Doing their parts for actors

So much for close-ups.

Performing at the Pantages Theater, actors read the “Sunset Boulevard” screenplay with grit and grace, but at a distance, prompting Nancy Olson Livingston -- co-star with Gloria Swanson and William Holden of the 1950 Paramount film -- to recall a remark made by director Billy Wilder when he saw the musical version: “It’s my screenplay in a permanent longshot!”

No matter. The 2,500-strong audience attending the April 4 fundraiser for the Actors’ Fund of America sat transfixed as a sinewy Anjelica Huston portrayed the unraveling Norma Desmond, Ben Kingsley her bristling servant, Max, and Patrick Wilson the opportunistic screenwriter Joe Gillis.

Livingston, who looks 20 years younger than her 74 years (“I’m vain!”), was “fascinated, riveted, nostalgic,” she said during the event that began with a champagne reception on the mezzanine and ended with cast party in the lobby. “This is a different experience. I mean, you don’t go to a bookstore to buy a film script. You buy plays, because they are literature .... In movies, the camera tells the story. All you need is a close-up of Swanson’s face coming down the stairs, for example, to see the madness. Here, we’re removed, but it works, because everybody has seen the film.”

Benefit chairwoman Kate Edelman Johnson, widow of Actors’ Fund benefactor Dean Johnson, recalled Holden’s friendship with her husband. “They were best pals -- had great times,” she said. “Bill was wonderful -- bright, self-effacing. He didn’t know how terrific he was.” She volunteered to chair the benefit for the second year in a row -- last year, “All About Eve” was featured -- because of her respect for the Actors’ Fund, a nonprofit organization providing supportive services such as housing and job counseling for the entertainment industry. “They take care of their own,” Johnson said.

The reading, which also starred Ed Begley Jr., Noah Wyle and Lauren Ambrose (as Betty Schaefer, the role Livingston played) and was directed by Peter Hunt, marked the second time playwright David Rambo had adapted a screenplay for the stage. “There aren’t a lot of screenplays that lend themselves to this,” he said. “The biggest challenges are things like where do you put the acting breaks and how do you deal with things like gunshots? “

And who sprinkles the sets of Desmond’s decaying Spanish mansion with marble dust? No one in this production, in which the stars sat on steel stools before script stands. But Livingston recalled a cameraman doing just that for the film. “He rubbed his hands with marble dust and flung it into the air before filming scenes inside the house to give the atmosphere luster. That was something.”