He was a vocal coach who had a group of singers, and they were a big chorus who sang behind Perry Como. They had a vocal group called the Ray Charles Singers. That Saturday, I was on The Perry Como Show. So, my final audition was for Judy Holliday between shows on a Saturday, and I had to do a little scene with her. Now, at this point in my life, I was half a performer and half a musician. The final audition was for Judy Holliday herself. This dancer I was going with convinced the stage manager to let me come in from summer stock on my day off and audition for him. So they wanted somebody to go in the chorus and cover Sydney. The standby for Sydney Chaplin was leaving to open the show in London - he was going to become a chorus member, an understudy, in the second year of Bells Are Ringing. I was going with a dancer who was in Bells Are Ringing. I didn’t even have an agent, I was just doing little parts. That’s one of the most dramatic “understudy getting a big break” stories I’ve heard. So when they said, “Would you like to consider playing it?” I jumped at it. He now spoke “dramatically,” you know, because he was now a “thespian.” It was just a wonderful, wonderful thing to see.Īnyway, that’s how I knew about the part. Those of us who knew him were just bowled over by the personality change. All of a sudden, he was a “thespian,” after all those years. He was a beaten-down guy with rounded shoulders, but once this role happened for him, he stood up straight. After living in one room in a very seedy rooming house on Broadway, he moved to a better room in the same hotel, and instead of sitting in the back of the coffee shop, he sat in the front!īut the biggest change in his life was his posture.

And all of a sudden at age, I don’t know, 68, he had a career! That part changed his life. Yes - “Oh wow!” Harold got all the reviews. And three days before opening night, David Burns had a heart attack, and so Harold Gary went on and opened the character that I’m playing right now. When Ilya, Darling closed, Harold Gary got to be understudy for David Burns in the original production of The Price, so he went right to work. He was probably in his middle 60s by then, living in a very seedy hotel on Broadway in one room, and spent his afternoons at the coffee shop in the corner, in the back, sitting around the table with his cronies telling lies. He was one of those guys who went from understudy part on Broadway to tiny role on the road to anything summer stock, anything he could get his hands on, and survived. Harold was older than me, and he played the Bartender and various things. My understudy was a man named Harold Gary. The year before, I had done a musical called Ilya, Darling, based on Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri - one of my many flops! I played Tonio, the villain, and I understudied the male lead, who was a Greek Adonis that they’d brought over. But I had a strange relationship with it. I was much too young to play it when it first opened. I knew the role, but I’d never done the role. Would you have any interest in that?” and I jumped. I did The Fantasticks with her, and after one or two days of rehearsal, she said, “We’re considering doing The Price at Arena Stage next year. I was working with Seema Sueko, the director, in California. How did you end up doing The Price onstage in Washington? Vulture spoke to Linden about his roots as a bandleader and stage actor, his work on Barney Miller, his brief stint dubbing foreign films, his memories of a potentially great sitcom that was canceled too soon, and the evolution of his craft over six decades. Linden plays Gregory Solomon, a brash and scheming furniture dealer with a dark secret who enters the lives of two brothers who are grief-stricken over their father’s death. Now 86, Linden can be seen onstage in Washington, D.C., starring in a new production of Arthur Miller’s The Price that runs through November 19 at Arena Stage. Hal Linden will always be best known as the wry, decent captain of TV’s Barney Miller, but he’s a versatile actor whose career predates that classic sitcom and has outlasted it by a staggering four decades.

Person who played barney actor