LAWRENCE HOLOFCENER
Growing up in Baltimore, Maryland during the Depression, and throughout his school days, his time in the army and afterwards in college, Holofcener never dreamt of becoming a lyricist, a playwright, a novelist, a poet, an artist, a sculptor or an actor, or even how to begin any of those challenging pursuits.
That is, until he met composer Jerry Bock at the University of Wisconsin. During a Christmas break, Jerry took him to his home in New York, and before the holidays were over, they landed a job writing songs for Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner. They stayed with the show for three years. But Jerry’s dream was musical theatre. And so, with Larry, was asked to write the score for Mr. Wonderful, with Sammy Davis, Jr., and it was produced on Broadway.
One evening, Lawrence was in the Ambassador Theatre watching Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, with Anthony Newley, and remarked to his friend, jokingly, “If I ever wanted to become an actor, there’s the role.” Newley, who wrote the show, was the only man onstage, for nearly three hours. He acted, danced, sang, mimed, and played characters from a Cockney to a lord. Within days, it was announced in Variety that the producer desperately needed a new stand-by for Newley. The current stand-by had left to take a road tour of the show, and Newley, engaged to Joan Collins, who was about to have their child, needed time off for a marriage and honeymoon. Over 700 actors applied for the job. Holofcener, who had never before acted on a theatre stage, got the job. He went on to act in Hello Dolly with Carol Channing, then Ginger Rogers.
Lawrence continued writing lyrics, poetry and novels, and his first play, Before You Go, was produced on Broadway and in London. Other plays were produced off-Broadway and elsewhere.
An acting job with the Charleston Opera Company, which rehearsed only nights and weekends, led him to the Gibbes Museum and its school of art. With his days free, he asked the lady at the desk if he could buy some clay and tools. The lady cried, “You’re a sculptah, our sculpting teachah has gone to No’th Ca’alina, would you take his classes?” He did, and the following year was given an exhibition in the museum’s main gallery.
Among his sculptures are Faces of Olivier at the Chichester Theatre, Sussex, UK; Allies, Churchill & Roosevelt, in Bond Street, London; William Penn, William Tyndale and Thomas Chatterton in Bristol, UK; and Thomas Paine in Bordentown, New Jersey. Recent unveilings; a younger Churchill at the Churchill Hyatt in London; (116) Faces of Golf at the British Golf Museum in St. Andrews, Scotland; and “Young Will” Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon.
He began painting at the age of 79 and was given exhibitions of his works in France, and in London. His memoir is appropriately entitled: Mockingbird Man.