Joanna Gleason makes first appearance here

By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN

Tony Award winner Joanna Gleason made a long overdue trip to New Orleans this weekend appearing at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré along with sexy and talented string quartet Well Strung. Gleason appeared as part of the Broadway@ series initiated by producer Mark Cortale two years ago.

Tony Award winner Joanna Gleason, who appeared here on Saturday night. (Photo courtesy Mark Cortale Productions)

It was Gleason’s first trip to the Crescent City, a fact which seems illogical given her many years of being a big name star on Broadway and in Hollywood where she worked on several TV series and in film. But it may well be her success and her dedication to teaching others that explains her inability to get away and get much traveling done.

In a recent interview, she also admitted that cabaret is very much a new experience for her. Invited by Cortale to perform along with pianist and interview Seth Rudetsky in Provincetown, MA., she first became aware of Well Strung, the string quartet Cortale also manages, who opened for her. She was transfixed. “Yes, I met them and I had this inspiration – this idea – that I would do a little show in Provincetown,” Gleason stated. “I had never done a cabaret show. I had never done an evening show of my own.”

To do an evening of unrelated songs or even a night of songs revolving on a theme didn’t seem like something with which she would be comfortable. “That’s not really me,” she explained. “I want to tell a story and guide a narrative there.”

After the success of the Provincetown performance this past summer, 54 Below, the cabaret hot spot in the former Studio 54 space in New York, came calling and asked her to play for three nights there with Well Strung in support.

“I wanted to use Well Strung to not only back me orchestrally,” she continued. “I wanted to use them vocally too.” Well Strung figures as a soundtrack to her life. “They play beautifully and they are charming,” Gleason added.

Along with her music director and pianist Jeff Klitz, she wrote her biography in words accompanied by selected songs, some of which Well Strung will play and sing as well as her. “He’s written some gorgeous arrangements,” Gleason gushed. “It is my story; the story of my life and is shows how I ended up right where I am in life.”

Her story is interesting to say the least. Born the daughter of TV’s Monty Hall (real name Maurice Halperin) of “Let’s Make a Deal” fame, Gleason  was imbued with a number of Jewish values including hard work and dedication towards family.

“The fact that dad was on a show that was nationaly famous made him into a sought-after fund raiser,” she noted. TV’s big trader made frequent appearances as a keynote speaker, auctioneer or host for the night. “He has raised over a billion dollars for charity,” she beamed. “Also, he has been a tireless and ceaseless fundraiser for Israel.”

Gleason’s memories of her childhood are largely pleasant. She recalled having first lived in her native Canada, before journeying as a youngster to New York City and later to a suburban home in New Rochelle, NY, as her father’s career improved. She attended two different schools in different districts there. Later, as her dad’s career kept improving, they moved to a modest neighborhood in Beverly Hills, CA. Her parents still live in that same home.

Gleason described that last move as culture shock because she still considers herself “an East Coast girl.” Her fellow Jewish schoolmates at Beverly Hills High School, were Richard Dreyfus, Lorraine Newman, Albert Brooks and Julie Kavner to name a few. It was there that she became a regular fixture in school plays and began to craft her profession, receiving instruction from soap star John Ingle, who was a teacher at her school.

She followed that up with her enrollment and graduation from Occidental College . Her master’s degree from UCLA also further prepared her for an acting and singing career and bred in her the desire to teach and give back to up and coming performers and acting students. Gleason has done this most of her life and still holds several master classes throughout the year teaching specific exercises and techniques for as few as 15 or as many as 40 students.

But as important as education was to ground her in her real life, Gleason said she sometimes retreated into an imaginary life, where she could be anything she desired, particularly during those turbulent periods when she was moving from one school to another or one culture to another. Part of that imaginary life – her life as a dancer or a big band vocalist – was expressed in the show she wrote and performed at Le Petit. “We moved so many times,” she acknowledged, “I would retreat into this.”

That overactive imagination may have been behind the drive for her success both as a professional actor and as a teacher. Although she did appear on several series including “Bette” with Bette Midler and “Hello, Larry” with McLean Stevenson, her true love has always been the stage.

Gleason’s win in 1998 for her role as the Baker’s Wife in “Into the Woods” by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine is probably her greatest professional achievement. But Gleason, who kept her married name from an earlier marriage to acting instructor Paul Gleason, points to her current marriage to Chris Sarandon (since 1994) and her three children from all three of her marriages as to her real great successes.

Sarandon, who some will remember from his role as Prince Humperdinck in “The Princess Bride,” made one of several guest appearances during the course of the evening.

Although Gleason doesn’t profess to an observant lifestyle, she raised her children with many of the values found in Judaism. She has focused on having a finely attuned social conscience, with which she was indoctrinated as a child by her parents, most especially her dad. “You have to have a basic grasp of right and wrong,” she mused about her upbringing. She also claimed that her dad told her and her sister to never be afraid to “be who you are.”

Gleason’s fearless show was a near sellout Saturday night. One of the highlights of the hour-plus long show on Saturday, was a song from her starring role in the not-so-successful, but critically acclaimed “Nick and Nora,” based on “The Thin Man” movie series.

Prior to her performance, Gleason described her realized work with Well Strung as a book show with music. “Hopefully it’s a window into my wacky world,” she said, admitting, “I like my little show.”

A reunion show in Los Angeles with most of the original surviving “Into the Woods” cast members is slated to be held in the upcoming weeks, just ahead of the feature film release this December of the same directed by Rob Marshall and starring Meryl Streep, Chris Pine and Johnny Depp. Gleason’s highly evocative role of The Baker’s Wife will be played by Emily Blunt.

Gleason’s future solo projects include working on a new movie she has written, which she hopes soon to cast and direct.