His Town: Dean Goodman
by Jean Schiffman

A smiling Dean Goodman answers the door in neatly pressed pale-lemon slacks and white shirt, just as his clock strikes the quarter-hour. He has lived in this small, shag-carpeted, rent-controlled apartment on Geary Street for the past 30 years. From knickknacks to chiming clock, surely everything here has a story to tell about his seven decades as a man of the theatre.

The bookshelves display only a fraction of Goodman's collection of biographies and autobiographies of film and stage stars--in recent years, he's sold many of them, and donated others to libraries and archives. On one shelf is a cherished possession, a framed cameo that belonged to his mother, who died when he was 5. There are stacks of videotapes--of events that he's spoken at, commercials and TV scenes that he has appeared in, and more--and, in the center of the room, an exercise bicycle that Goodman uses several times a day.

By the door is a maroon velvet wing chair. That's where Tennessee Williams--"Tom" to Goodman and other friends of the famed playwright--used to sit when he was in town in the late 1970s and early '80s and dropped in to visit. Now, guests are invited to sit in it.

Goodman, 86, relaxes in a chair by the window, armed with old newspaper clippings and publicity photos. Two things are immediately apparent. One is that he uses the word "lucky" repeatedly. "I've been lucky to play satisfying roles in my career," he says, picking as his favorite the part of Hamlet in a production that toured Canada in 1953. "I've been lucky with most directors I've worked with," he observes later, mentioning that he prefers those who give him lots of freedom. He remarks that he's been particularly lucky in recent years to get good, sympathetic, multidimensional roles with small local theatres: I Never Sang for My Father; Park Your Car in Harvard Yard; Visiting Mr. Green. "The role in Mr. Green [in 2002] was a good role for me to end with if I don't play anymore," he says. And with modest pension checks coming in from SAG, Equity and other sources, he clearly considers himself lucky to be financially stable enough to make cash donations to many local theatres and important causes.

The other thing that stands out is Goodman's memory for characters, productions, dates, people, events--recall that would put a 20-year-old to shame.

Goodman has beaten colon cancer and survived quadruple heart bypass surgery. He attends almost every opening night, at theatres large and small, elegantly attired in a pastel suit and sporting a cane, sitting near the stage to catch every word.

Born in Oregon, Goodman began to act in high school there, around the time Stanislavsky's first book was published in America, which places him among the first generation of Americans to learn the master's early teachings. Goodman spent a year at the University of Washington drama department, and then plunged into his career, appearing with Seattle Repertory Theatre in its nascent years and elsewhere.

His professional training began in earnest in 1942 with Moscow Art Theatre veteran Maria Ouspenskaya in Hollywood; he returned to her again after receiving a medical discharge from the army and studied with her off and on thereafter.

In 1943 he married Marlene Dietrich's daughter, Maria Sieber; his memoir, Maria, Marlene, and Me, describes that brief period (they divorced in 1946). And there were years of appearing in radio drama; touring the United States and Canada with various productions; working in Los Angeles and New York; appearing with famous names such as Leslie Uggams (in the musical The Boyfriend), Pearl Bailey and Lucille Ball (the latter was withdrawn and non-communicative, says Goodman). In 1955, he moved to San Francisco to teach in the drama department at San Francisco State University and also acted, directed, wrote plays and paperback fiction (under a nom de plume) and produced, working with companies such as American Conservatory Theater and Herbert Blau and Jules Irving's seminal Actors' Theatre. Along the way he garnered Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle awards, wrote reviews for Drama-Logue, and in recent years, has been bestowing his own awards to local actors, the Dean Goodman Choice Awards.

Goodman says he learned two important lessons as an emerging actor. One was to get rid of bad acting habits and mannerisms. The other was that an actor develops by plateaus, not all at once. "You understand things in words, but not on a gut level," he explains. "Then finally something happens and you get it."

Goodman himself had no sudden "Aha!" moment. His biggest problem, starting out as an eager kid, was the inability to relax. That was something he learned gradually. He also learned, over the years, the value of simplicity. "My tendency was always to go for the big moments," he says. He is rueful about his biggest film role, in Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: "In one scene, I'm over the top, and unfortunately, Coppola didn't reign me in." Still, he landed commercials, industrials and TV work as a result of that film, and was encouraged to move to L.A. But leaving San Francisco never appealed to him.

And yes, just like everyone else, he has experienced stage fright, which he usually overcame by concentrating on "Who am I, where am I, what am I doing?" He says, "Sometimes as you get more experienced, and people get to know you, they expect more from you. When you're young, you have false confidence. Later in life, you realize you're capable of making a mistake."

He thinks he probably made mistakes in the hardest role he ever played: Macbeth, in Vancouver, B.C., in 1952. "I don't think I was right for the role," he says. He approached the character in the wrong way, he thinks, and has always wished he could have another whack at it.

"There are things I didn't get to do," he confides: the Stage Manager in Our Town--he'd played George Gibbs in that play in its first West Coast production in 1939--and Richard II. "But I'm grateful for what I did get."

He is also proud of special accomplishments: his 1986 book, San Francisco Stages, a history of local theatre; his attempts to open a racially integrated theatre outside Washington, D.C., in the late '40s; his role in the creation of the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle in the mid-'70s. And he notes that actors have better working conditions here--and many of them, Equity and non-Equity, have better salaries--than they did 30 years ago. That was when Goodman and colleagues organized to keep the local Equity office open and to persuade the smaller theatres to sign union contracts. He was the first chairman of the now-well-established BAAC (Bay Area Advisory Committee to Equity). "I'm satisfied that I played a small part [in the improvement in conditions for actors]," he says, but observes wryly that his activism may have made him persona non grata at some theatres.

One of the secrets of living longer, Goodman avows, is always having something to look forward to. Last fall, he won a prize for a short play in Dominican College's new plays festival; he'll direct another short play that he wrote, Tea Without Sympathy, this month at Dominican College; and, in the weekly playwrights' critique group that he attends, he's developing a new play, Bloody August, based on an intriguing theory about Lizzie Borden. "I have ideas for a couple of other plays, too," he says, admitting to a lifelong fascination with Lizzie, Catherine the Great and Marie Antoinette.

"Now in life I appreciate the moment," he reflects. "I see the glass as half full.... The fire still burns to be creative."

Jean Schiffman is a local arts writer and regular Theatre Bay Area contributor.