Brian Dennehy

Brian Dennehy as “Erie” Smith with Joe Grifasi as the night clerk in the
Goodman’s Theatre 2008 production of Hughie. Photo by Liz Lauren.

Once you’ve done O’Neill, and I’ve done a lot of him, it’s hard to go on to anything else. In two weeks time, I go to Chicago to start working on, I don’t know, my fourth production, fifth production of Hughie. One of the great things about doing great parts is you never finish it [Audience: It gets better every time]—you just keep working on them. I don’t know [responding to audience member], depends on when you see them—you have seen a few of them. But it is, it’s always a work in progress. American actors have this tendency: “Well, I did that.” “What do you mean, you did it? “I did forty performances in Louisville. I’m done with that. I don’t do that any more” Forty performances? I did Salesman 650 times. And I would do it again if I felt strongly enough about it. Long Day’s Journey I did probably 300 or 400 times, and that’s one I’d like to go back to, this guy that I just read. But the point is—O’Neill very much liked himself, very much liked the life that he led—for an actor, O’Neill was never ever satisfied with what he’d done, he was never satisfied with the work that he’d done, and a good actor has to walk away from every production of O’Neill saying the same thing: “Eh, it was ok, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough. I can find more.” And I’m 71, and I’ve been doing O’Neill now for 35 years.

Moderator: What was the first O’Neill that you did?

Dennehy: There’s a few people here who may be old enough to remember Bill Hickey. Bill Hickey was the most extraordinary, wonderful character. Anything he was ever in, he stole. He lifted it up, and walked away with it. Audiences always loved him—I’m trying to remember something—oh, his most famous, in fact he was nominated for an Academy Award, was in Prizzi’s Honor. He played the old mafia guy. “Another cookie, my dear?” That’s Billy. He’s as Irish as Paddy’s pig, and here he is playing a Mafia don—nobody gives a damn, he was perfect. Anyway, Hickey and I did the sea plays, 1968, ‘69, forty some years ago, at a little theater which has long since disappeared called the [inaudible] Theater on Lexington Avenue, and we did the sea plays, and Bill didn’t know any of his lines. I played the—he played Yank, and I played Drisc, I guess, I can’t remember—all I remember was him saying, “What was I saying? What was I saying?” Because he didn’t know the line. So I’d say, “You were talking about the Embarcadero in Rio.” And he’d say, “Ah, yes, the Embarcadero in Rio…what was I saying about the Embarcadero in Rio?” Now, you have to know I fed him every goddamn line, and who do you think the audience loved? Him! I knew my lines and his lines, and not only that I had to say his lines before he said them, but that’s how good he was. But, anyway, that’s how it all started.