’s 20th anniversary national tour.
It’s the sixth time for Struthers, whose mantelpiece holds two Emmys and a Golden Globe Award, to play strong-willed matchmaker Dolly Levi, who subtly plans to introduce herself into the mix while finding a match for the ornery Yonkers, N.Y., “half-a-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder.
“But it’s the first time I’ve done it on tour, which is considerably more interesting,” she says. “Every theater is different, and some of them are old enough and small enough so a certain amount of our sets don’t fit, which changes our blocking and our delivery.
“We ask the audience to come along on the ride with us, and pretend there’s a door here and a wall there, and they do. Yet the audience doesn’t feel anything’s missing because they’re still seeing the same performances and the gorgeous costumes and they’re still hearing the music and Thornton Wilder’s wonderful words.”
Struthers is convinced that’s why the show has stuck around all these years.
“It’s kind of the perfect American classic theater musical,” she says. “The test for me, when I’m in a musical, is, if you take away the songs, is the story good enough to hold up? Is the dialogue, not the lyrics? If you saw the story without singing, would you enjoy the story, the plot, the characters? I’ve found that to be true with Annie; I’ve found it to be true with Dolly.”
Dolly is expected to open as a Broadway revival this year, but Struthers says she’s not expecting even to audition:
“It doesn’t matter how good you are or how much the audience loves you or the great reviews you get out in the hinterlands - when you’re talking about Broadway, the money people want a big name, and I don’t think I’m considered a big name.
“Name a Tony winner. Name a big star: Barbra Streisand could come out of retirement and do it in her dotage,” and, Struthers says, she’d finally be the right age to play Dolly. Streisand was in her early 20s when she made the 1969 movie, with which Struthers will brook no comparisons.
“I’m just saying, that of my knowledge of playing this role six times, and being very well aware of who Dolly is and what type of actress should play her - I understand why they chose Barbra Streisand, up and coming superstar, but don’t too closely examine it, because if you do, she was all wrong for the role,” she says.
“Dolly has to have lived many years on her own. … This has to be an older woman; she has to have been married many years, [and] now she’s a widow many years. You don’t want anyone under 45 or 50 years playing this role. You want a woman of a certain age who had a wonderful marriage and has [spent] many years scrappin’ on the streets.
“Besides, everybody thinks, ‘Dolly Levi, she’s a Jew.’ No, she married a Jew. She’s Dolly Gallagher Levi, she’s an Irish woman who married a Jewish man. Another reason why Streisand was so wrong for the movie. I rest my case.”
Theater
Hello, Dolly!
7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, Robinson Center Music Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock. Big League Productions Inc.’s touring production, under the auspices of Celebrity Attractions. Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman; book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker Tickets: $15-$50 (501) 244-8800, (800) 982-2787 Ticketmaster.com; CelebrityAttractions.com
Style, Pages 41 on 01/12/2014