{"id":18151,"date":"2014-05-31T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=18151"},"modified":"2014-05-31T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T07:01:00","slug":"actor-robert-morse-sweaty-at-36-sublime-at-83","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/actor-robert-morse-sweaty-at-36-sublime-at-83\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor Robert Morse \u2013 Sweaty at 36, Sublime at 83"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
Robert Morse as\u00a0Bert Cooper sings and dances. AMC photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The last time I saw Robert Morse there were beads of sweat on his forehead. It was 1967 and he was working the crowd on the set of a local TV comedy show.<\/p>\n

Robert Morse was on<\/em>. He was going for laughs and he was going for them with the intensity of a rocket launch. He was doing what mid-life folks do \u2013 he was striving.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The young Morse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Morse — actor, singer, dancer, comedian and Tony award winner \u2013 was improvising that day, throwing off sight gags and one-liners\u00a0as if his entire career depended on it.<\/p>\n

Which it did.<\/p>\n

In 1967, Robert Morse was a young man at the peak of his career. He\u2019d made big headlines with his performances in the musical \u201cHow to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.\u201d<\/a> And now, he was in Manhattan to film a comedy, \u201cWhere Were You When the Lights Went Out?\u201d with Doris Day.<\/p>\n

Success was his, but at age 36 he still had miles to go before he slept. Places to go. A family to raise. A career \u2013 today we\u2019d call it a brand — to build and, just as daunting, to maintain.<\/p>\n

I was a young movie reviewer at the time, striving for success of my own. And when Morse\u2019s PR people invited me to follow this famous man around for a day or two and watch him work, I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n

With Robert Morse on Times Square<\/h5>\n

And so it was that on a balmy summer evening I found myself sitting on a folding chair next to a star of stage and screen on the patch of Times Square where Morse was shooting a scene for \u201cThe Night the Lights Went Out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day it was a limo ride together to a nearby city \u2013 it might have been in New Jersey \u2013 where I watched Morse throw himself into that TV guest appearance.<\/p>\n

The man was on<\/em> the whole time. Talking, trying out jokes on me. Pummeling me with questions. Fretting. Putting a lot of pressure on himself. It was clear that, talented and popular though he was, it wasn\u2019t easy being Robert Morse. Not in 1967 anyway.<\/p>\n

Robert Morse on My TV<\/h5>\n

Fast forward a half century. Once again I am having the fun of watching Robert Morse at work. Not from a folding chair on a movie set, but from a comfy recliner in our family room, where he fills our flat-screen TV from time to time, big as life.<\/p>\n

Morse is an old guy now, he turned 83 this month, and for the past six or seven years he\u2019s been playing another old guy — Bert Cooper, the genial, laid-back, wise-old-man senior partner of the “Mad Men” TV show\u2019s Sterling Cooper ad agency.<\/p>\n

Unlike the young Robert Morse, the Bert Cooper character is anything but on<\/em>. As a partner in a fast-track Madison Avenue ad agency, he\u2019s surrounded by mid-life folks who drink and smoke, and scheme and strive. He stands outside the swirling action. He\u2019s just there.<\/p>\n

Being Bert Cooper<\/h5>\n

For me, one of the big pleasures of the “Mad Men” series has been watching Morse crawl into and inhabit the skin of this really neat, equanimous old guy.<\/p>\n

(Well, not always so neat: There\u2019s that racist comment he made as well as his predilection for the Ayn Rand’s two-dimensional, mid- 20th-century\u00a0 novels. But that\u2019s not Bert\u2019s fault; it\u2019s just the writing room trying to\u00a0inject some\u00a0complexity into his character.)<\/p>\n

It seems to me that getting older has done for Morse what it\u2019s done for a lot of us: It\u2019s liberated<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
Morse as the “Mad Men” old guy, Bert Cooper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

him from that wonderful, exhilarating, creative, debilitating, beads-of-sweat-producing drive to succeed.<\/p>\n

Yes. I know. I\u2019m conflating the actor with the character. But I don\u2019t think you can fake equanimity; I think the sweaty, frenetic young Robert Morse has actually evolved himself into a first-rate old guy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMad Men” Spoiler Alert<\/h5>\n

Which is why I was so sorry last Sunday night when the story line of the half-season \u201cMad Men\u201d finale required the venerable old Bert to die.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll miss the character, who toward the end of his life valued his \u201cteam\u201d above all else. But I\u2019ll also miss touching base with Robert Morse from time to time to see what I can learn from him about the business of getting older.<\/p>\n

And yet, what a great send-off showrunner Matthew Weiner bestowed upon both character and actor. In a brilliant stroke of creativity \u2013 Weiner was surely on<\/em> when he thought of it \u2013 he asked Morse to reprise his years as a song and dance man.<\/p>\n

At episode\u2019s end, the deceased Bert \u2013 a hallucination? an apparition? \u2013 shows up in the halls of Sterling Cooper to sing \u201cThe Best Things in Life Are Free\u201d to the arrogant, hard-drinking protagonist Don Draper.<\/p>\n

Morse described the scene this way in an interview with Rolling Stone: \u201cIt was Bert telling Don: \u2018What are you doing<\/em>? All this shit that you’re doing, cut it out. The best things in life are free.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Morse sings. He dances. He waves good-bye. I don\u2019t know if there was any sweat involved, but it was a heck of a scene. It was sublime.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this story, you might like “Would My Husband Like to Add My Name to His?”<\/a>\u00a0 or \u00a0 “Armistead Maupin — The Man Who Wrote a Novel on a Newspaper Deadline”<\/a>\u00a0 or “I Can’t Believe I Got in the Water With That 1400-Pound Whale.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

“Mad Men” fans will like this one: “‘Mad Men’ Discovers the ’60s Girdle — But Will She Get It Off in Time?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Actor<\/a>
The half-season finale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The last time I saw Robert Morse there were beads of sweat on his forehead. It was 1967 and he was working the crowd on the set of a local TV comedy show. Robert Morse was on. He was going for laughs and he was going for them with the intensity of a rocket launch. He was doing what mid-life folks do \u2013 he was striving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[103,1229,34,266,1224,1230,55,82,1231,1226,1228,268],"class_list":["post-18151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-aging","tag-culture-high-and-low","tag-dont-miss","tag-getting-older","tag-mad-men","tag-movies","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-pop-culture","tag-robert-morse","tag-television","tag-the-second-half-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}