Broadway Babylon (3 page)

“Broadway is, you know, unlike Hollywood, it’s a place where lack of talent is not enough.”—A
NITA
M
ORRIS
(
Nine
)

“Broadway is first and foremost about promise. It’s the promise of entertainment, and the promise, or illusion, of youth.”—
Rent
creator J
ONATHAN
L
ARSON

“The American theater is on its last beloved legs.… In ten years there will be nothing but the Theatre Guild and one or two similar organizations.… We are being mechanized out of the theater by the talkies and radio and by people who prefer convenience to beauty.”—actress J
ANE
C
OWL
in 1929

“The poor old theater is done for.… There will be nothing but ‘talkies’ soon.”—G
EORGE
B
ERNARD
S
HAW
in 1930

“Talking pictures will [by 1941] take the place of theater as we know it today.”—theatrical designer N
ORMAN
B
EL
G
EDDES
in 1931 (daughter Barbara played J.R.’s mother on
Dallas
)

“Television may kill the movies, but I doubt it. It is killing off plays, which used to be called the aspirin of the middle classes.”—writer W
OLCOTT
G
IBBS
in 1959

“Broadway is dead, and if not dead, dying. Don’t ask for my pity!”—D
ANNY
K
AYE
after the closing of his musical
Two by Two
(1970)

“Broadway is dead, long live the new Broadway.”—E
LAINE
S
TRITCH

“You can make a killing in the theater, but you can’t make a living.”—playwright R
OBERT
A
NDERSON
(
Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father
)

“The Federal Theatre Project was part of a programme to provide jobs for the unemployed [and] financed over 800 different productions between 1935 and 1939. Many of them were ‘living newspaper’ documentaries, dealing with the plight of American farmers or the homeless.… [But] the level of social criticism in the ‘living newspapers’ eventually led to the programme being closed down.”—
The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre

“Theater purists shouldn’t scoff when somebody who’s climbed up the ladder in Hollywood heads back to New York and does a play. Such a one is no less an actor … [and] is obviously less indolent than some, and brings in added revenue and patrons. The economics of stardom are undeniable when measured in a theater’s box office.”—movie and stage star J
OHN
G
ARFIELD

“The English keep producing my plays and they also keep producing Tennessee’s plays and O’Neill’s plays and a lot of other people’s plays that never see the light of day here [in the United States] from one decade to the next. I’m not sure but that a broader audience isn’t brought into the theater by the fact that the National [Theatre] exists, the prices are pretty reasonable, and so on and so forth.”—playwright A
RTHUR
M
ILLER
in 1996

“It’s scary to have a bottom line of profit that you have to watch each week. It cost close to $170,000 a week to run
Angels in America
on Broadway. You had to sell that many tickets or more, and that got to be frightening. There
are repertory theaters in Europe where
Angels
has been running now for two or three years, and it draws half audiences. But it doesn’t matter. That’s a much nicer way of doing it.”—playwright T
ONY
K
USHNER

“The impact of AIDS has been felt on Equity’s health insurance fund, which is losing $1,000,000 a month. Changes in eligibility guidelines will be made which will leave as many as 4,500 part-time actors without health coverage.”—
Variety
, February 15, 1993, pg. 89

“In February [2003], New Yorkers got their first glimpse of [Matt] Cavanaugh, his Western shirt flapping open, abs flexed as he rides a mechanical bull, on the show’s posters.… No doubt recognizing that women and gay men are Broadway’s primary ticket buyers, the producers had decided to rest the $5 million production’s print-advertising campaign squarely on the broad shoulders of a [Broadway] newbie.”—
Time Out New York
on the musical of the 1980 John Travolta film
Urban Cowboy

“Each decade produces more flops than the previous decade, and for the most basic of reasons: the cost of Broadway keeps rising, so shows have to run longer to pay off.… The 1960s is the last decade in which the Broadway musical held a stable position in American civilization. During this time, the music changed (to rock), the status of Most Privileged Art changed (to cinema), and the capitalization minimums changed (to prohibitive).”—Broadway historian E
THAN
M
ORDDEN

“The [1980s] was to be dominated by three imported British musicals and the talents of two English showmen: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh [producer of
Cats, The Phantom of the Opera
, and
Les Misérables
].… He introduced the limited-advance booking methods of the West End—permitting a few months’ advance ticket sales to a hit show in order to keep the ticket tight—and raised the level of theater advertising to new heights. These three shows revolutionized Broadway theatergoing and cloned international companies of themselves, creating an aura of celebration regarding the original New York and London productions.… In the absence of exciting homegrown American musicals, the tri-state area of approximately fifteen million people selected
Cats, Les Miz
, or
Phantom
as the one [Broadway] event they had to experience on their birthday, anniversary, honeymoon, prom night, etc.”—producer S
TUART
O
STROW

“We were these mad people with a Shakespearean director [Trevor Nunn] and these boring old poems going into the worst theater in London. All the people who were our normal sources of money, 90% of them turned us
down. We ended up with over 200 small investors. The show has been averaging a 200% profit since the return of capital—that’s 200% per year for over 15 years.”—C
AMERON
M
ACKINTOSH
on
Cats

“At the nervous London premiere, [producer] David Merrick told Mackintosh that he’d be prepared to swap the British rights to
42nd Street
for the American rights to
Cats
. It was, ostensibly, a generous offer:
42nd Street
was a proven smash.… But a wary Mackintosh declined, and was right to do so; by the end of 1990,
42nd Street
, Broadway’s biggest hit of the ’80s, had earned $10 million.
Cats’s
box-office receipts were 510,809,266 pounds sterling.”—author M
ARK
S
TEYN
in
Broadway Babies Say Goodnight

“In terms of box-office receipts, a typical week shows 87% of the gross comes from musicals (
Variety
, February 9, 1993, p. 83). Owners of multiple theatres count on the long-running musicals for survival.”—footnote from
Broadway Theatre
by A
NDREW
B. H
ARRIS

“Commerce owns theater much more than it used to. The costs are preposterous.… When we did
Virginia Woolf
in 1962, our total cost to open the production was $42,000. Off-Broadway, we produced Beckett’s
Krapp’s Last Tape
with my
Zoo Story
for $3,000.”—E
DWARD
A
LBEE
in 2002

“I still say, under the right circumstances, every theater in the so-called Broadway area could be full within two or three years, if the price of tickets was brought down and a couple of other things were done. This is not some natural consequence. This is a result of a certain set of sociological courses which can be remedied.”—A
RTHUR
M
ILLER
in 1986

“[The mega-musical] came during a recession in England and America. Between 1970 and mid 1992, the dollar and pound had both fallen by over 65% against the D-mark and yen, and wholesale prices had risen twice as fast as in Japan and Germany.… [But]
Les Misérables
was advertised in the 1990s as ‘The Show of All Shows’ and ‘The Musical Sensation.’ ‘Fight to get a ticket,’ the public was told.… In 1970 the best seats for musicals in New York City were around $10, in 1980 $22.50, and in 1990 $55.”—
The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre

“The Andrew Lloyd Webber shows were pioneers in marketing techniques like issuing the hit record before the show opened.…
Aspects of Love
was Webber’s one Broadway flop. It lost $8 million in its New York run.… As with most Webber musicals, it followed up with a concert version, profitably touring the United States.”—D
ENNIS
M
C
G
OVERN
and D
EBORAH
G
RACE
W
INER
in the 1993 book
Sing Out, Louise!

“The British musicals’ extraordinary success continues after 16 years; they occupy the best Broadway houses and have caused a backup of productions wanting to play New York. With the exception of Stephen Sondheim, American musicals’ dramatists were stifled, and the Broadway landlords did little or nothing to bolster their hopes, being contented with the prospect of having their flagship theatres filled into the millennium.”—S
TUART
O
STROW
in his 1999 book
A Producer’s Broadway Journey

“The Broadway musical used to be capitalism’s most joyous money-spinner. Today’s musicals are the closest that business comes to fooling all of the people all of the time.”—C
HARLES
N
ELSON
R
EILLY
(actor,
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
; director,
The Nerd
)

“It’s one of the tragic ironies of the theater that only one [person] in it can count on steady work—the night watchman.”—T
ALLULAH
B
ANKHEAD
in her memoirs

“
Wildcat
was a very mixed experience for me … If I could have done
Mame
as a musical play, it might have made the movie better. I’d have been terrified to sing and dance again on Broadway, but I’d have forced myself. I’d have given it everything. Back during
Wildcat
I didn’t have a supportive husband behind me.”—L
UCILLE
B
ALL

“I think most actors would literally break a leg to be in a Broadway hit show. Or an arm
and a
leg.”—C
AROL
B
URNETT

“I sweat blood when I’m on that stage. Later, I sometimes feel ten years older.”—R
OBERT
P
RESTON
(
The Lion in Winter, The Music Man
)

“Once you become known as a functioning, contributing, and rewarded part of the Broadway scene, there’s a lot less of being liked for yourself and a lot more of being disliked, or even hated, for who you are. Or more to the point, for what you’ve achieved.”—M
ICHAEL
B
ENNETT
, director-choreographer (
A Chorus Line
)

“For a killer role, a really terrific comeback role and vehicle with all the right ingredients, I’d give up my house, if not its contents.… I wouldn’t go back unless it’s absolutely terrific. It’s too easy to break your heart over Broadway.”—A
NTHONY
P
ERKINS
(
Greenwillow
)

“Whenever I’ve been on Broadway, I’ve had to try very hard to forget that I’m in a foreign country, and try to remember that the stage—an actor’s home—is universal.”—S
IR
J
OHN
G
IELGUD

“When you sign on to be in a play, you temporarily give up the sanity in your life. Your schedule, your habits, your diet, everything—they all go out the window for the duration.”—R
OSIE
O’D
ONNELL
(
Grease
)

“Forget going out for lunch, for starters … and the ladies who lunch, or dinner parties! Part of the so-called glamour of starring on Broadway is having to eat by yourself a lot.”—E
THEL
M
ERMAN

“A play, let alone a musical, is terribly demanding. It just has to come first in your energies and attention. You can do that, for a while. Eventually, I had to put my family first.… It simply and unfortunately is more difficult for an actress.”—A
NGELA
L
ANSBURY
, four-time Tony winner

“The stage is completely absorbing. Very different from camera work. In a play you must be prepared to sacrifice your private life as well as a regular schedule. Not that I entirely sacrificed my private life, but I would have. And I’ve always liked my private life.”—C
HRISTOPHER
H
EWETT
, of TV’s
Mr. Belvedere
, who costarred in the movie
The Producers
and on Broadway in the 1959 musical
First Impressions
, based on Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice

“The concentration required is just tremendous, total. This is the real acting, the essence of it. And acting on Broadway is the most paranoiac kind of theater acting. You feel as if every theatergoer in the Western world is watching you, that’s all.”—C
HRISTOPHER
R
EEVE
(
The Fifth of July
and
A Matter of Gravity
)

“You’ll more readily try something completely bizarre on Broadway than you might in a movie. I mean, makeup galore and lipstick on my nipples—I do that on Broadway (as the Emcee in
Cabaret
), but would I do it on the screen?”— A
LAN
C
UMMING
, Tony winner for
Cabaret

“When you’re starting out, you do anything, because it’s Broadway. Broadway used to get national attention, automatically.… When you look back, it’s sort of amusing how intense one was about it, and it’s not even something that’s permanent, like a motion picture.”—B
ARBRA
S
TREISAND
(
Funny Girl
)

“I have to give up my art for my art. When I starred in
Fiddler on the Roof
, I couldn’t possibly give to my painting the same loving attention that Picasso does to his. Which is only because he doesn’t have to act too.”—Z
ERO
M
OSTEL

“When I’m on stage, I am, of course, ageless. But I pay for it afterwards. It drains you … afterwards, I feel every year of my age. Until I’m back on stage.”—B
EATRICE
A
RTHUR
(
Mame
and her own one-woman show in 2001-2002)

“I’d have given five years of my life if
[The New York Times
critic] Clive Barnes had been struck by lightning the day after he wrote that smug, bigoted review that insulted many of my theatergoers and much of the population, besides.”—J
OHN
H
ERBERT
, Canadian playwright. Barnes opined that if one liked Sal Mineo’s production of Herbert’s
Fortune and Men’s Eyes
, one needed a psychiatrist. The openly gay John Herbert lived to 75.

“Broadway critics are notorious. When you’re being judged by them, you’d gladly relinquish a major portion of a stellar salary for a good notice.”—D
IANA
R
IGG
. John Simon famously wrote of Rigg’s nude scene in
Abelard and Heloise
in 1970, “Diana Rigg is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses.”

“I practically go celibate when I’m performing on Broadway. It takes that much out of you.”—R
ICHARD
B
URTON
(
Hamlet
and
Camelot
)

“If you’re not behind the scenes and not in the chorus, working on Broadway comes down to a big choice. That is, if you’re gay. The choice is: your career or your integrity. It’s smoother sailing if you lie and play it straight, but it’s soul killing and it creates paranoia.… If you have a love relationship, the denials and pretense hurt you and your partner, besides.… At least it’s not as bad as the movies, where the top Hollywood requirement, even more than looks nowadays, is lying low if you’re gay or bi.”—R
OBERT
L
A
T
OURNEAUX
, best known as Cowboy in 1968’s
The Boys in the Band

“Yes, I’m gay—when I’m on that stage. If the role required me to suck off Horst, I’d do it. But I didn’t consider it a bold move.”—
Rolling Stone
interview with pre-Hollywood R
ICHARD
G
ERE
, while he was in the Broadway production of
Bent
, about Nazi persecution of gays