“Fears of a Clown” by Bruce Weber first appeared in the March 1996 issue of Vogue. For more highlights from Vogue’s archives, sign up for our Nostalgia newsletter here.
Nathan Lane, the sad-faced comic actor who turned 40 in February, is finally becoming a star—thanks to a lead role in a Sondheim musical and a major movie about to open. What’s interesting is that he’s doing it, more or less, without his pants on. You could say the whole Nathan Lane phenomenon began four years ago, when he led the cast as Nathan Detroit in the celebrated Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls. Then last year, Lane—perhaps best known at that point as the voice of the wisecracking meerkat in The Lion King—brought the house down in Terrence McNally’s Tony-winning drama Love! Valour! Compassion! Playing an HIV-positive gay man who loves stage musicals, he made one of the most remarkable and memorable stage entrances ever, wearing only an apron and high-heeled pumps. He brazenly repeated that moment for a national TV audience during the Tony Awards last spring, just before launching into a medley of Broadway show tunes usually sung by women.
“I feel pretty, oh so pretty,” Lane sang, despite his appearance.
“Terrence originally wrote the part for me to come out onstage completely naked,” Lane says, fully dressed, over a recent dinner in Manhattan’s theater district. “But I said, ‘You can forget about this naked thing.’ I told him, ‘You’ve got to give me something. An apron. High heels. Something.’ And I wasn’t really naked underneath. I was wearing a G-string.”
It’s typical of Lane—bold and larger-than-life onstage—to be a little apologetic and anxious off it. That comes through in his wit, which is quick and self-deprecating. When told that Laurence Fishburne, an actor he admires, likes to be called Fish, Lane instantly replies, “I like to be called veal.” Then he adds, “Or shithead. I also look up when people say that.”
He’s been compared to Jackie Gleason and Zero Mostel for his theatrical fireworks, physical swagger, elastic face, and round build—his weight can fluctuate by 30 or 40 pounds between roles. At dinner, he looks surprisingly slim, but insists, “I’m really a big, fat guy at heart.”
“As a comic craftsman, he can do anything,” says Jerry Zaks, who directed Lane in Guys and Dolls and in his Gleason-like performance in Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Most recently, Zaks cast Lane as Pseudolus, the freedom-seeking (and pantsless) slave in the New York revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, opening April 18. It’s the role Zero Mostel originated 34 years ago. “Nathan has that thing great comic actors have—fearlessness, no hesitation about playing a situation to the fullest,” says Zaks.
Still, Lane says, “Every time I start something new, I think, I don’t know how to act. I’m just a desperate, needy little man. I want everyone to laugh. And I’m not sure I can do anything.”
Maybe so. But it’s not unusual to hear him called the funniest man in the theater, the toast of Broadway. “Not the toast,” he insists. “Maybe the cruller.”
This month, Lane—and his legs—will be very much on display when he stars with Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, and Dianne Wiest in The Birdcage, a remake of the 1978 French farce La Cage aux Folles. Directed by Mike Nichols with a screenplay by Elaine May, the movie gives Lane his first substantial film role. Until now, he’s had small parts in movies like He Said, She Said and Frankie and Johnny. When he recently saw a trailer for the film, with his name in big letters right after Robin Williams and Gene Hackman, “I went, ‘Noooooooo… What’s wrong with this picture?'”
According to Nichols, Lane is “a true comic actor, which is different from being a comic personality. There are people like John Cleese and Steve Martin, who are hilarious when they’re wNathan is one of those people who are hardworking but calm and serious when they’re not working.
In the film, now set in Miami Beach, Lane plays Albert, a loud, moody but lovable female impersonator who performs as Starina. His longtime partner, played by Williams, owns the nightclub called The Birdcage where Starina works. Even though it’s updated and set in America, the story is pretty much the same as the original: Starina’s partner has a grown son from a brief relationship years ago. Now the son is about to get married. His fiancée has lied to her very conservative and politically powerful family about her future husband’s unusual parents, and she’s begged them to “act normal” when the in-laws come to visit. “So I pretend to be the wife and mother,” Lane says. “I look like a young Barbara Bush.”
Nathan was born Joe Lane in Jersey City, the third son of working-class parents. He changed his name at 22 because (a) there was already another Joe Lane in Actors’ Equity, and (b) he liked the character Nathan Detroit, whom he had played in dinner theater. His father was a truck driver with a lovely Irish tenor voice who might have signed with a Hollywood agent, Lane says, if his mother hadn’t forbidden it. His father drank himself to death when Nathan was eleven. Lane once described his family as like “bad Eugene O’Neill.”
Lane made his stage debut when his older brother Dan dragged him into a student production of Frank Gilroy’s Who’ll Save the Ploughboy? at Jersey City State College. But it wasn’t until he appeared in his grammar school’s production of Around the World in Eighty Days that he got hooked.
“I was the French servant,” he says. “There was a scene on a train where we were being attacked by Indians. When they said, ‘The Indians are attacking the train’—I didn’t do this in rehearsal—I ran behind this little suitcase and crouched down. I was a chubby little kid, and there was a big laugh. I think it started then.”
After high school, where he performed regularly in plays and musicals, he won a drama scholarship to St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia. On the day he arrived, he realized the scholarship wasn’t enough to cover all his expenses. Instead of taking out another loan, he went back to Jersey City and got a job in the county clerk’s office. “I had to interview everyone who had been arrested in Jersey City,” Lane says. He left after two months and landed a job at the Halfpenny Playhouse in East Orange, New Jersey. Later, he moved on to dinner theater, stand-up comedy, and even singing telegrams.
In 1983, Lane starred opposite George C. Scott in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter on Broadway. The performance earned him a Drama Desk nomination and a spot in Broadway’s inner circle. He has worked steadily ever since, including a long partnership with Terrence McNally, who wrote roles for Lane in The Lisbon Traviata, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, and Love! Valour! Compassion!
Sadly, it’s this relationship with McNally that has been strained by Lane’s recent success. Last fall, after he agreed to make the film version of Love! Valour! Compassion!, the production was put on hold because Lane had also agreed to appear in a Hallmark Hall of Fame special, The Boys Next Door. Lane says it was a simple business decision; when he agreed to do the Hallmark special, there was no set date for filming the McNally play. Rumors spread that Lane backed out because, with The Birdcage already finished, he didn’t want to risk being typecast as a gay man.
“I hate that expression, ‘pulled out,'” Lane says. “I didn’t pull out of the movie. Terrence just assumed I would turn down anything and everything to do this, and saying I backed out because I didn’t want to play another gay role was very unfair. Why would I be afraid of playing a role I won a lot of acclaim for? I said I would make the movie. I just couldn’t do it during those five weeks.”
So, is there still bad blood?
“Bad blood?” Lane says with aSnort. “Suddenly we’re in The Valachi Papers. Yeah, Terrence ‘He-Sleeps-with-the-Fishes’ McNally stopped talking to me.”
So that’s the bad news. The good news is that Lane has committed to Forum for a whole year. By the way, he doesn’t wear a toga—”I wear sort of a loose, baggy-pajama comic outfit, like what the fashionable slave would have worn back then,” he says. Meanwhile, Hollywood keeps turning up the heat.
So why does he look so pained?
“Worrying is really my hobby,” he says.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about From the Archives Fears of a Clown This appears to be a specific episode or segment that explores the cultural fear of clowns The FAQs are written in a natural conversational tone
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q What is From the Archives Fears of a Clown
A Its an episode or archival segment that digs into why so many people are afraid of clowns It likely uses old news clips interviews and historical footage to explain the phenomenon
Q Is this about a specific scary clown like the one from It
A Probably not just one clown It likely covers the whole history of clown fearfrom reallife creepy clowns to pop culture villains like Pennywise and even the 2016 creepy clown sightings
Q Why are people afraid of clowns
A Its called coulrophobia The main reasons are their exaggerated fixed smiles heavy makeup that masks identity and unpredictable sometimes aggressive behavior Plus movies and news stories have made them seem dangerous
Q Is this a scary episode
A Its an informational piece not a horror film But since it uses real archival footage of disturbing clown incidents and scary movie clips it might be unsettling for people who are already nervous around clowns
Q Where can I watchlisten to From the Archives Fears of a Clown
A That depends on the series It might be on a podcast platform a YouTube channel or part of a TV documentary series Check the shows official page or search the exact title
Intermediate Questions
Q Does the episode explain the 2016 creepy clown panic
A Most likely yes That was a major realworld event where people dressed as clowns to scare others leading to school lockdowns and arrests An archival show would definitely include news reports from that time
Q What kind of archives does it use