Portland's Funny Business Andrea Martin, Miss Deering High 1965.

... ORWHATTO DO WITH YOUR LIFE IF YOU'RE MISS DEERING HIGH 1965 ...

SPOTLIGHT

Can Miss Deering High 1965 leave Portland, Maine---and find happiness with a dynamite career , a handsome, successful husband, two beautiful sons, and homes in Los Angeles and Toronto? The lady in question is dark-eyed, funny Andrea Martin, and the answer is a resounding "Yes!" Daughter of Portland's "Merry Manor" magnate, Andrea is the star of "Roxie," a CBS-TV sitcom' whichdebuted on Wednesday nights last spring. And though her background includes theater and films, she is probably best known for her·years as a writer and actor for the "Second City Television Network (SCTV)," the brilliant Emmywinning comedy of TV syndication, NBC late nights, and Cinemax pay cable. Two of the characters she created, garrulous station manager Edith Prickley and incomprehensible cleaning woman Pirini Scleroso, helped bring her a .1982 Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a comedy as well as two writing Emmys shared with the other SCTV creators.

In 1980, Andrea was asked about her goals when she was included in a prestigious book called Women of Canada, and she said: "I want to get to the point where I truly know the meaning of the word satisfaction. In five years I'd like to have a child, a loving marriage, and a blooming career ... a career that entails working with Fellini or Truffaut." Now, seven years later, Andrea's goals have been met but for Fellini, now that T ruffaut is gone. She adds, "I'd really love to do a low-budget film that is completely my vision, with people who have the same vision. I don't know what I'd like it to say yet, but it would be my material. Yes, that's what I'd desperately love to do ... or maybe a small project for pay-TV or

BY FRllll COHEN

syndication, not network. I have an idea, very eccentric, that's based on a book. It won't have tremendous appeal to everyone, but it will be moving and it will touch people. You see, what's so frustrating about prime-time TV like "Roxie" is that it's their material, and you must relinquish control and make lots of compromises. Sure, I really want success and I love being a funny girl, but someday I'd like to trust myself enough to do lots of other things."

About SCTV's late-night airing, Andrea says: "I've liked it that all my life I've been on the edge of mainstream

"As a kid, my insecurity came from feeling like an outsider because I'm Armenian with dark eyes and dark hair and the

world was blonde and Waspy. No one made me feel that way. It was just something in me. " - Andrea Martin

"I've liked it that all my life I've been on the edge of mainstream America, a cult figure, a nightmarket person. .. " - Andrea Martin

America, a cult figure, a night-market person. It's really ironic that I'm now doing "Roxie," the kind of show that is the exact opposite. One thing good about the series, though, is that people Bedford); and Candide, I remember her in much earlier, local productions. Portland Children's Theater came first, and at age 14, Andrea played "Liat" in the 1961 Kennebunkport Playhouse's South

Andrea (far left) at a Dorothy Mason School of the Dance recital in the early 1960s.

Andrea (far left) in another Dorothy Mason spectacular. (Win a Portland Monthly T-shirt by identifying the other dancers in these photos! Write to Portland Monthly, 154 Middle Street, Portland. Maine 04101.)

will see me as different from one of my funny characters."

Although Andrea's theater career includes leading roles in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; Godspell; Vanities; Private Lives (in Stratford, Ontario with Maggie Smith and Brian Pacific, starring now-famous Penny Fuller. A summer season at the Ram Island Playhouse showcased Andrea as "Ado Annie" in Oklahoma!, "Gooch" in Marne, plus roles in Marat-Sade and Threepenny Opera. As a theater critic for WCSH-TV, I reviewed her several times. She was wonderful!

Portland Monthly: Tell me about some of your Portland memories - your worst, your best. Andrea Martin: My worst! That's easy! Trying out for sports in school. I was awful, and I hated it. Funny, because after I got out of school I was really quite athletic. Oh, I have lots of happy memories. My happiest was being a counselor at the Luther Gulick Camp at Sebago, two summers during high school. I taught drama. I remember it as being the best time of my life. PM: I've known you all your life, Andrea. From the time your mother used to walk you in your carriage as a baby until you graduated from Deering High School in 1965, we always lived within three blocks of each other. I remember the piano and dance lessons, your election as Miss Deering in your senior year, the summer theatre stints, the active, busy youngster. Do you feel d . . ?riven ... Insecure. AM: Yes, I have this enormous amount of energy, and I do feel driven - to express myself - then and now. Insecure? Well, sometimes I think, "Oh God, I can't do it," but then I push

Miss Deering High School '65 in conservative cashmere (and a Patty Duke flip) for her Vantine's Studio graduation photo. myself to do it, and you know, often it's really good! As a kid my insecurity came from feeling like an outsider because I'm Armenian with dark eyes and dark hair and the world was blonde and Waspy. Noone made me feel that way. It was just something in me. PM: Do you miss Portland? AM: Yes, but I really miss my home in Toronto. After Portland, I really grew up in Toronto. My career took off there, and I got married and had my children there. PM: Your husband is Canadian. Tell me about him. AM: His name is Bob Dolman, and he's a wonderful person and a great writer. We worked together on SCTV, and now he's headed for England to film Willow. He wrote the screenplay, and it is being directed by Ron Howard and produced by George Lucas. He also wrote Cowboy Joe, an ABC-TV pilot starring Patti Lupone ("Evita" on Broadway), which is now in the works. PM: Describe yourself! AM: Joyful on the outside! Worried on the inside!

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GROWING UP AS THE DAUGHTER OF PORTLAND'S IIMERRY MANOR" MAGNATE

Sybil Martin, Andrea's mother, says her daughter started performing the day she was born. Although the family had no formal theatrical background, Sybil's parents, from Istanbul, were teachers in the Armenian School they created at Portland's Chestnut Street Church. Classes in Armenian were conducted for two hours after public school, and they put on plays at Christmas, at graduation, and at the end of the year. There were also poetry readings and little dance numbers in what really amounted to recitals. Sybil was the star! When Andrea was 2 liz years old Sybil broke her leg, so she spent a great deal of time reading to her little daughter. Andrea was already reciting from Shakespeare, and when her mother read to her from "Paul Revere's Ride" or "The Raven," Sybil would do the first line and Andrea would do the next. Andrea read and began to do a great deal of writing. One romantic story that Andrea wrote was about two trees, Penelope Pine and Bruce the Spruce. Penelope and Bruce fell in love, but men came and cut them down. Eventually Penelope became a door and Bruce became another part of the same house, so they ended up together and lived happily ever after. This may well have been the auspicious start of Andrea Martin's Emmy-winning writing career for SCTV!

Sybil makes a big point of saying that Andrea has worked and studied hard to get where she is. At age 8 she started taking piano lessons from Priscilla Morneault. Her recital was in the rotunda of the old Art Museum, where she recited a poem about a kitten and then played "Kitten In a Music Box." Sybil says she was the "star pupil." Andrea also studied and performed at the Dorothy Mason School of the Dance.

Andrea's mother clearly remembers that her daughter's clowning around during her early school years at Nathan Clifford and Roosevelt School resulted' in her transfer to St. Joseph's Academy for two years before entering Deering High School. There, her wish to perform led to Deering's Dramatic Club, where she was very active. After graduation in 1965, Andrea went off to college, graduating from Emerson College in Boston in 1969. She then studied mime dUling her junior year at the Sorbonne in France. After Emerson, she had planned to spend a year in New York in an apartment that was to be a graduation present from her parents. Unexpectedly, she was called to audition for the part of "Lucy" in a Toronto production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Ninety girls tried out, and Andrea got the part! She traveled ,for a year with the play and then got into Godspell at the Royal Alexandre Theater in Toronto. By now she was living in Toronto and doing live theater. She had dreamed of being a serious actress, but somewhere along the way she decided she was musical comedy material. To this day she loves t9 make people laugh.

Sybil Martin glows' with pride when she mentions her two grandsons ... John Hartley Dolman, 6, and Joseph Martin Dolman, 4. Andrea's younger sister, Marcie, is married to a Canadian and is production manager of City-TV in Toronto and vice president of ChumCity, which is an affiliate, and produces independent shows. Brother Peter Martin is one of the owners of the W onderbar Restaurant in Biddeford and works for his father at John Martin's Waterville Manor Restaurant.

Sybil Martin can now laugh about Andrea's irrepressible hijinks, clowning, and general mischiefmaking when she was younger. She does, however, have one very clear and sobering memory of the time Andrea was at the Sorbonne in 1968. Chaos and student protests overwhelmed Paris, with the streets all torn up and garbage lying about. When the news broke here, Sybil's first thought was, "Oh my God, Andrea started a riot!"

Andrea as Lucy in the T orontobased "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown," 1969-1970. -F.C.

PM: Who do you identify with in the business? AM: Carol Burnett, I guess, and Fanny Brice. Oh, I met Carol, and she is really gracious and supportive. She was a great fan of SCTV. Once, when she was doing a movie in Toronto with Elizabeth Taylor, I had her to dinner, and

SCTV characters (from top): "Libby Wolfson" (Andrea Martin); and "Pirini Scleroso" (Andrea Martin).

she was terrific. Afterwards she sent flowers to me and my mother-in-law, who was ill, and also wrote a letter. Nice lady! PM: If you had three wishes, what would they be? AM: Oh, let me think. Well, I'd like to work without feeling guilty about being

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away from the children, and I'd like to be with my children without feeling guilty about not working! Two ... I'd like to do a project of my own and work with compatible people. And three ... I just ran my first 1O-K race. My dream is to run in the Boston Marathon! PM: Any other Portland memories ... places, people? AM: Ohyes. I loved Children's Theater, Summer Theater, smelling the pine trees, and walking on the beach. I'm still in touch with Martha Crane Soule of Yarmouth, who was at camp with me, and I see Jeannie Vallely all the time. We grew up together on Whitney A venue in Portland. She has two children and lives in Brentwood, California. She's editor of GQ magazine, and right now she's writing a screenplay. PM: I remember Jeannie very well. Very talented. She wrote a cover story on Jaws and Steven Spielberg for Time magazine years ago. She came to Martha's Vineyard for the interview and research during the filming. Well, Andrea, would you like me to deliver any messages to anyone here? AM: Just give Maine a big kiss for me! Continued on page 19

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Of more recent vintage, dark and sinister and dangerous as well-bred and heady wine, is "The Silent Partner" (1978). Elliott Gould (no comic buffoonery here) plays a mild-mannered Canadian bank teller who, while taking his leisurely lunch unwittingly perceives that a man in a Santa Claus costume suit is preparing to rob his bank.

Insinuating himself back into what is now the target cage, he carefully secretes some money for himself, goes through Continued from page 11

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY: PORTLAND NIGHT CLUBBING.

BY CHARLIE BROWN

Portland, Maine, cultural center for the exploding North-Northeast, the Little Hub of Entertainment and Media, the VACATIONLAND Vegas ...

Hey, not so fast, Lobster Breath - I mean. considering its size, Portland can be pretty entertaininr. the city's symphony, theater, world-class string quartet, and organizations like the Portland Concert Association supply quality, affordable musical offerings year-round. The Civic Center is a regular stop for national arena events, and the Summerjazz program at the Performing Arts Center can be spectacular. There are first-, secondo, and third-run movies, good cable TV shows, some decent and even excellent restaurants, and 121 varieties of Green Mountain coffee.

But my concern is the electric musical arts, my stage (if any) the nightclubs, my business pop music. And the popular music business in Portland can be summed up in two

Chase Summer Blues With Vintage Thrillers.

Dr. Video recommends something to get us out of the summer blues - edge-of-the-seatthrillers to stimulate the blood.

Here are several excellent, but little-known, thrillers that might just rescue readers. Your prescription: Watch two of them and read this column next time.

Alfred Hitchcock, of course, is always a suggested remedy: a certified master of suspense whose dazzling camera style never ceases to lure us down sinister paths we fear but love to go. One of the most exciting, and delightful - and least known - of his thrillers is "Foreign Correspondent" (1940).

Here a first-time correspondent, in the radiant and eager form of Joel McCrea, is sent to Europe at the beginning of World War II to interview a diplomat whose impending announcement just might hold the key to peace. But the diplomat disappears, following the assassination of a double, and McCrea continues to follow the trail deep into the heart of a bloody Nazi subterfuge involving assassination, espionage, murder, and not least of all, romance.

Filmed during Hitchcock's middle period (just after "The Lady Vanishes" and "The Thirty-Nine Steps"), this movie contains some remarkable classic scenes (such as the famous windmill sequence where McCrea is about to be unavoidably churned to death as he's attempting to listen in on a secret Nazi rendezvous), as well as contemporary pacing and astonishing special effects.

The plane crash at the end, in its visceral impact on the viewer as well as passengers, is something that could have been filmed yesterday. With a superb supporting cast that includes the impeccable George Sanders (here doubly satisfying in that he plays a "good guy" for a change) along with Robert Benchley, Edmund Gwen, and Herbert Marshall, "Foreign Correspondent" is an unusually transporting thriller that's definitely worth writing home about.

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with the robbery and then later blames the additional money's loss on the robher. It's a perfect, if spontaneous, crime on his own part - until the robber calls him up later and tells him: "One night when you come home, you'll find me inside, waiting - and that will be the night you'll wish you'd never been born ... "

Thus Gould becomes the unwitting "silent partner" to a crazed and sadistic criminal played by Christopher Plummer who seeks to embroil the bank teller in more sinister schemes. How Gould desperately seeks to annul the partnership while keeping his life makes for a tense and riveting psychological thriller whose superb story-telling will have you guessing until the end.

Here's a vintage psychological mystery that, as accompanied by a superb concert piano score, is also a heart-wrenching romantic drama as well. ''The Seventh Veil" (1945) is the story of a talented, beautiful orphan girl raised in seclusion by an elegant woman-hater (played by the epitome of elegant acting, James Mason) who trains and intimidates her into becoming a world-renowned concert pianist.

As she grows into womanhood (under her mentor's Svengali-like tutelage), two other men she meets -a brash big band saxophone player and a weak socialite - add a further note of confusion in her life, pushing her to the brink of suicide and permanent catatonia. But deep down inside her, behind the "seventh veil" that hides the heart's innermost secrets, one of these men can actually save her. Which one is it?

This gothic romantic tale will have viewers wringing their handkerchiefs all the way to the richly satisfying surprise conclusion.

Fritzi Cohen.

Continued from page 17 When my sons grow up, I want them to go to camp there so I'll have more excuses to come to visit. But I'd really wish they'd stop all the building and expansion. I'd like the city planners to just ease up and leave Maine alone. I think of it as one of the last frontiers of simplicity and natural beauty, and I'm afraid they'll destroy the essence of Maine. I know it's unrealistic, but I can" change, yet Maine must remain the ~ame as I remember it when I was growmgup.

Andrea Martin has been called a genius, a supreme satirist with uncanny talent. To me she is all of that, but also amazingly littlechanged from Portland's bright-eyed comic dynamo. So ... move over Carol Burnett and Lily Tomlin, and if the marathon is on Andrea's agenda, watch out, Joanie Benoit!

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words - Hur Ting. Hurting for good clubs. Hurting for exposure. Hurting for talent. Worst of all, hurting for creativity. I mean, we're talking a small and fragmented scene here, discouragingly small, distressingly fragmented, with an overriding inferiority complex bigger than Westbrook's.

So what's the big surprise? Haven't talented local pop musicians always had to leave the area to advance their careers, just like their ambitious counterparts in other fields? Aren't local gigs, musical and otherwise, always inferior in pay and perks and promotions to those available farther south? Aren't the performing centers, bright lights, and big money of Show Biz in L.A. andN.Y.C., in short, anywhere but here?

Well, yes.

But wouldn't you think that Somewhere out of the glare of the Big Spotlight, where a person has time to reflect on things a little, Somewhere out of the Metroplex but also not I've seen regional music centers of importance sprout around the country. Athens, Georgia, put on the map by the B-52's; Minneapolis by Prince; Austin, Texas. I mean, Durham, North Carolina, by Stamey and the db boys! None of these places are exactly media centers (many are major university towns, of course), but I mean here we are, 110 miles from Fenway Park, not even the distance to Bangor from Boston, and we are out of it, people. This is not a physical ailment here, we're talking psychology, as in head cases.

Here's an example: Friday night, Portland, Maine, The Old Port Tavern, jammed, wall to wall, a showcase room for talent that a New York City band would kill for, the band takes the stage, and what do they do with the attention of a captive audience? They re-create the songs on the radio, the look of the music video, note for note, with killing, mind-

too far away, on the East Coast, preferably, Somewhere the cost of living still isn't too bad and you could be tapped into what's happening in the Big City, a Somewhere you could actually know your neighbors and bring up the kids and keep a band together and rehearsed and performing, a Somewhere very much like Portland, Maine; couldn't that Somewhere possibly be an ideal spot for molding and forming the talent that a continuously ravenous recording industry needs to survive? I mean, wouldn't you think it was possible?

You know, it's funny, but I had the same idea myself once, oh, about 10 years or so ago when I moved here fresh out of music school, bored to tears with the university "serious" musical life and contemplating a future in pop (I'll just hole up in this nice town, here, I thinks, and make those record industry guys come to me, as soon a~1'm ready, that is). It wasn't such a bad plan, really; in that amount of time Continued on page 32