Word: ronstadt
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...glad to know that Linda Ronstadt is not pigeon-toed in real life [March 22], because she is one of the very few show biz types that I would love to bring home to Mom. Not only has she survived the rock-'n'-roll treadmill with amazing grace but she has remained completely human under the media's celebrity microscope. If she finds moviemaking not quite comfortable, she can rest assured that we will all settle for just her music...
...true, and true also that Ronstadt, 35, was both enthusiastic and jealously protective of her stage role as Mabel, the prettiest and cleverest of the major general's eight wonky daughters. "I would have died before I let my understudy take over onstage," she says. "Not that I begrudged her a chance to shine before an audience, but it was my part." Now she is preserving it against the fender-gluing tedium of film making, with its rhythm of endless delays. Between takes on the set, she hikes her white Victorian hobble skirt up to her knees so that...
...hear is a succession of admiring stories about other members of the cast. Basic Pirates lore, told from different viewpoints, is an account of the night on Broadway when the pit band came in drunk from a Christmas party and couldn't toot together or on key. Ronstadt, making her first entrance, a point at which she must sing Poor Wandering One in a way that tells everyone who's boss, heard their clamor and got the giggles. She couldn't stop. Rex Smith, on-stage with her, felt himself begin to laugh-a realization, this open...
...continue. He said, very calmly, that she must go out in front of the curtain, before the second act began, apologize to the audience and sing Poor Wandering One again. She did, with Smith beside her, and the night was saved. Leach tells this as a tribute to Ronstadt and Smith. Ronstadt says that Leach is wise and solid, and that Smith, who hadn't caused the problem, had with characteristic generosity shared the blame. And Smith is awed that Ronstadt pulled herself together, and that her apology did not mention the miscreant musicians...
Next day, on a sound stage got up to resemble a pirate cove on the coast of a Cornwall that never was, Ronstadt is dead on her feet. She leans her head on Smith's shoulder between takes. All the pirates are on hand, and so are the major general's daughters. George Rose, the major general, a veteran Shakespearean actor trained at the Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Theater, is never out of character and never needs a retake. Kevin Kline, the pirate king, has a fencing shirt with a decolletage that makes matrons of good reputation...