USA TODAY Features LOOPED's Harper

Valerie Harper stars as Tallulah Bankhead in the new comedy LOOPED, opening on Broadway this Sunday. USA TODAY spoke to her in today's paper:

"Valerie Harper knows from strong-minded women. The veteran actress, who rose to fame on TV in the '70s playing the sassy Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the spinoff series Rhoda, also has tackled formidable women on the stage, including Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

In Matthew Lombardo's Looped, which opens Sunday at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, Harper, 70, portrays a grande dame who on the surface would seem as far removed from Meir as King Lear is from Mary Poppins. That would be Tallulah Bankhead, the hard-living, aggressively scandalous theater and early-film star who inspired fictional villainess Cruella de Vil and countless would-be femmes fatales. But Harper sees a connection: "Golda and Tallulah both had an inner core of real feminism. They saw men and women as equal partners on the planet."

READ: here

LOOPED opens this Sunday March 14 at the Lyceum Theatre (149 West 45th Street) and tells the story of Tallulah Bankhead, the internationally celebrated actress, being called into a sound studio in 1965 to re-record (or "loop") one line of dialogue for what would be her last film -- the dreadful "Die, Die My Darling." Southern, but by no means a belle, Ms. Bankhead was known for her wild partying and convention-defying exploits that surpassed even today's celebrity bad girls. Given her inebriated state and inability to loop the line properly, what ensues is an uproarious showdown between an uptight film editor and the outrageous legend. Brian Hutchison and Michael Mulheren complete the company. It is directed by Rob Ruggiero.

www.loopedonbroadway.com