Timing Is Everything: Randy Bennett’s Lives in the Performing Arts

Santa Fean Randy Bennett has had a long and illustrious career in the performing arts. Currently the Chairman of the Performing Arts Department at Desert Academy, Randy blew the competition away in third grade with his rendition of “Beep Beep, Beep Beep, My Car Went Beep Beep.” Wearing a makeshift car made from a toilet paper box and employing pantomime, Randy lip-synched his way to first prize. He and his audience were hooked.

Throughout high school, Randy won the area speech competitions and had the leads in his school plays. In 1966, he won the Texas State Talent Festival at UT—Austin’s 2,000-seat venue—with a humorous monologue, “My First Date, or How I Failed as a Debutante.”

Paul Baker of Trinity University (San Antonio) was the first in a series of influential mentors for Randy. Growing up in Waco, Randy knew of the controversial firing of Baker while working in the Theater Department at Baylor University: “He was fired because he refused to cut ‘the foul language and drunk references’ in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night.” Randy admired the professional stand Professor Baker took on perhaps America’s greatest play and, in fact, wrote both his high school and college theses on Long Day’s Journey into Night. The theater at Trinity was “amazing” with a horseshoe shaped stage with one of the earliest computerized light boards, a hydraulic stage, parquet flooring and leather chairs that swiveled on chrome bases. Randy was actually spoiled by his early college experience: “I thought all theaters would be like Trinity.”

I

In his first eight weeks at Trinity, he had his first main stage performance as a monk in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. He had one line at the very end of the play: “Here, my daughter, here’s your cross.” In the audience one night was 1970s Casting Director Superstar Bobby Hoffman who was to work on Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy. In San Antonio to film Viva Max! (1969), Bobby invited the eighteen-year-old Randy to audition for a part in the movie. Randy won the part of a young corporal in Jonathan Winters’ platoon in this zany comedy of a mad Mexican general attempting to retake The Alamo in modern times. In the satirical style of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Viva Max! is peopled with first-rate actors, including Peter Ustinov, Pamela Tiffin, John Astin, Keenan Wynn, Harry Morgan, and Alice Ghostley. The director was Jerry Paris who was fresh off the mega-successful The Dick Van Dyke Show. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when the President of Trinity University allowed Randy to do the movie but under strict conditions: “I am going to let you do this. I want you to learn how to make movies and get to know everything there is to know. Then I want you to report back to all your classes at Trinity.” So, during filming, Randy also worked in casting, wardrobe, payroll, and as an assistant to Jerry Paris. Finally, Randy whose nickname on the set was “The Waco Kid” was embarrassed by his tendency to mug. The highest praise Randy received is “He’s the next Jerry Lewis” because the young actor believed that the sillier and goofier he acted the better. One day during filming, the stentorian voice of Jonathan Winters boomed out to the director: “Though I’m not looking at him, tell the Waco Kid to stop mugging in my scene.” Randy learned the lesson of “less can sometimes be more,” if only in the presence of a star.

During his sophomore year at Trinity University after the release of Viva Max!, both Jerry Paris and Bobby Hoffman encouraged Randy to transfer to the Los Angeles area: “You should be serious about acting. You should move to LA….We will fly you out and set you up with the heads of the casting departments at schools in the LA area.” With apprehensive parents and friends encouraging Randy to stay in Texas, Randy went to LA and on the first night saw a life-defining production of Hair at the Aquarius Theater. However, when Randy actually met with the theater department representatives from UCLA and USC, his choice of a new school was not a difficult one.

UCLA told Randy he wouldn’t have a part until graduate school; on the other hand, USC actively recruited him. Randy transferred to USC for his junior year and discovered the drama department “couldn’t hold a candle to Trinity.” Randy carried a tremendous workload and graduated on schedule with a cum laude degree in theater from the California university.

II

On the day after graduation in 1972, Randy hit the road with the band Southern Comfort toured together for seven years. How Randy met his partner and piano player Janet Glazener is a story in itself. During the summers after his sophomore and junior years, Randy worked as a singing waiter in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, at The Farmhouse. He and thirty other waiters served six hundred people a night and had no days off but received great tips. And, of course, he made connections that led to the creation of Southern Comfort.

His band opened at The Holiday Inn at Waupaca, Wisconsin, and worked the Holiday Circuit for forty-eight consecutive weeks, six nights a week with five shows a night from 9 P.M. until 2 A.M. The rooms were free and the food was 50% off, so Randy was able to pay off his college loans by the end of the second year on the road when Southern Comfort began to play bigger Holiday Inns and had client bookings in desirable locales like the Bahamas. In response to my query, Randy described the group’s sound as “smooth, four-part harmony. We did a lot of The Fifth Dimension, The Carpenters, and Manhattan Transfer. Until the electric sound came about, we were successful playing top forty, Broadway, pop, and jazz.” After seven years of “making a lot of money but living a grueling lifestyle,” Randy had enough: “I stopped the group.” Before the week was out, Randy Bennett was on to another major stop in his career in the theater.

II

One week after the end of Southern Comfort, Tom Maxwell phoned Randy informing the out-of-work singer that he was a friend of Grady Lonon who was a singing waiter colleague of Randy’s at The Farmhouse during their undergraduate years. This was 1978 and Maxwell was organizing the first class of The Groundlings, a comedy improvisational group in Los Angeles. The founding director of the group Gary Austin taught Randy to teach improvisation. Randy who “took like a fish to water” to this form of performance became very successful within the company; he was in the first group of The Groundlings School to be admitted to the company proper. Within six months, Randy ran for corporation president of The Groundlings and won, defeating Paul Reubens (who created his wildly successful character Pee Wee Herman while performing with The Groundlings). Randy’s meteoric rise within the company revealed “a fatal flaw within the company: It was an organization that was run by the actors.”

In 1979 in Los Angeles, Randy supported himself by teaching early on at The Groundlings School where he taught five improv classes a week to over 3,000 students including Jon Lovitz, Julia Sweeney, Bill Rosenthal (executive producer of Everyone Loves Raymond), J. J. Abrahams (creator and executive producer of LOST), and a nineteen year old George Clooney.

As an actor with The Groundlings Company, Randy found his niche. Always comfortable doing political humor, Randy’s first big piece was to do an opening act Jimmy Carter impersonation in a press conference format with the audience. He was given invaluable advice by fellow company member Phil Hartman (who became a close friend of Randy’s and was later wildly successful on Saturday Night Live). Just as they entered the stage one night, Phil whispered to Randy: “Don’t try to be funny.” The former king of the muggers took the advice and slipped into the role of company straight man. His biggest hit as a Groundling actor was a return to his Central Texas roots. In Waco, that followed Paul Reubens’ Pee Wee Herman midnight act, Randy created the characters of Waymon Frye (which he also played) and his wife Olita that were based on childhood memories of the absurdist conversations of his parents and their friends. Randy provided me with a few minutes of a hilarious piece he did entitled “White Things Are Light…like mayonnaise, and whipped cream, and cream cheese.” Future President of HBO Chris Albrecht of the ICM Talent Agency tried to sell the Fryes to television “but it was bucking the tide of anti-Southern comedy in 1980.”

In 1982-83, Randy had a “massive burn out.” Realizing “I didn’t want to be a starving actor,” Randy left The Groundlings and took a job as assistant to Charles Barrett at the McCartt Oreck Barrett Talent Agency (MOB). The agency was high end, having a client list of only sixty at any one time; among other headliners, it represented Tom Selleck, Lynne Redgrave, Cloris Leachman, George Clooney, Kirstie Alley, and Kelly Preston. Randy’s time at the agency was a valuable learning experience: “I wanted to learn the business side of the entertainment business and I learned so much,” including that to succeed in Hollywood “one must know the business angles” and “must be terribly good-looking.” Working sixteen-hour days, Randy discovered that he was a terrible talent agent: “I couldn’t lie well enough.” Keeping his options open, Randy began teaching a few classes at The Groundlings School against the express wishes of Charles Barrett. George Clooney took Randy’s class and a month after the class ended told his agent at MOB “Randy’s class helped me.” Randy was fired that day though he had become Head of Episodic Television at the agency. Randy felt “it was all for the best. I hated the talent agency business.”

In 1984-5, Randy went back to teach for The Groundlings, becoming the head of the Groundling School of Improvisation. During this time he created and taught a “Writing and Character Development Lab” that developed many past and current comedy writers. He also relocated to New York where he taught on his own and researched spaces for the possible opening of “The Groundlings East” which did open in 1986-7 and is still in existence as “Gotham City Improv.” Running the business and teaching all day, Randy produced and directed a show in 1987 at the famous “Caroline’s Comedy Club.” Personal tragedy led to a “near breakdown” and to Randy’s returning to Los Angeles and beginning a rich creative time in his life.

IV

In Los Angeles, Randy began to work as a theater producer with his life partner, Craig Strong. They hooked up with money-producing partners Doug Cramer and Aaron Spelling (Dynasty, Knots Landing, Melrose Place, and Beverly Hills 90210). Their biggest hit was Ladies Room by another Groundlings cohort Robin Schiff. Set in a restroom of a Mexican restaurant and starring Lisa Kudrow of Friends (another Groundlings alumnae), the play became a “Critics’ Choice” and played a totally sold-out run. Barry Kemp, executive producer of Coach and Newhart, moved the play to San Francisco and another successful run. Other noteworthy Bennett-Strong productions include Cynthia Heimel’s Girls’ Guide to Chaos (a New York show that became an LA Critic’s Choice) that starred Debra Jo Rupp (the mother on That 70’s Show) and Richard Greenberg’s The Maderati that starred Penny Gilpin (Roz on Frasier).

Randy and Craig were “drawing in heavy-hitting producing partners” and “were known for their casting abilities and their influence as career makers.” All was “pretty cool” but Randy felt the imperative to make some “real” money.

Randy spent the next two years learning to be a television comedy director. The process is simple if exhausting and non-remunerative: “You find a director, stay by their side, and observe.” Randy observed at Murphy Brown, Room for Two, and Mad about You; however, he consistently shadowed Lee Shallat of The Nanny. After two years of no money, Randy was hired to direct an episode of The Nanny which enabled him to join the Directors’ Guild of America and to make a first episode fee of $32,000. Feeling like he had made it, Randy was a casualty of a falling out of director Shallat and star Fran Drescher and never worked again on The Nanny. However, Randy was not finished with his California professional career.

After talking with Tom Maxwell (his director from the Groundlings and Waco co-star), the creators of The Real World (television’s first reality show)—Mary Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray—phoned Randy and hired him on the spot. Randy was given the project of developing a new show. The process of how a pilot gets made is a fascinating (and expensive) one.

Randy’s project, initially entitled Life’s a Bitch, was to be a teen soap opera that was dramatically improvised in front of live cameras. In addition to his role as director, Randy also served as casting director and went across America to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Houston, searching for talent for the first step in development, a fifteen-minute pilot presentation. After the pilot was “picked up,” Randy hit the road again, adding Seattle, Boston, and Dallas to his talent search in preparation for a one-hour pilot with a 1.5 million dollar budget. The pilot was shot in ten days in Marina Del Ray in March of 1995. Personal tragedy struck Randy again during the shooting of the pilot. Further complicating matters, at approximately the same time, Randy and Craig who had produced a very successful Los Angeles Festival with Peter Sellars, met Martin Platt, the founder and artistic director of Santa Fe Stages (SFS). Ready for a change, Randy kept going back to Santa Fe with Craig who was “taking meetings” that led to his accepting the position of company managing director for SFS. Thus began Randy’s Santa Fe tenure.

V

Fed up with “one disappointment after another and eager to get out of Los Angeles” and “falling in love with Santa Fe at first sight,” Randy and Craig bought Running Wolf Ranch and established themselves in the City Different. However, Randy still owned a telephone and received another intriguing call to come to Dallas and start an improv school, KD Actors’ Conservatory. Randy “tested the waters” which proved to be welcoming. He did well for two years training other teachers. In 1997, his successful school led to the formation of his performing company, Lone Star Comedy: “I simply did what I knew best.” In 1998, Randy realized “I needed a venue or I needed to get out.” Randy stayed and purchased a club on Lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas.

Randy’s club almost worked. Opening in June of 2000, Randy built a “swanky New York City bar,” UPSTAGED—Smart Comedy, Smart Cocktails, with live entertainment. His old buddy Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (who played his daughter Wayleta in Waco at the Groundlings) was the opening night star and she performed gratis. His former Groundlings’ student Jon Lovitz performed at the club in 2001. The club provided an innovative approach to viewing a show: every show was performed live and shot with four robotic cameras, so audience members could experience the show live and on television simultaneously. Yet, despite the many high moments, the club was never very successful. Underfunded by $25,000 by the Small Business Association at its opening, the business never totally recovered. The final coup de grace occurred on July 3, 2002, when the state of Texas refused to renew Randy’s liquor license. A torrential rainstorm also occurred on the third and Randy felt the stars were aligned against him. He closed UPSTAGED the next week, declared bankruptcy, and hit another down cycle of exhaustion and depression.

Two weeks after returning to Santa Fe the storm clouds began to lift. It was decided that it was time for Randy and Craig to be dads. Randy also learned (or re-learned) major lessons from the failure of UPSTAGED: “You need luck in show business and a lot of breaks as well as knowing the right people. You must be made of iron to face the constant rejection and humiliation.” With the adoption of Craig and Randy’s son Zander, Randy experienced a major epiphany: “I shifted away from making money; my new priority was happiness and having a family with Craig.” In 2003-4, Randy was not working and “was happy as a clam at high tide” as a stay-at-home dad: “It was a great time filled with hope.” But that darn telephone kept ringing and soon Randy began his next career as a secondary school arts teacher and administrator.

VI

In 2005, Randy did a few workshops before friend Chuck Jones introduced him to Fredericka Johnson, the drama instructor at Santa Fe Preparatory School where “I became the official substitute teacher for Freddy.” Ms. Johnson praised Randy: “He was great with the kids and got so much out of them.” This part-time stint led to a full-time job for three and a half months at the New Mexico Academy for Science and Mathematics where Randy taught drama and produced and directed the school’s plays. Then Ray Griffin, Headmaster of Desert Academy, phoned and asked, “What can we work out here?”

Randy’s goal was to “build a performing arts department at a high school”; however, he decided to start slowly. In 2005, he taught only improv at Desert. The turning point for all involved was a spring speech and drama field trip to Los Angeles organized and led by Randy that attracted seventeen students. There were daily highlights, including Randy’s performing with The Groundlings with his old friend Mindy Sterling (Frau Forbissima of the Austin Powers movies), and auditioning for Ty Harman (a student of Randy’s at the age of 17, now 42) who was casting for American Pie IV. Everyone returned to Santa Fe reinvigorated and ready to begin serious study.

In 2006, Randy became chairman of the Performing Arts Department at Desert Academy, ran the Student Council, and taught four classes: film, drama, comedy improv, and a middle school speech and fine arts rotation. Randy wants to provide his students with more than he received in his education: “I was taught theater history and acting technique and was expected to have talent. But I also want to teach my students to be professional. No one ever taught me how to get work and never told me what to do at auditions. I didn’t know what a headshot was and didn’t know a thing about unions or how to get an agent. I want my students to understand the business of show business.”

I would love to attend Randy’s theater class. Among other activities, the class is enlivened with Randy’s lively anecdotes, film appreciation (e.g., Buster Keaton and Some Like It Hot), and professional guest lecturers such as Kirk Ellis (winner of an Emmy award for John Adams) who read the first four pages of his script for the mini-series and casting director Ty Harman. Furthermore, Randy has continued his yearly “Behind the Scenes” field trips, alternating between Los Angles and New York City. In a recent trip to the Big Apple, students were attending Patti Lupone’s performance of Gypsy two hours after landing: “I want to enrich the kids’ lives. I want them to understand what theater really is and to see how films and plays are made.”

And success is starting to occur in Randy’s program. Recent graduate Rose Leitner won a full scholarship to Stanford: “I love to see students go on and do well. You can’t put a price tag on that.” As for the future, students are starting to attend Desert for its rich arts offerings. Furthermore, Randy is doing interesting material, including Tartuffe (“the best thing I’ve ever done’) and Our Town that was cast with parents and staff as well as students from the Desert Academy community.

Randy Bennett has created a rich personal and professional life in Santa Fe: “I have never been happier in my life. I am (finally) doing what I was meant to do.” After a roller coaster ride of a professional career rich in memories if not dollars, Randy has come to the conclusion that “How one defines success is learned as you look back.” Whether one looks to the past or to the future, it is clear that the Waco Kid has touched many lives in an engaging and meaningful way.