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HERE COMES
THE RAINMAKER
Broadway dreams come true for Woody Harrelson
By Mervyn Rothstein

For years, Woody Harrelson has had a secret desire.

"It's always been my dream to act in a Broadway play," says Harrelson, who achieved movie fame in White Men Can't Jump, garnered an Oscar nomination for The People vs. Larry Flynt and won an Emmy--and the affection of an entire nation--as the lovable if somewhat dense Woody, the bartender on the hit television comedy "Cheers."

Well, Harrelson finally has his wish. He is starring on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre as Bill Starbuck, the smooth-talking con man who promises that for $100 he will make the skies open on a drought-ridden 1920's Western town in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Rainmaker. Harrelson actually almost made it onto a Broadway stage in 1985, when he was an understudy for two soldiers in Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues.

"It was my first job in New York after I came here to try to make a go of acting," the actor recalls in the same relaxed, affable voice, complete with Texas twang, that made bartender Woody Boyd a household name. "But I never went on. I left before I had a chance. I took a short hiatus for a small movie role, and while finishing that movie in Los Angeles, I ended up getting offered the role on 'Cheers.'"

Nicholas Colasanto, who had been Ted Danson's bartending partner, had died, and the producers of "Cheers" were looking for a replacement. "At first I couldn't see the merits of doing television," Harrelson says.
"I had a long day of turmoil. But everyone I knew told me to take the role, and I did."

[[image - black & white photograph (head shot) of a Woody Harrelson]]

Over the years, he often came back to theatre, acting in Los Angeles and San Francisco and, in 1988, in the Off-Broadway comedy The Boys Next Door at the Lamb's Theatre. After "Cheers," of course, his focus was on the movies, making hit films like Indecent Proposal and Natural Born Killers. But late this summer, a play he co-wrote and directed, Furthest From the Sun, which he describes as "a racially and sexually charged comedy," was performed at the June Moon Theatre in Minneapolis, and Harrelson hopes to bring it to New York early next year.

Until he was contracted by the Roundabout and director Scott Ellis--whose credit include the hit revivals of 1776 and She Loves Me--Broadway

"One thing about Starbuck that I really relate to is that he's holding a dream, and believes in his dream. That has always been important to me."

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[[image 1 - black & white photograph (head shot) of Woody Harrelson with dark hair wearing a suit]]
[[image 2 - color photograph Woody Harrelson wearing a t-shirt and a backwards hat]]

[[caption]]After a highly successful stint on TV's "Cheers," Harrelson shot to movie stardom in films like White Men Can't Jump (image 2) and The People Vs. Larry Flynt (image 1), for which we received an Academy Award nomination [[/caption]]

remained elusive. "To be doing Broadway is an amazing thing for me," Harrelson says. "I read the play, and I immediately liked it. There's an innocence to it that really appealed to me."

The comedy by N. Richard Nash opened on Broadway in 1954 starring Darren McGavin as Starbuck and Geraldine Page as Lizzie Curry, a plain young woman, desperately seeking a husband, whose life is forever changed by her encounter with the rainmaker. But the play is better known in its 1956 movie version, which starred Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn, and in the 1963 Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones Broadway musical adaptation, 110 in the Shade. At the Brooks Atkinson, Lizzie will be portrayed by Jayne Atkinson, who has been seen on Broadway in Ivanov and All My Sons.

"One thing about the character of Starbuck that I really relate to is that he's holding a dream, and believes in his dream," Harrelson says. "That has always been important to me. And he's big on faith. I had a very religious upbringing, and I know about faith. I gave sermons when I was a child, and the sermons were always about faith. 'If you have as much faith as a mustard seed, you can move mountains.' Words like that. For a while I even thought I might end up becoming a minister."

Harrelson was born on July 23, 1961, in Midland, Texas. As many people know, his father, Charles Voyde Harrelson, was imprisoned for murder when Woody was seven. Woody was raised by his mother, Diane, with his two brothers in Lebanon, Ohio, and went to Hanover College in Indiana on a Presbyterian scholarship, studying theatre and graduating in 1983.

"When I was really young, I was actually terrified of getting up in front of people to speak," Harrelson says. "But you know, someone who stutters will sometimes wind up becoming a radio disc jockey. It's a way of facing one's deepest fears. I remember in the late seventies, when I was in high school, right after Elvis died, I bought an album of his golden hits and started to sing all the time. So it got to where I had this pretty funny interpretation, and one day in my junior year I was in the library and people asked by to sing an Elvis song.

"At first I said no, but finally I started singing, and people started gathering around and clapping. I was singing 'All Shook Up'-'Bess my soul, what's wrong with me'-and they kept on clapping, and pretty soon it turned into a performance, me up on the table and all. Afterward, this girl came up to me-Robin Rogers, I remember her name-and she said I should be in the school theatre. That was all I needed. I went down and tried out for a part right away."

Harrelson has recently completed a new movie, Play It to the Bone, with Antonio Banderas and Lolita Davidovich, directed by Ron Shelton, whose credits include White Men Can't Jump, Bull Durham and Tin Cup. "Antonio and I are boxers who are best friends," Harrelson says. "We end up driving together to Las Vegas with Lolita-she used to be my girlfriend, now she's his-and we wind up fighting each other. It's really funny."

But for now, Harrelson says, it's the stage and not the screen that will hold his primary attention. "I guess you could say I got a little distracted," he says. "But not my heart and my mind are refocused on what was my original love. The theatre."

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