Wednesday Jan 20, 2010
"You’ve got to be known for something if you want to get anywhere," Tommy Femia likes to say. He celebrates his twentieth season of Judy Garland LIVE! at Don’t Tell Mama, his home base in New York, this winter. The energetic and still-youthful actor ("I’ll have your legs broken if you tell them my real age!") never expected it to go as far as it has. "Every time I got a gig, I lit a candle and made the sign of the cross," Femia said of those early days.
Originally, a friend coaxed Femia to join him in a duet act of Ann Miller and Judy Garland. After a year or so, the friend moved on to other performing work and Femia decided to go solo with "Judy." Since then, his impersonation has won him seven MAC Awards and brought him to sold-out engagements at such famed venues as The Cinegrill in Los Angeles, The Plush Room in San Francisco, Earle Hall in London and many others, including virtually every nightclub stage in New York.
Born and raised in Brooklyn (where his parents, married fifty-two years, still live, and who still attend all of his New York shows), Femia went to the High School of Performing Arts, where he graduated in a class with Suzanne Vega and Ving Rhames. "I was doing a play at night and school in the day," he recalled. Femia later did a lot of dinner theater and bus and truck tours. In the late ’70s and early ’80s he lived in Los Angeles as the guardian of his younger brother, John, who was a child star on the sitcoms "Hello, Larry" and "Square Pegs." (John now performs stand-up comedy.) While there, Tommy himself appeared on "One Day at a Time" and "The Facts of Life."
Always a fan
Back in New York, Femia appeared off-Broadway in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Whoop-Dee-Doo! as well as several regional productions. As Judy Garland LIVE! began making an impact, Femia appeared on the talk shows of Montel Williams, Jerry Springer, and even co-hosted an episode of Geraldo Rivera’s show.
"I’ve been a fan as long as I can remember," Femia said of Garland. "When she died, I was the only one in school wearing a black armband." "Cabaret is scary shit," Femia went on to say, explaining why he chose to remain at Don’t Tell Mama all these years. "Sidney Myer [the booking manager] is loving and nurturing. If I left, it would be like leaving my favorite it uncle." He remembered Myer encouraging him to do his show a few days after 9/11, telling him people needed escape. "The show was sold out," Femia said.
As for his part, Myer said, "I had the privilege of seeing and meeting Judy Garland and it was a life-changing experience. Tommy is keeping her alive for today’s audience." Indeed, one of the secrets to Femia’s success is perhaps his insistence that Judy has never left us. In the show, he comments on Liza’s recent Tony Award and doesn’t sugar coat Garland’s addictions, mining them for added comedy bits. "I recently did an engagement in Billings, Montana," Judy told the audience in a recent show. "And ladies and gentlemen, if you have the choice between going to Billings, Montana and going down in a plane crash, choose the plane crash. Honestly," she closed, pausing for comic effect, "there isn’t a pill big enough."
http://www.edgefireisland.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=theatre&sc2=features&sc3=&id=101349
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