HARVEY SCHMIDT

Remembering Harvey Schmidt
by Michael Glenn-Smith

2018 has been a melancholy year for me.  The most important thing that happened was the loss of a dear friend.  On February 28th, my wonderful Harvey Schmidt passed away.  Harvey was of prime importance in my life.  I first met him on the day after Labor Day in 1968 when I auditioned for the Broadway musical CELEBRATION, with music by Harvey and a libretto by Tom Jones.  I loved all their previous shows (THE FANTASTICKS, 110 IN THE SHADE, I DO! I DO!), so getting cast as the juvenile lead in CELEBRATION was a dream come true.  Jones and Schmidt were such good men (and fellow Texans) that they kept me working in the theatre for the better part of the next ten years.  Those three Jones & Schmidt shows (CELEBRATION, THE FANTASTICKS, PHILEMON) were my real career; everything else I did as an actor was just a job.  Even though I had worked for him for several years, I didn’t really become friends with Harvey until around 1973 or 1974 when he went to this expensive spa in Switzerland. I wrote him a funny letter (full of Texas stories) while he was there and that was the beginning of our real friendship.  Over the years I came to know him well.  He was always supportive of me, no matter what I did, be it actor, writer, Xerox machine operator, software specialist, old college student, or English teacher.  When I was at my poorest, he would frequently call me up and say that his press agent pal had gotten him tickets for a new Broadway show and would I like to accompany him—we could also have dinner at this new restaurant that had just gotten a rave review in the Times.  (I noticed that the bill was invariably more than my monthly rent!)  Harvey was a very successful artist in addition to having a great career as a composer.  In the 1950s he was one of America’s top commercial artists whose work appeared in the most popular magazines of the time.  Harvey taught me to see things with an artist’s eye.  For example, he loved the word “TEXAS” for its symmetry, with its alternating vowels and consonants and that “X” right in the middle.  I didn’t know anyone else who thought that way.  Although most people regarded him as “quiet,” when you got to know him, he could tell wonderful stories about his life that I have never forgotten: stories about being in the army, playing the piano for dance classes at the University of Texas [he had a great photograph of himself at the piano while fellow students Jayne Mansfield, Rip Torn, and Barbara Barrie danced around in black leotards], working at NBC in the 50s during the days of live television, being sent to exotic places by LIFE magazine to illustrate their stories, attending Adolf Zukor’s 100th birthday party and sitting next to Mae West [The image he retained was of her old hand, her bejeweled, exquisitely-manicured old hand, pressing into the red velvet cushion when she stood up to take a bow.], or the time when he was a college student hitchhiking his way up to Nebraska to make money cutting grain and ended up stopping in Colorado Springs and working on a movie all summer instead.  There were scores of stories over the years.  His father was a Methodist minister who had to take other jobs when the preaching did not bring in enough money to support the family.  They were a close family and their values stayed with him for the rest of his life.  He was truly a good person.  After he retired to Texas in the late 90s, I visited him many times in Tomball on my annual trip home.  We always had a joyous visit.  Even after he got old and would fall asleep in the middle of a conversation, I’d just read for a while until he woke up and we’d pick up the conversation where we left off.  I loved him so much and I miss him terribly.  Harvey died at age 88.  I knew him for almost 50 years.  I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without him.