Fifty years ago, a svelte, sultry Brooklynite named Lainie Kazan rose to national attention understudying Barbra Streisand in the Broadway musical, Funny Girl.
Over time, she grew more zaftig, but she still is a singer to be reckoned with and she has made her mark in films as the archetypal Jewish mother.
She will be recognized for the latter on Thursday at the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, where she will receive its Jewish Film Arts Tribute Award. That evening, at the Kravis Center’s Cohen Pavilion, attendees can see her flair for comedy in 2010’s Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay.
How did Kazan become such an iconic Jewish mother on celluloid? “Oh, my God,” she sighs over the phone from her home in Southern California. “I think when I did ‘My Favorite Year’ with Peter O’Toole, that was it. Then the die was cast and I couldn’t break the mold.”
As she concedes, her film prominence in such features as My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Beau Jest and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan had a way of crowding out her concert work.
“It did, but I’m not unhappy about it. It’s been a very wonderful career that I’ve had. But little by little, my singing career kind of diminished in the minds of the public. So I became the archetypical movie mother, not just Jewish, but anything ethnic. Greek, Italian, Armenian, I’ve done them all.”
/oon after her appearance here, and a few nights in a lightweight show called Celebrity Autobiography at the Kravis, Kazan returns to the West Coast to begin filming a sequel to her biggest movie success, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.
“I’m very excited about that. We’re supposed to start shooting at the end of February,” she says. She insists that the script is funny, but its details are shrouded in secrecy. “They made me go into a secret room and read the script in private. I couldn’t tell anybody about it. But it’s a very good film and it’s very wonderful for my character,” mother-of-the-bride Maria Portokalos.
In Oy Vey!, she is Shirley Hirsch, who not only learns that her son (Jersey Boys’ John Lloyd Young) is homosexual, but — oy vey — his partner (Jai Rodriguez) is definitely not Jewish.
Kazan says the movie has plenty of laughs, but she never cared for its title. “I thought it was ridiculous,” she says. And the director/producer refused to change the title. So they kept offering me more and more money and finally my manager said, ‘You know what? Just do it,’ and I did.
“It’s a little dated, I think. We’ve come so far in our views of the gay community. And having a family and adoption is so commonplace now.”
These days, between the occasional singing gig, movie and awards ceremony, Kazan, 74, contents herself with teaching.
“I’m a professor at UCLA,” she says with pride. “My course is called ‘Acting for the Singer.’ I teach them to approach a song as I would a scene. I do exercises with the students and we put together a great show that we do at the end of the semester. The show was very successful, and they made me a professor.”
Every now and then, Kazan appears in Celebrity Autobiography, a performance piece in which a company of actors read from the published memoirs of the rich and famous, running at the Kravis Center from Wednesday through Feb. 1.
“And when you find that these people reveal hilarious details of their lives, it’s very funny,” she says. “I do this every so often. I do Ethel Merman, I do Elizabeth Taylor and then some others are up for grabs. Sometimes I do Beyoncé. It’s funny.”
The press release says that Streisand is one of the celebrities whose autobiography is included. Surely Kazan handles the reading of Barbra’s bio, doesn’t she? “I have done her, yes,” she allows. “First I said, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to do Barbra,’ but then I came in with a couple of things that are funny.”
Kazan has been back on Broadway since Funny Girl, most prominently picking up a Tony nomination in the musical version of My Favorite Year. But she doubts she will be back on the boards there again.
“If the right piece came up — a play, a musical — then I’d be very open to it. But I’m getting to that point where I’m just very satisfied with giving back to the students,” she says. “I have so much information and so much to teach, so much to give, it really fills me with great pleasure and joy and satisfaction. I almost get as much satisfaction as when I sing.”
Celebrity Autobiography runs from Wednesday through Sunday, Feb. 1 at the Rinker Playhouse, Kravis Center. Tickets are $38. Call 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org. The tribute to Lainie Kazan begins with dessert at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Kravis Center’s Cohen Pavilion; the film screening begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the film are $25; for dessert with Lainie Kazan and the film, tickets are $75. Call 877-318-0071 or visit www.palmbeachjewishfilm.org.