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« on: July 25, 2016, 02:53:16 AM »
Grayson said in a magazine interview once that Julia attended Cornell and majored in haematology (I think this was Grayson's little joke).
Grayson said several times that Magda was her favorite character on the show. Grayson had some Romani presence back in her bloodline. I think I read somewhere that Sam created Magda because Grayson was so bored playing Julia, who she regarded as a "straightass."
In another interview, either Thayer or Grayson said that their accents for Magda and Sandor came from the fact that both of them had been in productions of the Molnar play Liliom. Their surname, Rakosi, is Hungarian. It was the surname of an important figure in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which resulted in a lot of people fleeing to the US (including the family doctor my Mom worked for in the 1960s and 1970s).
I've wondered if a core element of Magda came from a play Grayson did in the early Sixties, THE BUSKERS--the photo published in the NY Times of her in the role really has a Magda look to it.
Yes, some of us are just a bit hung up on Grayson. Because, you know, she was THE GREATEST ACTRESS TO EVER WALK THE EARTH. (I'm quoting no less an authority than Danny Horn there--LOL).
G.