Ed Asner as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.By Hap Erstein
He has played a slave ship captain in Roots, Pope John XXIII, adventurer Carl Fredericksen in Pixar’s Up and, of course, Lou Grant, the role that earned him five of his seven Emmy Awards. But for Ed Asner, 81, the opportunity to become Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a couple of hours each night was too good to resist.
Around the Kansas City household where young Ed grew up, Roosevelt was thought of as “God, the father,” he says by phone, before flying in to South Florida for a week of performances of Dore Schary’s FDR at Boca Raton’s Caldwell Theatre.
To Asner, Roosevelt was “revered certainly. Never for a moment questioned his authenticity, his goodness.” Elected to the presidency four times, FDR became an enduring liberal icon, a mantle that Asner has carried on in his outspoken opinions, his actions and the roles he has chosen to play.
As to his current performance, the former Screen Actors Guild president says, “I certainly never believed that I would be mistaken for Roosevelt, but the more I did it, the more I convinced myself.”
Asner has been acclaimed for his impersonation of Roosevelt, but that was never his goal. He accepted the role, first of all, because “Well, I had nothing to do at the time,” and secondly to deliver the play’s liberal message. “I go around in hopes that people will not only take heart, but take action,” says Asner. “And implement, supplement, the things that Roosevelt did.”
And of that message of Roosevelt’s bold, forceful style made its way to the White House, that would please Asner a great deal. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to keep going on the road. In the hopes of preaching to the choir – which I do most of the time – that the choir will somehow find a way to get the thought of the message, the joy of the message, to expedite the return of those policies. In preaching to the audience, I hope that they’re affected enough that they begin affecting the White House.”
Yet Asner has his doubts whether Roosevelt, confined to a wheelchair with polio, could be elected today. “Probably not, the press being what it is,” he says. “They’d call him much too crippled to handle the job.”
Ed Asner in a scene from FDR.Certainly Asner feels he could have learned a few things from FDR worth applying to his work in presiding over SAG in the early 1980s. “I hadn’t studied him sufficiently at that time. I could have used it,’ he says. “The charm that he used. I never used the charm sufficiently to win over my enemies. And I sure had them.”
And no, Asner never seriously considered running for public office. “Not at all. I always thought that, yeah, I could get out there and preach enough and maybe win the job, but I felt they’d get cheated,” he explains. Cheated? “That I wouldn’t be thorough enough, that I wouldn’t
compromise enough, that no matter how much studying I might do, it would never be enough to satisfy me.”
So he insists he is content touring the country, influencing the electorate with his performance skills. “And it rejuvenates me,” Asner says. Besides, “I’m not good for anything else.”
He gives a Lou Grant grunt at the suggestion that at his age he could be staying home and relaxing. “Oh, relaxing. If you sleep a full eight hours when you get in bed at night, what do you need to relax for?”
Well into his sixth decade as a professional actor, Asner feels he is at the top of his game. “I’m a better actor now than I’ve ever been, and if I chose to lie on my fat ass and do nothing, I would be morally wrong to deny a script the powers that I have at hand.”
So far, he had done about a hundred performances of FDR in 50 cities over the past year and a half. After Boca, he will continue to criss-cross the country with the one-man show, well into 2012. But do not look for him to take the show to New York. “I’m not eager to plunge into New York unless everything is absolutely perfect,” he says. “Because New York has favorites and I doubt whether I’m one of them.”
Boca Raton, however, is probably ready for Asner and vice versa. As to the play, FDR, he says, “they will be entertained and they will discover knowledge of the past that they either didn’t know or forgot.”
FDR, starring Ed Asner. Caldwell Theatre Company, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Wednesday, June 1- Sunday, June 5. Tickets: $40-$75. Call: (561) 241-7432.