Brian and his wife Victoria have two children. Mimi, his daughter from a previous marriage, is a member of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company. Between acting assignments, says Keith with affection, he spends most of his time "raising the damn kids. It's a 24-hour job. We do a lot of outdoor stuff, because in Hawaii you can, all year round. We go on the beach and camp out and all that crap."
He finds that being based in Hawaii causes no problems with his career. "It doesn't make any difference where you live," Keith growls softly. "People live in London, in Spain, in Switzerland. You don't go around looking for jobs. You wait till your agent calls you and you get on a plane and go. You can be halfway around the world overnight, from anywhere. It beats Bayonne."
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WESTSIDER HAROLD KENNEDY
Author of No Pickle, No Performance
7-22-78
In the early days of Harold Kennedy's theatrical career, he was involved in a play written by Sinclair Lewis, who may have been a great novelist but was no playwright. Kennedy was talking with Lewis one evening before the play opened when a young student approached the famous author and politely asked for an autograph. Lewis took the piece of paper the boy offered him and wrote on it: "Why don't you find a hobby that isn't a nuisance to other people?" He handed it back unsigned.
But the boy got even. The play opened a few nights later and was a total disaster. Lewis was sitting gloomily in the dressing room after the final curtain when a note was hand-delivered to him by an usher. He opened it and read, in his own handwriting: "Why don't you find a hobby that isn't a nuisance to other people?"
The story is one of dozens told in Harold Kennedy's book, No Pickle, No Performance, published this month by Doubleday. The book is a fascinating collection of true-life anecdotes stored up by Kennedy during his four decades in the theatre as a director, actor, and playwright on Broadway and across the country. The subtitle of his book is "An Irreverent Theatrical Excursion from Tallulah to Travolta," and he has written chapters about his experiences with both of these stars, in addition to Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Thornton Wilder, Gloria Swanson, Steve Allen, and others who are less well known today but were legends in their time.
Its book is dedicated to actress Renee Taylor, who refused to come on stage during a play's opening night until she got a pickle with her sandwich, as she had during the previews. The coffee shop that had provided those sandwiches was closed, and the curtain was held while a prop man got in his car and went searching for the holy pickle. It arrived seven minutes after the advertised curtain time, and the show went on.
Unknown to Taylor, the stage crew was so enraged by her antics that they performed "a little ceremony" with the pickle before giving it to her. Gloria Swanson later said: "Poor Miss Taylor. Can't you see her shopping around to every delicatessen in New York complaining that she can never find a pickle to match the caliber of the one she had in New Jersey."