Headed for new horizons

Someone's purse seems to be ringing and Bernadette Peters assumes it must be hers.

Peters's schedule is jam-packed with publicity appearances for her children's book, Broadway Barks, a touching story about a dog in need of a home, which comes with a CD of a lullaby she wrote.

The book, named after the annual event she started with Mary Tyler Moore to help shelter animals, is Peters's first — and her royalties will be donated to a charity organisation.

Peters, a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, couldn't have been happier to be back in Los Angeles, her home away from home. “I have some really good friends out here,'' she says.

“One girlfriend just moved to San Francisco but I have another who is like family to me, so I look forward to seeing her when I am out here.''

She could use the leeway. Life has been hectic even in a period that could gingerly be called “transitional''.

After starring as Rose in the 2003 Broadway revival of Gypsy — a role that brought her as much acclaim as angst — disaster hit. Her husband, Michael Wittenberg, was killed in a helicopter crash in 2005, and Peters, 60, says that the past few years have been “the hardest'' of her life.

“You realise that there is no such thing as time because that first year you don't even realise a year has gone by,'' she says.

“But what helped me was basically ... he would kill me if I didn't move forward. He gave me so much strength.''

Heartbreak and laughter — this two-time Tony winner is as well acquainted with both as any Chekhovian heroine.

Not just in her life but also in her art. For although she has long been the darling of American theatre, she acknowledges a history of what she calls “bombs'' — a word that comes with the giggle of a veteran trouper who has been at it since girlhood — and unexpected gaps.

Keeping skills in tune

Concert dates have kept Peters's song-and-patter skills sharp during this rough chapter, yet many of her fans are in need of a Broadway fix.

She is “talking'' about a return but doing eight shows a week is a commitment she doesn't take lightly. “You can't do anything else,'' she says.

“You have to take your day off and just recharge. Oh, it is a lovely experience when you are onstage. But everything leading up to it is about getting ready for the show, vocalising and exercising, not talking on the phone ... ,'' she says.

And although she might be known primarily as a Broadway baby, Peters had no choice but to branch out to TV and films, which have afforded her steady, if unspectacular, success since she decided to test the Hollywood waters in the early 1970s.

“I was doing Broadway and it was great, but it was a time when New York was in a slump. I remember I did Dames at Sea, and then when it was done for television, the part went to Ann-Margret, who I love.

"And I went, ‘Of course, it went to her. No one knows who I am. I need to go out to Los Angeles and get more exposure.'''

Peters was a guest on All in the Family and Maude, and she eventually had her own series, All's Fair, a short-lived sitcom in which she starred with Richard Crenna.

Of her TV work, Peters confesses to a fondness for The Carol Burnett Show. “I wasn't a regular but Carol would invite me on.

"She had come to see me in Dames at Sea and that was the beginning of her doing the takeoffs on films. ... We have a lovely history together.''

Two of Peters's biggest cinematic splashes were with her old flame Steve Martin: The Jerk (1979) and Pennies From Heaven (1981). Big back-to-back Hollywood breaks, however, haven't been the norm, and as she shruggingly admits, she has “never been able to get on that roll'',

She says she feels like “a working actress trying to do some good in the world'', which is her way of steering the conversation back to her book.

But surely she can give us a hint of what it is like to be a walking, talking Al Hirschfeld icon? “I don't like to think about my ego as much; it makes me uncomfortable,'' she says.

“Right now I'm focusing on making people aware of how beautiful animals are in our lives. How healing they can be.

"When I went to the pound and saw the pets there and how overcrowded they were ... '' Peters sombrely trails off to praise Oprah Winfrey for bringing exposure to puppy mills: “It was amazing. She said: ‘I will never buy a dog again. I will always adopt.'''

Moore was the star, however, who sparked Peters's activist streak.

“We did a film for television, The Last Best Year, where Mary helped me die,'' Peters recalls.

“We became friends and I got to know about her love of animals.''

After Peters saw that she had a knack for raising money during the 1999 Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun, the two joined forces to host a benefit programme for shelter animals in New York's theatre district.

The popular Broadway Barks, bolstered by Peters's bestselling children's book and featuring a star-studded adopt-a-thon, is now in its tenth year.

As for her prospects, Peters has acquired something of a laissez faire attitude.

“The way I think life works is that things are put in your path,'' she says. “Work was put in my path, shows were put in my path, and now this.

If you told me three years ago that I was going to write a children's book. ... I love children but why would I do that? And write a lullaby? I have too much respect for composers.''

Tough as things have been, Peters can't help radiating a musical theatre glow as she ponders these welcome surprises.