The Actor Behind the Personality

Sitting down to talk about his life in show business, Charles Nelson Reilly begins: “Paris. I was born in Paris.”

His face, however, indicates otherwise. Blooming there is one of his trademark grins, which seems to defy human musculature by stretching in a long, tight line from one jaw socket to the other.

Truth is, the 69-year-old comic actor confesses, he was born in the Bronx. He’ll get to that in a minute; but in the meantime, why not have a little fun?

“I have a good time,” he says. “Everyone makes such a big deal of living. Make a little laughter.”

That spirit is sure to be center stage beginning Thursday as he tells his life story in the one-man show “Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly,” at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank. Ranging from his first, addictive hit of applause in a fourth-grade class play to his work in theater and television with the likes of Abe Burrows, Uta Hagen, Julie Harris and Johnny Carson, the show is intended as a celebration of good times and as a thank-you to the people who’ve urged him along.

“I try to pay homage to these people who, my whole life, have made me the someone I was born to be,” he says one sunny afternoon in a Hollywood Hills home filled with photos, posters and other mementos from his career.

Reilly broke through on Broadway in 1961 with a Tony-winning turn as insidious nephew Bud Frump in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” then originated the role of adventure-seeking shop clerk Cornelius Hackl in “Hello, Dolly!”

He is probably best known, however, for his astonishing 97 guest appearances on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson,” as well as his antics as a panelist on such game shows as “Match Game,” “Hollywood Squares,” “Tattletales” and “To Tell the Truth.” He also co-starred as the modern-day descendant of a ghostly sea captain in “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1968-70) and played numerous guest roles on other sitcoms.

From the TV work, especially, he became firmly lodged in the American mind as that funny guy with the rubber-faced expressions, elfin demeanor and raspy, sibilant voice.

All well and good, except that that persona too often overshadows his more serious, artistic pursuits.

Because people see him as a perpetual jester, they tend to overlook, for instance, that he’s a renowned acting teacher, having coached the young Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin and Christine Lahti. Or that he has directed extensively for the stage (including a dozen shows with Harris, from “The Belle of Amherst” to a much-praised late ‘90s revival of “The Gin Game”) and the opera (with such companies as Opera Pacific and the San Diego, Dallas and Chicago Lyric operas).

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Displaying an opera review in which he is referred to as “Charles Nelson Reilly of ‘Hollywood Squares’ fame,” he yowls: “It’s like a scarlet letter.”

In other people’s eyes, he says, “I’m off the wall. I’m over the top. I’m a personality, not an actor.”

Harris, however, sweeps such notions aside. “He’s a wonderful actor, but he never gets enough chance to do it,” she says in a separate telephone conversation. “If I was his agent, and I wish I was, I’d have him working all the time.

“He’s taught me a lot about theater,” she adds, marveling at the coaching he has provided while directing her. “It’s his insight into the personal idiosyncrasies of human beings. He’s attuned to small details--the pieces of the puzzle that make up the whole picture.”

As irritating as the stereotyping is, it pales next to the other big misperception about Reilly: that he’s dead.

Among the mementos crowding his walls is an enlarged, framed photocopy of this query to a newspaper celebrity column: “I would like to know if Charles Nelson Reilly is still alive and, if so, where I can locate him. K.L.”

“That happens a lot: ‘Oh, my God, you’re still alive,’ ” he says.

The confusion eased a bit in the late ‘90s, when he made a splash with a string of TV guest appearances as Truman Capote-like writer Jose Chung on “The X-Files,” “Meego” and “Millennium,” winning an Emmy nomination for the “Millennium” appearance as well as for a guest turn as chemical testing company boss Mr. Hathaway on “The Drew Carey Show.” In the theater world, meanwhile, he earned a 1997 Tony nomination for directing “The Gin Game.”

Here in L.A., his recent directing credits include Ruby Dee’s solo show “My One Good Nerve” and Paul Linke’s one-man “Father Time.” (Linke, in turn, directs “Save It for the Stage.”) Late this summer, Reilly will re-team with Harris to ready her famous portrayal of poet Emily Dickinson for a September revival of “The Belle of Amherst” at the Laguna Playhouse.

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As Reilly chats away, his companion of 20 years, Patrick Hughes, wanders in and out of earshot, chuckling at stories he no doubt has heard many times. “He’s my life,” Reilly says, while a smiling Hughes, a set designer for television and theater, describes their time together as “great fun.”

Holding forth at their dining table, Reilly steps out of character now and again to offer smart-aleck commentary on his tales: “Thank you, Dr. Reilly” or “My soapbox is so high.”

If he has trouble recalling a name or detail, only to think of it a moment later, that’s his cue to call out to an imaginary convalescent-home attendant: “I got it, nurse!”

Comedy didn’t always come so easily. “As a kid, I was shy,” Reilly says. “I was not funny. All of this talk-show [expletive] that came later is from left field. I didn’t speak that much in my life,” he says incredulously, “and suddenly, I’m adorable on talk shows.”

Reilly was the only child of Charles Joseph Reilly, a graphic artist who was a head of outdoor display advertising for Paramount Pictures, and Signe Elvira Nelson. His young life was caught up in a domestic drama that drove his father to a nervous breakdown--induced, in part, by a missed opportunity to move to Hollywood to work with Walt Disney--and necessitated the family’s move to Hartford, Conn., to live in his maternal grandparents’ crowded, cold-water flat.

“Eugene O’Neill could never begin to get near all this,” Reilly says.

His mother was known to scream insults out the window at neighbors or kick around the cardboard puppet theaters her young son constructed. Still, she had an offbeat sense of humor that Reilly now recognizes as an early influence.

It shows up, in part, in the title to his show. “If I asked her a personal question--’Why do all the neighbors hate you, Ma?’--she’d say, ‘Save it for the stage.’

“I have no clue why. . . . “

It’s hard to say how much Reilly has saved for the stage, considering that all the world’s his stage, and he’s always playing the crowd.

Harris fondly recalls that at rehearsals for “The Gin Game,” Reilly and co-star Charles Durning “would spend half the time telling jokes, until I’d say, ‘Shouldn’t we rehearse?’ ”

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Opera singer Rodney Gilfry, whom Reilly directed in a Dallas Opera production of “Die Fledermaus” in December, offers a similar report. “Sometimes he’d be so funny we were on the floor, and we’d have to take a break.”

Funny business aside, though, “he’s extremely supportive,” Gilfry says. “If you do something that he thinks doesn’t work, he helps you to laugh at yourself--so you don’t take it as a criticism, or even a correction.

“Above all, the man is so loving. If I were to repeat his most-often-uttered phrase, it is ‘I love you.’ And he says it in many ways.”

Back at Casa Reilly, the funny man has shifted to a seat in front of the television, where he studies a tape of one of last summer’s first performances of his autobiographical show in Boca Raton, Fla. Watching himself extemporize jokes, he says: “I don’t know where it comes from, but God makes it come. It’s not me; a miracle happens every once in a while.”

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“SAVE IT FOR THE STAGE: THE LIFE OF REILLY,” Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank. Dates: Opens Thursday. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3:30 p.m. No performances July 20 through 23. Ends Aug. 27.

Price: $30. Phone: (818) 955-8101.