Page 6
University Daily Kansan, February 5. 1980
Spare time
Charles Oldfather, actor, politician, teacher, father, musician and golfer, discusses his acting avocation.
Actor plays many roles in real life
By LISA GUTIERREZ Staff Reporter
Charles Oldfather's voice was deep and resonant, more suitable for a theater stage than the closeness of a corner in the Kansas Union Cafeteria.
He lit another cigarette and began to talk about his acting.
about his acting.
"To play someone, you actually become that someone," he said. "And that means blitting out who you are."
He moved forward to the table in front of him and reached for the ashtray.
"You immerse yourself in that someone else and then you become that person," he said, as he gently tapped his ashes into the tray.
inge 191-year-old actor, singer, golfer and retired KU law professor immerses himself in
"I like to live my life fully," he said,
laughing at his own understatement.
Oldfather's affiliation with the University began in 1950, two years after graduating from Harvard University Law School. He served as KU faculty representative to the Big Eight and NCAA for eight years. In 78s he became the University's attorney.
His connection with KU hardly ended with his retirement in 1975.
For 20 years, Oldfather has been one of the
featured professors on the KLWN radio show Professor's Pigskin Picks. Last spring, he taught a course in Insurance law. He frequently returns to teach other courses.
Oldfather is also a member of the Lawrence Board of Education and is active in the Lawrence Symphony and Lawrence Community Theatre.
What the father of seven really keeps busy with these days is his acting.
"I keep busy." Oldfather said.
"I like to say I got my start in acting at the age of 13 playing Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore in an Eastern boys' prep school," he said.
Although he no longer portrays women, oldFather's latest roles have been in plays like "Cat on a Hot Tm Roof," The Sunshine Tree, and "On Golden Pond" and "The Good Doctor."
"In a way, my performance in 'The Good
Man' is my most memorable one." Old-
daughter said.
The Topeka Civic Theater's production of Neil Simon's "Good Doctor" won first prize for civic theater productions in the United States in 1980, he said.
Oldfather's latest play opened last night in the Opera House at Osage City. The play is a thriller, appropriately titled "Sealth." Oldfather plays the lead character, Andrew.
"I play an effete English gentleman of some means who is totally immersed in playing games of all sorts," he said. "This
gentleman decides to avenge himself on his wife's lover."
Oldfather slipped into a British accent as he went on to talk about the play.
He inudied in a few lines of the play to demonstrate his British mannerisms.
"Acutily, you just talk in a clipped way," he said. "to the case in which he slipped into his part."
But acting isn't always easy for Oldfather.
“It’s been interesting for me to find that acts takes a lot of intellectual activity,” he
"There's so much work involved in finding out what the author wanted his character to do, and I'm not ready yet."
Oldfather said that he is always nervous before a performance.
"The day you aren't nervous is the day you don't perform anymore," he said.
"I'm [waits nervous, nervous as a cat."
Despite the nervousness, intense concentration and long hours acting requires of him. Oldfather said the rewards made it all worthbubble.
"The rewards are feeling that you've done a pretty hard job well," he said.
Oldfather became pensive, the character
ines etched in his face growing deeper for an
inspiration.
"I think the ultimate compliment for any actor is for someone who knows him very well to come up to him after a performance and tell him 'I forgot you who were,'" he said.
O'Malley gives up 'tinsel town' for school
Staff Writer
By CATHERINE BEHAN
With experiences like this, why would Terence O'Malley be a graduate student, who kept her job as ordinary?
Could you bite into a fake hamburger and look as if you loved the imaginary piece of meat? Or stand in front of a camera and crew singing the "MelloYelo" soft drink jingle in your un-
money out come back, after learning that it we can to meet celebrities and to try out for comedy roles.
"Sometimes I couldn't believe the things I was doing in the auditions." O'Malley said recently.
"It's a look the product people are looking for," he said.
Product people such as McDonalds and Coca-Cola bigwigs, tell casting directors and agents what kind of "look" they want for a specific role and the agents send out likely prospects.
For O'Malley, people looking for a young male, 20 to 25 years old, six feet tall or over, with youthful looks and brown hair could sometimes see his face on the test films.
"You might think you're pretty special," O'Malley said, "then you walk into a room with 20 clones of you sitting there waiting to try out for the same part."
O'Malley never got a part in any commercials he tried out for during the year and a half he was in Hollywood, but he did get two small parts in upcoming movies.
In his first movie, the controversial, soon-to-be-released, Frances Ford Corp film, "One Man, Two Worlds," he directed.
His second role was a small part in the upcoming low-budget film, "Home Run."
In "Home Run," O'Malley is a member of a baseball team called the Cougars. He glances at the Cougar cap sitting in a corner of his room, and smiles, remembering the day. In one scene, the team sits around a table in a bar playing "Cougar roulette."
The actors were supposed to hold beer cans near their faces, hoping that the can each of them was holding was not the can that had been shaken up.
"We started filming at midnight Sunday and it was about 7 a.m. we started playing beer on the set."
But, all of the cans were shaken up so each of the actors was doused with beer. The scene had to be shot and re-shot to get close-up reaction shots as well as the group shot.
"After wrapping at mid-morning and driving some soaked in beer, I really understand why actors often earn great amounts of money. It is work—in a different sort of way," O Mallay said.
O'Malley came back to the Midwest to study television production at KU. He is an alumnus of Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, Mo., and graduated from Towson University in 1980, where he majored in English.
And although he acted in high school and in college before he went west to, as he called it, "Tinsel Town," he said his current goal was to work in television production.
There he met and talked to such famous people as Julie Andrews, "She's sweet," and Roger Moore, "He's exactly the same off camera as on-polished, debonair and smoking an eight-volt battery."
While he tried out for commercials and,
o'Malley held himself by working
with the company's former executive
never.
"I saw the good side and the bad side," he said.
"Now I'm going to concentrate on going to
Almost meeting celebrities at the hotel was thrilling. O'Maley said he was glad to be back
"I got a lot of grief for wearing designer jeans," he said.
Esquire photo exhibit creates visual overload
O'Malley said one hard part of coming back to the Midwest was the difference between the avant-garde attitude in Hollywood and the "campus ambiance," with the student uniform.
By DAVID HENRY Contributing Reviewer
rive he lives like many other KU students, in a studio apartment with his stereo and books, on the campus of Rutgers University.
Richard Nixon Rock 'n' rock Wayline Newton Fabian Topless Bridges James Baldwin Janis Joplin Sharon Tate Male West Andy Warhol Souls Food Catherine Deneuve Gore Vidal John Kennedy The Rest and the Brightest Tom Wille The Beautiful People, the Artist The Real People, in frames, right now at the Spencer Museum of Art. It's a collection from Esquire magazine and it's a well show.
Long known for its fiction and its Varga pin-up girls, Esquire began losing readers after World War Two. To save itself, Esquire went contemporary in the late 1950s. Really contemporary
Writers such as Norman Maler, Gay Talese and Tom Wole wrote articles on teenage rock 'n' roll stars, love festivals and the new aesthetics of 2014. Nothing was sacred and nobody was safe.
Take a breath, walk into the small White Gallery and there they are—110 photographs, all of which first appeared in Esquire, all of which capture a different view of the 60s.
It's visual overload. The photographs are everywhere, High, low, at eye level. Walk quickly through the gallery and they compete for attention.
Slow down and the exhibition takes on new meaning. Thomas Southall, curator of photography at the Spencer Museum, and a group of art history students recreated an issue of Esquire and placed it on the wall. Sorting through thousands of photographs given to the University of Kansas last year by Esquire, Inc., they edited, researched and organized for more than four months. The final product is as unconventional as the original source.
Along with photographs, KU also inherited all of the existing artwork used in the magazine's first 44 years, giving the University a valuable collection of 20th century illustrations and designs.
The Esquire photographs are successful because they make you look. Fabian's porcupine hair. Gore Vidal's concealing star. Sharon Tate's signature smile. Your delicate in this exhibit; you won't find art photos.
Indeed, some of the individual photographs are pretty dull. But not to worry. As an ensemble of an extraordinary decade, the exhibition is a success. These photographs, most of which have never been seen outside the pages of Esquire, are all too special. They are on view until Feb. 28. Go see them.
The Esquire photographs are on the third floor White Gallery of the Spencer Museum of Art. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m., Sundays, 1:00 to 4:30, and is closed Mondays.
Gift of Esquire Inc
This Helmut Newton portrait of Cathrin Deneuve was made in Paris in 1978. Part of the Esquire Collection, the original photograph measures 15 and one half inches by ten and one half inches.
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