August 7, 2003

The nearly 1,000 fans who attended a recent benefit by John McGivern could have cared less about his sexuality. They were there to revel in his humanity, his humor and his down-home approach to everything from career planning to frozen custard.

The benefit in May was for Catholic East Elementary School, McGivern's former grade school. During the week prior to his performance, talk-show host Mark Belling expressed his views on the inappropriateness of a gay man doing a benefit for a Catholic institution serving young children. Maybe Belling should have talked to Archbishop Timothy Dolan before making his remarks. Just a few weeks before the Catholic East benefit, McGivern did a show for all the priests of the Milwaukee Archdiocese at their retreat, with Archbishop Dolan immediately preceding him on the lineup.

And Governor Doyle certainly didn't mind sharing the agenda with McGivern at a recent Greater Milwaukee Convention and Visitors Bureau event, a kick-off for National Tourism Week.

It's a testament to John McGivern's popularity that the Catholic East benefit couldn't have been held at the school itself; it's much too small to accommodate the 850 people who crowded into Whitefish Bay's Dominican High School.

Everyone was there, from McGivern's mother, Joan, and his sister, Colleen, to the current principal of the school, to former classmates, and even one former neighbor from Bartlett Avenue who now lives in a condo across the hall from McGivern.

Whether it was sharing his relief that he was a "silver" reader in first grade, avoiding the stigma of placement in the far-from-stellar "green" group, or his not always successful attempts to limit his use of his trademark "high snap," McGivern had every audience member in tears from laughing so hard.

McGivern has been able to buy his condo and three others in the same building as a result of the overwhelming success he has enjoyed both in his hometown and nationwide. He has a webmaster and a personal trainer. He's enjoyed success in a variety of media, from live performance to radio to a small part in The Princess Diaries. Now he's on to television.

May 19 marked the first of a series of ongoing segments he does on the morning news on Channel 4 each Friday. "Milwaukee's Own" gives McGivern free reign to share with early viewers anything he determines to be uniquely Milwaukee. "Milwaukee's Own" has covered such classic local stories as the making of Usinger's sausage, the historic Pabst Theater (where McGivern saw his first live show, The Sound of Music) and a visit to the McGivern family homestead on Bartlett Avenue.

McGivern continues to do performances of Fully Committed, in which he plays more than 40 different characters. He also appears regularly with Dave and Carole on WKLH, and is teaching a class in "telling your own story" through UWM's Continuing Education department.

And, he is regularly bombarded with requests to make appearances at venues as disparate as Northwestern Mutual Life and the Task Force on Family Violence. A regular gig with the Elder Hostel in Lake Geneva is one of McGivern's favorite ways to "give back," as he says, especially for an audience of folks his parents' age.

Fully Committed started in the much smaller Stackner Cabaret, but has now moved to Vogel Hall at the Marcus Center, where it will run through Sept. 7.

But if ticket sales continue at their current pace, who knows? Could it turn into another Shear Madness?

McGivern traces the germination of his acting and comedy career all the way back to freshman year at St. Lawrence Seminary. He participated in forensics, a speech and dramatic arts team competition. He was the first freshman ever from St. Lawrence to get a gold medal at the state championships.

"At 14, you're like, 'well, I guess,' " McGivern says of his first inklings that performing in public might be something he'd like to pursue as a career. But he didn't give up on his first goal, that of becoming a priest.

"There are still moments in my life when I think that's what I should be doing," he says. He was thrown out of the seminary for homosexual activity in his junior year, but was able to return to religious training when a psychiatrist from the school said McGivern was "fine." Ultimately, though, he left it behind.

"Thank the Lord!" he says. "It certainly put me in with a different crowd."

That "different crowd" began to gather in earnest in the early 1980s, when McGivern did his first paid performance, appearing in Mousetrap in a summer theater production in Charlotte, N.C. He was doing more summer work in Fish Creek, Wis., when he met an actress who had an apartment in Chicago, which she was willing to let him have for very low rent. He took it, auditioned for Shear Madness two weeks later, got the part, and stayed with the show there for 11 years. And he hasn't looked back. Not with regret, anyway.

After the Tampa run of Fully Committed, he'll be doing Shear Madness in Atlanta, starting in October of 2004. His brother joined him in buying the Atlanta and the Seattle rights to do the show in those cities. And the best news for Milwaukee fans? McGivern will return to Milwaukee, along with another production of Shear Madness, in the summer of 2005.

"All of the shows, the seven days a week, the radio, the Channel 4 gig-that's what allows me to live in Milwaukee," McGivern says. "This is what creates focus for me."

He loves being near his family, especially his nieces and nephews. "I want to call this home."