San Francisco Chronicle - September 14, 2004
Edward Guthmann, eguthmann@sfchronicle.com.

How odd, then, to learn that Buckley has ditched Manhattan and relocated to the countryside near Fort Worth, Texas. There, on a 35-acre ranch with her four dogs, two cats, three horses and an African gray parrot, the actress/singer is learning how to ride cutting horses, a practice that dates back to the Old West.

"Some of my friends, especially in the musical theater world, were just in shock when I told them," says Buckley, who's doing a nightclub act at the Plush Room through Sept. 26. "I never thought I would leave New York City: I bought my co-op, a pretty place on the Upper West Side, and I thought, 'This is where I'm going to die; this is it.' But after 9/11 this obsession with these horses kind of took off from my life."

Instead of playing Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," say, and riding that slender thread between lunacy and reality, Buckley is putting on spurs, a cowboy hat, blue jeans and chaps. She's sold her BMW, bought a big red Ford truck and hired a trainer, Bill Freeman, who's coaching her in the art of riding a cutting horse.

Cutting originated when wranglers and cowboys had to ride into a herd of cows or calves and separate or "cut" one cow from the herd. Some horses had better "cow sense" than others -- the ability to mesmerize a cow and hold it apart from the herd -- and cowboys would get to bragging about how clever their horse was. Eventually, cutting became a sport with 2 1/2-minute competitions rewarding the horse and rider with the highest skill. Buckley competes on the non-pro level.

"It was something I'd wanted to do since I was 12," says Buckley, 57. "My whole life, since I was a little kid, has been really one-pointed about being a singer or an actress. Study, practice, practice. Work, maintain. Study, practice, practice. I wanted a different focus."

The art of cutting, she says, requires the same kind of concentration as performing. "Horses are very empathetic beings, and when you ride a cutting horse you have to be completely in the present, because they're big and they're prey animals and they mirror your emotional state. If you're not in perfect rhythm with the moment, you can't do it."

If ranch life seems incongruous for a Broadway star, bear in mind that Buckley was born in Big Spring, Texas, and grew up, the daughter of an Air Force lieutenant colonel, in Fort Worth. Her paternal granddaddy, Norman C. "Kid" Buckley, was "a real cowboy," she says, who worked big ranches in the Old West. Her grandmother, Myrtle Buckley, homesteaded land in South Dakota --

on her own -- at 18.

Spend a little time with Buckley and you discover how little she resembles a Broadway diva and how the ranch and the horses in fact make sense. Robust and forthright, she hasn't labored, like so many actresses her age, to construct a veneer of never-ending youth. Her figure's a lot fuller than it was 10 years ago, her hair is long and silvery gray and worn loose, and she favors big, blousy outfits.

Picture one of those Mother Earth characters that the actress Lois Smith plays. Or an aging Berkeley hippie who runs a psychotherapy practice or tiny independent bookstore. Or a good ol' gal who meets for drinks and rowdy talk with fellow Texas (and fellow Democrat) Molly Ivins. That's the real Buckley.

"I don't know Molly Ivins," she says, eagerly biting into a large sushi roll, "but one of the best comments I got last year was from this young man who said, 'I think of you as the singing Molly Ivins,' And I was like, 'Wow!' I still can't quite figure out what he meant but it was nice that he said that. What does that mean?"

Buckley is sitting in a Japanese restaurant, her favorite find since she flew into town for the Plush Room gig. It was her idea to combine dinner and an interview. Unlike most actresses, she's not adverse to eating and talking at once. Her appetites are so zesty and unfettered that they start to feel like aspects of the passion and dramatic depth she brings to the stage.

Sing big. Live big. Enjoy big. Hurt big.

A Buckley performance is never less than generous, never less than affecting. It's not just that big, big voice and those thunderous, flesh- tingling "money" notes she delivers. It's also the tenderness, the mark of firsthand heartache that distinguish her interpretations. Think of all the great singers -- Sinatra, Callas, Billie Holliday, Judy Garland -- and you won't find an untroubled soul among them.

What drives her? It's all rooted in her relationship with her dad, Ernest Buckley, a gifted but conflicted man who died 14 years ago and still casts a long shadow over his daughter. "My father was very opposed to my being in show business because he was from South Dakota and thought actresses were equal to prostitutes," she says. "My mother had been a singer/dancer who gave it up when she got married ... so they would have these roaring fights and she would sneak me out of the house for my lessons. Within a very short period of time I became this performing child."

At 11, she saw "The Pajama Game" at the Casa Ma±ana in Fort Worth and during the classic "Steam Heat" dance number, had an epiphany. "This awareness came up through the top of my head and communicated with me and said, 'That's it, that's what you're going to do for the rest of your life.' It was clear as a bell."

The choreographer and the lead dancer for that show, Ed Holleman and Larry Howard, were Broadway dancers -- a gay couple who fell in love with Fort Worth and decided to relocate and open a school. Recognizing the raw talent in Betty Lynn -- the name her mother and three brothers still call her -- they took her under their wing and taught her to dance.

Even though her father disdained show biz, he encouraged Betty Lynn to enter beauty pageants. She was crowned Miss Fort Worth and was asked to sing at the Miss America pageant in 1967 -- even though she had lost the Miss Texas title. "An agent saw me perform and asked me to fly to New York," she says. "I went back to finish my senior year at college but he kept calling me."

Buckley's mom, Betty Bob, was thrilled. But her dad, who had taught her to sing, continued to "vehemently" disapprove. She took a job at the Fort Worth Press -- she had majored in journalism -- and eventually flew to New York where, on her first day in the city, she auditioned for the Martha Jefferson role in "1776" and got the job.

Nobody has that kind of luck in the theater. But that's what happened.

Buckley never had the resolution she craved with her father. "We had moments of what I'd call d tente -- just moments. I so wanted an official apology and I didn't ever get that. So it caused me to miss precisely the moments where he was trying to give me more."

It's taken years of therapy, meditation and spiritual practice, she says, "to really free myself of the heaviness of my dad's influence and the damage that was done in those days. ... I've been working with this major analyst for the past 10 years and she's helped me enormously. And it's helped me to really embrace my mother in a way I've never been able to before.

"I think that's part of why I'm living back in Texas. I'm glad I'm there for her at this time in her life."

So don't worry that Buckley has fled to a world that won't embrace or understand her. She sees her mom, now 77, and has high-school and college pals in the area and says, "So far, I'm not feeling isolated." Each morning, she gets up, brews the Zabar's coffee that gets shipped in from New York and sits on the porch with her three Shih Tzus and the Labrador/German Shepard mix that she rescued from the highway. She gazes out at her ranch with its two ponds, its deer and its oak trees, and everything feels good.

One possible drawback is politics. Accustomed to a New York mind-set that's sharply at odds with Bush conservatives, Buckley says she's feeling outnumbered. "I got in the face of my best friend across the street who was giving me the whole Republican line over dinner.

"Now that I've moved back to Texas," she laughs, "I remember why I wished to move away when I was young. Although I have to say, my mother has come around (politically) and if my mother can come around, there's hope for all of us."

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Betty Buckley performs Tuesdays through Sundays until Sept. 26 at the Plush Room, 940 Sutter St. Tickets are $55 and $60. Thursday's performance is a benefit for Academy of Friends, which funds AIDS/HIV organizations in the Bay Area. Call (415) 885-2800 or visit www.empireplushroom.com for reservations.

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