Connie Arrigo, longtime stage-door guard, is fondly remembered ...

For years, Connie Arrigo was a fixture at the stage door of Orange County's most famous theater. The longtime Segerstrom Center for the Arts employee died Monday. She worked at the Center for 22 years, from one year after its 1986 opening until she was laid off with nine other staff members as a result of an early 2009 budget cut.

Many performers came to know and love Arrigo, whose salty personality and ready wit were as recognizable as her oversize spectacles and pulled-back white hair. She was the first person they encountered after entering Segerstom Hall's stage door on Avenue of the Arts.

Arrigo's nasally accent betrayed her East Coast roots. She was introduced to theater in her early teens. The daughter of a house painter, she was raised by her paternal grandmother in Asbury Park, N.J. She fell in love with the arts when she saw her first play, "The Member of the Wedding."

"After that, you couldn't keep me out of New York City," Arrigo told the Register in a 2005 profile. "I would get to Broadway somehow. It became a refuge. I never had any dreams of performing. Somehow, it was my cathedral, and I didn't want anything to interfere with that sanctuary. That's how personal it was ? and still is."

At 16, Arrigo got a full-time job for the phone company, moved to Long Branch and spent her spare time and change at big-band concerts, community theater performances, jazz clubs and Broadway shows.

In 1962, with her husband and two young children, she left the Jersey shore forever for California.

She got a divorce, a real-estate license and two triplexes on Balboa Peninsula in the mid-1970s. And after decades of attending the theater, she finally went to work for one ? first South Coast Repertory, then its 3,000-seat neighbor, known at the time as the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The late Charles Nelson Reilly bonded with her. The comedian would bring her frog-shaped jewelry whenever he visited the Center, and she got to sit in the front row at the opening night of his one-man autobiographical play at the Laguna Playhouse.

She once stopped Irvine native Will Ferrell as he tried to enter her sanctum. The actor-comedian wanted to see Jerry Seinfeld backstage. She wasn't having any of it.

"Hi, I'm Will Ferrell," he said.

"Yeah? I'm Lucy Arnaz," she responded.

Not missing a beat, Ferrell asked, "How's Desi?"

Arrigo couldn't resist a good one-liner. She let Ferrell backstage.

"Connie's positive energy and delightful sense of humor will be deeply missed," said Segerstrom Center president Terrence W. Dwyer. "She was absolutely passionate about the arts. Her love embraced all styles and disciplines, and that translated into a devotion to the artists who performed here. They became her extended family, and she gained many fans among performers."

Contact the writer: 714-796-7979 or phodgins@ocregister.com


Source: http://www.ocregister.com/entertainment/arrigo-338788-center-arts.html

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