Interview: Lane Bradbury of WE MUST REMEMBER THESE MOMENTS at Pangea

The first thing you notice about Lane Bradbury is her energy: it's positive, it's enthusiastic and it's creative. This energetic sprite of a lady might be known for playing Dainty June in the original landmark 1959 production of Gypsy (starring Ethel Merman and directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins) but when you've finished chatting with her, you will discover that Lane Bradbury is SO much more than Dainty June. She's a published author, she's a TV star with appearances in virtually every hit TV show from the 60's through the 80's, she is an accomplished horsewoman, a mother, a grandmother, a Southern Belle from Georgia, and she's still performing. Bradbury is coming back to the New York Cabaret stage with a brand new show: "We Must Remember These Moments." The cabaret, which is premiering at Pangea On March 18 and 25 at 7 pm, promises to be an evening of reflection through music and stories. I sat down with Miss Bradbury over lunch and discussed the show, her life, and the very moments she must remember that make up this show.

This article has been edited for space and content.

Thank you for sitting down with me. This is your third or fourth cabaret. What are these moments we must remember? Better yet, what are you saying, now, in this show, that you didn't say before?

Well, when I did my French show at Pangea (MON HISTOIRE EN CHANSONS FRANCAISES - My Story in French Songs), it didn't follow my life. In this show, there are certain moments in my life that completely changed me. So, I hit those moments in the show in song.

How did you go about selecting the songs in this show?

When we were in the middle of the pandemic, I started writing the show. Then it got longer and longer and longer until it became my memoir. (Note: It's called An Unruly Imagination and it's available on Amazon.) I chose songs that I loved to sing and that said something about my life. Then Jamie (James Beaman, Lane's director) and Michael (Michael Roberts, her musical director) changed some of that and added things that I didn't have at all and didn't think about. Some of the things I wanted to sing were taken out, but I love what they have done with the show and I love doing the show.

You played Broadway in J.B., Night of the Iguana with Bette Davis, Gypsy with Ethel Merman, and Marathon '33, directed by Baby June herself, June Havoc. The one thing that theatre fans might not know is that you were cast as the original Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Tell me that story.

They gave me the role of Honey, along with a script that was 40 feet high. I was thrilled to death to be given a part, but it was another emotional part, like my role in "Iguana," where I had to cry 8 times a week, with no play to take me there. I just had to rack it up 8 times a week and go onstage. If you're not true, if you're not really crying, if it's not real, the scene falls flat. So, I was absolutely emotionally burnt out because of Night of the Iguana. So, the first reading of Virginia Woolf I thought, "Let me just read the lines, let me just rest a minute from all of this emotional drainage." Then the next day, which was the first day of rehearsal, I was like, "Let me just take one more day. Let me just walk through this and then, I'll get going." And then I got fired. I wasn't producing. Honey is like one of those Night of the Iguana parts: you do all of your preparation offstage, the play is not helping you at all. You have to come on full-blown. If it's not true, it's not there. The scene fails, you feel awful. So, that's what happened.

You married and moved to LA, where you began another chapter in your career - TV and Film. You've appeared in almost every major TV Show from the late '60s through the '80s - everything from Gunsmoke to In The Heat of the Night. You've continued that work until just before the pandemic. Which do you prefer: stage or film work?

I LOVED doing TV. I loved working with Sally Field, doing Gunsmoke - those are particular favorites. Going from doing a show night after night after night to doing things where you do it once - if I had an emotional scene, I ramped it up, I did the scene, and, if everything went well, that was it. I mean, sometimes somebody would goof, like a cameraman or lights, and you'd have to do it again. For the most part, I didn't have to repeat. I think that they were especially careful when you'd do an emotional scene, they'd respect that and try very hard to make everything work. I LOVE doing cabaret because I'm singing songs I want to sing. I love that.

Tell me about the Valkyrie Theatre.

I was in church one morning... and the minister began talking about working with at-risk youth and I felt a "kick" in my left buttock. I didn't do anything. So, the following Sunday, I went back to church and the minister mentioned at-risk youth again... and I felt another little "kick." So, I went up to the minister and asked when and where they'd be working with these kids. I volunteered to teach dance and drama and I just loved it. I made up stories that could be danced out. For instance, one of the stories was about an LGBTQ person who gets beat up by a gang. Then, one person in this gang comes to consciousness and tries to stop it. Eventually, the trauma is stopped and they join together. I felt like I could say things I wanted to say and that needed to be said and I could give them to kids that didn't have an outlet. It was very very fulfilling to me.

I ended up getting a studio for like $100 a month in an undesirable part of town. Sometimes, I'd drive some of the students home, and I remember one afternoon, I was driving this boy home, and when we got to his street, he said, "Don't turn down that street." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Because there was a killing there." So, I went around the block. These kids lived in a world that was so foreign to everything I grew up with. I wouldn't take anything for that experience. To see the change in kids that would come in just sullen and unresponsive then, through the play of drama and improv they would come alive. I'd start off each class with a bit of ballet structure, plies, and tendus... not too long, I didn't want to tax them with too much of that, but I wanted to make sure they got that discipline. Then I brought in teachers who taught hip-hop and jazz and they'd be part of the dance/dramas that I'd create from class to class.

So, is Valkyrie still ongoing?

No. Sadly. I tried to get it started when I came back to New York and I just couldn't get it done. At one point, someone gave me a whole school building in Weehawken, but I thought of being in a big building all by myself... I didn't feel good about it. I just couldn't get it off its feet here, so I figured it wasn't supposed to happen. It was a beautiful project.

So, seeing Next to Normal brought you back to the stage?

Yes. I couldn't leave the theatre when I saw it. The situation mirrored what I was going through with my own husband but I didn't realize it at the time. I realized it a lot later. The performances, the music, the story captured me and I knew I had to come back here.

For We Must Remember These Moments, you're working with Michael Roberts as your Musical Director, and James Beaman as your Director, tell me about working with them and what they've brought to the show.

First of all, they're beautiful at guiding me. Jamie is brilliant with knowing how to take a part of my life that's IN a song and, then, he'll have me say something about my life and then go back into the song. It makes it a little bit harder, but I think Jamie has an incredible way of building and keeping an audience interested. When I first put it together, I did it the way I wanted to do it, but Jamie can see things I can't see with an objective eye. Michael Roberts is extraordinary to work with. They're the creme de la creme and I feel like I've been totally blessed to have fallen into their laps. It's just happiness!

You've worked with a lot of incredible people. Let me throw some names at you and you tell me what comes to mind: Let's start with Ethel Merman:

You know, there's a song in Gypsy - "If Mama was Married" - that Michael Roberts has rewritten as a brilliant parody, telling my stories about Merman and Jerry (Jerome) Robbins. Ethel Merman would never look me in the eye. She didn't look people in the eyes. I don't want to give it all away, so you'll have to see the show to hear that song!

OK, I've got some other names - Sally Field (Note: Bradbury appeared with Field in the 1971 film Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring):

She was heaven to work with. We had so much fun together doing that film. Neither one of us really liked Eleanor Parker and Jackie Cooper, who played our parents. We weren't particularly supposed to like them in the film, so that kind of fed us. We had so much fun being together and working together. It makes me happy just thinking about working with her. She's just extraordinary. Absolutely. She cannot be fake. Incredibly authentic whether it's comedy or drama.

Lee Strasberg:

I never got to know Lee. Lee was hard to get to know. I think he was basically a shy person and he didn't say hello to people, so I never got to know him. He certainly knew how to take me - someone with a natural talent - and build on that. When I would fall into traps or something, he would pull me out. He was an incredible teacher. He wasn't someone I was close to but he was someone who was so helpful to me where my talent was concerned.

June Havoc - What was it like to meet and work with the real June, who you played in Gypsy?

It was fine. She was wonderful to work with. She was a good director. We never talked about Gypsy, as it was a trauma for her and a trauma for me, so I never got to know her personally. Had I not played June, I might have gotten to know her better. She couldn't deal with that and I didn't particularly want to re-live it.

Without giving away too much of your parody song, what are the good things that you remember about Gypsy?

Jack Klugman. He was awesome. I mean, you're onstage every night. I enjoyed dancing. Jerry Robbins was such a tyrant that I was scared to death of him. The stage manager would sometimes announce when Jerry was going to be in the audience. Inevitably, something would go wrong. So, I finally said to the Stage Manager, "Please, Please don't tell me. Don't announce when he's going to be here." Ballet had always been my go-to to live, to be joyful and expressive. It was such a rude awakening to work with someone that I felt wanted to kill me. Destroy me.

What moments do you want to remember?

There are romantic moments, tragic moments, like when Martin Luther King was shot, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy. My children being born. Things like that. The show also puts in song a comment on the racial divide in this country. I sing "Abraham, Martin, and John."

What else do you want audiences to know about the show?

Just come and enjoy! I love Cabaret! I am singing songs that I love to sing. It feels like home.

Thank you, Miss Bradbury, and thank you for entertaining us for all these years!

Lane Bradbury will appear in We Must Remember These Moments on March 18 and 25 at 7pm at Pangea - 178 2nd Avenue NYC. For tickets please go to: www.pangeanyc.com

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