Larry Blyden was a favorite actor of mine when I was younger. He was one of those rare guys who had a good career on TV, a good career in the movies and a good career on Broadway — all three. He is probably best remembered from his time as the host of the syndicated What's My Line? game show but he was also on two episodes of The Twilight Zone, a great short-lived sitcom called Harry's Girls and dozens of other shows.
My all-time favorite thing I ever saw on a stage was the 1970 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. Larry Blyden won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor as Hysterium in that production and was also the main person responsible for that limited-run Los Angeles offering being transferred to Broadway.
He was in a number of other plays on The Great White Way. Whenever he was, he was known to post his Theatrical Laws on the wall of his dressing room and to hand out printed copies to others. Here are Larry Blyden's Theatrical Laws…
- It is better to have a hit than a flop.
- Never put a first year Stanislavsky student in a French farce.
- Know how many acts are in the play.
- It is as important to know the cues as it is to know the lines.
- Save your money.
- Know which battles you can't win and don't fight them.
- To have a career in the theatre, one must also have a store.
- Work breeds work.
- It is not safe to tell about a job until the day after the show.
- Save your money.
- Don't dazzle them with everything at once.
- Stay down for the laugh.
- Don't stay down for too long.
- Most of the people in Bangkok never heard of you.
- Insanity often passes for talent.
- When reading for a part, remember that they don't know what to do with it either.
- Save your money.
- It is better to act in a play that fails than to get behind in the rent.
- Being applauded at the end often only means you got through it.
- Doing a commercial is better than not doing Hamlet.
Larry Blyden died in 1975 in an auto accident when he was vacationing in Marrakesh. He was 49 years old. I bet if he'd lived another 20-30 years, you'd know him from a lot more things than you do. A very talented man.