‘Oklahoma!’ Plays Big Role in 2 Lives

Sometimes Bennie Lee McGowan and husband Bill McGowan ask themselves why they stay at it.

After all, for six years they played the same characters, Aunt Eller and Andrew Carnes, in an estimated 600 performances of “Oklahoma!” and most of them in an outdoor theater in the Oklahoma heat.

The props were real trees, horses and wagons.

“When I hear the music I know why,” said Bennie, a native Oklahoman who got her first, addictive taste of theater playing the lead in a senior high school class play. “It also helps to be a little crazy.”

Says her husband, a West Texas State graduate with a voice major who spent 25 years as an oil company manager: “When the overture starts, I get that extra spirit and push and inspiration. It is exciting music.”

In 1985 they played the same roles in a mini-version of “Oklahoma!” in London for a travel convention, giving 15-minute performances five times a day.

One performance was attended by Princess Diana.

These days the Costa Mesa couple, parents of five children, are appearing in “Oklahoma!” at the Candlelight Pavilion dinner theater in Claremont through Sept. 15. They are playing the same roles.

“Aunt Eller is a wonderful lady, and after having done it so many times I love it more,” said Bennie, a University of Texas graduate with a degree in theater. “I’d like everyone to love her.”

Though she has played the role over and over, it remains “fun because it’s less work and more enjoyment. I still make mistakes. Just like everyone else, you can go blank.”

Bennie patterns the role after her own aunt, on whose Oklahoma farm she spent summers as a young girl doing things like churning.

“I’m not the singer in the family although I can sing,” said Bennie, who continues to seek other acting roles on stage, television and movies.

“I’m really an actress, and Bill is the singer,” she said.

Her credits include television’s soap operas “Days of Our Lives” and “Designing Women.” She also played opposite the late actor John Carradine in the horror movie “Revenge.”

She recently hired a manager to find her other roles on the stage and in movies.

Her husband, currently looking for administrative personnel work in addition to his singing role--”I’m part of the unemployment picture in Orange County”--is as fond of his role as his wife is of her part.

“First of all, it’s fun being able to do shows with my wife,” said the one-time church singer. ‘ ‘Oklahoma!’ has been an inspiration to me.”

When “Oklahoma!” was looking for singers in Oklahoma, “just for kicks I decided to audition. I really didn’t think I could get a part,” he said. “There were so many qualified singers.”

Besides singing in church, Bill has performed as a soloist in little theater productions and at charitable functions.

Aside from singing, “I spent a lot of years in Texas as a treasure hunter with a metal detector I bought,” he said. “I found 900 pieces of jewelry and 18,000 coins, most of them pennies.”

He said the bounty wasn’t enough to make him rich.

“If our name came up from the lottery we’d love to stay with the theater whether we got paid or not,” he said.