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Brimming With Pride

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By WALT BELCHER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 21, 2008

TAMPA - After writing a bawdy song with lyrics about sexual desires after age 50, Kathie Lee Gifford took the tune to her 76-year-old mother for approval.

"I was worried that it might be too rough, and I wanted to pass it by my mother, who is very religious," says the former daytime talk show host.

"She was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes," says Gifford, whose "I Don't Want" includes lines such as this one: "I need a hump that don't come from osteoporosis."

The song is one of a dozen featured in "Hats! The Musical," a cabaret coming to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Jaeb Theater this week for a long run. It's in previews tonight and Wednesday, opens Thursday and continues through April 27.

The play is a salute to the Red Hat Society, the ever-growing organization of women 50 and older identified by their fancy red hats and purple garb.

Founded in 1998 by Californian Sue Ellen Cooper, a former homemaker and part-time artist, the Red Hatters take their name and inspiration from a poem, "Warning," written in 1961 by Jenny Joseph.

"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me"

More than 1.5 million Red Hatters band together in more than 30 countries. The group has its own platinum MasterCard, a series of best-selling books and a successful online store. The Tampa Bay area alone accounts for more than 100 chapters, with names such as Divas With a Hattitude, Red Hat Chili Peppers, Shady Ladies and Scarlett O'Hatters.

Cooper has endorsed the play, noting that taking it to the stage "is very appropriate, because we're not going off the stage."

Gifford, 54, says she doesn't own a red hat, but she loves the ladies who do.

"They are standing together to have fun and to show that they are not done yet with life," she said in a recent telephone interview.

Gifford, who is coming to Tampa for Friday's performance, says our culture has it backward. "We should be celebrating older women, but instead we have a beauty- and youth-dominated society."

Gifford wrote a second song for the production, "Yes We Can," that expresses the Red Hatters' you-go-girl! attitude.

Music and lyrics also were contributed by others, including Pam Tillis, Melissa Manchester and Tony-winning orchestrator Doug Besterman.

"There's a wide range of music, from some funny songs to some very emotional songs," says Marguerite Bennett, who plays Mary Anne, a woman on the cusp of Red Hatness - about to hit what the society calls The Birthday.

Fearful of leaving age 49 behind, Mary Anne meets her inner child, a big-hearted, big-busted Mae West-ish marionette named Ruby who introduces her to six Red Hat women.

Through the women and their songs, she learns that she is not alone in her fears, says Bennett, 51, who teaches musical theater at the University of Tampa.

The songs include the bluesy "My Oven's Still Hot"; Tillis' "The Older the Fiddle, the Sweeter the Tune," a country spin on graceful aging; and Manchester's "Invisible," an anthem about society's tendency to ignore older women.

"Mary Anne learns that she is not a has-been. She is a will-be," says Bennett, who calls the play "a celebration of acceptance and independence."

None of the cast members is in the Red Hat Society, but all are eligible, she adds.

"Hats!" debuted in 2006 in Denver and has since played in Chicago (with Manchester in the lead) and Las Vegas. It opens in New Orleans later this year.

Gifford says she has been asked to perform in a national tour of the play, but she would rather write than act.

Best known for her 15-year stint as co-host on "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee," Gifford started her career as a singer and actress.

Since leaving the daytime talk show, she has made a few guest appearances in films and television series. She also has produced and released several CDs, including "The Heart of a Woman" in 2000. It features standards from the Big Band era as well as contemporary Christian songs.

A couple of years ago, she did a three-week stint on Broadway as Miss Hannigan in "Annie." She says she did it for the camaraderie that comes with working in theater.

"I've been there and done that as far as performing goes, and there's no challenge in that for me," she says, noting that she has turned down TV's "Dancing With the Stars" at least four times.

She says that after her experiences in the tabloid press headlines, she likes being out of the limelight. She has been able to devote more time to her husband, former sports commentator Frank Gifford, and her children, Cody, 18, and Cassidy, 14.

"I wanted to keep the family out of the tabloids, and I personally wanted to do something more creative," she says. "I love writing. I've been doing it all my life, but it was mostly for myself, and it wasn't until a few years ago that I got serious about it."

After teaming up with composer-songwriter David Friedman, her songwriting skills blossomed, she says.

She wrote and produced the wholesome and heartwarming musical "Under the Bridge," which opened in New York in 2005. Based on the children's book "The Family Under the Bridge," it includes 19 songs.

Last year, she premiered a second play, "Saving Aimee," about the life and times of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, in Virginia. She hopes to bring it to Broadway this year.

She's also working on a couple of screenplays and a musical about the late Nancy Lamont, a New York cabaret singer who was popular in the 1990s. Lamont, who had an almost uncanny resemblance to Gifford, died of cancer in 1995 at age 43.

Says Gifford, "I guess I am living proof that you can do rewarding and exciting things as you grow older."

ON STAGE

Hats! The Musical

WHEN: Tonight through April 27; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (no 7:30 p.m. show Feb. 2,3, but there is a 2 p.m. show April 1)

WHERE: Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Jaeb Theater, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; (813) 229-7827

HOW MUCH: $29.50 ($20 for preview tickets tonight and Wednesday)

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813) 259-7654 or wbelcher@tampatrib.com. Share photos of you and your friends in Red Hats in an online gallery, keyword: Red Hat.

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