Broadway Babylon (52 page)

“It was the gayest Tony Awards show ever, including composer Marc Shaiman kissing his love and lyricist.… But why did Shaiman say gay people aren’t allowed to marry ‘in this world’? Has he never heard of France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, a growing number of others, including soon Germany? The United States is
not
the world.”—D
ELPHINE
R
OSAY
(and, in 2005, Great Britain.)

“Out of every musical I ever saw, the one thing that stands out most for me was from
The Fantasticks
, when the heroine says the line, or prayer or mantra: ‘Don’t let me be normal!’ You don’t expect that sort of forward thinking and validation in a musical, but it was written, someone said it, I heard it, and it became my bit of hope, my mantra, ever since then.”—author H
ELENE
H
ANFF
(
84 Charing Cross Road
)

“The blacklists didn’t affect Broadway much, due to the fact that where TV was beholden to sponsors and corporations, theatre producers were and are self-employed. No sponsors, nor the banks to which the film studios were so indebted.”—stage actress turned Congresswoman H
ELEN
G
AHAGAN
D
OUGLAS
(wife of two-time Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglas)

“I’m honored to help recreate the memory of a great writer and humanitarian like Dalton Trumbo.”—R
ICHARD
D
REYFUSS
in 2003; a different actor starred in
Trumbo
, an Off-Broadway play, each week—e.g., Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, and Chris Cooper—in the portrait of the most famous of the Hollywood Ten, adapted by Christopher Trumbo from his late father’s letters

“I’m aghast that such Red-sympathetic types as Dalton Trumbo and a mob of others could continue to make a living off our American theatre. But now he gets hired to script A-list pictures such as
Spartacus
and
Exodus
. Disgraceful!”—archconservative columnist H
EDDA
H
OPPER
, who urged a boycott of
Spartacus
(1960), which President Kennedy made a point of attending

“I’m polite. I always insist on good manners. I remember one party at which I had a chat with a rather nice man, but after he got up and left, I turned to my hostess and inquired
why
she’d invited that uncouth hick? She was, of course, surprised. I explained that although I sometimes forget a face, I do not forget a back—not one that got up and walked out on a stage performance I’d given a few nights before!”—J
ONATHAN
H
ARRIS
(
Lost in Space
)

“Miss Merman is a great broad … that is, she’s a great Broadway star.”—M
ARY
M
ARTIN

“Mary Martin? Oh, she’s all right, if you like talent.”—E
THEL
M
ERMAN

“Mr. George Abbott and other Broadway producers have from time to time approached me about starring in a ‘vehicle’ … however, I am afraid that because I enunciate and speak English, American audiences might not understand me.”—D
AME
E
DITH
E
VANS

“One doesn’t always know what to make of Broadway or what it expects of us. As a newcomer in the 1960s I was taken to New York’s collective bosom. But when I returned in the 1980s in what had been a significant hit in the West End, New York was underwhelmed and
Rose
was counted as a complete failure.… Broadway can be quite unstable for a foreigner.”—G
LENDA
J
ACKSON
, actress turned politician

“Theatre is miles from pictures, entirely different. Yet the brotherhood [gay actors] who work in New York on the stage seem as terrified to keep their little secret as their Hollywood counterparts. I shan’t name any names, but only because one can be sued for telling the truth, which in the States is a controversial thing.”—British comedy actor K
ENNETH
W
ILLIAMS

“It’s awful. We begin in the theatre, then the pictures spoil us. Spencer Tracy once told Charles and me, ‘Don’t bother with plays. Stick to pictures. Why make a fool of yourself on a nightly basis?’ Charles liked doing theatre; I prefer to do revues, skits, and my own comic specialities.”—E
LSA
L
ANCHESTER
, wife of closeted film star Charles Laughton

“The theatre is no place for a man who bleeds easily.”—Irish playwright S
EAN
O’C
ASEY’S
advice to Canadian actor Hume Cronyn

“One of the early unsuccessful plays that I was in was back in 1938 … I believe for six performances. Its title was
Eye on a Sparrow
, and the director was Antoinette Perry, now known as the ‘Tony’ of Broadway’s Tony Awards. The reviews were so bad that she took her real name off [the credits] and used a masculine alias instead [John M. Worth].”—M
ONTGOMERY
C
LIFT

“Gore Vidal did a satirical play called
Visit to a Small Planet
that became a Jerry Lewis movie. He also did
The Best Man
, a very safe, rather pretentious, and quite homophobic political play—ironic, in that Vidal is homosexual and twice ran for political office.”—Broadway costume designer M
ILES
W
HITE
(
Oklahoma!
)

“I’m sure critics have nothing so practical as a union nor as dignified as a guild. If they did, Kenneth Tynan should resign from it. The gall of setting oneself up as an arbiter of good taste in regards to the theatre, then helping stage a pornographic, all-nude revue passing itself off as a play or even
social commentary—his dreadful
Oh! Calcutta!
I’d like to assassinate him.”—H
ERMIONE
G
INGOLD
(
A Little Night Music
)

“Then Hal Prince went to my wife and asked why I wouldn’t do (
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
), and she came to me and said, ‘I heard you turned down
Forum
.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you.’ And she said, ‘If you don’t take it, I’m going to stab you in the balls.’ So I said, ‘All right, but this is the last time I’m gonna do something for money for you!’ ”—Z
ERO
M
OSTEL

“Katie [Hepburn] was a tough customer even when young. In one of her early plays,
Death Takes a Holiday
, the producer didn’t like her in the part and went backstage to give her the option of resigning. This infuriated her. ‘I’m not going to take that privilege,’ she answered coolly, ‘so if you wish to fire me, do so. But get out of here, because you’ll be lucky if I don’t kill you.’ ”—movie director G
EORGE
C
UKOR
, who began in the theater

“I’m resigned to the fact that those of us who have lived our professional lives mostly on the stage—myself, Katharine Cornell, Eva Le Gallienne, Edith Evans, Geraldine Page, many others as well—will not be as vivid in the memory of future generations as those who have made dozens of motion pictures or even done television.”—H
ELEN
H
AYES
, two-time Oscar winner

“It was my mother who helped push me into the business, having recognized my budding genius at an early age.… She took me to a children’s audition at a theatre where I did my little act and got hired immediately. The stage manager then took me back to my mother and said to her, ‘Shall we say three pounds a week?’ and my mother replied, ‘I’m sorry, but we couldn’t possibly afford to pay that much.’ ”—S
IR
N
OEL
C
OWARD

“Talk about ego. George White was like Ziegfeld—not quite as famous. But big shows, lots of girls, legs … cheesecake made him rich. But the cheese went to his head. He genuinely believed that they nicknamed Broadway—New York’s oldest thoroughfare—after him: the Great
White
Way.”—composer J
ULE
S
TYNE
(
Bells Are Ringing
)

“Publicity, in the woist sense of the woid, has always been the life’s blood of show business! Flo Ziegfeld would deliberately ignore his bills so his creditors would sue him, take him to court, and get his name in the papers. Publicity at any cost. Or none at all!”—J
IMMY
D
URANTE

“Clare Boothe, the socialite who became a playwright and diplomat, was distantly related to the acting Booth family, which included Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. To unrelate themselves, the family added an
e
.… Her
second marriage was to [Time-Life] publisher Henry Luce, so from then on she had power as well as wealth. Clare was not only extremely opinionated, but vengeful, and if she disliked you she was apt to try and destroy your reputation.”—actor-coach R
OBERT
L
EWIS

“[Ray Bolger’s] wife was finally banned from the theatre. He’d be in rehearsal and he’d be fine, but then his wife would tell him about the other performers and performances and, well, his wife was real trouble. I had to rehearse my one remaining number, [the showstopper] ‘Nightlife,’ in one of the bathrooms, with [director] Josh [Logan] sitting on the sink and me standing in front of the johns, because they were afraid to let Ray see it.”—A
NITA
G
ILLETTE
, the ingénue in
All American
(1962)

“My grandmother always told me when I went into the business to beware of the casting couch. I realized six months into the road on this show that the girls didn’t have to worry about it. It was the guys who had a problem.”—T
ERPSIE
T
OON
of
Sugar Babies
, later a director-choreographer

“I remember Jack Barrymore cared about the details, before the drinking took over.… When he did
Hamlet
, he reminded the girls who would carry on the dead Ophelia in the burial scene that they were playing virgins. Whereupon one of them said, ‘Mr. Barrymore, we’re extras, not character actresses.’ ”—T
ALLULAH
B
ANKHEAD

“When Irish eyes are smiling, beware.”—Welsh actress S
IAN
P
HILLIPS
(who enacted Marlene Dietrich on stage) on ex-husband Peter O’Toole

“I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.”—G
EORGE
B
ERNARD
S
HAW

“In the
Gypsy
company, [Ethel Merman] was famous for a sexual joke she didn’t get. When she asked Jack Klugman, her leading man, whether Tab Hunter was gay, Jack replied, ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’

“ ‘Yes,’ said Ethel, still waiting for the answer.

“Not bright, no, but endearing and despite a life spent in saloons, childlike.”—A
RTHUR
L
AURENTS
, who wrote the musical
Gypsy

“Richard Rodgers—beautiful music, ugly sentiments. He wound up not doing the music for
Coco
, which André Previn did instead. When colleagues pointed out that Coco Chanel had collaborated with the Nazis, Rodgers told them he knew something even ‘worse’ about her: she was bisexual.”—W
ARREN
C
ASEY
, co-creator of
Grease

“As far as I know, he’s never made mention, but I wonder how Stephen Sondheim feels now about the various anti-gay lyrics he wrote when
he was still in the closet?”—R
ON
V
AWTER
, stage and screen (
Philadelphia
) actor

“Sondheim insists his shows aren’t at
all
autobiographical. Why so vehemently, I don’t know. But he’s still never done anything with a gay theme or major gay character, and … suppresses gay content from his work. Contrast this with Jonathan Larson, who was apparently heterosexual but did include quite a bit of gay content in his first and last big show,
Rent
. You tell me who’s ‘the better gay.’ ”—stage director J
OSÉ
Q
UINTERO

“Critics have their own agendas, often fueled by green—money and jealousy. Or insecurity.… Some critics even write books. One is Martin Gottfried, who described
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
in print as ‘the most successful homosexual play ever produced on Broadway.’ An out-and-out homophobe. Years later he does a biography of Danny Kaye, and because he likes Kaye, he pretends Kaye was not homo- or bisexual. Facts be damned.”—Beverly Hills columnist and former Warner Bros, executive R
ICHARD
G
ULLY

“Fritz Loewe’s music was among Broadway’s most ravishing. But he created his own biography like a novel. He was a mystery figure, and two of his persistent claims cannot be verified: that he started composing at age seven and at 13 was the youngest pianist to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic.… He said he’d written a European song named ‘Katrina’ that sold millions of copies. Likewise his first decade in the U.S. is largely unaccounted for. Actors and writers are not the only ones who abuse imagination.”—Broadway set designer Jo M
IELZINER

“Most successes in show business have less to do with talent than sheer, dogged, persistent sticking around.”—actor-playwright-producer-director G
EORGE
A
BBOTT
(1887–1995)

“Strictly overrated!”—C
HARLOTTE
R
AE
(TV’s
The Facts of Life
) on George Abbott, who replaced her early on in his hit
The Pajama Game
(1954) with Carol Haney, who thus became a Broadway star

“If not for Broadway, I might never have made it to Hollywood. Look at the female movie stars then, how different I was from them. But via Broadway, you could still become a movie star, and I owed it to Carol Haney’s broken leg (in
The Pajama Game
). I went on for her, and in those days you had major movie directors and producers in the audience, so.”—S
HIRLEY
M
AC
L
AINE
, who began as a dancer

“Working for Mr. Abbott at that early stage of my career was not easy … not pleasant. I needed direction, and he was a man of few words. A lot of
things, he didn’t care about. He’d delegate a lot. He’d rather have been playing golf or tennis each afternoon. He was more of a traffic cop at times than a director, and I thought he was old
then
—he was in his seventies. But he’s still a great man.”—G
WEN
V
ERDON
in 1991; she became a star in Abbott’s
Damn Yankees
in 1955