March 20, 1978
FEATURE
DAYTIME TELEVISION STARS COME OUT AT NIGHT
IN SURPRISING ROLES ON “MYSTERY THEATER”
William Griffis of “All My Children,” Lloyd Battista of “Love of Life,” Nat Polen of “One Life To Live,” Mandel Kramer and Teri Keane of “The Edge of Night,” Jada Rowland of “The Doctors” and Larry Haines and Anne Williams of “Search for Tomorrow” are regularly featured on the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER in roles that would surprise their soap opera fans.
William Griffis, who has portrayed Harlan Tucker, the friendly retired banker on “All My Children” since last April, has been appearing on MYSTERY THEATER for over two years, “portraying everything from a 16-year-old boy to a 90-year-old Tibetan llama.” (On Tuesday, March 28, Griffis will play a man who kills his betrothed by pushing her into a well, in “Ghost in the Well.”)
Says Griffis, a radio veteran, “I love the versatility of radio acting, particularly the opportunity to ‘double’ -- that is, play two people in one drama and maybe even talk to myself.”
Echoing that sentiment is Lloyd Battista who, as small-time gambler Ray Slater, is being reformed through the process of love, on “Love of Life.” “I’ve been talking to myself all my life -- but this is the first time I’m getting paid for it,” says Battista. “Radio gives the actor a flexibility that rarely occurs in television or film. Few actors can play a 40-year-old man one day and then a 90-year-old man the next -- except in radio.”
Battista’s repertoire on MYSTERY THEATER has spanned Sherlock Holmes (in which he has played Watson to Kevin McCarthy’s Holmes), modernized Greek classics and science fiction. On Friday, March 31, he’ll be heard, ironically, considering Ray Slater’s attributes, as Rudolf Watson, the honest twin brother of an indebted gambler in “Shark Bait,” on MYSTERY THEATER.
On “One Life to Live,” Nat Polen is Dr. James Craig, chief of staff of Llandview Hospital, and a pillar of strength in the community. But for the past four years on MYSTERY THEATER, he has been heard frequently in more sinister roles. On Sunday, April 2, for example, he will play Benjamin, a Biblical merchant accused by the King Solomon of thievery, in MYSTERY THEATER’s presentation of “The Final Judgment.”
“Unlike the parts I play on MYSTERY THEATER,” say Mandel Kramer, who for 18 years has been seen as Bill Marceau, “The Edge of Night’s” incorruptible police chief, “Marceau is as honest as the day is long. In television, you are cast according to the way you look, but in radio it’s how you sound. I’m not the popular concept of a heavy, yet on MYSTERY THEATER I can be. It’s the theater of the imagination.”
Like many other MYSTERY THEATER actors, Kramer is a radio veteran. He was heard in the early days of radio on “Your Truly, Johnny Dollar,” “Gangbusters,” “The Shadow” and “Inner Sanctum.” It was then that he met MYSTERY THEATER producer/director Himan Brown.
The diversity that radio drama offers the actor seems to be its drawing card. “Whether or not you look the part, you can portray it on radio. You just have it in you,” says actress Teri Keane, a MYSTERY THEATER regular, who for 12 years was seen as Martha Marceau on “The Edge of Night,” until the character recently committed suicide. Ms.Keane comes alive again on Monday, March27, when she stars in “The Pretend Person,” on the MYSTERY THEATER.
“Radio is thrilling for actors,” says Jada Rowland, a frequent MYSTERY THEATER performer, who for over a year has also been featured on “The Doctors” as nurse and mother Carolee and who, from 1956-74, portrayed Amy on “Secret Storm.” “With the soaps, we rehearse all day, then film,” she explains. “But with radio drama, you have to be a real pro and rapid in your performance. You read through once and then go right to the microphone to record the program.” Jada, who appeared as a child on such radio series as “The Road of Life” and “The Second Mrs.Burton,” has perfected the technique through numerous roles on MYSTERY THEATER.
For 25 years, Larry Haines has been seen as Stu Bergman on “Search for Tomorrow,” and his radio career spans an even longer period. Haines claims to have appeared in some 15,000 radio broadcasts, a tradition he continues with frequent appearances on MYSTERY THEATER. “But,” he says, “they are really two different media: television daytime drama with its everyday social problems and radio drama with its whodunits. I enjoy them both, but radio is my ‘pet Love.’” Haines, Teri Keane and Jada Rowland will all have roles in “Blackmail,” on MYSTERY THEATER, Tuesday, April 11.
Actress Anne Williams was recently murdered on “Search for Tomorrow,” after 10 years as Eunice Martin. In her first script for MYSTERY THEATER, which she did over a year ago, she was murdered too -- coincidentally by a character played by Larry Haines, who, as Stu Bergman, was he dearest friend on “Search for Tomorrow.”
Anne, whose only experience in radio drama before MYSTERY THEATER was “seven meows,” on “City Hospital,” says: “Thanks to Hi Brown’s revival of radio drama, I have played an anthropologist sucked into a lake by a ghost, the wife of an Irish taxi driver, a nanny and a half-alien, just to name a few. And one day I played a character named Diana, the same name I had chosen for the child I was expecting, should I have a girl. I left the studio after the taping and headed right to the hospital, where that day my daughter Diana was born.” That program, “Last Train Out,” in which Anne stars as Diana Sherwood, an American television reporter in Turkey, will be rebroadcast Wednesday, March 29.
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Contact: Cheryl Daly
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