To theatergoers Elizabeth Franz is probably a recognizable face and name.  She gained fame when she originated the title role of Sister Mary Ignatius in Christopher Durang'sSister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1979 and again in 1981. In 1999 she won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Linda Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman opposite Brian Dennehy.  For the rest of you, it shouldn’t matter if you are familiar with this acclaimed actress because what’s important is that she is a true animal lover who says her dogs are “taken care of better than we are.  Our time is scheduled around them.”  And she’s not kidding!!     

 For the last few months Elizabeth Franz has been gracing the stage at The Ahmanson Theater in a revival of Morning’s At Seven, Paul Osborn’s heartwarming comedy about life in a small Midwestern town in 1939.  Featuring an all-star cast,Morning’s At Seven is about the extended family of four maturing sisters. Elizabeth portrays Arry, the youngest of the sisters, and like her stage alter ego, she, too, grew up with three older sisters in a small Ohio town.  But her household also included an array of animals.

 She had a Boston bulldog named Buster, a cat, and later two puppies. Unfortunately, these little creatures all met untimely deaths. “They were all killed by our neighbor,” Elizabeth explains.  “I was 11 when the dog was shot.  The next year we got twin puppies, Pete and Repete, who were poisoned by the neighbor. It was horrifying.  We finally did something about it, because he threw one of our chickens in my mother’s face when she was recuperating from surgery.  He was a very ill man. We had to rush her to the hospital, and that’s when, finally, the police were able to do something.” 

 She also had chickens, which she considered to be her pets. Her favorite was named Cynthia, who would come in the house and follow her around.  “Chickens really do have personalities,” she continues, “and they mow the lawn for you.  They were great fun. But my grandparents were Yugoslavian, so the chickens were eventually all killed and eaten. They thought I was a tremendous wimp, so they made me watch the slaughter of the chickens, which was not pleasant. I became a vegetarian because of it. Even though I didn’t remain a vegetarian, that made a big impression on me.”

 These days Elizabeth’s canine companions include Chloe, an 11-year old golden retriever and Mabel, a border collie/shepherd mix she thinks is 8.  “Chloe was the runt of a litter whose owners wanted to give her away because she was so tiny.  She’s really beautiful, with a pink nose instead of a black nose.  It’s really cute.”

 “We found Mabel in the desert, and she’s just the greatest dog.  You wonder about survivors… that they might have issues or aggressiveness.  Not Mabel, who’s always there with the biggest smile on her face.  She also loves to swim and is a great diver.  She dives right in the water, all the way down and then comes up.  She’s just incredible.”

 But Elizabeth’s favorite dog was Max, a 100-pound German shepherd whom she lost recently.  “He was the greatest pet of my life.  He went everywhere with me.  I got him a year before my husband passed away.  We had three dogs, and now I still have the two dogs, but Max was really my dog.  He was 12 when he died.  The loss is equal to a human being, even more somehow, because the loyalty is so extraordinary.  We had to put him down because he wasn’t eating, he couldn’t walk and his back had given out.  Afterward I said that I wished they could do this to human beings.  It’s so humane.  To be held by the person that loves you the most and just take a long, deep breath. It was that sigh… like, “oh, now I don’t have to fight anymore.  I don’t have to hurt anymore.””

 With a career that has her playing the boards from Broadway to LA, Elizabeth finds herself frequently travelling back and forth between coasts.  And the dogs are always with her.  “We don’t fly anymore across the country because the dogs don’t like it.  Max loved to fly, because he did it since he was a puppy.  But the other ones do NOT like it at all.  So we always drive. And we don’t stay anywhere that isn’t pet friendly.”

 When planning a drive cross-country, Elizabeth does a lot of research.  “Triple A has a Travelling With Your Pet book which is just super, so we call ahead to see just what these places allow.  There’s a new chain called Monaco that’s all across the country.  They take old buildings and turn them into wonderful grand hotels, and they allow pets. We stay at the one in Chicago, and they have hotels in Salt Lake City, and New Orleans… they’re all over the country.”

 “We try to see cities that we haven’t spent a long time in, and the dogs love travelling, so they don’t mind this at all.  They go everywhere with us.  If we go exploring they’re always on the leash with us.  We visit cities that we are interested in.  And the man I’m with, Chris, loves restaurants and food.  So we look up restaurants that we want to visit and then we find the hotels.  Sometimes we’ll spend 2-3 days in a city, and then to get to another city we stay overnight in another place. This time it took us 12 days to get to LA because we had several places we wanted to visit.”

 As a seasoned traveler with her dogs, Elizabeth has some great tips to share. “Water is very important.  If you take water from where they have been and integrate it with the water where they are, make it half and half, then they won’t get the diarrhea and the stomach upset that they sometimes get when changing locations.  We always have jugs of water with half the water of the city we’re in and half from where we were.”

 “We also cook for our dogs,” she continues, “because Max had so many allergies. We have cottage cheese, eggs and fish that we mix with their kibble, and they have the greatest coats in the world.  We take a cooler so the food lasts about 3 days. Then we find a microwave somewhere and make up a new batch.”

 “I also always take blankets so the dogs can be on the furniture, which I always tell the hotel about.  Many of the hotels offer blankets, which they call dog spreads. There’s a place in Mendocino in northern California where we stay that loves animals.  In fact they have llamas and sheep and everything wandering all over the place, and they have dogs and cats in and out of all the restaurants.  It’s called The Stanford Inn.  They have a bowl for each dog with their name on it, and they’ve got blankets that you can put on the furniture.  It’s just heavenly.  They had a bowl for Max, too, and were so upset they sent a condolence card when they found out I lost Max.”

 Whatever city Elizabeth Franz spends time in, she tries to establish dog parks.  “I’ve done that in a number of cities, including Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Boston.  First you find the parks, and then you find an end of a park and go to the City Council people and request a dog park for specific hours, asking if there is a way to fence off a little area.  Then you involve other dog people who bring posts and fences… and with everyone chipping in you make a little area for dogs.”

 “We use a number of dog parks here in LA… we just found a new, huge dog park in Brentwood that’s wonderful… but it’s just horrifying that you can’t go on the beach with your dog here.  For Christmas we’re going to Santa Barbara where we’ll stay at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort which, of course, allows dogs. And it’s right on the beach.  All the beaches up there are open to dogs.”

 As a bi-coastal person who spends a lot of time in both New York City and Los Angeles, Elizabeth has some interesting observations about the differences of living in each city with dogs.  “I find LA tougher for animals because they are so restricted.  In New York everybody has an animal.  Everybody has dogs.  I had a 4-bedroom apartment when I was doing this show back there that was by Central Park.  And all of Central Park is open to dogs.  They’re all friendly and they just have the best time.  It’s hard in LA because people are so private with their space.  They don’t like you to see all the signs that say to keep your pets off the grass. It’s more difficult because you want to obey the signs but you’re restricted.  We have a huge apartment in Santa Monica and a big house on 28 acres in Connecticut.  When I retire it will be full of animals.”

 For the last four years, Elizabeth has participated inBroadway Barks, an event started by Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters in 1999 that features Broadway actors helping to find homes for abandoned animals. Twenty-one shelters from across New York City participated, and over three dozen animals were adopted as thousands of theater-goers walked away with information about pet neutering and the benefits of shelter adoption.

 “It’s very tough,” explains Elizabeth, “because dogs that aren’t used to other dogs or large crowds get so frightened. They really need people that aren’t afraid to hold them… and who can recognize that if the animal is getting too frightened it has to be taken away, cuddled and pampered, and then brought back on the stage. You have to walk through the streets with thousands of people who are mostly there to see the stars and not, necessarily, the animals. I kept up with the two dogs that I had presented because they were high maintenance dogs.  They were older and one was a pit bull that a lot of people were afraid of, but we did get them placed.  I followed up on that.” 

 As a long time devotee to animals, Elizabeth has concluded that there are many people who should not have pets.  “You have to train yourself.  It’s not the animal that has to be trained, it’s you, yourself, that you have to train to learn how to be the best parent there is.  It’s like a child.  You have to listen to the animals and know what they need.  They will tell you.  Just look in their eyes.  Look at their smile.  Be aware when they’re not smiling.  They tell you everything that they need to make them happy.”

 “They’ll tell you when they need to go out.  When they need a walk. When they want to play. They’ll tell you when they want to cuddle up to you, and that they need loving because they don’t feel so well. And they will also tell you that it’s time.”

 “Max told me when he had to go,” Elizabeth remembers. “He said, “it’s time.”  They will tell you “I’m tired, Mom.  It’s time to let me go.”” 

 “When my husband died I was in such great mourning, and I can’t tell you what a comfort Max was.  He was everywhere.  He followed me around.  He was never allowed on the furniture but he jumped up on the bed.  And he was a huge German shepherd.  He jumped up and he lay down next to me, and I was sobbing so hard, but he just put his head on my lap so I could pet him.  It was so extraordinary.  They tell you everything. All you have to do is listen.”

 (Elizabeth Franz is currently appearing in Morning’s At Seven at The Ahmanson Theater until January 26th.  On television look for her in upcoming episodes of Judging Amy, and in the spring she’ll be on stage in Syracuse, New York playing sisters in Agog in the Galapagos, a one-woman play by Tina Howe that was commissioned especially for her.)

 January, 2003