You probably recognize Jerry Adler as a character actor from TV and movies, with roles on projects like “The West Wing,” “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” and “The Sopranos,” where he played Tony’s longtime associate Hesh.
But as you learn in his new book, acting was a surprise second career for the longtime Broadway manager, producer and director who was born into a legendary theater family.
Adler’s book is called “Too Funny For Words: Backstage Tales From Broadway, Television and The Movies,” in which he covers the many ups and downs of a life in the klieg lights and far from them.
Adler is now 95 and he says his next role is always a phone call away.
You were born into a family that worked in show business. Was there ever a time when you didn't want to work in show business yourself?
From childhood on, I was always happy to be in show business. It was a great thing to do in our family line. So I was happy to do it.
You had a lot of different jobs in the theater. How did you learn the ropes?
Well, I learned the ropes. On the job training, that was me. I got a job as an assistant stage manager on a show called ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' with Carol Channing. And I was just going on 21 at the time and knew nothing about the industry. And certainly learned as I went along.
I was surprised to learn that you were able to mix show business and your time in the service also.
I got drafted in 1952 during the Korean War. And I got stationed at Fort Dix over in Wrightsville, New Jersey. What I did for the whole time I was in the Army, I directed soldier shows. We put on plays and sent them out to the different forces in the First Army. I wasn’t exactly in trouble.
You stayed far away from the fighting.
Not exactly the firing line, no.
So eventually you made it back to New York. Can you talk a bit about the different jobs you've had? Stage managing and directing and producing, you kind of did it all.
My first half of my working career was on Broadway I did 40 shows as a stage manager, I directed a couple of shows, I produced a musical. And during the 1980s I decided I wanted to go to California, maybe break into the movies as a first assistant director. So I kind of moved out there and trying to get in the movies. It didn't work out.
What did you like about the life in a Broadway theater?
It's a strange life, don’t forget. You only work at night. All day long you have a normal life up until dinnertime, and then you cook dinner with your family, and then you go to work. It's a kind of a weird lifestyle, I think. Most people really can't get used to it.
It seemed to me like there's a tension between having a show that's working well and is successful, and then finding yourself having to stay on it for a long period of time, months or even years in some cases and then it becomes the same thing every day. So how did you keep your work fresh when you were doing that backstage job?
What was wonderful about being a stage manager is you could go off and do other things. When you’re with a big hit like ‘My Fair Lady,’ you could take a leave of absence and go do another show. Open it up and then when it opens you go back to ‘My Fair Lady.’ ‘My Fair Lady’ became a kind of focal point of work because you always knew you had a good job waiting for you.
It occurred to me reading your book that a lot of what you did was problem solving. Somebody would be late, somebody would be hung over, somebody wasn't hitting their cues. And you had to kind of figure out a solution most of the time.
That’s what the stage manager does, he takes care of everything. He keeps the show working. And then when you become an actor, the stage manager is doing that for you. It's a kind of a great turnaround. And I didn’t do it until I was getting ready for Social Security, then I became an actor in my 60s.
And we'll get to that in a second. Just a couple more things about theatre. Were you surprised to be working on a hit? Or did you know when something was very good and it would be successful?
We know we had a great hit with ‘My Fair Lady.’ That was a given. The only question was how long would it survive on Broadway. On television, when we were working on the pilot for ‘Sopranos,’ it was an ordinary kind of cops and robbers show. And the genius of it was the fact that Tony had a psychiatrist who he would go to go to solve his problems. But that's the way it worked in showbusiness.
Tell me about your time working on soap operas.
I did soap opera, starting in the 1980s soap opera called ‘Santa Barbara,’ which is a wonderful show. But the hours of work are enormous. Don't forget we did, I think, like, 40 pages of script every day. We came into work between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. for a quick rehearsal, and then you taped all of those scenes and by the time you get finished being certainly into the dinner hour. You will put in a good 12- or 13-hour day every day. Well, six days a week.
How did you keep track of all the plot intricacies associated with soap operas? Because obviously there's a lot of melodramatic development over the course of a week on a soap opera.
Right. I didn't get into the comings and goings of the characters. Mine was much more technical, of getting the scenes taped. So I didn't follow the extraordinary storylines that appeared in a soap opera. It was unbelievable. Somebody actually gets killed on a Friday and appear on Wednesdays as a new character. It was a world unto itself. It's unbelievable. Very, very tiring.
It seems to me the soap opera actors don't get enough respect for how much memorization they have to do. And they don't get a lot of takes either.
The toughest job in show business, learning all that material every single day, getting home from work at 7 or 8 o'clock at night. And being back on stage at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. It is an exhausting terribly, terribly exhausting job. I'm thrilled to have been associated with these people, but they are they are just relentless.
So you were involved in a successful national tour of ‘Camelot.’ Can you tell me a good Richard Burton story or memory that you have?
Richard Burton. He was a delightful man, first of all, a true gentleman. And he had a problem with one of the actors in the in the show, who had bad breath. He came to me one day and said is there any way you can speak to so-and-so. I say, what's wrong? He says, his breath is like the sea giving up its dead. That's got to be taken care of right away. We got a big bottle of Listerine put it on the this guy's dressing room table. So he got the gist. But Richard was kind enough not to really make a problem on it. But he skirted around and did it the right way. He came to the stage manager and let him handle it.
So eventually, as you say, you made a jump to the front of the camera. It must have been such a surprise to be working as an actor. I get the sense that you really got a kick out of this kind of second career of yours.
What was wonderful was I auditioned for this movie because a friend asked me, who was doing the casting, asked me to come because the director described me as one of the characters, and I finally got the job. And everybody in the soap world wants to graduate into features. That's their main quest in life: be in a movie. And now here the stage manager of the show is making a movie and they’re stuck in the soap opera.
When you started doing it, how did you know how to act?
Don’t forget, I had a great experience as a stage manager and director. I had no training as an actor. So I took each scene that I was going to do, and approached it as how would I direct this particular scene. And that's the way I would act it. It kind of turned out OK.
Your cousin, I believe, is the famous acting teacher Stella Adler. Did you develop a technique the more you did it that was your way? Or was it always the way you've just described it: let me think of this as a director. Did you find yourself getting into the character in a deep way or something?
I was totally working as a director. It certainly colored everything I did as an actor, because I had no training as an actor. And so my training as a director helped me get through this. Nobody helped me, I’ll tell you that much. I did it myself.
Unlike many actors, you talk about how much you enjoy going to auditions.
I think that's the best part of the business, the interplay between you and the guy or woman who is doing this particular project, to be able to create a kind of relationship with a stranger, as it turns out, when you're looking for looking for a job. And that was the most fun: creating a relationship with the man who is going to be your boss, in fact.
Maybe it was different for you in some way because you were known to so many people working in the industry. But did you ever go to an audition and see a lot of people who looked like you like in the hallway all there for the same part?
When I became an actor, I was a character actor. And a new character actor, all of a sudden, came on the scene. Nobody knew him, nobody knew what his name was, and I was a new face. So I got a lot of jobs. So I always, when I was doing these auditions, I'm auditioning with a group of people of my age, my size, my coloring, my look. And what makes you stand out at these auditions is how much a relationship you can create on a happy tone with the employer.
Did you ever have a very bad audition that sticks out?
I did a lot of those. I'm like a baseball player. If you hit .300, you're doing pretty good, which is three out of 10. If you get if you get three jobs at 10 auditions, you're doing very well.
So you said being a kind of a new face helped you get some work, including in ‘Manhattan Murder Mystery,' which is kind of built on the fact that you're not the obvious person in the plot. For people who haven't seen the movie, I don't want to spoil it. But how did you end up kind of insinuating yourself into the world of Woody Allen movies?
That was the genius of casting that. He was casting a man in a part. Nobody was supposed to know that he was the murderer. So they cast a guy that nobody knew. And it looked like a man who lived in the same building and actually I didn't find out I was the murderer until I was on the movie for a week and a half. We only got scenes every day. We didn't get the full script. So I never knew that I was the murderer.
What do you do when you get a script and maybe the part’s OK, but you think the project's not that good? Is that in your mind when you go to set —that you've got to really hit a home run in your own performance because the project, you know, doesn't seem that that promising?
There are auditions that you do only because you want to create a relationship with the casting people. You want them to know who you are and what you do. Even though you know that the thing you’re auditioning for is not particularly interesting. Again, it's three out of 10.
You talked about when you work in the theater that you wait all day to work at night; there's also a lot of waiting on sets. How did you deal with the hurry up and wait of getting into costume and then they've got to reset the cameras and everything and maybe your part is only going to film for a minute or so?
I enjoyed all of it. It's a different world, you know, and in the theater, you do that same job every single night. And in films and television, every scene, every day is new because you're doing a storyline that stretches out. In the theater, you're doing a play. The same play every night.
I want to go to a lightning round with you if that's OK. What's your go-to order from Zabar’s?
Sturgeon.
Your wife Joan chimed in to say sturgeon there.
And a pound of Nova.
When you think of James Gandolfini, who you were in ‘The Sopranos’ with, what comes to mind?
He had the most extraordinary eyes. You can look into this man's intelligence and the beauty of this person. He was one of the kindest, most generous guys you ever wanted to meet. It was a tragic loss when we lost this guy, he was great. He was number one.
You've been on a lot of prestige TV. Why do you think ‘The Sopranos’ remains relevant now? It's been off the air for almost 20 years at this point.
Well, the richness of the dialogue, the richness of the writing. Every Italian actor in the city of New York was in this wonderful show. I was the only one who's name didn’t end in a vowel.
Did you feel like you stood out on the set?
I was friendly with everybody. And I was not one of the, what you would call, principals. I didn't have a contract to do every single episode. I was on and off. So every time I came on, I rejuvenated the relationships with the actors. And it was a great group of guys. So it was really fun to do. Don't forget, we did this for nine years.
And there was a lot of waiting sometimes in between the seasons where you would go and do other things and wait for ‘The Sopranos’ just to restart again.
The reason that I wasn't in all of the episodes was because I was doing other things. The show had a kind of hiatus every now and then. In general, when I was doing a new episode, you work three weeks, and you're off a week. So we do the three weeks, jump on a plane go to New York. I had a week in New York to do a scene or two scenes on ‘The Sopranos,’ go back to California do three more weeks, then go back to that. That was the routine.
What's your theory about the famous ending?
That was the most brilliant thing. I mean, we're still talking about it, aren't we? I had no idea that it was gonna be done like that. I had a little bit of a scene after that we never filmed. I don’t think anyone on the show, maybe Jimmy knew, but I don't think anybody else knew what David Chase was up to. But it was a brilliant idea. There is no way that David Chase was going to kill off Tony Soprano. So how do you end the show? Pull the plug.
A lot of actors like to sometimes complain about their agents, but yours is your daughter. What's that relationship like?
Well she was kind of surprised when I did this audition and it looked like I was going to get to the part. I said, you’re going to have to ne my agent because it looks like I'm going to be an actor. So she took me on in the Paradigm Agency and she always looked out for me.
What's the key to living such a long life as you have?
Never say no. Keep going to work every day. That's not the last day, it’s just a day. Always wait for the phone to ring and do the job right. Keep it going and use all of your energies towards making sure that your job comes first.
