Interview: Stephanie Zimbalist at Westport Country Playhouse

Although Stephanie Zimbalist is mostly associated with Hollywood, her heart is in the theater. Zimbalist will be back at the Westport Country Playhouse on September 27th in the one night only performance of The Fitzgeralds: A Reading with Music, which also stars Alec Baldwin. Long-time Westport theater goers saw her in the title role of A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia and Far East and in the Script in Hand reading of The Last Night at Ballyhoo, as well as in The Cherry Orchard at the Long Wharf Theatre and in Los Angeles with Alfred Molina, and in Living on Love at the Seven Angels Theatre.

Zimbalist has fond memories of the Westport Country Playhouse. “My wonderful godfather Chuck Bowden had a big hand in starting the Playhouse,” she recalls. She has “sweet memories of Jim McKenzie, sailing, [and] Annie Keefe… Although the renovation was impressive, I remember the ‘Country’ Playhouse of wood and low ceilings.” Time to make new memories when she portrays Zelda Fitzgerald to Baldwin’s F. Scott Fitzgerald in a staged reading with an original live score by Forrest Gray.

The Fitzgeralds were the golden couple of the Jazz Age and their marriage was both passionate and tempestuous. The show is based on their letters, and the chemistry and dynamics between Zimbalist and Baldwin promise to deliver an unforgettable theater experience. “Alec Baldwin and I have known each other since there were three TV channels,” recalls Zimbalist. “I’ve helped him, he’s helped me. This is our third time working together. We’ve kept in light touch all these years, down to yearly postals for a couple of decades now. Out of the blue he called me up and asked me to do this with him. I’m DELIGHTED. And he’s a doll, and a wonderful actor.”

Zimbalist has certainly worked with many other highly acclaimed performers on stage and screen. Her select theater credits include The Baby Dance, The Tempest, The Cherry Orchard, Carousel, My One and Only, A Little Night Music, Tea at Five, The Night of the Iguana, The Threepenny Opera, Wonderful Town, The Philadelphia Story, The Lion in Winter, The Price, The Subject Was Roses, Hamlet, and Steel Magnolias.

On screen she starred as Laura Holt in Remington Steele, and 30 or so other television credits, including The Gathering, Centennial, The Golden Moment, The Babysitter, Caroline? (for which she won a Golden Globe nomination), The Story Lady, and many other productions, including Jimmy Stewart’s last leading lady in The Magic of Lassie.

“I guess I kicked up the most sand with Sylvia and Tea at Five,” she says. “Both [were] great ‘fun,’ as Kate Hepburn would say, as was gallivanting around the country with Tommy Tune and company in My One and Only.

“A decade ago, I played the Renee Fleming role in Living on Love. [I] pulled out my classical training for that one for the Puccini, again, great fun.

What roles would she still like to play? “Probably one that I would write,” she responds. “Who knows?”

It’s likely that she will.  She is the fourth generation of an immensely talented and internationally renowned family. Her grandparents were the legendary violinist, composer, and conductor Efrem Zimbalist and opera star Alma Gluck. Her father, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. made his mark in television with 77 Sunset Strip and The F.B.I. and other shows. “Most people don’t realize my Pop Efrem, Jr. was a musical force,” she notes. “He was an extraordinary baritone, studied violin in Russia and composition at the Curtis, and wrote several pieces, including a gorgeous sonata for violin and piano.” Her aunt, Marcia Davenport was the music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, a great novelist and biographer of Mozart.

Zimbalist honed her chops for six summers in the theater at Brown Ledge Camp in Vermont, studied voice with Natalie Bodanya in Santa Barbara before studying at Juilliard. “My Grandpa told me to always sing for my own pleasure,” she said. “Following your bliss ain’t so bad.”

Some of her other favorite quotes are equally wise, deep, and inspirational. “A thoroughbred never looks at the other horses in the gate” and “What other people think of me is none of my business.”  This one from Gertrude Stein takes a minute to digest: “For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.”

When interviewed by the Santa Barbara Independent for her role as Katharine Hepburn in Tea at Five, she described Hepburn’s uniqueness this way: “There’s the voice of course, and there was also a tomboyish quality to her, a strength and feistiness that distinguished her from the other glamorous women of Hollywood. She was so beautiful, but she didn’t come across as having to cultivate her glamour.”

That’s a rather good description of Zimbalist, who, she later learned, was Hepburn’s ninth cousin.  She doesn’t have to promote herself as glamorous, talented, or exceptional. She is all that, but in an authentic yet unassuming way. In an industry that relies on images and make-believe, Zimbalist is the real deal.