Al Waxman is sitting in a bookstore café in downtown Toronto, not far from his childhood stomping grounds in the Kensington-Spadina neighborhood — territory he made famous in the legendary King of Kensington television show which propelled him to fame three decades ago, near the start of his celebrated career.
Around the corner is a movie-house with The Hurricane on the marquis. This is Norman Jewison’s latest film in which Waxman has a modest part as a prison warden. It’s one of hundreds of roles the Canadian actor has played in movies, television and live theater over the years.
Waxman recently took on a new role as author. His autobiography, That’s What I Am, was recently published (1999) by Malcolm Lester Books of Toronto. It’s a highly-readable account of his professional life that takes in his formidable early work with the CBC, his film work in London, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, and his more recent success as a director of several plays in Toronto. The book has received favorable reviews and copies of it are on display a few yards from where we’re sitting.
Dressed casually in a gray Roots sweatshirt, he lifts an unlit cigar momentarily to his mouth and rests his hands on a script on the table beside him. The script is for Goon Squad, a cable-TV movie, and he brought it just in case the journalist he’s meeting is late. “The first reading is tomorrow, but I don’t have to memorize lines yet,” he explains. “I’m not acting until Saturday.” That project has nothing to do with his regular gig in the TV series Twice In A Lifetime, in which he co-stars.
At the height of his success and fame as a police detective on the American television show Cagney and Lacey, Waxman was jetting between the US west coast and his home in Toronto several times each week. “My kids are still flying on all the points I earned,” he jokes. But he says he never seriously considered moving to Los Angeles and severing his family’s connection with Canada.
“It’s not an altruistic thing. I really like it here. There’s enough to infuriate you here, make no mistake. But on balance, I really do feel it’s a very decent place to live. Canada has given me a great deal of personal satisfaction as well as patriotic pride.”
He also expresses a special pride for the city in which he was born in 1935. “When I was a kid and I went abroad, one always had to explain where Toronto was — no one ever heard of it. But now Toronto has become a marvelous cosmopolitan city and everyone has heard of it. I enjoy this city and I’m proud of it. Why should I want to leave?”
Waxman is working to translate his pride of country into a television series based on Pier 21, the recently restored facility along the Halifax waterfront that received about one million immigrants to Canada between 1928 and 1971. The series, he says, is still in an early stage of development. “The show will highlight all the people who helped build Canada, who landed at Pier 21 and went across the country, people who didn’t speak the language. Boy, did they have courage! Every story will be one of triumph and tears.”
He also takes pride in his Jewish roots — a feeling that is taking expression in another project. He has been asked to direct The Diary of Anne Frank for the coming season at the Stratford Festival. Rehearsals were slated to begin in February.
“The power of the play is the young girl and her words. The strength of this young girl is the power and the essence of the play. Anne Frank was one of the most influential people of the past 100 years. She had such amazing perceptions and insights. We must never stop telling that story.”
While he’s speaking, a man approaches our table. “Excuse me, but you’re Al Waxman, aren’t you?” he says. The actor turns to him and smiles. The man extends his hand and Waxman shakes it. “Good to see you, face to face,” says the man. “I saw you at Stratford last year in Death of A Salesman. Wonderful, wonderful! So sorry to interrupt.”
His portrayal of the salesman Willie Loman in Arthur Miller’s classic play received positive reviews; it is yet another of many accomplishments in a varied career.
With a recent book and a continuous stream of acting and directing challenges that take him all over the continent and beyond, the veteran stage performer shows no signs of slowing. Although he turns 65 this year, retirement is just about the farthest thing from his mind, he says.
Just as he loved Canada and refused to leave, one knows that Al Waxman is not about to walk away from the footlights, either in front of or behind them, to rest on his considerable laurels. As he says at the conclusion of That’s What I Am:
“If you think it’s been pretty good so far, what till you see Act 2!” ♦
© 1999
