Cinderella, produced by Carole W. Nussbaum for Cabrillo Musical Theatre, opens July 23; plays Thur.-Fri., 8 pm; Sat., 2 & 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through Aug. 1. Tickets: $25-$55. Kavli Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks; 805.449.2787 or cabrillomusicaltheatre.com.
With a career that ignited 40 years ago opposite Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, mushroomed through eight years of All in the Family, smoldered through seven years of The Gilmore Girls and glowed through decades as the spokesperson of international children’s charities, Sally Struthers seems to have it made. Among her many honors she has received two Emmy and two Golden Globe Awards as Family’s Gloria.
Sally Struthers
It would appear she would never have to work again if she didn’t want to! Au contraire, she laughs, “How would I pay my mortgage?” As it turns out this star of television and film also has a thriving stage career that never lets up - and she needs the work. “This is my way of earning a living. When I am not enjoying the spoils of having a job at home I have to hit the road. I didn’t think at this age I’d still be living like a gypsy. People think I get these big old All in the Family residuals but I don’t.”
Fortunately for Struthers there is no lack of opportunity. She is bewildered by her luck at getting work. “I have been unbelievably fortunate. I have friends who can perform circles around me - that they don’t work breaks my heart. I don’t know why I am this lucky. But work keeps coming at me. It comes at me!!! It is a strange phenomenon.”
Among her Broadway forays, she was Mamie Lynch in Tommy Tune’s revival of Grease and did the national tour of Annie starring as Miss Hannigan. Locally she has received an Ovation Award for her hilarious portrayal of Agnes Gooch in Mame at Musical Theatre West and was again nominated as Louise Seger in Always, Patsy Cline.
Though she would have preferred to stay home in LA with her daughter and pets, as soon as The Gilmore Girls said goodbye to Stars Hollow, Struthers went into nonstop rehearsals and performances throughout the country. Her next Southern California gig is as the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic Cinderella at Cabrillo Music Theatre in Thousand Oaks.
She is delighted at the prospect of Cinderella. “I met the kids playing Cinderella and the Prince [Melissa Mitchell and Derek Klena] at a photo shoot. They are absolutely darling. They’ve been friends since they were little kids.”
But mostly she is excited about her co-veteran TV star: “My darling, darling friend Marcia Wallace is going to play the Stepmother. I’ve been friends with her for almost 40 years and yet we’ve never worked together.” Also in Cinderella are stage pros Norman Large as The King and Christina Saffran Ashford as The Queen. The cast of 45 is directed by Lewis Wilkenfeld with musical director Steven Smith conducting the live orchestra.
Struthers comes back to Southern California off a series of theatrical events and is so glad to get home. “I don’t have much of a real life. When I talk to my kids I always say I am homesick. Home is Hollywood but right now I am in Pittsburgh doing the musical Curtains. I have been booked solid for the whole year. Before this I was somewhere in Pennsylvania doing Nunsense. Most of my work is away from home.
“The seven years on Gilmore Girls was an absolute luxury. I was also doing a recurring role on Still Standing. That was an extraordinary time to be at home with my daughter. All that goes away again when you roll up your sleeves and go out and do the real work.
“Luckily work comes at me from everywhere. The day after I close Cinderella I leave for Lewiston, New York to do All Shook Up [Aug. 12-22]. I believe I have a week off after that then I go to Ogunquit, Maine for two months to do Chicago. Then there is another production of Always, Patsy Cline being planned.”
She is anxious to work on Cinderella. “I am excited about having it unfold to me in the luxury of two whole weeks of rehearsal.” The word “luxury” is meant ironically as theatre companies can’t afford anymore to have the kinds of rehearsals performers need. Fortunately her deft sense of humor is intact as she describes current theatrical working conditions.
She says over the phone, “Here in Pittsburgh we opened Tuesday night after one week of rehearsal to learn a two-and-a-half hour musical that none of us knew. You don’t get paid if you don’t learn the part and you are expected to show up on opening night and do it! There have been mistakes by all of us. The people here in Pittsburgh are seeing something less than perfection since we are all out there mostly surviving on adrenalin.”
That sense of humor that keeps her going is a birthright from her family. She recalls with pleasure, “My mom was so funny. I was so lucky to have come into the world through her. She was a riot. She was brilliant. She single-handedly got my father through medical school. When people would ask her how I turned up in show business and had a successful career, my mother would say, ‘Sally was born with funny!’ Since the time I could walk and talk my greatest joy was to entertain the family. I couldn’t wait for the TV to break down. They’d take the innards out to take to the shop to fix it and I’d go to the box with a hole in it and was right there with puppets and products and if anyone would walk into the living room I’d do a show.
“It didn’t occur to me I’d do anything with it. When I went to movies or saw television I never connected up the idea those people had a career called ‘being an actor.’ My career choice was to be a doctor like my dad. But then I had to dissect a cow’s eye in biology and it made me so physically violently ill I had a nervous breakdown. My father had to come home and give me shots to put me to sleep. I wouldn’t stop crying.
“My mother sat me down and said, ‘We’ve got to get to the bottom of this. You’ve been crying for 12 hours.’ I bawled that I always wanted to be a doctor and now I didn’t know what to do with my life. She said, ‘Go to acting school.’ I whined, ‘Why would I do that?’ ‘It is what you do naturally. You’ve been entertaining your entire life. It’s a natural progression.’
“So she got me into the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts. It was a three year college but I only went two because the third year the IRS padlocked the doors.” Two years later she landed All in the Family and has never stopped working.
As soon as she was making a good living she followed her grandmother’s example of sponsoring a third-world child through the Children’s Christian Fund. “I received a photo and a case history of a little girl in the Philippines. I was happily doing that quietly for two years. Then someone wrote me asking if I would like to do more. I said I had been sponsoring two years blindly believing I was helping her. But if they wanted me to tell others to do it they’d have to let me investigate them. So I did.
“I was convinced but they wanted to convince me further and asked what country I’d like to visit to see how they worked in the field. There had just been a terrible earthquake in Guatemala so I wanted to go there. I went for a week and saw all the programs and all the kids. I came back and said I was completely convinced and would do it. I volunteered with them for about 25 years. Then I went to Save the Children for about 10 years. Now I don’t travel for either anymore because I got sick.” This work remains extremely important to Struthers whose sense of giving back is as strong as her sense of humor.
Still it is that spark of humor that keeps her life fresh and attracts others so much. “A sense of humor will get you through just about anything in life. My dad had a great one; he used to cure patients as much with laughter as by medicine. I see people walking down the street with the ear buds in their ears listening to an IPod or radios cranked up in their cars. Not for me, my favorite music is laughter. If I can get one person in a full theatre laughing it is a concert to me.”
Feature image of Derek Klena, Melissa Mitchell and Sally Struthers by Ed Krieger.
Article by Tom Provenzano.
