How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, presented by Reprise Theatre Company, opens May 12; plays Tues.-Fri., 8 pm; Sat. 2 & 8 pm; Sun. 2 &7 pm; through May 23. Tickets: $70-75; UCLA students/seniors $20. Freud Playhouse at Macgowan Hall, 245 Charles E. Young Drive East, Westwood; 310.825.2101 or reprise.org.
John O'Hurley
John O’Hurley is a man accustomed to life imitating art. On Seinfeld, he played Elaine’s eccentric boss J. Peterman to such notoriety that the real J. Peterman the ’90s sitcom had famously lampooned asked him to finance the company’s relaunch several years later. This week he channels the iconic catalog entrepreneur again in the guise of J.B. Biggley, pompous president of World Wide Wicket Company, for Reprise Theatre Company’s mounting of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying under the artistic roof of George Costanza’s alter ego Jason Alexander.
“It’s kind of an anti-leading man role,” laughs O’Hurley over coffee one morning in his Beverly Hills living room. “This guy, he’s a closet knitter. He’s an absolutely incompetent CEO. If anything, what he lacks in ideas he makes up for with volume. But it’s funny, the more I try the Biggley character on for size, the more I see J. Peterman. I can see him saying many of the lines. With so much proximity to Jason, it’s nice to be able to recreate a little bit of that character again.”
In truth, the fictional CEO who once told Elaine she couldn’t go with him to Africa because she tested positive for opium — “That’s right. White Lotus. Yam-yam. Shanghai Sally.” — is as much woven into the fabric of the real O’Hurley’s life as he is responsible for the whirlwind schedule and lifestyle the actor/show host/author/composer/ad pitchman has enjoyed since Seinfeld ended in 1998. Besides acting gigs, the role has led to lucrative advertising spokesman contracts and corporate engagements, co-ownership of the real catalog company as well as investment and venture capital opportunities.
He became a host for the revival of To Tell the Truth and USA’s Get Golf with the PGA Tour, currently anchors NBC Sports highest rated yearly show, The National Dog Show Presented by Purina, and just stepped down from a four-year stint steering Family Feud.
In summer 2005, he and partner Charlotte J¯rgensen were declared the winners of Dancing With the Stars highly contested “Dance Off” during its first season, leading People magazine to name him one of its “Sexiest Men Alive” that fall and O’Hurley making his Broadway debut as Billy Flynn in Chicago in January 2006. In March 2007, he began a two-year run as King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot at the Wynn Las Vegas’ Grail Theatre before undertaking its national tour, which overlapped with a second Chicago tour he just wrapped up in April.
Past national tours include Pirates of Penzance, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Brigadoon and Same Time Next Year opposite Loretta Swit. O’Hurley returns to Broadway this summer with Chicago following Reprise’s How to Succeed run.
He laughs when asked how he managed to work the show into his already jammed schedule. “Because I’m a type A personality, I have an Irish work ethic and I can’t give myself a vacation! If I have two weeks free I’ve got to fit something in. I just finished touring Chicago when I came back and I had just this amount of time to do it before I head off. So literally, the night we close, I’ll be on a plane the next morning.”
The 1962 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning musical classic by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser is being directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, a 2010 Tony nominee for Best Direction of a Musical for her scaled down version of Ragtime. Her Reprise cast stars Josh Grisetti (Enter Laughing) as J. Pierrepont Finch, Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory) as Bud Frump, Vicki Lewis (Newsradio) as Smitty, Ed Asner (Up!) as the Book Voice, Nicole Parker (MADtv) as Rosemary Pilkington, Melissa Fahn (Wicked) as Hedy La Rue alongside Reprise veterans Michael Kostroff as Trimble, Ruth Williamson as Miss Jones and Larry Raben as Ovington/Jenkins.
How to Succeed’s reteaming of the famed Burrows & Loesser partnership (Guys and Dolls) made a star out of Robert Morse who originated the role of Finch both on Broadway and in the 1967 film. Thirty-three years later, Matthew Broderick tackled the part alongside Megan Mullally as Rosemary in the 1995 Broadway revival. O’Hurley follows in the Biggley shoes of Rudy Vallee (Broadway/film), Billy DeWolfe (West End) and Ronn Carroll (Broadway revival). He was the first to be approached several months ago by director Dodge to participate in the Reprise staging and was later surprised to see a cast list led by Grisetti, his former Spamalot co-star in Vegas.
“This is a breakout role for him,” enthuses O’Hurley. “He’s an extraordinarily versatile actor. Very smart actor. Reminds me of Jason in many respects. Everything is thought out and he knows the reason for it all. He’s not just working off instincts. I think smart actors are the people who have long, varied and vibrant careers. It’s also the first time I’ve heard these songs, particularly some of the romantic numbers, actually sung well. You think back to Robert Morse or Matthew. Not singers at all. This is written very high and it’s written for a tenor. Josh has a gorgeous tenor voice so he’s able to sing this beautifully.”
John O’Hurley (J.B. Biggley) and Melissa Fahn (Hedy LaRue)
O’Hurley continued to heap praise on other cast members after experiencing the show’s first runthrough a few days prior. “I’ve got to tell you, I was blown away by how funny this is and how good the individual characters are in the show. Simon Helberg may be one of the finest comedic actors I have ever seen. He’s on my list of the five great ones. Who would have known? This is his first musical. But what he does with little Bud Frump…everything about him makes your skin crawl. Michael Kostrof has a little of Jon Lovitz in him. He’s brilliant in the way he’s created Twimble as a little a piece of milquetoast who’s been there for a quarter of a century.”
As for Reprise’s notoriously tight rehearsal and tech week schedule, O’Hurley equates it to “a bunch of kids putting on a show in their basement.
“I think coming from a background in daytime television this is not that extreme to me,” he admits. “When you’re doing an hour show you’re doing a 90-page script every day. The only difference is you have the flexibility of ad-libbing. You don’t have that in theatre. People write in certain styles and certain rhythms so you want to stay true to the words. The more difficult part is learning it exactly the way they wrote it. This is a very wordy play. I contrast it to Spamalot, which is very clipped and the book for Chicago, which is very tight and minimalistic. You say very little and you sing a lot. In How to Succeed, you say one thing but you’ll say it three times.”
O’Hurley credits old pal Alexander and Susan Dietz, Reprise’s producing director for continuing to raise the expectation bar with every production. “They’ve given it some real credence. I think it’s a wonderful incubator for great ideas and great takes on old things. It’s also a good wake up call for actors. We have a tendency to think the real actors are in New York on a stage and LA is a bunch of lazy people doing five lines. Or two-and-a-half pages a day on a movie set. That there’s this built in fluff factor out here. But this is about as intense as it gets. It really is.”
A Family Feud Over Spamalot
In person, O’Hurley is every inch the successful leading man, show host and business CEO. Casually dressed in a long sleeve black polo shirt, black synthetic slacks and brown moccasins, he exudes the understated but palpable confidence of someone used to controlling his own destiny. The sunlit living room with its muted tones and dark wood accents, adorned by good art and a baby grand piano in the corner, where the self taught pianist composed his second album The Secret of the Lake with son Will on his lap, reflects a penchant for clean design and simple elegance.
Citing his authorship of New York Times bestseller It’s OK to Miss the Bed on the First Jump: And Other Life Lessons Learned from Dogs and Before Your Dog Can Eat Your Homework, First You Have To Do It as examples, O’Hurley believes the key to living an extraordinary life lays in harnessing the power of one’s imagination, executing new ideas regardless of where they lead you and reaping the financial or creative reward. It is a message he delivers to graduating classes, business schools and corporations on a regular basis.
“The greatest tragedy in life is when people have ideas and they don’t believe what they imagine has value,” he explains. “Some of greatest ideas lie dead on the vine because no one has ever taken them up. Truly nothing moves off its state of inertia until you begin to value what you imagine. It’s very simple for me. I don’t separate myself from what I say. I try to walk my talk. It’s why I’ve had a different career than most actors have. It’s only because whatever I imagine I do. I just believe that is where I’m supposed to go.”
Following that credo has earned O’Hurley a certain Renaissance man moniker he says gives the period a “bad name.” While many men espouse visions of empire building, few execute at the level and breadth O’Hurley appears to have accomplished. His secret?
“I don’t have a concrete answer for that because there isn’t one,” he stresses. “I just have to use 24 hours of my day. I’m constantly in touch with what’s going on. Right now I’ve got $250 million of energy projects to fund!” he laughs. “So that’s a complicated challenge for me because I have to come up with all of that financing. We’re launching a new online game with my other company. I had a script reading at the house for a new movie I like and I’m producing. It’s a very complicated life right now. But it gets done.”
How does he manage to mentally shift gears from being a businessman to an entertainer?
“It’s very interesting to have to focus on theatre for a portion of my day and realize the people I’m working with have no idea of the other stuff I’m doing for the other 20. On the other hand, I remember sitting in the lawyer’s office in San Francisco with the British partners for my energy company. I spent all day talking with them until the last minute before I had to do Spamalot. They came to see the show that night and said, ‘It amazes us that you were just here talking about debt structure and warrants for the firm and 20 minutes later you put on a crown and go out there and sing.’ It’s compartmentalizing I guess.”
O'Hurley as King Arthur
O’Hurley calls the 90 minute version of Spamalot Mike Nichols repackaged for Steven Wynn’s Las Vegas resort “the most over rehearsed show” O’Hurley’s ever been in, unlike Reprise “which is flying by the seat of your pants.” Rehearsals began in late January 2007, followed by previews beginning March 8 and a formal opening three weeks later. “We had a heck of a run. I liked doing Spamalot without an intermission because it built on its own. Mike has a genius in his ability to communicate to actors. And he has a sense of pulling things out organically and letting them happen naturally rather than trying to produce them. I have to say I learned a great deal from him. He’s one of the better directors I’ve ever worked with.”
Nichols once blogged in Huffington Post that all audiences secretly ask, “So now, why have you called us together?” And a good director must assure them that they are in good hands. O’Hurley believes it is an important thing for a good show host or actor to do as well. “If it’s a man, he has to have a paternalistic quality so you know no matter what happens during a show, I can handle it. Because there’s nothing worse than watching a talk show or somebody on stage we feel like whatever they’re doing is above them or out of their reach. It’s the most uncomfortable feeling you can have in the audience. That’s inherent in the beginning moment when the King trots on stage. Even the fact he’s in an argument, you get the sense no matter what it’s about, this will be OK.”
Delighted squeals from the toddler O’Hurley fathered with Lisa Mesloh, his wife of nearly six years, faintly drift in the open windows from the pool outside bringing a smile to the recent 55-year-old parent. The boy is already a regular at Roger Dunn’s golf shop where being the offspring of two single digit handicap golfers means learning to drive has nothing to do with a car. Add charity tournaments for organizations like Golfers Against Cancer, which has raised $20 million to date, and the child has a Tiger Woods trajectory ahead of him. Preparations for preschool means O’Hurley’s touring life with Will backstage are nearly at an end, signaling a time of new priorities and a letting go of old ones like Family Feud.
“Four years was enough,” he emphasizes, and then laughs. “I don’t want to die a game show host! It became an absolute nightmare to organize the Family Feud schedule around Spamalot. I literally was shooting six shows during the day and then doing Spamalot at night. I had to do that for 165 shows. I said this is not worth it. I had a wonderful time. But the syndicated market is shrinking so much, to use the analogy it’s like peeing in a dark suit — you get a warm feeling but nobody notices. To give so much energy to something and have it just shrink every year without anything you can do about it. It was time to let it go.”
“Hopefully now that I’m free from the Feud, I’ll be able to commit to the birth of a show rather than taking over the reins. I seem to be replacement parts! Automobile replacement parts.”
O’Hurley says he tried to get Alexander to take over King Arthur when he had to leave the Vegas show for five months to finish up his Feud commitments. “I just thought it would be funny to have a diminutive king with everything around him. So he came out and saw it and he goes, ‘you know… not my thing,’” says O’Hurley with a spot on George Costanza delivery. “‘I’m not King Arthur.’ I thought it would offer a great new take. He didn’t quite get into it.”
A Focus on Legit Talent
O’Hurley wants his focus now to be on things like new technology, a new talent show and quality time with his son. “It’s more interesting to me to spend my time in the shift where media is going,” he explains. Everything is moving towards the cell phone. That little operating device is going to be in the next five years what the entire dot com era was in the ’90s. I have a company that’s figuring that out right now. I also have a three year old. The 3.4 version actually. You can hear him swimming in the background. I want to have the flexibility to spend a lot of time with him because there was no other reason to have a child this late in my life if I was not going to do that. It’s such a priority for me that I don’t want to be away. That was one of the things that went into the decision. The next chapter of my life is really opening up.”
He is currently in talks to develop a new competitive show for legitimate voices called Voce. “All the ones Simon Cowell doesn’t want. It will be for more legit voices competing in all different styles of music. It’s about actually singing the melodies and not wailing!” he laughs. “That’s the only thing they’re developing now. We also want people with cores to their voices. You take a microphone away from everybody on American Idol and you can’t hear them.”
O'Hurley
Ironically O’Hurley is not a fan of reality television though he owes part of his celebrity to Dancing With the Stars. He thinks the current show has lost the innocence of the first season and is both over produced and marketed. “Everyone knows what it does for them now.” Yet he still calls the show “great television.
“If reality shows should be doing anything, they should be rewarding talent not ambition. Celebrating talent either in writing, singing, dance or whatever. So many of the reality shows are more about social voyeurism. Consequently we’re making stars out of people who are simply notorious. I find it obscene they are taking up the space of people who are actually trained and have a gift.”
Do people still mention his DWTS appearance?
“Every single day someone says something to me. Unintentionally I have been able to grab the bootstraps of so many great brands!” he laughs. “And none of them were my own. I hitched my wagon to Seinfeld’s star there, rode that for four years, then DWTS in its first season. No one knew it was going to be a success least of all ABC. It went from no viewership in that time slot to 27 million people watching the show. Everyone just tried not to fall down. Mentally and physically it is the most challenging thing I have ever done. It was a little bit like someone handing you a violin and saying, could you possibly have a concerto for the entire country to listen to next Tuesday night? But the show gave me my name back. Up until then everyone knew me as J. Peterman. Now people know me as John O’Hurley.”
Besides considering the revamped La Cage Aux Folles for next season, O’Hurley says he’s nearly ready to tackle a part he’s waited nearly 40 years to play - the psychiatrist Martin Dysart in Peter Shaffer’s Equus. “It’s something that’s very much a part of my development as an actor. When that first came out in the ’70s, I saw it maybe 20 times. Hoping someday I might be old enough and mature enough to play that role. I think I’m finally getting to the emotional weight required to have a sense of what that character’s about. I think it’s a phenomenal play. I think Peter Shaffer was probably the best playwright we had in that time. His structure of language is some of the best I’ve ever seen.”
He agrees the play has a special significance for men. “We all want to feel as though we’ve accomplished something in our lives. That we haven’t been driving in second gear. I think that’s why it resonates so strongly with us. I think you have to be at a certain age to really understand.”
O’Hurley then slips into a J. Peterman like moment quoting a phrase from T.S. Eliot, “Old men must be explorers.
“It’s like I always say, the difference between a young man and an old man is that a young man always thinks in terms of his potential. An old man thinks of himself as a result. And that all of the things he’s done in his life have to be enough because that’s all there is. I see that starting to happen in people around me, especially the ones who were my peers, who have kind of settled into a midlife state of well, that’s enough. I look at my parent’s friends. My life’s enough. I don’t live that way. Anytime I feel like I’m moving towards that I give myself a kick in the ass.”
Feature image of (L-R) John O’Hurley (J.B. Biggley) and Josh Grisetti (Finch) by John Ganun
Article by Deborah Behrens
