Welcome back, Kaplan
By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post Theater Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2008
GROUCHO, Broward Stage Door Theatre, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral
Springs. Tonight through May 11, with extensions likely. Phone: (954)
344-7765.
What is Gabe Kaplan doing, appearing in the Palm Beach International
Film Festival's opening night movie and starring in a Groucho Marx
show in Coral Springs?
You could call it a welcome back for the guy who used to headline the
network sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter back in the 1970s.
After Kotter went off the air in 1979, the expected thing would be for
Brooklyn-born Kaplan, now 63, to grab another television series or
even graduate to feature films. Instead, he was content to take the
sizable bundle he made and sit at home, far from the limelight,
fiddling with financial investments.
"I used to put groups of people together, but I didn't charge, I
wasn't doing it to make money, advising people," he says over lunch in
a sleepy Broward County hotel restaurant. "In the '80s, it was a
different financial era and if you did the right due diligence and you
had a good feel for the market, you could tell if a company would be
successful. And I had a pretty good batting average."
It was a game, a gamble, in which he found he could outsmart the
field, not unlike his other post-Kotter passion - poker. Between the
two, he says, "I was completely fulfilled. I had no need to be on
television."
True, he would compete in a few televised tournaments and he hosts a
series called the National Heads-Up Poker Champion****p, but mention
the idea of him taking on another sitcom and Kaplan will recoil.
His retreat from the limelight was not for lack of op****tunities. "I
was offered a lot - second person on a sitcom, third person. Every
year to this day, I still get offered that stuff," he says with a
shrug. "And no matter how many times I say 'no,' the offers keep
coming."
Other than poker shows, the last time Kaplan appeared on TV was a 1984
episode of that has-been graveyard, Murder, She Wrote. "And the only
reason I did that was because it was a comedian and the comedian was a
killer. So I thought, 'OK, I have to do this one.' "
It was never his intention to be in the movie The Grand, an
improvisational comedy about a - what else? - poker tournament. It
unspools tonight at 7 p.m. at the Sunrise Cinemas in Boca Raton, the
kleig-lit gala opening of the 13th annual Palm Beach International
Film Festival.
"They first contacted me about being a technical advisor" on the film,
he recalls. "When I met (director) Zak Penn and we started talking
about poker, he said, 'Y'know, there's a part that you could really
get into. And it's improv.' So I figure this is great because we
didn't have to know the lines." He plays poker ace Cheryl Hines'
intrusive father. Of the shoot, he says, "You just go with it and you
go three or four times and that's it."
So does Kaplan want to make more movies? "Nope. Unless another perfect
offer comes along. If someone says, 'You want to play a gangster?' I
would say, 'Yeah!' "
Nor will Kaplan be walking down the red carpet tonight. Instead he
will be at the Broward Stage Door Theatre, opening in Groucho, a
biographical play about the legendary comedian, raconteur and quiz
show host that also just fell into Kaplan's lap. Twice.
When the play was first completed by Groucho's son Arthur Marx and his
frequent collaborator Robert Fisher in 1981, they offered it to Kaplan
then, because he had been on a short list of names that Groucho had
personally approved to play him. Kaplan had several encounters with
Groucho, including almost being sued by him for impersonating his
voice on a recording that was the precursor of Welcome Back, Kotter.
Groucho liked Kaplan's series and once visited the set for a taping
session, almost appearing as a surprise guest on the show. And Kaplan
recalls visiting Groucho in the hospital, just months before Marx died
in 1977.
To him, "Groucho was the ultimate comedian. Comedians are generally
divided into three groups. Those that look funny, those that talk in a
funny way and those who say funny things," notes Kaplan. "He had all
three and that's very rare."
Kaplan premiered the play 26 years ago and appeared in a version on
HBO in 1982, but he frequently disagreed with Groucho's son over the
content of the show. "I always wanted to explore Groucho's legacy, to
show who he really was and reflect on what comedians have in common,
how im****tant it is to have the acceptance that laughter brings them,"
Kaplan says.
Arthur Marx, on the other hand, wanted the show to be more "show
bizzy," with lots of songs and skits from his father's early career.
Kaplan never felt comfortable with all the singing ("I'm not a
singer," he concedes), and after touring with it for eight months, he
withdrew from the show before it arrived off-Broadway in 1986.
Many actors have filled Groucho's shoes in the show over the past two
decades, but it was a chance meeting with Arthur Marx that now has
Kaplan involved again. This time, Marx is allowing him to do the show
his way. "We do a little stuff from vaudeville, there's still a little
music - (Hooray for) Captain Spaulding's in there - but I don't want
to force people to listen to me sing," Kaplan says.
"I hope you learn that he was very defensive," Kaplan says of Groucho.
"He could only see his side of things. He had three troubled
marriages, trouble with his children. He really regretted that, like
most men do late in their lives if they weren't good fathers."
In the show, he says, "We learn that this guy, America's jester, was
really very unhappy. He was never able to express himself except in
correspondence, where he came closest to who he was."
The difference between Kaplan and Groucho - really between Kaplan and
most comedians - is that he does not have a need to perform. Broward
Stage Door hopes to keep extending Groucho into August, "but we really
haven't even talked about it," says Kaplan. All he knows is that when
the run ends here, he will put away the swallowtail coat and the
exaggerated moustache and head home to California, to his investments
and his poker.
"Groucho talks about the fact that all the comedians he met were
unhappy," says Kaplan. "And that's mostly true. You can't be in front
of an audience your whole life, and most comedians have a problem
dealing with life offstage. I don't."
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