Tammy played Molly Brown on Broadway for the show's entire two-year run, but the movie role went to Debbie Reynolds. She got some rave reviews for her acting in a Broadway thriller named Trick this year, but the show closed within weeks. When that happened, she quickly started working on a new show, Father's Day by Oliver Hailey, that is scheduled to open on June 21 at the American Place Theatre on West 46th Street.
"It's about three women who get together on Father's Day," says Miss Grimes in an interview at her Upper East Side apartment. "They live in the same building, and they're divorced. It shows how the three of them are coping with the situation. My feeling is that they don't want to be divorced. It's a very well-written play — a comedy. … It's at the same theatre where In Cold Storage started."
The interview takes place in her softly decorated bedroom looking out on a garden. Tammy is propped up on pillows beneath the covers, smoking a cigarette and sipping a bottle of Tab as she apologizes for her condition. "It may have been the caviar I had last night," she says, cheerful in spite of her discomfort. Her pixyish features expand easily into a grin, and at 45 she has lost none of the childlike playfulness that first propelled her to stardom. But the most surprising quality about Tammy Grimes is her throaty British accent. Although she has done little work in England, her normal speaking voice is far more British than American — a fact which, for some reason, she strenuously denies. "I spent a lot of time doing British comedy," she explains, "but I don't sound British!"
A native of Lynn, Massachusetts — "I just happened to be born on the way home from a party" — she grew up in Boston and decided early to become an actress. When she was 16, Thornton Wilder saw her in a production of his classic play, The Skin of Our Teeth. He declared: "Young lady, even Tallulah Bankhead didn't do the things you did to the role." By her early 20s she was performing in numerous Off Broadway shows. A singing act she developed for one of New York's leading supper clubs won her a rave review in Life magazine, and shortly after her 25th birthday, she received her first starring role on Broadway, in an ill fated Noel Coward production called Look After Lulu.
The following year, 1960, saw The Unsinkable Molly Brown reach Broadway. It was the most expensive musical ever mounted until then, and became a smash. Tammy played the role 1,800 times; she missed only 13 performances. "I believe that if you can speak, you should be up there," she says. "Even today, people will stop me and say, 'We came in from North Carolina to see you, and when we got to the theatre, you weren't there.'"
As a television performer, she has appeared as a guest star in dozens of dramatic series, situation comedies, and variety shows. She has played numerous Shakespearean roles, made five movies, done a great deal of radio work, and recorded numerous albums, including several for children. An animal lover, she gives her time freely to such groups as the American Horse Protection Association and Friends of the Animals.
Tammy has been at her present East Side address since 1969. Though she likes to cook, she also frequents many restaurants including Veau d'Or and Gino's.
Asked to evaluate her career as a whole, Tammy notes that all but one of the shows she has done "seemed to open and close in a natural way. There's always a reason why a play ends prematurely. … It's nice to please the public, but you can't constantly be thinking that they will accept this but not something else from you. You have to go by your feelings. If something is good, the public will go to see it."
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WESTSIDER DELORES HALL
Star of Your Arms Too Short to Box with God