Sports

Departed pair inspired Lauria

Charles Durning

Charles Durning (AP)

Jack Klugman

Jack Klugman (AFP/Getty Images)

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This is one of the stories that kept coming back to Dan Lauria across the past couple of days: A few years back, he was doing a play in Toronto and visited the set of “Lakeboat,” directed by his friend Joe Mantegna. During a break, Lauria found himself shooting the breeze with Dennis Leary, Peter Falk and Charles Durning.

“Charlie makes me watch an old movie every day,” Lauria told Leary, the novice of the group, a time-honored study habit for serious actors.

“You mean to tell me,” Leary asked, incredulously, “you’ve got, what, 3,000 movies?”

“Hell, Charlie’s got 9,000,” Falk said, laughing, “and those are just the movies he’s been in.”

It’s been a tough week for those of us who enjoyed the work of Charles Durning and Jack Klugman, but it’s been an especially difficult couple of days for Lauria, whose wildly popular star turn in “A Christmas Story” ends its limited engagement today at the Lunt-Fontaine Theater.

Durning, 89, and Klugman, 90, who both died Christmas Eve, were two of Lauria’s acting mentors. Durning befriended Lauria the very first month the former Lindenhurst High football player decided to make a go of things as a working actor in New York. Durning had survived both Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge, and Lauria’s being a former marine surely didn’t hurt the formation of that friendship.

But over the decades, Durning also became something of a wily professor for Lauria, as did Klugman; he would do regional theater with both men, and also took part in regular readings with them, and soaked in their knowledge and experience and stories like a sponge.

“If you were willing to learn,” Lauria says, “they were eager to teach.”

Lauria visited with Klugman often since both men lived in Los Angeles, and co-starred on the stage with him in both Arthur Miller’s “The Price” and “The Value of Names.”

It probably wasn’t a terrible internship, either, for the man who will probably forever be best known as Kevin Arnold’s dad on “The Wonder Years” to see the good grace and good humor with which Klugman accepted the fact that for all his genius as a dramatic actor, he too would best be linked to a sloppy sportswriter for the New York Herald named Oscar Madison, which launched a thousand careers on their way (including this one).

“It took me 10 years to learn how to act,” Klugman once told Lauria, “and the rest of the time to learn how not to act.”

Klugman told Lauria a wonderful story once about a famous scene from “The Odd Couple,” where the writers had written “Oscar teaches Felix how to play football” and then left four blank pages. Tony Randall loved challenging his fellow actors, loved improv, and he was a very good athlete, having fenced in college.

“So Oscar is showing Felix how to line up, and Tony suddenly decides to switch from right in front of Jack to alongside him,” Lauria said. “And suddenly Jack as Oscar says, off the top of his head, ‘What are we, the Rockettes?’”

“Improv,” Lauria said, smiling. “The ultimate acting challenge.”

Both Durning and Klugman proudly visited Lauria during his brilliant run in “Lombardi,” and both understood the irony that while he was hailed for his acting in what was technically his Broadway debut, he’d already done 58 plays.

“Charlie said, ‘Do a play a year,’ ” Lauria said, “which is what he did. That isn’t what your agents want to hear. But it’s the only way to improve as an actor.”

Which led to one final chestnut. Every time Durning saw Lauria in a play, afterward he’d put his arm around his protégé and say, “Danny, in another 20 years, you’ll be an actor.” A few years back, when they co-starred in “Men In Suits” at the Westport Country Playhouse, opening night, Durning, tears in his eyes, said, “All right. Another 10 years.”

And Lauria asked, “Charlie, are you an actor yet?”

“Not yet,” Durning replied. “But I’m getting damn close.”

Vacs Whacks

So if the Nets hire Kelvin Sampson, do they get hit with a postseason ban? Scholarship reductions?

* I know that nobody likes to see the doctor, that you always think if you close your eyes and hope hard enough you’ll feel better in the morning but … shouldn’t the Knicks put Carmelo Anthony’s knee under an MRI scan just, you know, for kicks?

* There are people who like football. There are people who love football. And then there are the people who will pay good money to attend the Jets-Bills game at Ralph Wilson Stadium this afternoon.

* Note to Deron Williams and the rest of the fellas in Brooklyn: As long as P.J. Carlesimo is in charge, do everyone a favor and put a little mustard on those practice passes, OK?

Whack back at Vac

@MJKleinman:
You forgot to add Dwight Howard to your list of all-time coach killers: Stan Van Gundy and Brian Hill, two coaches, zero rings.

Vac: Goodness, if Superman and Deron Williams ever DID get paired up on a team, the coach would need to wear a helmet on the sidelines …

Bob Buscavage: It’s too bad Tim Tebow didn’t stage a “wildcat” strike when he was traded to the Jets!

Vac:
That one sentence is 80 percent more clever than anything we’ve seen out of Tony Sparano this year.

Joe Orofino: Mike, the Nets are like that 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the Empire State Building: you put 4,995 pieces together and you realize the other five don’t fit. Repeat after me, “the Nets are the Nets are the Nets.”

Vac:
“The Nets are the Nets are the Nets …”

Tom Cooney: It’s only appropriate the Mets signed left-handed pitcher Aaron Laffey, because I think that’s what most folks intend to do-ey at them this year.

Vac:
For their sake, I hope the Mets don’t try to claim Frank Loseahundredandten off the waiver wire.