Julie Harris, Demurely Taking a Well-Earned Bow

The Broadway highlights that still awaited included the popular comedy "A Shot in the Dark" (1961); June Havoc's "Marathon '33" (1963), in which she played a Depression dancer; the hugely successful older woman/younger man comedy "Forty Carats" (1968); "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" (1972); a solo turn as Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst" (1976); and "Lucifer's Child" (1991), in which she portrayed Isak Dinesen. (The gap between the last two is partly explained by her six-year 1980s stint as Lilimae Clements on the prime-time soap "Knots Landing.")

And in a forgotten 1960 drama called "Little Moon of Alban" -- she got excellent notices but nobody much liked the play -- she was romanced, briefly, by fellow 2005 Kennedy Center honoree Robert Redford.

"Unfortunately, I died in the first act," Redford says. "And I wanted to be the guy she ended up with. So Julie and I go back to 1960 -- so that's a big deal."

Harris likewise speaks warmly of Redford. But then, evidence of her friendships is everywhere to be seen in her house. Photographs -- Ethel Waters, Geraldine Page, Shirley Booth, Carson McCullers, Michele Lee and many more -- cover the walls and leave barely an empty inch of space on the tables and shelves. Mention, say, Cherry Jones and she rises to her feet yet again to point out a small, framed picture.

Her gentle nature is revered in the theater. At the time of the "Gin Game" tour, production supervisor Mitch Erickson was approaching his 50th anniversary in the business. "I suppose the major thing that sets Julie apart is she's so sweet," he said then. "She's just a darling. Uta Hagen is a great friend of mine. She's temperamental, feisty, tempestuous. Maggie Smith is terrific but also has her foibles. No one in this wide world could say that about Julie."

For many within and outside the theater community, Harris's selection for the Kennedy Center Honors is a belated one. She expresses delight at being chosen with this year's crop, singling out each of her fellow honorees for praise. She says she's never been to the Kennedy Center event, but "I've seen it all the time."

And in the privacy of this very room, has she ever watched the show and thought, "Hey -- what about me?"

She dissolves into laughter. "No, no," she cries. "No, no, no, no."

In fact, it's hard to find a lot of "What about me?" in Julie Harris. A note from the interview with her six years ago reads: "You can pay her a compliment and she'll accept it graciously. She just doesn't seem very interested in it." It was the doing that mattered, the striving, the stretching. And the friendships.

"I loved actors," she says. "I loved actors. And it was wonderful to be with them in plays. It was always -- it was wonderful to be in a play with actors." That didn't seem to come out quite right, and she laughs.

In 1999, she spoke of the ephemeral nature of theater. But did she ever envy those performers who leave a filmed or taped record of their best moments, while hers evaporate?

"No," she said, "because the thing that was so exciting for me in the theater was that very thing -- it burns for that time, and then it's gone. Except it's never gone in your head and in your heart. I can still remember Laurence Olivier on the stage, and Margaret Leighton and Alan Webb and Ralph Richardson and Wendy Hiller. I can tell you about them. It's tangible to me."

And because her own work is tangible to many other people, Harris has arrived at this weekend of remembrance and celebration. It'll be a kind of curtain call for her career, but then she knows how to take a curtain call.

All those roles, all those colleagues, all those nights on all those stages: It would be nice to think that she spends time with her memories and that they make her very happy.

"No," she responds. She shakes her head and laughs. "I don't. No. That was then. And this is now."

And now, as ever, there's much to do.