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PAGE 14 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE February 18, 1983
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by Herbert G. Luft
—HOLLYWOOD
DUSTIN HOFFMAN, in his
current picture with the unlikely
title of “Tootsie,” renders a
thoroughly believable characteriza
tion as an unemployed actor who is
shunned by every agent and
producer on Broadway because he
is impossible to handle. Until he
decides to pose as a young woman!
The struggling performer
becomes a leading lady in a
television soap opera and is lauded
by the public with thousands of
letters coming in to the network
from women who are pleased with
the forceful portrayal of a hospital
administrator who is one of their
own and gains the respect of the
male staff.
“Tootsie” is the nickname the
TV director condescendingly has
given to Dorothy Michaels, who, in
reality, and unbeknown to
everyone but his roommate and
agent, is the versatile Michael
Dorsey who as a male was starving
for years.
The interesting part of the story
(with a screenplay by Larry
Gelbart and Murray Schisgal) is the
fact that this is not another
“Charley’s Aunt” but a realistically
woven yarn dealing with a man
who gradually comes to the
conclusion that he has to try
something off-key to gain
recognition. And as Sydney
Pollack, the producer-director of
the film, says pointedly, “Tootsie”
is the story of a guy who puts on a
dress and by doing so becomes a
better man.
On the screen, Hoffmam is
surrounded by an ensemble of
seasoned performers, from Jessica
Lange (star of the Frances Farmer
film), to Teri Garr to Dabney
Colemen (the male chauvinist of “9
to 5”), to George Gaynes, Charles
Durning and Sydney Pollack, the
latter in the pointed role of the
busy talent agent.
Hoffman
Hoffman has developed his
character delicately and with deep
insight. There are no cheap sex
scenes in “Tootsie” and no one will
be embarrassed except Dorothy
Michaels alias Michael Dorsey, or
vice versa. However, I must voice
objections to one remark, in the
opening scene of the picture, when
Hoffman speaks to an acting class
(still under the main title).
Unprovoked and com^etely
unnecessary he comes up'with a
line, “When the Nazis were short
with soap, they threw some women
into the furnace.” I could excuse
Hoffman if he were a small actor
reading some dialogue furnished
him. But “Tootsie” is his own co
production with the studio.
Dustin Hoffman grew up in the
motion picture environment. His
father Harry was a prop man and
set dresser in Hollywood. At first,
Dustin wanted to become a
concert pianist, entering Santa
Monica College as a music major.
Gradually he took an active
interest in the theater. Leaving
college, he enrolled in acting
classes at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Upon completion of the course,
he went to New York where he
shared an apartment, with two
other former Pasadena students,
Robert Duvall and Gene
Hackman. While working at such
diverse jobs as dishwasher and
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waiter (not unlike the character in
“Tootsie” in the beginning) as well
as typist and orderly at the New
York Psychoanalytic Institute, he
studied with Lee Strasberg and
himself taught drama at the boy’s
club in Harlem.
He made his stage debut in
a Sarah Lawrence College
production of Gertrude Stein’s
“Yes Is For a Very Young Man,”
followed by a walk-on part in “A
Cook for Mr. General” which ran
on Broadway for 28 performances.
He joined a company in Boston
and returned to New York as Ulu
Grosbard’s assistant on “A View
From the Bridge." In later years,
Grosbard was director of
Hoffman’s “Straight Time."
In the spring of 1966, he was
seen at the American Place
Theater in New York in “The
Journey of the Fifth Horse,” for
which he won the Obie Award as
Best Actor Off-Broadway. He
played one of the three
personalities of the schizoid hero
of Murray Schisgal’s “Fragments”
in Stockbridge, Mass. Incidentally,
today Schisgal is one of the two
screenplay authors of “Tootsie."
Off-Broadway again, he was the
cockney boilermaker in Henry
Livings’ farce, “Eh?" which won
him the Theater World—and
Drama Desk-Vernon Rice
awards.
Director Mike Nichols, then
casting “The Graduate,” flew him
to Hollywood to test for the title
role. Unlike the character in
“Tootsie,” he didn’t have to change
his sex to get the leading role. For
John Schlesinger’s “Midnight
Cowboy," the lovable young
graduate became a pathetic
hustler, Ratzo Rizzo. He was again
nominated for an Academy
Award. While appearing before
the cameras opposite Mia Farrow
in “John and Mary,” he was
rehearsing at night in Schisgal’s
“Jimmy Shine,” a musical comedy
about a Greenwich painter. He was
seen in the motion picture, “Little
Big Man” under Arthur Penn's
direction, and co-starred with Steve
McQueen in “Papillon.”
Today, he can write his own
ticket.
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