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Nordi Carolina School of flie Arts
The Kind
of Guy
Who Grows
On You:
JAMES BEARD
In recent years, the turnover
in the drama department faculty
has been almost as great as that
of the student body. This year
sees the addition of James Beard
to the drama faculty as an acting
teacher. Beard is a rather tall,
slender man in his late thirties.
He is poised and relaxed. Ap
propriately enough, he is
bearded.
The Beard family, including
Elizabeth his wife, and his
children, Adam and Lesley,
moved into a twenty-three acre
farm just outside of Mocksville,
North Carolina in July. They
planned to do many renovations
on the modest house. Beard, who
is interested in architecture,
plans to redo the whole building
from top to bottom.
The Tirst thing one notices once
inside the green brick structure is
a large photograph of Beard with
Riyl& Diller from “Hello Dolly”
over the livingroom fireplace. On
the floor there is a taped floor-
plan for a set of steps which they
wHl build up to the second floor.
The steps at present in the house
stop about three-quarters of the
way iQ>. All over the house there
are bMks and pam(Mets about
organic gardening. Lounging on
ttie couch there is a large black
and white cat named Baffle-
Plate .The property contains
twenty-three acres, several small
farm buildings, and an area just
bdiind an old died that has b^
cleared for a garden.
As for his work in the theater.
Beard began very young.. He was
“bom in a tnuik” you might say.
His father was in silent films
before he and Beard’s mother
both became opera singers.
Beard started while stiU in
grammar school, and has been
going ever since. However, like
most actors, he has had to do a
variety of things in order to
support himself. He has been a
chef, a gardner, a carpenter and
a factory guard. He almost
became an art smuggler,
smuggling art out of Spain, but
his ^ani^ wasn’t ^ood enough
He was even a beatnik down in
Big Sur before it became
fashionable-an experience which
he believes did him a lot of good.
He has been working steadily in
the theater since the sixties.
He spent his honeymoon on a
tour of “Oliver” back in 1962, and
a year later, on the same tour, his
son Adam was bom. He has also
toured “Hello Dolly” with Carol
Channing. He has a second child,
a daughter named Lesley.
We interviewed Beard at his
home, on September the 19. We
were given a tour of the property
by Nfrs. Beard. ITie interview
l^t^ about an hour. Several
exerpts are printed below....
NCSA: Is this the first time
you’ve taught acting?
BEARD: No, it’s not the first
time. I was at Bennington College
for a year when I was about
twenty-one, on the staff as a
“drama boy”. My official title
was actor in residence, and my
duties consisted of coaching,
taking part in all class^, and
acting in all productions. You
couldn’t really call me a full-time
teacher because I was also
studying. During the summer lay
off I went to New York and got
into a series of off-Broadway
{days for the summer. Tlirough
that I got an audition and was
invited to go to Ann Arbor,
Michigan, to appear for a season
in a stock company there. I never
went back to Bennington.
NCSA: Why did you choose the
School of the Arts?
BEARD: WeU, it was kind of odd
actually. Hie musical director of
the last diow that I did, which
was “Hello Dolly,” was a little
disenchanted wito the Broadway
scene, and I was a little upset
with it. I found myself growing
displeased with my work, wito
the situation, with the theater in
general I was getting more and
more uptight; my psoriasis was
getting the best of me. We
discussed alternatives. He’s a
composer and, coincidentially, a
friend of Bob Ward. The show
closed in December. And one
evening while I was sitting at
home contemplating whether to
audition for a commercial or
slash my wrists, the telei^one
rang. It was this fellow, won
dering if I was still interested in
teaching, one of the alternatives
we had discussed. I said yes I
gjji was. He suggested that I call Bob
Ward who was in New York.
Then, I just went through the
regular channels.
NCSA: Could you tell us a little
about your professional life?
BEARD: I was brought in
Hollywood, California. When I
was about nine, we moved there
from New York. My father was
the first to go into pictures. He
was in a number of pictures for
the early companies, but wanted
to be an opera singer. This was
before he went into that. Tlien my
sister became involved in pic
tures. I wasn’t much interested in
pictures or theater or anything at
that time, except maybe learning
how to ride my bicycle. My
sister’s dance coach, Queenie
Smith, said “James is a natural,
why don’t you send him to
claM?” I have a feeling she
wanted the extra five dollars. So I
was enrolled in a ballet Hnaa at
about eleven. And I was on my
way to becoming a ballerina, but
I wasn’t nuts about it. Queenie
had an idea to start a repertory
company designed for adidts, but
performed by children, “Tlie
Children’s Repertory Company,”
and I was asked to become a
member. I must have been about
twelve at the time. We did “Little
Women.”
As a matter of fact, I played
Laurie in “Little Women” from
the time I was thirteen until I was
twenty-two. We toured Eagle
Rock, Pasadena, all the big ones.
When I was in high school, we
moved to a very nice little theater
in Hollywood and we began to be
paid. But we just sort of grew up
in it. I got involved with theater
on the West coast, and with
theater stuff at Los Angeles Qty
College.
NCSA: Why did you adopt fai>
mtng as a hobby? It’s quite dif
ferent from the rest of the
faculty.
BEARD: I have to put that off on
my v^e. We found a really
marvelous spot in New Jersey.
We had the gardener’s cottage on
a big 300 acre estate. My wife was
always interested in organic
gardening. I told her that if she
wanted a garden that I would
break one for her in an old sunken
garden that ,was next to the
house, at great physical strain to
myself. But as soon as I saw the
things coming up through
ground, and the marvelous taste
of cucumbers and com when you
pick them off the vine, there’s no
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