Rain loomed on a recent Tuesday morning, and there was a chill in the air. But it was spring in Joel Gray’s loft in Manhattan’s West Village.
Yellow roses – some doing a solo act, some in a bunch – pink and yellow tulips and pink and purple hyacinths sat in different containers on the round table in the open kitchen, on the glass coffee table, on a side table and on the narrow, rectangular dining table. More multicolored roses, spread out on a cupboard, were – how do you say this nicely? – push daisies up.
Mr. Gray, who won a Tony in 1967 and an Oscar in 1973 for his ineradicable portrayal of the feverishly performed MC in the musical ‘Cabaret’, stood at the kitchen counter trying to arrange a new group of tulips. (He spends $50 a week on flowers at the local Whole Foods.) But this seemed to be an uncooperative group. “You kids are giving me a hard time,” he said, turning away for a moment to say hello to a visitor.
Based on the evidence of an admittedly small sample – a reporter, a photographer, a publicist – the eternally pixie-esque Mr. Gray guests as if it were the winning tickets he thought he had lost.
But perhaps some of this exuberance was situational. “You know, it’s almost my ninetieth birthday,” he announced, clapping his hands like a delighted child and leading him to his office. There hung on a hanger an orange sweatshirt with “1932” on the front in large black numbers. (For the record, April 11 was the day.)
“A dear friend gave Duane Michals a sweatshirt for to be 90th birthday, in February,” Mr. Gray said, referring to the photographer. “And I said to her, ‘I want one too!'”
Joel Gray, 90
Activity: Actor, writer, photographer
Not by design: “My style is not eclectic, but rather serendipity. I’m really mr. serendipity. Nothing I bought was planned. Everything here revolves around the moment.”
He bought the apartment in the late 1990s based on a floor plan.
“I wanted to be in the village. It was a whole new world for me,” said Mr. Gray, who had lived on the top floor of the Hotel Des Artistes on West 67th Street in an apartment composed room by room of the former maid’s quarters, with a skylight and patio. . ‘But my brother said to me, ‘You can’t live there.’ At the time, it was very grubby and filthy on the streets near the West Side Highway. The place where the boats came in – the piers – it was all very undone.
But what was grubby and filthy compared to its proximity to the Hudson River? Mr. Gray watches it roll by from the built-in daybed where he sips his morning coffee and reads his morning paper, “It’s my friend and my partner and my serenity.”
He was further captivated by the ‘wet clay’ possibilities of a new building. ‘It was about open space,’ he said, ‘which I found so alluring, and the mystery of how to make it a home. It was an adventure.”
A very personal adventure. There is no interest in showing off designers or making vignettes here. Minimalist and neutral, with clean lines, columns and concrete floors, the apartment is part 1970s SoHo loft, part mid-century modern design, with a cowhide rug on the bedroom floor, one cowhide upholstered butterfly chair and a Jens Risom woven chair.
“But I’m not thinking about menstruation,” said Mr. Gray. “I’m thinking exclamation marks.”
Perhaps the exclamation marks are the works of art: by Richard Tuttle, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Joan Miró, Sally Gall and Mr. Michaels. Carvings of antelope heads stand in a row on a windowsill. African sculptures adorn the piano. There is a galley wall in the primary bathroom.
mr. Gray is, of course, best known as an actor and director (of the critically acclaimed Yiddish version of 2018’s “Fiddler on the Roof”), and he continues to perform. He is part of the cast of ‘The Old Man’, a series premiering on FX in mid-June. “I’m not the old man,” he said before anyone had a chance to ask.
But for the past twelve and a half years, Mr. Gray also made a name for himself as a photographer. His work has been the focus of gallery shows and of several monographs. His most recent photo book, “The Flower Whisperer”, published in 2019, paid tribute to the lower reaches of daisies, sunflowers, lilies, daffodils et al.
During the pandemic, he sat inside and Mr. Gray began to search for — and photograph — the faces he saw in dried flower petals. They will be the subject of his next book. “Look there. It’s a whole new world,” he said, pointing to a detail in the image of a dead blossom hanging on a wall in his office. “I see a bow tie.”
Art and design have long been part of his life. Growing up in Cleveland, 8-year-old Joel fantasized about getting lost in the local museum and being locked up at night. Later, when work began to take him out of town, he invariably returned to New York with handicrafts. When he went to London to play palladium at age 19, he visited Positano, Italy, “and now I’m looking at these monkey candlesticks I took home,” he said, nodding at the coffee table.
On shelves in Mr. Gray stand puppets from Mexico; figures, dishes, vases and baskets from European ports; and, a little closer to home, collages made by his mother, Grace.
The mother-son relationship, as described in Mr. Gray’s 2016, “Master of Ceremonies,” was complicated. But it was thanks to Grace, he said, that even as a struggling actor, he cared deeply about his surroundings.
“I’ve always redecorated my apartments, even though I’ve only spent a dollar and a quarter,” he said. “My mom and dad taught me the importance of being professional and creating a place for myself. And with my mother, everything was focused on creating a space for art.”
He made the place and made the space. “It was all about, ‘Let’s figure this out,'” said Mr. Gray. “Let’s dream a little here.” I’m a big believer in dreams.”
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