Emmy-winner John Lithgow has no need to quit his day job as High Commander Dick Solomon on “3rd Rock From the Sun.” But his heightened celebrity (God bless television!) has afforded the versatile character actor the opportunity to conquer other worlds. He is now making a splash as a children’s entertainer with “Singin’ in the Bathtub,” the latest release in Sony Wonder’s Family Artist Series.
“Bathtub” recalls a bygone era when stellar entertainers such as Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney made records for children. Recent Family Artist recordings include Tony Bennett’s Grammy-nominated “The Playground” and John Denver’s Grammy-winning “All Aboard!” The concept, Lithgow joked in a phone interview, “is to do albums that kids will love and their parents will tolerate,” or, he added, “love, too, in the best-case scenario.”
The repertoire is composed of “old-fashioned songs that I loved, or the kinds of songs that I loved as a kid,” he noted. “Growing up, there was always lots of music in my house. I loved brilliant songs with fantastic lyrics. It really is a ’30s, ’40s, ’50s thing.”
Lithgow pays homage to Kaye with two songs he popularized, “Inchworm” and the comical “Triplets” (“My sister and I used to perform it at parties,” he recalled). The recording also contains one of Bing Crosby’s signature tunes, “Swingin’ On a Star,” a Shirley Temple favorite, “At the Codfish Ball” and the jug-band novelty, “From the Indies To the Andes In His Undies.”
Several of the arrangements take their cue from the current swing craze. One of the lures of this project, he said, was the opportunity to front a 30-piece orchestra. “I was just snakebit,” he rhapsodized. “The thrill of singing some of these songs with a full orchestra was so great I practically levitated.”
He was also inspired to try his hand at songwriting. “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House,” which kicks off the recording, contains the tasty lyrics, “Have a salami, Tommy” and “Have a tomato, Plato.” Lithgow also fleshed out “Codfish Ball” with a verse that goes, in part, “The music’s hot, so the lox fox trot.”
“I’m extremely pleased with myself,” he said jovially.
Lithgow staged four concerts to gauge audience reaction in choosing which songs made the final cut. “We thought it was necessary to put these songs in front of an audience so that we would know which songs kids loved,” he said.
“So as you go from one number to the next, there is this good feeling that there are no numbers the kids would want to skip. Skipping to (a song) is acceptable.”
Performing for children is not alien territory for Lithgow. In 1990, he released the music video “John Lithgow’s Kid-Size Concert.” “But I’ve been doing it ever since my first baby was born,” he said. “In fact, I learned the guitar just to play for my own kids and then do concerts in their classrooms.
“It’s a lot of fun, but there is a certain missionary zeal to it. Kids need to be wonderfully entertained by people who understand what they like. I love Raffi, and we had all his records. I think it is a very specific sensitivity (to know) what delights kids. It’s important to provide them with that. There’s good stuff out there, but not enough.”
Putting his money where his heart is, Lithgow has created “The Paintbox Fund” to “dispense whatever money I make (from my children-related projects) to support the arts in education.”
The demands of “3rd Rock” (which “we will definitely do for at least another year,” he said) leave Lithgow with little time for side projects. His small, but pivotal, role as the judge who bedevils John Travolta in “A Civil Action” only required a couple of weeks of shooting. The “severe role,” he said, was “a reminder that I did indeed have a couple of serious bones in my body.”
He is currently “in the middle of weight loss” in preparation for his starring role as Don Quixote in a film to be broadcast on the TNT cable network.
So, no, he does not believe that he is in danger of no longer being taken seriously as a dramatic actor and typecast as over-the-top comic characters.
“People still ask me to do the most bizarre variety of roles,” he said. “In a way, `3rd Rock’ has only widened the horizon. Though it is for one specific thing, I’m a lot better known. `Don Quixote’ was my idea. I made one phone call, and it was virtually done.
“One thing character actors have is longevity. They’re used to changing their spots. That goes for liver spots as well.”
