Audio Interview with Stockard Channing
Interview conducted by Tony Macklin. Audio interview originally published on February 23, 2009 @ tonymacklin.net.
Listen to the audio interview with Stockard Channing (MP3 format, approximately 38 minutes).
Stockard Channing was the best read person I ever interviewed.
She was also the only interview I ever interviewed in Cleveland, Ohio.
She was there to promote The Fortune. It was her first starring role in a movie, and what made it remarkable was that she was cast with two of the hottest stars in Hollywood -- Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty.
Stockard's friend and agent Kitty Hawks -- the daughter of director Howard Hawks -- got her a reading in which she impressed the two actors and director Mike Nichols and won the part.
The irony is that the movie bombed at the box office. The Fortune was a whimsical trifle; however, it was deft, whimsical trifle. But there was no audience for it.
It's not even on DVD.
In our interview she was a poised, articulate young actress (educated at Radcliffe) who had read books by Vladimir Nabokov and Nathaneal West. She used words such as "entrepeneur" and "eclectic." What's more she used them correctly.
No way she'd get on talk radio.
I enjoyed her style and smarts.
Now I can look back and see how much her career evolved through the years.
At the time I talked with her, Stockard was an example of a new breed of actresses who wanted more than just star billing.
She certainly achieved it.
The following is the introduction to the interview as it appeared in Voices from the Set: The Film Heritage Interviews (2000).
Born in New York City. Stockard Channing has appeared in more than twenty films, including The Fortune; Grease; The Men's Club; Six Degrees of Separation; Smoke; Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and Up Close and Personal. Channing has made numerous television appearances and has been successful on stage, winning a Tony Award for Joe Egg in 1985. She received an Oscar nomination for Six Degrees of Separation in 1993.
The Channing interview was in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was promoting The Fortune, in June of 1975.
