Valerie Harper, Dead at 80: Hartford Favorite

Sad news: Valerie Harper died Friday at the age of 80, more than six years after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. I interviewed Harper several times over the years. The last time was in 2013, just days before she learned of her diagnosis. Below is that interview.

By FRANK RIZZO

In our first interview in the 1990s, Valerie Harper described the character of Rhoda Morgenstern —sidekick on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and star of the spinoff "Rhoda" — as "the brash New Yorker who says the unsayable."

The same can be said of Harper, but she adds a gentle and empathetic grace in her truth telling.

In her memoir, "I, Rhoda," published in January by Gallery Books, she went public about her lung cancer in 2009 and how she survived it. She said she wanted others to learn from her experience.

On Wednesday, the actress revealed she has terminal brain cancer. The news was shatteringly sad for the many who love and respect her work over a long career on stage, film and TV. But in its direct simple honesty, it was so like Valerie Harper.

Something Amiss

Harper, 73, was taken to the hospital on Jan. 11 when she started garbling words and spacing out during rehearsals in New York for the upcoming tour of "Looped," where she was re-creating her Tony Award-nominated performance as legendary actress — and lush — Tallaulah Bankhead. The "Looped" team refers to that time as Black Friday.

I interviewed her a few hours earlier. We talked many times over the past 16 years and each time she made me feel like an old friend. On this morning she looked stylishly casual but she was upset that she had been a bit late for the meeting. During our talk she seemed a bit unfocused and had trouble completing sentences as other thoughts crossed her mind. Nothing too unusual for the high energy actress and I brushed it off as the effects of a busy schedule — juggling book and theater duties — or perhaps it was just the enthusiasm of a pal you hadn't seen in ages — with so many things to share you don't know where to begin or end.

The setting on that cold, gray morning was a swank midtown hotel. She wasn't staying there but we liked the atmosphere for our talk, which was to be about her book and the tour of "Looped," which would be launched at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford later that month.

In the memoir she describes how in 2009, prior to the pre-Broadway opening of "Looped" at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., she learned she had a cancerous tumor on her lung. She underwent thoracoscopic surgery, resulting in the removal of having one of the lobes in her the right lung, which got rid of the cancer.

"It was awful," she says of that period. In the play which is largely comic, Harper, who never smoked in real-life, "fake smokes" and she felt if audiences knew of her illness, even of her recent recovery, it would take away from the response to the production. She didn't want anything to jeopardize the production.

"But we hadn't told the boys," she says referring to playwright Matthew Lombardo and director Rob Ruggiero. "Matthew is extremely emotional. I did tell Rob after the surgery, though."

Ruggiero, after all could relate, having gone through his own cancer challenge with surgery and chemotherapy sessions in 2007 which led to his recovery.

But for Harper, there was no need for chemo or radiation therapies; orthoscopic surgery removed it. "It's gone. It was St. Patrick's Day [2009] when I heard the good news. There was something we could do, so hope springs eternal.

"I love my doctor so much and he said more women who don't smoke are dying of lung cancer, of breast cancer. I hope this will help in encouraging women to get tested. If found early enough, they can go in with a needle and remove it. Women should know that. Now I go every six months for an MRI."

Back To The Stage

After the D.C. run and with Harper cancer-free, the creative team came to Hartford to work on the script and rehearse for a Broadway production.

Hartford is familiar turf for Harper. In 1997, she premiered "The Dragon and the Pearl," her solo show about the life of writer Pearl S. Buck at TheaterWorks, which is the artistic home for Ruggiero. Lombardo, who grew up in Wethersfield, had his play "Tea at Five," a solo show about Katharine Hepburn, premiere at Hartford Stage in 2001. (Lombardo told me that many people advised Harper not to do "Looped" with him because of his history with drugs. He said Harper told him, "that we are all allowed to make mistakes in life and move forward" and signed on for the show — which would be the first Broadway credit for Lombardo and Ruggiero.)

Connecticut is familiar to Harper because she also played the Bushnell in tours of the Broadway comedy "Tales of the Allergist's Wife" — she also played the role at New Haven's Shubert Theater — and "Golda's Balcony," a solo show where she played former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The actress is not Jewish but she once proudly told me that "some Jews tell me I have a neshamah, which means 'a Jewish soul.' "

"Looped" opened on Broadway in the spring of 2010 and through the production was short-lived, playing just 33 performances, her work was widely praised.

She went home to Santa Monica but she was urged by the show's publicist to return to New York in May in case she was nominated for a Tony Award so she could participate in the festivities immediately following the announcement of nominees. Harper did and she laughingly recalls being in her hotel room and learning at the last minute that the televised announcement would be bumped because of breaking news. She and husband of 25 years, Tony Cacciotti, rushed to the Internet where she learned in a tiny news crawl that she was indeed nominated. They were ecstatic, she says."And when we called Rob he cried because he was so happy. But we all win when someone is nominated. That's what it's like in the theater community."

Though she didn't get the top prize she says it was a thrill to be at Radio City Music Hall for the awards telecast, a venue she played when she first started out in its corps de ballet at 16. As a chorus girl in the late '50s and early '60s, she appeared in the Michael Kidd-choreographed Broadway musicals "Li'l Abner" (she's in the movie, too), "Destry Rides Again" "Take Me Along," "Subways Are For Seeping" and "Wildcat," which starred another TV icon, Lucille Ball who presented her with her first of four "Rhoda" Emmy Awards in 1971, three for supporting and one as leading actress in a comedy.

All In The Book

When she was approached last year to write a memoir, she says her reaction was: "Who wants to read it? There's no sex, there's nothing kinky and there's no substance abuse — except for pizza and brownies."

She toyed with calling her memoir "I Rhoda Book." "Do you like it?" she says giggling, reaching her hand out. "But the publisher was dead set against punny titles."

The book is filled with stories of her life and career framed in warmth and gratitude.

"In writing the book I appreciated my parents so much — but I always have," she says, especially when her mother urged her when she in high school to move from California to New York to live with her father — they amicably divorced a few years earlier — because that's where the best schools were to become a dancer, Harper's first career choice. "My mother taught me that the present is what's important because that's where the truth was. It's in the here and now.

"My parents were both so positive," she says. "They clashed themselves but they were positive people who both loved to laugh. We learned that as kids, too. I was loved and that's so important."

In the book she writes about the time when she was on Broadway in "Allergist's Wife" on 9/11. When New York was in shock, Harper was among those who helped rally the theatrical troupes, promoting Broadway and the can-do, we're-not-down-yet-spirit of New York. She volunteered to waive her salary if it meant the show would continue. (It wasn't necessary but the gesture further boosted the morale of a struggling city.)

Besides the cancer scare, the other dark cloud in her life was the painful experience of being wrongfully fired in 1987 from the 1986 TV series "Valerie," which featured Jason Bateman as her son. She eventually won the contract dispute with Lorimar Productions and emerged triumphant.

"That happened strangely," she says. "Sometimes it's the vicissitudes of the business. Sometimes it's just, well beneficial to someone. Thank God I'd been in the business 18 years when it happened because if I was a new actress, who knows? They'd have labeled me a trouble-making actress and that would have been it. But I had tons of people in my corner."

She ends the book — and the interview — talking about reuniting with Julie Kavner, who played her younger sister Brenda on "Rhoda." Kavner provides the voice of Marge Simpson on the long-running "The Simpsons" series, and Harper was a guest last year, voicing a proctor who was evaluating the less-than-stellar Springfield school system.

"Julie came in and she looked gorgeous with curly, curly hair. I said, 'Did you have a perm?' And she said [and here Harper does doing a dead-on, deadpan imitation] 'No, menopause.' And I said, 'Well, I just got six capped teeth. Imagine, at my age!' And we both laughed. Oh, I think having a great sense of humor gets you through so much."

As the interview ends, she insists that I share a taxi with her because we are both heading downtown — she to her rehearsal. As the cab stops to let us out, a pedestrian starts yelling at our driver who must have just missed hitting the man. We don't know exactly what happened. Harper takes out a $20 bill, not believing me when I say the newspaper will pay the fare. Not really convinced, she says an upbeat goodbye. As the cab pulls out I I look back and I see Harper trying to ease the pedestrian's agitation, apologizing to him, making him feel heard, understood and important.

Views and NewsFrank RizzoAugust 30, 2019This Just In...