Barbara Harris

[+ WilliamM]

I saw Barbara Harris in 1965 in "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" She was wonderful. Ms. Harris had Merman's talent, but not her drive and ambition.

 

From the New York Social Diary:

 

 

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Barbara Harris with Alan Alda and Larry Blyden in “The Apple Tree.”

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One night in the Spring of 1966, at the end dinner hour about 8:15,Warren Beatty came in alone. Since I was the only standing near the maître d’s desk and wearing the wine red Sardi’s blazer, he asked me if I’d seenBarbara Harris.

 

At that moment, Barbara Harris was starring in a musical directed by Mike Nichols called “The Apple Tree”directly across the street at the Shubert. You could see it from the Sardi’s entryway with her name up in lights. Barbara Harris, a name all but unknown now, was at that moment a big Broadway star and considered one of the greatest talents of her generation.

 

So I told Warren Beatty, who was obviously her boyfriend at the moment – and who was my height (6’4”), and handsomer than he appears on screen -- that Barbara Harris was across the way in the show.

 

He then said that he knew that but she had just been onstage performing a song when she stopped and told the audience she couldn’t do it, and walked off the stage and out the stage door and went missing.

 

Where? No one knew. Everyone later learned that she had walked off the stage and directly out the stage door and down 44th Street where she got on a Seventh Avenue bus and went home. Somehow that theater exit marked a life did not get better for Miss Harris. I don’t know her ending but she was nevertheless a remarkable talent which was both endearing and as vulnerable as antique lace. Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane had written the musical “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” for her).