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In pursuit of the final cut, a TV actor embraces musical theatre

E. Kyle Minor

The over-30 crowd remembers actor Gregory Harrison as Gonzo, the colorful young physician on television’s “Trapper John, M.D.” His fans may be a bit surprised then to find Harrison singing, dancing and strutting as Billy Flynn, the razzle-dazzling criminal defense lawyer, in the national tour of Kander and Ebb’s “Chicago.”
Sure, Harrison has the looks and the charm, but does he have the silky-smooth baritone of Jerry Orbach, James Naughton or any of his other predecessors?
Harrison, 53, conceded in a telephone interview that that used to be a valid question, but he offered his experience in Broadway shows as proof that it no longer is.
“I’ve done a lot of musicals over the past several years,” said Harrison, who airs out his pipes this week at the Oakdale Theatre, where “Chicago” plays Tuesday through Nov. 23.

Since making his Broadway debut in Kander and Ebb’s short-lived 1997 “Steel Pier,” Harrison has kept fairly busy in musicals. He played Benjamin Stone in the highly anticipated revival of “Follies” two years ago alongside such heavy hitters as Blythe Danner and Treat Williams. Harrison’s regional musical-theater credits include “Of Thee I Sing,” “Paper Moon: The Musical” and “The Music Man.”
“Chicago” producers Barry and Fran Weissler asked him to play Billy on Broadway last May before leading the national tour.
“I had a six-month open slot,” said Harrison, whose previously planned stint in a play was canceled when his unnamed co-star bit on a movie role.
“I love going on the road,” he said. “I spent the last 20 years on the road, doing television projects. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, so I know I’ll be back with my family.”

Harrison, whose family includes his wife, former actress-model Randi Oakes, and their children, Emma, Lily, Kate and Quinn, has been a West Coast guy virtually all of his life. He grew up on California’s Catalina Island, helping his father with his charter-boat business. He has childhood memories of many stars who were customers of his father, most notably John Wayne.
“He always called me ‘The Kid,’” Harrison said, going into a worthy impersonation of the Duke. “You’d hear his voice as he came down the bridge (to the dock): ‘Where’s The Kid?’”
After serving as an army medic from 1969 to 1971, Harrison returned to California to pursue a career in show business. He dabbled in both musical and straight theater while trying to get the attention of the movie industry. His first break was the 1977 film “Logan’s Run,” in which he played Logan 5. Two years later he started a six-year run on “Trapper John, M.D.” Since then he’s done mostly television films (“Breaking the Silence” is only one of his 40-plus TV movie credits), working often as producer and actor.

“I can play roles that I won’t necessarily be cast in,” he said, explaining why he moved into producing. “(Producing) helps me control the finished project.”
For the same reason, Harrison enjoys working on the stage. “In theater, the actor gets ‘final cut,’” he said, invoking the sacred phrase in filmdom, meaning editorial control of his own performance. “It’s just the nature of theater,” he added. “It’s actually more collaborative than acting in film.”

Harrison likes to give credit to his fellow “Chicago” actors, whether it’s Bianca Marroquin (Roxie Hart) or Brenda Braxton (Velma Kelly).
He also rhapsodized on the interaction “Follies” allowed him to have with composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
“Working with Sondheim himself, it was a dream come true for me,” Harrison said. “TV and film just don’t satisfy like theater does.”

Harrison said he has long been a fan of “Chicago” and its creators, especially lyricist John Kander and composer Fred Ebb. The musical, which premiered on Broadway in 1975 and ran for two years, has become an even greater hit in its revival, which opened seven years ago this month. The revival - whose director, Walter Bobbie, emulates the work of original director-choreographer Bob Fosse - actually got a boost when the Rob Marshall film was released last year.
Harrison saw the film, which features Richard Gere as Billy Flynn, but he said Gere’s performance had “no impact whatsoever” on his own interpretation.
“Richard was great,” Harrison said. “Yet the role is so well put-together, there’s no definitive way to play it.
“It’s the Kander and Ebb magic that make this role so attractive,” he said.

After the tour winds up in Philadelphia Dec. 7, Harrison will return to his home on the Oregon coast to spend the holidays with his family. He said he’d like to soon tackle more stage roles, especially dramatic ones.
“I’d like to do more Broadway. The level of talent, the sophisticated audiences, the demand of the critics,” he said, dissecting its appeal.
“I mean, I hate the (New York) critics,” he added. “But they expect you to be great, and I like that level of expectation. I just try to keep up.”
At this point, however, Harrison’s lone iron in the fire is a television series in development. He said he’d certainly return to the small screen in the right project, his recent devotion to the stage notwithstanding.
“I’ve got four kids about to enter college,” he said. “I need to pay for some tuition.”

"Chicago" is Harrison's kind of musical

Joe Meyers

Gregory Harrison became a television favorite from his work on more than 40 movies of the week and hit series such as "Trapper John M.D." In recent years, however, the performer has been fulfilling his long held dream of starring in Broadway musicals.
During the past decade he was a Tony Award nominee for "Steel Pier," played one of the leads in a revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" and tackled the role of the show biz savvy lawyer Billy Flynn in "Chicago."
Harrison likes the part of Billy so much that he has joined the national tour of "Chicago" that arrives at the Oakdale in Wallingford Tuesday night.

"I had to go East to Hollywood from Catalina Island," Harrison joked of his boyhood off the California coast. "But it was always my hope to play Broadway."
"I've been doing musicals off and on for 25 years, but I made it to Broadway in 1997 and I don't want to stop," he said of his debut in "Steel Pier."

Harrison has continued his very active career as a producer and star of TV movies, but says the lure of live theater is always there. "Every couple of years I feel that urge to get back to theater," he said.
The producers of both the Broadway and touring editions of "Chicago" have been pleased to see interest in the stage show boosted by last year's Oscar-winning movie. Harrison believes the film has prepared younger audiences for additional forays into the world of musical comedy. "It has opened up the market," the actor said of the movie "Chicago," adding, "It shows a huge audience ready to appreciate [musicals]. 'Moulin Rouge' triggered an interest in [the genre with] the younger generation and 'Chicago' cemented it."

Harrison said he was having a lot of fun playing the shady lawyer who defends the two Jazz Age murderesses at the heart of "Chicago." "I can't think of any better entrance than the one Billy Flynn gets," the actor said of the lawyer's first appearance on stage, popping out of a circle of huge fans being waved by the show's gorgeous female dancers. "It's a real center of attention role," Harrison added of the part played by Jerry Orbach in the original 1975 production and Richard Gere in last year's film.
Harrison was one of several replacements for James Naughton in the 1997 revival that is still packing them in on Broadway. "I thought it was a great show," the actor said of the revival, noting that he saw it several times before he was offered the part of Billy. Harrison stresses that those who have only seen the movie of "Chicago" are in for a quite different experience at the stage show.
"As good as Richard was [in the movie] he was playing for close-ups. On stage it's much bigger and broader," he said.
The fun of Billy Flynn is that he's a guy who bends the law with great charm and wit, the actor points out. "He doesn't see himself as a bad guy at all," Harrison asserted.
At the moment, the star is signed for "Chicago" through December, but the show is doing so well and he's having such a good time that an extension is possible.

When he's not working, Harrison lives on the coast of Oregon with his wife Randi and their children, Emma, Lily, Kate and Quinn.

The actor said as much as he has enjoyed "Chicago" and the 2001 revival of "Follies" he would love to create another role in a new show like he did in "Steel Pier."
"You get spoiled when you work on Broadway," he said. "You have the cream of the crop in New York. There are always high standards you have to live up to when you do theater there."

Harrison is proud of his film and TV work, but says there is something "pure and straightforward" about working in a play. The actor experienced the downside of Broadway when "Steel Pier" closed after only a few months in 1997. Some said the new musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb was overshadowed by the reopening of "Chicago," the duo's 1975 success, which became an even bigger hit in revival in the late 1990s. Just as mid-'70s audiences weren't quite ready for the cynicism of the original "Chicago," Harrison believes the sweet and hopeful "Steel Pier" might have been jarring to audiences in the age of O.J. Simpson.
"[The original] 'Chicago' was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and didn't win any," Harrison said of the "A Chorus Line" sweep in 1975. "'Steel Pier" was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and didn't win any. Maybe 15 years from now could be the proper time for that one," the actor speculated.

`Chicago' struts to town

By Catherine Foster

"This is probably the most fun leading male role in Broadway musical theater history," says Gregory Harrison, who plays the shady lawyer Billy Flynn in the national tour of "Chicago," which opens its Boston run at the Wang on Tuesday.
"You wear a $4,000 tux and you have great [Kander and Ebb] music -- Billy's songs in particular --and you're surrounded by beautiful, long-legged women . . . with fans," Harrison says, laughing, on the phone from Toronto. "It's really hard to be bad."

The other actors are fun, too, Harrison says. He and Brenda Braxton, who plays Velma, performed in the Broadway production, and other cast members have toured in it. "Everyone is familiar with it," he says. "It makes for a really steamy energy that was there in the first day of rehearsal."
Many audience members will have seen the movie version of the show and may have Richard Gere fixed in their heads as Billy Flynn. Harrison doesn't care.
"I'm not like him," Harrison says. "And I'm not doing anything like his interpretation. I've seen the show with about four other casts, and one Billy was black, another was 20 years older than me. They all work. This part and this show can handle so many interpretations. It just goes to show how solidly the foundation of this show is built."

Veteran actor Gregory Harrison traps a plum role in hit musical

By Dan Kane

Before “Trapper John, M.D.” and “Falcon Crest,” and before his more than 40 made-for-TV movies, Gregory Harrison focused on musical theater. And now he’s returned to the stage with a vengeance, playing shyster lawyer Billy Flynn in the hard-edged musical megahit “Chicago.” The Oscar-winning, box-office-boffo movie version of “Chicago” seems to have only whetted the nation’s appetite for the show’s current touring stage production, which arrives Tuesday at Cleveland’s State Theatre.

An engaging conversationalist, Harrison, 53, was in Toronto when we spoke about matters “Chicago” and otherwise.

Dan Kane: "The movie “Chicago” was a huge hit. Has this helped or hurt business for the stage version?"
Gregory Harrison: "Helped it, definitely. I assumed the movie would sound the death knell for the Broadway production and certainly the tours, but it did exactly the opposite. It’s given that whole generation of younger people that missed musicals entirely the motivation to come to the theater."

DK: "How does the stage “Chicago” compare to the movie version?"
GH: "It’s faster paced and sexier than the movie. It’s not a letdown in any way."

DK: "Is Richard Gere a tough act for you to follow?"
GH: "Richard did a fine job, but he’s not the definitive Billy Flynn."

DK: "How great is this job for you?"
GH: "I’m having more fun doing this than anything I ever did onstage. It’s the best leading-man job on Broadway, in my opinion. You put on a tux, you don’t have to do much dancing, you get to sing great songs while all these beautiful women in skimpy costumes are fanning you with ostrich feathers. Don’t tell my wife how much fun I’m having!"

DK: "Plus, you get to do that great ventriloquist number, “We Both Reached For the Gun.”"
GH: "It’s my favorite moment in the show. It takes everything I’ve learned over about 30 years in show business and it condenses it into one five-minute number. I have about five balls in the air and I can’t drop any. It’s just brilliantly written. No matter what the audience is like, that song always gets them roaring. After that we just sail."

DK: "Tell me about the actresses playing Velma and Roxie."
GH: "Brenda Braxton and I did the show on Broadway together. She plays Velma and she’s fabulous. She’s a beautiful woman with a great voice and a great energy about her. She makes a funnier Velma than I’m used to having seen. Bianca Marroquin, who plays Roxie, did “Chicago” in Spanish for two years in Mexico City. Her English is perfect; you’d never know she is Latina. She’s fabulous."

DK: "You have done more musical theater than most people know."
GH:"I dabble in it every couple of years. I love it, but I still have a film and television base to my career."

DK: "When did you get started doing music?"
GH: "My father was a poet and he taught me to write poetry, ever since I was 8 or 10 years old. When I was in the Army in the late ’60s, I bought an old used guitar and I started putting my poems to music. My songs were pretty bad. Nobody else would sing them, so I did. Through trial and error I learned to carry a tune. I went to Hollywood and started singing my songs in clubs and eventually moved into doing musicals. I was doing a musical called “Festival” when I was cast in “Trapper John, M.D.”"

DK: "Is it rough being out on the road and away from your family?"
GH: "I have four kids and a wife and a beautiful home in Oregon, so I don’t want to be gone too many months in a row. I’m doing “Chicago” through the holidays, then I’ll be home in early December. Not sure what I’m going to do then. I think it might be time to throw my hat in the ring for a new series."

DK: "You’ve done a lot of television and theater, both things that can be abruptly canceled. Is it frustrating?"
GH: "They are very similar. You work on things for months, years even. A play can open and close in a night or two. A series can be canceled after a few episodes. And often it’s for the most whimsical of reasons having nothing to do with the work itself — like, which side of the bed a critic fell out of that day. After 30 years’ experience, I just do what I do and let the chips fall where they may."

DK: "I’ve read that you are an avid surfer."
GH: "I grew up on Catalina Island, so I’ve surfed and dived since I was a tiny thing, 8 or 9 years old. I still love being in the ocean as much as possible."

DK: "I imagine surfing provides a nice balance to showbiz."
GH: "It certainly is a humbling sport. Out there, you’re dealing with this manifestation of energy from a higher power, plus the waves tend to slap you around pretty good. In this business, you can be lured by the attention and made to feel you really deserve to be treated special. In the surf, you are made to feel there is nothing special about you."

Harrison plays Flynn-flam artist

By Ed Symkus

In 'Chicago,' Gregory Harrison gets to return to his stage roots

Not many people can say they remember when they heard their calling. But Gregory Harrison does.
He and his family lived on Catalina Island, where his father not only ran a glass-bottom boat for tourists, he was also hired as a consultant for the Doris Day film "The Glass Bottom Boat."
"They shot the movie on my dad's boat when I was 15," says Harrison. "And I'm watching them film this movie and I saw that it was a craft, it wasn't just off of instinct; and it brought it within my reach. I thought, 'Oh, this is like putting together a puzzle. You do this and you do that and hit those marks, and then they say this.' I saw that there was a real specific craft to it, and that took all the fear out of it."

Harrison is still best-remembered for his seven-year stint as the affable Gonzo on "Trapper John, M.D." But starting on Tuesday, he'll be returning to his stage and singing roots when the touring production of "Chicago" comes to the Wang Theatre, in Boston. He'll play the slick, smooth-talking lawyer Billy Flynn.
Harrison first saw the play on Broadway when James Naughton was in the role, and like almost every other moviegoer in America, saw the film version with Richard Gere. He insists the play and the film are two different animals.
"The play is faster-moving, it's not as obliged, as the movie had to be for movie audiences, to establish a kind of reality," he says by phone from Toronto. "[When] people come into a theater, they're willing to take the wild ride. A lot of theatrical conventions are allowed in a live performance that simply won't be tolerated in a movie theater."
And while he believes there have been between 40 and 50 Billy Flynns before him in various versions, traveling with this show since last spring has given him ample opportunity to make the part his own.
"I always talk to myself about how to bring whatever my specific personality is to any role I play," he explains. "I don't worry about making it different from the Richard Gere version or the Jimmy Naughton version, I've been acting long enough to know that if I just go for it with full commitment, it's going to be the Gregory Harrison version."

The flashy musical tells of showbiz wannabe Roxie Hart and club singer Velma Kelly, both in jail for murder, both represented by the suave Billy Flynn. Harrison is thrilled to be playing the part, because he really likes the guy, warts and all.
"I think he's kind of a benevolent dictator," he says of Flynn. "I think he feels that it's a dirty job and he's the man to do it. He loves his clients, he loves his job, he loves the crowd, he loves manipulating. He has a big ego, but he has a big talent to of along with it, so he's just a kind of bigger-than-life character."
He laughs off a suggested comparison to O.J. Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran, and says, "I've often said that Johnnie Cochran and that whole O.J. case is probably why this show is such a hit now. Because in 1975 when it opened, it was considered really cynical and quite unrealistic, too stylized, too dark. Then in 1996 when the revival opened on Broadway, the O.J. Simpson case had just happened, and Johnnie Cochran made Billy Flynn look like a kindergartener."

Between TV stints, Harrison has done his share of musicals over the years, starring in productions of "The Music Man," "Guys and Dolls," Steel Pier" and "Follies." To a degree, he owes his career to Jason Robards, who walked into the restaurant on Catalina Island where Harrison was part of the cast of "The Fantastiks." Robards later pulled the struggling young actor aside and told him that he should move to Los Angeles in order to really break in. Harrison listened.
Looking back on it today, he feels that he might have ended up as an actor even if Robards hadn't walked in that night. "I was waiting for any validation, and I was wide open," he says. "Jason happened to be the guy at the time, and I always appreciated it. We became friends and remained friends until he died. But I'm sure I would have end up in the acting business anyway. I was 21 years old and I was champing at the bit."
A better story would have been if it was Gregory Peck. Harrison laughs again when that name in mentioned.
"I was abut 10 or 11, and I was listening to a conversation my mother was having about 'Gentleman's Agreement.' She mentioned Gregory Peck and turned to me and said, 'You know, that's who we named you after.' I thought that was great, I loved it. He was big, tall handsome, well-respected, with a great voice. I never met him, but what a wonderful career he had."

Gregory Harrison stars in "Chicago" at the Wang Theatre in Boston from Nov. 4-9. Tickets are $28-$$75. Call 1-800-447-7400.