Two Actors and Their Bicoastal Flings : Rene Auberjonois and Betty Garrett are L.A. veterans, but both are adding new spice to their performing with Broadway shows

“People think this is false modesty on my part,” says ‘City of Angels’ Tony nominee Rene Auberjonois, “but the fact is, once our show was a hit, I was pretty sure I’d be nominated, because the role is the kind of role, as long as you don’t screw it up completely, (that’s likely to get you) nominated.

“In the same breath, I’ll say that just as I was not surprised to get the nomination, I am certain I will not be the recipient. This is not my year. That’s the name of the game.”

Auberjonois, who was once upset at being referred to as a “local Los Angeles actor” but now accepts the tag with pride, isn’t the only “local” currently on that other coast.Familiar faces in Los Angeles theater, Auberjonois and another “local,” Betty Garrett, took a bit of Hollywood with them this season as they flew across the continent.

Auberjonois is starring in the hit Broadway musical “City of Angels,” a double-edged spoof of the loony world of Hollywood studios and filmdom’s hard-boiled detective genre, for which, aside from the Tony nomination (as featured actor in a musical), he’s also received Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Award nominations. A few blocks away, Garrett is headlining the successful new stage version of the classic ‘40s film “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

When Garrett received the Broadway offer, she “turned it down flat. I didn’t want to do that, leave my home and the kids, and Theatre West (in Los Angeles)--because we were doing a lot of things there. Then I began to think about it, and I thought, ‘My God, I know actors who would kill to get a Broadway show. What am I doing?’ I’m very glad I did it.”

The Broadway magnet had the same pull on Auberjonois, whose stage persona is based on unabashed physical comedy. “I couldn’t resist it, because it was a part that I never thought anyone in their wildest fantasies would cast me in.” He plays a slimy but lovable Hollywood producer in the musical movie spoof. “I just didn’t see myself in this role,” he says. “It’s a rule of thumb with me, that whenever I think I’m absolutely wrong for a part, I should play it. It has to do with actors, like anybody, not really knowing who they are.”

Both actors, who owe much of their public image to film and television, have paid their Broadway dues. Auberjonois arrived in Manhattan in 1968’s “King Lear” and won his first Tony the next year for “Coco” with Katharine Hepburn. Garrett made her name on Broadway in “Call Me Mister” in 1946 but remembers being part of the madding crowd in Orson Welles’ “Danton’s Death” way back in 1938.

Six years on television’s “Benson” made Auberjonois almost a household name, but he has also given memorable film performances, beginning with “MASH” in 1970. Garrett, familiar to audiences from running roles on both “All in the Family” and “Laverne and Shirley,” has also made a mark in motion pictures.

Referring to her very young cohorts in “St. Louis,” Garrett can’t resist a giggle. One night they came rushing into the theater “in complete surprise and awe. ‘You were on television last night! I didn’t know you were in “On the Town”!’ They’ve suddenly discovered I had a whole career before ‘Meet Me in St. Louis.’ That’s fun.”

She thinks these young people are “just amazing. Kids today! I’m glad I didn’t come up in the theater now. They’re multitalented, and so good at everything they do.” When Garrett started out, “you had a chance with a mediocre talent. But these kids are just marvelous. It’s their first Broadway show, which is very sweet.”

“Sweet” may seem an odd description of a Broadway debut, but it’s said with affection and many “sweet” memories of 50 years in the business by an actress who isn’t about to slow down. “I had my 70th birthday,” she says, “and I’ve gotten on a kind of cause about age. My producer-director got mad at me because I told my age in an interview. He said, ‘Actresses shouldn’t do that.’

“And I said, ‘With me it’s a crusade, because I’m really tired of people being discarded because they’ve gotten to be a certain age, or regarded in a certain way as though they aren’t still very vital people.’ There’s another reason for being resigned to being older. The competition gets less, especially if you can still sing and dance.”

Garrett’s last fling on Broadway was “about eight years ago in George Furth’s ‘The Supporting Cast.’ Before that there was ‘Spoon River Anthology.’ That came out of Theatre West, and that was a glorious experience. We came for a four-week concert run and stayed for a whole season.”

“Spoon River” was that oddity, a show from Los Angeles that made it in New York. “It was one of those rare occasions,” Garrett says, “when they treated a Los Angeles show kindly. As a matter of fact, we had a quote from the New York Times that we used for years. ‘Never let it be said that Los Angeles only takes and doesn’t give.’ It was a wonderful quote. It was the only time I’ve ever seen them really appreciate that Los Angeles can give them anything. It doesn’t matter how good it is. It’s the strangest kind of snobbery.”

Auberjonois echoes Garrett’s feelings. “New York is very provincial. It’s a little island. Their attitude towards L.A. theater is definitely one of dismissal and condescension, and if something comes from L.A., it’s already got a strike against it. I know people who have brought shows from L.A. and tried to hide the fact.”

Fortunately, though the Hollywood product may have to sneak into Manhattan in disguise, the Hollywood performer is welcomed with open arms. Both Garrett and Auberjonois can smile, albeit consumed by their schedules.

Garrett sleeps till noon, readying herself for the evening performance. “What I find, that I’d forgotten, is that you don’t really do anything else, even if you’ve got the whole day. It’s all geared to that show at night.”

Auberjonois does find time to “do my rounds on my bicycle, going around for voice-over auditions.” But last year’s experience in Steven Berkoff’s version of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” with Mikhail Baryshnikov didn’t leave him that much freedom, in spite of his enjoyment of working in the piece. “ ‘Enjoy’ is not a word you could apply to Kafka. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I had no social life. It was like being in a fight every night.”

But they’re doing theater.

Auberjonois is adamant about his theater connection, “any time anyone offers it to me. It’s the most challenging, difficult stuff to work on. I do tend to think of doing theater as a sport, as opposed to television and film. That’s why I don’t like to ever get away from it for too long. I learned that lesson very early. I played the Fool in ‘King Lear’ with Lee J. Cobb, and he had not been on stage in 20 years. This was a great actor, but he was out of shape. You cannot go away from the sport for 20 years and then come back to it.

“They inform one another. I’m an actor who tends to take--I think of it as courage, but a lot of people think it’s just foolhardiness--but I like to take big chances. I think that’s the fun of going to the theater, seeing something bigger than life.”

Both performers work in films and television but find that less fulfilling than working before a live audience. No matter which coast it’s on, the magnet of theater is strong.

“I did ‘Benson’ for six years,” Auberjonois says. “It was a great experience, because it subsidized my work in the theater. While I was doing ‘Benson’ I came back and did ‘Big River’ on Broadway during my hiatus. It gives you time to do other things, which is wonderful. I know a lot of actors who have done series for a number of years and earned a lot of money, and poured all that money into the theater. I put a lot of money in L.A. theater, and it was easy to do when I had a series. But I’m not patting myself on the back.

“I sort of wish television understood how valuable actors like that are to them, and how they really have a responsibility to subsidize theater. Across the board I don’t think the big studios and big producers understand how valuable it would be to them to put money into theater. And how it would come back to them. A friend of mine in Los Angeles wanted to do a play, at the Taper or the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and his agent was very much against it. My friend said, ‘But I’m not doing anything.’ And the agent said, ‘I just don’t want you to advertise that you’re out of work.’

“I had worked with all those principal actors in ‘Benson’ over the years, in regional theater, and that’s part of why the show was good, why the show was efficient.

“My dresser asked me if there was a lot of theater in L.A. And I said, ‘Yeah, there’s tons of theater. I could spend every waking minute working in theater in L.A. I couldn’t make a living at it, but I could work all the time. I miss the Taper and the Theatre Center.

“When you lock up your life playing--and I loved ‘Benson,’ but I was playing a vicious twit for six years. I’m proud of what I did in it, but they had to pay me to do that. I wouldn’t have done that for nothing. I would play Richard III for nothing, or Feydeau. It’s a marketplace, that’s all. If you go to the marketplace you’ve got to be willing to sell them what they want to buy.”

Series television has also been a large part of Betty Garrett’s existence. “I enjoyed doing the shows I did, because they were such a nice group of people. It really is, not only time consuming, but life consuming. I remember Sally Struthers saying to me one day, during ‘All in the Family,’ ‘I’m 30 years old, Betty, and I’ve done nothing but this for the past six years. The best part of my life is gone.’

“I can’t knock it, because it certainly opened up a lot of doors for me, and gave me a notoriety I wouldn’t have had otherwise. But television for me is the worst of all the mediums. It takes all the spontaneity out of what you’re doing. I never really feel in my element.”

Theater is Garrett’s element, just as it is Auberjonois’. And awards are part of that.

“The awards, as everyone knows, are simply to draw the public’s attention to the business we’re in,” Auberjonois said, reiterating his thoughts about the subject. “For that reason I go along with them. They’re not a lot of fun. I think they do a lot of good for the business. Since I’m in the business, and I’m not naive, I play into the game. Perhaps I shouldn’t be singing this song this way, but I was fortunate in receiving the Tony the first time I went out for it. I was aware at the time of a very uncomfortable feeling within myself that it was much more important than I rationally knew it really was.”

Thinking back on her Broadway career, Garrett muses: “Michael Bennett’s gone, Gower Champion, Bob Fosse. It really distresses me that there’s nobody around with that kind of wonderful genius. There’s only Tommy Tune, and he’s such a genius. I’m going to write him a letter. ‘Please help me. If you can find a show for an old lady who can still kick up her heels, I’d love to work with you.’ ”

Garrett has as much of a clue as anyone about the theater magnet that keeps pulling actors back and forth across the Rockies. “There’s just something about it. I don’t know what it is.” Auberjonois thinks “it’s the miracle of watching something happening every night.”