R.I.P. Helen Hanft

[Reza]

New York Times June 5, 2013

Helen Hanft, Master of Camp Way Off Broadway, Dies at 79

By PAUL VITELLO

Helen Hanft, an actress whose mastery of camp humor, surreal scenarios and roles too risqué for mainstream comfort made her the acknowledged queen of the Off Off Broadway stage during a golden age for experimental theater in New York, died on May 30 in Manhattan. She was 79.

The cause was complications of an intestinal blockage, said Alan Eichler, her friend and longtime publicist.

Ms. Hanft made her mark in the 1960s and ’70s on Off Off Broadway stages like La MaMa Experimental Theater Club and Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in the East Village, as well as Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village, widely regarded as the birthplace of Off Off Broadway.

She appeared in early plays by Tom Eyen, who later wrote the book and lyrics for “Dreamgirls,” including “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down,” about a woman, a man and a fun-house air vent, and “Women Behind Bars,” a sendup of the B-movie genre of the title. She was also in “In the Boom Boom Room,” David Rabe’s play about go-go dancers and their lovers of both sexes, none of them suitable partners.
Her performances earned unusual accolades. Phrases like “wonderfully grotesque” and “energetically seedy” appeared in rave reviews. Critics referred to her variously as the Helen Hayes and the Ethel Merman of Off Off Broadway. (Bette Midler, who also acted in Mr. Eyen’s early plays, has told interviewers that in creating her persona as the gleefully campy Divine Miss M, she borrowed liberally from the raunchy dames Ms. Hanft created.)

Between 1965 and 1975 Ms. Hanft appeared in 75 productions, most of which paid her little if they paid at all. She supported herself by working in a series of odd jobs, she said in a 1975 interview with The New York Times. The most enduring of those, as a switchboard operator for the United Jewish Appeal, was, she said, “good voice training for an actress.”

She later had small roles in a string of movies, including Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979), “Stardust Memories” (1980) and “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985); Dudley Moore’s 1981 hit, “Arthur”; and Paul Mazursky’s “Next Stop, Greenwich Village” (1976) and “Willie & Phil” (1980).

Helen Hanft was born in the Bronx on April 3, 1934, the eldest of Benjamin and Esther Hanft’s three children. Her father was a prominent public relations executive for a number of national Jewish organizations.

Ms. Hanft had problems in school and difficulty finding a sense of purpose until, at her father’s urging, she auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts, which is now part of LaGuardia High School of Music & Art & Performing Arts, and won admission. There she found her calling, as well as many friends, including the comic actor Dom DeLuise, her sister, Sarah Comma, said.

Ms. Comma is her only survivor. Her husband, William Landers, and a younger sister, Alice, died years ago.
With her smoky voice and steamy laugh, Ms. Hanft began her acting career soon after graduating from high school. Her performance in the title role of Mr. Eyen’s 1965 play “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down” ­ as a sexually frustrated woman, in love with a gay narcissist, who gets her only relief by standing à la Marilyn Monroe over the air vent at a Coney Island fun house ­ made her an underground star.

Beneath its campy iconoclasm, she said in interviews, the play was about the loneliness and isolation people suffer as a result of the obsession in popular culture with image, sex and glamour. Reviewing a 1981 revival, Mel Gussow of The Times voiced a more upbeat view:

“Hanna and Helen Hanft are interchangeable and indefatigable. Perhaps more than any other character, Hanna is an icon of Off Off Broadway in the ’60s. If there were an American Tussaud waxworks, at the entrance there would be a lifelike replica of Miss Hanft’s Hanna, standing over the airstream in an Eyen fun house, letting her hair down and her skirts fly high.”