'Jack Lemmon Returns:' Chris Lemmon remembers his father in one-man show

It's really a look back at the wonderful times I shared with my father. It's basically, at it's core, a deeply tragic father-son story, but it's couched in the lore of golden age Hollywood. So it kind of runs the emotional gamut. 

Exactly. Not just his work — divorce, a number of different things, and life. It's really a unique — but in very many ways universal — father-son story. We were quite close when I was quite young, but at a very, very early age, we were really ripped apart from each other and stayed that way for quite a while. But then, through a conscious effort on his part, and eventually — even though I didn't know it at the time — we came back together and became the closest of friends against all odds. And then, unfortunately he died tragically young [at 76]. 

I was kind of a late bloomer. I'd say in my early 20's to mid-20's, when I sort of came into my own, and suddenly he and I just looked at each other and said, Wait a minute. Hold on a second there. I kind of like you. And we started to spend a lot of time together then. It was music, really, that brought us back together — the piano. 

He was the one who was responsible for teaching me. You take a look at the poster for [the show at] The Broad. It's an actual picture of me trying to plunk out notes while he's playing it at our beach house down on Santa Monica beach. He was very patient for a while, but then he said, "Kid, you gotta take some lessons." And so I did, and the piano became my love in an attempt not to have to follow in that giant's footsteps. I wanted to become a classical pianist, but becoming an actor was inevitable. My father used to say,  "It's in the genes. All in the genes."

The play is done in my father's voice, which is wonderful because it gives me a chance to be with him every night for 90 minutes. But as he tells it, he says, "He's a hot shot... all of a sudden he decides to go over. He sees this helicopter doing low, lazy circles over the neighbor's house. He knew every secret little passageway in the neighborhood, so he found himself by the neighbor's pool, watching this very pretty blonde lady frolicking in the water with a very distinguished-looking gentleman. And that's when the secret service agents pulled him out of his hiding spot. Well, of course, the lady was Marilyn Monroe and the gentleman... well, you know: Ask not what your country can do for you..." And there's the story. 

I wanted my father back. Don't we all? I mean, how do you ever get your parents back? Don't we all have those dreams, you know, on a regular basis, that those loved ones that are gone are back and it's just this wonderful, comforting feeling. I was searching for that and in writing down those memories, I was able to sort of find it. The writing process, it really is true — once you've got the first page down and the last page down, there's your story. And those wonderful characters, as I walked towards my office every day, were leaning out the windows saying, Come write us! Come write us! And it was just a magnificent feeling, and I missed it after the book was published. So in that search for catharsis, this play has filled that. 

I'd say both. A lot of these stories were from Pop himself, more so in the book than in the show. A lot of those stories are my memories and also Hershey [Felder] is a very good investigative writer. He really does his research. He's excellent at that and he found a lot of stuff. For instance, the whole fact that my father had an enormous crush on Jean-Louis Barrault — the French actor, director and mime — and that's a huge part of the show. That was something that Hershey brought to it that I didn't know. 

Exactly. My father was always — and this is something that I knew very much — he was always befuddled by the fact that Hollywood had to lay such stipulations on actors, that they had to be either this or that. He always felt that comedy and drama should seamlessly intertwine, and he was quite good at doing that, but Hollywood wouldn't let him until ... When people ask me what's my favorite Jack Lemmon film, I've got to say "The Apartment," for that very reason. 

It's very interesting and I hope I'm not giving myself an indirect pat on the back, but I gotta say that I do a damn good Jack Lemmon. (In his father's voice:) I try not to do an imitation by any means. I think I sort of channel him. You know Kevin Spacey? He came by rehearsal the other day and he does a pretty damn good Jack Lemmon, too. So we get into a Jack Lemmon duel, Spacey and me, and it's just disgusting. You don't want to be in the room when that happens. 

I saw an incredibly brave man. A man who was willing to make an enormously difficult change in his life because he realized that he was not only getting in his own way, but he was getting in everybody else's as well, and he didn't want to do that. My father was a very selfless man. He always thought of other people first and he realized the impact that his drinking had on those people that he cared about.



And not just his immediate family, all of his friends, all of his fans and the world, because he had the courage before it was by any means in vogue — when it was career suicide — to publicly admit it on The Actor's Studio in front of James Lipton, out of the blue. If you watch that episode, you can see Lipton's jaw drop when he turns and publicly admits that he was not only a recovering alcoholic, that he was attending, regularly, Alcoholics Anonymous. And as he says, as I say as him in the play, he made that decision and he never looked back: "I haven't had a drink since. Not one." And he didn't.