When actor Jamie Farr takes the stage at the Stranahan Theater Oct. 7 for An Evening with Jamie Farr, he expects it to be a fun evening, “just sitting around like I’m in your living room, having a chat.”
He will be joined by WTVG-TV, Channel 13, anchor Lee Conklin, who will interview the Toledo native as he tells stories of his early life in Toledo and his experiences in show business.
Farr will have a lot to chat about. The funny and gracious actor is famous for his work on the iconic TV series M*A*S*H, about a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea during the Korean War. The series ran from 1972 to 1983 on CBS. Farr played Corporal Max Klinger from Toledo, who dressed in women’s clothing, hoping to get a Section 8 discharge from the Army.
The finale episode of M*A*S*H in 1983, with 105.97 million viewers, held the record for most-watched TV show for 27 years, until it was overtaken by the 2010 Super Bowl broadcast, which drew 106.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen Company ratings.
Farr’s experiences in his 63 years in show business go beyond the TV series to movies and theater. His first film role was playing Santini in 1955’s classic Blackboard Jungle.
“Here I am, a kid from the North End of Toledo, watching an MGM movie at the Lowe’s Valentine in Toledo, and a year and a half later I’m on the [MGM] lot making a movie — that is really incredible,” he laughed.
His film credits also include the Cannonball Run movies and The Greatest Story Ever Told. Actor Sal Mineo did a charcoal drawing of Farr when they were doing that film; many actors also are artists.
And in the late 1950s, he became a regular on TV’s The Red Skelton Show and appeared in several other popular series, including My Three Sons, The Lucy Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and Murder She Wrote.
Among his theater credits are a national tour of The Odd Couple, playing Oscar Madison, and playing Nathan Detroit in a 1990s Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls.
His Toledo show will include outtakes from M*A*S*H and clips from other shows and from the Cannonball Run movies featuring Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Shirley MacLaine (“talk about a party!” Farr said).
Microphones will be set up in the Stranahan Theater’s aisles so people in the audience can ask questions. (Ask him about the fan letter from Frank Capra).
Farr was last in Toledo in August for the unveiling of a new plaque at Jamie Farr Park and for M*A*S*H Tribute Night, when the Mud Hens inducted his character Corporal Klinger into the Celebrity Hall of Fame at Fifth Third Field.
Farr has enduring affection for his hometown and the friendships he made here.
”We have a contingent [in Los Angeles] that are all from Toledo,” he said. “I came out here in 1952, and all the friends we’ve made here, the ones who are the mainstays that we contact almost every week or every month, are all the ones from Toledo,” including Andrew J. Fenady, who graduated from the University of Toledo and became a writer and producer of movies, TV shows, and more than a dozen novels. He wrote the script and produced Chisum, starring John Wayne, and produced the TV series The Rebel, which starred Nick Adams. Fenady’s wife, Mary Frances, also is from Toledo.
When Farr and his Toledo friends get together, they don’t talk about show business, they talk about Toledo. “We talk about all the places, Fort Meigs, the chili macs, Red Wells roast beef, the old Paramount Theatre, B.R. Baker ... for some reason, you can’t take that out of us. We all come from the same neighborhood in the North End.”
He remembers delivering the former Toledo Times in the morning, and The Blade in the afternoon when he was in grade school, folding the newspapers and putting them in a basket on his bicycle.
“That’s how you got your money to go to a movie or buy ice cream or pizza or a hot dog or something,” he said.
The newspapers were to be folded lengthwise, and he probably could still do the folding correctly, he said.
Farr’s wife Joy, whom he married in 1963, isn’t from Toledo “but she’s more or less adopted it,” he said.
Farr decided to do An Evening with Jamie Farr in Toledo and at the Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Van Wert as a replacement for performances of Tuesdays With Morrie after the Artists Group East, which represents Farr, decided the actor should withdraw from a national tour of the play because of visa hangups with his Canadian director and his co-star that prevented them from appearing in the U.S. shows.
“I was really heartbroken at what happened,” Farr said. “Tuesdays With Morrie is a wonderful play. But in any situation, the director, he or she, is the most important person for that play or movie, because they’re the ones who do the interpretation overall for what the author wants, and the relationship between the actors.” The Canadian actor and director had been committed to the show.
And because Tuesdays With Morrie is a two-actor play, the director becomes very important. The director knows the lighting, the blocking, all the things necessary to make the show look good.
“If anything looks good it looks easy,” Farr said, “but the work that goes into that is incredible, and that’s why the agent was concerned.”
“I love the play, I love the character, I love the director, and I love the actor [in Canada], they were both excellent.”
When he walks onto the Stranahan stage on Oct. 7, he’ll probably know everybody in that audience by their first name, he said with a laugh. He and Lee Conklin are not rehearsing; it will be a spontaneous show.
“I’m not a handsome guy, I’m not a great actor, I’m one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to have survived this long in this business,” he said.
An Evening With Jamie Farr will be presented 8 p.m. Oct. 7 at the Stranahan Theater, 4645 Heatherdowns Blvd. Tickets, $35 to $63, can be purchased at stranahantheater.org, by calling 419-381-8851, and at the Stranahan box office, open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. Tickets for Tuesdays With Morrie will be honored for the new production, and refunds are available for those who don’t wish to attend.
An Afternoon with Jamie Farr will be presented at 3 p.m. Oct. 8 in the Niswonger Performing Arts Center, 10700 OH-118, Van Wert. Tickets, $25-$45, are available at the box office, 419-238-6722, open noon to 4 p.m., and at npacvw.org. Tickets for Tuesdays with Morrie will be honored for this performance.
Contact Sue Brickey at: sbrickey@theblade.com.
First Published September 29, 2017, 4:00 p.m.
