Elaine Stritch: Legend on the loose

When I tell three theatre people that I am going to interview Elaine Stritch, I get three different responses. "Oh, my God," says the first. "Better you than me," says the second. The third is silent for a moment, and then says, "You'll laugh about it when it's over."

Stritch, now 76, has been appearing in musicals and legit for nearly six decades, the star of shows by Irving Berlin, Noël Coward, Stephen Sondheim, and Edward Albee, but it's not her reputation on stage that is so intimidating. She acknowledges in her one-woman show that she has, over the years, been less than emollient. Dust-ups with directors, stagehands, authors and theatre owners litter her career, and when the writer of her book quotes her as saying, "I'm not easy," and agrees, there is a definite air of understatement. The credits of Elaine Stritch at Liberty read "Script constructed by John Lahr; script reconstructed by Elaine Stritch."

Her peers and her public, however, haven't been shy of expressing their praise. One line in the show, which ran off-Broadway last year and transferred to Broadway this spring, has had to be changed for London – the one in which she says that she's been waiting 45 years to give a certain speech, the one in which she accepts a Tony. At the end of last season, she won the award for Special Theatrical Event. One New York theatre person gave an even greater tribute: "I wanted to see her so bad, I paid full price."

As so often happens, reports of the star's temperament seem to have been exaggerated. She calls me "honey" straight away and, when I say I'll need about an hour, says, "Are you sure that will be enough? I don't want to rush you," and tells her assistant to pick her up in an hour and a half. Before he leaves us in Joe Allen's restaurant, however, she gives him some instructions and snaps, "Why are you looking behind me? When I'm talking to you, you look at ME!" Then she hands him some parcels to take away, saying, "I'll keep a little Kleenex here in case Rhoda makes me cry."

Surely, I say, the title of her show does her a disservice – shouldn't a classy dame like her be at Fortnum & Mason? Stritch briskly dismisses this nonsense. "No," she says. "It's called 'at Liberty' because I feel that way only when I'm up there. Then I'm free." For the first time in her long career, Stritch is telling the truth on stage, in her own words. "It's wonderful being honest. You don't have to learn it."

Stritch grew up in Detroit, a good Catholic girl who went to a convent school. As she says in the show, theatre was a safe outlet for her way of expressing herself: "I could seduce an audience, and never have to go to confession." At 17, she went to New York to be an actress. "I wanted to escape," she says of her attraction to the theatre. "I never wanted to have any responsibility."

Is that why she has always lived in hotels? (During the Seventies, when she appeared on the London stage, Stritch stayed at the Savoy.)

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you don't have the responsibility of running a house."

"No, no, I run the hotel."

In spite of her formidable presence, Stritch says, she has always been undermined by terrible fear. "That's one of my faults. I don't think I have enough ego. I think I'm afraid to admit to myself how talented I am. Every once in a while I would come off stage and say to myself, 'That was good!' But I'd never say it to anyone else."

Fear of the stage made Stritch take a drink before she went on, then another shot of Dutch courage at the interval, "a little backup, and that was it. That was a good idea. Then I wasn't afraid any more. But that works for a while, and then it doesn't work." Sacked from shows and thrown out of clubs, Stritch failed to stop drinking even after she became diabetic. (She has written a book on the illness.) She had a severe attack in the hallway of her hotel, and was saved from death only because a passing waiter happened to be carrying a Pepsi. She finally went on the wagon.

Stritch adored Noël Coward, who loved "Stritchie" right back, and wrote the second-lead role in Sail Away for her. (It was the show in which she sang "Why Do the Wrong People Travel?") Before the opening, however, Coward decided to combine the two leading parts and "unfortunately", as she says in the show, the other actress had to be fired. "I said 'unfortunately' so the audience would think I'm a nice person. But one night, after I said that, a line came out right from the gut, and I heard myself saying, 'Well, that's show business'."

Stritch didn't care for Bertolt Brecht, in whose The Private Life of the Master Race she appeared when he was exiled in America. "He never made an effort." He was rude? "He never put on a clean shirt! I guess he thought he was, you know, a member of the proletariat."

Stritch can always count on getting the best table at Joe Allen's, and not only because of her status: she was once engaged to the proprietor. Stritch's other romances were with actors – Ben Gazzara, Gig Young, and her late husband, John Bay. She started late, remaining a virgin until she was 30. Though her press material says she "dated" Marlon Brando, the word is used, unusually for these days, literally. When, after a night on the town, he took her to his apartment, went to the bathroom, and reappeared in his pyjamas, the teenage Stritch shot out the door and back to the convent. She did not marry until she was 43, during the run of Tennessee Williams's Small Craft Warnings, in which she appeared in the West End with Bay.

"I called home and said to my father, kidding but on the square, 'Should I bring John home so you can see if you approve of him?' He said, 'No, just marry him. Don't let him get away."' The marriage lasted 10 years, until Bay died of cancer. "He was a dynamite guy. He was made in heaven for me. He had humour, he had savoir-faire. He was sure of himself, and had no jealousy. One time I said to him, about another actress, 'I hate her. I could just kill her,' and he said, 'Elaine, everybody has a sack of rocks.'"

Bay joined Stritch in living at the Savoy while they were married. She is back there now. "Every night, when I draw the curtains, I look down at the garden where I proposed to him. It's kinda romantic."

Now I think I may cry, even if Stritch doesn't, but she has put her hand out to stop a passing a waiter. Her voice has lost its dreamy tone. "I asked for a decaf coffee two weeks ago."

I decide to git while the going's good.

'Elaine Stritch at Liberty' previews at the Old Vic, London SE1 (020-7269 1722) from 1 Oct, and opens 9 Oct