DAY I
I called Barbara Harris.
By the time I got to Scottsdale, Arizona, I had spoken to her on the phone probably about three times. I posted a Sutori visual timeline of her career on the main page that I put together thanks to the Lincoln Center archives if you’d like to take a look. When I called the Lincoln Center Archives, speaking of, I asked him the same question that I had been posing to everyone else. “Do you know Barbara Har…” He cut me off. He knew who Barbara Harris was…she was only the best. Okay, I thought. I went. I took a genuine interest in getting to know her career because I myself didn’t realize who she was at first, and I came from a theater background. I had watched her performance of “Oh, to be a movie star” and “Gorgeous” from The Apple Tree at the first televised Tony Awards ceremony in history in 1967. She won the award that year for Best Actress. I read through the clippings, just to give a little context, and I had never seen such pageturners, just in terms of how her career went, but it wasn’t exactly my world.
All the same, “she makes skyrockets look lackadaisical,” a journalist wrote. She arrived in New York City with The Second City in 1961 on Broadway, and she became an instant star. She left the stage one. I guess they all did. Richard Rodgers happened to be in the audience one night. The video below is a clip from the musical that she inspired, and I would see why, it was part of my interest, actually. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Richard Rodgers and Alan Jay Lerner would team up to write a musical inspired by Harris, because Rodgers brought him to see her in Arthur Kopit’s smash hit six months later about, largely due to Harris, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad. Lerner ended up writing it with Burton Lane, as Rodgers and Lerner broke up due to artistic differences. And I pictured Harris on the banks of the East River…the helicopter descending to whisk her away to Lerner’s yacht.
"Can anyone amongst us have an inkling or a clue? What magic feats of wizardry and voodoo you can do? And who would ever guess?
What powers you possess? And who would have the sense to change his view…? And start to mind his ESPs…and Qs? For who would ever dream of hearing phones before they ring? Or harrowing the earth to send you up a little spring? Or finding you've been crowned? 'The Queen of Lost and Found?’ And who would not be stunned to see you prove…? There's more to us than surgeons can remove…”
“So much more than we ever knew…so much more were we born to do…should you draw back the curtain, this I am certain, you’ll be impressed…with you…” Just amazing. It started with her.
She agreed to meet with me and she was known to not talk to anyone in the press, but I wasn’t the press. I was barely a writer at that point. I did research; I watched everything I could. I didn’t decide to engage for another year or so. I thought that there might be a story here, but I didn’t know what it was, and I really didn’t have an agenda. I don’t, in general, but with her, I felt that was central. It ended up being four days with a truly extraordinary artist at the end of her life. I didn’t know that. It was May 2018. She passed away in August of that year. I was told that she might not show up, that I might be there for three weeks or something. It was never the case. I’ll continue posting our scenes, because she really did elevate life to a work of art, and I knew that going into it. Here’s something to start.
SCENE ONE: I GET TO SCOTTSDALE
BARBARA HARRIS: Hi.
MARIA: Hi! how are youuu?
BARBARA HARRIS: I’m so goooood. How are you? Are you here?
MARIA: I just got in. It’s hot.
BARBARA HARRIS: Are you in a hotel?
MARIA: I got an Airbnb. I wanted to stay around Scottsdale because it seemed easier to walk around.
BARBARA HARRIS: Scottdale, you can’t meet anyone. They all say hello, and they say let’s get together, and then they don’t. You never know who is going to say what, and if they are going to do what they say, and what’s going on…
MARIA: How do you deal with the summers here?
BARBARA HARRIS: It’s getting cooler! I don’t know. I don’t know why I picked this. Two people I knew lived here, and I was close to them. And I didn’t realize.
MARIA: When did you move out here?
BARBARA HARRIS: Yup, because I didn’t know where to move, and you run out of money moving. Where am I going to go? California is expensive, New York is impossible, that’s where I really belong. I would love to be back in New York.
MARIA: Have you been there recently?
BARBARA HARRIS: In the past year or two, yeah, it’s contagious, I love it. I’m here for now. Barely making it now, most of it got burned out.
MARIA: Well, for now. Step by step.
BARBARA HARRIS: I told you my “inch by inch is a synch, yard by yard is very hard…”
MARIA: That’s good.
BARBARA HARRIS: I lost so many people. I was planning to go back to Chicago, for one of my best friends, from early on childhood, and he died. You can’t go for your friends, cause they die on you! Just settle where you can work. Work comes first and then you create friends. People do it, but I’m pretty shy about it.
MARIA: Making friends?
BARBARA HARRIS: It’s hard for actors, I think actors are too separated. People want to know what they are about, and then they leave them. It’s sort of, I think, hm, I remember getting my first car in New York and I went to get insurance, and actors were listed under “call girls” and “bartenders.”
MARIA: Wow.
BARBARA HARRIS: And then one day I went to the bank, and she said something snotty about being an actor. “Well Ronald Regan was an actor,” I said. And she said, “that’s true.” People say, tear that thing down. With my old friends, that goes away, people like Ed Asner I knew from seventeen. People I know from a long time ago, I have no problem with. And people here are just snowbirds. Sometimes they nod and say hello and sometimes they don’t.
MARIA: I guess they aren’t warm. Snowbirds.
BARBARA HARRIS: I like neighborhoods. You know like in Chicago, you knew people in the building for like a hundred years…but I’m used to it. As long as I stay busy. But I’m living in a quarter of a house…I have things to do all day…are you busy today?
MARIA: I mean, I’m not. I can work around you.
BARBARA HARRIS: I have all these doctors’ appointments.
MARIA: How is that going?
BARBARA HARRIS: It’s going better. They don’t even think I need a pacemaker now, so I have to be at the doctor’s at 5:30. It’s a really neat place if you wanna walk around. Maybe we could get some supper?
MARIA: Sure, if that works for you!
BARBARA HARRIS: You don’t have a car…
MARIA: Yes, but there are car services now.
BARBARA HARRIS: You’re probably on what’s his name? The one who ran over someone the other day.
MARIA: Oh Uber…
BARBARA HARRIS: My car is just a disaster. We could eat at this place. It’s a shopping center. It’s all new but there is a Barnes and Nobles, and grassy areas, and little restaurants. I’m seeing black dots, that’s supposed to be a bad sign. That’s when my mother went blind…
MARIA: Did you just look into the sun..?
BARBARA HARRIS: Maybe…
MARIA: I can meet you at about six thirty.
BARBARA HARRIS: I might be a few min late, would you understand?
MARIA: No! Of course…
BARBARA HARRIS: It might be quarter to seven. I’ll try to rush the doctor.
MARIA: No, don’t rush the doctor.
BARBARA HARRIS: Ok…
MARIA: There isn’t a Barnes and Nobles, it seems, according to the map.
BARBARA HARRIS: Am I wrong?
MARIA: Well, I would hope there would be a bookstore. Let’s meet in front of Papyrus.
BARBARA HARRIS: WHAT?!
MARIA: It’s a stationery store.
BARBARA HARRIS: No!
MARIA: I guess you’re not into paper maché…
BARBARA HARRIS: Oh God…
MARIA: What about Sur La Table?
BARBARA HARRIS: Yeah yeah, I know that. Maybe you can find a place to sit, or a restaurant. You can shove round those stores, it’s cute…
MARIA: I’ll look at the restaurants. Is there any kind of food you like?
BARBARA HARRIS: I like Italian food. There are so many restaurants here, I cannot even breathe. I don’t know what you’re willing to spend, they go up to the top and down. We could end up in a deli, or a five-star, four, three, zero.
MARIA: Don’t you worry about it. I’ll look it up.
BARBARA HARRIS: So I’ll see you around 6:30, quarter to seven.
MARIA: You got it.
BARBARA HARRIS: I’m sure I’ll find it.
MARIA: Whatever.
BARBARA HARRIS: Whatever. You’ll see what I mean, it’s fun. You’ll find a dirty old car…maybe… in case you wanna check it out…
MARIA: I’ll check out your wheels…
SCENE TWO: THE OUTDOOR SHOPPING MALL—THE OASIS IN THE DESERT AT SUNSET
In front of Sur La Table, I saw the Honda Civic pull up in my peripheral vision into the outdoor shopping mall flanked by palm trees wrapped in Christmas lights. “Shot in the Dark” by Jon Bon Jovi was playing at an adjacent bar—Happy Hour. I dropped agenda again, consciously. I was on a bench. I knew she didn’t really like this, and I could understand that. I was on her side.
She singsonged.
“Yoohoo…is that youuuuu?”
“Whoo-yoou?”
Rouged lips in a pinch, her dyed hair was stick-straight and long, a departure from the short spunky style she had sported throughout most of her career, which flowed in the breeze along with her lime-green pants. It was sunset—a light orange sky. In her eyes was that signature sparkle, purity, and innocence, but her regard was not superficial or lacking in experience. It had the breadth and depth of her range as a performer.
She was shocked.
“Is that you?”
I asked her about the appointment. She was late, but not for me. She didn’t have to have an operation after all. She had a lot of papers…She didn’t want to talk about it. I tried to say that I made a reservation at an Italian restaurant in this shopping mall, but she had other ideas. A place near her neighborhood—fabulous. It was a little expensive, going dutch, the two of us.
We made our way to her Honda Civic across the driveway, the desert out the exit.
As of right now, we were just hanging…she said.
I put up my hands and sang a little line.
“Getting to know you…” I meant that. I figured we would be “bright and breezy…”
I opened by singing because I had learned that it was one of the most vulnerable acts you could do. She would be able to tell a lot about me right away. I hadn’t sung in a long, long time.
“Do you sing?! You need to sing…”
“I was always pretty shy about it…”
She understood. She had told Lerner she couldn’t sing, as in Alan Jay Lerner.
She asked me if I was a singer. No, I started out that way though.
I had to help her find her comb, and I said don’t leave me alone with my crazy, curly hair.
I was a lucky dog.
Folding over herself, she hadn’t eaten all day. She had been eating too many fruits! Churning them up…she was sure it was going to be okay. I gingerly removed her out of the way of an oncoming car. Getting into her beat-up but won’t-give-up Honda Civic, it was clear it was going to be a topsy-turvy, hilarious, and moving moment that would put me on the crack of the human heart—what makes us both laugh and cry. Our vulnerability. I found her comb. It was behind her gear shift. It was as if she almost tried to fit inside the nook.
SCENE THREE: CAR RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT AT SUNSET
She interviewed me. I’ll put this together.
SCENE FOUR: HOUSTON’S STEAKHOUSE
First, we tried Houston’s Steakhouse–the classy joint. Barbara dashed to the bathroom to comb her hair.
"I gotta, my hair…is such a mess.”
I quickly brushed across the scene. Tuesday night in Scottsdale, Arizona. Steakhouse. Green velvet booths. Dark wood. Fake blond hair totally or in highlights. The same black purse. Couples that probably had a kid or closing in on the deal. A guy at the bar who cashed in big at a good age with a martini flashing pearly whites in my direction. A peppering of after works of pretty much a pale color.
At the host stand, a fine young woman greeted me with ashy blond hair who clearly did not come from the pool of fancy that ruled Houston’s this evening–snowbirds–Barbara called them. I never found out why they were snowbirds, why they flew to the desert, but maybe they came from the icy frost? In any case, there was an hour's wait ahead of us for a table. Ashy offered me standing room by the bar or at the high tables as we waited, none of which was conducive for an eighty-three-year-old woman who was stiff, and not in tiptop shape, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
I stood for a moment, by the stand, waiting as anyone would for their friend to return, but then I jerked when I remembered who I was with. I swiftly moved towards the bathroom.
In a Second City Review, Barbara Harris was in a scene with Severn Darden and Paul Sand. In the bit, Sand was coming out to his parents that he was gay. His mother played by Barbara Harris excused herself so she could leave Sand alone to come out to his father first. Harris normally reentered to conclude the scene. One night, though, Barbara exited the stage as was expected with enough time to smoke a cigarette. She noticed that the show across the street featuring her friend Zora Zampert had just broken for intermission. She was delighted could catch the second act. She put out her cigarette and crossed the street. Meanwhile, Sand and Darden remained on stage, waiting for Barbara Harris to come back on. Darden invented some excuse to get off-stage to figure out what had happened. She was nowhere to be found. Darden came back onstage.
“Mom’s dead.”
Blackout.
There were two women of equal height and measure with blond highlights primping and washing their hands at the two sinks. Barbara Harris was positioned just behind and between them combing through her hair in reverse. I was relieved to find that she hadn’t left, so it was going alright, but then, what did I know what she did and what she didn’t? You know? I didn’t know, which was my baseline. I started to giggle when I discovered stage right a large vanity mirror with no one in sight.
“There’s a vanity mirror…if you wanna get a better look Barbara…”
“Oh, I don’t want to do that.”
“Well, it’s an hour wait.”
“WHAT? An hour? They must be joking…”
“I don’t know if they’re prone to joking…”
“So they’re serious?”
“Seemed pretty serious…”
“Are you sure?”
“Good point. I think you better try.”
Out of the bathroom, she stopped.
“M” on the door in front of her, she turned around. “W.”
“M and W…what happens if you’re dyslexic? How do you know?”
“You know, that’s really interesting I thought that dyslexia was a horizontal thing, but this is a vertical…”
“There are many tyyyyyypes of dyslexia…”
Barbara made her way, she knew, towards the host stand.
That statement actually blew my mind. I made a note to look that up later.
“Really Barbara, that’s pretty good.”
***
Harry Armytage, Principal at Listen4Life – helping bright kids learn easily
Yes it is quite common in the clients I see, for instance:
Horiz flip: b becomes d and
Vertical flip: d becomes q
***
Her arrival pushed back the chins of the couple hogging it. Houston’s was the place to be, I guess.
“Is it really an hour?”
Ashy nodded apologetically.
Out the door, she suggested the place with the “small lamb chops, appetizer, that are so nice…”
“Let’s try it!” I was enthused.
In the dark, now, we stood at the precipe of an oceanic parking lot under some stars.
“Let’s try it.”
“Should we walk?” She wondered.
“I don’t know…where is it?”
“These places are all over...hard to know... “
She said.
“Across the parking lot…I think.”
“How long was your plane ride?”
She asked.
“An hour…”
The journey was long. I told her to take her time. She wanted those lamb chops, now.
“They have a lamb appetizer that is just so nice.”
“Maybe a baked potato, too.” She pouted.
“Oooh, with butter and chives and the whole shabang?”
She nodded apologetically. “Yeah…”
“Let’s see if we can make that happen.”
I got gently her out of the way of speeding headlights, the new kind, if they aren’t even considered new anymore, that look like they’re from outer space. I don’t know what they’re called. And funny enough, I had read some theory that a race of aliens gave us the technology that enabled us to manufacture these headlights. Harris was somewhat out of breath, but her fatigue and hunger had a strong opponent in her will plowing through it. Her energy was distinct. We drifted very far to the right— to the restaurant the furthest away from the one with lamb chops. We swerved back round and stopped at an Italian restaurant with a canopy of Christmas lights. The server confirmed that there were no lamb chops at the establishment.
Barbara quick and witty thought.
“Well, that’s ok. We’ll be right back for a second dinner…”
An unexpected statement, delivered straight, broke the host’s systematic way of conversing with clientele, confusing her rigid way of interacting, and resulted in a genuine release of amusement and confusion. I could tell she ping-ponged a second, whether or not Barbara was being serious. No, I thought, it is you who are being serious. Inching towards an unknown destination, Barbara sighed. We investigated the contents of the store after store. Barbara Harris noticed what she thought was a strange tagline for a t-shirt.
“Spiritual gangster…”
I nodded.
“That’s what they’re wearing now?”
My sister gave me a tank top as a gift with spiritual gangster written in gold cursive. I had not worn since the first time I put it on, more so because it was an impractical top, but I’d seen the phrase pass by on many a t-shirt in many a yoga studio, on the street, and she had spotted it just like that in a darkened boutique.
“What do you think about that?”
“Hm...I regret that they are not telling the truth. Every time I come by here though, it’s changed. There’s always something new.”
“Things aren’t built to last here…"
“Yes… that’s new, that’s new…it’s all new…”
As if spotting the first sign of land, I pointed.
“Is that it?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
The existence of the lamb chop appetizer was confirmed by the hostess of the sports bar, blasting music on a night relatively sparse with clientele like the one in the outdoor mall where we had met. Above the bar, the televisions fell in a line, flashing the limbs of the players on mute. Feats of athleticism, beers on tap, Barbara bopped towards a back table.
It feels odd to call her “Harris,” though using her last name would be formally correct. She didn’t seem to like that about fame. I could picture her saying, can you just call me Barbara? So I’m feeling that out. As a performer, if I understood correctly, and I watched her too, right? She was known for her “stunning vulnerability,” and her “people scenes” as “a pioneer in the field of improvisational comedy.” She was one of the original members of The Second City, and she was, first, an original.
SCENE FIVE: THE PLACE WITH THE LAMB CHOPS
Barbara Harris ordered the lamb chops. Or tried to, the moment a ponytail flapped into view. “Um, you have those…” Words puffed into the air that squiggled into cute intonations. “Lamb chops, so delicious…” The waitress’ reaction, whose blond hair was a color peppier than Ashy’s, meant one, or all of these things: she was thrown by Barbara wondering what was on the menu, or deaf because of the volume of the music. Or, both. It didn’t help that the kitchen was directly behind us either. A general confusion ensued over what, how many Lamb Pops, and to entree or not to entree? Which isn’t a word for a main course. I interjected here and there to clarify. In the end, we didn’t take the menus, but we successfully ordered two lamb pops and a glass of white wine each. Actually, we’d keep a menu just in case.
MIKE NICHOLS: What is it that she has? I suppose it’s an ear for what’s happening: she is a person who really hears. She’s the opposite of people who can’t hear how they’re coming across–the kind of person who goes on and on at a party, and you say to yourself, “doesn’t he know his wife is embarrassed?” But then there are these people who have a completely accurate ear. They just know what other people are thinking. They hear.
Barbara did. She was taking in so much around her. Her focus would move to whatever interested her at that second as she was settling in. In my opinion, and from what I had gathered a little already in the clippings, she was quite a feeler in how she sensed. I was told by someone I call “the wise screenwriter” that words were not my primary form of communication. Barbara Harris was sensitive, fragile no. Also, I was there, so how to begin this conversation with Harris? How does that sound?
I sang an obscure yet familiar lyric, so she could hear me. It’s the vulnerability point again, opening up a little to her, but not telling her my life story. There was fragility in my voice, she would sense that, a lot. Heart. Just a touch. It was unexpected, too. It was genuine; I was touched by this song. She would be able to tell that I honestly looked at her career. We could open up an atmosphere. And it allowed some room for her to take it in and respond.
“Everybody’s in the know but me.”
Barbara turned with eyes wide and bright with amazement as if I were a magician that pulled the lyric out of my water glass.
“How do you know that song?!”
It was the first line from a ditty as tender as a lullaby. Barbara opened the first The Second City show with it on a blisteringly cold winter night in Chicago in 1959. And I imagined that the voice that delivered it, as was my experience, must have warmed the hearts of everyone in the room that evening. In the UCLA media archives, tucked away in the recesses of the library basement, I watched a recording of it from a Second City show from 1963. Harris had just won an Obie Award for her wildly successful performance in Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad, and The Second City moved downtown. She was waiting, as New York was, for Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane who replaced Richard Rodgers to complete the script for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. The show opened with the cast of men—Bob Dishy, Macintyre Dixon, Paul Dooley, Andrew Duncan, and Anthony Holland—broken into couplets, riffing on current events from newspapers they held in their hands. After witty banter, they formed a line and lifted their papers to mask their faces. And like a spring day fresh and sweet, in a demure sparkling party dress, Barbara went to the wall of information and began her sweet confession.
“Everybody’s in the know but me.”
All these years later, Barbara Harris was impressed, an older woman with a sparkle.
She called me “the natural archivist.”
Taking a sip of wine, her head tipped back and forth as she pulled the words off the dusty shelves in her memory bank.
“Know what’s wrong, what’s right...it could have been Nixon or…”
I raised my glass and skipped to the chorus.
“But if you don’t like this…”
“Wine!”
“World…”
“If you don’t like this wine…”
Looking at each other, our versions of the song were sincere thus we both doubted our memory. I accepted the possibility that I had made a sentimental leap to hope for a better world to come, so I considered her proposition.
“If you don’t like this wine, the next one will be better? Well, the next one would be better because the drunker you get the easier it goes down…”
Barbara bopped her head about in agreement.
I continued.
“… the lights will be brighter, the songs will be louder. Well, I don’t know if the lights would be better or would the songs be louder, in a good way. That sounds like a bad night out. I think it’s world…”
“You sure world? I don’t remember!”
“If you don’t like this world, the next one will be better…”
“You need to sing!”
“I love to sing, but I was always shy about it.”
“I understand that. I was terribly shy when I was in The Second City.“
“What gave you the confidence to do it then?”
“Confidence comes from belonging. I was in a group that had no idea why they were there, and stayed.”
To be continued…I have to organize the next part. Thanks for reading.
SCENE SEVEN: CROSSING THE OCEANIC PARKING LOT TO GET TO THE CAR
First time in a succession of three I reach for the car handle and she reveals something.
SCENE EIGHT: THE TWO-MINUTE DRIVE TO HER HOUSE BEHIND A NICE HOTEL
“Are you sure?”
SCENE NINE: THE JOURNEY TO GET HARRIS’ MAIL/ HARRIS TAKING OUT HER GARBAGE
SCENE TEN: STARGAZING ON HER PORCH WAITING FOR MY UBER
Excerpt for a clipping “Will Success Wreck Barbara Harris?”: Most of the critics were fascinated, particularly a veteran who saw Barbara as exquisite, appetizing, alarming, seductive, out of her mind, irresistible, and from now on unavoidable. Would you believe just plain nice? One could believe just plain nice, but one had also to wonder just how poisonous the little girl was going to find her lollipop.
Comments like that…
“Would you mind terribly…” Barbara said, “…if we were to step outside and talk?”
“So that is where we conversed…” Michael wrote, “under the stars in the alley that flanked the theatre, and the setting only served to enhance my indelible impression of a child fearfully trying to find her way in a big city.”