Eternally Groucho But Never Grouchy: A Conversation With Lewis J. Stadlen

Lewis J. Stadlen is one of those legendary entertainers of Broadway, film, television and the international cultural sphere, whom it is simply impossible to forget for his over four decades delighting audiences of all ages. It may well be possible that most remember him for the first season of the sitcom “Benson,” in which he co-starred alongside Robert Guillaume, James Noble and Inga Swenson, but those truly in the know will equally remember his sensational work as Groucho in the 1970 cult Broadway musical hit Minnie’s Boys, with star Shelley Winters and fellow Marx Brothers Danny Fortus, Irwin Pearl and Alvin Kupperman. Later, he would portray Groucho again in a critically-acclaimed national stage tour, and fall into the hearts and minds of legions of fans. Before, after, in the meantime and in between, he would create the part of Ben Silverman in the original company of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, receive a Tony nomination for being Pangloss in the 1974 production of Candide, portray Lupinski in Mel Brooks’ 1982 celluloid remake of the classic film To Be Or Not to Be, play a featured role in Neil Simon’s The New Odd Couple in 1985 (which starred Rita Moreno and Sally Struthers, along with Stadlen and budding newcomer Tony Shalhoub as the male Latino love interests from upstairs), and find himself at this writing back on Broadway in Douglas Carter Beane’s play The Nance at the Lyceum, with Nathan Lane. Stadlen may not have picked up a heavily-deserved and unfairly-ignored Tony nomination in the process, but he remains one of the finest thespians of the last forty-plus years; the son of renowned voice-over artist Allen Swift always seems to roll with the punches regardless of the trappings of awards and tinsel. He’s even published a memoir, Acting Foolish, available at Amazon. And The Andrew Martin Report couldn’t be more thrilled that he took time out of his schedule to grant us an interview.

ANDREW MARTIN: If your father hadn’t been Allen Swift, do you think you would have followed a career path into acting regardless? And what was it like having him as a dad? Can you discuss your childhood?

LEWIS J. STADLEN: There is, of course no way to know.  It was my mother who discovered a theater camp, Gray Gables Theatrical Workshop, in Kitchawan, New York, for me to attend when I was fourteen. She sensed I had a creative bent. It was the first time that I felt self-confident about anything. I made my acting debut as Petrovin the artist, in a remarkable teenage production of Anastasia (Marta Heflin played the title role). My chief motivation, which continues to this day, was that girls took a greater interest in me. I attended the camp for two summers, and my social life revolved around a Saturday dance class during the school year that was attended by many of the campers at the wonderfully-atmospheric rehearsal studio, Variety Arts, across the street from the Forty-Sixth Street Theater. The Gray Gables Choreographer, Joe Vilane, who to this day is the best choreographer I have worked with apart from Agnes DeMille, taught the class. So because of that experience, I glimpsed the possibility of leading a useful life. That said:  I was extremely insecure about everything, and without my father’s unending knowledge and support, and the future rejection I was to later experience in the “real” grown up world, I’m certain my early enthusiasm would have been nipped in the bud. He was instrumental in every way in helping me to navigate the minefields of an exceptionally cruel and capricious business. He was instrumental in my ability to land my first job, which was the first national company of Fiddler On The Roof when I was nineteen. By that time, I had had the good fortune of NOT being invited back to the Neighborhood Playhouse, owing to the presence of one of the all time sadistic- bastards Sanford Meisner, who was probably responsible for destroying the confidence of thousands of talented, but all-too-trusting and self-critical souls. It was the first major rejection I experienced and with the help of my father, I was able to overcome it and by chance fall into the nurturing embrace of the great Stella Adler, who actually taught me the fundamentals of my craft which I use to this very day.  As I review a career that is into it’s forty-seventh year,  I realize I’ve mostly learned my survival skills from my actor-father, while my over all sense of choice and sense of esthetics have been gleamed from my college-professor mother, Vivienne Schwartz.  I would not have survived in my profession without either of their support.

AM: What are your thoughts about Minnie’s Boys, both the fact that you were so young to make your Broadway debut and also playing Groucho? (We’ll come back to the Groucho factor later). And was it surprising that even though the show retains a cult status, it really didn’t run very long? Also, what was it like to work with Shelley Winters?

LJS: Well, cult status is highly subjective. It’s rarely revived because the libretto is terrible, and as absurd as the creative experience turned out to be, I can only be grateful for what turned out to be my entree into the theatrical community.  I no longer had to introduce myself. (Be careful what you wish for.)  There were many reasons why Minnie’s Boys failed.  Shelley Winters was a disaster, but mostly, the story was thought to be in the same vein as Gypsy. But Gypsy was not about Gypsy Rose Lee’s attainment of fame as much as it was the story of her ambitious stage mother. Rose was a very human monster, and the show’s conflict had to do with the effects her behavior had on her children. Minnie’s Boys was about a show business family, devoid of any conflict. Everyone loved Minnie, and it was hardly a mystery as to whether the Marx Brothers would eventually overcome the obstacles before them and become a success. The original director and choreographer were two of the most inept individuals I have encountered in my forty-six years in Show Business; the choreographer is, ironically, a member of the Theater Hall Of Fame, which is a credit to her political abilities and certainly not her talent. Shelley Winters, a terrific film actress, was completely over her head in a musical comedy. You will observe that in most of her film performances she is usually murdered by her leading men, be it drowned, choked, stabbed, run over by a bus, etc. She was one of those performers who had the ability to throw her weight around, thinking only of herself, but in this case she did not possess the requisite skills to selfishly get what she wanted and wound up thoroughly subverting herself and the entire project. She was actually fired in previews, but her contract was such that the producer’s could not afford to pay her off for a year and hire another star performer. One being Kaye Ballard, who I performed with in a subsequent production at Pittsburgh’s Civic Light Opera in 1972. She was wonderful, but the role had already been cast in stone due to Shelley’s many deficiencies. As for the show running for some eighty performances in previews and another eighty after we opened, everyone wanted to bend over backwards to make it a success with the exception of the critics. It just wasn’t good enough, even though it possessed a mostly-winning score and had some excellent performances.  As they say, “The fish stinks from the head down.” That said, it was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, and Danny Fortus (Harpo), Irwin Pearl (Chico) and Alvin Kupperman (Zeppo) remained friends from that day on.

AM: What were your thoughts on being cast to create the role of Ben in The Sunshine Boys? Was anything particularly intimidating (be it creating a role in a play by Neil Simon, working with Jack Albertson or Sam Levene, etc)?

LJS: It was very intimidating being cast in The Sunshine Boys. For the first few days of rehearsal, I was certain I’d be fired. I was a twenty-five year old actor with limited acting chops.  The person who most intimidated me was our director Alan Arkin, who I more than admired. A strange, brilliantly talented man whom I felt I rubbed the wrong way.  Neil Simon, who I got to know a great deal better during the next three decades, was at the top of his form in 1972.  (I have since done three more of his plays from scratch.)  A brilliant artist and craftsman, who I’ve come to realize always brought an operatic element to the productions of all his plays. He suffered not only from fear of failure, but also from success anxiety. A combustible combination. Jack Albertson was a wonderful actor, and it was a pleasure to perform with him. His Willie Clark is still the best performance in that role. But, the person who had the most lasting influence was the GREAT Sam Levene, who to this day I consider one of my foremost mentors, although he would probably cringe at that description. Besides being a great actor, he was incapable of dissembling in an industry that encourages an interactive fraudulence that erodes your soul. He taught me much about onstage comportment, consistency of performance and how to survive in life with your sense of integrity and self-worth intact. For a time, I felt I was actually turning into Sam Levene, who did have a propensity for falling on his own sword. Hopefully, I have taken all that was true in the man and learned to suffer not quite as much.

AM: What was it like to do Candide, and how did you feel about the Tony nomination?

LJS: Candide was, unfortunately, an unhappy experience. I did not get on with Hal Prince, and I don’t care to elaborate as to the reasons why. Let me take some responsibilities for my own actions; I was only twenty-seven at the time, and felt I had to be the spokesman for everyone’s discontent as well as my own. Perhaps I hadn’t quite perfected the good Sam Levene within myself. Based on some very legitimate contractual grievances with Mister Prince, I made the naive mistake of taking him on as a peer, and was crushed in the exchange. At this stage of my short career I believed that doing a Broadway show a year was my birthright, which proved to be a ridiculous assessment. That I could not enjoy the experience is unfortunate, since I have been told by many people that the production itself, and my performance in it, was one of their most enjoyable  theatergoing experiences. As for my Tony nomination, the cast was done no favors by Mister Prince, who would not allow any of the Tony voters to come to individual performances.  Instead he scheduled a ninth, a Sunday evening performance for all the voters to sit in judgement.  We were all nervous and exhausted and, as it turned out, Candide won a flock of Tony Awards, but none for the actors who were nominated from the show. It was par for the course of how the cast was presented, as if we were street urchins turned magically-professional by Hal Prince’s brilliant direction. (He DID win the Tony that year). The experience was instructive in many ways; I lost to the great Christopher Plummer, who probably shouldn’t have won for his performance in the musical Cyrano, but to lose to an actor of such brilliance was an honor in its own right.

AM: We all know that you took a little break from Broadway to play the featured role of Taylor in the first season of the sitcom “Benson.” First of all, what was your experience of that? Secondly, what led to your separation from the show, and was it very harsh? Similarly, did you know that Rene Auberjonois would be replacing Taylor with his own character of Clayton? How did that feel?

LJS: “Benson” was the epiphany needed to figure out what I wanted from my profession. My dear Stella Adler had posed a question to our acting class years before, whether our priority was to become an ACTOR or a STAR? I thought the question daft. Obviously, a star would get the opportunity to play the best parts. Why wouldn’t one aspire to stardom? “Benson” allowed me to fully appreciate the distinction. It was a thoroughly loathsome experience. Even when one is engaged in a poorly conceived theatrical endeavor, there is some flicker of idealism that one might be creating something of worth. Commercial television is about selling beer and cornflakes; the entertainment exists to serve the product. Everybody in charge of bringing “Benson” into the public sphere lied about everything. Our two crass producer’s were thrilled that the show wasn’t in the top ten in the Nielsen ratings because we had “no place to go but down.” Every week we were told to go out and beat the pants off of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.” I didn’t sign my contract until the fifth show, I hated the character I played, and was petrified I’d be typecast as the same sniveling asshole who was only around to be the butt of the joke. Apparently, Rene Auberjonois had no such concern. He was only hired to replace me after I had screamed my way off the show. I remember one of the producers telling me that they would let me out at the end of the season as long as I didn’t expect to get paid in return.  He simply couldn’t conceive that I wanted no part of his money.  Several months later, I was performing a one-nighter of my two person Groucho show in Mansfield, Ohio. A rather slow young man, who was running the spotlight, approached me at a Ham & Egg just before the performance. “Do you mean to tell me that you would rather be here in Mansfield than in Hollywood doing Benson?” In a flash,I recognized the significance of his question. “YES!” was my immediate reply. And if you notice, I don’t even list my television credits in my Playbill bios. Ever.

AM: In 1982, you were more or less rediscovered by the public by your portrayal of Dr. Gruber in The Verdict. Can you describe that experience?

LJS: It was a terrific experience. Sidney Lumet was a great director and it was an honor to work with Paul Newman, and be a part of the same project as James Mason, Charlotte Rampling and Jack Warden. We rehearsed the film for two weeks at 890 Broadway, as if it were a play. We’d run through the screenplay twice a day. In my scene with Paul Newman, I had ninety percent of the dialogue. It would be a three-minute tracking shot when we filmed it up in Boston, but for the process of rehearsing, Sidney had us walking around the rehearsal studio with me taking the lead and Paul trying to catch up. Because I was in awe of Paul, I’d slow up so I could be face-to-face while we conversed. Sidney kept telling me that he wanted Paul to chase after me because I was a big-shot doctor and his character was a down-in-the-heels lawyer, a drunk. But I kept slowing up due to my respect for Paul, until Sidney took me aside and said, “Listen, you’re fucking a twenty-two-year-old intern across the river in Cambridge. You’ve got three hours to get to her apartment, and then back to Boston before your next operation.” From that moment on,   I walked very fast. Giving an actor an “active” motivation is the mark of a great director.

AM: In 1983, the public at large once again got to enjoy your gift of comedy when you portrayed Lupinski in To Be Or Not To Be. What was it like to work with Mel Brooks and company? Were there any standout moments? In particular, what was it like to do the Shylock monologue?

LJS: It was very difficult. Mel Brooks can be a delightful, always hilarious man when he is feeling secure about a project’s prospect for success. In the case of To Be Or Not To Be, he knew he was competing with the original film, which in my estimation is a comic masterpiece. The director of the original, Ernst Lubitsch, was a genius, and Jack Benny and Carole Lombard were brilliant in their respective roles. Because Mel was afraid, and rightfully so, to be compared to Lubitsch and Benny, he pretended that we was not the director of the film. (He was.)  Instead, he gave the directing credit to the film’s choreographer, Alan Johnson.  This created a dysfunctional working relationship that was very hard on the actors. Mel was especially hard on my interpretation of the Shylock speech, which was a work-in-progress until we finally shot it, seven weeks into the shoot.  A large part of being a good director is instilling an actor with confidence, and Mel did the opposite. In retrospect, I realize that Mel was as petrified of performing Shakespeare as I was.  The night before the scene was to be shot,  I smoked a little grass and came to the conclusion that Lupinski’s motivation had to do with kicking ass for the Jews. But the next day, what I didn’t realize, was that the shot before had me rushing out of the theater men’s room straight at Mel, who was dressed as Hitler, while surrounded by several big, strong, blond body guards in SS uniforms who grabbed me by my arms and hurt me. Suddenly, I wasn’t just emoting Shakespeare’s prose, I was fighting for my life. It was a terrific acting lesson. It’s never about the words; it’s about the subtext you create underneath. Mel was more then pleased, thank God, because you don’t want to get on his bad side! Essentially, with the exception of my rendering of that speech, I was too young for the part. Felix Bressart, who was in the original, was much better. As was everything else in the original film. There was to be plenty more Mel Brooks in my life, but two decades later.

AM: It’s absolutely amazing to think that when the The New Odd Couple came to Broadway in ’85 at the Broadhurst, with an all-female cast featuring Rita Moreno, Sally Struthers, Marilyn Cooper and Jenny O’Hara among others, you played one of the Latino love interests along with Tony Shalhoub, who was making his Broadway debut at the time. What was that situation like in general, first of all with the ladies as the leads and secondly to be working with Shalhoub?

LJS: It turned out to be a turning point. I was thirty-seven, and in a depression over what to do with the rest of my life. I think it’s becoming clearer after the re-telling of these experiences that an actor’s life is not a walk in the park. It’s a roller coaster ride complicated by the need to re-invent yourself every decade, as you morph from flavor of the month,to being a character actor who now appears too young for the roles he might be considered right for. If you’re lucky. The original roles of the Costazuela Brothers (the male re-imagining of the Pigeon Sisters), was written for two middle-aged bald Hispanic actors, and I wasn’t bald, Hispanic or middle-aged. The only reason I was asked to audition for the part was, because as desperate as I was to find work, I had invited the show’s casting director to a Mets game the night before. Having nothing to offer me, she threw me a bone and scheduled an audition the next day for a role I wasn’t remotely right for. That afternoon I found myself in a room with about twenty middle-aged, bald Hispanic actors wondering what the hell I was doing there. I even expressed that sentiment aloud to the actors in the room. One of my many complaints that I voiced at the time was that Raul Julia, who spoke with a decided Spanish accent, seemed to be immune from type. He had recently been cast in Noel Coward’s comedy-drama Design For Living, playing an Englishman with a decided Spanish inflection. Seconds before I was to go into audition for the director,  Danny Simon (Neil Simon’s older brother), I decided that if Raul Julia could play Noel Coward,  I could play Raul Julia. So that’s what I did. It was a wicked take-off , and it proved hilarious to the powers that be. The next day, I was asked to audition for Neil and I turned the audition down as a waste of time. Some poor bastard had already been cast in the role of the other brother, and there was no way I could appear to be his brother. I received a conference call between the producer Manny Azenberg and Danny Simon that morning, begging me to come down to the Alvin Theater and audition for Neil. The moment I auditioned with the  bald, Hispanic actor cast in the other role, I knew I was going to get the part, and that the other actor was screwed. (I never found out what happened to him. He must have been bought out). Neil came down the aisle of the theater, and asked me if I was “fucking nuts” for turning down the audition. When I mentioned the plethora of bald jokes, he told me he would rewrite the part. I was astonished that I had gotten the role, and saddened that it had come off the back of the other actor. But…that’s show business!  The moment I walked out of the stage door of the Alvin (which has since been renamed the Neil Simon), a pigeon shit all over my new suit. A woman passing by assured me it was a sign of good luck and I told her I hoped so. After I was cast in the role of Manolo, Tony Shalhoub came in and blew them away as Jesus. It was his first high-profile role, in what has turned out to be an elegant career. Neil Simon rewrote the roles so that the two of us were sexually appealing, and the build up to our characters was so artfully written, that the moment we appeared in the doorway midway through the second act, carrying roses and boxes of candy, the audience was in hysterics. We had great chemistry together. Unfortunately, I got a bit distracted by falling in love with Rita Moreno.  But that’s a story for a different time.

AM: How did you come to play Groucho later Off-Broadway and on tour? Was it as a direct result of Minnie’s Boys, or were you just sort of “that Groucho guy?”

LJS: I didn’t play Groucho Off-Broadway. After Minnie’s Boys, I was offered all the plays and sitcoms that had a Groucho character. While Groucho was alive, I was the only actor he allowed to play him. I was super-sensitive about being typecast as his imitator, and tried everything in my power to choose roles as far away from that image as possible. In the 1970s, during a serious lull in my career, I put together a two-character play which I produced, Groucho, which I co-wrote with Denny Martin Flinn, who directed. We performed it for four weeks at the Ford’s Theater in Washington, and three weeks at the Tower in Houston, and were courted by several Broadway producers who wanted to bring it to Broadway. I refused for reasons I listed above, preferring  to play one-nighters and split weeks all over the country for three months a year, from 1979 to 1982.  I loved playing Groucho Marx, and the show we wrote was funny and literate, but I was happy to do it out of the New York public eye.

AM: You had a relatively-small but absolutely-memorable role on “The Sopranos.” What was that experience like?

LJS: My time on “The Sopranos” was very nice.  It was a show I actually watched religiously.  James Gandolfini was a remarkably generous actor to work with. The shooting schedule was more like a movie than a TV show; everyone involved seemed aware that this was the greatest gig of their lives. They actually wrote a segment about my character that I couldn’t do because it was the first week I was performing as Max Bialystock on Broadway in The Producers. They just renamed the character and got another actor.

AM: So many people, myself included, feel a regrettable loss from the cancellation of “Smash,” in which you’ve had a recurring role. Can you possibly share what the experience has been like, and why you think it’s hasn’t been able to hang on?

LJS: I watched the first twenty minutes of the first episode I was in and turned it off. I thought it was pretty bad. They wanted me to return for a fourth episode, but I turned them down. When you’re a recurring character, your time is not your own. You’re at their disposal at all times, and I don’t choose to live my life that way. Also, to be perfectly honest, I have memorized books of dialogue in my time, but for some reason I have a hell of time keeping disposable dialogue in my head. When you’re doing a recurring role, you’re usually the last person to be put on camera.  Instead of knowing what you’re doing and why, you’re trying to remember the verb that connects the sentence. I am in the fortunate position of not having to take every job that comes down the pike, which is mostly due to my three unions and their generous pension plans. Tell that to those asshole Republican governors from Wisconsin, Ohio and beyond.

AM: How are things going with The Nance?

LJS: I love doing The Nance. It’s a wonderfully ambitious piece. Nathan is his usual brilliant self.  Jack O’Brien is a terrific director. The cast is made up of kind and accomplished actors. The Lyceum is my favorite theater that I’ve played on Broadway. That said, it’s exhausting. I used to poo-pooh actors who complained about doing eight performances a week. That I’m jumping around out there like a teenager out there–I can almost see their point.

AM: Finally and honestly, Lewis, where do you see yourself ten years from now?

LJS: That’s a good question. I’ll be seventy-six.  Hopefully, I’ll be dining at the Edison coffee shop between a matinee and evening performance of a new play. Along with my old friends (and I MEAN old), Chip Zien, Mark Blum and Lee Wilkof (in their respective shows). With my ten-year-old grandson and Mary Macleod at my side.

Well, hopefully most of us will also all be around to meet them there for a good ol’ Edison corned beef on rye and a coffee. Until then, we’ll all continue to enjoy Lewis J. Stadlen on and off stages and screens, and wish him continued great good luck.

Getting Dishy with Judy Graubart

(Note: this piece was originally published in my monthly publication, CaB Magazine, on October 1st, 1992. It recently resurfaced on the Internet and I thought it was appropriate to post here for posterity).

Comic actress Judy Graubart still laughs about being married to Bob Dishy. “It only took us twenty years to do it!” being that the two began their relationship when both were members of Second City over twenty-five years ago. Now, six years later, the two are enjoying happiness both from each other’s company and the arrival of their son, Sam. Graubart, however, has much else to be happy about.

Growing up in Chicago as a rabbi’s daughter, Graubart began her initial performance path in after-school improvisational classes and programs from age five. “It was great for me,” she says over coffee at City Bakery. “I was an overweight kid and extremely nearsighted, and being insecure about all of that, so being involved in these little acting groups just pulled me out of that. It allowed me to think I was funny, and…I just loved being a part of dramatic activities.”

She honed her skills further at sleepaway camps following the death of Rabbi Graubart when Judy was eight, but didn’t get serious about performing until her attendance at the University of Chicago. “I did some productions in college, which were fine,” she says, “but my real break came because of a boyfriend I had, who was good friends with David Steinberg, and he was with Second City at the time. And so I began working as sort of the everything-girl at the club itself. I was a bouncer, I did my share of cocktail waitressing with my share of spills and no tips until finally I really knew the show, and they needed someone to be “the woman” one night; Second City was generally five or six guys and one or two women. So I stepped in and became the Man Who Came To Dinner. I just stayed. And before I was done with school, Second City did a United States tour through the Theater Guild, so I guess the rest is theater history. I’d been planning to be a French teacher, since my major was Romance Languages, but I wound up doing all of this instead. And I love doing improvisation. It’s not easy to do well; I think the ability to improvise successfully is there if actors are willing to relax and use it, but it can be hard to do a scene with somebody if they aren’t skilled in it. There were guys I had to work with who would just butcher what we were doing, and then I remember working with someone like Peter Boyle, who was TERRIFIC. I kept think that working with Peter was like talking with someone from your hometown; someone with whom you just speak a common language.”

The tour ended in New York, and Graubart transplanted herself here along with other members of the company. And distinguished company it was; Robert Klein and Fred Willard were in the company with Judy back in the Windy City, along with the aforementioned Steinberg, and the tour also featured Avery Schreiber and Jack Burns. Following other club dates with members of the company and Second City’s Broadway presentation in the early 60s, Graubart landed an audition and a job at Upstairs-at-the-Downstairs. “I had no money at the time, and I still owe Rod Warren for a sweater he loaned me some cash for,” she laughs. She stayed at the club for a year-and-a-half. “It was unusual for me at the beginning; you know, Second City was revues and this was revues, but Second City was improvised and these shows were scripted. What’s funniest to me is that I don’t remember doing the shows as much as I remember hanging out with Madeline Kahn and Janie Sell, and Dixie Carter and Lily Tomlin, hiding in the kitchen from the AGVA man, and going to the movies between shows, and having fried-egg sandwiches at the Warwick drugstore counter. It was a great time.”

Several plays and commercials continued to put bread and butter on Graubart’s table for a time, she was even a commercial spokeswoman for Cheer detergent. “I got so much mileage out of that,” she tells me. “It was just a bunch of spots of this character seeing how white she could get her clothes with Cheer. And it wasn’t just in the States; I’d gone to Germany to do some spots in German. Actually, it was about that time that Second City went to do a show in London, so I felt pretty international. I did some traveling around that time, France, and Israel. I thought I should cleanse my little Jewish soul after working for Cheer in Munich,” she laughs again. “Do you know, when I was having our son in 1986, I was trying to do some of those hokey Lamaze exercises, where they ask you to recite a mantra. Well, somewhere from the depths of my memory came the Cheer commercial I’d done in German. I started reciting “Cheer, it will get your clothes white as a ghost,” in German.”

Graubart managed to keep the bill collectors from the door and satisfy her artistic self, including the television version of Paul Sills’s “Story Theater,” shot in Canada with a cast of such Second City alums as Richard Libertini, Melinda Dillon, Dick Shawn and Valerie Harper, and then one day came the opportunity to audition for the new children’s educational program “The Electric Company,” produced by the Children’s Television Workshop. She landed the job and would stay with the show for its full seven-year run through 1978, creating characters that would delight children all over the country. “It was such a wonderful feeling to land a show as a regular, a show that was doing some good instead of just being a sitcom or something.” Again she was in illustrious company; Bill Cosby was a regular for the first two seasons, Rita Moreno would be with the show for some time, and other cast members included Todd Graff, Skip Hinnant, Luis Avalos, Hattie Winston, Lee Chamberlin, Melanie Henderson, June Angela, Gregg Burge, Irene Cara, and then-virtually-unknown Morgan Freeman. “It was marvelous that they welded together this group of different ethnic types and different energy levels. I guess I was the low-energy person in the family, except when I was doing a character like Jennifer of the Jungle, swinging on the vine and doing my “Oyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoy” yell.”

And she still tries to see fellow cast members when she can. “I run into Skip and Lee and Hattie all the time, and my husband Bob is going into a film being written by Todd Graff (“Used People”). Luis is hard to track down, because every time I’m on the Coast I try to call him and there are a zillion Luis Avalos-es in Southern California, but one day I’ll hit the right one. And as for Morgan, it’s been fantastic watching him achieve what he’s achieved. It’s a pity that he seems to have a sore spot about doing the show, but I think he’s just so lovable. I remember we used to have these workshops, sketch development workshops, where we had to do a lot of improv-inspired exercises which I was used to, having done all of that stuff with Second City. And I remember Morgan just not having any of it; just going “I’ve worked this hard as an actor to get here, just so I could play children’s games with a bunch of adults?” And the other thing I remember is that Morgan and I used to have crossword-puzzle races. It was great. We were a family, really; we spent a lot of time together off-camera.”

Following her stint, she co-starred with Alan Arkin in the cult-comedy/sci-fi film “Simon.” “A great experience and a very funny film, but way ahead of its time,” Graubart tells me. “If it’s finding an audience now on Comedy Central, that’s terrific. I had a ball making the film.” Other than the odd commercial and voice-over, Graubart has spent the last few years concentrating on being Mrs. Bob Dishy and the mother of six-year-old Sam. Is there ever conflict between the couple, being that Dishy is a slightly more recognizable name than his wife? “I don’t think so,” she muses. “Truthfully, I’d have to think about it…no, I don’t think there is. Although he always told me there was,” she laughs. “I’m always so happy when Bob lands a project that there really isn’t room to feel anything else about it. But there’ve been times when projects would pop up that he’d initiate, or I’d initiate, and I’d want to do them with him, and he’d just look at me and say, “Judy, we are NOT the Lunts!” Which, like any good Jewish girl, would send me to bed for a week, but…no, seriously, we don’t compete. We’re actors seeking work, and there’s a tremendous support system there.”

Now that Sam is firmly ensconced in school, Graubart is actively beginning to seek work again. In fact, a very promising project is lurking around the corner even as you read this. “There’s a series of children’s books out now, called “The Magic Schoolbus,”which star a character named Mrs. Frizzle. She’s a schoolteacher who wears kind of funny clothes and weird shoes; her shoes are sculpted like animals, elephants with trunks and such. They’re wonderful books, and they’ve been gaining popularity. Anyway, they’re trying to develop a tape to go with the books, and as we speak, it looks like I’m Mrs. Frizzle. I don’t know that anything’s going to come of it because I never count chickens, but we’ve recorded it, and it’s probably in the mixing process now, and…we’ll see. Actually,” she continues, “I was telling Sam’s teacher that I was going to be Mrs. Frizzle, and she looked at me really sadly. She said, “But you CAN’T be Mrs. Frizzle! I’M Mrs. Frizzle! Look at my shoes!!” Poor thing, I hope she’s not too depressed. Anyway, I promised myself that no matter what happens, by the end of the year I was going to start looking for work seriously again, so keep an eye out.”

We promise. In any case, whether she’s Judy Graubart, Mrs. Dishy, Sam’s mother or Mrs. Frizzle, she is a consummate delight…and as one of the performers New York has missed so much in recent years, it’ll be nice to see her become the apple of the city’s eye again.

R.I.P. Kathi Moss: A Beautiful Woman Is Lost To Us

When Grease first opened Off-Broadway at the Eden Theater on February 14th, 1972, barely anybody including its stars (headed by an unknown fellow named Barry Bostwick and a gal named Carole Demas, besides a couple of ladies by the names of Adrienne Barbeau  and Ilene Kristen, and a chap named Alan Paul) remotely imagined that that the show would not only saunter to Broadway, but by 1980 become the single longest-running show in the history of New York when it displaced Fiddler on the Roof. It has since retained distinction as the fourteenth-longest-running Broadway show of all time. The show has had two very successful revivals since then, in 1994 and 2007 respectively, not to mention the mega-smash film version that was the undisputed hit of the summer of 1978, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. And among the other legendary talents to be borne from the show was a very robust young lady by the name of Kathi Moss, who memorably created the role of Cha-Cha Di Gregorio and managed to virtually walk off with the entire second act of the show when she steals Danny Zuko (Bostwick) from Sandy Dumbrowski (Demas) and wins the high school dance competition as televised live.

If her work in Grease hadn’t already cemented Moss loudly and clearly as a Broadway legend, she won the chance to prove it all over again in Nine in 1982, directed by Tommy Tune and which would go on to win a Tony for Best Musical (in the season in which Dreamgirls was heavily lauded to sweep the entire shootin’ match).  She spent most of the first act dressed as a nun in full habit, singing backups in her rich female tenor,  and then almost disrobe completely to embody the role of the whore Saraghina on the songs “Ti Voglio Bene” and “Be Italian” with a chorus of four young boys. It not only stunned the audience at every performance, but Moss made theater history when she and the kids performed it on the Tony Awards in 1983, tambourines in tow.

Other than a brief turn in Grand Hotel in the early 90s, Moss didn’t return to Broadway again but stayed busy in regional theater, and kept her friends close, among them your humble reporter. She once said, “Nobody will ever know how hot it was to wear that nun’s habit night after night under those  goddamned lights . Whenever I got to remove that wimple and that tunic and finally feel the cool breeze through the lace shorts, I was the happiest woman on Broadway.” And then she fell into blissful marriage with her husband Tom Quinn, who she loved more than life itself.

Which is why it was so awful, just a mere matter of weeks ago, to learn that she’d fallen victim to a fatal blood disorder known as cardiac amyloidosis. Her families from Grease and Nine rallied together to put together a benefit concert at the Signature Theater on January 14th to help with the costs of the illness, but Kathi shuffled off her mortal coil just a few days later, peacefully and painlessly and in the arms of her cherished Tom. As it rightfully should have been. And once again, her families from both shows gathered to share their memories with The Andrew Martin Report.

Alaina Warren Zachary, who created the role of Ilsa von Hesse in Nine, was one of the rare few who worked with Moss in both shows. “Of the Grease experience,” she says, “Pat Birch will corroborate that Kathi was an amazing dancer, for a large woman. For this reason, she was made the official dance captain of the show. She traveled to London and other places, to teach the original Pat Birch choreography to many Grease companies. In the program, and according to the union, Kathi was listed as Dance Captain. BUT in typical Kathi style, she insisted on being called the Dance Queen. So you will find that listing in our programs. But wait, there’s more; Kathi, being Kathi, wanted more than the acknowledgement of Dance Queen. She also requested a tiara. Probably both Pat Birch and Louis St. Louis can back me up on this. And if memory serves, she was presented with a tiara. Kathi had her own expressions, as any one who knew her well can tell you. One that lingers (and it usually referred to timing for a step or who knows what all) was “block-a, block-a block-a.”  She, so fond of telling stories, was the first person I ever heard who said “long story short.” And one of my favorite facial expressions was when Kathi would close one eye and look at you. Outside of our onstage/backstage times in Grease and Nine. I was the person who recommended her to Tommy Tune, when we learned the Saraghina from the workshop would not be continuing on to Broadway with us. So Kathi auditioned and became the Broadway Saraghina. But she never shared the royalties that the workshop folks received. As I was saying, outside of our Broadway adventures, we played together as girlfriends. Kathi had a car and I was starting to think about buying a weekend place in the Hudson Valley, so Kathi decided we’d take a drive and look at real estate upstate. Probably the year was 1983 by then. I remember we stopped at a little antique shop in Cold Spring, where I found a lovely simple gold and amethyst bracelet, which is my favorite to this day. But that’s not the story I wanted to share. We had so much fun looking at houses that we decided to get a motel room, and continue looking at houses the next day. Of course it was a spontaneous decision, so we hadn’t packed anything. We bought toothbrushes and toothpaste, but we had no pajamas and no other clothes than what we were wearing. It was Kathi who suggested (and I still laugh about this) that we take down the drapes and wear those around the motel room. Which we did. Toga style. The last story I’m sharing was a phone conversation I had with Kathi. After becoming a weekender upstate around 1984, I sold my Chelsea condo and moved full time to the Chatham area. I knew at some point that I would need to return to the city in order to pick up one more year to qualify for an AFTRA pension, and that year turned out to be 1997. I’d been away from New York for a long time, away from my performing pals, my agents, the casting people and all the Broadway society that had been a vital part of my life from 1971-1985.  So, naturally, I had trepidation about returning. How would I pick up the threads of my active, prosperous performing career after an absence of more than ten years? What would I say to everyone? Kathi, on the phone, had the advice. She said, ‘Coma. Tell them you’ve been in a coma for ten years.’ So typical of Kathi humor.”

Alan Paul, who of course followed his marvelous success in Grease as a member of the Manhattan Transfer, has equally wonderful memories of Moss. “She was such a great talent,” he says, “with a dynamic voice, that needed no mic to reach the far corners of the balcony. She was also a great swing dancer. We shared a little secret while in Grease. When we started out Off-Broadway at the Eden Theatre, the entire cast was on a favored-nations clause, making a big $280 a week. Kathi’s role as Cha-Cha, and my characters of Johnny Casino and Teen Angel, didn’t make our appearances until the second act, so we figured we were getting paid the same amount as everyone else while putting in half the time. On many occasions, we would sign in an hour before the start of the show and then sneak out to do whatever we wanted. It used to drive our stage manager, Tommy Smith,  completely nuts. But we never missed a performance, so he gave us slack.” Paul continues, “Another fond memory of Kathi was with her dog, Chichornya, named after the Russian folk song. He was an Afghan, absolutely beautiful, but the stupidest dog I ever met. Kathi lived in an apartment downtown that was on the third floor, and had a balcony overlooking the street below. One day, Kathi left her dog on the balcony to run some errands, and when poor Chichornya saw Kathi exit the building, he jumped three floors to get to Kathi, breaking both his back legs. Fortunately, they were able to pin together his legs and he was his jolly self again, except he now walked with a limp. Seeing how traumatic this must have been for Chichornya, it was a logical assumption on Kathi’s part that the probability of this scenario ever happening again was nil to slim. Well, unfortunately, that was not the case with Chichornya. Three months later, he once again jumped off the balcony, three floors in order to get to Kathi, and once again broke both his hind legs. He healed again and, as far as I know, Kathi never put him out on the balcony again and they lived happily ever after.”

Entertainer Nancy Hillner, now a sought-after theater teacher in Rhode Island, never actually worked with Moss but chimed in, “In 1974 after seeing Grease, I used to ‘second-act’ the show often. I had auditioned for the national tour a year or so earlier before I had even seen the show, and wanted to see what I had missed out on. I enjoyed it so much, and I kept going back because they looked like they were having so much fun, especially Kathi. I can still see her hand-jiving!” She continued, “I knew Kathi from Charlie’s, a theater restaurant across from the Royale. I worked the coat room, and Kathi and the rest of the Grease gang would sit at table twelve, a big round table near the front. She enjoyed her cocktails and liked to stay late, and we would chat/dish about mutual friends. One good friend (whose name I won’t mention) at one point did the show with her, and when I asked Kathi how she was, she didn’t pull any punches; she said she was awful! I truly loved how honest she was, but just in case people might know who it is, let’s just say I loved her brutal honesty about people. I also remember when she lost all of her Cha-Cha weight. What a difference! If I had to sum her up, I’d say she was always there with a smile, she loved having a good time, and her talent was a knockout.”

Dee Etta Rowe (now Dee Etta Rowe Ferraro), also from the original cast of Nine as  Olga von Sturm, said, “I didn’t know Kathi at all, until she joined us in the workshop. But I thought she was perfect for the role. She was very professional, fit right in with all of us even though she joined the cast later on, and was always very nice to me. And oh, how she loved to laugh. Nothing ever seemed to bother her at all!! Kathi was very kind, and loving, and talented. It was a pleasure to have worked with her and shared the stage with her!!”

Though Walter Charles wasn’t an original cast member of Grease, he became the first original replacement as Vince Fontaine and later scored success in Sweeney Todd, Cats and La Cage Aux Folles. “Kathi and I were close friends during the years I was with Grease, in the first National & Broadway companies,” he says. “Although, we hadn’t seen each other for some years and had lost touch, I was, like all her devoted friends, devastated to learn of her illness and passing. It just seems so inconceivable. For the years I was in Grease with her,  she shared one of her Christmas traditions with me; we’d get into an old station wagon she had, a Country Squire or something, and she’d drive to this Christmas tree stand downtown that she liked. We get our trees, tie them to the roof of the car, then drive back uptown, park, and go to a sweet shop that used to be on Central Park South called Rumplemayer’s. We’d sit at a table and have a hot chocolate together, with whipped cream!  Then she’d drop me at my place, I’d unload, we’d get back into the car, and help her unload at her place. We laughed the whole time. We were also the “fact-finding committee”, which was part of a larger Equity committee during the musician’s strike during the 1970’s, and which closed down the musicals for about twenty-seven days, I think it was. Kathi and I were on the phone constantly with each other, or meeting up at her place or mine. She was a loyal, trusted friend during that time in my life, I will never forget her, and will always hold her memory close to my heart.”

Colleen Dodson (now Colleen Dodson Baker), who created the role of the Gondolier, says, “My favorite memory of working with Kathi on Nine was her grace under pressure at the rehearsal for the 1982 Tonys. Anita Morris and ‘A Call from the Vatican’ were rejected because it was too risqué, so the producers decided to go with Kathi and ‘Be Italian.’ I’ll never forget waiting for our rehearsal to start; we were in the house at the Imperial watching the Dreamgirls cast rehearse, and when Jennifer Holliday started singing her heart-stopping number, “And I Am Telling You,” we fell silent. You could tell by how somber the Nine girls got that we all had the same thought – how are we EVER going to follow THAT?! But then our time came, and Kathi took the stage. Nothing was going to intimidate her. She was a total star. Powerful and radiant. She owned her talent, her love of our show, and she reveled in the chance to perform her number. She showed us all the way that day, the night of the Tonys, and every performance she did during her run of Nine. I can’t see the YouTube clip of  ‘Be Italian’ on the 1982 Tonys without thinking back to that afternoon.”

Nancy McCall created the role of Arabella in Nine, later finding fame as the booking manager for both Palsson’s and Steve McGraw’s on West 72nd Street, the home of such Off-Broadway hits as Forbidden Broadway, Forever Plaid and Bittersuite. “It is easy to remember Kathi’s generosity. One night, she treated a group of us to dinner at Barbetta. And her opening night present of the mini-tambourine, with ribbons in the Italian colors, was a treasure. There are stage memories, but a standout was her generous, radiant smile, when I was an ensemble tambourinist.”

As if none of this was enough, Katie Hanley (the original Jan in Grease and later a star of the movie Godspell and heavily featured in Xanadu) said, ” I will never forget the first rehearsal for the cast of Grease at the Eden; the opening night memories are still with me every Valentine’s Day. As each actor walked into the room, I was struck by the amazing casting. Kathi and Tim Meyers walked in together, and their enviably deep friendship was apparent from the beginning. When Kathi read her first line, the power and talent in that gal had us exploding with laughter, along with every audience she played to. One of the highlights of the show was her entrance into the prom in her outrageous poofy yellow dress, booming out,  “They call me Cha-Cha, ’cause I’m the best dancer at St. Bernadette’s.”  And was she EVER! She took that stage and filled it with so many delicious moments, and was a major contributor to the success of Grease.  I just wish she’d been in the movie!! Selfishly,” she continued, “my favorite moment in the show was just before ‘It’s Raining On Prom Night.’ There were only a few of us onstage, and I was fortunate enough to have been positioned with my back to the audience, frozen, and looking up at Carole Demas. It was great to be part of the audience, soaking up Kathi’s intro. I go to YouTube for a listen every now and then, and get fed by all that is in her voice. I should point out that I didn’t see Kathi again after I left the show, but in spite of all the years that have gone by, my memory of her is fresh.  Those intelligent, big eyes…the face of a doll, her powerful voice, amazing dancing feet, and a presence that exuded generosity of spirit, authenticity, no-nonsense wisdom, and a refreshing sense of humor about herself, all rolled up into one who is impossible to forget.”

Linda Kerns created her own stir in Nine as Helga von Sturm, and remembers, “As well as the many laughs (and Kathi had the greatest, heartiest laugh of anyone I know) we had in our dressing room, during the run of Nine, one of the things I remember with great fondness is the ‘Champagne Saturday Nights.’ Kathi started a tradition of someone (usually herself) bringing in a bottle or two of Freixenet to wrap up the week. Then one holiday (I think it was a Christmas), she presented each of us with the greatest tallest champagne glass, which I STILL HAVE! Thru several moves, one of them across the country, that glass has gone with me to remind me of the wonderful times we had. It sits proudly on a shelf in my home, and using it is never out of the question.”

Even Raul Julia’s intrepid dresser, Susan Wright, has her memories of Moss. “I think of our Nine year with so much fondness and happy memories, and Kathi was a big part of that. I loved her number in the show. She sparkled and shined with joy, and was so lusty. The lust absolutely poured out of her! Sometimes I wonder what those kids really thought was going on. I know Raul thought she was wonderful, and so great in that role. We all did. Who couldn’t?”

Jim Wann wasn’t even a member of either cast; he was busy starring in Pump Boys & Dinettes in ’82 at the Princess Theater. But he, too, absolutely adored her. “I am remembering, with a big smile, Kathi Moss paddling around on that little round thing on wheels that Pat Birch put her on at the Kennedy Center in Hot Grog. Talk about a low budget! She also sang her ass off in Country Cabaret and especially in Nine. She made me, a country boy, want to be Italian just to hang out with Saraghina. And well, maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but everyone thought she was brave for dating Roger Howell. Who I love, too.” He continued, “I have thought of Kathi often through the years. We worked together a few times, and I never had a bad moment in her company. She was always great-hearted and generous with me, and she always made my work come alive in a way that made folks want to laugh and applaud. To me, she was a true theater person, who reminds me of all the best reasons to have friends in the theater.”

And Carole Demas, not merely a legend of Broadway for creating the role of Sandy in Grease but also of children’s television, and who is still knocking it out of the park in concert as recently as just a few weeks ago in the Westchester town of Irvington, said, “My husband, Stuart Allyn, owned a recording studio on Broadway and West 58th Street years ago. He was engineering and producing an album with our St. Croix friend and client, Llewellyn Westerman, a tall, broad shouldered sailor by trade (never a motor-ever!) and ‘Calypso King Of The Virgin Islands’ several times over.  Llewellyn plays guitar, sings in a sweet, deep voice and writes true Calypso; the poetry of the islands, full of his observations of life, the beauty of his home, his political ideas–his songs were (and still are) the real Calypsonian deal. I was singing backup, creating the soaring, mysterious soprano voices of mermaids for his song, ‘Underwater.’ All was well, and I was having a great time, until he decided I should sing some Calypso stuff–not exactly my ‘ting,'” she laughed. “He also needed a low, rich woman’s voice to join with mine. But it was after 10 PM. Who to call? I hadn’t seen Kathi in ages, but I called her, full of apologies for the hour and the short notice. In fifteen minutes, she was in the studio. Llewellyn met my weak protestations that ‘I wasn’t sure I could sing Calypso’ with a hearty, ‘Take off your shoes, girl, and just sing it!’ Kathi wasn’t exactly experienced singing Calypso, either, but her shoes were off in seconds and we wailed, rocked and crooned, swaying and stomping in our bare feet, screaming with laughter, until well into the early morning. Unforgettable.  Kathi was absolutely fearless, and I will be grateful to her forever for helping me find my groove. The woman had a direct connection to the joys of life.”

Long story short, as the lady herself would say, Kathi Moss will remain sorely missed by the Broadway community as well as the legions of fans she so completely embraced with her talents. One more angel now sings with the feathered choir, in a rich deep tone that will caress the clouds forevermore and always steal the show. Ti voglio bene, mia cara signorina.

Concertgoing: This is My Life

The Three Degrees.
(From left, Helen Scott, Freddie Pool, Valerie Holiday)

One of the most wondrous things about growing up in a showbiz family is that from a very early age you find yourself attending concerts. If you’re even luckier, those concerts encompass a wide range of styles and tastes.

The very first I ever attended were Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. My recently departed cousin Barry Finclair was one of their violinists, so he always got us great seats. But the first solo concert I ever saw was PDQ Bach, when we were visiting relatives in Poughkeepsie. I was maybe seven at the time, I hated it and I fell asleep midway through. In retrospect, I so wish I hadn’t, because Peter Schickele is a genius.

Aside from all the Broadway shows I ever saw and have seen, not to mention thousands of cabaret acts, concerts are my favorite things to attend. The first one I really remember clearly was Carly Simon, at Hofstra in 1980. This was before she caught stage fright, right around the same time when “Vengeance” was a big hit. I want to say it was a good show, but it really wasn’t. She did all the big hits, like “Anticipation” and “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” and “Legend In Your Own Time” and “Nobody Does it Better,” not to mention “You’re So Vain,” but she was also trying to transition into harder rock and it was a study in fruitlessness. But I love that I got to see her.

Then in ’82, Mom took me to an Elly Stone concert at the Bottom Line, may it rest in peace. THIS was a big deal. I don’t expect half of you reading this to know who Elly is or remotely care, but she’s kind of a legend; she was the star of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” and was basically considered the new American Piaf in her day. My mom was such a fan that Elly was and still is considered a goddess in our house (I’m friends with Elly now, all these years later, and she thinks that’s hilarious). But that was the night I fell in love with concertgoing. We actually sat through the second show, and it was also the night I became acquainted with the wonderful work of Kitty Hendrix, who sang backup for Elly and also became a friend of mine. Plus, who wouldn’t want to be thirteen years old and taken to see a show at the Bottom Line?

A year after that I had a chance to see Pete Seeger in concert, which really gave me my love of folk music. He was doing a very informal show in Westchester as a benefit for the Clearwater Project, with which he’s fiercely committed to clean up the Hudson River. As a special treat, he invited Arlo Guthrie to come up on stage and join him to duet on “Guantanamera.” To call it glorious would be an understatement. Which is why, when I was in college in 1986, I took an elective seminar called “The American Folk Tradition,” hosted by Mary Travers. Every week she would have a guest from the folk music world come and do an interview for about forty minutes, and then they’d do a mini-concert for the rest of the hour, sometimes joined by Mary and sometimes not. Because of that, I got to see such artists as Odetta, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Buskin & Batteau, and the New York Choral Society. The best was on the last day of the seminar, when she had Peter Yarrow as her guest. After the interview, they got up together and sang “Lemon Tree” and “500 Miles,” and then Peter said, “Mary, that was fun, but I keep feeling like there was something missing.” Then we heard a guitar strum from the back of the house, we all turned around, of course it was Paul Stookey, and we all went wild. He strolled down the aisle, playing and singing “The Wedding Song” and joined them on stage, and they gave us a blissful concert for the next hour. It was other-worldly.

That same year, David Bowie played at the Garden with his “Spiders from Mars” tour, and they just happened to add a second date. So my friend Jessica, who is a major Bowie fan, called me and said, “Look, they’ve added a second date and I have no money. If you can get us two tickets I’ll be your friend forever.” Now, I am not the biggest Bowie fan on earth by a longshot, but I knew what a great show he puts on plus I’d never seen a show at the Garden, and I had the cash so I got us the tickets. Whether I’m a fan of his or not, I cried my eyes out when he sang “Jean Genie.” It was THAT good.

That was the same year that the Monkees (minus Michael Nesmith) embarked on their “Pleasant Valley Sunday” tour, and it was coming to Pier 86 (when they still did concerts there).  So my friend Sandy begged me to get tickets for her and myself. I had a mad crush on Peter Tork, so I didn’t exactly need a lot of persuasion. We attended together, and they were amazing, but best of all was that for their opening acts they had Herman’s Hermits featuring  Peter Noone, as well as Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and The Grass Roots, with whom I’ve had a lifelong love affair (and they sang EVERYthing, “Sooner or Later,” “Live for Today,” “Midnight Confessions,” “The River Is Wide,” you name it).

Right around that same time and through the late 80s, I caught three shows at the Bottom Line that absolutely changed my life for their greatness. The first was Phoebe Snow (again with friend Jessica). The second was Laura Nyro (with a boyfriend whose name I can’t remember) and the third was Janis Ian (alone, but we were all united as one in her genius).  I had a ticket to see Joan Armatrading three weeks later, but that afternoon I caught a vicious flu and had to give the ticket to a friend.

In 1990, my life was to rearrange when I was offered a job as a cabaret reviewer and features contributor for a magazine called Night & Day. My very first assignment was to review a Peggy Lee concert at The Ballroom. And I’d not been a huge fan of Peggy Lee until then, but this was an assignment, after all.  So I spent days figuring out what to wear, what to do with my hair, even what pen to bring with me to take notes. Miss Lee walked out onto that stage with a nine-piece band and knocked my socks off;  it was the sweetest trial by fire anyone could ever experience at twenty-one years of age, to be shown into the Ballroom, guided to the best seat in the house, encouraged to order anything I’d like to eat or drink for free, watch Peggy Lee for an hour, go home and write about it, and then GET PAID!

As if that wasn’t enough, four days later they sent me to the Beacon to review a major concert experience called “Heartstrings.” They rented me a limo, and my cherished friend Kim and I got all gussied up and attended the show and the party afterwards at Citicorp Market. It had a core cast and a script of which the theme was a fable about AIDS infiltrating humanity, and I was afforded the opportunity to discover some really fantastic musical theater performers (including a sensational vocalist named Mary Beth Purdy, who brought the house down when she sang “Come Rain or Come Shine” and has also become a friend of mine since then) but even more than this, it was hosted by Christopher Reeve (darling man, who I got to meet that night and may he rest in peace) and Marlo Thomas, and included such delicious moments as Tommy Tune dancing to “Kicking the Clouds Away” with a chorus of beautiful girls and Barbara Cook knocking all of us on our asses by singing “Love Don’t Need a Reason” by Peter Allen.

The next ten years were spent with attending a LOT of cabaret and jazz shows, two highlights of which were Dr. Hook at the Village Gate and Chaka Khan at the Blue Note (and she is so short you can’t believe it). Then came 2001, when sort-of-ex-husband and I met (long story, we were together and then apart and together again and then apart and now we’re sort of…I’m not sure), and I’m thrilled to say that he LOVES concerts. The first was Jane Olivor at Westbury, about seven weeks after we met because we’re both major fans, and we subsequently attended four more of hers at different venues. (As most of you know, Jane and I eventually worked together on a project and she did me dirt, so I refuse to ever see a concert of hers again. Whenever the lunatic does one). But we attended a whole big bunch of them together. The memorable standouts are of course Cher (in her first Farewell Tour, hee hee) at the Garden, Bette Midler in the “Kiss My Brass” tour (also at the Garden, on the memorable night she was flying off stage on the carousel horse to end the first act and it got stuck in mid-air), Linda Eder at Carnegie Hall (to which we brought his parents, who bitched about my getting such crappy seats), and Il Divo at Radio City.

And then there was the night, in 2002, when he said to me, “Let’s catch a concert at Jones Beach this summer. Look up who’s playing. You pick the artist.” So I looked it up, and there happened to be a Three Dog Night concert, and I worship Three Dog Night. But the problem with a Three Dog Night show is that there’s never a guarantee that Chuck Negron will be in shape to go on, and if he’s not in shape to go on, they cancel altogether and don’t give refunds. So I figured we shouldn’t chance it. I said, “Styx?” He said no. I said, “Supertramp?” He said no. I said, “Pat Benatar?” He said, “Certainly not. I hate her.” (So much for me picking the artist, and I should have known then that the marriage was in trouble). So then I said, “How about Hall & Oates, with Todd Rundgren as an opening act?” THAT idea he  liked. So we got tickets. And they put on a GREAT show; they sang every hit except “Private Eyes.” The downside was Rundgren, who had cocaine running down his face from the moment he came out to sing “Hello, It’s Me.”

Now, I also have this friend named Jennifer. Our birthdays are two days apart, so we can never forget. And she always goes out of her way to get me something incredible as a gift. That’s my Lovey. (I call her Lovey and she calls me Bunny. Don’t ask, it’s a friend thing). Anyhow, in ’07 she called me and said, “So what am I getting you this year?” You should also know if you don’t already that I collect giraffe statuettes. Fifty-eight and counting, to be precise. So I said, “A crystal giraffe from Swarovski.” She said, “No giraffes. I’ve given you enough giraffes.” So I said, “A set of All-Clad cookware. My friend Susan Scudder says you have to be married for forty years before you earn a set of All-Clad.” She said, “I’m not buying pots. What do you want more than anything that you can’t afford?” I said, “Get me a ticket to the Streisand show this autumn at the Garden.” She said, “But that’s October. I want you to enjoy it on your birthday.” I said, “You’re asking me, I’m telling you. I’ll wait three months to enjoy it if it means I can see Streisand.” So she got me a ticket, and the show was on a Monday night (the 9th, if I recall, John Lennon’s birthday). As I was dressing to go to the show, she called  me and said, “I know how much you’re looking forward to tonight and I hate to ask this, but they’ve added a second show for Wednesday and if you can possibly wait, I can get you upgraded to a Skybox in one of the Club Suites for that night.” So I waited the two nights. And it was the best thing I ever did. I saw Streisand from the best seat in the house.

Much more recently and as many of you know, I’ve been taking a lot of road trips with dear childhood friend George. Mostly New England but also Long Island. Anyway, all of a sudden after one of our trips this summer he offered me a ticket to go with him to the Beacon and see the Dukes of September, which is Boz Scaggs, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, and Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers. Would YOU say no? So of course we went, and it was absolutely magical.

The reason I bring all of this to light is because last night, Scott Barbarino (my cherished publisher at NiteLifeExchange.com) invited me to come see The Three Degrees do their show at Iridium. This will probably be their last time in New York; they’re hitting the road in a few days to do concerts in Japan again. For those of you unfamiliar with The Three Degrees (and shame on you if you are), they’re the female vocal trio who scored a huge hit in 1974 with the song “When Will I See You Again?” The current group is not comprised of the original members, which started in Philly in ’63, but they are three fabulously-talented women named Valerie Holiday, Helen Scott and Freddie Pool. And their energy is mesmerizing. It was literally one of the greatest concerts I have ever seen. Of course they sang that hit, but also “Dirty Ol’ Man,” “Shake Your Groove Thing,” “Maybe,” and did an incredible tribute to their fellow artists from Philadelphia (The O’Jays, McFadden & Whitehead, The Trammps, etc).

In closing, it was a trip to the  moon on gossamer wings. And I can’t wait to go see another concert. Soon.

Requiem for a Paperweight

About seven years ago, a dear friend of mine and I sat at a little bar on Ninth Avenue in the West 40s one night, knocking back a few and having some laughs, when he suddenly said to me, “You know you’re my favorite journalist of all time, right? Well, when the time comes, I want you to write my obituary.” I said, “Oh, honey, STOP!! Don’t be morbid!! And anyway, you’re gonna bury us all!!” He said, “No, no, I won’t. People might remember who I am, maybe for a little while, but I want you to promise me that you’ll write my obituary when the time comes.” So I said, “Fine. Should I ask if you have a title for this little opus I’m supposed to write?” He said, “Yes. I want you to call it Requiem for a Paperweight.” And we laughed and ordered another round and smoked a few more cigarettes as usual, and I figured that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. He died this morning. And writing this article may well be one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do, but I’m keeping the title as per his wishes.

The world has lost a wonderful gentleman named Ron Palillo. Most people probably know him best as the iconic character Arnold Horshack from the megahit sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter on ABC for four seasons. Yes, he of the signature gravelly laugh, dorky clothes, comical Brooklyn accent and explanation of his moniker (“I’ll have you know that Horshack is a very old and RESPECTED name. It means, ‘The cattle are dying.'”) Whether he was joining a religious cult, becoming a figure not unlike Peter Finch in the movie Network or merely hanging out with his fellow Sweathogs, Horshack was to the 1970s what Urkel was to the 80s or Screech was to the 90s, in pop-culture parlance. And millions will never forget him or the joy he brought to the cultural landscape.

But I don’t want to talk about Horshack right now. I want to talk about Ron, the man I was blessed to know so well for over twenty years, and the joy he gave me personally as a friend.

In 1990 I got my first job in journalism, writing reviews and features for a now-defunct magazine called Night & Day. One feature of which I was particularly proud was an interview with my dear friend Shirley Stoler, which gave me great pleasure to write. So a few days after it was published, I was hanging out at Don’t Tell Mama on Restaurant Row having a drink at the bar when all of a sudden this guy came over and started staring at me. A little bit short, not a bad body and really luminescent skin. He looked an awful lot like Ron Palillo, but something was different; maybe he’d had his nose bobbed or something. So I smiled at him. He said, “Do you happen to be Andrew Martin?” I said yes, I was. “Oh, I love your writing so much! I was just reading your interview with Shirley Stoler the other day and I absolutely adore her. My name’s Ron Palillo.” I nearly spit my drink out of my nose. “I THOUGHT that was you!! HI!! Oh, I’m so pleased to meet you!! HUGE fan!! So you’re visiting New York, then?” By this point his lover Joey came over and joined us, Ron made introductions and explained that no, he and Joe were living in New York now, they’d just moved back and gotten a place in Chelsea. By three or four drinks later, the three of us were already great friends. They literally poured me into a cab to take me home to Queens after I gave them my phone number and they gave me theirs, and we all promised to see each other soon. Now, everybody knows how it works in entertainment circles in New York; you always promise you’ll see each other again and nine times out of ten you don’t. But this, I learned, is why nobody should have ever underestimated Ron Palillo.

About three weeks later, on a Friday night, I took my buddy Jim Loftus to see someone’s cabaret act at Rose’s Turn on Grove Street (I have absolutely no recollection whose cabaret act it was, so I apologize to whomever they are and I hope I gave you a nice review). We went downstairs after the show to sit by the piano and hear my friend Peter Gloo play and my other friend Elaine Brier sing, when all of a sudden Ron and Joe walked in. As soon as they saw me, they made a beeline for us. “Andrew! Why haven’t you called? You promised!! Never mind, it’s nice to see you now. May we join?” Of course I said yes and introduced them to Jim. Who, once they were seated, said, “Am I dreaming this? Did you honestly just introduce me to Arnold Horshack and now he’s sitting here with us?” I assured him it wasn’t a dream. We all got lit as lords and had a wonderful evening.

So, for at least the next year and longer, I kept in touch with them (I was never quite as friendly with Joe as I was with Ron, but Joe was always very happy to see me wherever it was). In due time, Night & Day Magazine folded, I was then moved over to the New York Native newspaper and then I parted company with them also, and after a few months away from it all except for occasional freelancing at magazines like Details and Lear’s, I started my own magazine, CaB. So I asked Ron if he might possibly be so gracious as to grant me an interview. Believe me, he needed no bidding; he was delighted to know that I’d be writing about him, and invited me to swing by the apartment he and Joe were subletting in Chelsea. It was really a little nothing of a building, a very innocuous brownstone,  and then I got to their apartment and nearly died. It was the most luxurious duplex I have ever seen, and I’ve been to some pretty luxurious duplexes in my day. I said, “You and Joe actually LIVE here? This isn’t a movie set or something?” He said, “Andrew, it’s called being on a hit show for several seasons.”

Then we did the interview. He spoke of growing up in Connecticut and how lonely he was most of the time as a kid, how much he wanted to be a star, how his gravelly laugh as Horshack was actually his father’s death rattle as he lay dying of cancer, how frustrated he’d always been after Kotter because nobody would take him seriously as an actor, and all kinds of other things nobody else could have possibly known about him. Then he showed me his drawings; he’d begun working as an illustrator for children’s books (one in particular, The Red Wings of Christmas, had been written by his dear friend Wesley Eure, who was best known as the star of the Sid/Marty Krofft series “Land of the Lost” and also as the longtime lover of Richard Chamberlain). He also spoke with desperate passion about his best friend, actress Debralee Scott, whom he loved more than life itself. It was an amazing interview and frankly left me more than a bit dazed.

For the next decade, Ron and I continued to have an absolute blast. He and Joe and I had mutual friends in the form of a couple, two wonderful guys named Woody Leatherwood and Larry Scheraldi, who threw the most wonderful parties imaginable at their apartment on West 39th. (By this point, Ron and Joe had taken a new apartment on 49th Street). I recall one night in particular when Ron and I and our other friend Tommy Femia decided to play “The Movie Game” This is where the first person names a movie, the second person names someone who was in that movie, the third person names another movie that person was in, and it just goes around and around until someone can neither name a person or a movie that goes with the subject. The whole point is to be as obscure as possible so you stump the next person. Ron really thought he was gonna get Tommy (the world’s best Judy Garland impersonator) out of the game when, after I named Vigil of the Night as the movie and Ron volunteered the name of Rita Page, Tommy looked at both of us and in his best Garland voice said, “She played my mother in Little Nellie Kelly.” Ron’s jaw dropped to the floor and he said, “That’s it. I’m out of the game. I give up.” It was adorable.

Then, in ’02, my ex-husband and I had four friends from out of town staying with us for Gay Pride Week, and one night after we took everybody to see the Empire State Building, we went to the same bar I mentioned in the first paragraph, on Ninth Avenue between 45th and 46th. We were all having a ball, then I got up to go to the bar and get another drink, and who should be standing at the jukebox but Ron. I said, “Oh, no you’re NOT, Ron Palillo!!” He turned around, saw me, came over and gave me a huge hug hello and then joined our table. The guys were absolutely beside themselves that “Andrew knows Arnold Horshack!!”

Ron was an absolute and understandable mess the day Debralee Scott died in 2005. It wasn’t hard to comprehend why; they were as close as brother and sister, and she and he and Joe were always constantly in each others lives. But I’d never seen him so upset and distraught. Hence, the night he insisted on meeting me for drinks at that bar. And also hence why he decided that I should write his obituary.

One of the very last times I spoke to him by phone was after he appeared in the opening number of the TVLand Awards. He said, “I hate that they trotted me out as HIM one more time, but I made a little cash and got to see some old friends. If Alison Arngrim (Nellie Oleson from “Little House on the Prairie”)  hadn’t been there I never would have gotten through it. Hey, do you know her?” I said that I most certainly did. He said, “Isn’t she the best? One of the funniest women on earth, and a brilliant actress, outrageously intelligent and the warmest creature you could imagine,” and he just sang her praises for well over a half hour.

Ron and Joe moved to the Palm Beach area a couple of years ago, and while Ron wasn’t particularly happy about it, he was certainly proud of their home. Our very last conversation was a couple of months ago, in Facebook Chat. He was extremely worried that he might have had cancer from all the smoking, he said he’d developed a cough that sounded a lot like his father’s, but that he’d begun seeing a respiratory therapist and that so far was so good. Then this morning, Joe came downstairs, saw Ron clutching his chest, called an ambulance and they set off for the ER, where he died shortly after arriving.

And so here we are tonight. Ron is gone and my heart is aching. But it’s not aching for myself. It’s aching for Joe. It’s aching for his siblings. It’s aching for all the social misfits out there like I was, who knew that in Arnold Horshack we had a friend for life. It’s aching for those people who were ever lucky enough to know him. And by now I’ve lost enough friends to also know that it’s not about all the things we didn’t get to do or having the chance to say a final goodbye, but all the things we DID get to do and all the chances we had to say a hello.

Thus, all there is left to say is one last hello. Rest in peace, my wonderful Paperweight. I love you.

Golden Jubilee for a Hallowed Hall

In 1985, cabaret unwittingly found a new fair-haired boy in their midst. Kevin Scott Hall had arrived in New York City from Maine in his early twenties, and seemingly wasted no time in establishing himself  as a permanent and powerful presence in piano bar and on stage. Nearly three decades later, armed with an endless arsenal of tenacity and staying power besides bucketfuls of talent in a variety of areas, Hall has evolved from a vibrant singer and recording artist (including the CDs Live at Middle, New Light Dawning and Holiday Spirit) to a respected university lecturer, vocal coach and teacher (he created the That Singing Feeling workshop), cabaret columnist for EDGENewYork.com, and even a published novelist with his book Off the Charts! Having turned fifty merely two weeks ago from the time of this writing, he also announced what will sadly be his very last cabaret act ever, which premiered at Don’t Tell Mama on Wednesday, July 18th as a birthday celebration and plays its second show on Saturday, July 21st. If the gods are kind, however, someone will convince him that this can’t be the last time. It’s a brilliant presentation beyond words; Hall retains his marvelous pop/rock sensibility as always and simply dazzles. His voice hasn’t lost one micro-ounce of its glorious tenor timbre lo these many years, and clearly he can still wrangle a tune with the best of them, whether Joe Flood’s “I’m In a Hole,” “Come to Me as a Bird” by Julie Gold, Carrie Underwood’s “Last Name,” or “True to Yourself” by Karen Benedetto. He’s aided as always by the spectacular Clare Cooper at the piano as well as Steve Marks on bass, Bernice “Boom-Boom” Brooks on percussion, and Allison Mickelson and Alex Bertrand-Price on background vocals. And the show isn’t without its angst-ridden moments; he recounts making headlines as a stabbing victim in Hell’s Kitchen in 1994. But the show as a whole is a true celebration of the glorious person that is Kevin Scott Hall, and indeed should be witnessed by all who can attend the 6 PM show. He also somehow found the time to grant us an interview in the midst of his busy schedule:

ANDREW MARTIN: We can all assume that when you were growing up in Maine that a career in performance was a focus of yours. But was cabaret something you always wanted to do? What drew you to it?

KEVIN SCOTT HALL: That was actually not true, at first. I was so shy and, frankly, bullied, that I was afraid to get involved in anything at school. I was just biding my time. I was a writer first. However, I did like listening to 45 rpm records and American Top Forty with Casey Kasem every week. And my father played–and still plays–piano, so he gave us an education in standards. There were a lot of parties around that piano, so it was like growing up with a piano bar in the house. I didn’t really have theater aspirations until I was in college and decided to try out for a play, Charley’s Aunt, and got the small but comic role of Brassett, the butler. Then I got the bug. Later, after moving to New York, I was drawn to the piano bars. I guess in some ways it reminded me of home. And I stayed there!

AM: Can you describe what it was like when you first got to New York, and why you almost immediately immersed yourself in cabaret?

KSH: Well, I found the whole auditioning thing to be very lonely. You wait around for hours to sing sixteen bars of a song, and there’s all this fake camaraderie in the hallways. But in cabaret, I could do what I wanted to do, and I was allowed to try and fail and try and fail and sometimes succeed! It’s also very personal and intimate, and that’s more my groove.

AM: Why do you choose the songs you do? You seem to have always had a pop/rock-based sensibility as an artist, but what is that based on?

KSH: Yes, growing up in small New England towns, I did not listen to theater recordings. I had to really catch up on that when I got to New York. My father played standards and I knew some, but I had no idea where they came from. I grew up on radio and, you know, back in the ’70s what was great about radio was that you could have a pop song, a country song, and an R&B song playing on the same station. You don’t find that anymore and, to me, that’s not progress. I still listen to what the kids are listening to, though. There are a few great songs being written and we as cabaret artists can bring them out.

AM: What drew you to start working with Clare Cooper as a musical director?

KSH: Well, when I started working in piano bars–Rose’s Turn, specifically–in 1995, I got stuck with the deadly Saturday happy hour, and there was Clare! She also had a pop-rock sensibility, so we came up with the Rock and Soul Happy Hour. We had a small but very loyal following, and we kept that going for nine years. When you work so closely with someone for that long, it becomes almost like a marriage (I think, I’ve never been married!). We still miss Rose’s Turn. There was no place like it and I’m afraid there never will be again.

AM: Getting stabbed in the chest would clearly be a traumatic experience for anyone. What (excuse the pun) sticks out most in your mind about the experience? And was it simply natural to work that into your cabaret act(s)?

KSH: That was clearly a watershed moment in my life. I was actually on my way home from a piano bar (Eighty Eight’s) when that happened. The psychic wounds of that lasted far longer than the physical ones. I was very angry that here I was, striving to create music from the heart and then I give someone my trust for a moment on the street and he stabs me in the heart. The metaphor of that shook my faith to the core. I was a very angry man for a few years. Anyway, that kind of experience takes you to extreme emotions and I think it lends itself to the act. Don’t try to run and hide from those experiences. Embrace them. Let others learn from them.

AM: How did you make the transition from cabaret artist to teacher? Conversely, how did you make the transition to lecturer on a college level?

KSH: I did a show in the mid-90s and hired a well-known director, and I didn’t feel this person really was able to pull the soul from me. And I was being charged a lot of money. Basically, I thought, I can do this better. And it was a natural fit. I think because I have been through traumatic experiences, I am able to get to the heart of the matter and cut through the BS. I think I have a gentle persistence that can bring honesty out in people. At forty, I decided I’d had enough of the music career. I’d worked at it so long and it was going nowhere. So I went back to school to get my MFA in creative writing (yet another practical choice!). As part of the process, we were given an opportunity to intern as instructors. I was so scared. I’m all about diversity, which is what CUNY is, but I thought, “What are these mostly Black and Hispanic and Asian and Arabic students going to think of this middle-aged White guy?” Well, I discovered that I had changed a lot since being a bullied teenager. I am very real with the kids, and I really use my sense of humor with them. I’m not afraid, I’ll tackle any topic with them. I surely learn more from them than they learn from me.

AM: Where did the inspiration for Off The Charts! come from?

KSH: Off the Charts! is a satiric novel, about the music business, funny but very dark. It was my way of coming to terms with how awful that business can be. But I put it in the dance music world rather than my cabaret world. The business is all about marketing and image and, for my character Sally Testata, trying to keep her sexy even though she’s in her forties. I get angry about what I see in the music business, with some music videos and such. It was hard for me, but it’s very hard on women.

AM: What do you like most about the recording process? What do you like least? Do you think you might do another recording anytime soon?

KSH: I LOVE recording. It’s much more in my comfort zone than live performing, which is all-consuming and still makes me very nervous. Going into a recording booth is very private and intimate and you get to try things several times (although my most successful recorded songs, they tell me, happened to have been done in one or two takes). I have a hundred ideas for recordings and if I could just record without performing live, I would!

AM: Complete this sentence: “In ten years I, Kevin Scott Hall, will be…”

KSH: In ten years I, Kevin Scott Hall, will be teaching a few classes, living on a lake and writing during the summer, and have perhaps a couple more books and recordings under my belt.

It’s safe to say that we all want to take a swim in that lake. The cabaret community wishes Kevin Scott Hall a very happy second half-century, and offers a plea for him to continue delighting all of us as an artist in any and all media.

Toto? Now I KNOW We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, both legitimate versions for children’s theater/school plays and humorous adult parodies, have been a staple of American theater for decades. A notable example of same was A Yellow Brick Road Runs Through It at the Grove Street Playhouse in the mid-90s, starring Paul Lucas and the late Julie Kurnitz, directed by Joseph Weiss with musical direction by Joel Maisano. Enter the Haberdasher Theatre Company, an ambitious and merry band of Off-Off-Broadway entertainers, who have now brought their own adaptation of the play to the Drilling Company Theater, 236 West 78th Street, and the result is a nonstop chucklefest which simply must return to the New York stage after it closes on June 30th.

This version was initially adapted by Jeanette Jaquish for children’s theater before playwright/director Hollie Elizabeth Klem adapted it further for an adult audience, and the result couldn’t be more sensational. This time around, Auntie Em is a tough cookie from Queens who had to sell the house and move to a farm with orphaned niece Dorothy and her dog Toto. After the dog has been threatened to be destroyed by evil neighbor Almira Gully, the child decides to run away to New York City, pup in tow. It’s only after a chance meeting with slimy vacuum salesman Professor Osland that he convinces her to return home, at which point, of course, she and the house are subsequently swept up in the tornado that brings her to Oz. As expected, the house smashes the Wicked Witch of the East; what’s not expected is that instead of Munchkinland, Dorothy is informed by Glinda that she’s landed in NoHo Village. The story continues much in the same way as the beloved story, but with a few delectable twists; we learn of the deep sibling rivalry between the two wicked witches, Glinda carries a long pink shotgun rather than a magic wand, the band of Flying Monkeys are a ghetto crew, and the greeters at the gate of Oz Castle could be a hairdresser’s convention in the Castro. It all combines to an uproarious two hours that speaks volumes of the Haberdasher Theatre Company’s potential, especially under Klem’s directorial helm.

Performance-wise, there’s not a weak one to be had. An obvious measure of any parody of The Wizard of Oz are strong performances, and they are here in abundance. Tami Soligan is perfection as Dorothy, vulnerable and lost in wonder but possessing an inherent bravery. Jeff Foley as the Scarecrow is so adorable you just want to put him in your pocket and take him home, and Brian Ogston makes the wise choice of playing the Tinman with a bit of an edge even sharper than his axe. One wouldn’t think that casting a woman as the Lion would be prudent, but Nicole J. Lippey gives it her all and comes up swinging at every turn.  Matt Giroveanu absolutely sparkles in the dual roles of Professor Osland and the Wizard, and likewise Christen Madrazo as both Auntie Em and Glinda. And the four members of the ensemble each have a chance for more than one standout moment; they are Melody Cheng, Joseph Dale Harris, Jennifer Michaels (who is particularly delicious as both the mean Apple Tree and the Gatekeeper besides the Wicked Witch of the East) and Nick Panagakos. But the standout performance of the evening is the talented (and blindingly beautiful) Taylor Zito as both Almira Gully and the Wicked Witch of the West; this gal is electric in the role right up until her final exit after melting (with a hilarious action that has to be seen to be believed). Overall, this cast is simply breathtaking.

The technical side of this production is equally top-shelf. Although it would be nice if the show had a higher budget for sets, designer Link Salas has created a beautiful forest. Michael A. Megliola’s lighting is absolutely divine as is the prop design by Keri Taylor, and Adam Weir on sound design and stage management proves impeccable in both capacities. As for the costume and makeup design of Katie Grammes, the only appropriate adjective would be ‘outstanding.’ And Quincy Ellis provides admirable fight choreography.

In an ideal world, Haberdasher’s production of The Wizard of Oz would at the very least make a permanent move to a higher-profile house that would enable them to achieve the following they so deeply deserve. Alas, this is not to be. If perhaps there’s a wizard out there who can grant them that wish, the Off-Off-Broadway community would emerge as undoubtedly richer.

Sack o’LOVE?? Sack o’BRILLIANT TALENT!!!

When one thinks of the great celebrity impersonators of the last sixty years, many names spring to mind. As far as the males, there’s of course Rich Little, David Frye, Fred Travalena, Charlie Callas, George Kirby, Jim Meskiman, and more. Among the women, there’s Marilyn Michaels, Louise DuArt, Christine Pedi, Klea Blackhurst, Suzanne Blakeslee, Tracey Berg, Chloe Webb, Jane Horrocks, Hynden Walch and so many others. And as far as those who cross over from male-to-female impressions, there’s Craig Russell, Charles Pierce, Tommy Femia, Brian Murphy, Steven Brinberg, Jim Bailey, Kenny Sacha, Jamie Beaman, Rick Skye and a plethora too numerous to list. Not to mention the triumph Rainie Cole scored with Always Patsy Cline, Rita McKenzie’s Call Me Ethel, Totie starring Nancy Timpanaro, Julie Sheppard as Judy Garland and the entire catalogs of Michele LaFong, Alison Briner or Angela LaGreca. But a new and extremely-stellar talent has joined their legendary ranks, and if her first full-length cabaret act I Hear Voices, which will play its final show (for now) at the Duplex (61 Christopher Street) on Tuesday the 12th at 7 PM is any indication, the genre has a brand-new and rightfully-deserving star on its hands. Her name is Carly Sakolove, and to call her a genius simply doesn’t sum up what this lady has got to give. If this were 1962, she’d be a superstar beyond words. But she must become one regardless; she’s THAT good.

Directed by the ever-excellent Bill Russell (a Tony nominee for his work on Side Show, and previously-renowned for his collaboration with Frank Kelly on the Off-Broadway mega-hit Pageant), the evening is basically a therapy session spent between Sakolove and her therapist explaining that she doesn’t merely HEAR voices, but that then they speak through her. The voices in question, however, happen to be those of the greatest divas of our time from Broadway and beyond, including Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Elaine Stritch, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Barbra Streisand, Carol Channing, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and Julie Andrews. Now, to those who either do impressions or are a fan of impressionists, some of them may seem indeed slightly run-of-the-mill. Sakolove, however, has more than a few tricks up her sleeve; she also provides faultless sound-a-likes, either spoken or sung, by Idina Menzel, Dame Judi Dench, Jennifer Coolidge, Susan Sarandon, Heather Hedley, Alice Ripley and Jane Lynch. As if none of THAT was enough, as evidenced when she released her Some People and Send in the Clowns clips within the last season to viral effect on YouTube, it became clear that she can record her brilliant pastiches in one take without a breath from voice to voice, a feat never accomplished by a similar artist. Hence, this is a young lady very possibly headed for extreme greatness within the genre. One is left to wonder what she might next add to her act: Betty Buckley? Barbara Cook? Madeline Kahn? Angela Lansbury? Audra McDonald? Whatever they may be, Sakolove has established herself once and for all as a true wonder of the nightlife universe with her otherwordly talents.

In addition, one must make mention of the splendiferous accompaniment of musical director Dan Micciche. His prowess on the keys is only matched by his phenomenal abilities to display the lady perfectly, and keep up with her numerous personas as they unfold throughout the evening.

Needless to say, I Hear Voices, and of course Carly Sakolove, stand to emerge as one of the greatest finds in the last several decades of cabaret and beyond. For those wishing to catch her final show at the Duplex this Tuesday before she is most certainly whisked away to greater stardom, do not hesitate to call 212-255-5438. In all truth, this is neither a cabaret act nor a concert. It is as much a happening event as seeing Midler herself at the Baths in ’71. Seats are goin’ fast, folks!

(UPDATE: Due to popular demand, Sakolove has extended her show for two additional nights at the Duplex, Thursday, June 21st at 9:30 PM, and Friday, June 29th at 7 PM)

Hello, Mali!!!

The dual phenomena of “spoken-word” and “slam poetry” have infiltrated modern culture like a requisite epidemic. Harkening back splendidly to the days of beatnik nightlife, when throngs would gather in darkened coffeehouses to hear poetry delivered by the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and applaud with finger-snapping, the art form has received a miraculous re-awakening ever since Thaddeus Rutkowski began reviving it at such venues as Jackie 60 in the early 1990s, whenceupon it was taken up by all manner of poets both amateur and professional who began plying their cornucopia of wares throughout New York and the globe. One of the most stellar of the slam poets to emerge in the last ten years is most certainly a gentleman by the unusual name of Taylor Mali. A New York City WASP by birth and a schoolteacher by profession, the last calendar year has seen him emerge as viral on YouTube and other Internet broadcast media because of his poem “What Teachers Make,” which has garnered nearly four million hits on one website alone. The one-man show Teacher! Teacher! would soon follow thereafter, and win a major comedy prize. A follow-up, entitled “The The Impotence of Proofreading,” has been equally successful. Since that time, he has published several books, created the New Teacher Project (later renamed Quest for 1,000 Teachers), recorded a number of CDs and also loaned his voice to narrating various projects, and for a time became the president of Poetry Slam, Inc. Though fame and tireless work have taken him throughout the world as both educator and performer, he mercifully found the time to grant an interview to The Andrew Martin Report. And we couldn’t feel more honored or privileged to have been so thusly indulged.

ANDREW MARTIN: Can you describe your upbringing as a New York City WASP? You seem to have a long lineage that goes back several centuries. Conversely, what was your own school experience like as a student? Where did you attend from K-12, and where did you go to college? Even more conversely, was there any one teacher in particular who inspired you to become a teacher and later an advocate for education?

TAYLOR MALI: My WASP upbringing was pretty standard stuff, really. We named our houses, named our cars, and ONLY named our dogs after local bodies of water. Everyone had a trust fund and was told never to talk about it with anyone. I attended The Collegiate School, established by the Dutch in 1628, just about 30 years before my earliest ancestor was born on the island. Another branch of the family that would one day combine to produce me had already been living in the country for almost one hundred years, having landed in Salem sometime in the 1500s. I went to Bowdoin College in Maine. Then Oxford University for a summer of drama school. Then eventually Kansas State University for an MA in English Lit/Creative Writing. It was there that I discovered my passion for teaching. So there was no single teacher that did it. Rather, the love was born of exigency.

AM: How long had you been teaching before you decided to immerse yourself in the spoken-word art form? Did the two automatically go hand in hand?

TM: The spoken word came first by about three years. I performed a poem at Oxford as part of a talent show among the actors, and it went over REALLY well. That was summer 1987, and I credit that with being my first spoken word piece. Three years later, at a poetry reading in San Francisco, I performed another piece (that would go on to become the poem “I Could Be a Poet”), and it solidified my understanding that performing a poem well was just as important as writing it well. That fall I left for Kansas, unaware that the first National Poetry Slam was coming to the SF Bay Area. Had I stayed in the Bay Area, I probably would have discovered the poetry slam a few years earlier than I did, but the craft I learned at KSU might have taken we much longer to develop. But to answer your question more directly, teaching and poetry go hand in hand because they are both about instruction and delight.

AM: Was it ever difficult, or even surreal, to have to balance being a teacher on one hand with being a spoken-word artist on the other?

TM: No, never. I treated one as a kind of performance, and the other as a kind of lesson.

AM Was “What Teachers Make” actually inspired by a real event? If not, what inspired it? Likewise “Proofreading.”

TM: There really was an incident with a lawyer at a New Year’s Eve Party (in 1997) that was the triggering subject of “What Teachers Make.” I’m sure he didn’t phrase his question that way (“Be honest, what do you make?”); that was me using poetic license. But more importantly, even if the lawyer HAD asked the question that way, I am not witty or brave enough to have been able to answer his question in any form similar to what became the poem “What Teachers Make.” The poem is totally what I WISH I had said. “Proofreading” came from repeated attempts by my computer to correct the spelling of my name; I tell people that my spell checker suggested Taylor Mali might have been a botched attempt on my part to spell “Toilet Malice,” but I think I made that up.

AM: Was it ever surprising when “Teachers” began to go so viral so quickly?

TM: Yes. Every bit of attention that my work has received has been surprising to me.

AM: What is the New Teacher Project exactly, and what has it accomplished?

TM: I’ve had to change the name of the project because there already is a great non-profit called “The New Teacher Project,” founded by Michelle Rhee in 1997. Their executive director called me to say their lawyers recommended sending me a cease & desist letter, but she said no way because they are all fans of mine! Anyway, my Quest for 1,000 Teachers was a goal I gave myself in 2000, which started quite informally: I would help convince a thousand people to become teachers through the way I talk about the profession. Gradually, I got more serious about how I kept track of the teachers on my list, and then I promised to cut off twelve inches of my hair when I reached my goal. Everything came together for the publication of  my book “What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World,” and early in April I approved that thousandth teacher and cut my hair live onstage.

AM: Did you particularly enjoy the process of writing your books? Was there anything you disliked about the process? I ask the same question about the CDs you’ve recorded.

TM: Only the writing of “What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World” felt like writing a book because it’s the only one where I really had to hit the chair every day and turn out pages whether I wanted to or not. My two other books and all of my CDs are collections of poetry, and so were produced/compiled more episodically.

AM: Tell us about Poetry Slam Inc. and your experience of being their president.

TM: I was the first president after Marc Smith, the founder of the poetry slam and PSI’s “president for life.” You could argue that I was the perfect person to succeed Marc, but my tenure was marked by what is considered the WORST National Poetry Slam ever! That was a bad year for me, 2004; my wife died, and I’d just rather forget it all.

AM: We all know that Teacher! Teacher! won a solo prize at the Comedy Arts Festival in ’01. Are there any plans to bring it back?

TM: There should be, shouldn’t there? No. But it’s high time I wrote another solo show.

AM: You’ve also won at least one award for narrating The Great Fire. How does providing voice work for those projects you’ve not personally created differ from work on those you have?

TM: It’s so much easier to just swoop in and be The Voice. But it’s harder in that you have to internalize the syntactical rhythms of the author and make them your own. I like reading aloud (especially to a beautiful woman, curled up on my chest, smiling).

AM: Where do you see yourself five years from now, and what frontiers would you still like to conquer?

TM: I’ll still be doing what I’m doing, traversing the globe teaching poetry. But I’ll be better at it, and I might be based somewhere else. I’d like to teach online poetry classes using some sort of video Skype PAID conference call type service that probably already exists.

Wherever life may take him next, Taylor Mali is sure to go down in performance history as a force of nature made of lightning. Anyone unfamiliar must acquaint themselves with his work. After all, those who can, do. Those who can’t, well…

Oh, Kaye!!!

If the MAC Awards have become known as the Tonys of cabaret, the Bistro Awards have certainly become its equally-glittering counterpart. Launched in 1985 by the late and legendary cabaret journalist Bob Harrington in his “Bistro Bits” column in Back Stage, then under the editorship of Sherry Eaker, it was initially just a list of winners before evolving into a live awards ceremony in 1990 at the now-defunct Eighty Eight’s. Recipients have included Dionne Warwick, Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert, Dixie Carter, Cleo Laine, Eartha Kitt, Mario Cantone, Joy Behar, the team of Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, and far too many more to list in appropriate completion. This year’s ceremony, which takes place on the evening on Monday, April 23rd at 6:30 PM at Gotham Comedy Club (208 West 23rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues), features an equally-impressive roster of cabaretfolk and theaterniks; these include Rita Gardner, Billy Stritch, Terese Genecco, Shaynee Rainbolt, Lauren Fox, Billie Roe and Parker Scott among others. The four most prominent awards of the evening, however, are being bestowed by an impressive lineup; for one, jazz legend Annie Ross will present Warren Vache with Ongoing Excellence as a Jazz Instrumentalist. George Faison gives Dee Dee Bridgewater an award for Ongoing Artistry in Jazz. Marvin Hamlisch bestows Outstanding Contribution to American Popular Song to Melissa Manchester. And the Bob Harrington Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented by legendary columnist Liz Smith to Kaye Ballard.

As is well known, Ballard has managed, in a spectacular career than spans nearly seven decades, to conquer Broadway musicals (The Golden Apple, Carnival! and The Pirates of Penzance among others), film (A House is Not a Home, The Ritz, the original Freaky Friday), television (as a co-star with Eve Arden on The Mothers-in-Law), and every manner of concert and nightclub stage ever since her career began as a touring player with Spike Jones in the late 1940s. More recently, she toured cabarets and clubs throughout the nation in the show Doin’ It For Love, along with Liliane Montevecchi and Lee Roy Reams, and she’ll be coming back to New York in June for a one-woman blockbuster evening at Feinstein’s. One may call the lady who began as Caterina Balotta in Cleveland anything they like, but what they must call her first and foremost is a survivor who has seen it all. And The Andrew Martin Report couldn’t be more honored that she found the time to grant us a brief interview from her home in Palm Springs in preparation of the awards next week.

ANDREW MARTIN: What’s the most exciting/gratifying thing about being the recipient of this award?

KAYE BALLARD: Well, just looking at the people who’ve received it before me. Cleo Laine, Eartha Kitt, people that I know/knew and respected. I’m so flattered. I sometimes look back on my life and all of the unexpected things that have happened, and this just happens to be the latest one. Not bad for eighty-six. But I look pretty good, no? (Laughs).

AM: Had you been familiar with the Bistro Awards before now?

KB: Well, I knew Bob Harrington, and I’d heard about it, but I didn’t really know what it was. I knew of the MAC Awards, but not the Bistros. Although they sounded more prestigious. I also want to thank Gretchen Reinhagen for doing her show, because she really kept my name alive in cabaret. But what do awards really mean? I’m just happy to be alive. It would have been nice to win an Emmy or a Tony, but Gracie Allen never won one either. You know, I come from a time when actors couldn’t even get a hotel room, or had to use the back door.

AM: Are you a particular follower of any of your fellow recipients?

KB: Of course! I LOVE Melissa Manchester. And Dee Dee Bridgewater. She’s really wonderful. But I’ve also seen two acts in the last year that I don’t think anyone can touch; one was the Callaway sisters, Liz and Ann Hampton, and the other was Christine Ebersole. So being part of cabaret now, along with such wonderful people, is gratifying beyond words.

AM: What’s your impression of how cabaret has changed/grown/not grown since your first emergence as a star?

KB: It hasn’t grown. It was so much better when I started. There was the Pierre, the Plaza, the Bon Soir, etc. They had an elegance about them, in a strange way. It was an honor to play those places because they had a built-in elegance. I worked with people ranging from Mae Barnes and Pearl Bailey to the Smothers Brothers. Nowadays, there’s too much vulgarity. I’ve worked with people like Bert Lahr and Jimmy Durante and Shecky Greene, who always had total class. I’m so sick of performers who feel compelled to be vulgar. My mentor was Henny Youngman, who never worked blue. I’m very much opposed to working blue. Jack Benny once said, “Funny is funny.” And I agree. As Fred Ebb, who was my writer, once wrote, “Whatever happened to class?”

AM: Tell us about Doin’ It For Love.

KB: It was such a thrill. Lee Roy Reams is the quintessential song and dance man, and Lilliane Montevecchi is so much of something from the past, just an elegant and sophisticated Frenchwoman from another era. So between them and the combination of what I do, it just worked beautifully.

AM: Is there any chance you’ll come back to New York with a solo show any time soon?

KB: Well, as I say, I’m doing Feinstein’s on the 17th of June. I can’t wait!! It’s really what I did in Doin’ It For Love. I’ve always believed that the best of the past is meant to last. It’s all the stuff I used to do, and I also talk some truisms. I think it’s gonna be a good show. David Geist is playing for me, and he’s just sensational. I found him in Santa Fe. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever found to Arthur Siegel, who was my dear heart, as we all know.

AM: We know you had a strong attachment to Arthur Siegel, both as a singer/instrumentalist and a composer. Those of us who attended Arthur’s memorial will never forget your speech or the wonderful duet you performed with Sandy Stewart. Do you have any particular favorite songwriters now for theater and cabaret? How does the new crop differ from yesterday’s greats?

KB: I LOVE Billy Charlap. He is fantastic. And I just love Marc Shaiman. The problem is, I love melody, and there’s not a lot of melody to be had nowadays. Not what I call melody. This is why I loved Arthur so dearly. He worshiped Jerome Kern, so he always came up with a great melody.

AM: How do you feel about the award being presented by Liz Smith?

KB: Oh, she’s one of my closest friends. She was my road manager at one point when I was doing Top Banana. She’s one of the brightest women I’ve ever known, besides being the kindest columnist ever. I’ve never known her to be remotely vicious. It’s an honor to know that she’s presenting the award to me.

AM: What advice can you give to some young women out there who think, “I want to be the next Kaye Ballard?”

KB (laughs): Does anyone really want to be me? I can’t imagine! But seriously, what I would say is to look at what came before you and then look where you’re going. I’ve always looked where I was going. And you should never think anything is old-fashioned. The great ladies of British comedy, like Bea Lillie, Joyce Grenfell, Hermione Baddeley, these are my heroines and the women I wanted to be. I feel the same about Patricia Routledge. My feeling is, I’d rather be Gone With The Wind than Saturday Night Fever, and I would recommend that anyone who wants to follow in my footsteps do the same. Because the truth is, I got a lot more out of it.

It is a grateful worldwide audience that will continue to get as much out of Kaye Ballard as she has to give. This humble reporter will most certainly be there on the 23rd and looking forward to it!

(Note: All who are reading this can purchase tickets for a five-dollar discount!! That’s $55 for each General Admission ticket, or $90 for Premium (includes pre-show champagne reception and priority seating)!! Just click here, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Donate.” Type in how many tickets you want at either $55 or $90, and you can pay with a credit card (PayPal not required; a credit card should do just fine). You can also send them a check if you’d rather; message me privately for the details. And don’t forget, ALL ticketholders are invited to an After Bistros supper buffet and party!! Hope to see you there!!!)