Checking Into Grand Hotel : Theater: Lives of some of the players in the hit musical parallel the lives of the characters they portray.

By T.H. McCULLOH

Aug. 13, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

SAN DIEGO — The conceit of the recent film “Soap Dish” was the revelation that the private lives of the actors appearing on soaps often paralleled the action on screen.

What about “Grand Hotel Dish?”

The four leading actors in the international touring company of the Broadway hit “Grand Hotel,” opening tonight at the San Diego Civic Theatre, play starkly individual characters who find their destinies in that posh, fictional Berlin hostelry. Indeed, they’re recreating roles based on characters from the best-selling novel of the same name by Vicki Baum that were made famous by Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Joan Crawford in the classic ‘30s film version.

Are they living their roles or are their roles reflecting them? Here’s the dish on four of the fictional guests at the Grand Hotel: There’s an aging ballerina facing the end of her career, but finding momentary love with another guest. Then there’s the dashing, handsome young baron trying to reconcile his situation with his dreams, and the flashy steno whose heart is set on Hollywood stardom and is obsessed with figuring out how to get there. Last is the bookkeeper who makes a decision to really live for a change.

The lives of the actors are somewhat reflected in the mirrored walls of the lobby of the Grand Hotel.

Mark Baker plays Kringelein, the bookkeeper. He’s had a pretty good career as an actor, including regional theater, films (“Swashbuckler,” “Valentino”) and TV (as Buddy Askew on “St. Elsewhere”). He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1975 for his performance in Harold Prince’s “Candide,” but “Grand Hotel” director Tommy Tune won that year for “Seesaw.” Baker quips, “My hair’s naturally curly anyway, I don’t need a Tony.”

When he was offered the bookkeeper role, Baker, like Kringelein, had to make a choice. “I had to make a lot of decisions changes,” Baker states, “since I had to sell my house in Maryland and live in hotels across this great land of ours. I had to be forced to travel and re-enter the professional world of high energy show business.

“I’d been vacillating with the idea of retiring (from theater) completely and doing my design work. I hand paint wallpaper and do some design stuff under the aegis of my firm, called the Offices of Urban Rubble. I really had considered retiring. But then, just before this, regional theaters started calling me up. I started getting more offers.” Baker was appearing in a summer production of “Annie Get Your Gun” when he found out about the “Grand Hotel” tour. Like Kringelein, he made the choice to start living again.

Liliane Montevecchi, the only cast member from the original production, who plays fading ballerina Grushinskaya, is not a fading ballerina. At 18, she was Prima Ballerina with Roland Petit’s French ballet company, but fate had some surprises in store for her. While the company was appearing in New York, John Houseman offered her a screen test with MGM, which led to such films as “Daddy Long Legs” with Fred Astaire, and “The Young Lions” with Marlon Brando. She went on to star in the famed Folies Bergere for 10 years. Her first Broadway show was the musical “Nine,” also directed by Tune, which won her a Tony and a Drama Desk Award.

“No, no, a dancing career is so short, and it’s so hard. The little dance I do in the show,” she admits, breaking into rich laughter. “How do I do it? I cannot believe I was a dancer before. I cannot jump anymore, I can’t, it’s finished. It’s impossible.” She’s not sorry she gave up her dancing career. “I’ve had so many careers, artistically, from the ballet to the film, to the theater to comedy to drama. It was wonderful, so of course I didn’t miss dancing. But it was because of the ballet I got all this.”

Like Grushinskaya, who’s dancing career turns out to be far from over, Montevecchi will probably go on acting forever, but her great love is longer lasting. It focuses on the theater. “I’m a gypsy,” she says, “I don’t own anything. I just have a lot of suitcases.” Montevecchi thinks films might even be fun, which they weren’t during her MGM days. “I never liked film before. But now I want to go back to it, because stage is very tiring. I was younger then, when I was in film, and I was impatient.” Like Grushinskaya, Liliane Montevecchi can’t seem to stay away from dancing, but that’s not all there is.

DeLee Lively, who plays the sexy, Hollywood-obsessed steno Flaemmchen, like her character and like Montevecchi, has her eyes on Hollywood. She began her career 21 years ago as Baby June in a production of “Gypsy” at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, Texas. After graduating from high school in Houston, she auditioned for the touring company of “A Chorus Line,” got the job and wound up playing Valerie (“T&A;”) Clark for almost three years on Broadway.

“I relate a lot with my character Flaemmchen,” Lively says. “She does really want to go to Hollywood, and that’s basically what I’ve always wanted to do.” When the tour was playing Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre, Lively met a lot of industry people and got a “great response. When I go back to Hollywood, they’ll remember me.”

She’s been what she calls a “great housewife for eight years,” but she and husband Eddie Mekka (he was Carmine Ragusa on “La Verne & Shirley”) are divorcing. “I’ve started focusing back on myself. I have to do what I have to do before I have to say, ‘Why did I miss the boat?’ I don’t know whether Flaemmchen created me this way or vice-versa, or if it was God-given for me to leave and get it together, get it while I’m young.” Flaemmchen didn’t make it to Hollywood, but DeLee Lively has luckier cards.

The romantic Baron von Gaigern in “Grand Hotel” doesn’t have much luck keeping his life together, but Brent Barrett, who plays him, does. He left his home in northwest Kansas at 17 to wend his way to New York, with stop-offs to finish high school and attend the musical theater program at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh. He landed his first Broadway show without taking a breath, the revival of “West Side Story.”

Barrett has done some television (“All My Children”) and made his first film, “Longtime Companion.” He also has an eye on Hollywood, but, like DeLee Lively, doesn’t envision giving up musical theater. “That’s the one thing about coming out to Hollywood,” he says he’s learned, “if you’re fortunate enough to work out here, then you are a much more desirable commodity in New York. And I do say commodity. A lot of people who come to Los Angeles and never have had any experience on stage are missing something.

“I’ve got a project that I’m working on in New York now. It’s a musical version of a James M. Barrie play called ‘Quality Street.’ Other than that I’ll probably just come out to Hollywood and be another out of work actor, like most of the people I know out here. But I want to keep a finger in both pots.”

Like the Baron, Barrett is covering all his bets. Unlike the Baron, he’s got better odds.

“Grand Hotel” opens tonight at the San Diego Civic Theatre and continues through Sunday. Performances are at 8 p.m. tonight through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets, $22.50-$37.50, are available at the Civic Theatre box office and through TicketMaster Outlets.