Broadway Babylon (25 page)

H
E’D HAVE MUCH TO THINK OVER
, and gnaw on. What gnawed at him most, besides the movie noncareer, was the persistence of his reputation as a heartless informer during the McCarthy witch hunts. “Jerry wanted to work in Hollywood,” said revue producer Ben Bagley, “wanted to leap from ballet into the movies, with theatre as a stepping stone.… After he got to Hollywood by doing what he did, most doors remained shut to him. They wanted
established
directors who’d informed, like Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk, and heterosexual theatre people, like Jose Ferrer.

“They didn’t want demanding gay types who were hard to work with and hard to keep within a budget.”

For the rest of his life, Robbins (born Rabinowitz) would often try to
justify his actions, short of a private or public apology. His excuses included everything but naked ambition. He referred often to being Jewish; the inquisitors were mostly right-wing Christians. (The witch hunts commenced soon after Republicans took control of Congress in 1947, even though being a Communist Party member was never illegal in the US.) Robbins stated that his upbringing had instilled in him the fear that Jews could have everything taken away from them at a moment’s notice. Yet he was far from the only Jew in jeopardy; though it ostensibly targeted Marxism, a hugely disproportionate number of the Red-baiting’s victims were Jewish and/or homosexual.

Robbins almost never referred to his greater fear that as a gay man he would be socially and professionally destroyed if he didn’t cooperate with Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee—in any sort of witch hunt, gay men are typically and historically the most vulnerable targets. However, as someone working in ballet and the theater, Robbins would have been much less vulnerable to the blacklists that infested the film and television industries. It was his big-screen goal that prompted him to inform avidly, even if in apparent terror. Whether the brevity of his Tinseltown career made him regret turning tail is generally unknown.

But his blithe arrogance on the topic gained him more enemies and soured many co-workers. Years after his 1953 turn before HUAC, Robbins breezily informed
Gypsy
associate Arthur Laurents, “I suppose I won’t know for years whether I did the right thing.” Laurents, also Jewish but openly gay, answered back, “Oh, I can tell you right now. You were a shit.”

To Laurents’s surprise, Robbins, in
his
surprise over Laurents’s bluntness, began to cry: “Jerry expected the loyalty from me that he himself hadn’t given friends.”

Ironically, by most accounts Robbins hadn’t been a committed Marxist to begin with. Biographer Greg Lawrence characterized his initial involvement as “a flirtation that served his choreographic ambitions.” One motivation was a favorable review of the gifted young ballet choreographer by a leftist female critic. A relatively late bloomer, Robbins switched from modern dance to ballet, also eventually discovering or admitting to himself that he was a more talented “dance director” (as choreographers were often called) than dancer.

J
EROME
R
OBBINS
(1918–1998) had his young but ambitious imagination fired by George Balanchine’s request, prior to the 1936 Broadway opening of
On Your Toes
, to have his billing amended from the usual “Dances by …” to the newfangled “Choreography by …” Use of the Greek word lent new stature and classicism to the men arranging onstage dances. However, the new term was widely ridiculed. Irving Berlin, for one, penned a lyric about
the chaps who’d done taps no longer merely tapping: now, “They’re doing
choreography
!”

Twenty-one years later, Robbins won extra notoriety when his vanity-credit demand, “Entire production conceived, choreographed, and directed by Jerome Robbins,” for
West Side Story
was granted—though he did not conceive the production. The innovative, dance-heavy musical was a career highlight for Robbins, who’d broken through when his ballet
Fancy Free
evolved into the 1944 hit musical
On the Town
, which he choreographed.

Another triumph was
Gypsy
(1959), which boasted the last stage role created by the legendary Ethel Merman, who nonetheless toured for the first time with it. The steamrolling star experienced no problems with Robbins. The friction occurred elsewhere. When Robbins, typically more interested in dance numbers than songs, tried to cut the touching and revealing “Little Lamb,” he was furiously overruled by composer Jule Styne. After lyricist Stephen Sondheim devised the song titled “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” the uncomprehending Robbins demanded, “Everything’s coming up Rose’s
what
?”

“The man knew dance,” said Ben Bagley. “Actors and singing were something apart. He habitually wanted to cut songs in favor of more dancing, whether it suited the show or not.… He did treat dancers badly, but he didn’t really relate to nondancers.”

In 1991 Ron Rifkin explained, “I just finished working on a workshop piece with Jerome Robbins.… He will say to somebody, ‘This is what I want you to do. Put your left hand in this position, put your right hand in that position,’ and the dancer does it. So he would say to me as an actor, ‘I want you to do this.’ And I told him that I couldn’t work that way. No actor can.”

A pre-fame Charles Durning also experienced Robbins’s non-technique with actors. Durning appeared in
Fiddler on the Roof
on the road but not on Broadway because his “character got cut the week before the opening in New York.” Durning was impressed by star Zero Mostel’s versatility. “Jerry would say, ‘It’s not right, Zero.’ And Zero would change it. ‘That’s not right.’ He’d change it. ‘That’s not right.’ And Zero would change it every time and give him something completely different and that fast. Now, I can’t work that way. That’s genius.

“Zero said to me later, ‘He really doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but when he sees it he knows what it is.’ ”

An anonymous
Jerome Robbins’s Broadway
performer was quoted, “Jerry doesn’t approach emotion as an actor, a director, or, necessarily, as a human being. Emotion scares him. He seems to prefer the formality and logic of dance.”

Numerous associates remarked over the years how difficult it was to get close to or know Robbins. Some believed his coolness and tantrums were meant to keep people at bay. But his consistent behavioral extremes suggest a deep sadistic streak. Several
West Side Story
cast members have gone on record
about Robbins’s cruelty toward also-gay male lead Larry Kert (who much later died of AIDS). Robbins habitually needled and ridiculed Kert in front of the company, even calling him “fag”—and Kert took it. John Carradine of
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
(1962) affirmed, “Talent or no, the guy couldn’t rein himself in. He’d let go, explode, indulge in childish and embarrassing excess. It was a big bore.”

Some observers felt that Robbins was furious with life itself. The fact that he often treated gay men the worst of all indicates that he may have punished others for what he most hated in himself. Joe Layton theorized, “He’s always wanted so much to belong, to fit in and succeed.… To a greater degree than most of us have, he’s internalized the homophobia we’re all forced to grow up with.”

Though most dancers and actors were eager to be in a Jerome Robbins production, many dreaded it, and many or most came to dislike or hate the man. One of the most famous stories about how extremely he alienated his associates recalls the time he was [again] berating an assembled cast that saw him edging backwards toward the edge of the stage. Nobody said a word to prevent his falling into the orchestra pit, which he did.

O
N THE OCCASIONALLY MASOCHISTIC SIDE
of the coin, Robbins endured sweet revenge as well as abuse from Zero Mostel after he agreed to take over and doctor—
sans
credit, for director George Abbott—
Forum
, starring Mostel and Jack Gilford, both victims of the McCarthy blacklists. The friends had been wary when Robbins was approached. Zero was asked if he would mind working with Robbins. He gave in, explaining, “We of the Left do not blacklist.” Gilford, whose wife, Madeline Lee, was
named
by Robbins, was inclined to quit the show until she advised, “Why should you blacklist yourself?” (Mostel and Gilford appeared in the 1966 movie version too.)

Mostel also worked with Robbins in
Fiddler on the Roof
(1964), which Robbins officially directed and choreographed. Initially considered “too Jewish” for mainstream appeal,
Fiddler
went on to surpass
My Fair Lady
and
Hello, Dolly!
as Broadway’s longest-running musical, a record it held until
Grease
surpassed it in December 1979. Though Mostel willingly took direction from Robbins, the actor did his best to make his boss’s life hell. The large, boisterous Zero made scenes, referred often to Robbins’s informer status, and openly called him “the Jewish fag,” which Robbins for the most part tolerated. Cast member Leonard Frey said, “Maybe he felt he had it coming … or even deserved it.… After the fiasco of his
West Side Story
dismissal, Jerry must have sensed that being gay would permanently hold his career back. Only, instead of that activating him against prejudice, he just became sort of a gay passivist.”

Choreographer-turned-movie-director Herbert Ross, who’d married a ballerina for cover, offered, “The dislike many individuals feel for Mr. Robbins
isn’t necessarily from politics. Not everyone gave a damn about that.… He stayed [contractually] single, and after years in the spotlight his sexuality became known.… A lot of individuals have no use for him personally,” for instance the homophobic Richard Rodgers. (Robbins choreographed Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
The King and I
, 1951.)

When Robbins wasn’t hired to choreograph, never mind direct, the highly anticipated film of
Fiddler on the Roof
, theater denizens deemed it a mixture of homophobia and political payback as well as natural reaction to Robbins’s abrasiveness and blithe disregard for cinematic schedules and budgets. “Jerry went into [the movie of]
West Side Story
strong,” said Joe Layton, who also didn’t succeed at a Hollywood career, but was far easier to work with than his colleague. “He got them to make him co-director with Robert Wise, who soon after did
The Sound of Music
.

“But then there were clashes. There was hand-wringing. When studio executives saw the rushes, the sight of youths in tight trousers doing ballet steps on the streets of New York terrified them. It was a whole lotta dance, and it was about Hispanics, with an unknown male lead [Richard Beymer] … a big gamble. No one knew it would be a hit and win two Oscars for Jerry, who got fired rather early on but still shared credit with Wise, who easily directed most of it.”

Even though
West Side Story
also took the Best Picture Academy Award, the episode dampened Robbins’s hopes for future screen projects—he would never get another. Gay VIPs shunned him too. One who “avoided him professionally and socially was Herb Ross,” said Layton. “You know, after his wife died he wound up marrying Jackie Onassis’s kid sister, and at the wedding Jackie was heard to ask another guest if the groom was gay.” The closet cases who eschewed Robbins’s services and company did so for varied motives of camouflage, jealousy, politics, or self-hate.

In any case, Robbins was more comfortable, he told friends, in the less-oppressive worlds of ballet and theater, where he was less shunned and judged (except politically) and could dictate, even tyrannize, with less resistance or repercussions. Gwen Verdon once observed, “Dancers will take abuse more readily than any other group of performers except trained dogs.” Isobel [sic] Lennart, who wrote
Funny Girl’s
book, observed, “Dance used to be far more identified with homosexual men. On Broadway, male dancing could be art. In Hollywood, [it was] a necessary evil, something to be disguised. Jerry should never have left New York at all.”

R
OBBINS WAS THE ORIGINAL DIRECTOR
for the Barbra Streisand stage vehicle
Funny Girl
(1964), but departed after a dispute. He was briefly succeeded by Bob Fosse, then Garson Kanin, who left after Robbins was lured back (the eventual credits read “Directed by” Kanin and “Supervised by” Robbins). As
with Merman, Robbins was awed by his leading lady, whom he didn’t attempt to bully. Unlike Merman, Streisand, then in the beginnings of her career, was somewhat “scared” of Robbins, or at least his reputation.

“It’s funny, because Jerry’s intimidated by strong personalities and anyone who stands up to him,” said Ben Bagley, who shared a lover with Robbins (not concurrently). “Like most bullies, he’s also a coward.” Stars like Merman and Streisand could appreciate a director who also choreographed their movements and showcased their strengths. “Divas love him, humans hate him. The age of stage divas is past, but Jerry continues a dance diva himself.”

The controversial Robbins was a frequent magnet for criticism of director-choreographers. Broadway’s leading dance star, Gwen Verdon—
Damn Yankees
co-star Ray Walston called her “a nice diva”—defended Robbins: “The choreographers were a lot more interested in the book scenes than the book directors were in the numbers. When the orchestra started up, George Abbott used to go out and play golf. Yet the directors were happy to take all the credit.

“Even today, people don’t realize what a choreographer does. In
Phantom
in the scene with the four opera singers, there’s no dancing at all. But it’s still staged by [choreographer] Gillian Lynne, not Hal Prince. That’s why, in the ’50s, Bob [Fosse], Jerry Robbins, and Michael Kidd figured that, as they were doing so much of it anyway, why not do it all?”

As for Robbins, Verdon allowed, “You wouldn’t, perhaps, want to spend time in his home, but you did know that time spent together professionally would, after all was said and done, yield something special and be a growth experience.” Verdon, who trained under gay dance tyrant and virtuoso Jack Cole, was a believer that that which doesn’t kill you makes you strong.