HARE-BRAINED SCHEMES IN MOVIES AND ON STAGE, THE EVER-ENDURING 'HARVEY' JUST KEEPS GOING AND GOING ...

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

Let's face it: Jimmy Stewart couldn't have trademarked the lead role in `Harvey'' any more indelibly if he had requested that his tombstone be fashioned in the shape of rabbit ears. Even without popping the 1950 film into the VCR or DVD player, you can conjure up Stewart's tell-tale drawl saying, ``Dowd's my name. Elwood P. Here, let me give you one of my cards. Now if you should want to call me, use this number. This other one is the old number.''

Of course, signature roles are destined to be un-signaturized. So contends producer Don Gregory, who has seen Stewart play Dowd on screen and on the London stage and cast Harry Anderson, Charles Durning and John Travolta in the same role.

``Dick Van Dyke was our original thought,'' says the Newport Beach based Gregory, who is producing the Broadway-bound revival of ``Harvey'' opening this weekend at the Laguna Playhouse. ``He would have done it if we had stayed in L.A. We started looking around for other people. Durning had asked (director) Charles Nelson Reilly if he could play Dowd.

``That wasn't my idea of the right look for Dowd, but then I realized, 'What does that mean?' '' Gregory continues. ``As long as you're a good actor, you can play this. There's no description in the play of how old, how young, how thin or how fat he is.''

Durning, the two-time Oscar-nominated character actor, was originally cast as Dr. Chumley, the keeper of the mental institution where Dowd and his omnipresent companion - a 6-foot-tall rabbit named Harvey only he can see - nearly live out their days. Durning, 80, will never be mistaken for Travolta, who is attached to a new film version of ``Harvey'' that Gregory will produce for Miramax. And neither performer is much like Anderson, the arch magician and former ``Night Court'' stalwart who starred in a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie that Gregory produced in 1997.

That's a small screen and a stage ``Harvey'' with a feature film on the way. Think Gregory has a thing for Mary Chase's 1944 Pulitzer Prize winner about the gentlemanly Dowd who visits bars, dispenses cards and pals around with an invisible white rabbit?

Maybe just a little bit.

``I can't hope to qualify for the kind of way that Elwood Dowd lives his life. I've not had that epiphany yet,'' says Gregory, speaking, as he often does, as though Elwood P. Dowd were a real person. ``The basic value of 'Harvey' is love and hope and a simplicity that you just can't find in the cynical world we live in today.''

But you can, apparently, put it on stage. At a rehearsal space off the 5 freeway in Laguna Hills, ``Harvey's'' Charleses - star Durning and director Nelson Reilly - razz each other mercilessly during a rehearsal interview which, they promise, will morph into a three-hour lunch break. The production, which also stars Dick and Joyce Van Patten (as Chumley and Dowd's sister, Veta Simmons, respectively) plays through Aug. 31 and is scheduled to open at the Lyceum in mid-September.

Reilly talks almost nonstop, throwing in anecdotes about the personalities he has worked with during a career spanning more than six decades in show business. Durning often does straight-man duty, but lobs in a few zingers and off-color gags of his own.

``Will you get the hell in here! You're already 10 minutes late,'' says Durning.

To which Reilly retorts, ``You are casting a stone?''

The two men are longtime friends who have worked together on stage several times - most recently in a 1997 revival of ``The Gin Game,'' which starred another frequent Reilly collaborator, Julie Harris.

In the mid-1940s, a teenage Reilly ushered at the original Broadway production of ``Harvey,'' which starred comedian Frank Fay. Fay was, according to Reilly, who is very much prone to exaggeration, ``the funniest man I ever saw.''

``The laughter was amazing and I decided I had to learn how they did that,'' says Reilly, 72. ``Our set designer asked me what kind of a spin do I want to put on (the play). The spin is to try to bring it back and put it in an usher's eyes, to do the play like I saw it 50-some-odd years ago.''

Make that nearly 60 years ago. The original production opened in November 1944 and closed more than four years later. Stewart came in as a replacement Dowd in 1947 and never really gave up the role. He returned to Dowd in a Broadway revival in 1970, and also played Dowd on the stage in London.

And don't try to tell the ``Harvey'' creative team that Chase's play is a dated, folksy comedy about a lovable drunk. Elwood P. Dowd is not an alcoholic, insists Gregory.

``It's not a comedy,'' agrees Reilly. ``And with Mr. Durning in it, at times it's a tragedy. You can't categorize it. And Harvey is Jesus Christ, you know what I'm saying? It's not a funny play about a guy who has pink elephants. It's far deeper than that.''

``He doesn't think about pink elephants. He thinks about rabbits, and the rabbits are white,'' says Durning. ``And that's a racial slur, and I can't take it back.''

Reilly: ``You know, it's interesting, (Chase) didn't write anything about the war. It's the height of the second world war and she never mentions a thing.

Durning: ``No, she didn't. This was after we came out of a Holocaust and she never mentions it. Which is a good thing.''

The ``Harvey'' commitment may mean that some dozen films and TV projects will have to find someone other than Durning to take a role. But the Highland Falls, N.Y.-born actor, who has more than 130 film and TV roles since making his film debut in 1962, says that keeping his stage muscles limber is just as important.

``Most of the actors that I see today, they don't listen. Or they listen for their next line,'' says Durning, who last appeared on Broadway in a production of Gore Vidal's ``The Best Man'' in 2000. ``Most of them have never done stage or plays. You have to do stage. It's imperative.''

``It's like Esther Williams never going in the water or Lindbergh never going in the air,'' says Reilly. ``An actor must go on stage.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

HARVEY

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through Aug. 31.

Tickets: $55 to $62. [phone].

CAPTION(S):

8 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) RABBIT transit

`Harvey' keeps shuttling between stage and screen with different stars along for the ride

(2 -- cover -- color) CHARLES DURNING

(3 -- cover -- color) JOHN TRAVOLTA

(4 -- cover -- color) JAMES STEWART

(5) Director Charles Nelson Reilly lends an ear (or two) to his star, Charles Durning, who is playing Elwood P. Dowd in ``Harvey'' at the Laguna Playhouse.

(6) Joyce Van Patten, as Dowd's sister, and Charles Durning rehearse a scene from ``Harvey'' in Laguna Hills.

(7) Costume designer Noel Taylor, left, chats with Durning during a fitting. ``You have to do stage,'' says Durning, a veteran of 130 film and TV roles. ``It's imperative.''

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(8) James Stewart in ``Harvey.''