Broadway Babylon (51 page)

“Miss [Gypsy Rose] Lee and I were discussing a fellow actor who used to pray before every performance. If it was for talent or stardom, it didn’t work. Miss Lee said, ‘Well, praying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.’ ”—R
ODDY
M
C
D
OWALL
, who won a supporting Tony for
The Fighting Cock

“I have white ancestors too, and I carry some red Indian blood.… I think my racial mix stimulates my creativity as a poet, writer, playwright … and citizen of the world.”—L
ANGSTON
H
UGHES
(1902–1967)

“It takes a tirelessly resourceful actor, not an exploding mushheap like Richard Harris or a has-been wannabe like Robert Goulet.”—writer E
THAN
M
ORDDEN
, preferring Richard Burton, the original star of
Camelot

“Steve Allen’s books, which most people have no idea exist, have one redeeming feature: you can put them down. Sophie Tucker’s estate should have sued when he wrote the score for
Sophie
. That music had about as much to do with her as I do with Alfred Hitchcock. It was a terrible show, bitterly disappointing in relation to what it could have been. Allen’s music, unlike his books, could not be put down, stuffed under a sofa, or flung at the wall.”—T
RUMAN
C
APOTE

“Admittedly, my score was not up to the sometimes sublime standard of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill in
Funny Girl
. But it wasn’t chopped liver, either, and it wasn’t fair that Libi Staiger seemed to lose all hope for stardom because our show took a nosedive—no pun, and I’m not comparing Miss Staiger with Miss Streisand, who is more talented, even, and certainly has a bigger nose.

“As to how talented and big a star Libi might have become, sadly we will never know.”—S
TEVE
A
LLEN
on
Sophie
, about Sophie Tucker (by contrast,
Funny Girl
, about another offbeat Jewish singer-comedienne, Fanny Brice, was a hit and a star-maker)

“After the extraordinary achievement of
West Side Story
, Leonard Bernstein just stopped.… He spent the last years of his life tinkering with
Candide
, a Voltaire operetta whose characters include a woman with only one buttock—but, then, the whole show is half-assed.”—M
ARK
S
TEYN
, North American correspondent of
The Spectator

“I briefly met this famous actress. Very talented. Very promiscuous. At a party, her agent told us all in front of her that in her new drama she would be playing a virgin. I blurted out, ‘Will she be playing it from memory?’ If looks could kill, she’d have murdered me on the spot.”—stage and film actor J
ASON
R
OBARDS
J
R
.

“Angela Lansbury as a lunatic and a Southern tramp? I saw
Prettybelle
[1971] strictly for her, but she was so blatantly miscast. Since then, I’ve never assumed that even a talented, intelligent performer necessarily knows best what roles are right for her.”—playwright N. R
ICHARD
N
ASH
(
The Rainmaker
)

“The fact that inconsistency is a part and parcel of art really struck home when I heard the music in
Prettybelle
, a flop musical that starred Angela Lansbury. The story was idiotic, but it’s the music that struck me speechless. This was from the same two guys [Jule Styne and Bob Merrill] who’d done all that fantastic music for
Funny Girl
, so many good songs that several weren’t kept in the movie [version], for space. Their music for
Prettybelle
was the palest shadow of wonderful. That’s when I learned there are no guarantees, even from artists.”—composer-actor P
AUL
J
ABARA

“Where Anthony Newley went wrong [in
Chaplin
, 1983] was imagining he had anything in common with the comic genius. That is what prior Broadway acclaim can do: swell your head and shrink your reason.… He and Charlie Chaplin both came from England. Period.”—producer S
TAN
M
ARGULIES
(TV’s
The Thorn Birds
)

“Bea Arthur’s Meg makes Mama Rose look like Little Miss Muffet.”—
Gypsy
composer J
ULE
S
TYNE
on Arthur’s monstrous mother character in the 1968 flop musical
A Mother’s Kisses

“What was Bea thinking? She went from
Mame
into
that
(
A Mother’s Kisses
)? It was her bid to move over from supporting to leading lady? Go figure. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time … I should be glad. If she hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t have had to go into television.”—Arthur’s
Golden Girls
costar E
STELLE
G
ETTY

“The stage has its own magic. It softens, even beautifies. Somebody strident, like Ethel Merman or like Bea Arthur in
Mame
, can be amusing, even charming, upon the stage. But not usually on the screen, so magnified. And a truly homely woman like Lotte Lenya … in
From Russia with Love
she looked like a toad. But on Broadway in
Threepenny Opera
, she’s a national treasure.”—L
ARRY
K
ERT
(
West Side Story
)

“You have to be big to come across inside a theatre. To be a star there you need big features. I was lucky with my eyes … the mouth one can always enlarge.… I loved the theatre, and when I initially flopped in pictures, I was preparing to go back to New York. But I was summoned back, just in time, by the great British actor billed as ‘Mr. George Arliss’ who saw something
in me. However, I’d have been quite content to become the American Duse and live my career on the stage.”—B
ETTE
D
AVIS

“The thing is, Betty Buckley was
good
in
Carrie
[1988]. But she must have known even a good performance of a demented [mother] character in a super-mess of a project could in no way salvage it. Barbara Cook realized this [in England] and left
Carrie
before America ever got
wind
of it, if you know what I mean.”—playwright B
OB
R
ANDALL
(
The Magic Show
)

“If
Titanic
did one good thing, it’s kept Leo DiCaprio off Broadway.… Horrible thought: Do you think we’ll ever see Tom Cruise on Broadway, around 2015 or 2020? With any luck, by then I’ll be dead.”—R
ICHARD
H
ARRIS
(
Camelot
on screen and stage, in that order)

“I liked Nathan Lane in Terrence McNally’s plays. Wonderful stage talent. Then he had this spell of trying to become a movie star and edging back into the closet. Now he’s back to normal and Broadway’s better off.”—B
EN
B
AGLEY

“It’s sad. Broadway was a big enough, great enough venue that it grew its own stars. Big people with big talents. Now, for the most part, they must import from movies or TV—big people with big salaries and followings.”—theatrical photographer K
ENN
D
UNCAN

“Who could ever forget Whoopi Goldberg in
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Many, however, have tried.… It’s a
man’s
role, not a gender-bender. Heaven forbid someday they do
Man of La Mancha
as ‘Woman of La Mancha.’ ”—R
ICHARD
K
ILEY
(
Man of La Mancha
)

“He’s not short, and I hear he did fine in
The King and I
. But good or adequate is not what it’s about, not what it’s supposed to be about. And Lou Diamond Phillips, after Yul Brynner, is
small
.”—K
IM
H
UNTER
(
A Streetcar Named Desire
, on stage and screen)

“Jonathan Pryce is Caucasian but landed the star part in
Miss Saigon
. Obviously there is a big-time push from English stage and screen powers to try and make him a star … in movies like
Brazil
and
Evita
as Juan Peron. They’re trying to make a leading mountain out of a molehill.”—publicist B
ILL
F
EEDER

“Two of the worst ideas I have ever heard about for musicals are from the autobiographies of Boy George and Rosie O’Donnell.… By all means come out of the closet. But whatever your orientation, keep your life stories to yourself, or at least on the bookshelf. Don’t make us hear you
sing
them.”—nightclub owner T
AMMI
G
OWER

“At $90 a seat, you don’t want to just hear me sing.”—R
OSIE
O’D
ONNELL
in 2002 about her upcoming musical based on her book
Find Me
, and why she was adding a second person to it

“I passed on the play about the gay baseball player (
Take Me Out
) that later got the Best Play Tony [in 2003]. Who knew? Then I didn’t see that crazy new British show
The Play What I Wrote
. I was offered tickets for when Roger Moore guest-starred. Didn’t go, and then he collapses on stage, almost has a heart attack—I read he’s 75. I miss all the excitement, staying at home. Nowadays, my back goes out more often than I do.”—B
UDDY
H
ACKETT
in 2003

“Tovah Feldshuh played Yentl on stage before Streisand musicalized her for the screen. Decades later, Feldshuh is amazing as Prime Minister Meir in
Golda’s Balcony …
accents galore—Meryl Streep would die—and a Henry Kissinger impression you have to hear to believe.”—Monaco radio personality D
ELPHINE
R
OSAY

“You re-evaluate people when their talent conflicts with what is fair. Like with David Rabe. In the late ’90s he’s done an AIDS-themed play (
A Question of Mercy
). I just saw it at the New York Theatre Workshop. Here’s a straight man writing about gay men and demonizing one of the two main gay men in it and making a hero out of the straight doctor, in such a biased way that if he’d done this with or to any other minority, he’d have been lambasted for it. Yet the average reaction goes, ‘Isn’t it wonderful of David Rabe to write a play about AIDS and even include a gay couple.’ ”—S
USAN
S
TRASBERG
(Broadway’s
The Diary of Anne Frank
)

“In the end, he was only about getting straight black men into the fold. At one point someone in the audience asked, ‘What about women?’ and he answered, ‘I mentioned my mother, didn’t I?’ And he was serious! He didn’t care about the dramatic lack of women playwrights or other people of color, and he absolutely didn’t care about lesbian and gay voices in the theatre.”—lesbian Jewish playwright S
ARAH
S
CHULMAN
on black playwright August Wilson at a 1997 Town Hall debate about more equitable representation in American theater

“Society, or the media, focus much more on divisions of race, but the biggest divisions are of gender, and entertainment really shows this up. For every play or movie by a black man, how many, or any, are there by a black woman? For every gay play, how many lesbian plays? Men like to keep the power within their sacred masculine circle.”—actress L
YNNE
T
HIGPEN

“One reason I became an actor was because I heard you could meet queers in the theatre.”—S
IR
I
AN
M
C
K
ELLEN

“I don’t mean to sound flippant. But eight marriages can do that to a man. Actually, your question is itself rather flippant.”—composer F
REDERICK
L
OEWE
, when asked why his former partner, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, seventeen years his junior, had died first

“I did. I have believed thirteen was my lucky number. I’m re-evaluating that.”—A
LAN
J
AY
L
ERNER
, whose thirteenth musical,
Dance a Little Closer
(1983), closed in one night and was his Broadway swansong

“Michael Crawford was in the movies of
Hello, Dolly!
and
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
. I’ve seen him on stage in
Phantom of the Opera
. The critics say now he has all this dramatic weight to bring to the part, but I don’t buy it. He has more weight, but not dramatic.”—B
EN
B
AGLEY

“No denying Lauren Bacall has presence. She brings glamour and star power to whatever she does. But when I saw her in two musicals, … she is a very unmusical person. She would stand or sit there while the people all around her sang and danced. And when she did actually sing, or talked-sang … well, don’t ask.”—R
OBERT
P
RESTON
(
The Music Man
)

“Joan Rivers has tried more than once to make it on Broadway. She’s even directed a movie—she’s done it all. But in a play, she gives the impression she’s annoyed that the other people on the stage get to talk too.”—M
ADELINE
K
AHN

“In 1961, when I directed my play
Invitation to a March
, Shelley Winters, the star, complained to [producer] Lawrence Langner that her leading man was gay. This was the same Shelley who tried to come between Farley [Granger] and me when we were living together, but she wasn’t good in the play and she knew it.… ‘Miss Winters,’ Langner said, ‘Mr. Laurents wanted you for this play. I did not. I said he could have you on one condition: that I never have to talk to you. Good day.’ ”—writer-director A
RTHUR
L
AURENTS
(Granger had gone on studio-arranged dates with Winters during her pre-flab days.)

“We’re not allowed to get married in this world—I don’t know why But I’d like to declare in front of millions of people, ‘I love you and I’d like to live with you the rest of my life.’ ”—2003 Tony winner M
ARC
S
HAIMAN
to fellow
Hairspray
winner and life partner of twenty-five years Scott Wittman