ARTicles vol. 7 i. 4: Remembering Paul Benedict

Impish and laconic, intelligent and alert, Paul Benedict was a gentle giant who seemed incapable of an unkind word or act. He gained his greatest fame as the quirky English character Harry Bentley in The Jeffersons, and also did a lot of movies, most memorably playing the director inThe Goodbye Girl who insisted on making Richard Dreyfus play Richard III less like a king than like a queen. But he was always happiest in the monastic role of non-profit stage actor, a commitment inculcated by the years he spent with David Wheeler’s Theatre Company of Boston. By a strange coincidence, among the last stage roles he played was the patrician Hirst in Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Landat the A.R.T., also directed by David Wheeler.

Most actors are notoriously gregarious, but I think Paul was essentially hermetic. I suspect he loved raw nature more than human society. He certainly found some of his closest companions among raccoons. While the rest of us normally treat these predators as pests, and call up animal control the moment they knock down one of our garbage cans, Paul invited them to dinner every night on Martha’s Vineyard, sharing meals with them, treating them as friends.

Earlier, I called Paul a gentle giant, though he wasn’t very large or imposing. Indeed, his characteristic silhouette was hunched and bowed. But he reminded me of Lemuel Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels, smiling indulgently while being pinned to the ground by Lilliputians. Along with Gulliver’s relaxed forbearance, he also possessed Swift’s savage indignation. He looked upon such agencies as the CIA as fundamentally corrupt examples of secret government. More than once he tried to convince me that the CIA, not Al Qaeda, was responsible for 9/11.

Paul died too young. For many reasons, I’m sorry he didn’t live long enough to see Obama inaugurated. For one thing, it would have restored his faith in government, and tested his penchant for conspiracy theory. But more than that, a longer life for Paul would have given us the opportunity to watch him lend his laconic, relaxed, and enigmatic style to those great roles he never got to play. Paul Benedict was a loyal friend and a loyal man of the theatre. I still hear his voice in my ear, at the same time hoarse and musical, reasonable and passionate, soft and urgent. I miss him. Hell, I even miss his raccoons.

Robert Brustein is the Founding Director of the American Repertory Theatre.7_4-2