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| Author | Topic: Dames Article |
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 moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/16/2003 at 10:10:26 PM ET
A while back I mentioned an article I had read about Bernadette when she was starring in Dames At Sea. The reporter came to her house (her parents' house) and well I just thought it was adorable and many of you wanted me to tell you more. The problem of course being that I couldn't remember much more about it. Well I found the article again. Since Kevin can't legally post the entire article, I'm going to post excerpts. My favorite part is the last paragraph but I'll post in order so you'll have to stick it out to the end. 
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 12/17/2003 at 10:41:48 AM ET
Oh good.Really looking forward to that--just love the old interviews and bios.
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/17/2003 at 11:31:34 AM ET
Running into some technically difficulties. I'll get the first installment up as soon as I can.
| Chiquita
Registered User
Registered:
12/4/2003
From:
Toronto | posted: 12/17/2003 at 11:40:35 AM ET
Wow! Thank you sooo much! I'm sooo excited! Where is the article from?
One more question: I'm confused as to when Bernadette did Dames at Sea. Some sources say she was 19, others say she was 24! Did she do it more than once?
You either got it, or you aint!
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/17/2003 at 12:04:25 PM ET
First Installment:
Dames at Sea - or on the Way Up?
“You mean ya wanna come out to Queens?”. The voice on the telephone is breezy, breathless and boop-bopp-a-doopy, and it belongs to Bernadette Peters, the 20 year old kewpie doll star of Dames at Sea, the smash Off-Broadway 30s musical spoof. She lives in Ozone Park, she says, which is 10 miles into the heartland of Queens, and she has a mother, a father , a brother, a dog - and a great-uncle who lives upstairs. “Would you mind?” She asks in that apologetic tone that people who live in Queens always seem to have. Mind, after all those same old interviews at the Plaza, or in dressing rooms, or over lunch at Sardi’s, where gravy always seems to dribble on your notes? Mind?
And so it is Saturday, and the photographer’s car is speeding east on Queens Boulevard, and we’re looking for a Woodhaven Boulevard to turn right on. We get lost. Finally, an unusually courteous cop tells us to go back west until we spot a Howard Johnson’s, and turn left there. Then it’s down Woodhaven, past countless gas stations, a couple of cemeteries and closed-for-the-winter ice cream stands. In the distance, a big jet takes off from Kennedy, and you wonder if its going to wind up in Havana. At last, 45 minutes after leaving Big Town, we come to a halt in front of a modest two-family frame house with artificial brick siding that is not much different from all the other houses in the neighborhood, except there is a blue and white panel truck parked in the driveway with the words “Italian Bread” painted on the back.
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/17/2003 at 12:58:47 PM ET
Installment Two:
Bernadette throws open the front door. She doesn’t look a thing the way she does in “Dames”, mainly because she has hooked a long blonde fall into her ordinarily short locks. It makes her a ringer for Lynn Redgrave. (She’s also been told she looks like “a young Angela Landbury.”) Her brown eyes are her best feature - they shimmer like crushed velvet - and she has the flawless skin of a girl who was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm instead of in the grimiest city in the world. She is wearing a brown wool minidress with a mesh “harem” belt, and it is obvious that this is one actress who does not exist on celery and yogurt. Her shape is probably best described as “voluptuous.” Whatever it is, her chubby thighs jiggle in time with the music whenever she dances in “Dames”.
Inside, the family is waiting. There’s “Ma”, Marguerite Maltese Lazzara, a-big-busted woman in a black dress who is as stagestruck as her daughter and who dabbles in acting under the name of Marge Peters. She sometimes keeps three television sets going (two black-and-white, one color) when she’s watching for her daughter’s Playtex bra commercial - and also so she won’t miss the TV reviews of Bernadette’s shows. “Daddy” is Peter Lazzara, a smiling, soft-spoken man who buys Italian bread from bakeries, puts his own blue and white wrapper on it, and sells it to the grocery stores. (Bernadette chose the stage name “Peters” in honor of her father.) Great-uncle is Anthony Libassi, a part-time steamfitter, and he is holding Suzy, a part fox terrier, part cocker spaniel whom the Lazzaras call “the burglar’s friend” because she is not much of a barker. The other member of the household, Bernadette’s 24-year-old truckdriver brother, Joseph, is away for the weekend skiing at Lake Placid.
“I still can’t believe what’s happened,” Bernadette says, sounding a bit like Ruby, the small-town chorine she plays in “Dames” who taps her way from the bus station to stardom in 24 hours. “The people from J. Walter Thompson and Ashley Famous want to be my agents. I’m going to on the Merv Griffin Show, and two years ago I couldn’t even pass the audition. People are coming down to “Dames” in limousines. David Merrick came down, and he went out and sat in his limousine during intermission. We all thought he had left because he didn’t like the show. They’re even talking about making the show into a movie. I’d like to do it, because I’m close to the part. I don’t want anyone else to get it. Movies would be fun, I think, but I don’t want to do any ‘Bikini Beach’ type films.”
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 12/17/2003 at 1:28:04 PM ET
Spectacular! Moljul, you're my new hero. This is just the best. Can hardly wait for more. Thanks!!
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/17/2003 at 1:35:05 PM ET
Glad you are enjoying it. I was hoping to cut and paste from the file of the article but it wouldn't work so I'm having to type it in. So be patient, I'll eventually get a new installment to you. 
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/17/2003 at 4:36:57 PM ET
Installment #3
As Bernadette snuggles into a red velvet Victorian couch to be photographed, Mrs. Lazzara conducts a tour of the house, starting with her “real Italian kitchen.” The refrigerator, of course, is bulging with Italian delicacies, and there are wine bottles everywhere. “She makes the best lasagna and ricotta cake that anybody has ever tasted,” Peter Lazzara says, throwing an arm around his wife’s waist.
The next stop is Bernadette’s blue and white bedroom, its walls covered with theater posters, autographed pictures of actor friends, and the Theater World citation Bernadette won in 1968 for her role as George Cohan’s sister, Josie, in “George M”. Sitting on the bed is an enormous stuffed pink pig that Bernadette got as a gift from a friend.
“She’s just a normal little girl,” Mrs. Lazzara says, pulling some beads out of Bernadette’s dresser. “She likes beads. She helps me around the house. She sets the table and makes coffee. She’s always been a very, very bright child. She used to sit in front of the televison and imitate the actresses. I took her to dancing school in New York when she was 3, and then she started appearing on all the children’s TV shows. She imitated Sophie Tucker singing ‘Some of These Days’ on the Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour. She was on ‘Juvenile Jury’ twice and won a typewriter and a wristwatch. She always had the gift of gab. She won $800 on ‘Name that Tune’ when she was 5 ½ . You know what song she missed on? ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama!’ She was 9 when she got her first stage part, with Kim Hunter and James Daly in ‘This is Goggle.’ She was supposed to play a funny little girl. Otto Preminger was the director, and he said to her, ‘Darling, you were wonderful.’ You know, with that accent of his. One of the critics called her ‘a grammar school Diamond Lil.’ She got good reviews but the show bombed. It closed in Washington before it got to Broadway.”
After that came more TV shows, and then, when she was 13, Bernadette spent eight months on the road playing Dainty June in “Gypsy.” In 1966, the year after her graduation from Quintano’s School for Young Professionals on West 56th Street, Bernadette originated the part of Ruby in a short-lived production of “Dames at Sea” at Caffe Cino in the Village. She became a hot commodity after her “Dames” debut. She pulled down the lead in “The Penny Friend” Off Broadway, which snagged her a nomination for the Vernon Rice Award in 1967. Later that year she made her Broadway debut in “Johnny, No Trump,” which closed after one night. Then came the part of Alice Faye in “Curley McDimple,” another Off Broadway 30s musical now in its second year. She left “Curley” in December 1967, to do “George M,” and left “George M” last August to do “A Mother’s Kisses,” but was written out before it folded in Baltimore. And then in November, after Bernadette had taken a vacation in Puerto Rico to get her “first tan,” along came good old “Dames at Sea” again - rewritten, longer and with new songs. This time the show got raves, and everyone loved Bernadette and her red bee-stung lips
“Now I’m out of the picture,” Mrs. Lazzara said sadly, still fondling the beads in Bernadette’s bedroom. “She doesn’t need me any more. At 20 years old, she told me, ‘Mother, get your own show.’”
| jmslsu01
Registered User
Registered:
6/9/2003
From:
northern VA | posted: 12/17/2003 at 5:11:54 PM ET
Moljul-
This is a treat. Veeery interesting.
Jenn
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 12/17/2003 at 5:49:37 PM ET
I feel like a 19th century reader eagerly awaiting the next Dickens installment.
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 12/17/2003 at 8:17:23 PM ET
Well the wait is over. I particularly love the last part:
Bernadette’s picture-taking session is finally over, and the whole gang gathers around the dining room table for coffee and six varieties of cookies. The talk ranges from antique rings - Bernadette likes wearing them on all of her fingers - to whether the Lazzaras are Sicilian or Italian - “We’re Sicilian,” Mr. Lazzara says, “but we say Italian because otherwise people think of the Mafia” - and finally settles on astrology. It is Bernadette’s pet passion right now. “Oh, I’ll never have a chart done,” she says. “I just like to know signs, because I like to watch how people with the same signs react to each other. Each sign is supposed to have a part of the body that’s particularly vulnerable. I’m Pisces and mine is the feet. The critics are always mentioning my feet. Kerr mentioned my feet in his review. But I’ll never get hung up on this stuff. It can upset you. A girl in ‘George M’ read my palm and told me I’d have three marriages and many affairs. I got so upset I cried for two days!”
Bernadette says she didn’t do too much preparing for the part of Ruby, seeing as how she’d seen all those 30s musicals on TV when she was a kid. “I’d check the TV Guide every week,” she says, munching on a pink, green and white cookie, “When an old musical would go on, I’d dance with my shoulders (she demonstrates) just like those women would. I love the way they danced, always gliding, and the way they always seemed to have a 12-foot midriff. I used to stand and look at myself in the living room mirror and dance like Ann Miller. I liked Ginger Rogers a lot, too. And Eleanor Powell, when she’d kick her leg up and wave her foot back and forth. I wasn’t that fond of Ruby Keeler, though. She was such a heavy hoofer.”
The fact that “Dames at Sea” is in the Bouwerie Lane Theater on the edge of the Bowery doesn’t bother Bernadette much, even though the derelicts occasionally try to panhandle her - just as they do the audiences. “I feel safer there than I did on 47th and Broadway where I did ‘George M,’” she says. “That’s where the ladies of the night work. I couldn’t even walk down the street without feeling like a prostitute. And when you have to stand there and wait for someone, forget it!”
And that brings up the subject of The Wicked City, and whether or not Bernadette should have her own apartment in Manhattan. It’s a touchy topic in the Lazzara household - even though Bernadette spends $240 a month on cabs going to and from the theater.
“She has all the comforts of home here,” says father.
“Too many dope addicts and mental cases in the city,” says great-uncle.
“If she did live alone, I’d make sure she had a doorman,” say mother.
“Listen, if I did live alone, I’d make sure I had a doorman,” says Bernadette. The voice is brave, but her eyes betray her. For an instant there is a scared-little-girl flicker in them, and you get the impression that right now, anyway, she’s rather live in a place where a girl doesn’t need doormen to fend off would-be robbers and rapists. A safe place. A homey place, with mama’s pasta. Ozone Park.
|  Brandon29
Registered User
Registered:
6/13/2003
From:
Brooklyn, NY | posted: 12/17/2003 at 9:15:05 PM ET
And now look at her! One successful marriage, movies, television, concerts, and playing her dream role, billed as a two-time Tony Award Winner! The beads thing remids me of the line "So rattle me beads... look what happened to Mabel!" Haha!
LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO MABEL!!
| BroadwayQueen06
Registered User
Registered:
9/3/2003 | posted: 12/17/2003 at 10:59:15 PM ET
Thanks for posting this, moljul, the article was really interesting. I love reading the old interview's Bernadette has given and comparing them to the more recent ones.
| Chiquita
Registered User
Registered:
12/4/2003
From:
Toronto | posted: 12/17/2003 at 11:09:36 PM ET
That was amazing. It really puts everything into persective and makes her more real and honest than she already is!!!
Thank you!
You either got it, or you aint!
| poster53180
Registered User
Registered:
9/25/2003 | posted: 12/18/2003 at 12:07:39 AM ET
My FAVORITE part of the article is this...
“She’s just a normal little girl,” Mrs. Lazzara says, pulling some beads out of Bernadette’s dresser. “She likes beads."
how cute it that? she likes beads! Thanks so much for posting the article Moljul! much appreciated!
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