Let’s salute some fine actors who died in 2013. Here they are, in their own words:
James Gandolfini
He’ll forever be Tony Soprano, of course, but anyone who saw Gandolfini in Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” on Broadway knows the actor was at home onstage, though as he admitted to me on TV’s “Theater Talk,” it took him a little while to match the level of his co-stars, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels.
“I think I was kind of arrogant, and it took me a day or two to realize that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” he said. “I came in thinking I was going to be fine. It was not that fine for a little while. I was shell-shocked. I don’t know why. I did feel very out of sorts, and then we had a meeting and I was told this is the way you’re supposed to feel. So don’t drive yourself completely insane about it. That was helpful.”
Bonnie Franklin
If you grew up in the ’70s, you knew Bonnie Franklin as the perky divorced mother of two teenage girls in “One Day at a Time.”
But before that, she was a Broadway baby, singing and dancing in such shows as “Your Own Thing,” “George M!,” “Dames at Sea” and “Applause.”
After she became famous, she appeared regularly as a presenter on the Tony Awards, though, as she told The Post in 1976, she thought the Tonys were becoming too top-heavy with TV personalities:
“For me, the most memorable Tony ceremony was the 25th anniversary show. It had all the people from the stage: Vivian Blaine, Alfred Drake, Yul Brynner, Zero Mostel. I cried through the whole show. It was what Broadway is all about.”
Eydie Gorme
Gorme was married to — and sang with — Steve Lawrence for more than half a century. They were fixtures on television variety shows in the ’50s and ’60s and played all the great New York nightclubs, including the Copacabana. In 1968, they appeared on Broadway together in “Golden Rainbow.”
Post columnist Earl Wilson swung by their dressing room one night and got an earful from Gorme about, as Wilson wrote, “hippie-type shows with nudity and lewdity which are acclaimed as being contemporary.”
“That’s the biggest put-on since Andy Warhol and his tomato cans!” Gorme exclaimed. “They don’t have contemporary music. Burt Bacharach is contemporary!”
Jean Stapleton
Long before she became TV icon Edith Bunker on “All in the Family,” Stapleton was a popular character actress on Broadway and on tour — in “Harvey,” “Damn Yankees,” “Bells Are Ringing” and “Funny Girl.” When she became famous, people confused her with another actress, Maureen Stapleton.
“She gets the Oscar, and I get the congratulations,” Jean said in 1986. “We were down at the Kennedy Center a couple of years ago. I was staying at the Ritz, she was staying at the Watergate. We met at the White House and she said, ‘Well, I’ve got your candy, I’ve got your flowers and now I’m getting your phone calls. And if another damn person asks me if we’re sisters, I’m going to say yes.’ Later on, I saw her, and she said somebody just asked her if we were sisters. She said, ‘Yes. And Jean’s the one who drinks!’ ”
Conrad Bain
A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts — where his classmates were Jason Robards and Anne Bancroft — Bain appeared on Broadway in “Candide,” “Lost in the Stars” and “The Iceman Cometh.” But he found fame as the millionaire who adopted Gary Coleman in “Diff’rent Strokes.” Still, Bain remained a stage actor at heart.
“That’s the only place where an actor is in command,” he said in 1979. “When you walk around onstage in front of a full house, you either deliver or you don’t. Nobody’s supporting your performance or ruining it. You either can do the job or you can’t.”