Growing up, my parents were stage actors. Towards the end of their prospective careers they both got into motion pictures somewhat, which was their goal all along, but for all the years, and I mean decades, they both performed in whatever city they lived in, in what ever company that would have them and in certain instances they were part of full time professional theater companies at the highest levels.
In Houston where I grew up Mom and Dad worked for several companies (they were both members of Actors Equity Union) but the most notable was Theater Under the Stars. When I say at the highest levels, they performed countless musicals, dramas and plays in-the-round as well as the roundly boring (in my opinion) Shakespeare Festivals.
It was at one such production of Shakespeare's Kismet an stage at Miller Outdoor theater, it must have been my first play. I was sitting on my mom's lap as we watched my father play "The Wassier", a government crony who is hated by all the village folk. He is rich and flambouyant and dressed very colorfully.
I remember my mom saying, "There's your father", pointing to him. I was mesmerized: he was tall and lean but his features were too rugged, his clothes were blue, silver and black and he had a big turban on his head. But I heard his voice and I knew it was him. Well later in the play, The Wassier is killed by the townspeaple, they gang up on him and drown him in a fountain pool in the town center.
I remember it clearly: they forced him down, then they held him down in the water. I can see him struggling. Then all is calm and they all back away, he's dead. And I lost it.
I'm sure my screaming mortified my mother. It reached all corners of the audience. I was rushed outside and although I don't really remember the crying fit, I'm told I was inconsolable. So she took me backstage, the show was not yet finished, found my dad who was still in costume and makeup and I stopped crying. I have such a clear memory ingrained on my brain of a single drop of water on his shirt- he wasn't wet at all!
I probably sniffed and went on being a brat.
One more:
One of Dad's film credits was Sugar Hill (1974), what they called a Black Exploitation film in the 70's. It was the type of film that cast all black heroes and good guys against all white bad guys. In this story Sugar, the heroine, was battling white mobsters. My Dad played one of the mobsters who was to be killed in a scene where he crept into Sugar's house, but was confronted by an evil chicken-foot which pounced on him and got him by the throat, then the witchdoctor forced him down into a coffin that was filled with venomous snakes. As he is being bitten, they close the coffin lid and his hand is still clutching the cash payment he had come after.
Well, during filming, the director explained what was going to happen, Dad was going to lie down into the coffin with a bunch of trained, non-venemous snakes. Real snakes! He said ah hell no. So they simply edited it to look like the snakes were in there when he was forced down.
I remember going to see this movie in the theater at the Majestic Metro downtown. This was in the 70's.
Below are a couple screenshots from online searches, first Mom as Clairee in Steel Magnolias, top-center with white hair. The 1989 production at Houston's Alley Theater. The play was a smash hit.
Under that is a screenshot from a pic on the imdb website for the film Sugar Hill. Dad is the cigar chomper on the left.
Thomas Cyrus Carroll Feb 16, 1932 - Jan 12, 2006
Marjorie Anne Lovberg Carroll May 2, 1933 - Jan 2, 2017
Love you both, Rest In Peace
