Part 45

She has made countless appearances on What's My Line?, Girl Talk and The Today Show, but to most television viewers she is best remembered as the bright, beautiful, All-American girl who for 11 years was a panelist on I've Got a Secret.

During her years of TV stardom Betsy was doing plenty of serious acting -- everything from Shakespeare to Peter Pan to Ibsen. She has made five Hollywood films and performed the lead in numerous Broadway shows, including South Pacific, Cactus Flower and Tennessee Williams' Eccentricities of a Nightingale. Few of her roles, however, have been as demanding as Doris in Same Time, Next Year.

To begin with, she and her co-star, Monte Markham, are the only characters in the play. Second, the play's action takes place over a period of 25 years, in which Doris goes through momentous changes. In doing this transformation smoothly, Betsy creates a character so believable and lovable that the audience forgives her for cheating on her husband, which she does one weekend a year in order to meet her lover George.

"Doing the play takes all my energy.I'm a single woman now, and have been for three years. But if I were involved with somebody now, it would take up a lot of my energies. So it doesn't bother me; when the time comes for me to be involved, I will be. Right now, I'm really quite satisfied to come here six days a week and have a fantasy life. It has all the good things in it and none of the bad things. ... It gives you such a rainbow of colors to express yourself within, that I find it terribly rewarding and gratifying. I am never bored with the show."

George, like Doris, is married and has three children, and he too goes through drastic changes of attitude during the time period from 1951 to 1976. But while George wins the audience's respect and sympathy, Doris steals their hearts.

"I get out there and I feel such love. All of a sudden they begin to adore her. They're watching her spread her wings and finally fly. ... The adultery is done with such taste. You see two people who really love their respective mates, and their children."

In her cozy backstage room at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, which is decorated with Christmas lights, Betsy demonstrates an overbubbling friendliness and an extremely fluent style of speech. An interview with her is both a pleasure and a challenge, for she talks about each subject with an enthusiasm that makes it hard for anyone to interrupt and go on to the next question.

Her memories of those panel shows? "You know, we used to do Secret right in this theatre. We must have done it here five, six, seven years easily. There are a lot of guys here now, on the backstage crew, who were here with Secret. It's nice to be working with them again. ... But I'm not interested in the past. The past is an illusion, as is the future."

Betsy has been an off-and-on Westside resident ever since she first came to New York in 1951. When doing Same Time, Next Year she is subletting a friend's apartment on Riverside Drive. Her 16-year-old daughter frequently comes down from Connecticut to spend time with her on the West Side.

"I've lived on the East Side but my preference is the West Side. Let's face it, Broadway's on the West Side. Where Broadway is is where my heart is." Flowers by Edith (69th and B'way) is one of Betsy's best-loved Westside establishments. "I've become very good friends with her. I've gone to her house to parties."

In response to an obvious question, Betsy scolds gently: "Never ask an actress what she's going to do next. Opera stars say, 'You know, I've got this opera lined up, then this one, then this,' but an actress doesn't usually know. ... I just hope that the next play I'm able to do will have a lot of humanity in it, like this one. It's not enough to get a bunch of laughs. You've got to be touched inside."

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WESTSIDER JAN PEERCE The man with the golden voice

3-22-80

In December 1979, in a benefit concert at the Alvin Theatre, about a dozen Broadway stars of the past and present strode to the microphone to sing some of the songs they made famous. John Raitt, Alan Jones, Jack Gilford, Michael Moriarty, Delores Wilson and others received waves of enthusiastic applause from the packed house. But when a short, stocky, barrel-chested man with thick eyeglasses and a nose like Jimmy Durante's shuffled to center stage, the audience didn't merely cheer: it erupted. And when 75-year-old Jan Peerce finished his two arias, he was prevailed upon to give the only encore of the evening. Appropriately enough, his choice was "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof, the show in which he made his Broadway debut at the age of 67.

Although Peerce has been one of America's most beloved singers for almost half a century, it was not for sentimental reasons alone that he was treated with such acclaim that evening. He still has one of the clearest, strongest, sweetest tenor voices in the business, and his repertoire is enormous. Besides arias and showtunes, he performs ballads, German lieder, French contemporary songs, cantorial and oratory music with equal facility. In order to keep his voice in top form, he now limits his concerts to about 50 a year, but last summer, on a tour of Australia, he did 17 concerts in 21 days.

"I vocalize every day of my life, I keep observing the laws of decent living, and I face every booking as it was my first," he says in a recent telephone interview, contacted at his Westside apartment. "I believe in the adage that the show must go on, but you must not go out at the expense of your health, or impair the quality of your voice by singing against nature."

This fall will find him doing a one-man show at Carnegie Hall. In addition to his regular schedule of cross-country concerts, he makes cruises of the Caribbean several times each year aboard the SS Rotterdam.

His parents were Orthodox Jews who had immigrated from Russia, and they were able to afford violin lessons for him by taking in lodgers at the Lower East Side apartment where he grew up. Born under the name Jacob Pincus Perelmuth, he began his career working primarily as a violinist and bandleader in the Catskills. In 1929 he married his childhood sweetheart, Alice Kalmanowitz, and three years later was discovered by the great showman Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel, who hired him as a featured singer at the new Radio City Music Hall.

"People on Broadway said I belonged in opera," recalls Peerce, "and opera people said I belonged on Broadway. But when Roxy gave me my break, things began to happen. And then came Toscanini. He hired me to sing with his NBC Symphony of the Air. And when he accepted me, that sort of clinched things. People said, "If he's good enough for Toscanini, this guy must be good.'"

For 15 years, Arturo Toscanini preferred Peerce to all other tenors in the world. Meanwhile, in 1941, Peerce had joined the Metropolitan Opera. There he sang the major tenor roles up until 1968, when, after losing the sight in one eye, he retired from the Met and began to concentrate on recitals. In 1976 he published his memoirs, The Bluebird of Happiness, named after his recording that has sold 1.5 million copies. Peerce has made dozens of other recordings, including many complete operas.

A deeply religious man, long noted for his humanitarian efforts, Peerce is particularly supportive of Bonds for Israel. "My wife Alice is the only woman on the board of governors. She's the chairperson," he says proudly. "It's to help Israel build and keep building, and develop to the point where she belongs. She's growing beautifully, and she will grow even more."

The Peerces, who have two daughters and a son, maintain a house in New Rochelle as well as the Westside apartment that they have had for the past 15 years. Although Jan Peerce stopped playing the violin long ago, he is still a dues-paying member of the local violinists' union. "One day I asked them if they could give me an honorary membership," he chuckles, revealing his famous offbeat humor. "They said they were very sorry, they couldn't do it. I said why not, and they said, 'All our honorary members are dead.'"

Another time, when he was the guest of honor at a dinner party, the hostess, seated next to him, chatted with such energy that Peerce had trouble getting in a single word. He got his chance when the waiter brought around a tray of assorted salad dressings. The gabby woman asked, "Mr. Peerce, how do you usually eat your salad?"

"In complete silence, madame," he replied.

Of the dozens of conductors he has worked with, Peerce is quick to name Toscanini his favorite. "First of all, he was a great man, and second of all, he was a genius musically. He had no tricks, except that he had a certain vision about the music. He made everybody sing or play as the composer meant it to be. And that was the secret of his success. He was an inspiration to anybody who worked with him or under him."

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EASTSIDER GEORGE PLIMPTON Author, editor and adventurer