MILTON KATSELAS SHARPENS HIS DIRECTING SKILL BY TEACHING

Drama Logue

BY LARRY KETCHUM

MAY 6—12, 1982

Milton Katselas, the man who directed the original production of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, Butterflies Are Free (on Broadway and in the movies), New York revivals of The Rose Tattoo and Camino Real, as well as the films Report to the Commissioner, Forty Carats and When You Comin' Back. Red Ryder?, has lately turned at least pan of his attention to television.

His first television work, Strangers, a film about the relationship of a mother and daughter which starred Bette Davis and Gena Rowlands, was the highest rated television movie of the year for CBS and won Ms. Davis an Emmy for her performance. Obviously, CBS hopes for historical repetition when it airs The Rules of Marriage, directed by Katselas from a script by Reginald (Twelve Angry Men) Rose and starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Elliott Gould and Michael Murphy, on May 10 and 11

"I've been wanting to do something based on a marriage for a long time," Katselas says in the office of his Beverly Hills Playhouse. "It's a very conservative, very conventional kind of film but it's also a very emotional film. it's called The Rules of Marriage and everyone says, 'Oh, yeah? What are the rules of marriage?' Everyone has had their own problems. Every time we worked on the film with one department or another, whether it was the sound department or the labs, the guys would say, 'Hey, I had one of these marriages. I had a story like this. This happened to me."'

The director has nothing but praise for the stars. "; think Elizabeth Montgomery, though she is highly rated on television, is, in some ways, under-rated as an actress; I think she is a fabulous actress. She just does everything, no matter what it is what assignment what you talk about, she delivers it A wonderful kind of vulnerability she has. And Elliott is—great. I love Elliott. So it was good a good experience with the actors."

Photography on the film was finished in January and since that time Katselas has been spending a lot of time in Small darkened rooms, munching on doughnuts and seeing to the completion of the film. He's been rushed a bit by the network. "We were hoping for early fall but then they slipped it into this 'Sweep Week' or whatever it's called." With a track record like Katselas,' CBS can hardly be faulted for its scheduling.

However, television viewers in Katselas' hometown of Pittsburgh won't be able to see The Rules of Marriage in May—the movie will be pre-empted May 10 and 11 for Pittsburgh Pirates baseball games.' He grew up in Pittsburgh and studied theatre at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). Did he come from a family with a theatrical background?

"I thought for a long time there was no connection but as it turns out my father, who owned a restaurant and then owned a movie house, became part of the connection for me there. I did some of the booking for the films and so forth, so I was an exhibitor m a sense, looking at films all the time, seeing westerns like The Gunfighter, The Return of Frank James, something like 10 times, 14 times. Maybe I saw Viva Zapata 20 times. If there was a film I liked, I'd bring it back and book it again on a Wednesday or Thursday night.

"So there was that connection, plus the fact my father had his own company of actors—Greek actors, they weren't English-speaking—and he was the leading actor in the company. He was a singer and an actor."

Remembering vividly now, leaning back in his chair, Katselas continues, "My father was quite a character. He came from Greece and went from New York to Oregon where he was assigned a team of 30 Indians and they helped build the railroad from Oregon to California. E he was called 'Chief George,' that's hat the Indians called him. And he was 18 years old at the time. He then went m Pittsburgh, got in the restaurant business. And he became friendly with Caruso, who used to tour and Pittsburgh was one of the big stops and any time he played a concert in Pittsburgh he would sit my father on the stage, in a special chair. So there was all that theatre, artistic stuff, floating: around."

caving Pittsburgh after college, Katselas went to New ~ York and lived in a $10 a month loft which he had to vacate each day from 2-6pm to permit a fellow tenant to come in "to paint huge paintings of Dude men. And the heat was steam. Do you know what it's like to wake up in the morning with a lady friend and the room is filled with steam and there are these gigantic paintings of nude men on the walls?"

Katselas started teaching actors in 1957 and he was "an assistant gofer type of thing to Elia Kazan, Josh Logan, Sandy Meisner, and I was doing a little directing in odd places—any place I could find a little theatre like up in the Bronx, or anyplace, summer stock."

One day a friend who had gone to school with Katselas at Carnegie . Tech came to see him. "He said, 'I suggested you for this play. I think you're perfect for it.' I met the producer and Edward Albee and that was that. They wanted me to do both The Zoo Story and Krapp's Last Tape but I didn't at that time although I do now, like Krapp's Last Tape. I didn't like it as a young director—I found it a bit boring.

"That was an exciting time in New York because off-Broadway was really something. You used to walk around New York with no fears, no concerns. You might go over to Avenue A or Avenue B—I wouldn't go over there now without six detectives and a Sherman tank. It was a wonderful time back then on off Broadway We got that whole show The Zoo Story on, as I remember, for like $4,000 We stole the bench from Central Park and also the garbage container. In 10 days they had recouped their money and the show ran for four-and-a-half, five years."

Katselas spent 17 years in New York. While there he directed Call Me By My Rightful Name off Broadway and gave Robert Duvall and Joan Hackett their first major roles. His revival of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo starred Maureen Stapleton, Harry Guardino and Christopher Walken. He revived Williams' Camino Real at Lincoln Center with Al Pacino, Jessica Tandy and Jean-Pierre Aumont. He was nominated for a Tony for directing Butterflies Are tree and star Blythe Danner won a Tony for her performance.