At 84, 'Trying' and Succeeding
Age Hasn't Slowed James Whitmore, Who Takes On Another Memorable American at Ford's

By Jane Horwitz,
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

James Whitmore has none of that showbizzy reticence about age.

He is "very pleased" to be 84, swims every day, and at home in Malibu, Calif., revels in his family: Noreen, his wife of 4 1/2 years, his three adult children, seven adult stepchildren, 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

The back trouble that benched Whitmore in 2000 during a revival of "Inherit the Wind" at Ford's Theatre is, pardon the expression, behind him now, and he is back at Ford's, this time in "Trying" by Joanna McClelland Glass. It runs through Feb. 26.

Judge Francis Biddle, who served as solicitor general and attorney general for Franklin D. Roosevelt, isn't as iconic as other Whitmore roles -- Truman in "Give 'Em Hell, Harry!" or Will Rogers in "Will Rogers' USA" -- but the actor says he finds him plenty theatrical.

"He's a very complex man who held very important positions, and yet he is very vulnerable," Whitmore says. "He knows he's going to die . . . and the world has changed around him so drastically."

The two-character "Trying" is based on Glass's experiences working for Biddle at the end of his life in 1967-68, when he and his wife, poet Katherine Garrison Chapin, lived in Georgetown. Glass (fictionalized as the character Sarah in the play) was an unsophisticated young woman from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and Biddle was a highly educated, widely traveled Philadelphia-bred Brahmin.

"He was an extraordinary guy," says Whitmore, puffing on his pipe in a dressing room at Ford's, "because he broke a family tradition of arch-conservatism and was called, as was FDR, a traitor to his class."

As a young Harvard law grad, Biddle was secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was "vehemently opposed" to the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, Whitmore says. After the war, he served as a judge on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and later was president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

At the start of "Trying," a cantankerous Biddle obsesses over his increasing frailty at age 81, yet has no intention of letting some dewy young miss tell him what to do about his important correspondence in that office above his garage. Sarah "stays with it and she finally -- I can't say conquers him, but she gentles him," Whitmore says. "They thrust and parry and they finally say, 'Touche.' "

Playwright Glass says she tried to produce an accurate "observation of a man really doing battle with his mortality. And it was a battle. He was in a rage much of the time against . . . the loss of faculties, of memory and of physical ease in the world."

Glass began to write "Trying" as a one-act play soon after Biddle died and took many years and drafts to find its real focus.

"He was in many ways my education into American history," she says from her suburban Chicago home. "So I would get whole scenes about the Tennessee Valley Authority or stuff about his family buying land from William Penn. . . . It took me a long time to whittle it down to . . . a young girl from the Canadian prairie and a very old man from Philadelphia and the culture clash."

Hemmingsen's Willy Loman

"If you look at my résumé, I've probably done more very good roles than most actors who are 70, but I did it for nothing," says Brian Hemmingsen with more pride than regret.

Now he can add Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" to a list of archetypal roles that includes the title characters in "Uncle Vanya" and "Macbeth," and the hapless hobo Estragon in "Waiting for Godot." Keegan Theatre's production of "Salesman" runs at the Church Street theater space through Feb. 18.

"It took me a month to stop weeping when I read it," Hemmingsen, 51, says of the play. "It's so sad. It's so sad." Even chatting, his eyes well up when he speaks of the scene when Willy imagines talking to his long-lost brother and confesses to him, "I still feel kinda temporary about myself."

A big, burly guy with a distinctive voice -- an arresting blend of boom and rasp -- Hemmingsen was cast in 1978 as Big Daddy in an Arlington Community Theatre production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He was 23, and the director, Dorothy Neumann, recalls he was "just very authoritative, even though he was quite young. He had that power."

Neumann also directs him in "Salesman." They figure this is perhaps their 12th play together. Hemmingsen was an artistic director of, and frequent actor at, the Washington Shakespeare Company in Arlington during its early years, and Neumann has directed there often.

A two-time Helen Hayes nominee, Hemmingsen has never joined Actors' Equity, though he's thinking about it now. It was a matter of principle back in the 1980s and '90s, to work with the fringiest theaters and say phooey to the big institutions. With a 7-year-old son and a wife, actress Nanna Ingvarsson, "it's nice to have a paycheck," he concedes. He freelances and helps make ends meet as technical director and set builder for GALA Hispanic Theatre.

Hemmingsen has never seen "Death of a Salesman" performed, and he refuses to worry about what lofty tier Willy Loman occupies in the lexicon of great American roles. "Somebody said, 'You're playing an American icon.' I said, fine and dandy, now let me do the [expletive] work."

Follow Spots

· The Shakespeare Theatre Company's David Sabin will join three actor pals he's known since his student days at Catholic University -- Robert Milli, Barbara Andres and Tony winner Philip Bosco -- in staged readings of George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell" Feb. 3, 4 and 5 at the school's Hartke Theatre. (As students in 1956, the four were in "The Merchant of Venice" together.) The readings will benefit the school's undergraduate drama scholarships and tie into the Shakespeare Theatre's production of Moliere's "Don Juan." Call 202-319-4000.

· Madcap Players continues its Winter Carnival of New Works through Sunday at the H Street Playhouse. Visit http://www.madcapplayers.com .