Hi-ho, the glamorous life!
I came along after the generation that had only a few jobs or at least a few employers over a lifetime, a time when changing jobs, no less a career every few years was considered a dead-end journey that must be avoided at all costs. Aside from his lifelong passion and highly successful side hustle as a jazz trumpet player and band leader, my father had one employer his entire career. As his first born and namesake, I am the proud keeper of his gold watch for 39 years of service and have been known on at least one occasion to use it as evidence of the stock and character that I came from.
My own two so called “careers” share the theme of building and creating of things. Each produced brief moments in the spotlight otherwise known as my time as the ice cream flavor of the month.
“I used to be a tour de force. Now I’m forced to tour.” — Sir Donald Wolfit
Barely out of high school, while doing my Actor’s Equity internship, I had interaction with stars that were household names in a less high-profile period of their lives. Summer stock and dinner theatre were places they could keep in the game, practicing their craft and at least earn a modest living. But to me people like Dana Andrews and Imogene Coca were still big stars. What did I know? I sat at their feet and listened to great stories. They were artists with a huge amount of introspection about their professions and careers. While I was not around when it was on TV, I had become aware of Your Show of Shows from a compilation film release, I loved it and asked Imogene why network TV wasn’t that clever anymore. “Ron, when we did that show television sets cost a fortune, so only people of means and higher education had them. The greater the reach, the lower the bar dropped. Watch a sketch on Your Show and then one The Carol Burnett Show. They are reaching to different audiences. It will be clear to you.”
I began to understand this pecking order of stardom when I read this Rex Reed book that first introduced us all to the concept of the “A- List” and everything below that. As a young adult I became highly fascinated by that “fleeting moment in the sun” syndrome. Do we all get that or is it just reserved for public figures?
Arthur Miller who?
Following the 1984 opening night revival of Death of a Salesman, I was standing at the police barricades watching the star-studded guests cross the snowy and slushy street from the Broadhurst Theatre to the party at Sardis. It was one of the most bi-coastal cross discipline A-List gatherings that I had ever witnessed. Dustin Hoffman delivered the goods and the superstars. The Entertainment Tonight TV crew was getting soundbites (Alan King: Broadway at its best”) and B-roll for their nightly show. With the audience all out of the theatre, Arthur Miller and his wife exited. The crew was facing the doors and yelled right in their direction “no one else important here, let’s move on to the party.” As those words were spoken, I was the last one standing at the barricade and found myself looking up (he was very tall) at the legendary playwright who suffered no fools. I wanted to scream. To yell, ah the most important person is standing here. One of the greatest American playwrights. A part of my life since studying The Crucible in middle school. Before I could form a sound, he shook his head wearily as if to say, this does not matter. But it hit me like a huge sucker punch to my very soul. Inside I was screaming inside louder than Willie Loman. “Attention must be paid.”
No, no, Lauren Bacall really is a big star!
Four years later, I would be living in New York and among other things producing and hosting a TV show about Broadway that aired on Japanese television. Japan was a massive economic force and a little obsessed with Broadway. Part of the beat was to cover those opening nights alongside the E.T. crew. This go round I became the unofficial and highly appreciated celebrity whisperer for their crew. While we all had the same arrivals list, the Entertainment Tonight crew had no clue who the celebs of the past were or what they looked like. That’s Lauren Bacall (“is she somebody, they asked”), that’s Ethel Kennedy, that’s Walter Cronkite, that’s Hal Prince. No need to try to explain who Barbara Cook was, if they didn’t get Bacall there was no chance for the Marian, the librarian stage and cabaret star.
Maybe I’ll have another moment in the sun
We had just left the premier film screening and were headed to the ballroom of the Iridium Jazz Club for the after party. The film was Kansas City. The director was Robert Altman and the star, no super star, was Harry Bellefonte, who was returning to the silver screen after an absence of a generation. My friend and colleague, Pat Story, was Mr. Bellefonte’s publicist and shared with me that Harry was so excited by the film’s response that he shared with her in the limo, maybe he would have “it” again for a moment. “It” was clearly meant as “back on the top.” I almost fell over. Beyond Mr. Bellefonte’s massive talent, he was a hero to me in the area of social justice and humanitarian advocacy. The space he held in my head far surpassed any box office report. A legend whose status was fixed for life. On reflection years later, I would come understand the what the “it” was and all that comes along with “it.”
Sunday in the Dark with the Book and the Barr
On warm spring evening a generation and half ago (31 years to be precise) there was a huge commotion in front of house of the Cort Theater where the recently transferred Steppenwolf production of The Grapes of Wrath had just opened to rave reviews. Paparazzi were swarming the place and the pre-show audience noise-level was at fever-pitch foreshadowing the arrival of someone really important. It seems that the television power couple of the moment was making their way into the theater. With a welcome befitting an evening on the town with Liz and Dick, Sean and Madonna or Brad and Angie, Roseanne and Tom Arnold took their seats concluding the pre-show extravaganza and set out to follow the “Okie’s” great depression journey to the promised land of California. A journey, one could surmise that they both had made their own version of on the way to their then status of the power couple of the number one show on television.
On a very warm summer afternoon some twenty-one years later at an early in the run Sunday matinee of The Book of Mormon a very quiet woman wearing a lose fitting house-style dress, white gloves and baseball cap with a fabric shopping bag serving duty as a purse has snuck into the theatre and to her seat. Both her head and voice remained lowered, as not to draw attention to her. Her companion for the matinee is less concerned about being spotted. But, then again Ms. Sandra Bernhardt has a way of looking out at the world that does the work of dozens of baseball caps. Roseanne was complaining that she had asked for four house seats and only got two, and not on the aisle, where I and my partner sat.
Hadn’t Roseanne retired to Hawaii?
Forsaking the ritual reading of the Playbill, a quick search on my phone reveals that she is in town for a press junket for her new Lifetime shoe “Roseanne’s Nuts.” From Letterman to the ladies of The View.
The search also resurfaces Roseanne’s Salt Lake City childhood mix of Jewish and Mormon influence. An online excerpt from her autobiography guarantees that this freak coincidence of theatrical seating will result in an experience likely to remember.
“When I was three or four, I fell on the leg of the kitchen dinette and my face froze in a manner that resembled an older person who had had a stroke. When it did not return to normal the next day, mother called the rabbi, who said a prayer for me, and nothing happened. The next day, in escalating panic, mother called the Mormon priests, because she feared my face would mar my chances of acquiring a meal ticket at a later age. Anyway, the day after the Mormons prayed, I was miraculously “healed.”
Why, you may ask (as I did at a later age), was a doctor or a health professional not contacted? Well, the only rational answer to that is we lived in Utah, where all illness, disease and mild upset is assessed to be a SIGN.
Even though we were not Mormon but Jewish, the mystique of the “new Zion” had also enveloped us and mother feared the wrath of the god of the gentiles.
When my face became healed, mother (never having lived anywhere on earth but Salt Lake City) accepted it as a sign from God that the Mormon faith was the one true religion on the face of the earth, and that she and I should join it.”
Then there were Roseanne’s tough words (and later walk back) to the Church and Marie Osmond about her son’s untimely death the year before.
House lights dim. Comic legends has remained safely unnoticed. Before the overture ends, a spotlight hits the Angel Moroni statue atop the church-like proscenium and her iconic laugh begins and continues non-stop for two and half hours. Baseball cap comes off. White gloves come off. Line about the 1978 church decision that allowed blacks into the priesthood generates such whoops and howlers that result in the contents of her fabric bag falling to the floor. Multiple searches for iPhone before it’s back in the bag. Intermission finds the stars seated (baseball cap back on) and remaining unnoticed. First ones to their feet at the end. Then, unnoticed, out of the theatre before the house lights come back up and on to tweet their rave reviews.
