Andrew Leeds likes to be busy.
His professional resume is eclectic enough. It includes acting since the age of eight, writing TV pilots and other scripts with a couple of partners, directing his sister’s 2025 screenplay, “Bulldozer,” and moving easily from television to stage, from in front of the camera to behind the scenes.
Heck, when Leeds is not occupying himself with the creative arts, he says he likes to bake cookies and put together furniture.
He sounds unstoppable!
Although he’s played a significant role in several series, television audiences will recognize Leeds most as the recurring computer genius, Christopher Pelant, who manipulates victims to their deaths, in “Bones.”
He also played Henry Winkler’s son on “Barry” and Zoey’s brother on “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.”
Recently having moved back to New York from Los Angeles, Leeds is also making a return of sorts to musical theater as the male lead, George, in the 1964 musical, “She Loves Me,” at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse from Friday to Sept. 14.
‘She Loves Me” happens to be my single favorite musical of all time. Its plot derives from the 1940 James Stewart-Margaret Sullavan movie, “The Shop Around the Corner,” in which two strangers who are ardently in love with each other as “lonely hearts” pen pals can’t stand each other as colleagues at the Budapest parfumerie in which they work.
I say “return of sorts” because Leeds began in the musical theater at age 8 in his hometown, Clearwater, Fla., and had the gumption to act if he could follow a Broadway-boundproduction in which he was cast as local understudy, to New York.
The answer was yes, and Leeds has worked in some aspect of entertainment ever since.
The writing, which includes a TV pilot that won a reality show contest for best script, directing, and all else is the product of a general restlessness that finds Leeds always doingsomething.
“So much of acting is determined by what is available to you,” Leeds says by telephone from New York during a break from “She Loves Me” rehearsals.
“You can wait around until the next time you’re asked to do a part or get cast for one, or you can do a lot of different things.
“I tend to be creative, so when I’m not acting, writing or even making furniture fills my time. I just figure I’ll ride whatever horse is available to me in the direction it’s going. If thatmeans doing a part, great! If it means completing an script and getting a pilot made, that’s fine too.
“I know it sounds weird, but that has been the way my life works.”
Leeds also benefits from not being shy about asking for what he wants.
His parents enrolled him in theater classes because he was shy. Leeds shares a story about he and “She Loves Me” co-star Elena Shadow comparing childhoods and how they got started in acting.
“Elena said she was so shy she was always hiding behind her mother’s leg, and I said I’ve been telling that same story, using that same phrase, my whole life.”
At age 8, Leeds saw an ad asking for a local child to understudy one of the Roosevelt children in a pre-Broadway production of “Teddy and Alice.” Leeds got the job although he said he prayed he’d never go on because he didn’t know a line of dialogue or song lyric.
Nevertheless, he asked to go with the show in New York, sang an audition song in Clearwater, and was accepted. It led to other child parts in Broadway shows.
Television and movies seems a logical place to go, so he rode his proverbial horse in that direction.
“I’ve worked hard, and I keep busy, but I would say luck also has something to do with my career,” Leeds says.
“My part on ‘Bones’ for instance was supposed to be a one-off, two episodes at most. The character became popular with the audience and useful for plots, so I kept being brought back.
“In the case of ‘She Loves Me,’ I’ve been a fan of the show since seeing Boyd Gaines in it on Broadway in 1994. When I moved back to New York and did some theater, including at Steppenwolf in Chicago, a place I always wanted to work, I read that Bucks County Playhouse was doing a production of ‘She Loves Me.’ I wanted to play George. I let my agent know, and all worked out.
“Luck again! In rehearsal, I’m finding so much in the character, and this cast assembled by Denis Jones, who I’ve known and who I wanted to work with, is so terrific, I spend time that I’m not personally needed and can be doing anything I want at rehearsal so I can watch them work and build their characters.”
Leeds says he is definitely an actor before all else, but his college roommate, David Lampson, he adds, is a “wonderful writer.”
“He wanted to partner to work on a script for a reality series that was being produced by Sean Hayes. As you advanced, you’d have the chance to make your pilot. David and I won. We made our pilot. It didn’t go anywhere, and offered the smallest prize in reality television, but we won.”
In the last couple of years, Leeds’ sister, Joanna Leeds, put together a comedy script based on her experiences as a actress.
She asked Andrew to direct. He did, and their film, “Bulldozer,” starring Joanna has been getting attention at 2025 movie festivals.
So, busy Andrew Leeds always finds something to do. Including, when he’s not involved in or guesting in a TV series, being part of the respected improvisational troupe, The Groundlings.
Familiar voices
Scott Graham’s voice, one of the most recognizable in broadcasting, is heard everywhere from commercials to narrations and various hosting gigs, one of the most regular being his emcee position for evening football games on Westwood One.
Philadelphia is where Graham’s voice and presence first gained prominence, so it was good to hear him calling play-by-play Thursday as the Super Bowl LIX champion Philadelphia Eagles played their first season game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
In the booth with Graham, was another announcer associated with Philadelphia, former NFL offensive lineman Ross Tucker.
The Eagles won decisively, even though the Bengals played their stars in the game’s first quarter.
Graham and Tucker called the game on Channel 10, which is the home of Eagles pre-season football.
The next game is set for 1 p.m. Saturday vs. Ohio’s other team, the Cleveland Browns, with whom the Eagles are conducting some combined practices this week. It too airs on Channel 10, with Graham and Tucker again at the helm.
Merrill Reese and Mike Quick handle radio announcing duties on WIP (94.1 FM).
Tennis, anyone? Not much
No one was expecting Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic.
From the talk among Joe DeCamara and Jack Fritz’s colleagues at WIP (94.1 FM), neither challenger was fit for the tennis round, the third in five-part sports competition the hosts from rival WIP shows began last month.
Tennis between DeCamara and Fritz became such a joke, both participants seems grateful when their first scheduled match was postponed because of extreme heat.
On Wednesday, the hastily arranged game took place at South Philadelphia’s FDR Park, and all trepidation about the match seemed warranted.
From hearing midday hosts Joe Giglio and Hugh Douglas describe what they were seeing in real time on inner-office video, Joe DeCamara looked about as graceful as a court comedian hired to mock the game of tennis.
Jack Fritz was worse. A lot worse.
He many have practiced a few times with a buddy, as he told micmates Ike Reese and Spike Eskin, but he made DeCamara look almost adept.
The lumbering, hacking, perspiring, and overall travesty continued until a complete set was won.
The victor was the morning show’s DeCamara, who took six game out of seven. This puts him ahead in the contest. 2-1.
DeCamara previously eked out a win in the golf round. Fritz trounced DeCamara in the baseball round.
Next come running and basketball. Neither has a scheduled date, per ‘IP’s website.
Fritz may be favored in both of those. But if DeCamara manages to outrun Fritz …
Stay tuned.
A premonition?
Phillies play-by-play announcer Scott Franzke surveys the situation: Phillies down by two runs with two out in the third inning, one man on, and Kyle Schwarber at the plate.
Franzke ends some pattern with color analyst Larry Andersen by saying, “I’m feeling some tie-breaking vibes.”
“You calling it?” Andersen asks with some surprise in his tone.
Franske’s usually the cautious one, waiting to call a game rather than predict, while Andersen is the one who takes flying leaps with “vibes.”
Before Franzke can grunt his assent, he’s telling the WIP (94.1 FM) audience how Schwarber drilled a rocket to the upper deck seats in left field for home run No. 39. He would hit his 40th home run of the season later in the game.
Good going, Scott. Shows the benefit of being sparing with your prophecies.
Passing of Loni Anderson and Jane Morgan
Loni Anderson, the lone female regular on the late ’70s sitcom, “WKRP in Cincinnati,” albeit as the radio station’s receptionist, passed away last week at age 79, two days before what would have been her 80th birthday.
Anderson received Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her role.
Besides acting, she was known as the girlfriend, and later wife, of the actor Burt Reynolds.
Anderson was divorced from Reynolds in 1994. At the time of her death, she was married to Bob Flick, a member of the ’50s singing group, The Brothers Four.
One of the first stars I saw on a Broadway stage, Jane Morgan, also passed away last week at age 101.
Morgan was a popular singer and recording star whose big hit was “Fascination” in 1957. Besides being seen frequently on television, she also appeared regularly in night clubs.
My favorite movie of all time is “Auntie Mame.”
In 1968, at age 17, I finally got the gumption to head to New York, solo if I had to, and see Broadway shows. The musical, “Mame,” seen in December of that year, was one of the first.
Jane Morgan was the third actress to play the leading role, following originator Angela Lansbury and Janis Paige. I remember to this day her thrilling version of “If He Walked Into My Life.”
Movie not close to super
“Superman,” the current movie version, I say here and now with no compunction to give it the benefit of the doubt, is total trash.
I disliked it from Scene One and found it more tedious as it went along.
There are some interesting premises and a decent scene or two, but in general James Gunn’s film, succumbs to what mars so much of 21st century art.
Cool ideas that stay cool ideas and never build to any texture or importance beyond their utilitarian use within a plot.
The problem with these cool ideas is no one, Gunn in particular, ever things to takes his thoughts or ramification past the superficial.
“Superman” is also full of another 21st century bane: moralism.
About the only thing I found fun in the movie was its sendup of today’s sycophantic, hypocritical TV news industry, that follows fashions and tries to guess about heroes instead of digger deeper from what an “influencer” plants.
The trouble is I don’t know if Gunn meant to make fun of TV news folk or just stumbled into it.
Acting is another area in which Gunn’s “Superman” is deficient.
Thank goodness Nicholas Hoult (Czar Peter III in “The Great”), who plays Lex Luthor with wit and swagger, and Nathan Fillion (“Castle,” “The Rookie”), who plays a doltish Green Lantern bother to do some.
