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Dixie Carter, married to actor Hal Holbrook (who will appear as Shylock in Michael Kahn's production of The Merchant of Venice later this season), is a full-fledged luminary in her own right. Throughout her career, Carter has played the range -- from Shakespeare to musical theatre, cabarets to situation comedies, soap operas to Broadway -- always shining brightly. As she rearranges her life to head east for Michael Kahn's production of A Woman of No Importance, Carter is pure firecracker. Looking back on humble origins and forward to portraying Mrs. Arbuthnot in Oscar Wilde's deliciously witty comedy, she moves easily from the past to the future, bringing the two together with a quick anecdote, tying up her stories with a bow. She begins, appropriately enough, in McLemoresville, Tennessee, where she was born and her ambitions to become a performing artist almost died.
"I was born in a town of 200 people -- it's 300 now, it's really grown -- halfway between Memphis and Nashville, really the backside of nowhere," Carter remembers. "Every afternoon I listened to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts and when I was four, I told my mother and father that it was my destiny to sing there, that I was going to sing at the Metropolitan Opera of New York City (that's what I called it). You see, I've always had this in me.
"When I was seven, my brother and sister and I were taken to Jackson,
Tennessee, where an ex-football player who had become a doctor cut our
tonsils out," she continues, her memories darkening momentarily. "And this good ol' boy went way too broad with the knife on me and mutilated my throat. After that operation, the right side of my throat was solid scar tissue and I was told that I would never be a great singer. But I couldn't stop. And it's a miracle that I've been able to sing the way that I have. But I do -- because it was just in me, it was in my heart to sing."
Following that botched operation, Carter redoubled her efforts, studying
voice and acting, learning the trade at one of the country's first regional
theatres, the Front Street Theatre in Memphis. Eventually, she packed her
bags and, buoyed by her dreams to make a living in the arts, journeyed to
New York City. An agent who had seen her play Hero in Much Ado About Nothing arranged for her to audition with the great impresario Joseph Papp. It was a harrowing, revelatory experience. "I walked into that audition and read the flower speech from The Winter's Tale just as fast I could, hoping that would maybe eradicate my Southern accent. And Mr. Papp called out from the back, 'You have the part, dear.' And I said, 'Mr. Papp, I'm a singer, I just do musical theatre!' And he said, 'You have the part, dear,'" Carter recollects, her voice full of disbelief still. "Joe Papp gave me a job two weeks from the day that I got to New York City in 1963. I was just a kid and he gave me Perdita in The Winter's Tale, opposite Michael Moriarty, in
Shakespeare in the Park! And I didn't have sense enough to see and realize that Joe had taken me on."
After The Winter's Tale, Carter left the nurturing circle of Papp's arms and returned to her musical roots, landing a spot in Richard Rodgers's musical theatre program at Lincoln Center. There she understudied lead roles while singing in the chorus of such shows as The Merry Widow and The King and I. She spent two years under the master songwriter's tutelage, waiting for the star-making role Rodgers promised Carter he was writing for her. It was, the actress eventually found out, an empty promise. "Finally I had to say to him, 'Mr. Rodgers, I don't believe you're ever going to write a part for me. I think I have to go out in the world and prove myself to you.' And Mr.
Rodgers said, 'Yes, it's true, Dixie.' So I started to cry and I said, 'Mr.
Rodgers, I took it on good faith that you really were going to do something
with me; how could you do this to me?'" Carter recollects. "And he said,
'Dixie, I'm a businessman. And if I can get somebody like you to sing in my
chorus, why wouldn't I?' Well, it was a big letdown, let me tell you."
Carter wasn't down for long, though. She switched gears and began performing
in revues at the Upstairs at the Downstairs nightclub alongside Madeline Kahn and Lily Tomlin. Next, in 1967, her life took another direction when she passed on the film No Way to Treat a Lady and instead married the mogul Arthur Carter (publisher of the New York Observer) and had two daughters. Seven years later -- during which time she continued to study voice and acting and perform in the occasional musical -- Carter took her lumps for having deserted Papp years earlier and reapplied herself to acting, appearing in such musicals as Pal Joey and Sextet, which ran all of one week but garnered her a rave in The New York Times.
Television came next, the situation comedies Diff'rent Strokes and Designing Women, and more stage work. Carter's singing career continued to flourish, too, with annual appearances at the Cafe Carlyle in New York and the release of two albums. Then, last year, she was given occasion to breathe life into one of her idols, the legendary soprano, Maria Callas, in Terrence McNally's
Master Class on Broadway. For someone who had been a lifelong fan of Callas, who had even started to work with Franco Zeffirelli on a television project about the diva, the opportunity was a gift from heaven. "When the call came to see if I was interested in Master Class, I sat on my husband's lap, put my arms around his neck, and wept and wept and wept," she says of the demanding role. "It took every ounce of emotional and physical strength I had. It took every bit of voice that I had. I literally did not speak when I was off-stage; I didn't talk to my husband even, and he was in town doing Wendy Wasserstein's play An American Daughter."
After Master Class, Carter was offered many plays, but it was Wilde's wit and Michael Kahn's genius that finally wooed her. Understandably, she is tight-lipped about the work ahead. "To talk about 'Mrs. Arbuthnot' now would be irresponsible, because I'm just starting to work on her. I know that I have a very strong reaction to this woman, her plight, her deep need to protect her privacy. She has not been the person that everybody thought she was all these years. That's intriguing for an audience, I hope, and fascinating for me to have to play with," Carter explains.
"It has always been my ambition to do a wonderful part like this and to get
to reach a deeper understanding of myself through acting. It'll be a big job
for me because it's a comedy of manners and one must always remain in the style. We're not doing Streetcar here, but Michael will guide me, I'm sure, and I do have the feeling for it and boundless enthusiasm," Carter concludes. "I can't imagine anything more fun than working on this glorious role with Michael and this company. I'm so looking forward to it. I tell you, I'm leaving bleeding loose ends here at home to get to Washington."
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