Email from C.C. Courtney to Bob Walker
on August 12, 2002:

Hey Bob!

Man, what a surprise. A friend called me to come look at the computer. (She's always looking up stuff about me on there for the fun of it.) There was your site and you were talking to Ann in Texas telling her that maybe I would write. Well, here I am. And there you are.

What are you up to these days? Besides running a cool website.

Well, there was some fact and some fiction in your rumors about my existence since I first left N.O. I came to New York to become an actor and, thankfully, was quite successful. I did The Doctors, the number two soap opera at the time for a while. I did most of the major TV shows shooting in NYC, like NYPD, and a couple of movies. I also did Broadway and Off-Broadway stage acting.

But it was writing that got to me. I wrote plays for Broadway and Off-Broadway with some success. Then I realized---here I was writing, telling people how to live their lives, while there was so much I did not know. So I left New York and moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where I got married and had two kids, a boy and a girl. And beleve me I learned a lot.

There was one period in there when Buzz Bennett called me and begged me to come to N.O. and help him win the radio ratings. I was so glad to get back to N.O. that I jumped at the chance. But as you said, that was an unfortunate experience. AM radio was giving way to FM and the WNOE AM tower was falling down and had a very weak signal. We still won the ratings a couple of times before it all fell apart.

Then I ended up with my kids by myself. I went back to my place in Virginia. And then I learned even more. When they got up in age, I moved to Richmond where they could get a good education and learn something about city life. Meanwhile, I went back to college and got a Masters degree.

Then I went with a gentleman from the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and helped him establish a theatre company in Louisiana. Swine Palace it's called. For that I got another Masters degree.

Then I moved to Costa Rica. I was actually interested in Cuba, thinking that when relations were finally returned to normal somebody was going to make a lot of money.

While I was there the acting school I had attended in New York got in contact with me and asked me if I would come teaching acting up there. The Neighborhood Playhouse is the best in the country, producing such stars as Joanne Woodward, Steve McQueen, and Robert Duvall among the hundreds of older ones, and Allison Janney from West Wing and Mary Steenburgen and Dylan McDermott from the Practice and hundreds of others from today's actors. Pretty good for a school that only graduates 25 per year.

Well, to make a long story almost short, I came up here to teach. I didn't think I would particularly like it, but like N.O. I love NYC. But I can tell you I love it. I love teaching acting. I feel that, except for my children, it is the most important thing I have ever done in my life. At last all the dropping careers and moving around are over.

You know, N.O. in the 60s has meant so much to me. I learned so much about life and a ton about show business. Years later when I was doing well as an actor, had an extremely popular soap character and caused the Illinois State Fair to come to a screeching halt when another soap actor and I went out to make an appearance there, it didn't mean that much to me. I had had better experiences in N.O.

When my picture was on the covers of 16 and Teen and other teen magazines, it wasn't as important to me as having my picture in high school newspapers in N.O. I guess the time in N.O. helped me face success in New York with a sense of humility and realize that that was not what I wanted. It had been more fun in N.O. when it was more personal. And I was doing no good for anybody or the world as an actor whereas in N.O. we were doing some good for the world in the 60s. The world was changing big time and we were playing the soundtrack. And we could choose it in those days, it wasn't chosen for the jocks like it is now. I loved it.

Congrats on you mag. I published one too for a couple of years. You remember it---FRED. I learned a lot there too.

Acting training is a life changing experience. I take in 25 students in September and turn out 25 or so totally different people in May. There are three first year classes at The Neighborhood Playhouse. So out of the 75 first year students only 25 or so are invited back for the second year. The students have to take speech, dance, singing and stage combat as well as acting. It is the oldest acting school in the U.S. And I love it.

Again, thanks for your kindness. Please say hello to Ann from Texas for me and you can give her my email address if you are in touch with her.

CC

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