Actress Dixie Carter on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

she has come to symbolize the strong southern belle with a will of Steel and the heart of a full-fledged liberal in real life the southern part is true but she's been known to refer to herself as the only Republican in show business she's a complete performer but her most recognizable character will probably always be as designing woman's Julia Sugarbaker from TV to film Broadway to cabaret she continues to make her presence known in the 1980s she found her soul mate and actor Hal Holbrook and the two have come to represent the best of Hollywood unions hello i'm ernie manouse coming up on interviews our conversation with the Emmy award-winning actress and singer Dixie Carter how different do you think this world would be if everyone was from the south that's a tricky tricky question I think southerners have many admirable traits and in many ways it might be a pretty nice world one jumps to the notion that the world we'd be moving a little bit less rapidly it would be a kinder world that I know for sure it would be a kinder world if everyone were from the south a great funny idea it would be a more literate world people would read more it would be a better world for children really yeah so it would be a better world because it would be a better world for children did you ever try and fight against the southern stereotype mmm-hmm I guess I did I I don't know it my folks named me father was the principal mover in this name me Dixie so that I wouldn't be named some of the other long family names my sister was named Melba Helen after our two aunts his daddy sister my mother's sister there was a Faustina Imogen in the family there were many family names and daddy said let's name her something cute that nobody will ever make fun of so I went to New York with the moniker Dixie and I had fun made of my name and me sort of tangentially I did a play with Meryl Streep and she got Tom babe back in the 70s got Tom babe to insert a line where she could call me miss cup never comfortable exactly for me you know so I've taken it all these years I say taking it because it's out there making fun of southerners is really out there it one doesn't want to say I have a very very high IQ I'm really smart but it does become a kind of a goal inevitably to get the notion across that one isn't an idiot so many people have said Oh Dixie I expected you to be blonde meaning with fans and bubbles or you know yeah people but then Linda Bloodworth salute attempt to get women out of a situation where they're always on the front porch in their slips scratching yeah and she created for me a public impression that I was smart that all of us were really but particularly that I was smart so I get invited to do speeches now a lot public appearances because people think I'm not smart because of Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women it was nice feeling nice does it bother you when people confuse you with that character though mm-hmm no nothing bothers me about being confused about anything that has contributed to arriving in my late 40s at a level of I guess you'd have to use the word success in show business that you know I nothing about it bothers me fans who come up to me and disturb me in restaurants do not really bother me because I'm grateful yeah I didn't get that kind of a notice and tension and financial remuneration when I was young I took ten years out of my life to get married and have my baby girls and those were what I call the pretty years so I was out of show business from 26 to 35 that was a big chunk yeah and events transpired my marriage to my children's father failed and I received an offer to come to Hollywood not scared of LA and I didn't want to go I didn't want to leave New York I love living in New York but I couldn't earn a living working for Joseph Papp but the New York Shakespeare Festival so so at 40 I did go to Los Angeles against all odds so I'm proud of that yeah I'm proud that I was the valedictorian of my high school class I'm proud of one the math award and and I'm proud that I went to Los Angeles at 40 years of age and managed to get lucky if that's the word managed to become established and see and I think that's interesting in the story of your life the fact that not just the trip out to California when you did that but the trip from Tennessee up to New York when you chose to do that yeah how did you I mean here you are and I don't mean any disrespect but your southern girl you grew up in the heart of the south living the south as the south is yeah yeah and you decided to go to New York it wasn't a decision I don't believe these things are decisions really more and more I don't I think you just do it your one is propelled the Metropolitan Opera started broadcasting on the Texaco company started putting them on Saturday afternoons the year I was born 1939 and so that was in our home on Saturday afternoons and by the time I was 4 or even before that I knew it was my destiny to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City I knew that as a tiny child that glorious music that glorious sound coming out and I would peek into the radio and look to find the little creatures who were making those sounds I knew what I had to do I always knew it yeah I didn't get to do it we had a disastrous experience with tonsillectomies in our family dr. Barry Hill who who got to be well-known in West Tennessee as a football player and coach just decided all of a sudden to start operating on people and start cutting out tonsils so he cut he cut all three of us the same day we all nearly bled to death and I wound up with scar tissue growing up I knows in my ear and down my throat and I was from that moment on I was not going to sing old mare involved not for New York City I was seven but I wound up right across the park at the cafe Carlyle for 11 seasons know that I did a lot of musicals you can't keep somebody from doing what's in their heart to do when you were seven and this happened and you must have realized your life was different I didn't know no I sang like a lark I didn't realize what was gonna that this stuff was gonna keep growing over the years it was going to cause muscular whatever tight tension contraction that would just limit my voice and so George Hearn used to say I had the most feminine sound he ever heard but and I was a caller Tura you know but it wouldn't it wasn't it was not gonna be I studied classical music always and I set it up and I found teachers in New York who were willing to take me seriously as a musical student I think was more musician's musicianship than the vote but then I got to do Maria Callas on Broadway yeah in master class and so my heroine with whom I had been singing although that wasn't the right thing for me to be singing this is gigantic our lady muscle Natori holiday look but I knew what it meant as the lady I auditioned for the met when I got to New York and she said that was awful she said after I sang there sang them aria from La Rondine a Loretta's dream which I played for myself on the piano not that time not for that audition it was a met pianist and her name is escaping me right now Geraldine souvaine said that was awful but you certainly had lovely Italian and you know the words mean and you should be on the stage now whether it's the stage Matt I don't know miss Carter but I'm going to stay in touch with you so she and she knew Richard Rodgers and I wound up singing for him at the newly instituted music theater of Lincoln Center this is before I married you know under studying there and singing in three massive revivals carousel Oklahoma sell the cane I I understood leavin Nora Oh carousel on decided Susan Watson John rate came back and did it and the merry widow and I understood patrice Munsell two of those I toured and then after the carousel to it that was the third one I met my future husband and and I stopped forward progress but um but when you were making the and not the choice but when the time came to go to New York was their fear was there mm-hmm where am I going what am i doing what if this is wrong mm-hmm do you ever I can't explain that but oh I'm much more fearful now than I was when I was younger yeah do you have reason to have become that way mm-hmm I think so I think and the world hasn't dealt with you harshly yet what is there to be afraid of when you've grown up in absolute love very loving wonderful family and community but nothing's harmed you yeah why would you be afraid of anything how about your family what was their reaction to you going to New York if I had said or my brother Hal or my sister midge I want to be an astronaut they would have said do you really want to will you work hard and how can we help that would have been the response so although they had to be just a little bit of just maybe making the truth malleable we'll say as to what I was doing I mean the story was Dixie Virginia's gone to New York to study music she's studying singing there wasn't any any mention that I would also maybe like to perform you know alright but I wasn't afraid the only coming in from the airport I went by myself I had a place at the rehearsal club the famous rehearsal club rooming with Patsy welting who was singing for the Mets to do then Patsy welting for Memphis not living anymore and the a taxicab brought us right through Queens right through all those graveyards all cemeteries lined up harsh entrancing and then he threw my bags on the street in the rehearsal club had a big brownstone had those stairs to get up and that was kind of disappointing but that was the only shock I had in New York for a long long time yeah I loved The New Yorker and they liked me yeah I was looking for well you know there's this story about the two sets of travellers going down the road and they they both encountered the same old man smoking his pipe sitting leaning rocking in his chair and they both stopped one after the other and say what's that town like up ahead where the people like it the old man says what kind of people you expected in the first man says no I don't think this part of the country are going to find many nice people around here and he said you probably that's probably why you're gonna it's going to work out and then of course the second the second group of travelers said oh we heard they're really nice up there and he said that's probably the way it's going to work out so so I expected as I always have with audiences to I expect it to be well if not loved at least warmly received yeah when you first made it then out to LA warmly received there too cuz that's a different kind of town and of course the other thing I don't mean to jump on your answer but at your age for Hollywood they're gonna say oh she's what is she thinking if this is a song I did in my I do in my speeches always and I did in a couple my cabaret acts and you'll know it I don't know what it was a Statler Brothers all the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in somebody else's name so if you dream in about California it don't matter at all where you played before California is a brand-new game true huh it is in New York you get no but you know you get it if you get it but in LA I've never heard the word no to this day I've not heard no but I've had things happen like whoa where did the knife go in and and I'm still not exactly bad things but whoa when the ho you know it's a it's a very tough place because my opinion money isn't the thing that makes it so jeopardize its its power that comes along and the desire for increasing and increasing power and control makes people do things just behave in certain ways and makes people who 15 minutes ago we're so grateful for whatever this new situation is job new job makes these people turn into ego maniacs instant instantly but unreasonable makes people unreasonable but I've been there 26 years now and I've found that there are wonderful wonderful wonderful people in Los Angeles I've just it - it took me 18 years to adjust to Los Angeles do you think it helped coming at the age you came then as much as career-wise people would have assumed but it gave you a life experience I don't know the answer to that I doubt it I think it would've been easier for me - it would have been easier for me to acclimate myself I think if I had come single I came with two little girls 9 and 10 feeling fraught that I had that I was divorcing there you know that the divorce had happened and I'm feeling so frightened as to how would care for them and uprooting them changing their lives it was just grim time for me and always that there was pressure for me to move back to New York their father wasn't happy that I had taken these children away but my parents were steadfast with me to come and be with me help me to surround these little girls with security and love and I met hal holbrook a year after I got out there and he said do not go back to New York to keep doing these guests appearances do you were always working you're always getting jobs keep doing it Dixie one of these days somebody's going to get your number because you got something to give you you're gonna you're going to have a success out here you're going to get into a series and you're gonna go you just don't give up and I believed him also he's the first person who did not make fun of my name Dixie Carter he said what a great name what is it about do you think your relationship with Hal Holbrook that worked when others didn't why what was it special that made this click you had to have thought about it I thought about it so much um there's a southern expression it takes a mighty good witch I was just absorbing what I meant how I hope you've never heard it because it'll tickle you if you haven't it takes a mighty good man to be better than no man at all that's a good one it's good it's true yeah so I had adjusted to that idea and thought I'm just gonna raise my children behave myself see if I can find work and not be looking for romance and and then I met Hal and he was that mighty good man when I met him I think I knew that I was smitten I blushed horribly in the costume shop CBS Radford his eyes were unmasked absolutely honest piercing snow nonsense eyes and it was it was very different from men I had met in Los Angeles before way way different did you know what it was at the moment I just knew it was very unsettling and I knew that he was not friendly uh toward me but that he was all a pro you know a great yeah Pro and that there wasn't gonna be any nonsense from him it was going to be no evasiveness no nothing it was going to be boom what you see is what you get and it was that whole shoot which at that time television movies were made in five weeks was a long time and I got bad sick with a flu the last week of the shoot and I gave up trying to be charming her getting his good sign I just gave up and at that point when I gave up just relaxed and let myself get silly and we were shoot light into the night and I had my medicine I was on those antibiotics and feeling horrible and then he started to take a turn and not see me as a woman who was gonna entice him into another marriage he's sure he did not want to marry ever ever ever ever ever again and there was a rap party and he said going to the wrap party prior to this I had been into his big star trailer once to listen to Ricky Lee Jones he liked Ricky Lee Johnson he had invited me and to talk about something about the script aisle i sat there you know very prim and nervous that was it and then he said you go to the wrap party and I said oh I had stopped calling him mr. Halbrook because he really didn't like that but I said I don't know I'm I'm on antibiotics and I don't like to go to a party if I can't drink wine and I don't even know what's the point on antibiotics and he said are you crazy this is when are you crazy I wouldn't take an antibiotic without a glass of wine so I went went to the wrap party with him and he was going off to resume sailing in the South Seas I think the very next day so well we didn't stay long we say now had a glass maybe two with those days and then he saw me to my car and Clifford Pullen's and his wife had moved from New York with me to take care of me my children the house and two Clifford who had driven me because I was so sick and I knew that I would be shooting a little bit late so he was sitting in the car in my old black Buick and he saw this hal holbrook said good night to me and then as he was going to open my car door he kissed me I said goodbye and then put me in the car and I wavin I said clever did you see that I was called totally shaken I mean so my gosh scared me to death but it was so thrilling kiss me kiss me goodbye no warning and uh-oh that was he in for me of course you know and then when he came back from the South Seas whenever it was a month or two whenever or however long he was there he called me up and we started going out together and then our romance began and then I wound up sailing in the South Seas with him on three different trips when you know I realized that that was probably going to be the best way to his heart was to get on that boat out in the ocean and risk my life and and it was the best way to his heart because that that you know made made him somehow recognized that I would be I think what he wanted then was some fun in his life and I would be fun to be with a fun companion I think that was my and then of course it wasn't long before I came to know that he having been left by his mother and his father when he was little was looking for a family and did I have a family this is about him yeah big family so when you look at your career is there a point that you can put in point that says that was when I hit success that's when I crossed over is there one moment that you look at depends on how you I guess how you measure success you'd have to say Designing Women who'd have to say that yeah definitely was commercial success and getting to do masterclass for example on Broadway probably wouldn't have happened without designing women getting to sing at the cafe Carlyle probably wouldn't have happened without that's my calling card that made me well known so you know I think as an actress that I felt like I I got somewhere the year designing women was cancelled 1993 I asked for a the gentleman who started me in in the theater George to Liotta's to return to Memphis from where he's living in Vancouver and direct streetcar named desire for me and he did and University of Memphis put up great deal money within the bet Ron Terry a bank in Memphis First Tennessee bank put up the money and gave us a big gorgeous production which ran that summer of 93 and I broke through something there with that great role for myself I thought and the audiences were very very visible and then and then to get to do masterclass was another tremendous experience I actually achieved tremendously satisfying and now looking back on it if I hadn't stopped doing everything right then I know that I would have gone from this to this to this I I did a play for Joseph Papp know it was right after I came hour of my imposed retirement called Jesse and the Bandit Queen was to character play and I played nine characters and some of them were men down at the Public Theater and and that was terrific big experience you have to do something that's very hard to do to get better I'm doing it right now in Arsenic and Old Lace I'm growing my hair at white I'm running up and down three flights of stairs and that gigantic set every night with my aunt Dylan the great Maya Dylan this is hard for me admitting my age and going over into you know this is an old lady part it's even even older than I actually need to be but I think I have to have to try to do something that isn't easy for you and you know I'm gonna have to do right now that isn't easy for me stop the format of this show says we are out of time thank you so much for city thank you for having Dixie Carter to order a DVD of this or any episode of interviews please visit Houston pbs.org

Channel: HoustonPBS

Views: 157,130

Keywords: KUHT, HoustonPBS, InnerVIEWS, with, Ernie, Manouse, Dixie, Carter, 'Designing, Women', 'Hal, Holbrook', family, law, the, evening, sun

Id: JVjfddah1aM

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2010