Jeanne Lehman French
I am very excited to be sharing an interview I had with the wonderful Jeanne Lehman French! Jeanne Lehman has had an exciting career spanning theatre, television, concerts, cabarets, and recordings. A couple of her most well-known Broadway roles include Mrs. Potts in Beauty And The Beast and Mother Abbess in The Sound Of Music. I first met Jeanne a few years ago when I was invited to attend the Beginnings Workshop with Peter Sklar where she taught voice. I was awestruck by the wealth of information she had to share. I quickly took up voice lessons with her and am very grateful to have her in my life! She is one of the most influential and inspirational people I have met and is a talented and strong woman whom I look up to and hope to follow in her footsteps!
Abby: How old were you when you began acting, singing, or dancing?
Jeanne: “I have been singing and dancing since I was a very little girl. I have a twin sister, we started dancing at age six; ballet and tap-and some jazz. From three years old Kathrine and I were singing, a lot. And at age eleven we began singing all over northern California. We were known as the Lehman Twins. I came from a very musical family. We all sang, my parents had beautiful voices, my brother had a beautiful tenor voice, and we all played instruments. So singing and dancing have been such an important part of my life that by the time I got into college I thought I’d become a psychologist but my career just kept unfolding!”
Abby: Tell me about your first audition.
Jeanne: “My very first audition I believe it was for a summer stock program in Pennsylvania-Barnesville, Pennsylvania. It was when I first came East. I had just arrived in New York. I auditioned for the ensemble because I had missed the principal call and I was hired on the spot. And a week later the producer called me and said his leading lady for the season had broken her ankle at an audition she’d been to and asked if I would be his leading lady for the season. So I was not only in that season but the next season and that’s what started my professional career in New York, summer stock theatre. But in school, I auditioned for ‘Bells are Ringing’ in high school and I auditioned for the lead, and this is what’s crazy about auditions, I didn’t get it because the man that got the role, (there’s only one man available for the role playing opposite my character) he was shorter than me and the director didn’t feel like we’d fit. Another lesson learned. However, I kept learning the role just for myself and the night before the opening, the dress rehearsal, in front of invited guests, the leading lady couldn’t do it. And nobody knew what we were going to do because we had this whole audience full of people and somebody said “Jeanne knows it! Let her do it!” so I did some with a script, with a book, but most of it I had known and at the end of the show we all gathered and somebody started playing piano and said sing ‘The Party’s Over’. I started to sing it and when I finished the director was in tears, the cast was, they all said ‘you should have had this role’. It was a strong lesson to learn because I had prepared for it, just for me! And it paid off and I have found that in my entire career.”
Abby: Have there been any times in your career where you were discouraged or felt like giving up?
Jeanne: “Never like giving up, but yes I’ve been discouraged. I’ve been discouraged when I didn’t get something I really wanted. That was one! But look what happened! I treasure what happened at the end of that story. The feeling I carried with me and knowing the director knew I could do it and I knew I could do it! And that was what was important about it. I did, another time in my career, I auditioned for a show on Broadway that would have been a huge step for me, but the star was really threatened because I did a really good audition, I was not always a good auditioner, that one I was because I had just been doing the role elsewhere so I knew it. I owned it, I felt it. And he felt a little threatened by that because he had never done a Broadway show. And also, I was very much like his daughter and we would have been opposite each other. So, that didn’t work. They hired somebody else. I was disappointed. Then the producers called me and said, “We really want you. We’re going to hold another audition. We’ve stopped negotiations on this other character. We want you to do it.” So I had another audition-same thing. I cried after that! I mourned it! Which we are allowed to do in this business! When something doesn’t work, mourn it! Let it out! Right? I cried! But the happy end to that story is that very week my life changed. My husband and I met and would have not married and I would not have had thirty years of an incredible marriage if I had gotten the show. So a year on Broadway or a thirty-year enchanted marriage, there’s your story.”
Abby: What are some highlights of your career?
Jeanne: “Highlights, there’s so many because I love what I do! The people- the best thing about the business is the people, the relationships, the people you work with. Which is not happening a lot today because everybody is busy on their phones or iPads but we have relationships. We talked. That’s been some of the happiest parts of being in show business for me. I loved playing so many roles -of course, Mrs.Potts. I loved being a teapot because the child in me got to play with the adult! And Mrs. Potts, the heart of the castle, she helps guide both Belle and the Beast which that part of me, my mother was in it, the same as in being Mother Abbess. Now I had been Maria earlier in my career and I loved that role because they’re both me- Mother Abbess and Maria because I sang all my life and my sister and I are very spiritual and come from a very faith-filled family. And I still am which is also why I love what I do so much and why there’s so much joy and why I’m so grateful. So playing Maria with so many different people and playing Mother Abbess and again everybody I respected, the women in my life were in that role being also the spiritual guide for someone. My Fair Lady was one of my favorite roles because of the journey Eliza takes. From the guttersnipe to the lady. And so many times I would not be cast in that because people didn’t think I could play the guttersnipe. But the director, Susan Schulman, who directed later Sound of Music on Broadway and Secret Garden, Susan had a star for that role at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, they had a star but she had to cancel at the last minute and the producer said audition, Jeanne Lehman. And Susan said ‘okay’ but she called me and said, ‘I don’t have to audition you, I think you can do it.’ One of my favorite roles to this day. Highlights- Carnegie Hall. I’ll never forget the first night I sang at Carnegie Hall. It was Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops and I sang with him for twelve years after that on and off at Carnegie Hall, tours, but I was able to do that because I stayed true to my talent. When everybody was telling me to belt, to scream, it’s more screamy today than when I was starting out when people were belting. I refused. I kept my voice in shape and because of that, I stepped into being able to sing concerts all over! All over the world! So I have highlights throughout my career. My first Broadway show, Irene with Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. That was exciting! That was thrilling! And I got that because the musical director liked me from one of the tours he brought me in and he had everybody sing around my voice. He knew what he was doing musically and he hired his ensemble around my voice. Then I went on to understudy both Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds in the role and went on. Those are highlights the times I went on as an understudy, they were the base of my career.