‘She Loves Me’ Is Music to Beth Howland’s Ears

Beth Howland is very happy to be a soubrette.

That’s the word the actress--who for nine years played Vera on the television series “Alice”--uses to describe her role as the heart-of-gold Miss Ritter in the California Music Theatre production of “She Loves Me,” opening today at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

“The show has always meant a lot to me,” said Howland during a recent rehearsal break of the Joe Masteroff/Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick musical. “My one job outside show business was as the secretary for Sheldon Harnick--only because his wife was my very best friend. They kind of adopted me. He sent me to typing school. I was totally incompetent as a secretary, but I’m great on the phone. . . .”

Although she didn’t see the show then, Howland has always been a devoted fan of the album:

“The story--boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl don’t know they’ve found each other--is charming, the score is beautiful.

“I’m not a singer,” she added quickly. “I’ve been in musicals (including a Broadway debut at 16 in “Bye, Bye, Birdie”), but as an actress --I mean, I have a sense of music. I was in ‘Company.’ Stephen Sondheim wrote a song for me (“Getting Married Today”)--for my range of three notes.”

Such handicaps don’t appear to have stood in her way. Howland’s first trip to Los Angeles netted an episode on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” (“My first television job, and I never got over it. Everyone was so nice .”) The second trip was for a pilot that didn’t sell. On the third trip, she got her role in “Alice.”

Overnight, her life changed. “I would walk into a restaurant and people would stare . . . it was really weird. But the biggest change for me was having security. Doing a series: It’s like a vacation from worrying. I mean, the biggest part of being an actor is the business end of it--which is really hard, especially if you’re not a very confident person. When you’re a kid and you have all these aspirations, you don’t think about the reality of how it all works.”

For Howland, those realities felt a lot harsher in Los Angeles.

“The difference between New York and here is enormous,” she stressed. “It’s not as competitive in New York, I don’t think. Here, it’s all about money. In New York, say if I had an audition and I knew I wasn’t really right for it and I bumped into you, I’d say, ‘Listen, you’ve got to run over and see so-and-so.’ Here, forget it. But that really did happen in New York--a lot. It was the norm.” Even as a teen-ager, the city held no terrors for her. “They say God looks out for children and idiots,” she said, smiling. “There must be something about innocence that protects you.”

When success finally did hit, the Boston-born actress held on with both hands. “An actor on ‘The Love Boat’ (television series) once told me he was going to be on that ship till it sank,” she said. “That’s the way I felt. It’s crazy to leave a series. Of course, it gets to a point of (artistic burnout)--but there are other realities, other considerations. Like the dentist. Like not wanting to have tuna noodle casserole every night.”

When the series “Alice” ended in 1985, Howland quickly segued into a role in “The Torch Bearers” at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

“I was really lucky to do that,” she recalled. “If I hadn’t, I probably would’ve gone into shock. I think I kind of did, anyway. It’s like leaving school--you see all these people every day for years, then suddenly they’re gone from your life.”

It also felt--a bit--like starting over again professionally. “People know you,” she said, “but they don’t want your type, and you’re locked into an image. I still am.” Howland hopes to break the perky mold in an upcoming ABC “Afterschool Special,” in which--she says proudly--”I play a really hateful character.”

Between bouts of work, she beats off malaise with Saturday morning out-loud readings of Shakespeare plays with a group of actors.

She’s also launched a new project with actress buddy Jennifer Warren, an animated film with “documentary wrap-around,” based on the writings of a young boy with cancer--” . . . in all the books he read, the people with cancer died. He decided to write about people with cancer who lived, because he was going to live.” Currently raising funds for the project, the actresses hope to show the film on television and later in hospitals and schools.

“We were tired of just sitting around, waiting for people to come to us,” Howland said matter-of-factly. “So we decided to stop worrying and take responsibility for ourselves.” She shrugged. “You just do the best you can. It must be very hard to people who come to California and have success on television when they’re very young. I was older. I’d been in the business a long time.” The trick, she says, is not taking that new-found stature too seriously. “I think it’d be really stupid to believe it--because it goes real fast.”