In 1986, when I went back to college after five-year hiatus, I was cast in a production of Chekhov's "The Sea Gull." For a lot of reasons (chiefly that it was a very good production), we made it to the regionals of the American College Theatre Festival, which that year were held at UCLA. We did the revival of the show there in late February of 1987, right when I was dealing with my mother dying. As grateful as I was for the distraction of doing the show, there was (obviously) a huge cloud hanging over my head.
After all the shows had been presented, there was an awards banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt, in the room where the first Academy Awards banquet had been held (and in recent years, has been Club TCM for the TCM Film Festival). I was seated at a table with Norman Lloyd and Charles Durning (among others) and got to spend the evening listening to them trade stories. It was both a perfect evening and a welcome distraction. I've always associated both of them with that night since. (Parenthetically, at one of the Festivals, in my haste to get from one screening to another, I nearly ran Lloyd over. I stopped myself in plenty of time, but regretted coming so close.) I harbored hopes that, since this season of "City On a Hill" (which I've found quite good and a step up from the first), which is set in Boston, and has mentioned St. Eligius a lot (and even showed the entrance to the Tom Fontana Emergency Room), I was hoping that Dr. Auschlander would be shown, still working the place thirty years later. No such luck, though. Lloyd was one of a kind, a master raconteur, and (from all accounts) a real mensch. He will be missed. RIP. --Dave Sikula On Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 2:51:27 PM UTC-7 Diner wrote: > > https://deadline.com/2021/05/norman-lloyd-dead-st-elsewhere-actor-1234754280/ > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/9708bceb-9e23-4378-9569-546543f87c1bn%40googlegroups.com.
