For Barry Bowman, doing local movies and TV projects fulfils an adolescent dream.
The Saskatchewan-born retired broadcaster best known as CFAX radio’s Morning Mayor for years says he wanted to go into theatre after graduating from high school in Wadena. By the time he was accepted into Montreal’s National Theatre School, however, he had been hopelessly seduced by the allure of life as a young deejay at Weyburn’s CFSL.
“It was a crazy decision to make,” laughed Bowman, 69.
Still, the radio personality couldn’t shake the urge to perform. He got the chance to do that in his mid-50s with appearances as a fisherman in Watchtower, a TV reporter in The Survivors Club and more recently a priest in Max McGuire’s Foreverland.
“When I was put out to pasture, I said, ‘What am I going to do now?’ so I got involved with the Victoria Opera Society and groups like that,” said Bowman, now part of the 22,000-member UBCP/ACTRA performers union.
Ironically, Bowman found himself behind the microphone again 10 years ago when he was cast in Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie’s Angels (2004). He played an inebriated Gig Young, the actor who was replaced by John Forsythe after being too drunk to record his lines as the voice of millionaire Charles Townsend on the 1970s TV series.
Two years later, Bowman had “my Cinderella experience” filming Fierce People at Hatley Castle, where he was upgraded from background performer to photo double when director Griffin Dunne said he needed a hand double for Donald Sutherland.
“They got all these guys together and said, ‘OK, put your hands out,’ ” he said, recalling Dunne’s directive to cast the actor whose hand Sutherland’s precious signet ring would fit on. “We had to try it on to see whose finger fits the ring.”
Bowman, who currently co-hosts the nostalgic podcast series Boomertown (on iTunes) with Winnipeg-based broadcaster Roger Currie, also appeared in Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep — sort of.
Although cast as a “1980s anchor guy behind a desk in a newsroom,” Bowman never appeared onscreen, but got a screen credit.
“I went to see the movie and this guy in a trenchcoat on the street is saying my line,” laughed Bowman.
“Hey, that’s showbiz.”