Actor David Huddleston: A Wonderful Life of Many Characters
by SANDRA KELLY

In mid-March, actor and Roanoke Valley native David Huddleston was in New York for most of a week shooting a scene for Mel Brooks’ upcoming movie, “The Producers.”

Thirty years ago, he appeared in Brooks’ movie, “Blazing Saddles.”

Approaching 75 - his birthday is Sept. 17— David finds himself in a blessed place for someone in show business.

“I just do whatever it is I want to do. I get offered a lot of things,” he said during an interview a few days before the New York shoot.

David is a graduate of Montvale High School, Fork Union Military Academy and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He has a long list of credits in film, television and stage, in acting as well as production, which began in the 1960s and have run non-stop since.

David has more than 70 film credits and almost 60 television appearances to his credit. He was nominated for an Emmy for his role in “The Wonder Years.” His credits include “The Big Lebowski” starring him and Jeff Bridges, made in 1998. Recent television credits include “The West Wing.”

He will be honored as a favorite son during the 2005 Blue Ridge-Southwest Virginia Vision Film Festival, April 14-16 in Roanoke. David will receive the John Payne Lifetime Achievement Award, named in honor of late actor and Roanoke native. Payne, who died in 1989, was a film and stage star from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Show business has been good to him, David said.

“It was something I wanted to do since I was very small. It’s a good life for me. I’ve shot in Africa, Italy, Israel, Mexico and England,” David said.

“I’ve never been a star, but that’s probably in my favor,” he said in that confident deep voice that carries a hint of the smile even during a telephone interview.

David loved his profession enough to say OK when his son Michael decided to go into the business. “I wasn’t going to encourage him, but I didn’t discourage him,” David said.

Prior to the New York shoot, David had visited his son and daughter-in-law, Michael Huddleston and Nancy Foster, who live in the old family home in Villamont off U.S. 460 near Roanoke. During the visit, David reunited with the few relatives remaining in the area, but he also picked up a bug and spent most of the time trying to recover for the “Producers” shoot.

Michael had an impressive list of show business credits, too, when he returned home three years ago to care for an ailing uncle. Michael had split his growing up days between his grandmother’s home in Villamont and his mother’s home in Los Angeles since his parents divorced when he was young.

Michael and Nancy stayed in the area after he inherited the family property, partly because she suffers from arthritis and will need surgery. Nancy worked in animation with Walt Disney and now conducts her business through the Internet.

Michael, a graduate of Liberty High School and the North Carolina School of the Arts and the American Academy in New York, said his father is his “hero.”

“I’ve always loved to see him on screen,” Michael said. “I’ve never seen him do anything bad.”

Michael especially liked David as Big Joe in “Bad Company,” a 1972 western starring Jeff Bridges, and as Santa Claus in the 1985 movie, “Santa Claus.”

David met his current wife, casting director Sarah Koeppe, when she cast him in the lead role in “Santa Claus.”

Asked if she and David clicked from that first meeting, Sarah said, “He made me laugh.”

She confesses she was also attracted to David’s ability to get tickets to “Death of a Salesman,” which was on Broadway at the time. David was in the show.

“When he offered me the ticket, however, he said it came with the stipulation that I have dinner with him after the show,” Sarah said from their home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. “That’s how it began.”

Sarah, a native of Tennessee, also has Virginia connections. She was a member of the founding staff of the Virginia Stage Company in the early 1980s in Norfolk. She also toured with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and even had an occurring bit part as a nurse on the “One Life to Live” soap opera.

“It would be hard to find me credited as a performer there,” she said. “I was usually fluffing pillows.”

The acting side of show business was not her first choice of involvement, Sarah said.

Sarah continues to work as a freelance casting director and also runs an antiques shop, Sarah’s Shop, near her home. The shop grew from a need to dispose of furniture from family estates and from the four different residences she and David had at one point.

Both had apartments in New York, he had a place in Los Angeles, and they had a home in Santa Fe, N.M. “It also gave me something to do when David is away,” Sarah said.

Show business has no normal schedules. Sarah refers to it as “feast or famine.” She and David spent last October in Italy. Two years ago, however, he was in Washington, D.C., playing Ben Franklin in “1776” at Ford Theatre, and she was back and forth visiting him.

During the time he was onstage in New York, she was casting films in Santa Fe.

The weekend before David traveled to Roanoke, the two of them had been in Santa Fe looking at property. They lived there for 12 years and plan to retire there in a couple of years.

“As we’ve gotten older, our life is getting a little quieter,” Sarah said. The couple has more time to spend with their Jack Russell terriers, Barney, Chloe and Minnie, which range in age from 2 to 14.

“I suppose I am kind of retired,” David said. In the next breath, however, he points out that someone has written a one-man show on Ben Franklin and wants him to star in it.

“We’ll see if they sell it,” David said.

Sandra Kelly is the editor of Prime Living.