(classical music)
- Betty Buckley is a Broadway legend,
a Tony winner who's been called the voice of Broadway
and she's still making music with the recent release
of Betty Buckley Sings Stephen Sondheim.
She took a walk with Paul Wontorek,
to talk about her incredible career.
- She's a Tony-winning theater icon,
who spends a lot of her time
on her beautiful ranch in Texas with her beautiful animals.
But today, she's on Broadway.
(laughing)
Hey Betty Lynn Buckley.
- Hey Paul.
- So good to see
- I'm so happy to see you.
- I'm so thrilled to see you.
You are here celebrating an amazing new recording,
Betty Buckley Sings Stephen Sondheim.
- Right.
- You have recorded so many amazing Sondheim songs
over the years,
and you pull them all together with some new things
and people can now enjoy this beautiful tribute
to this amazing man.
- Like everybody, we all loved and honored him so much.
I consider myself a devotee.
- Yeah.
- And the idea that it's all together in one place,
as kind of mini-essays about my love for Stephen Sondheim.
- Yeah. You have been in many amazing Broadway shows.
Today, I wanna sort of live through some of these memories.
- That's so sweet.
(indistinct)
- So we're gonna start right here.
You were Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard"
in this mammoth Broadway theater.
- Yes.
- Mammoth hit "Sunset Boulevard."
What are your memories?
- Well, that opening night was one of the greatest nights
of my life.
The place was packed.
And from the moment I started,
the audience gave me so much love.
I had done the show for a year in London.
- Yeah.
- I felt literally like I was swimming through love.
The love in the audience was completely palpable.
I'm living with the remembrance with my knees.
Two years of "Sunset Boulevard"
completely destroyed my knees
running up and down those stairs
in high heels and heavy gowns.
- It was an enormous set. Enormous.
And then the whole thing moved up and down
and you looked amazing and you had the turbans--
- Thank you.
- And it was definitely a mega musical.
That was a big show.
- Yeah.
- All right, let's head west,
and go see some more of your amazing career.
- Okay. (classical music continues)
- This is the Jacobs Theater.
It was once the Royale Theater
and you graced its stage twice.
- Yes.
- And of course we have a Sondheim show right now,
"Company" is here, Sondheim is on Broadway right now,
but you did an Andrew Lloyd Webber, two shows.
So "Song and Dance" which is a score.
I actually really love it.
- [Betty] Yeah, I loved that.
- You love that score too?
- [Betty] Yeah, I loved it.
- I'm really mad I didn't get to see you do that.
- [Betty] Yeah.
I kind of begged them to let me do that.
Opening night, the end note of da da da da da da--
- The unexpected song.
- Yeah, was like a G.
I had so much adrenaline,
that I belted the note on opening night
and my voice teacher was there, Paul Gaver,
and the whole audience from my perspective,
looked like that,
remember that old Memorex commercial,
where everyone's hair is blown backwards?
They all literally were like, "Oh my God."
And Paul comes back and he goes, "Don't ever do that.
Not ever."
And I was like, "I'm sorry, I just had so much adrenaline."
- And then you got to come back
and do a a beautiful little show called "Triumph of Love."
- Yeah.
A jewel of a show
- Little jewel of a show.
It was again, the kind of musical
that was so great to see in a space like that.
- [Betty] Yeah.
It was such a beautiful show and incredible cast.
- Yeah.
- And I was in these incredible costumes--
- Incredible.
- Where I walked around like this, (laughing)
with my giant panias.
So yeah, it was a wonderful thing.
(classical music)
- So the Imperial Theater,
a very big grand Broadway theater.
- Yes it's fabulous.
- You had two big successes there.
So first let's talk about Pippin.
- Okay, I wanted to be in Pippin so badly
'cause Bob Fosse was directing it.
Fosse was my life when I was a teenager.
I studied with two of his acolytes
who'd done a lot of his shows.
- Yeah.
- And they were my teachers in Fort Worth, Texas
and so I knew everything Fosse.
And he came back and directed me into the show, Fosse.
- Yeah. What was he like?
- He was great.
He always had this cigarette attached to his lower lip
and the ash would burn all the way down to the center--
(laughing) - That really happened?
- But it stayed balanced.
And he wouldn't make eye contact
so I was constantly like running around
trying to see his eyes to communicate with him.
And he taught me
some of the greatest lessons about musical theater.
He said, "Betty, you're a very Fosse performer."
And he said, "But when it feels good to you, it's wrong.
You need to find that part of yourself
that feels awkward."
- Wow.
- And that's right.
- And then the Tony winner, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."
- Yeah.
- It was a big hit here.
- It was so good.
- And you played, Edwin Drood.
- I played Alice Nutting
who was a male impersonator who played Edwin Drood.
And I also played the old man, Datchery.
That was one of the greatest cast of all time.
And that cast album,
I think is,
I will say without a doubt
is one of the greatest cast albums in Broadway history.
(classical music)
- We're on 46th street.
And this used to be the 36th street--
- 46th street.
- But not very creatively-named 46th Street Theater.
- Yeah.
- Now it's the Richard Rodgers.
- This is my first, first Broadway theater.
- This door, the stage door,
that's where you walked in to make your Broadway debut.
That's awesome.
Betty Lynn Buckley from Texas
who walked into that stage door,
I know she came to Broadway
with a lot of pageant and musical theater success
from Texas.
- A lot of musical theater experience.
- You did.
- And some of the best teachers--
- You were the best of Texas.
- I was so ready.
- You were so ready?
- Yeah. I got this show "1776"
my first day in New York city
which is true.
- First day?
- Yeah.
(classical music)
- Okay, Betty.
So this is the August Wilson Theater.
They just put up the Funny Girl marquee,
and it reminds me of another marquee--
- [Betty] Of the colors of "Carrie."
- The colors red and black, a little bit of white--
- They painted the whole interior of the theater black.
- I know.
- I mean, this beautiful theater.
(indistinct)
- You were Margaret.
- [Betty] I was Margaret,
the cruel and sadistic religious fanatic mother.
- And of course you were in the movie.
- [Betty] I played the gym teacher.
- Yeah, you were a gym teacher in the movie.
So you had a connection to it already.
- [Betty] I did. Yeah.
- "Carrie" was this, how do you describe?
It was this big--
- It was an event.
- It was an event?
- Yeah.
It was schizophrenic the response to the show.
It was just wild
'cause people would come in costume.
- Yeah.
- And they would yell at us from the audience.
Like I remember one day I was at the top of the stairs
and they were like, "Betty Buckley, come on down."
It was like so crazy.
And I just thought, this is gonna be an event
where people come and speak the lines with us,
like "Rocky Horror."
And it's unfortunate that they didn't go for it.
- If marketing was different...
If it was a different time, it totally would've happened.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
(classical music continues)
Finally, here we are,
the Winter Garden Theater, home of "The Music Man,"
Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.
But Betty Buckley...
- Yeah.
- You won your Tony Award--
- Yeah.
- While playing Grizabella, the iconic.
- But I'll never forget
when we moved into the theater
and this beautiful Winter Garden marquee
and then on that whole sign
there was the cat's eyes and the slogan, now and forever.
- Yes.
- And I remember walking up to this place
and just being like,
"Oh my God, look at that." (Paul laughing)
It was really cool.
- Your rendition of memory is legendary.
- Thank you.
- You don't mind me using the L word.
- Thank you.
- And you still perform the song beautifully.
- Thank you. - I see you perform it.
And I love when you perform because you sort of get,
you do the little cat...
You become--
- I know.
- You become feline. - As soon as I hear
the opening chords
I immediately just go into this place--
- Yes. (laughing)
- And I immediately see everything
in my imagination that I saw then.
It's always the same place.
Yeah and people say,
"Well, what's the difference in your interpretation
and everybody else on the planet whose sung "Memory"?"
And the difference is that I actually was a cat.
(laughing) (classical music ends)