In Lights It Spells Harris

The formula for hit musicals used to be as complex and changeable as the seasons. One time it was two parts social significance, one part legs; another time it was male stars who said the words instead of singing them. But this year the recipe has become refreshingly simple: be sure the leading lady's name is Harris.

Of all the musicals aimed for Broadway this fall, only two have so far survived critical stoning: Skyscraper, starring Julie Harris, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, with another Harris girl, Barbara.

The girls are not blood relatives,* but in talent they are siblings. Neither has appeared in a Broadway musical before; yet both stars are so luminous that they have brightened second-rate material and made promising hits out of what might easily have been flops. But there the resemblance ends. Barbara Harris, at 30, is starring for the first time on Broadway; Julie Harris, at 39, is a veteran of more than a dozen big-league shows.

Seedling Woman. Now, as always, the essence of Julie Harris is vulnerability--the kind of poignant, feminine helplessness that makes every man in the audience want to reach out and right things for her. Now, as always, it is the little girl against the big odds--in Skyscraper she is against the builders who destroy cities; in the past she has opposed such formidable enemies as the police (Shot in the Dark), the boxing profession (Requiem for a Heavyweight) and all of England (as Joan of Arc in The Lark). And now, as always, she beats the odds in her own special way, winning even when she loses--in The Lark she lost her life but won immortality; in Skyscraper she loses her brownstone but walks off with a large bankroll, a rich husband and the show.

Throughout her career, with the same diminutive voice and figure ("If I had a bosom," she once declared, "I could rule the world"), Julie Harris has been a world of women. In her first triumph 15 years ago, she was twelve-year-old Frankie in The Member of the Wedding. With a small voice issuing from a still smaller chest and her hair cropped as short as a boy's, she managed to convey a blossoming femininity, the seedling woman of passion and perception. She was a sentimental strumpet in I Am a Camera, a queen in Victoria Regina, a madwoman as Hamlet's Ophelia. Her secret is not true versatility--there is never any question that behind the makeup it is Julie Harris. Audiences flock to her performances precisely because she can mimic no one but herself; she simply takes on each challenging role and wraps it around her like soft mink. Judging from the length of the line at Skyscraper's box office, the fit this time is fine.

Constant Clown. Barbara Harris plays it all in reverse. She not only has a bosom, she saucily displays it. As a constant nympho in Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, she nearly fell out of her blouse giggling, wiggling and winding around a virginal young man in a nocturnal round of seductio ad absurdum.

Even before that, she was spotted as a talented hoyden and mimic in Second City revues, where she did a host of impressions in a night. If Julie has always seemed all of a piece, Barbara appears as a battalion of selves. Nearly everyone who knows her knows three or four Barbaras--the constant clown, the achingly insecure truth seeker, the girl who's always on, the girl who is lost without a mask.

In Clear Day she plays a dual role as Daisy Gamble, a low-brow chick who gains highborn chic when she is hypnotized. With a nod of her head, she goes from side-of-da-mouth to elegant eighteenth century English, from bubble-gum popping to a low purr when crystal wouldn't melt in her mouth. The new voice seems less to be coming from her than through her--a ventriloquistic trick--but it provokes a growl of lusty approval from the audience. And that in itself is justification aplenty for Alan Jay Lerner to have paid Barbara $30,000 to stay available for the 31 years (and two collaborators) it took him to write Clear Day. With the box office now running at $88,000 a week and the theater selling tickets through June, Lerner has already made back every bright penny.

*Nor is Rosemary Harris, star of the APA's revival of You Can't Take It With You (see THE THEATER) .

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