Shy Guy Who Took to the Stage

Washington Post Staff Writer
Patricia Brennan
June 23, 1991

When he was growing up in Salisbury, Md., John Glover had no brothers or sisters, but he had one of the first television sets in town -- his father sold them. So Glover spent much time watching the tube by himself By the time he was in high school, he was becoming involved in the theater: He moved scenery. But he didn't get to act until his senior year, when he starred in "The Importance of Being Earnest."

That was the beginning. The role, he said, "kind of grounded me."

For three college summers, Glover worked at a small theater in southwestern Virginia, honing his craft so well that on graduation from college, he hopped a bus for New York and began his acting career. For more than two decades, the versatile Glover has been busy acting on the stage and on both large and small screens.

Over the years, the shy boy from Salisbury turned into an award-winning actor, a chameleon who changed his appearance to fit his various roles. Many have been villains, such as Russell Blake in "Dead on the Money" (Sunday at 4 on TNT) and Daniel Clamp in "Gremlins 2: The New Batch," both airing on HBO and Cinemax. On Monday, WJLA repeats the fact-based "David," in which Glover plays a reprehensible father who abducts his son and then sets him afire.

In July, he'll appear in an installment of HBO's "Tales From the Crypt" called "Undertaking Parlor." And he is making a four-hour NBC miniseries in Atlanta called "Grass Roots," in which he plays a ruthless assassin for a band of white supremacists.

It's likely that you've seen John Glover. Perhaps in one of his Emmy-nominated roles, as a dying AIDS victim in "An Early Frost" or as Lee Remick's confidante in "Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder." On "L.A. Law," he was a physician afflicted with disfiguring neurofibromatosis who sued to continue practicing. He turned up on "Miami Vice" and "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" and in dozens of movies and miniseries (including "Kennedy," with friend Blair Brown). This year, he was inABC's remake of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" with Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave.

He won an ACE nomination for HBO's "Traveling Man." In TNT's "A Season of Giants," he was Leonardo da Vinci, and in HBO's "El Diablo," a conniving preacher.

On the larger screen, he started out as a playboy who got slapped by Jane Fonda in "Julia" (1977). But he made his mark in slimeball roles: greedy real estate mogel Clamp in the goofy "Gremlins 2" (1990); a drunken, murderous stepfather in "Masquerade" (1988); a smarmy TV executive in "Scrooged" (1988); a manipulator in "The Chocolate War" (1988); a blackmailer in "52 Pick-Up" (1986) and a CIA agent in "White Nights" (1985). He also appeared in "Annie Hall," "Melvin and Howard," "A Flash of Green" (again with Blair Brown) and "Robocop 2."

Or you might have seen him in one of his many stage performances, including the American premiere of "Plenty" with Blair Brown at Arena Stage here, or doing Shakespeare at the Mark Forum Taper in Los Angeles, or in his Broadway debut, "The Great God Brown," which won him a Drama Desk Award and critical accolades. He won the Dramalogue Award and Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for "The Traveler" at the Mark Taper Forum.

But Glover, 46, said one of his favorite roles was the one he played in "52 Pick-Up." For that, he covered one of his hazel eyes with a blue contact lens for a sinister look. For others, he has dyed his hair or shaved it off, and in "Dead on the Money," he wears it curly.

Glover seems to have specialized in villainry and character roles, which means he rarely gets the girl. In "Dead on the Money," he does -- sort of.

Glover plays the very rich Russell Blake, an intelligent but childlike eccentric who is attracted to an aspiring actress his cousin Carter Matthews has brought to the Blake mansion. Jennifer isn't particularly interested in Russell -- she's already fallen for Carter -- but she is surprised to hear that she resembles one of Carter's former loves, a young woman who ended up marrying Russell. Carter claims that Russell then murdered his wife for the insurance money.

Incredibly, Carter urges Jennifer to marry Russell in order to gather evidence that would expose him as the murderer. Stranger still, she does. Then she's horrified when Russell asks her to sign documents on a sizable insurance policy, and begins to suspect that someone -- either the man she fell in love with or the man she married -- is lying to her. And may be trying to kill her, too.

Jennifer and Carter are played by willowy Amanda Pays and her husband, Corbin Bernsen, looking in his underwear scenes a bit thin on top and a little thick in the middle. Eleanor Parker, who marked her 50th year in show business the day she showed up to work on the production, plays Russell Blake's mother. Kevin McCarthy is his father, a tycoon; Sheree North is Jennifer's invalid mom, and Kathleen Wilhoite plays Jennifer's friend.

But it is Glover, with his intense eyes, who remains fascinating. And no wonder: producers John Dolf and Victor Simpkins bought the black comedy (based on Rachel Ingalls' "The End of Tragedy") with Glover in mind, and told writer Gavin Lambert to create specifically for him.

It was the first custom-designed role for Glover, who has been working steadily as an actor since the day 24 years ago that he boarded a bus for New York City.

Currently, he's in Miami working on Michael ("Miami Vice") Mann's "Drug Wars: Colombia." Next spring, he'll begin "Richard II" at the Mark Taper Forum. For once, he's the lead: "I would like the change, to play more leading roles and be the hero. I like challenges."

Last year, when he played the lead in an "American Playhouse" production of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People," the performance won critical accolades.

John Glover has come a long way from Salisbury, Md., where he grew up as the only child of a television salesman and his wife. "I was very timid," he said. "When I went to the beach, I went alone."

In his junior year at Wicomico Senior High School, too shy to perform, he helped change the scenery. "I didn't act until the senior class play," he said, "and it kind of grounded me."

In 1962, Glover went off to Towson Teachers College (now Towson State) near Baltimore, where he met big-city kids. "I felt so ashamed to say I was from Salisbury," he recalled. "But I quite like it now, I like that flat kind of country.

At Towson, Glover began to prepare for a career as a teacher, but "the thought terrified me," he said. "I was terrified of getting up in front of a class."

So he transferred to the drama department. Somehow it was easier getting up in front of people if he wasn't appearing as himself.

During his freshman year in college, Glover's mother decided to visit her family in Pulaski in mountainous southwest Virginia. There she learned about the Barter Theatre at nearby Abingdon, started during the Depression by Robert Porterfield for out-of-work actors. People who couldn't afford tickets could barter whatever they had to offer, including foodstuffs and live animals.

Glover said his mother called to report that the Barter had a summer position for an acting apprentice. She said she'd bring an application and advised him to get a couple of recommendations. As soon as classes were out at Towson, he left for Abingdon. That first of three summers there, he portrayed Eugene Gant, the lead, in "Look Homeward, Angel."

"Luck has had a great deal to do with my career," Glover observed.

Last Memorial Day weekend, Glover went back to Pulaski and appeared before classes of fifth graders, no longer terrified. "I get up in front of an audience and play make-believe and fantasize," he said. "They knew me as the guy from 'Gremlins II.'"

Glover's willingness to take a variety of roles has kept him working over more than two decades, although "agents are forever telling me not to take jobs," he said. He takes them anyway, and enjoys portraying villains.

"They are a lot of fun to play," he said. "One of my favorites is that guy in '52 Pick-Up.'"

When the character, created by Elmore Leonard, was offered, Glover called his father. "My dad said Elmore Leonard is a wonderful writer and he writes with such humor. So I studied the book like a text, and I took the book with all these scenes to {director} John Frankenheimer ..."

Suffice it to say that Glover's research meant a production more faithful to Leonard's book than it began.

For his role as an assassin in NBC's upcoming "Grass Roots," Glover spent four hours daily in the make-up chair.

"Here's the interesting part: They attach to me this huge nose and geat big ears, and I come off as the ugliest man you've ever seen in your life, and then they send me to a plastic surgeon and I'm back to what I was before. What I tried to work on was the head trip of a man who spends 30 or 40 years of his life not able to go outside without having people gag when they see him."

He had encountered such a person when badly burned David Rothenburg and his mother visited the set of "David."

"Ninety-five percent of his body was scar, his nose had fallen off, but he was a beautiful young man. There is this inner self, this soul that considers itself normal."

But that soul may become angry. "I once took a vacation with some people and there was one guy, an actor, a handsome leading man, and he kept getting angry a lot at people. Friends said he was very heavy in his youth and that's all his defense. That stuck in my head when I read this part, for 'Grass Roots.'

Glover's willingness to take a variet of roles has kept him woking over more than two decades, although "agents are forever telling me not to take jobs," he said. He does anyway, and enjoys portraying villians. "They are a lot of fun to play," he said.