We sat backstage at the Playhouse Theatre in Toronto. A few years earlier, we’d attended the same high school, but by the time we met professionally 57 years ago, actor Cathy Wallace had trained at the Banff School of Fine Arts and appeared off-Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie and in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And she was my first-ever professional interviewee. I pressed the record button on my reel-to-reel tape recorder and asked an obvious question.

“How do you feel about playing Lucy in an off-Broadway show?”

“It just goes to show that producers can’t resist a pretty face,” she quipped. Any tension I felt evaporated, and we were off on a fun chat. (more…)