Broadway Babylon (12 page)
Authors: Boze Hadleigh
“No man can be criticized but by a man greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.”—R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON
in 1842
“I really stopped caring what critics said when I was in a play by Maxwell Anderson, very famous guy at the time.
Truckline Café
(1946). Not the best play, not the worst. Pretty good—good enough. The reviews were atrocious. That’s when I figured out it wasn’t a serious thing. It was just a game. And nobody was immune.”—M
ARLON
B
RANDO
“I say I’m going to read [reviews] later, and then I don’t. I guess I’ve read a few, and then friends call and leave them on your machine. I’ve heard them that way. And occasionally you get the gist of them from the way people act after opening—smiling or in a slump. At the time that they’re relevant, you really can’t read them, because good or bad, you have to continue with what you’re doing. And then, afterwards, it’s like, who cares?”—S
TOCKARD
C
HANNING
(
Six Degrees of Separation
)
“Most reviewers of the theater are Communists, trust me.”—conservative playwright G
EORGE
K
ELLY
, Grace’s uncle
“There are a couple of critics I would gladly off, if I could get away with it. I won’t name them. Not because of legal reasons, [but] just in case.”—B
OB
F
OSSE
, who admitted, “My friends know that to me happiness is when I am merely miserable and not suicidal.”
“Are all reviewers in the States so juvenile? They dote on puns and bad jokes. More than once, they’ve actually written, ‘She played the part
Baddeley.
’ ”—Englishwoman H
ERMIONE
B
ADDELEY
“I attended a charming little musical in Beverly Hills that I’d seen Off-Broadway, and both times some critics complained that the cast ‘played to the audience.’ Who
else
would they play to? You could tell the actors were relishing their roles and lines and the songs … and audiences loved that show, critics be damned.”—production designer R
ICHARD
S
YLBERT
(the musical was
Ruthless!
)
“A reviewer once described me as ‘a delicious ear in a field of corn.’ I deluded myself into thinking the key word was ‘delicious,’ that it was a compliment. The key word was ‘corn.’ ”—M
ARIE
“M
Y
F
RIEND
I
RMA
” W
ILSON
, who in the early ’60s toured as Lorelei Lee in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
“Someone has to write about, and describe, plays. But how did it devolve into Broadway critics having the power to close shows down?”—C
AROL
B
URNETT
“I realized how pretentious critics can be when
Cats
came along and several of them tried to discern or invent different levels of meaning or significance and symbolism in the show. Others wrote with such conviction about the wonderful or the terrible performances in
Cats
—either way, how could they
tell
?”—M
ADELINE
K
AHN
(
The Sisters Rosenzweig
)
“Critics are snobs who only want to write about stars. It’s not about credit where credit is due. That’s why they deliberately ignored Joe Cino, who helped revitalize Off-Broadway—more than a few of its hits came out of his coffeehouse. By day he was a typist, just to pay the overhead on his productions. He called it Off-Off-Broadway, and he deserves so much credit, but he didn’t get it, nor money or any glory.… When he died in 1967, a suicide, the critics still thought he wasn’t a Name and wouldn’t praise him.”—the
Village Voice
columnist A
RTHUR
B
ELL
“It is the arrogance of certain critics to believe that their job lies less in assessing an art than in guiding or even bullying it. But art can properly appear only as the product of the free artist.”—theater historian E
THAN
M
ORDDEN
“On Broadway, the critics attend previews rather than the official opening night, write their reviews in advance and have them ready for the first editions—which usually means the notices arrive when the [post-premiere] party’s in full swing and, if they’re unfavourable, clear the room quicker than a nuclear warning.… In London, happily, first-night reviews are still reviews of the first night … there are no brutal critical dissections to cast a pall over the [party]. The critics, like the hangovers, belong to the morning after.”—T
HE
S
TORY OF
M
ISS
S
AIGON
(1991 book)
“Jule Styne,
Gypsy
’s composer, implored [writer] Arthur Laurents to remove a joke about the Vatican because critic Walter Kerr was Catholic. He wouldn’t. And Laurents wouldn’t let Kerr leave till he’d seen all of the show. Kerr had naively thought that since Gypsy Rose Lee was a stripper, the show would end with a strip tease, which he didn’t want to see in front of his wife. But this was an Ethel Merman musical, and it ended with Merman’s biggest number.
“It came out swell. Kerr’s review was a love letter. He called
Gypsy
‘The best damn musical I’ve seen in years.’
Damn
, mind you!”—pop culture historian M
ARTIN
G
REIF
“I doubt most New Yorkers are Catholics. Yet they seem willing to let their theatre critics make up their minds for them … reading the notices as if they were papal edicts and infallible, when mostly they deliver a lot of bull.”—R
ICHARD
B
URTON
(
Hamlet, Camelot
) in 1968
“I resent critics who use their excess weight to try and damage a production. And those who get too personal and can harm an actor.… My attitude is, generally, that of a famous Frenchman who wrote a letter back to a nasty critic while sitting in the loo. He said that he had the bad review in front of him, but that soon it would be behind him.”—R
ICHARD
K
ILEY
(
Man of La Mancha
)
“… critics don’t write for their readers. They write for each other, or for what they are sure is a personal following of superior intellect.”—producer D
AVID
M
ERRICK
“You have to stand up for yourself from the very beginning of your career. The playwright doesn’t have to make changes, and the playwright would be wise not to. I never went into the theatre to be an employee. If you refuse
to be owned and refuse to be an employee, they’ll probably start to revile you … [It] makes them angrier and angrier, because they can’t cripple you.”—E
DWARD
A
LBEE
on his past treatment by critics
“A newspaperman whose sweetheart ran away with an actor.”—columnist and sometime critic W
ALTER
W
INCHELL’S
definition of a drama critic. (On his tradition of praising the first play he saw in any given season, he said, “Who am I to stone the first cast?”)
“Criticism is prejudice made plausible.”—writer H.L. M
ENCKEN
H
ow surprising is it that the real-life Mama Rose of
Gypsy
was lesbian? Her grandson Erik Lee Preminger publicly acknowledged it. Rose Hovick’s performer daughters “Gypsy” Rose Lee and June Havoc didn’t admit it as readily. In Lee’s eponymous memoir, which bears minimal resemblance to the Broadway musical, Rose’s sexuality was camouflaged by her marital past; the 1959 musical added “Herbie” (Jack Klugman) as Rose’s fictitious love interest. Gypsy Rose Lee told writer Arthur Laurents that she wished she’d invented Herbie herself.
Lee penned
Gypsy
as a “monument” to herself and, hopefully once it was musicalized or filmed, a path toward permanent solvency. The glory, not the facts, concerned her. When Laurents asked how she’d gotten the nickname “Gypsy,” she replied, “Oh, honey, I’ve given fourteen or fifteen versions. Yours will be as good as mine.” Like daughter, like mother, for Rose had never let the truth stand between June—the younger and more talented of her daughters—and success. For one of Dainty June’s finales, Rose showcased her in a gown flocked with rhinestones which she claimed in a program note was worth a then-whopping $1,000. Rose had had to be dissuaded from adding that three seamstresses went blind while making the garment.
The musical’s credit read, “Suggested by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee.” In the Broadway version, after Louise blossoms into a relatively demure stripper and strikes out on her own, it’s suggested that Mama (never referred to as “Mama Rose”) could open an acting school for kids, to keep occupied. She rejects the idea indignantly. In reality, Rose Hovick wound up running a
lesbian boarding house and brothel. This was revealed in June Havoc’s second autobiography,
More Havoc
, published in 1980, by which time The Topic could finally be broached (her first book,
Early Havoc
, in 1959, was a sisterly attempt to grab back some of the limelight from Gypsy, whose memoirs had angered June less than the resultant hit musical).
June’s mother had informed her, “Sex is dirty because men are dirty.” As for her lesbian tenants, Rose warned, “Don’t you dare feel superior to those girls. At least they have the good sense to know they can’t get pregnant with spit!”
The 1984 book
Gypsy and Me
was by Erik Lee Preminger, the out-of-wedlock son of Lee (1914–1970) and director Otto Preminger, whom he strongly resembled and who eventually acknowledged his son. Erik noted that his surrogate father had been a gay man who lived with Gypsy and son during the boy’s formative years. He was more candid about the non-heterosexuals in his background during gay-press interviews in 1993 while publicizing the TV remake of
Gypsy
that starred Bette Midler.
“Boyd Bennett was there to make sure that I grew up thoughtful and considerate of others. He told me, ‘Your mother is arrogant and grand. But you’re not going to act like the son of a diva if I can help it.’ I couldn’t have learned the lessons I learned if I’d been raised by a straight man.” Among other things, Erik was taught to value women for more than their looks. “I think Red Buttons was [Gypsy’s] only straight friend. Mother would have been happier if I had been gay. She wouldn’t have had as much trouble with me.”
Ironic that although most of the musical’s creators were gay, it had no lesbian or gay content, then or in revivals. In his 2000 memoirs Arthur Laurents recalled that one impetus for
Gypsy
had been gay or bisexual writer Liz Smith showing up at a party with a girlfriend named Selma Lynch who confessed that her first lover had been Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother. Laurents wondered if Gypsy herself, like many strippers and hookers, was bisexual, possibly lesbian? He added that June Havoc had written about lesbian cocktail parties that Gypsy and Rose gave for their friends, who had to pay admission.
L
AURENTS AND OTHERS
have described Rose as not just the quintessential stage mother but a “monster” trying to live out her dreams through her daughters.“I was born too soon and started too late,” the fictional Rose asseverates. As played by Ethel Merman, Rosalind Russell, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, and others, Rose is an egomaniacal dynamo. An unusually strong female character for a musical, she is judged more severely by theatre critics and audiences than many similarly domineering male characters in straight plays.
Merman, who originated the role, had long awaited a musical that offered a real dramatic challenge. When
Gypsy
was published, Ethel read it and told
Gypsy Rose Lee at a cocktail party, “I want to do it. I’m going to do it. And I’ll shoot anyone else who gets the part.” After the show became a reality and a smash hit, Lee advised reporters, “I told Ethel to drink lots of milk and stay healthy. She’s going to be my annuity.” Merman, while relishing the starring role of Gypsy’s mother, tried to distance herself from the harsher aspects of Rose’s personality. Herself a domineering mother, she announced, “Rose and me, we got hardly anything in common, ’cept for love of show business.”
In any case, the real Rose Hovick was considerably tougher than the Lee, Laurents, or Merman versions, and the relationships and incidents presented on stage varied markedly from the truth. For instance, the break with rebellious daughter June (born in 1916) wasn’t as final as in
Gypsy
. Yet the scene after June up and weds a boy named Bobby from their act was more dramatic in real life. Where the fictionalized Rose resigned herself to the loss of her thirteen-year-old daughter and chief breadwinner, the real Rose went straight to the law and demanded of a police lieutenant, “You aren’t going to let him abduct my baby, are you?”
The cop, who spent the day investigating the case, answered, “Marriage isn’t the electric chair.” With the boy present, he assured Mrs. Hovick that her new in-law was of good family and long-range intentions. He ordered, “Shake hands, please.” In
Early Havoc
, June described what came next. “Mother moved toward Bobby; her eyes glistened. He extended his hand, but just then Mother produced a small automatic.… Ten inches away from Bobby’s chest, she pulled the trigger—once … twice.”