So how do you know Jim Dale? To be honest, it kind of depends
on which decade you grew up in.
If you were in the UK back in the 1950s, maybe you were
lucky enough to catch Dale's stage debut where — at the tender age of 17 &
a 1/2 — he became the youngest professional comic to work the English Musical
Hall circuit.
If you're a child of the Sixties, perhaps you know Jim as
the lyricist for "Georgy Girl" (which Rolling Stone — back in 2002
— said was No. 36 on that magazine's listing of the "500 Greatest Pop Songs of All Time").
If you grew up in the 1970s, you undoubtedly recall Dale as
Doc Terminus, the comic villain from Disney's "Pete's Dragon" who
wants to chop up Elliot so that he could then sell "Every Little Piece."
If you were a Broadway fan back in the 1980s, then you first
thrilled to Jim's Tony Award-winning turn in "Barnum" and were then
startled by his electrifying dramatic performance in "A Day in the Death
of Joe Egg."
If you lived in London
in the 1990s, maybe you got to see Dale play Fagin in Cameron Mackintosh's
long-running revival of "Oliver!" in the West End.
Or perhaps you caught Jim's return to Broadway in the revival of Leonard
Bernstein's "Candide."
And if you came of age in the 2000s, then Jim Dale is the
voice that you hear in your head whenever you think of Harry Potter.
That's six full decades that Jim has been entertaining
folks. Or should I say seven, given that this 78 year-old showman is now
starring in his first-ever one man show, "Just Jim Dale." Which
opened this past Tuesday to rave reviews at the Roundabout Theater Company's
Laura Pels Theater in NYC.
"And given that I'm actually out there onstage with
Mark York, who does an absolutely brilliant job of accompanying me on the piano
as well as quietly prompting me whenever I forget what the next bit is …
Well, it's not really a one man show, is it?" Dale admitted during a
recent phone interview. "More to the point, every word that I speak
onstage has been meticulously edited by Richard Maltby, who's the director of
'Just Jim Dale.' Which is how we've managed to take my 65 years in show
business and then trim that down to one-and-a-half hours of really interesting
stuff."
So as Dale & Maltby were putting "Just Jim Dale" together, what
pieces of Jim's life story wound up on the cutting room floor? Surprisingly
enough, it was the "Carry On" films, that popular series of low
budget British comedies which Dale appeared in back in the 1960s.
"There were 31 'Carry On' movies made over the years and I appeared in 11
of them. And in the UK,
because they're still shown on television twice a week, the 'Carry On' films
are still hugely popular. So much so that all 31 are now in the archives of the
British Museum
as the best example of 20th century humor," Jim explained. "But here
in the States, the 'Carry On' movies never really caught on. So since Richard
& I were prepping this show for Broadway … Well, it just seemed silly for
me to reference something that most American audiences have no idea about. Mind
you, if I did this show in London at some point in the future, Richard and I
would — of course — reference the 'Carry On' comedies. We would perhaps
devote a good 10 minutes to the various stories & jokes & things that
are related to that film series. But here? No."
Mind you, you'd think that today's Broadway audiences would
at least be familiar with Dale's work in "Pete's Dragon." But based
on the reaction that Jim recently got from a somewhat elderly crowd, that's
clearly not the case either.
"You know, I mentioned that movie just last night. I
said 'I did a film for Disney. I loved it. My kids loved it. Maybe your kids
loved it. It was called 'Pete's Dragon'.' And there wasn't this murmur of
recognition that I typically get from an audience whenever I talk about this
movie. There was just this profound silence. So I leaned in close and got a better
look at that night's audience. And you know, a lot of those people actually looked
like they predated movies," Jim laughed.
But Dale being the veteran entertainer that he is, sensing
that his audience was slipping away, Jim quickly jumped to his next anecdote.
And — within moments — he once again had that somewhat elderly crowd eating
out of his hand.
"But that sort of skill, being able to quickly read the
mood of a crowd and then knowing that you have to re-engage them, that's
something that I learned from my days in Musical Hall. And in a way, everything
that I've done over the course of my career can be traced back to Musical Hall
and the lessons that I learned there," Dale continued.
That was especially true during those 12 weeks that Jim
spent at with the Big Apple Circus school where he learned to walk the tight
rope, juggle and stilt walk. Which were all essential skills while he was portraying
that legendary showman, P.T. Barnum, in that acclaimed Cy Coleman / Michael
Stewart musical, "Barnum."
"One of the things about working the Musical Hall circuit is that you keep
going back to the same theaters over & over. Which means that — while the
people there want to see you do the same stuff that you did the last time that
they enjoyed — they're also going to want to see something different. Something
that would genuinely surprise them," Dale said. "Well, did you notice
that — at the very end of 'Barnum,' after about the third or fourth curtain
call — three of us came onstage on unicycles in a big circle. I mean, we took us
12 weeks to learn how to unicycle purely to come on after the third curtain
call. That's how much work we put into 'Barnum.' But it was worth it. That curtain
call shocked the audience."
And speaking of shocking … It will probably surprise a lot
of J.K. Rowling fans to learn that — in spite of the two Grammy Awards that Jim
has won for his work on the Harry Potter audio books (Not to mention that Guinness
World Record he received for creating & then recording 134 different
character voices for a single audio book) — that Dale has never once listened
to any of the Potter audio books.
"You have to understand that — in television and film — there's this
thing called takes. You can do Take 1, Take 2, Take 3. Take 50, if the director
wants it. But in the audio book world, it's always Take 1. You keep talking
until you say something wrong. You just have to keep talking until you make a
mistake," Dale stated. "So that is why I've never heard an audio book
of mine. I've done 50 audio books and I've never heard anything from Harry
Potter. I don't want to, because I'd hear it and then think 'I can do better
than that. If only they'd given me a Take 2 or a Take 3 or a Take 4 …' So I
just decided that — rather than listen to them and then be unhappy about it —
I won't listen to them at all."
Which — I know — will shock a lot of Potter fans who just
love Jim's work on all those audio books. But that's the sort of show that
"Just Jim Dale" is. Just when you think that this one man show is
going to be an evening of cute stories & charming songs, Dale suddenly starts
performing a piece from Peter Nichols' "A Day in the Death of Joe." And
you're startled to realize that this makes-it-all-look-easy song-and-dance man is
also a seriously talented actor.
But now that "Just Jim Dale" has received such
great reviews (Charles Isherwood of the New York Times called this show "
… light-footed and lovable," while Steven Suskin of the Huffington Post
called this revue " … gloriously funny"), one has to ask: Will Dale
& Maltby now take this surprising show on tour?
"It's funny that you ask that. Because Richard is in London
right now and he keeps e-mailing me, saying that " … as soon as I
mention your name, everybody always says 'Ooh, the 'Carry On' films.' It's as
if they're waiting for you to come back," Jim said. "So who knows.
Maybe we'll take 'Just Jim Dale' over to the UK
next year and then put back in those 10 minutes of 'Carry On' stories that we cut
out of the American version. But we do that, I'm thinking that I'd first like
to go on a nice, long holiday."
"Don't get me wrong. I realize that I mustn't wait too
long. Because old age takes quite a long ways to get there. But really old age
comes on very quickly. So I think I should get everything done as soon as
possible because I can't plan anything for three or four years. By that time, I
may not to be able to move," Dale concluded. "But then — of course
— we can always have a wheelchair ramp up to the stage. There'll be no
stopping me even then."
This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post's Entertainment section on June 8, 2014.