Harvey Fierstein: No longer an activist

(CBS News) Harvey Fierstein is up tonight for what could be his fifth Tony at the annual awards ceremony here on CBS. Richard Schlesinger of "48 Hours" found Fierstein at his favorite haunt . . . on Broadway:

These days it's not easy for Harvey Fierstein to make his way through the crowded Theatre District. He has two hits playing nearby: "Newsies," which won a Tony last year; and "Kinky Boots," which is up for a slew of them tonight.

If you don't know him Harvey Fierstein by sight, you know him by sound. His VOICE was once compared to "a deep-throated jazz diva who has just tossed back a double-bourbon."

"One of my favorites was 'a sixth grader in shop class learning to use a rasp,'" Fierstein said.

"I mean, at very least, I'm the guy with the voice, you know? Then hopefully, I'm the guy who's really funny with the voice. And then the guy who can not only do comedy, but can do tragedy as well with the voice. And the guy that can really command a stage with the voice."

He comes by the voice naturally.

"I have double cords. We all have double cords. You have your real vocal cord, and then you have the false cord over. My false cords are over-developed. And so a 'double voice' is actually what you hear."

Fierstein's voice has served him well, first on stage, then in film, then on a soapbox. It is a career that began improbably.

"I was a soprano in a professional boys choir before my voice changed," he told Schlesinger. "Boy, did that voice change.

Of course, it's not just the tenor of the one-time soprano's voice that has allowed Harvey Fierstein to be heard so loudly and clearly. It's the messages that he delivers.

His script for "Kinky Boots" has earned him his latest Tony nomination. It's based on a true story and adapted from a British film.

In a nutshell: Boy meets girl . . . girl turns out to be boy, and together they save their world, a shoe factory, threatened with bankruptcy until its new owner decides to make Kinky Boots for transvestites.

Fierstein focused on the relationship between Charlie, the down-on-his-luck shoe manufacturer, and Lola, the over-the-top transvestite.

"These two people who couldn't be more different from each other meet up," he said, "and end up, not quite friends until the very end, but end up in each other's lives. They help each other and they complement each other."

Fierstein isn't in "Kinky Boots," but his footprints are all over it. He started a collaboration with pop star Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the music for the show, even though she had never written anything for Broadway before. Now she's up for a Tony, too.

"I was having a good time," Lauper said. "Even when it was a struggle, I would call him constantly. I left stuff on [his] answering machine all the time. I sang to him all the time."

"My favorite," said Fierstein, "was, she sang me a line of song. But all I could hear was the hair dryer. You were gettin' your hair done. And you were singing something to me."

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, I had to keep working!"

The work paid off. "Kinky Boots" has been sold out since it opened. And if Fierstein wins a Tony this year, it will be his fifth.

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He's won in every major category, starting in 1983 when he won two, for writing and acting in "Torch Song Trilogy," his masterpiece about the complicated life and loves of a familiar Fierstein favorite, a transvestite.

Critics said "Torch Song Trilogy" had the first gay character who was portrayed as something more than a silly, mincing stereotype.

"Do you have any sense at all, or do you even believe, that you've had a role in sort of the evolution of the way gay people are portrayed in theater and on television and in show business?" Schlesinger asked.

"I don't have an actual picture of that, no," he replied. "I know I'm part of it. Obviously, I'm part of it. Because I know when I went on 'The Tonight Show' and talked about being gay with Johnny Carson, he didn't seem to know a lot of other people that had done that before."

The next year, he won for writing "La Cage Aux Folles," the wildly successful story of two gay men facing a crisis in their relationship. The reaction to the show seemed to surprise him. He told The New York Times in 1987, "It's still quite extraordinary to realize that all those people from Westchester are cheering wildly for two gay men on stage."

"That was a jump, that was a real leap," Fierstein said, "because we'd never seen a love song between two men."

His fourth Tony was for what was perhaps his best-known Broadway role and, once again, he played it in a dress: Edna Turnblad, the overstuffed and slightly overbearing female lead in "Hairspray."

"So what is it about you and drag?" asked Schlesinger.

"Fate," he laughed. "Fate. I was aware of being gay [at a] very early age. And I had no role models at all. I mean, and I'm not trying to cop out. There wasn't no role models in the '50s for a gay kid growing up -- not anymore, thank goodness, but back when I was growing up, asked all these questions and there was no good answers. So you had to make up ones of your own. For me, I guess on some level, there was the identity with the feminine."

And it was drag that lifted his career beyond Broadway. His role in "Mrs. Doubtfire" made Harvey Fierstein a household name for millions of moviegoers.

Fierstein has done as much in show business as anyone could hope for, but his career almost ended in the years before "Hairspray." It was in the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic.

"Well, I lost almost everyone I loved," he said. "I mean, I lost lovers. I lost friends. I mean, just from the cast of 'Torch Song,' I think we lost four or five people. From the cast of 'La Cage,' a few people. I had the ashes of three or four friends buried in my backyard. And it was all-consuming, 'cause constantly you're either trying to raise money or you're trying to raise awareness. You were trying to teach safe sex or find out what actually is going on."

He wrote a series of three short plays he combined together in a work called "Safe Sex," talking about life and love in the age of AIDS -- and then stopped writing for the theatre.

Stopped acting, stopped pretty much everything, except drinking.

"How did you come out of that period in your life, where you were drinking and not writing?" Schlesinger asked.

"I almost died. That's how you come out of those periods," Fierstein replied. "You hit bottom. And then you say, 'Okay, my choices led me here. I can no longer be in charge. I'm not good at this.'"

With the help of a 12-step program he emerged with a new role off-stage, under a political spotlight. He became an activist, speaking passionately about AIDS prevention and gay rights.

"In 30 years, two people have been cured of AIDS," Fierstein said. "And that's always been my struggle -- I want to support people with AIDS. I want to support them with all my heart and say, 'We'll do whatever we have to do for you and take care of you.' But at the same time, I don't want anyone else becoming infected."

And while he is still active today, he no longer considers himself an activist.

"Artistic, I think. I used to call myself an activist. I used to think of myself as an activist, until I realized I didn't get anything done. I wasn't getting anything done. At some point, you stop calling yourself a chef when you never put the food on the table. At some point, you gotta put the food on the table.

"And I never got anything done, you know? I did have some effect on some stuff, maybe. But, you know, I never got dinner on the table. So cut that off the list, Mary."

"But you got a lot of stuff on stage," said Schlesinger.

"But I, yeah, a lot of stuff on stage."

And that's why he has to stop so much when he's walking around the theatre district. He's lucky that way. Everyone has a tough time getting to Broadway. But only a few are successful enough to have a tough time getting around Broadway.

For more info:

• "Kinky Boots" (Official site)
• Harvey Fierstein on Facebook
• "Newsies" (Official site)
• Harvey Fierstein's blog on The Huffington Post