CLOSE-UP Hal Linden: Smart, Sweet, But No Schmaltz

[Zoneboy]

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If you think the world of Hal Linden begins and ends with Barney Miller, then think again.

Yes, the much-loved '70s TV series that made him a star is probably the most prominent peak of Linden's career, but it's far from being the only one.

The 78-year-old performer is in Toronto rehearsing for the Harold Green Jewish Theatre's production of Tuesdays With Morrie, which starts previews May 8 at the Winter Garden Theatre but, in the course of a far-ranging conversation conducted at The Senator over a breakfast of bagels and lox, he lifted the curtain on his long and varied life.

He was born in the Bronx and grew up under the care of a father who was "a real music lover and served as the patriarch for our extended family. There was my brother and me, as well as eight male cousins, and all but two of us wound up as professional musicians."

Linden was the youngest and the clarinet was his instrument of choice. He studied dutifully until puberty started moving his thoughts to the fair sex.

"I learned that more girls went to dances than to concerts," Linden says with a laugh, "so I switched to the saxophone and adopted Benny Goodman as my idol."

After that, it was a short leap to becoming the vocalist in front of the band and – after a stint in the military – he began auditioning for Broadway shows.

At first, Linden's luck wasn't that great. Oh, he got jobs, but some of them were in classic turkeys that didn't even leave the rehearsal hall or closed on the road. As he rattles off titles like Pleasure Dome and Strip for Action, it's easy to see why the shows never made it.

But then came Bells Are Ringing, the hit musical starring Judy Holliday. Linden's girlfriend at the time – Frances Martin, who he has been married to since 1958 – was a dancer in the show when the job of understudy to male lead Sidney Chaplin came open.

This was a particularly sensitive posting, because, as Linden vividly recalls, "Judy and Sidney were having a thing at the time and it got pretty volatile on occasion. They hired me on a Monday and, by Sunday, Sidney was announcing, `I'm not going on stage with her!' and I had to spring into action."

He hadn't even had time to learn the staging for the show's hit song, "Just In Time," so he sang it into Holliday's ear as she gently but firmly pushed his shoulder so that he faced the audience instead.

"She was the most generous actress I ever met," he says fondly, "and one of the most brilliant, saddled with the impression that she was a dumb blonde," thanks to her star-making role in Born Yesterday.

Linden continued in Broadway musicals, finally breaking through to stardom and a Tony Award with The Rothschilds. But then – as it always does – Los Angeles beckoned and, before too long, he found himself as the star of a police-station sitcom called Barney Miller.

To this day, Linden is proud of his work on that show. "We never walked away from a shoot saying, `We'll do better next week.' Every single episode was executed as perfectly as we could do it. The actors around me were the best. And the scripts? Unbeatable."

After Miller went off the air in 1982, Linden tried other sitcoms but none really clicked. He's philosophical about the whole process.

"Who knows why something succeeds or fails? It's not like anyone ever sets out to deliberately do a bad TV show but, sometimes, that's just the way it works out."

The stage has always remained Linden's first love, which is why he's in Toronto in Tuesdays With Morrie, based on the Mitch Alboim book about the wisdom the author received from weekly visits with his dying former teacher.

"I didn't like the original book," Linden says with rare candour. "I thought it was sentimental, maudlin, self-aware. Morrie was so full of folksy wisdom that I wouldn't want to be in his presence too long."

But when he read the stage script, he changed his mind completely.

"Everything has much more humour. We get all the points obliquely. You don't have to sew it on a sampler and put it up on the wall."

What does he think the play is trying to say?

"Live fully," is his immediate response. "Take life and fill it up with all you can. Commit to it and, when you go, you'll go smiling.

"I don't fear death," Linden says thoughtfully. "I'm not a heavily religious person and I don't really believe in hell, but I've done enough good things in my life, just in case. I have four children who – wonder of wonders! – all still talk to me, and eight grandchildren who are always happy to see me. That's the best."

And when it comes time for Linden to leave this world, he would like to do it like his brother Bernie did a year and a half ago.

"It was Yom Kippur," Linden says with a gentle smile, "and he was playing the viola in the synagogue. He died, literally, in the middle of a note.

"You want that ending? I'll take it any day."


GETTING PERSONAL WITH HAL LINDEN

Q: Have you ever considered doing another TV series?

Ruth Pellis, Newcastle, Ont.

A: Yes. Anything that has validity and interest where I can contribute some imagination to the process.

Q: What would you say is the biggest difference between acting for television and acting for the stage?

Racheal McCaig, Elgin County

A: The size of the proscenium. Stage is 30-odd-feet wide and you have to fill it. The TV screen's opening is maybe 30 inches and you have to fill that, too. You always have to do just enough, not too much.

Q: Did you have a favourite moment in Barney Miller?

Mark Stevens, Oshawa

A: It was an episode I directed. Steve Landesberg, who played Dietrich, met an old high-school girlfriend of his and they wondered whether or not to connect again. I told them to play the subtext of how much they had wanted each other back then, but never did it. It made the scene electric.

Q: Are there any musicals you'd still like to do?

Michael Rubinoff, Toronto

A: Well, I've had about 19 offers to play Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, but none of them ever worked out and I think I'm too old now. I also always wanted to play the King in The King and I and Harold Hill in The Music Man. Too old for those as well, but I still sing "Ya Got Trouble" in my concert act.

[catlover79]

Thanks for postuing, Charles! Great article. Hal has always been a class act - and I would love to hear him perform "Ya Got Troule".