MULTIFACETED CAREER : HAILING HOUSEMAN AND LIFE IN ARTS

How about a smile for the camera, Mr. Houseman?

“I don’t do that,” he said gruffly. At age 84, Romanian-born John Houseman ( ne Jean Haussmann) is perhaps justifiably world-weary but not unkind; imposing but not imperious; stately, direct--and very, very much on the ball.

On Tuesday, the Mark Taper Forum celebrates its 20th Anniversary Week with “Hail Houseman,” a tribute to the actor/writer/producer/director with readings, film clips and anecdotes--by colleagues who include Geraldine Fitzgerald, Nina Foch, John Frankenheimer, Lainie Kazan, Brock Peters, Madolyn Smith, David Ogden Stiers, James Stephens and Inga Swenson.

“I don’t know exactly what they’re going to do,” he said, glancing out the window of his sunny beach house in Malibu. “I have a fairly shrewd idea. I’m sure they’ll say kind things. There’ll be hell to pay if they don’t.” As promised, Houseman doesn’t smile, but occasionally there’s a hint of a twinkle. And his being honored by the Taper is certainly apropos.

“In 1947, Norman Lloyd and I started a theater here called the Coronet,” he explained. “We had a very distinguished season of plays: five West Coast premieres, including the world premiere of Brecht’s ‘Galileo.’ At the same time, HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) investigations had started and that dampened everybody’s morale. But the truth is that the town really wasn’t ready for theater. I wanted it to be, and it should’ve been--but it wasn’t.”

He shrugged. “Exactly 12 years later, we started the Professional Theatre Group (at UCLA). The programs were almost identical, but the climate had changed. As so often happens in theater, it’s not enough to do good shows. Your timing has to be right. This time people were waiting for it--and the theater really took off.”

Houseman stayed with the group three years, his less-than-happy departure a result of the university regents’ reneging on a plan to build an on-campus theater. But before he left, he suggested a young protege, Gordon Davidson, as his successor. Davidson got the appointment, and 2 1/2 years later, when the Taper was built, he was tapped to be its artistic director.

“Gordon’s success was a great joy to me,” Houseman said simply. “He had been production stage manager on ‘King Lear’ (with Morris Carnovsky in the title role) and had also worked for me for two years at Stratford. I was very fond of him; we were very close. He started out downtown with a fairly controversial piece, ‘The Devils,’ and all hell was raised. But it was a very healthy thing. What you’re afraid of is a theater where no one gives a damn one way or another.”

Although he may not remember by name his favorite Taper shows over the years, Houseman’s admiration is iron-clad. “On the whole, they’ve been very lively, catholic, interesting programs. Of course, certain plays I liked better than others. But that’s as it should be.”

Spoken like a true theater person. Since his arrival in the United States in 1925, Houseman’s had his hands on everything, from the 1927 launching (with Orson Welles) of the Mercury Theatre to writing radio scripts for Helen Hayes, to producing films (“Julius Caesar,” “The Bad and the Beautiful,” “Lust for Life”) and Broadway (“Coriolanus,” “Beggar’s Opera,” “Clarence Darrow”), to the founding of the drama division at the Juilliard School in 1968.

He’s also found time to write about his life (in “Run-Through,” “Front and Center” and “Final Dress”) and with his 1973 acting debut--and subsequent Oscar for best supporting actor in “The Paper Chase”--found himself a media celebrity: reprising his Professor Kingsfield role in the long-running “Paper Chase” series, and adopting that authoritarian presence in endorsements for everything from McDonald’s to Puritan Oil, to his most famous, for Smith-Barney.

“I’ve always done many things,” he noted. “It’s sort of a vice of mine. Not a wonderful way to operate--you scatter yourself to some extent--but it’s the way I’ve always worked, the way I’ve enjoyed working. One of the reasons I was so happy when this screwy acting career happened was because, with theater producing, I always have the feeling that I’ve done it before: 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago. And while each (project) is different, you do have a feeling of repeating yourself.”

And after those many years, even Houseman gets tired. “I’m getting very old to work any more,” he said. “There are a lot of young people coming up and theater’s an enormously hard taskmaster.” Although he’s cut down on the directing (an exception: 1985’s staging of “Richard III” at San Diego’s Old Globe), Houseman does stays active in the decision-making of his New York-based Acting Company--and, when he’s able, fits in some radio work: “I love radio. I grieve its demise.”

And Broadway’s?

“Broadway is a washout,” he said without emotion. “It’s sad because Broadway in its day was a source of great theatrical energy. It was a wonderful place. Now, it’s become a showcase for tourists. Everything you see in New York has originated somewhere else, either in Britain or in the regions. Of those, Los Angeles is one of the big growers. So are Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Seattle. Although San Francisco is in a bit of a decline. . . .

“We’re not in a great cultural era at the moment,” he continued. “Years and years of inflation, years of Reagan management . . . it’s not been a very inspiring time for any of the arts. And theater is always the most sensitive, the most affected by circumstances. The fact is, if you look at the space in the entertainment section in the New York Times, theater is fourth--behind music, television and movies. New Yorkers have an allergy to the theater. They simply won’t go.

“It’ll pass. It always does.”

For Houseman, there are only good feelings about a life in the theater. “I’ve been very lucky to live as long as I have,” he said, “and that it’s added up to a great deal: a body of work, a body of human relationships in that work. That’s what really adds up when you finally look back down the hill. That’s what’s most impressive--and most satisfying.”