Part 41

Melba's first professional stage role was in Hair; from 1968 to 1970 she rose up through the chorus to win the female lead. "I have no hard-luck stories," she says, in her clear, nearly accentless voice. "From Hair, I went right into Purlie." That was the role that earned her the 1970 Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress and the New York Drama Critics' and Drama Desk Awards.

Melba was born 32 years ago on West 108th Street. Both her parents were entertainers, and Melba began singing at the age of 4. At college she majored in music, and upon graduation, taking the advice of her parents to "get some security," she taught school for a year. But soon a burning desire to get into show business took hold of her, and she quit teaching. "Ever since that day," she recalls, "even before I got my first singing job, the whole world looked better to me."

It was while working as a studio singer that she was given an audition for Hair, and since then her story has been a virtually unbroken success. Melba has starred in numerous television shows, including her own summer series for CBS and an ABC special on the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Better known for her singing than her acting, Melba has recorded nine albums and has received a Grammy nomination. Her most remarkable vocal feat, however, was probably her one-woman concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in December 1976, which won her rave notices from every music critic in town. In the concert, she performed everything from ballads to rock to opera.

"Singing opera actually rests my voice," says Melba. "It's like doing vocal exercises." Equally at home in a nightclub or a concert hall, she has demonstrated her four-octave range with many of America's leading orchestras.

Her new album, released late in September by Epic Records and titled simply Melba Moore, contains both disco songs and straight ballads. One of the cuts, "You Stepped Into My Life," is out as a single. Another cut is "The Greatest," from a film about Muhammad Ali. "No, I didn't sing it in the movie, but I am an Ali fan. I'm a fight fan. I turn on the cable and watch everyone -- flyweights, everybody. People I've never hard of."

Her new movie, Purlie, in which Melba will recreate her Broadway smash success, is scheduled to begin filming this November in the countryside of Georgia. Melba plays the orphan Lutibelle Gussiemae Jenkins. After the movie, she will devote most of her time to a new musical, Harlem Renaissance, which is planned to reach Broadway next spring.

The day after she quit Timbuktu, Melba headed for Acapulco to be one of the judges in the Miss Universe Pageant. "They said there were going to be 600 million people watching, so I made sure my nose was powdered. ... They worked us from sunup to sunup, but I did manage to get a little suntan," she says teasingly, showing me a patch of light brown skin directly under her top shirt button.

Married for the past five years to restaurateur Charles Huggins, Melba is overjoyed to have a child at last -- "we have been waiting for her" -- and spends as much time as she can with her daughter. A Westsider off and on for most of her life, Melba is fond of shopping at Vim and Vigor Health Foods (57th Street near the Carnegie Recital Hall), then going next door to the Merit Farm Store, where she buys her favorite junk food.

Of all her accomplishments in the last 10 years, Melba is perhaps proudest of her involvement with an international television series for children, Big Blue Marble, which is currently being shown in 78 countries.

"I'm very much into international things," says Melba, "I have appeared in some of the segments, but basically my role is to let people know about it. ... In some way, we hope that the program can help promote peace and understanding to these children -- while they're still at a vulnerable age."

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WESTSIDER MICHAEL MORIARTY Star of Holocaust returns to Broadway in G.R. Point

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When Michael Moriarty rose to national stardom last year with his chilling portrayal of SS Officer Dorf in the NBC miniseries Holocaust, his performance was witnessed by some 120 million Americans. His current vehicle, G.R. Point at the Playhouse Theatre on West 48th Street plays to a maximum audience of 500. Yet, in the lead role of Micah Bradstreet, a wet-behind-the-ears soldier from rural Maine, Moriarty delivers what Clive Barnes of the New York Post has said is "the best performance, so far, of his career."

G.R. Point is a play about the Vietnam War and its effects on those who are forced to partake in it. Set on a strikingly designed stage built to resemble a devastated hillside, the play demonstrates how each of the eight characters manages to cope with his predicament in his own way. Its message is summed up in the final words of the drama, spoken to Micah as he departs for the U.S.: he is told to "count the living, not the dead."

"One of the main reasons I wanted to do this play is that it affirms life," says Moriarty, in a dressing room interview just before a performance. "It doesn't take any specific political stance, but it doesn't avoid any of the horrors of war. Its only stance is: in the end, what overcomes the situation is love. And love sometimes shows itself in the strangest, most bizarre ways."

He is tall and solidly built, looking somewhat younger than his 38 years, and though his demeanor has an edge of shyness to it, Moriarty's penetrating eyes reveal that much is going on beneath the surface. Asked about his personal views on Vietnam, the actor replies, "I'm not an intellectual, so I have no specific feelings about it." But his conversation soon reveals him to be a deep thinker and a wit besides, whose remarks are tempered as much by humility as by professional instinct.

"Whatever I could say about the war has been better stated by David Berry, the playwright. I'm able to show my emotional response to the war through Micah Bradstreet. ... I'm not trying to influence anyone in any way in particular. I do think the play tells the truth about Vietnam. So the more information people have, the better decisions they can make."

Moriarty's decision to become a dramatic actor can be traced to his undergraduate days at Dartmouth College, when he was overwhelmed by Paul Scofield's performance in Love's Labor Lost. Following graduation, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1974, after years of perfecting his craft in theatres across America, he picked up the first of his two Tony Awards for his performances in Find Your Way Home. Equally skilled at television acting, he is the recipient of two Emmys, including one for Holocaust.

A Detroit native of Scandinavian and Irish ancestry, Moriarty attends Catholic mass regularly, and finds much inspiration in the Bible, both spiritual and literary. His chief hobby is music: he is a polished singer/pianist/songwriter who frequently performs in the city's leading nightclubs between acting assignments. Asked whether he would consider teaming up with octogenarian blues singer Alberta Hunter at the Cookery in Greenwich Village, he replies with a laugh, "That's very heavy company. I'll cook and she'll sing." He usually practices in the morning. "I'll ramble over the piano and play some easy music. It's purely according to my libido. You might call it ad libido. Hey, not bad! How's that for an album title?"

Another of his talents is writing plays. Although hesitant to discuss this up-and-coming aspect of his career, Moriarty finally admits that one of his plays was recently read dramatically at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, under the direction of Ben Levit. "It was none of my doing. I sat back, and it all happened before my very eyes. I was astonished, and pleased, and proud, and in no great hurry to see it produced except by this director -- if he wants to."

Long a devotee of Shakespeare, Moriarty founded his own non-profit Shakespearean company, Potter's Field, in 1977. He and his group perform free each Sunday in Central Park near the statue of Sir Walter Scott, weather permitting.

In response to a question about the West Side, where he has lived for the past five years, Moriarty says that "you can walk one block and encounter everything the world should either be proud of or ashamed of." His favorite local restaurants include Coq du Vin on 8th Avenue and O'Neal's Balloon at 6th Avenue and 57th Street. "Pat O'Neal and I crack jokes about my career as a waiter. I worked at O'Neal's off and on for about four years. I was terrible! They kept me on out of sheer compassion. I guess I became an endearing lunkhead."

Other goals? "None that I'd care to mention," says Moriarty, smiling softly. "All the other ones are neurotic, and I don't want to expose them. I've done it too often. In my neuroses, I think, 'Gee, I'd like to do that or this.' But in my higher self, I have no unfulfilled needs."

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WESTSIDER LeROY NEIMAN America's greatest popular artist

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Like Norman Rockwell before him, LeRoy Neiman has the distinction of being one of the very few American artists whose work is familiar to practically everybody in the country -- rich and poor, black and white, urban and rural, educated and illiterate.