Broadway Babylon (48 page)

“Well, the inspiration for the song was a conversation Rex [Harrison] and I had while walking along Fifth Avenue. We were bemoaning our marital woes … problems with our assorted wives, when Rex suddenly blurted out, ‘Alan, wouldn’t it be marvelous if we were homosexual?’ People turned to look, but I turned the thought into, ‘Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?’ [later retitled “A Hymn to Him”]. Shaw would have loved it; he disdained the idea of any possible romance between Henry Higgins and Eliza, but for Broadway we had to include a romance.”—
My Fair Lady
lyricist A
LAN
J
AY
L
ERNER
, who had eight wives (Harrison had six)

“I have lived, and done it openly for 12 years, with a devoted friend and companion whom I love. I find, however, that most American journalists who have heard of me and wish to write about me try to inquire, quite impertinently, about the nature of the relationship … as if they might find a perceived flaw which would allow them to label me less of an actress.… But
love is love. So enough.”—D
AME
E
DITH
E
VANS
(1888–1976), who lived for sixteen years with a female partner

“The profession of acting does attract many emotionally unattractive people.… More and more, I find.… As I’ve often said, if a woman wants to act like a man, why can’t she act like a
nice
man?”—D
AME
E
DITH
E
VANS

“Pearl Bailey has an ego that won’t quit. She was in
House of Flowers
, and in it she was a madam. Well, fine, that’s her persona anyway. But in this musical, she wanted to be a madam without her girls. She didn’t want any feminine competition in what she saw as her vehicle, which it wasn’t. A potential hit musical, but it closed early.”—J
AMES
K
IRKWOOD
, a creator of
A Chorus Line

“Josephine Baker. We were on Broadway together in 1935. They called her the no-clothes horse. That was in France. On Broadway, brother, she had clothes!”—B
OB
H
OPE

“When we costarred [onstage] in
Becket
, I wanted Larry [Olivier] to be my buddy. But he didn’t want to know. He just wasn’t interested. I tell you, I felt like a schoolboy with a crush on his teacher. I loved and was not loved. I was terribly hurt.”—A
NTHONY
Q
UINN

“Richard [Burton] is so discriminating, he won’t see a play with anybody in it but himself.”—then-wife E
LIZABETH
T
AYLOR

“Laurence Olivier is the most overrated actor on earth. Take away the wives and the looks, and you have John Gielgud.”—O
SCAR
L
EVANT

“Richard Burton could have been another Olivier, but he met Elizabeth Taylor. He went Hollywood after marrying Dame Fortune.”—D
AME
J
UDITH
A
NDERSON
, on Burton’s giving up the stage

“Mary Martin was Broadway’s biggest closet king. Everyone thought Ethel [Merman] was butch and maybe a lesbian, but she wasn’t. And everyone thought that lovely little Mary was Miss Femme, and she was—except next to her gay husband [Richard Halliday]. In other words, don’t judge a star by her cover.”—B
OB
F
OSSE

“I always heard that Noel Coward wrote that song [“Mad About the Boy”] because of his friend Cary Grant.”—D
OUGLAS
F
AIRBANKS
J
R
. in his memoirs, explaining that it wasn’t written about
him

“I was at a benefit rehearsal with Ethel Merman, the queen of Broadway herself. She kept wanting them to add more songs from
Gypsy
, her latest triumph. I dared to suggest another song from
my
show,
West Side Story
, and
she reacted as though I were leading a palace revolution.… There were others present that day, including an actress whom I won’t name, but she’s the only one who really stood up to the Merm, and very effectively too. Ethel backed down immediately when this actress fixed her with her gimlet eye and said, ‘Don’t you dare get manly with me!’ ”—L
ARRY
K
ERT

“Honey, I’m a singer from day one. Carol’s a comedienne. If I have a natural gift for comedy, I can’t take the praise—God gave it to me. But I don’t think too many folks outside Carol’s immediate circle can claim she has a divinely inspired voice.…”—P
EARL
B
AILEY
, comparing her and Carol Channing’s turns in
Hello, Dolly!

“Rod Steiger’s the worst actor that ever lived. The very name makes me throw up. He’s so terrible. He’s one of the world’s worst hams. A real
jambon
!”—T
RUMAN
C
APOTE

“Oscar Hammerstein was a city boy, and lyricists are not infallible. In the song ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ he wrote, ‘The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye,’ unaware that Oklahoma is
not
part of the Midwestern corn belt.”—Midwestern playwright W
ILLIAM
I
NGE

“With the single exception of Homer there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise as entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.”—G
EORGE
B
ERNARD
S
HAW
, critic turned playwright

“I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”—G
EORGE
B
ERNARD
S
HAW

“It is his life’s work to announce the obvious in terms of the scandalous.”—writer H.L. M
ENCKEN
on Shaw

“David Mamet strikes me as a pretentious, macho-er-than-thou Norman Mailer clone, a poseur in the vein of Hemingway, who were he alive today would no doubt be writing plays and screenplays and directing.… I find Mamet’s writing has a closet-y quality.… I don’t like bluster, bravado, or berets on non-Frenchmen’s fat heads.”—New York columnist B
OYD
M
C
D
ONALD

“He really showed great promise. But it wasn’t acting he was as interested in as stardom. Acting was the means.… He wanted it fast; perhaps he had a sense of feeling doomed. He only did what he had to do in the theatre until Hollywood paid attention to him.”—G
ERALDINE
P
AGE
, who
starred in
The Immoralist
on Broadway, in which Dean played a supporting role

“If he’d lived, they’d have discovered he wasn’t a legend.”—H
UMPHREY
B
OGART
, who began onstage, on James Dean

“Young men are the least self-disciplined of actors … the least dedicated to craft. Take a talent like Brando. After he took the easier route of camera acting, not having to show up more often for less money and more memorizing, he never returned to the stage. That was just a stepping stone.… Believe me, Marlon’s sole abiding interest is Marlon.”—writer T
RUMAN
C
APOTE
(Brando once allowed, “An actor’s a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, ain’t listening.”)

“In the theatre, you were more wary of reading reviews. The praise of a Walter Kerr or a Brooks Atkinson meant more and less than a more casual, less influential movie or TV review.… I got so much praise for
The Miracle Worker
that eventually I got sort of numb to it. Until one of my sons, when he was three or four, saw the movie of it and asked, ‘Mom, when did you get over being blind?’ ”—P
ATTY
D
UKE
, who earned an Oscar for the screen version

“There is a writer, Robert Brustein, a critic—assassin—who tried to destroy me. He came close. If ever I were to commit suicide, I’d want him within ten feet of me.”—playwright W
ILLIAM
I
NGE
, whom Brustein attacked in a venomous article that temporarily shattered Inge, who much later took his own life

“So-so on stage,
Dreamgirls
would make a less than so-so movie, but it
will
eventually be filmed, simply because it’s a black showcase, and of course they will hire some gay white male director to do it, and he’ll be so
thrilled
. Too sad.”—author D
AVID
S
HIPMAN

“I was not turned off by Miss Merman’s famous belt nor her hard-as-nails demeanor. I found her voice and personality occasionally refreshing. No, what I found off-putting was her tendency to perform robotically. In any given show, her performance on opening night was the same performance she’d give eight months later. She didn’t vary by a hair. That’s non-human!”—critic W
YATT
C
OOPER
(the same was said of Carol Channing)

“I contend that the most rabid human species is the minority member who’s trying to pass. I refer specifically to Grace Kelly’s gay uncle, George Kelly. The playwright. He hated gays, Jews, most women, blacks, liberals, of
course. He was a royalist, sided with the king against the people in the French Revolution. When his niece became Princess Grace, he almost burst a gut in rapture.… I recall that someone at our table disagreed with George, and George did what was apparently a habit: called the man a liar, then said, ‘You’ve told so many lies, it’s a wonder your face hasn’t turned black!’ … By the time I met him—the once—he hadn’t had a Broadway success in I don’t know how many decades.”—writer J
AMES
L
EO
H
ERLIHY
(
Midnight Cowboy
)

“The worst part of Broadway success has to be the inevitable film version inevitably casting someone else in your role. It can wound egos and create enemies, even ruin friendships.… After Rosalind Russell got the movie of
Gypsy
, Merman busied up and spread innuendo about the sexuality of Roz and her producer husband, whom [Russell] met when he was involved with Cary Grant.”—A
NN
M
ILLER

“Maybe Hollywood is on to something. We were all pleased as punch to get the chance to be in the movie (of
The Boys in the Band
). It was anything but a hit … even so, legions more people see a movie than a play. Among them the movietown movers and shakers. I should’ve said no to doing the movie, instead of being limited by it. Of course if I hadn’t been in it and it had been a hit, it would personally have killed me.”—K
ENNETH
N
ELSON
, star of the original
The Fantasticks

“The wonder is that [Broadway producer] David Merrick’s movies bombed. Because his taste was always on the Hollywood level.”—British director J
ACK
C
LAYTON
, who helmed one of them,
The Great Gatsby

“Way back when, nudity in and of itself was classed along with pornography. It was also often, between two people, a sign of contempt. [Director-producer] Jed Harris had great contempt for his fellow man and he could express it, insultingly and without a word, by appearing semi-nude or jaybird naked in front of someone.… When he received his colleague [playwright] George S. Kaufman completely in the nude, Kaufman, unhappily for Harris, didn’t bolt and didn’t flinch. And when he left, after the long business meeting, Kaufman merely added, ‘By the way, Jed, your fly’s open.’ ”—J
ACK
G
ILFORD
(
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
)

“Beatrice Arthur reprised her Vera Charles characterization in the motion picture of
Mame
that starred Lucille Ball in place of Angela Lansbury.… Bea later said it was one of her all-time lows, professionally and personally. It drove her back to drinking.… I remember when Lucy had Madeline
Kahn fired, and a few of us went over to Bea on the set to ask what she thought about the shenanigans. Bea just rolled her eyes. Then when I asked who
she
thought should be playing Mame, she silently indicated—herself!”—Hollywood columnist L
EE
G
RAHAM

“I hope the publicity isn’t going to be on the order of: he’s playing Liza Minnelli’s first gay husband. Or questions like, Isn’t it daring of you to play an openly gay man? I hope that in theatre, at least, such attitudes are passé.”—Australian H
UGH
J
ACKMAN
(Curly in
Oklahoma!
in London in 1998) in 2003, preparing to play Peter Allen on Broadway in
The Boy from Oz

“It is a mystery why of all of my plays on Broadway, only
Dracula
ran more than a few weeks.… Today, interviewers come out of the woodworks … [but] can you believe that during the entire run of
Dracula
, no one asked me for an interview? Not in New York, where they are blasé. But later, in California, where they are most impressed by New York plays, there was considerable interest. And then even more after the movie became the big sensation of 1931.

“Two years after the war, I was in a rather charming play (
Three Indelicate Ladies
, 1947). In Boston I received excellent reviews, but they criticized the play, said perhaps it needed some rewriting. Instead, before arriving on Broadway, the stupid producer closed up the show!”—B
ELA
L
UGOSI
in 1952

“Helen Hayes was so proud to have a theatre named after her. Eventually it was torn down … but then they named another one after her, and for the first time ever, she made me laugh when she said, ‘Oh, it’s wonderful to be a theatre again!’ ”—theatrical producer R
OBERT
W
HITEHEAD

“Poor old Vincente Minnelli. He was directing too late in life. All he cared about were colors and costumes, not action or performances. David Merrick hired him for his name value … he knew he could run Minnelli like a puppet. Because by then his mind had slowed to a turtle’s gallop.”—J
O
M
IELZINER
, set designer of the 1967 flop
Mata Hari

“The man [David Merrick] thinks his wit is sharper than a hummingbird’s beak. But he’s still, au fond, a lawyer, and the part of him that does resemble a hummingbird’s beak is securely hidden from view.”—director R
OBERT
M
OORE
, former actor who appeared in Merrick’s
Cactus Flower