PAUL MICHAEL GLASER

Actor, Director, Writer, Humanitarian

Paul Manfred Glaser was born on Thursday, March 25, 1943 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He grew up in the residential towns of Brookline and then Newton; upper-middle-class communities just outside Boston . He is the youngest of three children and the only son of Dorothy and Samuel Glaser - an MIT graduate, was an architect and partner with deCastro & Vitols. Established in 1930 by Samuel Glaser, it is one of the oldest architectural firms in the City of Boston. The original firm became a partnership in 1968 and in 1979 reorganized as two separate entities, Glaser/deCastro Associates and Vitols Associates.

Paul's exposure and interest in acting began at an early age. His older sister Pricilla, was very involved in the dramatic arts and theater. Paul's first stage appearance occurred when he was 14 in the production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors". He continued to involve himself in school plays throughout high school. "She influenced my interest in the theater," says Paul. "I Have 2 older sisters, the middle....the... younger of the two older sisters, ah, was determined to be an actress and I think, when,. we were very close when we were kids and I think I kinda followed in her footsteps and I found myself in my last 2 years of High School pursing aggressively starting to think about acting and getting involved in it. My mother used to do a lot of story telling and performance."1

Filled with many wonderful memories of Newton, MA, Paul recalls these treasured things: "Skating at Kennard's Pond. Pillaging the Concord grape vines in the back yard. Walking to Newton Centre for a soda. Jumping into Autumn's piles of dead leaves. Walking home on snowy evenings. Finishing mowing the lawn, raking the leaves, picking up the apples. Watching the winter squirrels leap across the leafless tree branches from my window. Jack Oven, the 'Fruit Man' and his green fruit truck. Dogs; Duke, then Dorn. Walking in the woods. The coolness of the garage on hot summer days."2 There was also a lot of music, art and theater in Paul's growing up. "... and so I kinda headed in, ah, that direction. So when it came time to apply to a college, I choose a college with a good theater department. Then in the summers I did summer stock and repertory."3

When Paul was 4, his first "stage" appearance was standing on a pillow in his living room conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra while listening to them on the radio. In May 1978, Paul actually got to conduct a symphony, The Newton Symphony at Boston College! It was a marvelous performance with a funny ending! Some very excited fans began crawling down the aisles while he was conducting. Fortunately, he caught site of it and before he was ambushed by his adoring fans, he dropped his baton and very quickly headed into another room to escape. Turning around swiftly, he graciously told the fans to "freeze" .. which they ALL did instantly! He explained that his tux was a rental and he didn't want it torn to shreds. Instead, he would meet them all over by the piano for a calm procession. And... he did just that! I know one fan who's now famous "Crawl to Paul" was one of the best highlights of her life!

Paul's spiritual core of his religious training came from his father and grandfather, who was one of the founders of a conservative temple in Boston- the Kehilath Israel in Brookline, Massachusetts. In a1998 interview with Jewish Television Network, Paul says: " Well, my father's father was a very religious man. He was one of the founders of a very big conservative temple in Boston.. Kehilath Israel in Brookline, Massachusetts and my mother wasn't, ah, at all raised in a very strong Jewish tradition. In fact, she was basically agnostic." To expand Paul's spiritual journey beyond Sunday school, when his father had met a student from Israel at MIT, he asked him to teach Paul his Haftorah for his Bar Mitzvah and to teach him Hebrew. At 16, in 1959, his teacher took Paul and 12 other young men on three month trip. Paul says "He and I became very close, this man, this teacher, and he went and ended up taking 12 young men to the Brussels's World's Fair and through France and then we got on the theater half, which is on of the reparatory boats and we sailed from Marseilles to Haifa and we spent a month and one-half in Israel, two months in Israel."4 Today, Paul considers himself a “Jew-Bu” (Jewish-Budhist).

After graduating from Cambridge School of Weston, in 1961, Paul was drawn to Tulane University in New Orleans because it was the farthest place from home and it also purportedly had a good theater program. His roommate was director, producer and writer Bruce Paltrow. "Bruce and I were fraternity brothers and for one year, house mates with two other guys. Bruce was into the fine and applied arts, I was into theatre." "We had a great department--it was a spirited group,"5 Paul says. "I felt the people there were very supportive and I have nothing but good memories of the whole experience." He was fortunate to land a lot of good roles! In his junior year, Paul took a leave of absence for a six month trip to London where he studied and observed theatre. While in England , Paul studied with Max Adrian, a very well thought of character actor; audited classes at R.A.D.A, and L.A.M.D.A. and spent a month and a half observing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-On-Avon. Paul returned with intentions of finishing his college degree at Carnegie Tech in their well known theatre dept. but “Carnegie Tech had insisted I lose a year in order to take some technical classes that taught what I had already learned to do in summer stock, so I passed on that, returned to Tulane and proceeded to try and implement lessons I had learned that Max had told me would take forty years to learn. He was right. I was terrible.” 6

Always keeping busy, Paul performed in such plays as ‘Comedy of Errors,’ ‘Major Barbara,’ ‘Uncle Vanya,’ ‘Clarembard,’ ‘ Juno and the Paycock,’ ‘ Twelve Angry Men,’ ‘ The Queen and the Rebels,’ … and after Paul’s return from London, Paul played the role of “the bandit” in Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon.”

For Paul, what marked his college days was the passion with which his professors and fellow students approached their subjects. "The head of the department was a Dr. Monroe Lippman who I remember fondly. We had a theatre-in-the-round and a small proscenium theatre under what was left of the old football stadium. The Dept. had it’s reputation off it’s publication. "The Tulane Drama Review.’" "It was a place that allowed me to do an awful lot of work," he says, citing both Monroe Lippman and Irving Rivner as influences. "It wasn't just what they taught; it was more how they taught and their passion for what they taught. Finding people who are passionate about what they do is not as easy as one might think." People generally are unable to communicate their passions, he continues. "In the theater and the arts, passion is the fuel that makes it all go, so to have people like that as my mentors--people who were passionate about what they did and were willing to be there for you--was a valuable thing."7

Paul appears as a "Juror" in the play "Twelve Angry Men" at Tulane University in 1966.

Paul spent his summers doing stock at Tufts Arena Theatre, Stockbridge Summer Theatre, Williamstown Summer Theatre, (abbreviated because of a backstage accident that landed him in the hospital for a month and a half), Cedar City Shakespeare Festival, and Loeb Drama Center where he played Raskalnikov in ‘Crime and Punishment,’ and Thomas in ‘The Lady’s not for Burning,’ ( his favorite play).

He continued his education at Tulane graduating with a B.A. degree in English Literature and Theater before heading back to Boston University where he earned a M. A. in Theater majoring in Directing and Acting. He is an alumni member of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu. Their commitment to service today supports the EGPAF. Since 1995, they have raised over $100,000.

Paul believes his biggest personal breakthrough came when he was acting in Crime and Punishment at the Loeb Drama Center in Boston. The director had rewritten the script, with little understanding of the play, and faced with an opening night totally unprepared, Paul decided that the only way to get through the evening was to treat it as just another rehearsal. From that point, “ I strove to make every performance a rehearsal.” 8

After graduating from Tulane (A&S '66), Paul went onto Boston University and earned a second Master's ('67) in acting and directing. Paul and his friend Richard Huges were the first students to graduate there. During his studies at BU, he directed "Escurial", played leads in Pirandello's Henry IV and Richard III. Richard III was also his Master's Thesis.

In 1968, Paul headed for New York. While doing ‘under fives,’ (under five lines on Soap Operas), Paul was approached by the Actors' Equity, where there was already another Paul Glaser on their books (Whose original name was Paul Groat), We can't have another, it's against the rules." Feeling that Manfred Glaser sounded a "bit too pretentious", Paul decided on Michael Glaser. It was not until 1973, while doing a Guest Star’ on ‘Kojak’ when Paul picked up ‘Variety’and read that "Paul Glaser had died", that he was able to add Paul as his billing name…so then he became Paul Michael Glaser, keeping the name ‘Michael’ because a lot of people had come to know him as that.

It was at this time that Paul was introduced to Renee Valente by Bruce Paltrow (his college roommate and friend from Tulane), who introduced him to an agent and had him appear in a talent showcase where he met David Soul for the first time. Soon after, "Michael Glaser" made his New York stage debut in Joseph Papp's rock version of "Hamlet" in the role of a soldier. Regarding Hamlet, Paul states "I played a spear carrier, or rather a gun carrier, it being the rock version. I spent the next four years in New York, waiting on tables, tending bars . . . a great way to meet people ... keeping the crazy hours you keep in the beginning, saying to yourself as you fell into a bed at 4.30 a.m. that every star had to start this way."9

"The Man in The Glass Booth"

During those four years, Paul waited tables and tended bar as well as performing in several off-Broadway and off off Broadway. His big break came when he began his Broadway stage role in "The Man In The Glass Booth" with Donald Pleasance, written by Robert Shaw and directed by Harold Pinter. Soon after, Paul was offered and turned down the role of the "director" for a Westport County Playhouse of "Butterflies Are Free" with Blythe Danner and instead went to The Coconut Grove Playhouse for an abbreviated season of "Room Service" with Jules Munchen. "I remember playing the night the Astronauts landed on the Moon. There were four people in the audience, two of whom were friends of mine from NYC who were surprising me." 10

Paul also read for a big extravaganza with Maximillian Schell on Broadway, "The Prussian Officer". He read for the role of the young officer who is killed in a duel in the first ten minutes of the play and then becomes the topic of discussion for the rest of the play. While he didn't get that role, he was offered a role in which he would have to wear a woman's ball gown (as most of the men in the play were wearing)! "I wasn’t big on that, but I let my agent talk me into it with the promise of an understudy role. Well, when I returned from my aborted summer stock, I went into rehearsals for this play, immediately realized it wasn’t for me, and after the first day, asked to be fired."11 For two days, Paul was kept in the dressing room until he was called out to talk to Biff Liff, David Merrick’s right hand guy. David Merrick was the hottest producer on Broadway and nobody ever quit a Merrick show and worked again. After Biff and Paul talked a while, Biff agreed to let Paul out of the contract, told him he was making the biggest mistake of his career, and then, as Liff was getting into his cab he turned to Paul and asked if he could sing. (So much for ‘never working in this town again’)

A couple of weeks later, while visiting friends in Westport, Paul went to see the pre-Broadway production of "Butterflies are Free" and was asked again if he would play the role of the director. He accepted and "Butterflies Are Free" playing the role of director Ralph Stanton for seven months on Broadway (1968 - 1969)/ would also become his first film role in 1972 after the filming of "Fiddler on the Roof".

Paul's first experience of national popularity and adulation came on the daytime serial, "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing" (1970) where he played the role of Dr Peter Chernak. Of his character, Paul recalls, "he's within the system, but working against it. When the character evolved, I thought, 'This is what I'd like to be playing in a nighttime series.' Later, in 2004, Paul recalls that " Dr. Peter Chernak fought the establishment, slept on a cot in his lab, cooked polish sausages over a Bunsen burner, and seduced the nurses. Not bad! He also had the ability to heal people whenever the writers felt like it." 12

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