Award-winning actor, songwriter and author John Lithgow likened the Jones Library to the town of Amherst’s soul last Saturday as he entertained a near-capacity community audience at Amherst College’s Johnson Chapel with stories from his career.
The free event — “An Evening with John Lithgow: In Support of Libraries, the Humanities, and Democracy in General” — was cast as a fundraiser for the $43.95 million project to renovate and expand the town’s main library.
Best known for his roles as Winston Churchill in Netflix’s “The Crown,” the voice of Lord Farquaad in “Shrek,” and the Rev. Shaw Moore in “Footloose,” Lithgow drew an appreciative crowd of hundreds.
Having toured Jones before his appearance, Lithgow said it was clear the downtown library was in dire need of long-overdue renovations.
“A community that doesn’t take care of its library is a community that doesn’t take care of its soul, and that’s what has got to happen here,” Lithgow said. Encouraging the crowd to contribute to the capital campaign for the project — which remains several million dollars short of its goal — the actor disclosed his own plan to “write a big check before I leave town.”
Lithgow was introduced by Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at the college as well as chairman of Jones’ board of trustees, who gave a primer on the massive Jones Library renovation and expansion.
Public libraries, Sarat said, are at a pivotal moment: “We live at a time when the work that libraries do to ensure the free flow of information and the availability of books and ideas is under attack across the country.” Praising the crowd for its support of the project, Sarat noted that the event had so far raised more than $12,000.
Lithgow opened by explaining his personal stakes in the project. His parents lived in Amherst for several years and his brother, David Lithgow, has lived with his family in town for more than 40 years.
“He obviously really loves the library,” said Pam Mandler, a resident and frequent Jones visitor. “He has some connection to the area. He supports what libraries do overall and was very blunt about asking for money to support the project.”
Beyond supporting the library, an evening with the comically inclined Lithgow was sure to provide some evening entertainment for Amherst residents, and Lithgow soon shifted gears to a light-hearted series of anecdotes he shared with the crowd.
From stories about his role in the film “The World According to Garp” to reading excerpts from his book of satirical political poems, Lithgow drew nonstop laughter from the audience.
The actor’s trademark dry wit was evident as he first shared one interaction with a couple and their 5-year-old son, who had starred as the baby at the beginning of “The World According to Garp.” The couple told their son, “This man was in your movie.” The 5-year-old, Lithgow joked, had a fully developed actor’s ego — describing how the child had “sized him up” and how he could feel an “air of condescension.”
Lithgow continued by reciting two verses from his book, “A Confederacy of Dumptys: Portraits of American Scoundrels,” to the crowd. The collection features rhyming satirical poems about past national political figures and their controversies.
A crowd favorite centered on Vice President Spiro Agnew, and touched on Watergate and the vice president’s failures. One line read, “Faced with facts too incontestable to fight / he struck a deal with Elliot to vanish in the night. / No prison term, no recompense, his felonies ignored. / His punishment, a soul disgraced, replaced by Gerald Ford.”
In the final story he shared with the crowd, Lithgow explained how a hostess came up to him while eating breakfast in his Boston hotel and told him he reminded her of actor and comedian Charles Grodin. Lithgow responded by saying people have told him he “looked like John Lithgow” — to which the hostess confusedly replied that she had no idea who that was.
“He just nailed it out of the park,” said town resident Dan Parker. “It was so much fun and he was so funny and just seemed so human and relatable. It seemed like everyone had a great time.”
Many of the event’s attendees were regular visitors to Jones who were enthusiastic about the renovations.
“I’m a big fan of the library and a regular patron,” said Parker. “I’ve volunteered at the library in the past and just wanted to come out and [thought] this would be a great event to help support.”