‘Just a joy’: Morgan Fairchild’s 50-year love affair with Kansas City dinner theater
Tiffany’s Attic dinner theater opened in 1972 with Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” starring a four-person cast that included a 22-year-old blonde from Texas named Patsy Calmes.
The Star’s theater reviewer, Giles M. Fowler, enjoyed the comedy and liked Calmes in her role as “a pot-smoking weirdo,” writing, “Her gradual buildup to sheer mania turned out to be one of the show’s funnier developments.”
Here’s another funny development: Patsy Calmes went on to become TV star Morgan Fairchild.
Fifty years later, Fairchild is again performing dinner theater in the Kansas City area — for the same two guys who brought her here in 1972. Fairchild is starring in the comedy “Don’t Dress for Dinner” at the New Theatre and Restaurant, which Dennis Hennessy and Richard Carrothers opened as the successor to their Tiffany’s Attic (5028 Main St.) and Waldo Astoria (7428 Washington St).
She has become a regular — and a favorite — at the Overland Park theater.
“It’s just so nice to work here because they are very kind people,” Fairchild said. “I’ve been doing this 62 years now, and these are the kindest, most caring producers I’ve ever worked for in all that time. It’s just a joy to come here.”
Fairchild, who began acting as a 10-year-old in her native Dallas, has more or less quarantined herself while in town because of COVID. But she took in the local sights during past visits.
“I was always so impressed with all the beautiful fountains and how beautiful Kansas City actually is,” she said. “… Kansas City has a great history, and it’s a beautiful city, and it’s so full of wonderful people.”
“Don’t Dress for Dinner,” which opened Feb. 2 and will run through April 10, is Fairchild’s third starring turn at the New Theatre after “Murder Among Friends” (2014) and “The Dixie Swim Club” (2017).
Carrothers said Fairchild holds a special place for him and Hennessy.
“Fifty years ago, 1972, we were kids opening our first theater,” he said. “Those people that open that theater remain with you the rest of your life.
“You have friends that you’ve been friends your whole life; it’s just because it’s a great fit. You’re comfortable with each other. That’s the way it is with her. We both accept each other and love each other for exactly the way we are.”
Then why did it take more than 40 years for Carrothers and Hennessy to reunite with her?
“There was a point in Morgan’s career where she couldn’t afford to come back to Kansas City,” Carrothers said.
No, it wasn’t our extravagant Midwest lifestyle. With her glamorous roles on prime-time soap operas, Fairchild simply was in the stratosphere of stars who could make as much in one week in Hollywood as for a 10-week run — with three weeks of rehearsal — in dinner theater.
Fairchild did perform in Kansas City while at her peak of popularity, however. In 1986, she starred in the musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” at Starlight Theatre. She played Lorelei Lee, the role Marilyn Monroe made famous in the 1953 movie.
In his review, the best The Star’s Robert Trussell could muster about Fairchild was, “Her singing voice is generally adequate.”
Hollywood days
Trussell’s harsh review hardly sidetracked Fairchild’s career.
The woman is nothing if not enduring — her impressive 157 acting credits on IMBD begin in 1970 (Blonde Driving Roadster in “A Bullet for Pretty Boy”) and continue to today (18 projects since 2016). And those don’t take into account her many theater gigs and dozens of TV appearances on talk shows (Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas), variety shows (“Night of 100 Stars,” “Saturday Night Live”) and more (“Battle of the Network Stars,” “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “Politically Incorrect”).
To the baby boomer generation, Fairchild is one of the biggest stars of 1980s nighttime soap operas, originating the role of Jenna Wade in “Dallas” before playing manipulative seductresses in “Flamingo Road” and “Falcon Crest.” She was among Harper’s Bazaar’s “America’s 10 most beautiful women of 1982” and was voted the fourth sexiest woman in the world by readers of Penthouse in 1985.
To a younger crowd, she is Chandler Bing’s mom on “Friends.”
Nowadays, she focuses on comedy. In “Don’t Dress for Dinner,” a farce about an illicit romantic weekend gone wrong featuring secret lovers and botched alibis, Fairchild plays the wife of a cheating husband. Hennessy directs.
He and Carrothers, who both have theater degrees from UMKC, are celebrating not only their 50th anniversary presenting live theater but also the 30th anniversary of the New Theatre. “Forever Plaid” was the first show, opening Aug. 5, 1992, in the former Glenwood Theatre.
New Theatre has grown into what its website says is “the largest and most successful theatre restaurant facility in the United States.” It averages more than 250,000 in attendance annually with 25,000 season ticket holders.
That success enables Hennessy and Carrothers to bring in familiar names to star in many of their productions. Most are former cast members of popular TV sitcoms, including nearly every supporting character from “M*A*S*H” (Jamie Farr, Loretta Swit, Larry Linville, Gary Burghoff, William Christopher and Mike Farrell).
Carrothers indicated there is no celebration planned for this anniversary season. In fact, he said that Fairchild’s return is more or less a coincidence.
“It’s just synchronicity that it happened, that Morgan is back here at our 50th anniversary,” he said. “It was meant to be.”
Fairchild is the lone marquee name this season after the theater closed for more than a year because of COVID before reopening in July 2021. Carrothers said most Los Angeles actors have been hunkering down at home, but not Fairchild, who takes extreme care to make sure she doesn’t catch COVID.
She has become an expert on the virus, and she shares her knowledge on her Twitter.
“I’m always looking for chances to learn more, read more,” she said. “I tweet about paleontology, anthropology, archeology, all kinds of different things they’re discovering all over the world.”
Fairchild has used her voice in the science arena before. She was one of the first celebrities to join the fight against AIDS in the 1980s, speaking out even though it made her unpopular among Hollywood power brokers.
Of course, you would never know about her scientific bent based on the roles she has played.
“Here I am a virus nut, love paleontology, come from a family of lawyers, and they never cast me as any of those,” she said, adding that fate dictated her career as an actor.
“I wanted to be a doctor or paleontologist when I was a kid, but then when I got into theater, people just kept hiring me. So I just kept going and going and going, and here I am, still going. … I don’t want to retire. I like working. I never want to sit around and eat bon-bons or watch TV or go to the Beverly Hills Hotel all day. I like working.”
50-year roll call
A sampling of TV and movie stars who have appeared at Tiffany’s Attic, Waldo Astoria or New Theatre:
Dyan Cannon (“Heaven Can Wait”)
Godfrey Cambridge (“Watermelon Man”)
Barbara Eden (“I Dream of Jeannie”)
Shirley Jones (“Oklahoma!”)
Jack Klugman (“The Odd Couple”)
Don Knotts (“The Andy Griffith Show”)
Michael Learned (“The Waltons”)
Hal Linden (“Barney Miller”)
Jerry Mathers (“Leave it to Beaver”)
Butterfly McQueen (“Gone With the Wind”)
Hayley Mills (“Pollyanna”)
Garrett Morris (“Saturday Night Live”)
Nichelle Nichols (“Star Trek”)
Marion Ross (“Happy Days”)
George Wendt (“Cheers”)
Cindy Williams (“Laverne & Shirley”)
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
