The Creative Team

CURRENT APPEARANCES / VIDEO CLIPS / PHOTO GALLERY / A TRIBUTE TO ZERO MOSTEL / REVIEWS / CONTACT

ZERO HOUR

MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM

JIM BROCHU (Actor/Playwright)
      Jim spent the better part of last season in New York City, starring in his Off-Broadway hit, “The Big Voice: God or Merman?” which the New York Times called, “Triumphant – a hilarious and utterly enthralling evening of musical theatre.” Jim will return to New York next season with his new play, “Zero Hour,” in which he portrays the theatrical giant, Zero Mostel. One Los Angeles critic called it the best performance of the 2006 season. “Zero Hour” was also awarded the Best Play of 2006 by the L.A. Ovations.
      In 2005, Jim was nominated by the Los Angeles Ovation Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for “The Big Voice,” an honor he won from both the Palm Springs Desert Star Awards and the Valley Theatre League ADA Awards. He is proud that “The Big Voice: God or Merman?” was also given the Ovation Award as Best Musical, presented to himself and composer-partner, Steve Schalchlin, by the legendary Jerry Herman.
      Jim Brochu was born in Brooklyn, New York six miles and thirty years from where Zero Mostel came into the world. He wrote his first show, a charity revue featuring the Bay Ridge neighborhood kids, at the age of thirteen and four years later was working on Broadway – selling orange drink at the back of the St. James Theatre during intermissions of Hello, Dolly!
      After studying drama at Carnegie-Mellon University, where his classmate was Stephen Schwartz, he returned to New York, got his B.A. in English from St. Francis College and spent a season learning his craft at the Surflight Summer Theatre in Beach Haven, New Jersey where he played thirteen leading roles including Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.
      Jim made his Broadway debut in Sid Slon’s production of The Taming Of The Shrew. His off-Broadway credits include Robert Lowell’s Endicott And The Red Cross at the American Place Theatre, Ephraim Kishon’s Unfair To Goliath at the Cherry Lane, Avery Korman’s Skye at Lincoln Center, Don Pippin’s The Contrast at Theatre East and Frank Loesser’s Greenwillow for the Equity Library Theatre.
      While working as a stage actor, he appeared in two legendary commercials – first as a dancing raisin for Post Raisin Bran and as the “Lemon from Outer Space” with Jan (Madge the Manicurist) Miner for Palmolive.
      His television work includes regular stints as Father James on All My Children, Judge Julius Weyburn on The Young And The Restless, Officer Jerry Chandler on the cult-classic Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the befuddled bailiff on NBC’s Sirota’s Court with Michael Constantine. Although the part was small, he can also boast that he made his motion picture debut in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight opposite another newcomer, Robert DeNiro.
      His acting career has taken him to regional stages all over the United States, including the Washington, D.C. Theatre Club, the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, S.T.A.G.E.S. Repertory Theatre in Houston, The Trinity River Arts Center in Dallas, The Shelterbelt Theatre in Omaha, Theatre Building Chicago, The Folly Theatre in Kansas City, two seasons at the Goodspeed Opera House where he originated the role of Flint in Something’s Afoot, the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the DejaVu Theatre in Los Angeles where he won the Backstage West-DramaLogue Award as Best Actor for his performance as Marvin in Robert Patrick’s T-Shirts.
       His career as a playwright began while playing Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof at the Waldo Astoria Dinner Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. Jim bet the producer that he could write a play in a week and won the bet. The play, Cookin’ With Gus, was immediately published by Samuel French, has been performed all over the United States. A huge hit in Quebec, Canada; it was recently taped in French by HBO.
      One play led to another and soon Jim was writing full time. For the theatre, he has written the comedies The Lucky O’Learys with Kathleen Freeman, Fat Chance, The Lady Of The House and the off-Broadway smash hit musical, The Last Session, which he also directed.
      After The Last Session’s New York run (for which he received Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Nominations), the show was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the ten best plays of the 1998-1999 Season, garnering him the Oscar Wilde Award and the GLAAD Media Award. Brochu won another Backstage West Award for his direction of the show, along with the Los Angeles Drama Critic’s Circle Award as playwright.
      In 1988, Jim got an offer he couldn’t refuse - a call from his idol, Lucille Ball, who had read his play The Lucky O’Learys and thought it would be a perfect vehicle for herself and Audrey Meadows. By the time he finished writing the pilot for 20th Century-Fox, Miss Ball was not up to doing the project and it never developed. However, what did develop was a deep friendship between Ball and Brochu that resulted in them spending every afternoon together until her death in 1989. Jim chronicled Lucy’s life as she told it to him over the backgammon table in his book, Lucy In The Afternoon, published by William Morrow and named as an alternate selection by The Literary Guild Book Club.
      On November 6, 2000 Jim was presented a plaque from Mayor Richard Riordan on behalf of the City of Los Angeles for his contribution to the Arts and for improving the quality of life to the city
       In 2005, the legendary Jerry Herman presented Jim and his partner, composer Steve Schalchlin, with the coveted L.A. Stage Ovation Award for their musical, The Big Voice: God or Merman? He was also nominated for Ovations in 2003 and 2005 for Best Actor in A Musical for The Big Voice and won this year’s Valley Theatre League’s ADA Award as Best Musical Actor for the same show.
        In 2001, Jim’s caricature was hung on the wall of Sardi’s Restaurant in New York – a singular tribute to a thirty year career as an actor and playwright. He dedicates this show to Zero, Steve, Davy, Stan, Lucy and Jacques.

PIPER LAURIE (Director)
     Piper has been a guiding force of Zero Hour since its inception and through its developmental stages. She was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of a Polish immigrant and his Russian-American wife. Her father was a furniture dealer who moved his family to Los Angeles, California, when she was 6-years-old. Her parents sent her to weekly elocution lessons and in addition to her lessons in Hebrew school, she studied acting at a local acting school, and this eventually led to work at Universal Studios.Universal signed her as a contract player when she was only 17-years-old, She was cast in the movie Louisa (1950), and became very close friends with her costar, Ronald Reagan.
     She was then cast in Francis Goes to the Races (1951) with 'Donald O'Connor (I)', Son of Ali Baba (1952) with Tony Curtis, and Ain't Misbehavin' (1955) with Rory Calhoun. The studio tried to enhance her image as an ingenue with press releases stating that she took milk baths and ate gardenia petals for lunch. Although she was making $2,000 per week, her lack of any substantial roles discouraged her so much that by 1955 when she received another script for a Western and "another silly part in a silly movie", she dropped the script in the fireplace, called her agent and told him she didn't care if they fired her, jailed her or sued her. From there, she went to New York City to study acting, and worked in live television, starring in The Hallmark Hall of Fame version of Twelfth Night (1957), The Days of Wine and Roses (1958) with Cliff Robertson, which debuted on Playhouse 90 on October 2, and as Kirsten in the Playhouse 90 version of Winterset (1959). In 1961, she got the part of Paul Newman's crippled girlfriend in the classic film, The Hustler (1961). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for that role of Sarah Packard.
     That same year, she was interviewed by a writer/reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, Joe Morgenstern. She liked his casual dress and lifestyle, and 9 months later, they were married. When she did not receive any substantial acting offers after The Hustler, she retreated with her husband to Woodstock, New York, where she pursued domestic activities such as baking (her grandfather's trade) and raising her only daughter, Anne, born in 1971. In 1976, she accepted the role of Margaret White, the eccentric religious zealot mother of a shy young psychic girl named Carrie (1976), played by Sissy Spacek. Piper received her second supporting Oscar nomination for this role. She and her husband divorced in 1981, she moved to Southern California and obtained many film and television roles.
     She got a third Oscar nomination for her role as Mrs. Norman in Children of a Lesser God (1986), and won an Emmy that same year for her acting in Promise (1986) (TV), a television movie with James Garner and James Woods. She has appeared in more than 60 films, from 1950 to the present. Ms. Laurie has appeared in many outstanding television shows from The Best of Broadway in 1954, to roles on Playhouse 90 in 1956, roles on "St. Elsewhere" (1982), "Murder, She Wrote" (1984), "Matlock" (1986), "Beauty and the Beast" (1987), "ER" (1994), "Diagnosis Murder" (1993) and "Frasier" (1993). Her daughter, Anne Grace, has made her a grandmother, and though she lives in Southern California, she frequently visits her daughter in New York.

Gary Smith (Producer)

Herb Isaacs (Producer)