Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There [2003]

before the parade passes by i'm gonna go and taste saturday's high life i think what happens in the theater is a miracle i do i think it's the closest thing to a miracle in this 21st century it's very rare that you see something which is just mesmeric but when you do when you can it is gold dust because you know it's gone and at the end of the show it may never be as good as that again for the audience there never will be a substitute for live theater because the performers respond to the audience the audience responds to the performers you can feel it it's magnetic when in television or movies you're not breathing the same oxygen it's not on film it happens once the theater there's no cheating there's no redoing it you have to do it there on the spot and there's only one crack at night on the stage the actress making those creative artistic choices which in a movie the director and the editor to make it in the theater the actor's in charge he makes the decisions it's his it's his medium nobody can touch you you're out there once that curtain goes up you know we have another ear that never ceases it's as sensitive as can be you're working on your fellow actor but that other ear that other antenna hears the audience always who can smell them you can see them you can almost touch them and then you you never forget so that's what you have to tell people that they will go to see something that they will take away with them forever what does the theater have to offer that movies and television don't the theater above all else is live [Music] get my regards remember me the herald square tell all the gang at 42nd street that i will soon be there i grew up in the mid-1960s in the small town of beech grove indiana there wasn't much to do in beech grove it seems like much of my youth was spent in the basement of our suburban tract house watching old movies on television i soon realized that most of these hollywood stars hadn't actually started out in hollywood they had started out on broadway performing live i was curious so after school i would ride my bike to the beach grove public library on main street and study the new york times i was stunned at how many shows were playing simultaneously carol channing and hello dolly angela lansbury in maine i would pour over our local tv section for movies that had come from broadway shows marlon brando and kim hunter in streetcar named desire robert morris and michelle lee and how to succeed in business without really trying julie harris and ethel waters and member of the wedding and gwen verdon in damn yankees carol burnett had started out on broadway 2 and always had stage people on her tv show like robert goulet lainey kazan or k ballard by the time i did move to new york city in the early 1980s i found that the broadway that i had dreamt of starring on no longer existed there were no more john rate romantic baritones he had been replaced with high rock tenors dying in french revolution musicals or singers and dancers covered in cat costumes appearing in british imports it was a different world but as i walked through times square over the next two decades i couldn't help but wonder had this golden age of broadway ever really existed had i been just a little too late or had it perhaps only been something that i had watched in those old movies in beech grove indiana i decided to find out for myself i set off alone with my camera no budget no crew to find an old broadway legend or two to sit at their knee and ask them what it really been like to have been there had there really been a golden age and what had happened to it i may have been a little bit too late to talk to ethel merman or mary martin and the only barimore left was drew but little did i know my journey would take me over five years and bring me to four countries a hundred legends and back in time to another world we didn't call it the golden age of course but now i look back i do believe it was when you say golden arrow i'm not even aware that it was a golden era until you say it and then i say yes it was a golden era and there was a camaraderie no one ever thought it would come to an end it was just assumed that every year there'd be a rogers and hammerstein of the lerner and lowe a frank lesser julie stein musical i thought it was going to go on forever you hoped you know that it would the culture has changed so much from what it used to be i'm not saying it's good or bad but it is different it was such a thrilling and exciting and dangerous and wonderful time those were the days of kim stanley and julie harris julie harris had a new play every season i saw everything she did when the great stars of the theater like the luntz and catherine cornell and katherine hepburn and lawrence olivier when they had a success in new york it was thrilling it was a glorious wonderful time to come down from the sky and how to succeed you know come down from the window washer and turn around to the audience how to how to succeed in business i really look out in the audience celebrities and political people they hadn't torn down the morosco my first theater where i did remains to be seen it was the theater district walking to the theater to do my performance of canon hunting roof and next door is bill ninja's bus stop and over there is tea and sympathy and over there is brigadoon and over there is eugene o'neill unbelievable it was a dream a dream come true i remember seeing the new york times theater section in 1950 and if you look at that theater page you'd say all of these shows couldn't have been running at the same time not south pacific and mr roberts and a streetcar named desire and death of a salesman they couldn't be all on the on broadway at the same time in the same year yeah they were you took it for granted that it's only in retrospect that you look back and say wow was that amazing we don't know that when we're doing it that's the end of something it takes a few years to realize that something has ended i didn't realize it i just thought that that's the way it always was i didn't realize that those years were the golden age of broadway and it'll never be the same again ever my mother took me to plays and she'd always get the front row and i remember it for some reason this one particular play the first one the leading lady had this incredible perfume that really came across the stage to me and there was just something about that and to this day when i'm on the stage i think i wear a little more perfume than i ought to so i hope i get somebody from that audience some young person who says oh there's something about this i saw orson wells around the world in 80 days and remember him shooting the bird out of the center of the chandelier in the house and all the feathers falling down and that was my first theater experience i caught a feather and got home with like i took this home with me i saw james earl jones do the great white hope somewhere in the show he swung his head around and a bead of sweat came flying out into the audience and hit me and i was one with james earl jones from that moment on yeah the first show i saw was oklahoma but the one i particularly remember is carousel because oscar took me to new haven and i saw the first performance of carousel and that was one of the great evenings of my life and it was in previous it was it was the very first performance ever oh wow in new haven what was it like it was thrilling it was just thrilling to cry it was thrilling my mother took me to my first broadway show which was gypsy and i'll never forget the feeling that i had when the overture started because see i can get emotional right now there's something that brings me immediately back to that time when i sat in a real theater when i was in new york do you remember those first four notes of that overture off the top of your head was that it that's it yeah the first show i saw was annie get your gun with ethel merman and i i just went berserk you know i i really went mad and i said that's i want to be up there and then i left hollywood i bought out my contract so i want to get to new york and i i was a movie young movie star broke literally because i decided that i i wanted to be in the theater the first thing that i did was an acting role and it was with ether waters on a show that she had called beulah i played her niece on on an episode and she invited my mother and i and i was six years old to see member of the wedding six years old going to the straight play that's quite something when your mother doesn't have to say shh sit still she didn't have to do that for me i was less like riveted the first play i ever saw was member of the wedding julie harris ethel waters uh boy oh boy i was a teenager i guess when i saw ethel waters and mamba's daughters she was a woman who worked in cotton fields and had a baby and had given the baby away and the baby was almost white because the man was fair-skinned and who raped her and the baby was taken away and then the girl grows up and they have the confrontation scene and ethel was in the field hands dress the cotton handkerchief over her head and this girl slender beautiful was standing watching her and they said this is this is your mother and ethel's arms went out like that and the girl was didn't know what to do and then but those arms those arms stayed out there and out there until the child couldn't resist it and ran to her mother i was 14 maybe i never forget that that feeling was just so powerful and little did you know you'd be running into those same art i know every night for a year and a half yesterday south america traveling on trains running rip on motorcycles flying all over the world in airplanes who will have thousands and thousands of friends we'll belong to so many clubs and we can't even keep track of them all we will be members of the whole world by a man if you see julie harris a member of the wedding or shirley booth and come back a little sheba or lawrence olivier in the entertainer or hume and jessica in the four poster see it stays with you forever julie harris yelling at the morphs remember of the wedding you've got wings what are you doing here you've got wings what are you doing here you want to talk about it you know what i mean it's better than the roseanne show i'm going to get letters as each of these legends told me of the performances that had inspired them to move to this town i thought of the day that i had first come here myself from indiana stepping off a bus into the middle of a ravaged 1980s times square i couldn't help but wonder what it must have been like for them arriving in a completely different new york city do you remember the first time that you saw times square i don't know i think it was in 1732 but i could be wrong are you rolling uh yeah oh you are i certainly do remember when i first arrived in new york because it was and new york was just the way i had seen it in all those black and white movies as a kid i had seen times square only in the movies and for the most part it was black and white when i was growing up and it was just it was just wonderful i mean it was just everything i had dreamed that it would be first time i saw times square in a jim cagney film king kong and the empire state building really the sidewalks in new york at night very late at night was perfectly safe it used to be but this was depression time when i was on the stage i came here in 1948 that was the first time i'd really been away from home and i had trouble sleeping because i was always so excited so i'd get up at you know seven o'clock in the morning and just walk around and i just kept pinching myself i couldn't believe i was in new york the first time i saw times square was in 1947 when i appeared at the strand theater doing six shows a day with spike jones in his orchestra and the strand was in times square and i'll never forget as long as i live seeing my first time square it was just astounding the streets coming from all over every place and the light i knew that i wanted to do broadway i left spike jones in new york city i quit the band in new york city because i said i've got to do broadway i came out of the theater that night when i went in it was daylight because i went into rehearse came out that night and saw times square i think you fall in love with places times square was pretty happy you know people people walking around the streets and everything but with smiles on their faces you know and that fascinated me to see this in lights and i could understand why they call it the great white way uh and that was a great impression on me i used to love it when there was somebody puffing smoke every imaginative well there was a magazine theater arts monthly and i memorized every word of it i mean i knew i knew new york before i ever got here oh so it was so you just you know where everything was supposed to be exactly i made sure everything was where it was supposed to be that's exactly it i was 13 or 14 when i saved my money and just got on the bus from journal square in newark new jersey got off at times square area and walked up and down the 40s looking at the marquis and stopped about 50th street because i thought that was new york and went home it was my secret i'm sure other boys were sneaking to other things when they were that age but i was sneaking off to broadway when i first came to new york it was in the middle of that blizzard i think that was 1947 no subways which i didn't know how to take anyway no buses no taxi cabs were running but through the snow there were all these marquees with names that i'd only heard of i mean i was so green that when the stewardess said we're going to be landing in newark and i thought oh my god because i had a real not just southern but a real cajun louisiana accent you know and i remember i said oh i want to go to new york not newark i mean that's how green i was i used to stand there and just look i mean i'd be so still looking that the pigeons would land on me just like they'd land on the statue in times square i was in the george white scandals and mr white uh showed me the big sign in times square that lit up and it had george white scandals and it showed me dancing all in lights and i i remember how thrilled i was to see that and i was 16 years old when i saw it my dream started when i was a kid on the corner of a neighborhood of tenements on 29th street between 1st and 2nd avenue i stayed out of school for 36 days in a row i went to every movie on broadway radio city music hall the roxy i store stage shows i felt it was all being done for me you know i said this is my way off the corner i think i found it i got on a plane i'd never been any further east in texas and i landed and i was so naive and stupid that i had no idea where i was going to stay i was reading the new yorker on the airplane and i saw a little ad for the algonquin hotel i thought oh that's nice that's where the round table was so i had a cardboard suitcase and they gave me a room for nine dollars a day and nine dollars a day was enormous because when i'd left home our rent was 30 a month so i was a dollar a day so i called my grandmother my mother collect and they kept saying come home come home i hung up i didn't know what i was going to do i unpacked my suitcase and i started to cry one thing i was determined though i was determined that i was not going home i never held out the idea well if this doesn't work you can always go home never i was out here in california a young singer and aspiring to make it videos came out looking for a replacement of outfit proper drake offering to pay my way to new york and back they didn't like me so i decided this would be my big break and sold the car gave up the apartment took a a four and a half day train ride to new york was whisked right from the penn station and taken to the st james theater and told to say well i was very cocky in those days as you should be you know and i said you look i have warmed up since i left california you don't mind if i warm up seeing this figure but i guess it inspired them rogers and hammerstein because the vast paddle part in the figure are here my name is figaro figuero figaro that prompted their writing this song within carousel for me it goes i don't give a damn what he does as long as he does what he likes he could sit on his tail or work on a rail with a hammer had the same kind of pattern going for it and had the big high tested tour at the end [Music] my little girl i gotta get ready before she comes i gotta make certain that she won't be dragged up in slums with a lot of thumbs like me she's gonna be sheltered and fed and dressed in the best that money can buy i never knew how to get money but i'll try my god i'll try i'll go out and make it or steal it or take it [Applause] down maggie garland lives in a cold water tournament in the east seventies which she rents for twenty two dollars a month and has furnished from second-hand stores she is deadly serious about her career and has been since she played the lead in her high school class playback in oklahoma city like most young actresses maggie keeps a close check on living expenses which she shares with her roommate my parents said now here's 250 dollars that's all we've got and you can use it and stay in new york as long as it lasts by the way in new york in those days because it's quite different every subway bus and train was a nickel every hamburger was a dime huge huge gorgeous hamburgers i can still see them better than they are now in the automatic there was a restaurant for a nickel you could go and get a cup of coffee and you open up a slot and the outcome becomes a buffing but you could have a coffee and a roll for 10 cents you could go to the automatic you could get lemon in a glass sugar on the table already and then free water i would make my lemonade because i never had any money i went to new york i think it was 55 with a another actor and we had no money we were flat broke we're going into a horn in the heart i said we've got to get some cutlery i said no just to do it my way all right jack it up i said you take the two folks two big two little spoons and we ate with some of them and put the others up the sleeve like that and then put the hand in your pocket and drop it into the pocket i had one phone number in my wallet and it was that of a girl that had been ahead of me at ucla and i called her and i hear all these noises girls in the background and she said where are you i said i'm at the algonquin she said what you're doing get out of there she's we're at the rehearsal club you know that's the place stage door was written about she said you get over here i'll get you a cot here so i packed up my cardboard suitcase and walked up to the rehearsal club four other girls that i'd gone to northwestern with put me up for a week and then i stayed with somebody else for a week and oh broadway that's what i wanted my first apartment when i got to broadway was a place called the whitby i think it was on 45th street lenny kazan lived down the hall it was you open the drapes boom there's the kitchen you just walked in it you had about maybe eight nine inches on the first and the 15th of the month i made 40. i know it's hard to believe 40 and my my rent was 30 a month i was the hick there was the ballerina there was the english kind of twit there was the actor studio girl who never bathed and slept under newspapers and then there was the smart ass and she was the the one that chewed gum and knew everything you know and me and this is all in one room we lived with two other would-be actresses and it was one room with a cupboard kitchen and they went to bed uh with a on the studio couch which led out and my mother and i were in the in a door murphy bed i lived at the henry hudson hotel the american woman's club it was called and where no men were allowed into the elevator certainly not in your room it was june allison who became famous movie star and the four of us lived there with the one bathroom i mean you didn't think of it as a hardship living in one room it was what you did i lived most of those times on sullivan street 147 sullivan street which was in the italian section which i still see the people today and they fed me for years i did 22 off-broadway shows and i would come home at night with no money and there was always food outside my door ziti and sausage from like 1954 to 65. that's about nine years obsidian sausage an actor living on ziti and sausage for a decade maybe it wasn't easier back then but it was different a struggling actor couldn't isolate himself with headphones a walkman a cell phone the internet or a thousand cable channels on demand four girls living together in one room didn't even have a television so what did they do they struggled together i hear garson kanan starts casting friday garson kanan friday at 10. the theater was a community then there were a whole large group of people everybody loved the theater and talked theater i couldn't afford to have dinner there but i went to sardi's and at the bar partaking of all the free cheese and ritz crackers everyone was talking about the plays they had seen that night and everybody was really just fired up with a fever of theater it was wonderful alfred was so funny because we were so poor then we we couldn't afford saudi so we used to go to trials and sit all night and discuss theater you know and early on there was a little place called ralph's west 45th street where you went where you didn't have much money that's where you went to house i would go where the actors were you know it was a drug store and all the actors were there they'd all come to the drug store and everybody'd have a tuna fish sandwich and you'd go in and you'd find out what shows are coming up and there was there was a sense of community well i remember gray's drug store across from the old actor's studio that's where i met rod steiger it's where i met jimmy dean jack lemmon would hang out there i remember jack warden gray's drug store where you you'd get the gossip and the news and this was vital it was vitally important to be in those places and you went to walgreen's drug store walgreens drugstore walgreens drugstore walgreens walgreens walgreens was a walgreens drugstore in the astra hotel where we used to all meet and they sometimes they we they couldn't afford to pay our bill and they would carry us for a while until we got a job steve and i had a important lunch sitting at the counter at walgreens and i remember us talking about the future of the theater and and how we'd be part of it before we were part of it i didn't hang out with the gang i never went through that drugstore period i went to saloons like a crazy person because boy that was fun all the comedians hung out at hanson's drugstore like 50th and 7th avenue where my pal tom poston took me there and i'd sit at that table with those comics jackie leonard and lenny bruce and they would go bang bang boom and they never left i was the only one laughing you know i was 20. they'd say funny i think leo shell had a newspaper and they would send kids for auditions for things i would look in the paper there was a column called news of the rialto and it would say what plays were coming into new york if you got it in early september it could list the season what was promised promised and hoped for it used to say years ago you went door-to-door between the producers in the agent's office and you made yourself known to them on a one-to-one basis i was 18 at the time and so i went to the william morris office and i was sitting next to by the way camden and green were on my right and they weren't condoned in green yet we were making the rounds of the offices because that's what you did in those days i i was just an unemployed soul we had to write to give ourselves material to perform because we couldn't afford to buy material so we just as we say we chipped in and bought a pencil and i started to write and that's where we and down on our like actors would meet and one of them was jimmy dean and jimmy and i became friends and jimmy and i started making the rounds together keep each other company for the rejections which were often you usually didn't get very nice treatment from the secretaries i said i'd like to see oprah lovely von temple do you have an appointment i said no casting why are you so mean to everybody she said i'm not i said yes you are you bark they brush you off and say yes oh mr so-and-so is busy right now it was so discouraging i would go into office after office after office and uh it's not an ego builder that process i don't think you even left picture and resume in those days but you left your name and hopefully got an appointment then in the evening you had a bite fell flat into bed and started again early the next morning i mean the idea of doing that now is ludicrous i passed a pile of eight by tens you call them and with resumes on the back at the theater where i'm working now it was about this thick and on top of it it said shred wow four of us bought a dress a dress uh each one of us put in five dollars so it was 20 dress at bloomingdale's which was expensive then if you had an audition and you got first claim to it you got to wear the dress but then you were responsible for having it cleaned and put back in the closet for the next person i just know that i loved walking down 46th street and stagehands and dancers hanging outside and and and it was the streets were packed with our people i remember 46th street at the howard johnson's we'd all meet at the howard johnson's you know we get our number you know number 156 or number 283 would be your your audition number you know and uh then we would go get coffee or grilled cheese sandwich you could sit out in schubert alley in the sun before a matinee people would walk by and uh it was a happy time and you knew everybody's name even in the other theaters back then there weren't so many of us we knew everybody who was in show business of any kind we knew the jazz musicians we knew the strippers it's almost a big family you might say everybody outside of the theater is a civilian we didn't have that in hollywood it didn't stem from jealousy it's just stem from uh the way hollywood is laid out i mean out here you don't see anybody annette fabre nanette febre and i have been trying to have lunch together for i think for a year when all these legends were struggling together in new york city they all seemed to have seen one performance that affected them for the rest of their lives i would have expected it to be ethel merman mary martin or one of the usual suspects but instead it was always the same person a little old lady named lorette taylor that i had never heard of she had never been in movies or television except for a few silent films in the 20s but nevertheless she directly influenced almost every person in this film how did that happen she was mesmerizing she's the most powerful actress i've ever seen i sell her five times in glass menagerie and ten times in outward bound ed was she she was unforgettable i still to this moment moments that i won't forget ever ever ever if i shut my eyes as though she had just seen it this second in outward bound she turned around and she saw her son and she said oh and there he was and i tell you i'll never forget as long as i lived i stopped out loud the first play i saw was loretta taylor and the glass menagerie and i thought ah she's not so good she's just like everybody is here on the street i didn't realize it took a lifetime to get to be that good larret taylor on stage i thought they pulled her off the street she was so natural loretta taylor was almost like this woman had found a way into the theater through the stage door and was sort of wandering around the kitchen that was the greatest performance i've ever seen in all my life it was fantastic i've never seen anything to top that in my life loretta taylor i knew when i watched it and i sat in the balcony you'll never see greater acting as long as you live i saw the glass menagerie before it opened i mean i'd heard about the reviews in chicago you couldn't not have heard oh yes laura taylor i saw that twice and then i saw it three more times i i had to see her i just had to see her again i saw that seven times seven times and the red tailer turned around and pulled down her girdle and i have never been that affected by a stage action in my whole life it made me weak i saw that in class magic oh boy she was she said every whenever i see a somebody in that to do something like that i walk for miles afterwards i can't get it out of my head did a lot of walking when she did the speech about the jungles and the gentleman caller she was a young girl she it was this old lady but she was a young girl she was anything she wanted to be and everybody talks about her telephone conversation to that woman who she's selling trying to sell magazines to it's just it's just the saddest most brilliant it just that's how i learned i learned from these people how can somebody be that real it could have been my mother you know how can a woman laugh and cry in the same breath only people do that i never saw an actress do that thought i can't describe what she did or how she did it you know but boy well i especially treasure having seen her on stage laura taylor because she never made a film with sound and they did a um they did a screen test with her i'm 80 today congratulations thanks because my old friends are dead i can't do anything for them now so i thought i'd take this jaunt abroad and i've seen many lovely things but i had to see them alone and she was so natural i didn't believe that she was an actress and they never used it somebody somebody said some ah yes yes yes rosetti rosetti said beauty without the beloved is like a sword through the heart and i used to have my supper after the show at longchamps which is long gone but she used to sit at a table right over there and she would line up three drinks and she sat alone and sipped those three drinks and then she went home or wherever she went i was julie hayden's understudy for the glass menagerie so i saw a great great many times from the wings yeah yes now this may be related to the fact that she drank she never seemed drunk to me i never saw her drink but i think i saw it twice where in the middle of the scene she would she'd come into the wings beckoning and they'd bring a basin or something and uh she threw up um and went back on stage continuing the scene and and i don't think the audience knew it you know it was if she drifted to that side of the room and was gone for a second and was there you know i i it was miraculous a miracle the play that i knew had to be preserved was loretta taylor in the glass menagerie and she was very old at that time and i said this we must preserve this never happened you were right there's no record of it yeah and nobody knows who she is she changed that thing her impact her impact whether people saw her or not they read about her etc and i think we've all been striving to be her one way or another i'll tell you what i got one in the standing room for 480. 480 for standing room boy it's a lot to stand for in it you couldn't make that 240 and i'll stand on one foot [Laughter] okay indiana you win here's one of the balcony 240 i don't know why i should be doing this i i guess there's something about you guys from indiana we didn't have an ironing board for two years and ironing boards were about 3.95 and theater tickets were a dollar ten apiece and my mother would say should we get an ironing board or should we go to the theater and i'd say let's go to the theater so i used to iron on the floor with you know doing stretches with my legs out like this when i was a kid and you'd go to a place called gray's drugstore it was actually underneath gray's drugstore it was the basement at 42nd street and you could buy last minute sales of tickets and the second balcony we could get tickets for 55 cents they were normally 1.10 it was absolutely wonderful for 25 cents you could stand in the back of any theater i saw everything you could go to the metropolitan opera 25 cents and be up at the top going to the theater was so easy if you could go to the theater for a dollar a dollar eighty three dollars and a half 3.75 3.98 440 580 660 750 880. then it skyrocketed to 11 for new year's eve in 1968 we went to the unheard of price of 15 a ticket that was outrageous i once said to nancy walker who was a dear friend of mine i said nancy do you think i have anything to bring musicals she said yes 6.95 that's the top prize but a smart kid in those days who wanted to see everything you would just kind of walk in after the first act find an empty seat and sit we saw a lot of plays second and third act that's called second acting you never heard of that when you second act it means the first act curtain comes down all the people run it out of the theater you would get an old program from another show dress up and hang by the door and when the ushers came out and bent over you sort of went over and gotten the crowd coming out you know pretend that you came out of the first act usually did it with a friend of mine you know and we'd say what do you think of it i say well i don't know i don't think she's so good but i like the set then when everybody went back in in such a clutch uh you would just walk in with them and sat in the back on a monday or tuesday you couldn't do it on a friday or saturday acting students everybody learns to do this everybody come on i don't ever remember really going up to a box office and plunking down the money and nobody have ever had any money in that case so you know if you managed to get a date you'd go to see the first act also and then if you didn't care for it you could leave and go to another theater for the second act and the longest wait in my whole life in theater is that moment waiting for the lights to go down and for me to sit in the dark to watch the second act because often i know she would come down and say i know the seat was empty before and you're in it out i always thought that when i moved to new york city it would be like one of those old movies i'd watched in beech grove indiana you know where the leading man or the leading lady got sick and the chorus kid went on for him and became an overnight sensation well in real life it didn't always happen like that but then again sometimes it did shirley was uh in the chorus she was in the she was in the pajama factory you know and so she sang and danced but just in the chorus when she joined the show originally she had long red hair and somewhere in boston i said something weird's happening mr abbott i keep looking at carol and i'm looking at the wrong girl one of our girls looks just like her and he said what are you saying oh my god yeah and so there was carol and there was a girl with the same hairdo singing and dancing behind her and it was shirley she had gone and cut her hair so she became the understudy carol was a gypsy and i knew that she would go on with a broken neck like we all would if were gypsies so i decided that i wanted to leave pajama game and go up the street to the shubert theater where cancan was playing where gwen verdon sometimes was out i had my notice in my pocket ready to go to the theater turn it in the subway got stuck in times square so i was 20 minutes late for my own half hour call but you know how much time do you need to get ready for it's racing with the clock when you're racing with the collect a little part and then of course and i got to the theater 10 minutes before the curtain was supposed to go up and there was fosse jerry robbins hal prince and all of them lined up across the stage door saying where have you been i said i'm sorry i'm i got reach in the back for my notice i said but the subway got stuck i'm so sorry and they said you're on carol haney fell and hurt her knee very very badly i stuff my notice back in real quick and you know i didn't know what key i sang in i'd never had a rehearsal i didn't know anything except watching in the wings johnny raitt said to me what key do you sing uh hernandez hideaway in and i i have no idea he was so scared he didn't know her lies he could do dances pretty well that's okay i had never opened my mouth on the stage before i two lines in me and juliet it's so long since susie left the show was my line so that was my big acting experience in me and juliet we never thought very much about shirley you know she we knew her say hello she's cute she was in the chorus i had been to jones beach the day before and had some tennis shoes in my in my dancer's bag and they quickly took them to the basement and they dyed them black because you had to have black jazz shoes for steam heat i don't know where they found a derby that would fit me but the dye on my shoes was still wet when i went on that night i was there and i said it the part of said we'll take by shirley maclan said wow that's pretty fancy they announced that carol haney was going to be out and this person was going to go on and people threw some things at the stage and they went like that i heard all that over the monitor and of course we were all standing in the wings hoping to god you know she was gonna be okay and they were they were lined up on their shoulders one over the other watching how on the devil i was gonna get through this thing she did the hat dance and i know there was really technically to turn the hat around put it up and down and whatever and then the problem was for me i knew i was gonna drop the hat in steam heat which i did by the way and said [ __ ] first time a featured player ever said [ __ ] she turned to the audience and went [ __ ] the three first three rows backed off who is this person but in the end i guess i did pretty well because they stood up they gave me the standing ovation i felt like throwing the tomatoes back at them and sitting in the audience is hal wallace and from there on his history i didn't know who hal b wallace was and he asked me to go to dinner and i thought great i can eat meat for the first time in you know since i'm six because i never had any money to eat meat i was living on graham crackers and peanut butter bobby griffith said i have to talk to that girl and bobby said i hear you're thinking of leaving well i've been offered these two movies he said don't do it your career is on a wonderful course made the newspapers people know you're great be a star on broadway don't go out there they'll make minced meat of you and send you back and you will have missed the moment and she went and she was right in the days when professional producers produced shows and that's not the case today they understood that a play was a work in progress until it got to a certain state of maturity and the way to do it was first you took the play out of town and you honed the play in front of audiences eight times a week until finally the producer felt this is ready for broadway the audiences in boston and philly and new haven they had to tell us what was good and what wasn't that was the last piece of the puzzle moss would take the newspaper in august and he would go through it and say we'll be there and there and there and there because these were plays that friends were opening in and he knew that we'd be out of town to help out and advise and they ate and they talked and they told people what to how to fix the show and they smoked and when a show was in trouble the ashtrays were full of cigarette butts and the poor author looked disheveled and miserable the quality of it occasionally uh has been presented in films in many many musical films at least they've attempted to present it and it always comes out like oh all these kids having fun together and gosh isn't this great actually it's working making all minor changes which keep us up till seven every morning i liked it because if you had a good time because it was very chubby as i said when you hung out with people and you had nothing to think about except the show except they kept cutting my part and trimming it down and trimming it down because carol lawrence was getting very upset because orson bean and i our parts were working like gangbusters and stopping the show and everything so they kept cutting it down then they kept putting it back it was a nightmare you would revise lines songs put new songs in take songs out that's why they say the best songs were written out of town in all of these shows the songs that i've written out of town have been good like something like i'm still here and it certainly helped with comedy tonight the opening of forum which changed the whole tenor of the show before the parade passes by was written under unbelievable pressure in a detroit hotel room in the middle of a blizzard and i don't know if i would have written it with as much passion if i didn't have david merrick breathing down my neck and threatening me but then we had to add things um we added so long dairy and took out a lot mr merrick was closing the show it got such bad reviews hello dolly could not have been a bigger bomb and then mr champion fixed it in washington but really fixed it and we had an out-of-town tryout with see-saw which was also a disaster i'm in my coal detroit hotel room like seven o'clock in the morning and it's my manager and he says laney they're replacing you and who were they replacing you with one of my best friends michelle lee for reasons that had nothing to do with her talent she's brilliantly talented as we know but anyway um they brought michael bennett and i in and michelle lee would be in my costumes dancing and singing during the day when tommy and i came into the show we had two and a half weeks to learn the show before we opened and i would sing and dance every night and pour my heart out and cry my eyes out on the stage as this character and things went crazy i mean we were rehearsing during the day throwing things out and believe it or not i thought they'll discover that they've made a terrible mistake if hitler were alive they say the only appropriate sentence for him would be to be out of town with a musical neil simon wrote barefoot in the park for me talk about lucky hey i mean we're out of town in new haven and we're out of town in boston and out of you know you're months out of town working on it rewriting working rewriting the first night that we did it like in front of an audience and this was a light comedy right it ran something like five and a half hours they changed the whole cast of uh of of clear day first preview in boston went up at 8 30 and came down at 12 10. so then we start cutting and i remember mike nichols said save every page you're going to be tearing out because basically we're going to be tearing out about 10 million dollars worth of jokes cole porter wrote the first act of kissing faith on the train from new york to boston and then while they were rehearsing it wrote the second act all the horror stories are all true i was terribly nervous opening night in philadelphia because everyone was saying oh no and i walk out and after the first chorus stop the show and it absolutely stunned me i couldn't believe it and it wasn't until opening night in philadelphia and we heard the audience that we realized we had this fabulous show i mean everyone says oh wasn't the new york opening fantastic yes it was but the philadelphia opening was more so because we really didn't know how to succeed went into philadelphia with no advance and we had very few people in the audience on opening night robert morris and rudy valley we were frightened we were scared it was a dismally rainy evening but the rain did nothing to take the luster off an opening night on broadway among the audience was actress kitty carlisle and her husband playwright moss hart and most important to our story drama critic walter kerr of the new york herald tribune with his fellow critics kerr will pass on the worth of the musical and so on with the show not a sincere line is spoken in the new abe burroughs frank lesser musical and what a relief that is it is now clear to me that is what has been killing musical comedy is sincerity how to succeed in business without really trying is crafty conniving sneaky cynical irreverent and pertinent sly malicious and lovely gosh thank you wallace just lovely once upon a time there was an understudy this very talented young lady waited and waited and waited in the wings during guys and dolls and during the entire run of ray bulger's big hit where's charlie the dramatic critics discovered her talent on the opening night of cold part of silk stockings the producers came to me and said we have a new show we'd love you to do it's called silk stockings and it's cold porter and we'd love you to be in the chorus and understudy the singing and dancing star and i didn't want to be another understudy and i said no i don't want to do that i'm sorry i think i'll go out to hollywood and try to be a movie star it's about two months later and i have not become a movie star phone rings ernie martin fear and martin we've opened in philadelphia it's a huge hit but guess what ivana dare is sick her understudy went on it would have been you so now i'm going to make you an offer what is that will you join us as understudy to the understudy will pay you a lot of money 150 big money 150 i can i will never forget standing in the back of the shubert theater in philadelphia watching silk stockings try out with a girl named sherry o'neal who'd gone on for ivana there it would have been me it was she but i just knew that i had to get that part but they wouldn't give me a chance at it they never even rehearsed me meanwhile i'm standing in the wings every night i swear to you i even sneaked in and tried on the costumes was i aggressive or not ambitious little girl meanwhile ivana dare is coming back she's gonna be okay so the understudy is furious because she also had wanted to be able to open on broadway in two weeks i'm feeling better at least they didn't give it to anybody else fade out fade in ten days before the show comes to new york true story i'm standing in the wings watching and she comes off stage and collapses i go running quickly to my dressing room because when i had come in the theater earlier that night sherry o'neal said to the doorman mr daryzen don't tell anybody i'm catching a train for new york i have a big audition in the morning for another job i'm not staying here so i knew she was on a train for new york so i went in my course girl dressing room and i'm sitting there and i'm getting made up and over the loudspeaker sherry o'neal sherry o'neal please come to the stage manager sherry o'neal and i know that she is on a train for new york so it happened rick knock on the door gretchen weiler so that was the night cole porter was in the audience a burroughs was in the audience the producers was in i went on stage that night it's called ambition the story ends by cole porter being carried up to my dressing room because it was on the second floor and abe and the producer saying you will open the show in 10 days on broadway and i did she was a real trooper and she went on she became a smash jesus they loved her and you know that was the one part that wasn't working all the time it had happened the year after shirley maclean went on for carol haney and i don't think an understudy ever for years and years following that were ever not ready to have been able to go on on a moment's notice and if they are they shouldn't be in show business because that's the kind of discipline you have to have can you imagine when sherry o'neal came back the next day from new york and was told what happened i hope she got the job shed she certainly didn't understand me from june to october the summer theaters today replaced the old-time stock companies of the training ground for ambitious talented youngsters years ago theaters during the summer were empty around the country but they found that if they got a big broadway star like loretta taylor would go out and do pegging my heart a big broadway hit pick up some extra cash in the heat of the summer and and fill that theater my first season summerstock for instance we did i believe 10 major musicals in 12 weeks now you think about that you learned your craft pretty good i had 12 shows under my belt by the time i did my first summer stock and they all toured in those days helen hayes and catherine cornell and brianna hearn and just everybody tour george weiss can't they all to it i learned this from carol channing from mary martin and carol learned it from lon fontan touring she said go out on the road it's important to go on the road because then when those people come to new york they'll say oh let's go see carol channing because she came to see us lenny said i can hear her voice in my ear she said eat your duty to the theater to tour the provinces if your show is enough of a hit and you can then you can afford to take it to the provinces the luntz would take a play out with the playwright and tour for months and months and months before they would bring it into new york and then after the run in new york they probably would take it out and tour you know other places where they hadn't been ethel worm was doing any get your gun and mary martin took it on the road i saw it in dallas texas with mary martin they all toured we lived out of a trunk we never unpacked there was no need to unpack boom boom boom i used to say the leaping land house like we were a circus act i did a lot of it i was as i say i was on the road about 20 20 weeks out of the year for about 20 years there aren't the dinner theaters that used to be there are not that many places to go to play and also so much much of the material has been used people are tired of seeing the same old things nobody goes on the road much now julie harris is the exception julie harris she lives and breathes theater and she just wants to act and she's she's brilliant and she's the big star left that really does that when the great stars of the theater when they had a success in new york they took it on tour you didn't see a substitute for them you saw the the actor or the actress who had made the the show a success it was thrilling you all have to realize that theater survives not just in new york that is not the answer theater must be all over the country if you grow up with it you have a relationship to it that you never want to lose then new york will survive new york won't have a problem because when people come to new york they know what they want to do those were the best days i could go off of my husband and they had so many summer theaters and that was your summer you know you do a week each place but you know how you do have an epiphany sometime i was putting on my makeup backstage doing summer smoke almo my character alma and i was putting on my makeup and i thought ah how lucky can you get this is the best of all worlds being in that play in that theater loving the role terrific director like kids going all summer that was the best of all worlds it was a matter of five minutes you were about to leave for europe to look for lancelot for camelot we thought we'd seen everyone on this side of the ocean five minutes before we left the office an agent called and pleaded with us to listen to bobby saturday afternoon there were several messages there from a guy called abe newborn from new york and he said can you come to new york to audition for learning role for the next musical monday morning i went over to new york lost my luggage at the airport i was in blue jeans and cowboy boots and a t-shirt and a leather jacket that had needed cleaning i was sitting on the steps inside the theater and moss looked at me and he said well i see you've come prepared for action and i said yeah but they weren't sat in the audience and they said okay robert goulet can i sing a song [Music] [Applause] [Music] and they went to stage left and i'm over here on stage right watching them i'm having a little discussion in there and i went over by the piano and there's uh this mud whitney came over any uh he put his arm around me now i don't even know this guy but i figured this is theater and uh he said 750 a week for the first nine months 900 a week for the next nine months and a thousand dollars a week for the last six months and i said i'll do it for nothing he said shut up because he made a lot of money for that one phone call oh first day of rehearsals we sat down in aldi all these chairs and uh julie was there richard was there now we read the script called none of us had ever seen the script nobody talked to me none of the the people who were producing none of the the leads none of the chorus kids no one talked to me i was over there by myself i said so this is broadway okay what am i doing here what am i doing here on the same stage with actor richard burton one of the greatest actors in the whole world i mean he was he was he was hamlet at the age of 23. sure they say come on down from canada it's a big break it'll help launch your career well it's not going to launch it i'm afraid it's going to sink it i mean when that shakespearean character starts devouring up the scenery he's going to chew me up with it now rama said all right let's read it again read it again meant to me this time we've got to put something into it god forgive me but i do overacting or something and i saw richard drop his massive head in his hands and say oh god and i figured i'm going to take the next plane to toronto this afternoon so i might play sang say and if ever i'd leave you right then there and uh they listened to me sing and richard said he's got the voice of an angel hear that voice you hear that beautiful baritone voice what am i doing in the same stages here i'm an actor not a choir but i must be out of my mind so i kept my job no never could see i worked the blue dragon nightclub there down my stock yard and he come there the annual rodeo him the rest of him cowboys in that nightclub every night every night there's a big five you asked eva marie saying you ask joanne woodward why did they go into the theater because they saw you kept me on the bus i am being adopted you wanted to be like him i mean there weren't many you know there was a lot of competition but there was something about her that you could allow yourself to say that's i want to be that honest i want to be that that wonderful on stage and before her it was laura taylor but these are the people of a magnitude that you i've never seen acting like that never seen anything in my life like kim stanley she and geraldine page i think were the the closest thing to the beauty of laura taylor's acting i mean you could draw a line and put them on it within one two week period i saw geraldine page in sweet bird of youth and i saw kim stanley in a far country i mean that was so beyond anything my meager mind could grasp because of what was going on up there so kim stanley and cherie once and uh i went the next day because i couldn't believe it i thought i must have just seen something that just happened once she did one of the most wonderful adorable funny performances ever in bus stop hey you can't go out there it's cold your freezer well sure it's outside honey this is just a country town and i think marilyn tried to copy a lot of what she did and some of it she copied pretty well all right you montana he said we're gonna get married just a minute we get there and uh you're against it i don't want to go to some god forsaken ranch in montana i think 100th time my name ain't cherished well i can't say it the way you do what's wrong with jerry it is kind of embarrassing can't pay attention i ain't going with you and that is final but jerry we was familiar with each other that don't mean you gotta marry me you know after a long run in the show you kind of get oh my god two today you know wednesday boys i never got tired of watching kim stanley never never she was wonderful when i was 17 18 i played a little bit part in trip to bountiful with kim stanley and lillian gish i watched kim every night watched her every night it was so startling some of the things that she did nobody had ever done before i'd never seen acting like that you know just totally mind-blowing have you ever seen the goddess sure she played the monroe role well you watch that movie again and watch it carefully scene by scene and you will not believe the stuff she does as an actress in that and that's film that she hated and this is the face of kim stanley probably the greatest actress of our time aired as a bride for her husband and i heard a great voice out of heaven saying behold the tabernacle of god is good that's the greatest performance that has ever been captured on film i've never seen a performance like that i could go back now i would ask to go to the theater where kim stanley is playing in a far country so i could see her say i can't move my legs i would go to the theater where kim stanley was playing in cherie where i would watch her take a string of pearls and put them around horse buckle's neck and say this is going to be the last great moment of my life i would want to see kim stanley open her eyes at the beginning of natural affection sit up look out and communicate to me that she was living a life of incredible despair without ever having said a word i would want to go and see her and the three sisters say i love i love i love for sheenan i love that man i love i love what she did but i anyway i don't hear you well what am i to do at first i thought i'm foolish and strange that i fell in love light is is a thing in the universe that you can only burn so bright without burning out there was a soul and a genius there with a kind of wattage it couldn't i mean it couldn't burn you can't burn that way and and that doesn't last me was so extraordinary the only time dancing was truly fulfilling was in shows that bob fosse was the director and choreographer and he very much believed in you've got to act to dance gwen would sing a song from from damn yankees whatever lola wants and this is the way she shows up knowing the lyrics at least and that's all and sings for me the first time whatever lola wants lola gets and you would think one dialogue and say another that was bob's trick and sometimes you'd reverse the seat with that other dialogue and then you would go and do the scene and you would activate other dialogue while saying what was written now uh this you would have to imagine is the locker room of the washington senators uh gwen is the devil's helper lola and i'm gonna try and help out and be joe hardy the phenomenal baseball player uh joe hardy wants to go home and lola doesn't want to let him get home but he knew what the scene required so he would give you an image [Music] now bob's images were very different but um what were his images being a little fat girl a little [Music] lola was funny to the audience but when you stop and think that she sold her soul to be that person and then be given the image of a little fat girl hello joe it's me he hit so far hold on so when people say it's sexy to me it was never sexy it was just a little fat girl i always [Music] he always said life is an onion you can keep peeling and peeling and peeling and peeling he said that's what i want you to do as an actor as a dancer till you get to the very kernel of what it's about and bob was fabulous at that [Applause] we did one baxter's audition for west side story it was a disaster and it was in a very a very fancy apartment overlooking the east river and um lenny hated you know having to go hat in hand he thought it was beneath his dignity arthur jerry lenny and steve were there and lenny pounded the piano singing the song so loud that you could barely believe it because he was nervous the whole the whole atmosphere was not fun and they didn't get the backers didn't get it at all not one cent was raised i'd spent the previous year listening to those songs and i thought they were pretty odd steve would come over and say listen to this fabulous melody and he sit down piano and play maria and i remember saying that's so ugly i didn't get it i mean stupid i totally got it i got it i knew that i was i had one foot in the door something really amazing and that i would feel standing in the back of the theater a part of the history of musicals when i heard america for the first time ah i went how does he know these rhythms like this and this is just so basic and so fabulous but jerry i believe went up to spanish harlem you know and and checked it all out up there i mean it was a lot of work done west side story was an enormously unusual show i know that west side was a unique situation and we were dealing with geniuses that would settle for nothing less than a 200 percent effort on everybody's part but jerry literally asked us as actors the principles to rehearse for a full month with no pay at all and we worked in a little attic somewhere we didn't know that that was going to be such an amazing piece of theater we had no idea because we were busy being it i've worked on a few shows in my life where i thought this rhythm this sound the way this is happening this is unique and getting me in some visceral place where i'm so excited i could scream and the first time you you know something is when you do like a a run-through for gypsies or something you know and you go oh my goodness oh wow at least six million people saw opening night of west side because every time i meet somebody oh we were there opening night and you know they weren't you know they couldn't have been there it was one of the most wonderful nights in the theater you lived or you died in one night i went to the opening night of west side story with steve sondheim which was not a very happy experience for him the reviews were very disappointing for steve it was as though the lyric writer didn't exist not with the times ignore me the trib walter kerr slamly the reviews were condescending they were good but begrudging they had come in ready to have that be their opinion until they got hooked in the middle of the first act what does tony stand for anton hey adorable anton pay a daughter maria [Music] [Applause] [Music] me and then they came along for the roller coaster ride and it was undeniable and people were sobbing and screaming and yeah it was thrilling though the post-war nightclub boom will hardly last forever the u.s nightclub as an institution appears to be here to stay i did go to juilliard i did study opera but it interfered with my night clubbing i was very young and i loved to go dancing at the store club so i would get up eight in the morning and go to school and then come and do my play at night and go out dancing to the stored club clothes we went there every night every single single night i used to go to el morocco a lot i had a lot of dates it was such a wonderful time in new york oh it was heavenly it was just heavenly i mean all the people that were playing at the blue angel and playing at the little club and playing downtown in a morocco cabbage society it was just like being on a different on a cloud saturday night we would go to 42nd street after a show working off broadway in three penny opera making 45 a week we'd go on the subway 15 cents come out have a hamburger hot dog a beer or something fried clam sandwich on the corner at grants or hector's go to a double feature come out at four in the morning and wait for the fresh donuts to come out the warm donuts in from the bakery at 5 30. the whole evening cost about two dollars unbelievable two bucks when i was in the middle of the night bob fosse went to my late husband john cassavetes his studio across from the uh theater so when i was finished with the play he'd just drop over pick me up and we'd go right down to 42nd street to one theater and see two movies and then we'd go across the street and see a couple more and get home you know 10 o'clock in the morning sometimes it was just it was terrific vincent gardenia and i would be acting on the stage and he would say under his breath you want to go for chinese you know we would make the plans during the play but we did that a lot bobby morris used to do that too i'll meet you later at downey and i think i did uh my happiest uh the drinking in those days at jim downey's and it was everybody had fun there was peter fark in one booth and everyone was at a place called jim dummies bobby morris was there oh yes there were dreams of us now we would walk by saudis and we'd say we'll be there we'll be on the walls but for the meantime we'll be at downey's i was leaving the morosco theater and there's kim stanley who i knew and tim introduced me to elaine's stretch and they said where you going i said i'm going in down there you want to come along have a drink and my first date with ben gazar and downies and could and they switched drinks they gave me a less than a half in how much boobs one can consume that's right it must have done something right for us because it was two years when we both decided that it wasn't the thing to do so downies was the takeoff you saw gwen verton ben gazara janice rule kim stanley paul newman maureen stapleton jason robards julie harris there was the main room where the people who happened to be working were usually sitting and then there's a room aside that were for other folks the real working actors were all in the booths the first time i went to downies and got a booth i thought i had arrived in new york sardi's and and oh it was such fun you know and i loved it oh wow it was very good opening night always in the 40s and 50s you went to sardi's i mean that was where you went and then you waited for your newspaper reviews to come out after the opening of uh cyrano we went to sardi's and it was very exciting you could tell how successful the show was by how many people left sardis or how soon they left sardis i mean our reviews were good but i can imagine some of them whose reviews weren't very good they would go home without dinner we all went to sardis that was the great mecca walk into sardi's every night was filled with all of the stars sardi's was really a theater restaurant for us and the people that would be the outsiders would be sitting there going oh look there's so and so and there so and so and then and you yourself as an actor were going oh my god there's you know somebody over there in the corner what did it feel like to walk in there while you were in a hit show oh the people would applaud they would you know they'd whisper you'd feel it and hear it i've gone to starting since 1947 so that's 53 years and i can truly say that was camaraderie that was the family the broadway family it was magical and inside is everybody knew everybody else it was it was like a club sitting there with bernie hart and moss hart and kitty carlyle and and all these luminaries of broadway when i went back last week it was it was almost embarrassing to tell the people i was going to be with that they won't know who i am anymore because i'm gone 20 years but would you tell them who i was because i can't go in and not get the best table and they did and i did the opening night of catalan tin roof seated in front opening night is tennessee williams kazan lee strasburg cheryl crawford and i don't know who i was so nervous i said jesus i better be good well we blew them away we got such a reaction there was a big fancy part the fanciest thing i've ever been invited to and at my table tennessee's here kazan is here i'll never forget the newspapers came the new york times appeared and kazan opened it up and what a review what a review i'm not giving you any excuse to divorce me for for being unfaithful or anything else maggie i wouldn't divorce you for being unfaithful or anything else don't you know that a hell i'd be so relieved to know you found yourself a lover well i'm taking no chances no i'd rather stay on this hot tin roof maggie a hot tin roof's an uncomfortable place to stay on yeah but i can stay on it just as long as i have to you could leave me maggie there's no reason why why we can't have a child whenever we want one are you listening are you listening to me yes i hear you maggie but how in hell on earth do you expect to have a child by a man that can't stand you whatever you we all got jesus christ and what brooke jackkinson said about me you couldn't buy it more lives cried he had tears in his eyes so did barbara billy get his i think we all cried jesus christ well if i could have lived in any in any time as an artist i probably would have lived uh probably the 40s and the 50s the late 40s brando streetcar where i was starting off as an actor you know in the 1940s look i've read all about as much as you could in baton rouge louisiana about the actor's studio and marlon brando otherwise known as god in my racket well people talk about the epiphany moment in their lives that was mine whatever that was whatever was going on there i wanted a piece of well marlon was a buddy when janice and i had our apartment on 52nd street but he hung out there and eventually he got an apartment in the same brownstone he lived underneath us maureen gathered friends she was like the queen bee marlin was there often she and marlon were very close friends wondrous on stage you know he was magic besides being so attractive you know and all the other stuff oh yeah oh yeah marlon was whipping around new york and in a motorcycle and he was an imp marlon oh god marlon is a work of art i think he's a work of art he had that instinct for finding what was real in the situation and allowing himself to be uh vulnerable when i noticed marlon was in i remember mama and it wasn't a very big part but it was it was a great actor speaking an ordinary line but it was so real a play called truckline cafe was martin brando i thought another guy they pulled off the street i said who the hell is this guy you know he's just he's too good to be an actor in truckline cafe marlon and i had two of the smallest parts in the whole damn play he stopped the show he literally stopped the show the three leads who were sitting at the counter up there didn't know what to do they were clapping and stomping and screaming and trying everything and marlon makes the next it's never happened before to me and i don't i don't think it's ever happened after that and this happened every night i just know working with him was absolutely wonderful i became well aware of how good an actor he was as is all right listen baby when we first met jewelry you thought i was common well i'll write to us i was common as dirt it was just incredible to work with a sense of truth and what he was doing and what saying and all of that was to embrace it was just marvelous to work with you know you're an air-conditioned theater i mean it wasn't hot but when you watched that play you there was sweat dripping from armpits and wet and sensual and sexual and muggy and humid and i was dripping and wet i mean i could smell the perspiration i could smell the armpits i mean marlon was brilliant as a matter of fact as a matter of fact there wasn't no wire at all and i wasn't all millionaire mitch didn't come back with roses because i know where he is there's no darn thing but imagination and lies and conceit and tricks and uh look at yourself look at yourself in a sworn out mardi gras outfit running for 50 cents of some rag picker please you know i've been on to you from the start and not once that you pull the wool over this boy's eyes you come in here and you sprinkle a place with potter and spray perfume you stick a paper liner over the light bulb a long ball the place is turned into egypt and you're the queen of the nile sitting on your throne swirling down my licking you know what i say the joy of what i say is that [Applause] you know come to think of it maybe you wouldn't be better in a fair way stay back don't you come to me another step or what something awful will happen it will what kind of act are you putting on now don't don't i i'm in danger you want some rough ourselves all right let's have a little rough house not that bottle top you tiger rapper we've had this state with each other from the beginning when you work with that kind of truth it brings out the absolute best in you it really does it was it was just extraordinary working with him marlon can make wrong choices even bad choices as far as that's concerned but the one thing he can never be is false and believing that sense of truth that that absolute truth is glorious to work with believe me i say marlon broke the mold he shattered a transitional period in american theater his his craft his skill his talent was unbelievable believable believably unbelievable every breathing singing dancing lady wanted the part and everybody auditioned for me and nobody just hit us in the heart this was the one one part that i desperately wanted i really went after it and i'm not known for doing that but in this instance i did she kept calling jerry she was determined that's what i love about andrew she was determined to get that job she wasn't about to let up i knew that the producers didn't feel i had a big enough strong enough name to carry a show one of the producers looked at me and said are you kidding this is a lady who plays everybody's mother they really weren't very interested that's a big big big role nobody knew if she could really cut it you know and angela came to my apartment and i opened the door and i knew i just knew that that was my name and we went into cahoots together he volunteered to help me and taught me every single song we rehearsed and rehearsed we went out to dinner we came back and rehearsed again and we met the next day at the winter garden and when they said ladies and gentlemen los angeles very she walked out on bare stage it was in a darkened theater with just one little kind of work light and a stage manager who was asked to hold the light over my face while i was singing i snuck into the orchestra pit and he actually played for me now that was unheard of you see you didn't do that so it was he did it secretly i did an arpeggio and she went like the handles and all this crazy going crazy trying to give a performance you know i i tell you if the five people i was sitting with didn't fall out of their seats they they almost did and she just knocked them for a loop she sang it's today and if he walked into my life and that was me it was never the search was over and it worked it really worked [Applause] i never did anything before yet and i've never done anything since it came anywhere close to me [Music] [Applause] within a few short years hair o calcutta and jesus christ superstar had opened the world was changing and so was the theater but this broadway that had created rogers and hammerstein irving berlin ethel merman brando sondheim lorette taylor maim and tennessee williams what happened to it i had an appointment with richard rogers the day after hair opened he said i think my kind of music is over he said look at the look at the reviews this guy and i he said it's rock and roll now and i said no what are you talking your kind of music will never be over you know but it was i always felt that the demise of the big musical was when all the little group shows were there there were no choruses there used to be singing choruses and usually ten and ten and dancing cars usually eight and eight and because of west side story i think they realized well well dancers seem good enough so now we don't have to have we don't have to hire all those singers they would get somebody who could dance a little could sing a little and act a little remember when the talkies came in and all the hollywood stars they had to learn to talk well the dancers had to learn to sing we had to learn to sing in the 19th century in italy everybody was writing operas wonderful operas in america we had the american theater which is the only thing we invented in this country except jazz and it's gone acting was different and our attitude about art was different our attitude as a society toward culture itself was different the whole thing was just more lush well plays became increasingly fewer and fewer there wasn't a chance to make a living the 70s things begin to kind of ramp down and by the 80s it's pretty uh much concretized what we have today when i did pirates of penzance in 1982 it was a joke every night it sounded like nurse ratched this one will be out that one will be out this one will be out someone's breaking in a new pair of shoes they're not coming in tonight i mean i never saw anything like that before i was a singing teacher i was on broadway and i was in carnival and i happened to be cape alice understudy and she never was out never those were the troopers on those days it's a whole other kind of show business i don't understand i used to do three flops a season at the time i thought oh please why can't i be in a big hit but those failures were enormously instructive for young actors today where did they go to get experience in the field when i went back to do beauty and the beast i said you know what this is a whole different broadway this is a whole different theater there were no special effects we didn't use microphones we had voices that we used there were no mics in the 50s to speak up most beautiful voice in american theater ben gazar and he could stand and whisper or talk just like this and he could fill a room well 2000 he didn't have to do anything i remember quite frankly being able to whisper and be heard in the morocco theater up up to the top yeah now miking in the theater not only changes the theater but it kind of destroys it it's not the same experience it's not live live is unmiked all right i'm gonna be blatant now when a musical wins best musical when a show wins best musical and it has no words in it it has canned music i don't believe anybody sings when that wins best musical something is different very different and sound is probably even more high-tech today what they can do they just reset everything and they just push a button and it all happens that wasn't true we had to really do it all ourselves certainly the music had to be done live we were live today in the theater a lot of stuff is on pre-record and i know it's done because i know recording studios where they do it you need to walk into the theater and hear that orchestra strike up that van and see that curtain the theater is live live and when you start putting canned stuff in there it's not live anymore it was in 1966 angela and i came out in a show that had no chandeliers and no cadillacs on stage and no helicopters and we both ran away with the tonys but i don't feel like we should take up the space of a broadway theater with a revival we need to have that space available and encourage the new things to grow so there'll be something to revive 20 years from now i think people are so stupid when they say we shouldn't revive these musicals revived my god there's a whole new generation in the world they should see kiss me cage it's great theater they should see guys and dolls one of the best musicals ever written they should see annie get your gun it's a ball this is you know beethoven this is bach this is something for christ's sake going to the theater is no longer just something you do it's an event you for most people you plan it often a year in advance you get tickets for whatever the big hit is whatever is difficult to get tickets for that's what you go to tickets are a hundred dollars a piece if you take your wife you've spent 200 god forbid you should have two kids who want to go to the theater you spent 400 to go to the theater a hamburger is 25 bucks now it's not 75 cents like it was in those days you've spent 500 to have a bad night in the theater if it's a bad show people pay far too much money to sit in an uncomfortable chair where they cannot smoke drink eat scratch cop a feel or put their knees on the chair in front of them to not see something that's going to challenge them you may do anything to an audience but you may not bore them but most shows get standing ovations because the audience wants to remind themselves that they're at a unique experience particularly since they paid 100 bucks a ticket and uh not to mention the babysitter so they they make it so the only way to make the evening their evening is to stand and ovate it it's their part they're saying i'm part of this evening once they they added the tax and raised the prices for whatever it was that happened in new york at that time you know once you do that you can never go back and i they should have because they're too high in 1949 it cost more to see a first-run movie on times square was two dollars to see a movie but it was only 85 cents to see a broadway play and the souvenir programs were a quarter the theater wasn't a luxury it was as natural to life to a new yorker as breathing and so year after year the fabulous invalid always ailing and never dying continues to work the old sleight of hand the well of magic which for thousands of years has brought its enchantment it's the famous line of of george s kaufman the theater is a fabulous invalid there was a time a couple years ago when i kid you not it was in intensive care big time and it's coming out of it i i remember several years ago reading the list of the plays in the times like this and now it's like this broadway's in great shape but i hope that as more people realize that you actually have to nourish the soul finally as happened in the 40s 50s and 60s the human spirit has a survival instinct just the same as the human body and finally it will want nourishment i have a feeling that broadway's like an old hooker she just goes on and puts out and people still i mean her clientele is not what it once was they don't line up like they used to but there's still people that go oh wow i'd like to see some of that but nothing can replace cheetah rivera or angela lansbury or marlon brando or kim stanley you're a living breathing thing an actor and you are irreplaceable kids are still coming from ohio from indiana even california from connecticut they're still coming with that dream of going on broadway there's never been anything like it since and there will never ever be again and it was a time that we all remember lovingly and it's all different now so thank goodness i was in there so did i find what i was looking for was it a golden age did i learn anything well i did find out that it was a time when broadway affected the world when you could walk within a few blocks and choose from new shows by eugene o'neill cole porter arthur miller or lerner and lowe you could see gwen verdin or helen hayes marlon brando or yule brenner shakespeare or damn yankees and everyone could afford it hollywood came to broadway looking for product not the other way around is it a golden age now that's not for me to say there is some young kid in beech grove indiana or some small town sitting in front of a computer downloading songs over the internet from hairspray or the producers and that's his movie to make in 20 years no people like show people we smile when we're lost [Music] yesterday they told you you would not go far [Applause] that night you opened and there you are next day on your dressing room let's go with the show and to think a few hours ago we didn't even know each other's names and yet you trusted me like a friend you permitted me to do things for you and you've told me all about yourselves more than i think you know i'm going back home and give my thanks to the one who done me wrong the one who done me right she'd do a bump he'd done her wrong and she enjoyed that bump every second of it she enjoyed it you know that character is funny broadway rhythm it's got me everybody dance when i marry mr snow what a day what a day and julie would come in the flowers will be buzzing with i got a story baby there's no business like show business like no business i know the borscht is bubbling over hold on to your hats here comes that little logic presenting mickey counts if ever i would leave you it wouldn't be in sardis seeing you in sardis i never would go something like that i don't know why did i say sardis i don't know i could have said a few other things other girls act coy and hard to catch but other girls ain't having any fun every time i lose a wrestling match i get a funny feeling that i won something sweet something sort of grandish sweeps my soul when thou art near my heart feels so sugar candice my head feels so ginger if i loved you time and again i keep going and how i loved you if i would swallow like that so i could and the people said my god how good actor he is you know shows this emotion motion hell i'm just swallowing so i can sing the next two notes are you someone better it's a lazy afternoon you could spray it wherever you think in the substitute i learned you could give her a shot for whatever she's got but it just won't work if she's tired of getting the fisheye from the hotel called a person for developers called oh i would kill that i've written that this is a rose maria i love you i got the other one i'll get yet [Laughter] need to relax need to escape go see feyre in the palm of an ape when the broadway baby says goodnight it's early in the morning [Music] how i miss the old soft shoe how i miss you know who the stare the way you wear your hat the way you sip your teeth [Music] the memory of all that no no they can't take that away from me no they can't take that away from me the music has stopped and the children must go now have i stayed too long at the fair deep in december it's nice to remember the fire of september that made us mellow deep in december our hearts should remember and follow and that's always the end of the evening for me now last question the more you know the less you know well you would know and i would know i think that's a good a good quote anyway i might have just gotten the end of my film yes i have a feeling but does anyone still wear a hat oh my god you're unbelievable that's funny because rick that's enough isn't it you gotta you got enough for christ's sake [Music] uh let's go on with the show

Channel: Bia Vasconcelos

Views: 11,427

Rating: 4.9337015 out of 5

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Id: FPkQOGajgCY

Length: 111min 19sec (6679 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021