Broadway Babylon (6 page)

Q
: Isn’t nepotism much less common on Broadway than in Hollywood?

A
: Less, anyway, and more often behind the scenes. For instance, take the 1964 28-show-a-week musical spectacular
Wonderworld
, which played the New York World’s Fair for 250 performances. It costarred Chita Rivera and Gretchen Wyler, with music by Jule Styne. The lyrics were by his older son, Stanley—the son also musicalizes.

Oscar Hammerstein II had a producer brother named Reginald, likewise Angela Lansbury, whose brother Edgar produced
Godspell
and her turn as Mama Rose in
Gypsy
(music by Jule Styne, lyrics by the unrelated Stephen Sondheim).

Q
: Who was America’s first star actress?

A
: Charlotte Cushman (1816–1876) was an assertive eldest child who hated housework and had no desire to wed. At eighteen she went into opera, acting as well as singing her roles, unlike more stationary divas. Then she lost her singing voice. She took to the dramatic stage—due to her plain looks, romantic parts were out—and broke through, with cheering audiences and glowing reviews, as Lady Macbeth in 1835. In 1837 she joined the Park Theatre, then New York’s most prestigious company, bowing as Patrick in
The Poor Soldier
. But four years later she was stuck mostly in secondary roles.

She quit and moved to London, where she became a star on her debut, which one reviewer claimed surpassed anything seen there since the talent of Edmund Kean thirty years before. Besides Lady Macbeth, Cushman essayed Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare’s
Henry VIII
and Hamlet in Edwin Booth’s borrowed tights. When she returned to the United States after five years, her British stardom made her a welcomed celebrity, and she went from triumph to triumph. Cushmania peaked in 1852 when she gave her farewell performances and moved to Rome.

Though rich, she continued acting in Europe. At her final performance, shortly before she died from cancer in 1876, a tribute was bestowed upon America’s greatest actress, with William Cullen Bryant presenting her with a laurel wreath. Cushman’s passing garnered headlines around the world. Half a century later, she was the first member of her profession to be inducted into the Theatrical Hall of Fame. She was the first American actor to be as highly
regarded as an English actor. She eschewed the usual histrionics and ad-libbing of the era for
felt
and disciplined acting. Cushman was initially thought eccentric because she insisted upon play rehearsals. She may also have been the first to institutionalize curtain calls.

P.S. Like some twentieth-century actresses, Charlotte Cushman wore men’s clothes offstage. In the 1800s this caused tremendous comment. Yet she didn’t camouflage her nature by presenting men to the public as “beaux.” The press played down her relationships, various of which Elizabeth Barrett Browning termed “female marriages.” Yes, Virginia, America’s first star was a lesbian.

Q
: Was Agnes de Mille’s dream ballet in
Oklahoma! (
1943) the first?

A
: From its Freudian influence and how much has been written about it, one would think so, but it wasn’t. George Balanchine used a dream ballet in 1936 in
On Your Toes
. There was one in the 1937
Babes in Arms
and in 1938 in
I Married an Angel
, whose title ran afoul of censors objecting to the idea of fornication with a heavenly being.
Pal Joey
(1940) and
Lady in the Dark
(1941) also featured dream ballets, but thanks to
Oklahoma!
’s impact they became a staple into the 1960s. (Their waning popularity paralleled Freud’s.)

As realism crept in, as exemplified by shows like
Pal Joey
and
Cabaret
, audiences were less willing to accept different actors playing the same characters, i.e., Laurey and Curly and a Dream Laurey and Dream Curly.

Q
: Which musical conventions are now extinct?

A
: Besides dream ballets, the scene “in one”: a scene played in front of a traveler curtain while behind it the scenery is changed. Technology obviated the need, and today’s audiences are used to watching a set change or move before their eyes. Also, musicals feature less dancing today. Television has shortened attention spans, but also, the more realistic the musical, the less dance fits in. Dancing in contemporary musicals typically requires an aggressive and/or erotic edge, else it seems hopelessly old-fashioned.

Q
: Don’t good reviews help a theatrical career?

A
: Theatrical success is more dependent on good notices than is success in the movies. But consistently good reviews can indicate boredom or being taken for granted. Peggy Wood, best remembered as Mother Abbess in the film version of
The Sound of Music
(she “sang”—dubbed—“Climb Every Mountain”), enjoyed “a wonderful career on the stage,” working with the greats and doing important plays. She noted, “I was very lucky and even renowned for my good reviews. I never really got a terrible one.” But Wood never became a stage star. Sometimes controversy, or at least variety, helps.

Q
: Do all theatrical producers yearn for hits and hope to avoid flops?

A
: In today’s more complicated fiscal arena, it’s not so simple. Mega-musical producer Cameron Mackintosh—openly gay yet Britain’s highest-paid subject—admits that during a premiere’s intermission, “I retreat to the bar and pray that it will be a mega-disaster so I can pull it off straight away. The worst thing to have in the theater is a near success.” Macintosh produced
Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera
, and
Miss Saigon
, but also, for example,
Moby Dick
, which sank almost without a trace.

Q
: Has an actress ever beaten up a producer?

A
: The aptly named June Havoc, the former Dainty June and Mama Rose’s real-life daughter, did when the 1944 musical
Sadie Thompson
closed prematurely. The closing notice went up on New Year’s Eve. She recalled: “[A.P. Waxman] was a little man; everyone loathed him. On closing night, he called the cast out onto the stage. I did not come out of my dressing room. Then the little man made the mistake of coming to my room.

“I don’t know what it triggered in me, but he started toward me and I closed the door, locked it, and let him have it. I beat him unmercifully. I was taken to the hospital.… They gave me a sedative, and when I came to, people from the company were sitting there waiting—they were taking shifts. They had
all
wanted to beat him up.”

Q
: What was the most scandalous thing Tallulah Bankhead ever did?

A
: The “Alabama Foghorn” was outrageous, outspoken, exhibitionistic (a flasher even in her sixties), and almost-openly bisexual in
those
days. Her biographies read like glamorous soap opera. Probably Tallulah’s most then-shocking public gesture was deciding not to wear stockings on stage in 1919 during a particularly hot New York summer night. Producer Lee Shubert begged her not to so affront “public decency,” but she did, receiving hisses, mostly from women.

Through the 1920s Bankhead was an ongoing hit in London. When stage veteran Mrs. Patrick Campbell (her actual billing) was asked the source of Tallu’s West End success, she declared, “She’s always skating on thin ice—and the British public wants to be there when it breaks.”

Q
: Who were the Shuberts?

A
: Brothers Sam, Lee, and Jacob were Lithuanian immigrants to Syracuse, New York. Sam died prematurely in 1905. Lee and “Jake” (or J.J.) helped break the power of the Theatrical Syndicate or Trust, which had almost monopolized show business in the US. The Shuberts’ theater empire became the largest ever. The brothers’ business savvy and their penchant for real estate gave them
unrivaled theatrical power. Predictably, they put the bottom line before art and were eventually referred to as a near-monopoly.

Lee was a big fan of Sarah Bernhardt—whose 1906 American tour he sponsored—not only for her talent but for her business acumen. Years later, he would often recount, “English she couldn’t talk. English she couldn’t pronounce. But, boy, could she count in English!”

Q
: How was the stranglehold of the infamous Trust broken?

A
: In 1895 six powerful businessmen joined forces to seize control of the American stage, not just in New York. Their Theatrical Syndicate all but took over the supply-and-demand ends of show biz by booking nearly all the acts and players and by owning or controlling almost all the theaters. By eliminating competition the Syndicate could fix prices. As growing urban populations’ demand for live entertainment increased, the sextet’s greed did too, and ticket prices went up while performers’ salaries and production costs were slashed.

The Trust intimidated star after star into signing with it. One lone actress-manager consistently stood against them: Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932). For twelve years the star toured under adverse conditions, sometimes acting in a tent. Yet people flocked to see her. She chose controversial plays and performed in a boldly naturalistic style. Fiske made plays by Ibsen acceptable and successful in the US, even when dealing with a volatile topic like divorce in
A Doll’s House
.

The energetic and progressive Fiske opposed bullfighting and clubbing seals to death for their fur, and almost single-handedly rescued the snowy egret from extinction after its feathers became popular on women’s hats. She shamed society ladies into giving up egret feathers, and within one season the fashion for them died. The publicity resulted in laws to ensure the birds’ protection.

Fiske’s allies against the Trust were impresario David Belasco and the brothers Shubert, who quietly bought up individual theaters as they became available (sometimes using other names). The embryonic Shubert empire was shaky and heavily mortgaged; to enable the brothers to retain their theater network, Minnie Maddern Fiske agreed to use her drawing power on tour in their mutual war on the syndicate. Ironically, the woman later nicknamed the Trust-Buster would live to see the Shuberts become almost as monopolistic on Broadway as the Trust had been.

Finally, a telegram from Manhattan was sent to Fiske while she was performing in Cincinnati, offering her the use of any Trust theater she cared to occupy, and on independent terms. The monopoly was broken, marking the moral highpoint of a shining forty-five-year career that earned Fiske the significant title of “First Lady of the American Theater.”

Q
: Did a musical ever have its premiere in the Yukon?

A
: The 1964 Broadway flop
Foxy
, starring veteran ham Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion in
The Wizard of Oz
), did open and play seven whole weeks in the remote, frozen Yukon. Why?
Foxy
, inspired by Ben Jonson’s
Volpone
(1616), was set in that area, and Canada was pushing tourism to the Yukon, so it co-produced and opened the show. Canadian-born star Beatrice Lillie was chosen to show up and introduce
Foxy
on opening night in far-off Dawson City.

Playing in the middle of nowhere, with a skimpy population and few tourists even on weekends, the musical saw mostly empty houses. Fading star Lahr was at loggerheads with much of the cast and crew. He mugged and ad-libbed madly, trying to completely dominate the show. When it reached New York Lahr won critical raves and a Tony Award, but few younger audience members—he was celebrating his fiftieth year in show business.
Foxy
was his Broadway swansong.

As for playing the frozen north, Lahr declared, “
You kon
have it, buster!”

Q
: Was Mitch
“Man of La Mancha”
Leigh a one-hit wonder?

A
: Most Broadway composers used to have several hit songs, but Leigh had “The Impossible Dream.” Period. However, he’d previously worked in advertising where he had created another hit “song”: “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”

Q
: Why is Broadway gayer than Hollywood?

A
: Because the stage is more of an actor’s medium, and it’s from a distance. The camera specializes in outer personality, gestures, stereotypes, and reaching mass audiences versus a more sophisticated and tolerant urban audience. As to why so many performers are gay, Sir Ian McKellen (a Tony winner) explains, “We learn to start acting, to start passing, as children and teens, as soon as we realize we’re different.”

Why are so many gays creative and artistic? Novelist-playwright Truman Capote believed, “We channel our creative instincts into our surroundings and the world itself, not just into reproducing. We want to make the world more attractive and kinder, more wonderful.… Theatre’s the best and easiest place to pretend.”

Q
: What proportion of Broadway is gay?

A
: Who can say for certain? But theatre columnist and author Mark Steyn offers, “On the basis of my own unscientific research, I would say that, of the longest-running shows of the 1940s, some two-thirds had a homosexual contribution in the writing/staging/producing department. By the 1960s, the proportion of long-runners with a major homosexual contribution was up to about ninety percent.”

Leonard Bernstein once apprised a friend, “To be a successful composer of musicals, you either have to be Jewish or gay. And I’m both.”

Q
: Did someone ever commit suicide to ruin a theatrical premiere?

A
: The playwright Congreve wrote, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Rachel Roberts’s dramatic promise was subsumed by her marriage to superstar Rex Harrison. After he left her (he had six wives, and mistress-actress Carole Landis’s suicide in 1948 nearly cost him his Hollywood career), Roberts’s life went downhill. She yearned for a remarriage; friends said she’d been more in love with Harrison’s Portofino villa than with the testy actor himself. But Rex refused, and the already suicide-prone actress planned to kill herself in time to spoil his much-heralded return to Hollywood in a revival of
My Fair Lady
.