A theatrical class act

Actress Marian Seldes, 75, comes to her role in “The Royal Family” at the Ahmanson Theatre with a lot of baggage. Good baggage -- but baggage all the same.

The veteran actress realizes that her long list of sterling theatrical credits -- as well as her imposing height and famous angularity -- have the capacity to intimidate. “When I meet someone, I try to break that down right away,” she says. “And just when you think you are an actress and you are somebody, you’ll talk to somebody who doesn’t have a clue who you are. So you think: ‘Who do I think I am?’ It’s very humbling, and very important.”

Seldes has been collecting baggage ever since her Broadway debut at age 19 in “Medea” with Judith Anderson, directed by John Gielgud. She started dragging “prestigious award” baggage around with her in 1967, when she won a Tony for her role in Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance,” beginning a relationship with the celebrated playwright that has lasted almost 40 years. She has racked up multiple Tony nominations and Obie, National Critics and Drama Desk awards.

She has taught at the famed Juilliard School. She’s been labeled “a grande dame,” a “stage divinity,” an “accomplished scene-stealer.” She’s written articles and book reviews, attended prestigious theater festivals, written an autobiography: “The Bright Lights: A Theatre Life.”

Although less known in Hollywood than in the theater, she has reached mass audiences as the aunt of Candice Bergen’s Murphy Brown and recently portrayed the Wellesley College president in “Mona Lisa Smile.”

In 1992, the New York Post’s Clive Barnes suggested her for the heavy-baggage title of “the American theatrical diva for our time.”

In one sense, Seldes -- seen at the Music Center in 1996 as a peevishly eccentric 92-year-old in Albee’s “Three Tall Women” -- is the real-life version of Fanny Cavendish, the theatrical matriarch she portrays in George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s 1927 comedy “The Royal Family,” opening April 7 at the Ahmanson.

The play is loosely based on that larger-than-life theatrical clan, the Barrymores. This is Seldes’ third go-round with this play; in 1952, she played the younger Julie Cavendish, to be portrayed at the Ahmanson by Kate Mulgrew. She previously portrayed Fanny in 1996 at the Williamstown Festival.

In another sense, Seldes is anything but. Although her 56-year resume may scream “diva,” her offstage persona says otherwise. Contrary to expectations, the soft-spoken, meticulously gracious Seldes is hardly larger than life -- though at 5 feet, 9 inches, perhaps a little taller.

Before a recent interview, Seldes declines a publicist’s offer of a glass, opting instead to swig a soft drink from a bottle. She does, however, allow him to unscrew the cap. “How do people who live utterly alone survive? There are so many things that won’t open,” she complains mildly. “I’ve got a few dresses in New York, and I can somehow get them on, but I can’t get them off.”

A conversation with Seldes is rich with illustrious theater names: Albee, Barrymore, John Houseman, Horton Foote, Tony Kushner, Judith Anderson, Julie Harris and Katharine Cornell -- not because she’s a name dropper, that’s just who she knows. She observes that the date of this interview -- March 12 -- is Albee’s 76th birthday. And one of the most celebrated names on the list is her second husband, playwright-director-screenwriter Garson Kanin, who died in 1998, leaving her to struggle with loneliness, bottle caps and dresses that zip up the back.

Seldes offers that, although sometimes a play demands it, she never uses four-letter words offstage; she’s as proper as her posture, ramrod straight from years of ballet training. “The Royal Family,” she asserts, is not a sendup of her chosen field but rather “a love letter” to it.

“It’s a spoof, the comedy parts of it,” she muses. “But it doesn’t make them fools, you don’t think: ‘Oh, actors.’

“And they are bound together by the theater; they don’t all adore each other, but they adore the theater,” she adds -- just as she does. “If I had a religious belief, I would want it to be as strong as my belief in the theater.”

Ah, the Barrymores. “My angel, I don’t think there’s a book about them, or a film they have appeared in or a memoir that I haven’t read,” she says; throughout the conversation “angel” is used interchangeably with “darling.” “I’ve always been fascinated by them even before I was on the stage, when I was still in school. I’m old enough to remember the headlines when John Barrymore married that young high school girl.

“When I began to act in the professional theater, one of the first jobs I had, I had no lines, I was just on the stage in a play where the lead was played by Diana Barrymore. And of course, I wanted her to be the essence of theater, the essence of that amazing family, but she couldn’t be; it was too late. Her discipline was gone, and I wished I could somehow put her all back together again. But I just loved it that it was a Barrymore.”

She laments that there are not many theater dynasties anymore, in part because there is less theater. But ever positive, she is thrilled to see Drew Barrymore’s success in the movies after overcoming drug problems in her youth. “This amazing young girl, who so often when she is interviewed senses John Barrymore is still watching her. It’s sweet,” Seldes observes.

Her longtime friend Albee says that though Seldes is the picture of decorum offstage, she’s at her best portraying characters who are over the top. “It’s very hard to put into words,” he says. “I think she’s better at characters that are a little bit off-center. I don’t mean that in any bad sense, but not your usual person. She has a wonderful extravagance to her. Even if we go back to ‘A Delicate Balance,’ which is a totally naturalistic play to the extent that any play is, she plays a daughter who is right on the edge.

“One of my favorite performances I ever saw her in was a play called ‘Isadora Duncan Sleeps With the Russian Navy,’ which was done off-Broadway 25 years ago, maybe even more,” Albee recalls. “It was remarkable; there she was as Isadora Duncan, sleeping with the Russian Navy.”

Losing her fear

Seldes says she noted in her autobiography how flattered she was when Albee wrote a role in “A Delicate Balance” just for her. It was not until years later that she found out he hadn’t written the part for any particular actor; he never does. “By the time Edward called me on it, I’d done others of his plays,” she says with a laugh. “But that’s what I’d heard, and I treasured it.”

The actress says she’s no longer intimidated by Albee but admits, “There’s a little part of me that thinks: ‘Oh, God, don’t let me bore him.’ Not only that, but if you misuse a word -- which one tends to do with people one reveres -- he gets it right away. It’s like the wrong key on the piano; he’s very sensitive to that.”

One of the nice things about being a certain age, Seldes says, is that she’s lost her fear of venerable playwrights, of being vulnerable onstage -- and, she adds wryly, she’s outlived most of her early critics.

She remains philosophical about the people she has loved and lost, including her father, the multifaceted writer and critic Gilbert Seldes, and Kanin, whose first wife was actress Ruth Gordon.

“When I did ‘Three Tall Women,’ Garson Kanin was alive and he could come and see me, it was lovely,” she says. “But he’s still here for me; it was amazing for me to find this late in life. I don’t grieve. I want to go back to when I first knew someone, my first memories of my father, or how it was to see a play by Garson Kanin before I ever thought I’d meet him, much less be part of his life. I think they’re with us.

“And, back to the play, there are so many references to: ‘You have to uphold what we’ve made, you have to keep it in the theater, and you have to give it your best,’ ” she adds. “But no one had to tell me to do that. I found it young, and I never wanted anything else.”

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The women in her life

Seldes’ face is familiar in Hollywood character roles, but she is foremost a creature of the stage. Some notable performances in recent years, both on stage and on screen: (see photos)

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‘The Royal Family’

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Opens April 7. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. on April 11, 18, and 25. Additional performances April 29, May 6 and 13 at 2 p.m.

Ends: May 16

Price: $20-$65

Contact: (213) 628-2772 or www.TaperAhmanson.com