Word: lithgow
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...bumpkins like me. But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed brassy broad is queen, I suppose, because we naïve little actor-types just worshipped her. Part of Frances’s mystique was her past contact with a special subset of actors to which Lithgow, this year’s Harvard Commencement speaker, belongs...
That subset is comprised of celebrities who, like Lithgow, are absolutely legendary among “Theater People” and who had “That One Thing” that made them somewhat famous among the general population (in Lithgow’s case, his starring role on the late-’90s sitcom “3rd Rock from the Sun”), but who never quite attained the cultural ubiquity of a pretty face like, say, Ashton Kutcher...
Actors like Lithgow are of an older, pre-“Punk’d” breed. Some other names I’d put in this category might be Bernadette Peters and Nathan Lane: they sing, they dance, and they’re multitalented and too smart for media pandering. I would never see how vital they are to American art, until Frances would tell me a lovingly embellished story about how intelligent, funny, and wise they were in a one-on-one conversation...
There’s only one way I know to convey that John Lithgow is the embodiment of theater at Harvard: by doing my best Frances Asher impression as I tell you some of our memorable phone interview...
...this Abe?” queries the voice on the other end of the phone line, stressing my name like I’m a beloved relative. I say yes, and he replies with an emphatic, “Well, hello! This is John Lithgow!” As anyone who has seen Lithgow on TV or Broadway can attest, his voice is a wholly unique mix of nasal delirium and eloquent control—it’s like forty pounds of voice crammed into a five-pound sack. It’s overpowering...