Like many Twin Peaks fans, I was saddened to hear of Piper Laurie’s passing at age 91 on October 14, 2023. Her Emmy-nominated performance as Catherine Martell in the show’s first two seasons was exceptional (her exchange with Sheriff Truman about her time on Pearl Lakes is my favorite scene). Originally named Rosetta Jacobs until the age of 15, Laurie was no stranger to the stage and screen staring in numerous films beginning with Louisa in 1950 with co-star Ronald Reagan. But did you know she also appeared on stage in a one-woman show during the height of Twin Peaks mania in 1990? Let’s take a look back at her performance as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
PIPER LAURIE’S SHOW ABOUT ZELDA: THE LAST FLAPPER
Playwright William Luce (1931-2019) first wrote Zelda in 1984 as an off-Broadway production based on unpublished writings by the wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was also staged at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery around the same time.
A few years later, Luce turned the show into Zelda: The Last Flapper, which was set in 1948 on the day Zelda died in a fire at a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina.
The show was tested in 1987 with Piper Laurie staring as Zelda at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre located at 1001 East Indiantown Road in Jupiter, Florida.
Reynolds operated this theatre until 1989 when he licensed the 440-seat playhouse to Richard Atkins who continued running the venue until 1996. Today it’s known as the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.
Laurie reprised her role when director Charles Nelson Reilly formally introduced the show at Houston’s Alley Theatre from September 15-October 4 that same year.
A national tour followed beginning in San Francisco, California and ending at Westport Playhouse in Connecticut on July 24, 1988. Just before the tour, she spent three days in Montgomery, Alabama researching the city the Fitzgeralds once called home.
CASTING PIPER LAURIE IN TWIN PEAKS
About a month later on August 25, David Lynch and Mark Frost would attend a first concept meeting with ABC Television Network executives about “Northwest Passage,” the original name for the show that would become Twin Peaks.
At some point following that meeting, Piper Laurie was cast in the role of Catherine Martell with principle photography for the pilot episode taking place between February 21 and mid-March 1989 in Washington state.
The Chicago Tribune first mentioned “Northwest Passage” on March 1 with Piper being named along with Richard Beymer, Joan Chen, Lara Boyle and Michael Ontkean.
Her name regularly appeared as a notable actor when the series was discussed in newspapers. This snippet from March 23 only lists Laurie and Kyle MacLachlan as staring in Frost and Lynch’s new television show.
The show was picked up by ABC in September 1989 as a mid-season replacement. An additional seven episodes were commissioned and filmed in the fall of 1989. This meant by the beginning of 1990, Piper Laurie would have long been wrapped on her part as Mrs. Martell for the show’s first season.
A few weeks before the pilot episode aired, she spoke with Marilyn Beck about her role in the upcoming show. The role of Catherine was something new for her as the character is “not above doing anything to achieve her end.” She felt her character had a combination of humor and sexuality and her scenes took place in “very unlikely places, where a dignified woman would not be caught.”
On April 8, 1990, Twin Peaks mania took over the United States as ABC aired the pilot as a Sunday night special.
REVISITING ZELDA FITZGERALD
About a month prior to Twin Peaks‘ television debut, Piper had spent several days in the Minneapolis – St. Paul scouting theatres for a revival of Zelda: The Last Flapper. C.J. from The Star Tribune reported Laurie selected Weyerhaeuser Auditorium in St. Paul’s Landmark Center, 75 Fifth Street West, for the show.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in the city on September 24, 1896 before his family relocated to Buffalo, New York three years later.
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT IN MAY
By mid May, local newspapers were running advertisements about Laurie’s show at the Landmark Center.
Performances would be held from June 6-23 with tickets available via Ticketmaster. Notice how her role as Catherine in Twin Peaks was featured in this blurb.
The same article contained this publicity shot of Laurie with Joan Chen and Richard Beymer from Twin Peaks.
The high-resolution version of this same image can be found on The Mauve Zone.
A few days later, D.L. Maybery from The Star Tribune ran a longer piece about the upcoming show. By this time, the first season finale of Twin Peaks had aired with Catherine Martell disappearing in the Packard Sawmill fire. Piper remarked about the character that it was “great fun to play parts that are nasty and mean .. because everybody’s got a little of that in them and most people don’t get a chance to be deliberartly mean and get paid for it.”
The article also mentioned that her character would be back in the fall for the second season … so much for a cliffhanger.
A short advertisement also ran in the May 31 edition of The Star Tribune, again leading with Laurie being mentioned as a star of Lynch and Frost’s runaway hit show.
ZELDA: THE LAST FLAPPER OPENS
With the start of June, Peter Vaughan from The Star Tribune penned a lengthy article about Piper Laurie and her upcoming performance in Zelda: The Last Flapper.
The article mentions that a planned national tour of the show was shelved because Twin Peaks was picked up for a second season. Piper also discussed working with David Lynch and how she didn’t expect the kind of following that Twin Peaks generated – “Sometimes something becomes an event and people don’t want to miss it.”
The article included a publicity shot of Laurie and Richard Beymer from the Timber Falls Motel scenes. It’s not a shot that I’ve seen but it must be from a similar sequence of images.
The closest image is this color shot from The Mauve Zone taken from that same scene.
The article also had this publicity shot from the play of Laurie sitting on a desk as Zelda Fitzgerald.
Interestingly, advertisements for the one-woman play in The Star Tribune called out Piper as being a “‘Twin Peaks’ Star.”
TICKETMASTER TROUBLES
The Star Tribune ran a short story on June 21 about the troubles the production had with Ticketmaster. It appears people were being sold seats to shows that didn’t exist or listing the performances as sold out when plenty of seats were available. Some things don’t change with the passage of time.
PIPER LAURIE IN LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS
On Sunday, November 18, 1990, Robin Leach’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous included a short segment about Piper Laurie.
The episode’s promo included two shots of Laurie with one of them being from her performance as Zelda (at least that’s what it looks like to me). How I wish I could see the full episode!
NATIONAL TOUR IN 1991
While her plans for a national tour were postponed in summer 1990, things picked up in March 1991. This extensive article from the San Francisco Examiner on March 3 discusses Laurie’s performance in the play and in Twin Peaks. She explained how the Japanese businessman Mr. Tojamura was her idea for the show’s second season.
The national tour for Zelda: The Last Flapper began in San Francisco from March 6-10 and continued to Los Angeles.
The newspaper advertisement for the San Francisco show listed Piper as a Golden Globe winner, something she received on January 19, 1991 for her performance in Twin Peaks.
I was unable to find records of the show being performed in other cities after Los Angeles but Laurie wanted to take it on the road for as long as she could.
