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who lives in a house in Pasadenawith his wife and her 100-year-old mother, has the luxury of seven accumulated prime- time sitcom salaryplus syndication residuals, which also have bought him a second home in Santa and part ownership of the Santa Fe Southern Railway. Mary, who married and lives in an apartment to the west and whose Night work israrely re-aired, has more urgency in the never-ending quest for work. goal is to pay the she cracks. THIS FEBRUARY LUNCH MARKS THE first time these siblings have seen each other since a wedding before Christmas. Michael Gross is a warm, wry wisecracker, long and lean and dapper in his neatly trimmed salty goatee, tweed blazer and blue checked shirt, still recognizable as Steven Keaton, the liberal dad to Michael J.

Batemanand Tina minus the plaid flannel shirts and some hair. Mary, identifiable from her Night days as well, is slim and casual, in a long-sleeved navy blue T-shirt, baggy lime-green pants and sneakers. She still has that high-pitched voice that swoops and soars like an animated bird, and she spins stories with a breathless energy, as if reliving every moment. That night Mary would have a bit part as apoolside tourist who distracts her former Night City co-star Jim Belushion the CBSlegal drama evenings later Michael would play a stuffy food critic who flirts with Richard Chamberlainon the ABC family drama Although Mary and Michael took very different routes to arrive at this place, they come by their talents naturally. Their father, William, who designed tools and still lives on the North Side, embraced the arts, but their mother, Virginia, was the irrepressible performer.

was known for singing and dancing and telling jokes and creating games, wearing costumes we never knew what she was going to do Elizabeth Gross, the sibling between Michael and Mary, says from her Chicago home; she does financial work for a downtown firm. was the only ham that be Michael says. Growing up on theNorthwest Side, Mary made her performing debut in a musical mounted by the since-razed Madonna High club, whose president was future star Marilu Henner.Mary, a reserved type who liked to make her friends laugh, sang a ditty about Louis XIVof Franceset to the tune of Feel Little did she know what a pivotal moment this performance would be. just prepared for that overwhelming fear that took hold of me as soon as I got in front of the she says. trying to get a laugh, but somehow my awkwardness and my anxiety turned me into Barney Fife(from Andy Griffith and I was getting huge laughs.

And all I wanted to do was get off that stage and find a The before-and-after realities have been more dramatic. I came off stage, my life she says. school bullies loved me. The teachers loved me. Our science teacher canceled a test that day, she said, because I made her so Calling the performance most terrifying moment of my teenage and magical day for Mary set foot on a stage again for years.

Michael knew about none of this; he was already away pursuing his calling he puts on a mock-pompous voice as classical He had thought he might become a priest before he sang in Kelvyn Park High chorus and a production of discovered his love of performing. By the time he was starring in plays at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Michael had become, in the words of his college acting teacherand future best man William Raffeld, the most disciplined actor ever come Michael was acting in Minneapolis when he heard the news about Mary, who as a 24-year-old employee of the American Dental Association had swallowed her fear and taken an improvisation course at Loyola University. mother said, doing improvisational Michael recalls. said, little quiet sister Soon Mary was acting at The Second City alongside Tim Kazurinsky, who had lobbied for her hiring. was very young and seemingly delicate and fragile, but she just did this outrageous stuff and said things that sort of shocked says Kazurinsky, now primarily a screenwriter living on the North Shore.

Acouple of years later, Gross was joining Kazurinsky at Night and she spent four seasons (1981-85) on the was dominated by Eddie Murphyand Joe Piscopofor the first three years and the Billy Crystal-Martin Short all-star cast for the last. Her memorable contributions included impressions of Alfalfafrom Little Marilyn Monroe, which Kazurinsky and Jim Belushisay is the best ever seen. Meanwhile, Michael, who was acting in New York when Mary arrived for Night overcame his aversion to televisionand got cast in which debuted in 1982. Now the siblings were on the same network, NBC, though they rarely swapped notes. was under a lot of stress, and we were on two different Mary says.

two times I visited Michael, I thought, Oh my God, what a cushy job this is. He have to write the show. He have to fight for space in the show. He just gets a script and knows right where always felt as if Mary and I were kind of in two different Michael says, she was still doing essentially what she was doing at Second City on Night and I knew very little about that world and comics, and I thought they were all even more neurotic than regular pause, sly smile present company excepted. Two years into Michael married Elza Bergeron, a casting director signed off on hiring at Paramount Television.

She had two teenage children, and, he says, became very busy for Mary wound up in Los Angeles, too, to chase jobs after Lorne Michaelsretook the reins of Night and let go everyone hired by Dick Ebersol, who oversaw four years there. She views her subsequent struggles as being as much about mindset as opportunity. spent a couple of years in improv, a couple of years at Second City, four years at Night spent eight years satirizing she says. had an audition for a show called and I remember thinking It sounded like something we would immediately parody, just because of the title.To this day it breaks my heart: I had a callback for and I think I went in on it. And then later when the show was on, I loved career started more strongly but also spurred regret: He immediately scored a change-of- pace role as a survivalist in the well-reviewed, tongue-in-cheek horror film which became so popu- lar on home video that it spawned three sequels and a short-lived 2003 TV series, all of which starred Michael, but initial theatrical release fizzled.

cry over spilled milk, but had more people really come to see that, it might have made a difference in more of a major sort of film career for Michael says. MICHAEL AND MARY HAVE SPENT the last two decades appearing in movies and on TV shows, sometimes for multiple episodes (he on Drew Carey Young and the I Met Your she on People Next the Teenage and But neither Gross has experienced the kind of steady work eachenjoyed in the 1980s. Still, Michael remains comfortable. been on a top-10 TV series for seven years and gone out and bought a bunch of Ferraris and yachts has a bit of a cushion, and aware of Michael says. like that great middle class of actors who work pretty consistently but have that particular years on late-night comedy does not equal seven years in prime time, Mary sighs, noting that had to borrow from her retirement account.

Now that Michael is a grandfather, he want to work thousands of miles from his family. priorities changed. as basic as it always was: I want to be associated with something Mary says. was being cynical when I said I want to pay the rent. Of course, I want to pay the rent, but I agree with Michael that I want to do quality In some months, Mary goes on five auditions.

In some she goes on zero. Most auditions, no matter how well they go, she never hears back anything and tries not to take offense. only can control what I bring into the she says. But things get complicated. She says she was asked to audition for the recently released film as Ed former high school teacher and current girlfriend, and she really liked the script except for a love scene between their characters.

completely Mary says. on top of him. engaged in the act, and saying in a Wisconsin accent, it and it was funny, but as soon as I saw that, I just froze because I thought: My cousins go see this. be let bad taste stand in the way of a good Michael says. Mary says she asked her assistant whether the naked sex scene was and the assistant responded, is what it So Mary audition, and the role went to Sigourney Weaver, who does not appear naked on screen.

just want to see you ever do that Michael says at the end of story. give a (expletive) about what your cousins That she work more often is a frustration to friends, relativesand fans as well as herself. She says a couple recently approached her to express their admiration, and after she thanked them, man said, miss And it sort of made the hair stand up on my neck, because it sounded like retired or passed away. I said, still His wife said, what are you working And I said, Mary laughs and claps her hands. it was very Kazurinsky thought Mary was so in her four-episode turn as a woman with on he wondered, this woman working all year instead of a few times a His proposed solution: She should return to Chicago.

made many attempts to tell Mary to move back here and become part of the Chicago Kazurinsky says. get tons of stage work and tons of voice work, but to no Upon hearing of recommendation, Michael chimes in: think my sister would gain a lot from going back to her roots. I would love to see her do that work again because I think where a great deal of her soul is and her the Mary says. 10 years ago I became deaf in one ear (from disease, an inner-ear disorder), so working onstage is very frightening to me. Especially doing improv, because afraid miss some nuance, I be able to play off the laughter of the audience.

My timing is not buying Michael says. were fearful when you went into those first improv classes at Loyola, but you went back. And I know all you have to do is tell the rest of the cast, deaf in one ear, keep that in They work with true to a certain she says. have a he says, sorry to this day that you exploit it more and use over she snaps with a laugh. Elizabeth Gross says she understands why Mary want to move back to Chicago.

does wonderful auditions out there and meets a lot of famous people that are considering her for she says. hard to not do that, especially when something been working for so many years. like dream we want to give Mary says later. think ever used that word in my career. Especially now, after 30 years, a career.

I see it with any romantic And as much as she loves Chicago, she says, that career is in Los Angeles. Later, Michael notes that if Mary would return to her roots, she would get back of her joie de which prompts her to cackle. you know what my mom Mary says. I lost my hearing, I was on the phone, and I was crying, and I said, I have a permanent hearing loss, and now I hear out of my right I said, used to make so much fun of me (about my allergies), and now I and she said, now you have to listen to Mary flips back her head and laughs uproariously. AFTER A COUPLE OF HOURS, Michael bids his sister a warm farewell.

Mary remains, looking pensive. That so bad, right? she says, for Michael telling me what to During the lunch she has written on the paper tablecloth in elegant handwriting: always Mary explains that when Michael was talking about their mother, she flashed back to a conversation she had with her in the hospital, about a year before her mother died the day after St. Day in 2005. mother was on morphine, and she was in intensive care, and she was very charming and very chatty and feeling no pain, and one of the things she said to me was, always wanted to do what you Mary recalls. I said, always been my and she said, It was so fickle; family ties endure Continuedfrom Page1 Mary Gross made her performing debut in a musical at Madonna High School, and Michael discovered his love of acting in at Kelvyn Park High School.

KIRK NEWSPAPERS PHOTO 3 TRIBUNE ON MARY was just one of those original people. She had a very oddball rhythm. She was very funny, very actress Marilu Henner, a high school classmate of Mary immensely talented, much more talented than she Second City co-founderBernie Sahlins always knew how to carve out her space in spite of what other mayhem was going on around her. You listened to what she said and heard how she said it. It was a remarkable Tim Kazurinsky, Mary Second City and Night friend and co-star ON MICHAEL was the kind of guy who, anybody on the street would ask for a quarter, he gave it to him.

He was very empathic with people who had needs. That helped make him the wonderful actor he William Raffeld, Michael college acting teacher and lifelong friend know him from but before he hit that kind of stardom, he was just a salt-of-the-earth actor, and a really good one to boot. He can do it producer David Marshall Grant, who acted with Michael Gross on Broadway in and cast him decades later on his show What saying about the Grosses Product: CTBroadsheet PubDate: 03-17-2011 Zone: ALL Edition: HD Page: LIVEADVP3-3 User: lseemann Time: Color:.