THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604270056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines
The first time I saw Arnyce Anders she was belting the Cole Porter standard ``You're the Top'' in a tent in Virginia Beach. I never quite got over it.
She was about as subtle as Hurricane Hazel, which had preceded the event by only a half-dozen years. She surrounded the chorus boys and, quite literally, filled the stage. The voice shook the underpinnings of the Summer Sands Theater tent.
She had an electric stage personality and powerful vocal delivery that ranked her with the first, not the last, of the Red Hot Mamas.
For some 30 years, Arnyce Anders entertained Hampton Roads from saloon to saloon and theater to theater. On stage, she played Reno Sweeney in ``Anything Goes'' and Dolly Levi in ``Hello, Dolly,'' but no role from any mere script could approach the character she was in real life.
Arnyce Anders died a few weeks ago at age 59, ending a career that included bookings from Baltimore to Washington, upstate New York and Los Angeles. Wherever there was a room and a piano, Arnyce could weave her magic. In the last decade, she made her living exclusively from cabaret appearances and by teaching voice and piano. It was a uniquely full-time, local show business career to the end.
Once when asked about her choices, she said ``I have no drive, no ambition, no nothing. Quite frankly, I just sing better than I do anything else. I'm a lousy housekeeper. I'm terrible at everything that everybody else is good at. Singing at clubs pays a lot better and is a lot easier than working eight hours a day as a secretary, typing away.''
Friends and fellow performers will gather Monday at 7 p.m. at Alexander's in the Omni Hotel in downtown Norfolk to honor the full-figured woman with the full-figured talent. It is somehow appropriate that the gathering, which recalls what many now think of as the ``golden era'' of local theater, will be in a bar. Anders, who wrote much of her own risque material, used to quip that she had sung in every bar in the area.
She taught more than one drunk a lesson. When they asked her to sing ``Melancholy Baby,'' she'd sing it.
``That would teach them,'' she used to say. ``No one ever asked for that song more than once.''
Open to the public, the informal evening of Arnyce memories includes pianist Pat Curtis and his seven-piece orchestra, singers Pete Decker, Becky Livas and many, many more. They'll also show clips of Anders' past performances.
Her death came just two days before the release of her last CD and cassette. It was a fund-raiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, called ``Stars Come Out for the Kids of St. Jude.'' (The album can be ordered by phone at 622-3317 or 464-2693.)
``Arnyce was as consummate an artist as anyone I've ever known,'' said Norfolk singer-lawyer Pete Decker, with whom she appeared on telethons for St. Jude. ``She sings `Love is Here to Stay' on the album and she, as always, knocks the hell out of it. I sang with her many times and she'd hit it on the downbeat every time.''
Everyone in local theater has their favorite Arnyce Anders story, but unfortunately, few of them can be printed in the newspaper.
Her unique recording of Christmas carols, with a special ``wind ensemble'' accompaniment, is a collector's item. Unique is a weak word to describe it.
Once when responding to a party invitation, she said, ``I'll wear my birthday suit, but it's pretty wrinkled. It's been around a lot. It needs ironing.''
One of her many answering service messages encouraged callers to ``push zero and step back, if you want Coretta, the cat from hell. On the other hand, push anything and I'll purr.''
Her pets were legendary. The longest-running dog in her home was Barny, a creature Arnyce wouldn't describe as a mere dog. Before him, though, was Cinnamon the Wonder Dog, whom Arnyce swore could sing and say ``Mama,'' although the pup was never allowed to go on stage.
``Too vulgar a place for her,'' Arnyce explained.
Tom Looney, a longtime morning disc jockey for WTAR radio who is now at radio station KLITE in Corpus Christi, Texas, recalls another side of Anders.
``She was really very shy - and very religious. She knew the Bible totally. She was classically trained. There are operatic recordings around that astounded critics. Vocally, she could do it all.''
Anders herself described herself as ``almost pathologically shy. Between sets at the piano, I'd be so afraid to talk to strangers that I'd hide in a corner and read a book.''
It was a side that few in her audience would have guessed. She co-starred often with Toby Stephens, Mark Tomas, the late Welton Smith, Danny Gunn and many others in such local shows as ``How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,'' ``Hello, Dolly,'' ``Gypsy,'' ``Anything Goes'' and ``A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.'' In the latter, she played Domina, an overbearing shrew. ``I always get cast in those roles,'' she once said, ``and, actually, I'm really so sweet.''
She was born Arnice J. Anderson, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. M.L. Anderson of Portsmouth. She began taking piano lessons at age 6. ``At age 10, my piano teacher said `Forget it, honey,' '' she once explained.
It was Professor Arthur Lancaster, a Portsmouth music teacher, who encouraged her to switch to vocal classes. She was age 12 when she began studying.
Ron Stokes, longtime director of the late, lamented Tidewater Dinner Theater, said that Anders so underestimated her acting abilities that she turned down dozens of roles. ``Arnyce loved to write her own material. She was so quick that you'd go into one of her cabaret shows, expecting tired material, and she'd do a half-dozen songs about news events of that very day. She thought of herself as a singer and was always reluctant to take acting parts.''
She had a bit part as a somewhat overweight roller coaster rider in the Universal Sensurround movie ``Rollercoaster'' with George Segal and Henry Fonda.
She wouldn't tell her weight, but often said, ``If I could, I'd be 102 pounds. But it seems to be a self-destructive impulse.''
She claimed, though, that all actors have a streak of self-destruction in them.
``Why else would we get up on stage and subject ourselves to ridicule? Especially a fat lady? It must be masochism.''
With Anders, though, there was a much more obvious motive: joy for others. On stage, she was bigger than life in a way that no mere death could snuff out. She is a remnant of the years when dinner theaters (four of them at one time) were commonplace in Hampton Roads and a stable of reliable local actors went from theater to theater.
None of them was more brassy, witty and talented than Arnyce Anders - the very embodiment of show business. MEMO: A TRIBUTE TO ARNYCE
Friends, performers and fans will gather Monday at 7 p.m. in
Alexander's in the Omni Hotel in downtown Norfolk to honor Arnyce
Anders. ILLUSTRATION: Photo of portrait by Lee Lively
Anders (above in "Hello, Dolly") will be eulogized in Norfolk
Monday.
by CNB