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TV BECK

Crystal feels ucky after 'Soap,' film

HOLLYWOOD Unlike his "Soap" -stars, Katherine Helmond and Robert Tuillaume, Billy Crystal doesn't have an mpressive background of Broadway apearances and Tony nominations.

But for the actor-standup comedian, \BC's "Soap" and the recently released ilm, "Rabbit Test," promise to be the tart of something big.

"I'm doing fine," says Crystal, 29, lad in V-necked sweater and jeans. 'There's still a lot I want to do. I have to have that sense of being in control, of creating something out of nothing. Of tak ng six minutes and making them funny and sad, making people feel better about hemselves. It sounds like a cliche, but I ike making people happy.

"I've been lucky," he says, adjusting he tweed cap framing his boyish face. The performers I've toured with have >een hot at the time: Melissa Manchester, 4-The Plain Dealer, Sunday, April 2, 1978

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George Benson, Neil Sedaka. I played Tahoe last year with Barry Manilow, my first legitimate concert date. By legitimate," he says drolly, "I mean the audience wore leisure suits. Really, I've been fortunate to have been with good acts, because I feel strongly that what I do is in good taste."

He feels particularly fortunate because the long hard climb is not so far behind. The youngest of three sons of the late jazz-concert producer Jack Crystal, Billy got to West Virginia's Marshall University on a baseball scholarship, but chose to study drama. He sharpened his acting skills for three summers with the Alumni Theater Group, earned a TV and film directing degree from New York University, performed at more than 75 colleges with two friends billed as "3's Company" and in 1975 headed out on his own as an opening comic act for rock bands.

"I had some experiences with rock bands." Billy lets out a sort of snortchuckle. "My God! What I did for $125 a night. Three years ago, while living in New York, I was offered a job in Baltimore to open for the group Sha Na Na. So I drove all the way there alone, a fourand-a-half hour trip, and when I arrived At seven for an 8:30 show I discovered it was a theater in the round. I'd never done that, I had no idea what performing on a

Billy Crystal

round stage was about,” recalls Billy with a shrug.

"But I got up on stage and rehearsed until I felt like I could handle it pretty well. When it came time for the show to start, and I was waiting to go on, the announcer said, 'No smoking,' and the crowd yelled, 'Boo!' Then, No flashbulbs.’ The crowd let out another 'Boo!" Then the audience found out that to start the show vaid váan hežu ja ikiş

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they had a comedian. What comedian? They had come to see Sha Na Na they'd even come dressed in '50s clothes because it's a '50s type band. They'd never heard of me. I'd not been TV, anything at all. So they shouted, 'Boo!' even louder. I felt like a Christian with the lions.

"Rude?" snickers Billy. "They were unbelievable. I got up on stage and took the biggest bows possible, broke the ice a little and proceeded to do the best 30 minutes I'd ever done in my life. They gave me a standing ovation! And I took my check and ran."

He smiles, brown eyes gleaming. "On the way home, I listened to the tape of my performance, I record all of mine, and I couldn't believe how good it turned out. I floated all the way home."

If not for purely sentimental reasons, then as a reminder of what's on the downhill side of a career peak, Billy still drives the 1971 Volkswagen, now with 90,000 miles, which has carried him, wife, Janice, and daughters, Jenny and Lindsay, from one gig to another to his berth as "Soap's" homosexual Jodie Dallas,

"Sure, I can get tired of having people ask if I'm gay, since Jodie is. But to tell you the truth, because they ask means I'm doing a good acting job. I've always tried to play Jodie with subtleness."Parame