Gary Sassaman, who was so interesting recently on the podcast of the San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog, sent the following…
I did, in fact, see that production of Inherit the Wind on Broadway in 1996. As I remember it, I must have seen it while it was still in Previews. I think I was there in early March, and I remember flying in from Pittsburgh into an ice storm in NYC, which made getting around very dicey. The night I saw it, Tony Randall was in for George C. Scott, but I seem to recall it was because Scott was embroiled in a scandal for harassing his personal assistant (which, of course, they didn't mention on stage). I did a search, and sure enough, Scott was sued in May 1996. Maybe I'm combining the two stories and Scott was out because he was ill, which was reported at the time. The show closed in May, either because of his ongoing illness or the lawsuit.
I remember Randall coming out and announcing he'd be playing the Clarence Darrow part ("Henry Drummond") and to please be gentle with him, since he didn't know the part that well, but I don't remember him having a copy of the script with him. I thought he was wonderful, as was Durning and I really enjoyed this production of the play, which was always one of my favorite movies.
On a side note, I worked with a very attractive anchor/reporter when I was a graphic designer for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. At one point, she had her own half-hour afternoon talk show on another Pittsburgh channel and she had Tony Randall as a guest one day. The host was also an actress who appeared in local productions (I saw her in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as Martha) and she asked Randall how he stays so calm and collected on talk shows. He replied, "Well, I imagine the host is naked…and right now I'm having a wonderful time!"
I never met Tony Randall but I always liked him as a performer, even (maybe especially) when he was nagging people to stop smoking. I do remember though that the first time I met George Carlin, he said to a group of us, "I just did The Mike Douglas Show and I learned why Tony Randall is always so convincing playing an asshole."
It was sadly ironic that smoking largely destroyed the voice of Randall's close friend, on and off screen, Jack Klugman. I saw the two of them on stage twice, once before Klugman's voice began failing him due to throat cancer. In 1975, the year they stopped being The Odd Couple on TV, they did a tour of the original Neil Simon play and I saw it at the Shubert here in Los Angeles.
I believe my pal Ken Levine saw it and has said good things about it on his blog. We must have seen it on different nights since it was pretty weak the night I went. The sound in the Shubert was terrible and the two stars seemed to be on auto-pilot, just running the lines without a lot of performance behind them.
Then in 1997, the National Actors Theatre — the same group that stiffed me on those Inherit the Wind tickets — mounted a production of The Sunshine Boys on Broadway with Klugman as Willie Clark (the Walter Matthau part, if you remember the movie) and Randall as Al Lewis (the George Burns role).
It was terrible. By now, Klugman's voice was raw and raspy…and I'm sorry. No matter how gifted a comic actor is, nothing sounds funny when every sentence sounds like the speaker is in acute pain. The reviews said it almost enhanced his performance and maybe it did on opening night when the critics came. By the time I saw the show, it was just sad and too distracting. Some people left at intermission.
Randall wasn't much better, delivering his lines with a thick Jewish accent that sounded neither real nor like Tony Randall. It's a testament to how good those two men were in the other things they did that I wrote those two plays off as aberrations in otherwise successful, award-worthy careers.
Turning to George C. Scott, I went and looked up his New York Times obit and found this in it…
In 1996, he was on Broadway again in a revival of Inherit the Wind as a lawyer based on Clarence Darrow. It was the kind of flamboyant role that should have been the capstone of his career. But he became ill during rehearsal and the opening was postponed. When the play finally opened, Mr. Scott received favorable notices and was nominated for a Tony Award, an honor that had eluded him. Because of illness, he missed several performances. Once he left the stage in the middle of the show and was replaced by Tony Randall, who produced the play through his National Actors Theater. Subsequently, it was disclosed that Mr. Scott had an aortic aneurysm.
Further clouding his triumphant year, an actress who had been his personal assistant accused him of sexual harassment. Early in May he left Inherit the Wind and went to California for medical treatment.
That production of Inherit the Wind did its last performance on May 12, 1996 so maybe my friend was wrong when he said I'd just missed seeing George C. Scott's last stage performance. I only saw Scott on stage once…
In 1978, he starred in Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox, at the Shubert out here…with audio much better than they had when Klugman and Randall did The Odd Couple on that stage. Scott was wonderful in it and so was the supporting cast — Jack Gilford, Trish Van Devere, Gretchen Wyler, Jeffrey Tambor and Hector Elizondo.
Scott was one of the greatest actors of his generation and I'm glad I got to see him at least once. I still wish though I'd seen him in Inherit the Wind…and not just because I wanted to get what I paid for.