Broadway Tails (14 page)

We met the shelter manager who introduced us to Flicka, which is Swedish for “little girl.” Flicka had been owned by an older lady who could no longer take care of her. She was about Bugsy’s size but had more black on her, with a splash of white on her chest. She was friendly and outgoing. The shelter was very helpful, and we drove back with our new understudy. It’s always a great feeling when you can save an animal, and I was glad Dorothy got the chance to experience it with me.

The dogs got along fine. Once Bugsy got used to the pattern, we started laying on the distractions, other people, more noise, and getting her used to the backstage area. At the end of that first week, I started showing Dorothy how to take care of Bugsy and how to run the cue. That transition proved to be bumpy because Bugsy had been working with me for almost two years, and now I was pretty much turning her over to a perfect stranger. But Dorothy persisted. She had a gentle way with Bugsy. The two of them had sleepovers, and by the middle of the last week, we were able to show the director the behavior. Bugsy would run onstage, grab the shoe, bring it to the prince, and then run off. Sometimes she would miss it and go to the prince and then go back and get it. Sometimes she would get the shoe and drop it two feet away from the prince. But the overall effect of a dog coming out of nowhere, doing something, and leaving is exactly what the director wanted. Dorothy had done an amazing job learning my methods, as well as taking care of the birds.

At that point the show closed in Boston and the cast went back to New York. I took the dogs back to Connecticut, repacked, and moved again, staying with Sarah Jessica Parker’s family while we rehearsed for
Annie War-bucks
. Dorothy was staying with Wendy at her apartment, along with the
two birds and the two small dogs. I remember helping Dorothy move the birds, cages, and dogs into the dressing room. We had had an intensive two weeks together and got along great.

By now, I realized that Dorothy was doing all of this mostly to help out her friend. In a way, we were alike. I had agreed to help people I knew and had worked with by training a dog. Dorothy and I had not studied animal training, but just used our natural love for animals. Even though she was not acting in it, it was Dorothy’s first show on Broadway. I was glad I could share in that moment as well. Dorothy was so warm, sweet, loving, and hardworking that I was amazed guys weren’t all over her.

The producers had Bugsy go on for the first two previews, and then exercised their option to cut the dog from the show and go ahead without
me. The show opened four days later, and while it got some good reviews and a number of Tony Award nominations, it couldn’t find an audience. It was a brilliant play that was brilliantly acted, but unfortunately, it couldn’t run and the show closed. I thanked Dorothy for all of her hard work, both with Bugsy and with the birds, and we promised to remain friends and stay in contact. We had connected through the animals, and I discovered my intuition was right—she was a wonderful person, with no ulterior motives.

Later that year I was working on
Nick & Nora
, as well as other productions of
Annie
and
Annie Warbucks
. Dorothy would always find time to write. She was very good about staying in touch. She would come up to my house and visit Bugsy. I really liked her but didn’t want to seem like I was leading her on in any way because I was dating someone else at the time. About four months after
La Bête
closed, I decided Flicka would be better off with a family. She was too excitable for show business. Dorothy mentioned her brother and sister-in-law were looking for a dog. She arranged for me to meet Jim and Ginger, who were living in a nice house in the country. They really took to Flicka and she took to them. They renamed her Mandy, and she lived with them for another fifteen years.

I again felt amazed that Dorothy had gone out of her way to help me and the little dog she helped rescue. She had a heart full of love. While I was out on the road with
Annie Warbucks
, I broke up with my girlfriend. I happened to be speaking to Dorothy one day and jokingly said, “Hey, I’m single again. If you find yourself out in Chicago in the next month, look me up.” Imagine my surprise when she called the next weekend and said her cousin was a travel agent and had some travel vouchers. Dorothy could come to Chicago if the offer still stood. I remember thinking, This is too good to be true. I said I would love to see her.

Dorothy flew out and we had dinner before she saw the show. Afterward we walked and I really wanted to kiss her—but I respected her as a person and friend and didn’t want to blow that, so I took it slow. I was like
a nervous teenager when I grabbed her hand as we walked. And she didn’t take it away. She would often come out to visit me on the road, and we officially began dating.

When
Annie Warbucks
opened off-Broadway, I got her a job as the child supervisor so we could spend more time with each other. It felt good to be working together again. Soon after that, I asked her to move in with me in Connecticut. Sometime during 1994, while we were living together, she asked what I thought was a silly question. “If you could have any animal, what animal would you like?” We were having dinner at a restaurant and I said I thought llamas were funny. For my birthday that year she gave me a card with a gift certificate in it for two llamas. I was just blown away. We had been together for a while. She knew me and
my imperfections. She knew that living with me meant living with dogs, cats, and all sorts of animals. Yet here she was, adding to this menagerie with a pair of unusual animals.

The gesture touched me so deeply that I asked her to marry me that Christmas Eve. We were married the next summer with the llamas in attendance. We have been working and living and taking care of animals together ever since.

Nick & Nora
is remembered as one of the biggest flops in Broadway history. I remember it with fond memories of one smart little dog.

Back in 1987, two young producers contacted me about a new musical based on the
Thin Man
movies, those great old films that featured socialite detectives Nick and Nora Charles and their dog, Asta. They wanted Asta to be onstage throughout the play, just as he had been in the movies. The idea of an animal performing through an entire show was unprecedented—remember, until
Annie
, no one believed a dog could be depended on to play a character in a live production. I loved it. We began laying the groundwork for making that sort of performance possible. I got a call from the author, Arthur Laurents. We spoke, and he liked my input. The producers were very grateful and said they’d get back to me when the production was on its feet.

Four years later I saw an article in the
New York Post
about auditions for the role of Asta. It seems that there were new producers and new stars, Joanna Gleason and Barry Bostwick. Arthur Laurents was now directing as well. The music was by my old
Annie
colleague, Charles Strouse. It was going to be a major production. I called the producer’s office and told them what my involvement had been. I was told another trainer had been hired, but I left my number just in case.

Months went by, and I kept reading about bad luck surrounding
Nick & Nora
—illness, money problems, creative differences—but nothing about the dog. In April 1991, I was in Tucson doing a production of
Annie
when I received a call from the producers. Things hadn’t worked out with the other trainer. I explained that, based on my original discussions about the script, I would need a few months to train the dog. It would be close—rehearsals were to begin in August. My search began immediately. Wirehaired fox terriers, which are sometimes called “Asta” dogs, are small, white dogs with curly hair and very expressive faces. They were bred to be fast enough to chase foxes and intelligent enough to outsmart them. Past experiences with terriers made me worry about that last trait. Terriers in general are hard to train because of their independent nature, but there are certain breeds of terriers that are so independent, they are impossible to train for this type of work. I was afraid wirehaired terriers fell into this category.

Another challenge was that I needed a purebred dog, and they usually don’t end up in shelters. I called some breeders in Arizona, looking for a rescue dog, and was put in touch with the Abandoned Terrier Rescue Association. It is a fox and Airedale terrier rescue kennel, run by Ruth Millington in Los Angeles County. I drove from Tucson to Ruth’s ranch. There were terriers everywhere! It sounded like a battle zone when all those dogs started barking—I owned ten dogs at the time, and even I was taken aback.

We met a few dogs who were nice to strangers, then one little guy snuck through Ruth’s legs, jumped up on the couch, and began sniffing my hair. His name was Riley. Riley had been a stray wandering the streets of Los Angeles, and his owner never claimed him at animal control, so Ruth went and got him. She named him Riley for being so lucky and now living “the life of Riley.” He escaped almost all her barriers and did whatever he wanted. It frustrated and amused her that this dog always, well … outfoxed her. There was something about his all-out determination that made me laugh, too. After he finished sniffing my hair, he got down and wagged
his tail and barked at me as if to say, “What took you so long to find me? Let’s go!” He was pushy, but he had that certain something. I decided to take him and, if I had to, use him as an understudy.

I returned the next day to pick him up. From the minute we left the ranch, Riley started teaching me about fox terriers. Fortunately, I had purchased a carrier to transport him, just in case there were problems. He spent the first five minutes running around the van, literally bouncing off the walls. When I tried to hold him on my lap, he growled. I decided to put him in the carrier for safety. He didn’t like the confinement of the van, and he liked the crate even less. He barked and growled the entire ten-hour drive back to Tucson. I thought he was upset about leaving the ranch, but I finally decided he was just plain angry he wasn’t driving.

We made it back to Tucson just in time for the evening performance of
Annie
. I took the two Sandy dogs and left Riley with a friend. I thought he’d be tired from the ride. When I got home, Riley was running around the apartment, there was garbage everywhere, and my friend was locked in the bedroom. Riley spent his first night in the crate, barking. This dog was going to make Broadway history?

I had to make him accept that I was the alpha dog. He’d stare at me with piercing eyes and I’d stare back. In dog language, staring is a very threatening gesture, and it’s usually only seconds before the weaker dog looks away. Riley would hold my gaze for a long time, and then his back leg would begin to shake, he’d growl, and, finally, he’d look away. I knew if I could harness that concentration for good instead of evil, he would be a great dog. When he finally accepted me as the alpha, he became one of the most attentive and smartest little dogs I had ever trained. But the first thing I had to do was make him understand that he had to do what
I
wanted before he got what
he
wanted.

The
Annie
production ended. The trip home took five days—the longest five days of my life. I called my answering machine from a phone booth in Oklahoma and got the message that the producers of
Nick & Nora
had found a less-expensive trainer—someone with a Hollywood reputation. I
could hear Riley barking from the van, and each bark shot through my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. After all the time, energy, and money I had invested in this project, I was excused without so much as a thank-you. I was furious. This time when I told Riley to be quiet, he listened. He must have heard the angst in my voice—he was not going to mess with me. I thought about placing him in a home, but I couldn’t imagine anyone capable of handling him. Even though I had lost lots of sleep, I enjoyed the challenge Riley presented. I felt I owed him the chance to live with me like all the others after their shows closed. Talk about the life of Riley! He hadn’t even worked and he was retiring.

I began the process of training him to make him a better pet, and I decided to use his intelligence against him. I was going to make him believe that obeying me was his idea. I had other dogs do behaviors in front of him—then they’d get rewarded and he’d get nothing. It didn’t take him long to figure out what he had to do to beat the other dogs out of the treat. The more he obeyed, the more attention he got from me. From then on we were able to work things out.

By August 1991 preliminary rehearsals had begun for
Nick & Nora
, and their latest dog tried to bite Barry Bostwick. They were only eight weeks away from the first performance. Arthur Laurents gave the producers an ultimatum: get a dog that works or else. The producers came back to me. This time, I told them I would do it, but I raised my fee substantially. When they accepted, I realized I had proven to the Broadway community that I was the go-to guy for animals. Even a big Hollywood trainer couldn’t do what I was able to achieve.

Arthur and I went through the script together. When we got to the last scenes, Arthur said he wanted Asta to bring on the clue that solved the murder. I said, “Do you really want the resolution of the entire show to rely on an animal?” He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yes.” I left the meeting fully aware of the challenge I faced. Rehearsals began in seven days, I had a maniac dog I’d just figured out how to train, I had no understudy dog, and this was the most ambitious project I’d ever undertaken. So
I immediately began work on the final trick. Asta was to bring on a watch that belonged to the murder victim and give it to Nora. That clue helps reveal the murderer. Terriers are not known for fetching—that’s for retrievers. If I threw a toy, Riley would make
me
go get it. If I put a watch in his mouth, he’d spit it out. So I got my best retrieving dog and began throwing my watch around the living room and rewarding the dog for bringing it back. Not to be upstaged, Riley caught on in no time. I thought we might have a shot.

I began searching for an understudy. People always laugh when I tell them I have understudy dogs, but every actor in a show has someone to back them up in case of emergency. From the very first Sandy until now, I have always had a backup dog, but my secret hope is that they never go on. In a high-pressure situation like a Broadway show, there’s barely time to get one dog up to speed, never mind two.

My contacts in the Humane Society of New York led me to a farmer in New Jersey who had acquired a wirehaired fox terrier for breeding, but never got around to it. He had left the dog tied up in his barn all winter—when he ran out of dog food, he gave it horse feed. When I met BJ, he was emaciated and his coat was matted. After a year of isolation, you can imagine this dog’s joy when I gave him some biscuits and a hug. BJ sank right into my arms—the only thing moving was his little cropped tail. The farmer offered to give me the dog, but I paid five dollars for him and got a receipt, just to make it legal. BJ jumped into my van and never looked back. He went directly to my vet for medical attention and quarantine—he had every worm in the book and had to eat special food until his digestive system could tolerate dog food again.

In my meeting with the company, I was very candid. I explained we were behind in training and that these dogs could be aggressive and unpredictable. I asked for everyone’s cooperation and assistance, and I got it. From the stars to the stage managers, everyone was wonderful. They helped me socialize Riley and get him used to a lot of people, and they gave both dogs love, which they desperately needed. My main job was to bond Riley to
Barry and Joanna. They would be the ones commanding him, and he had to love them—or at least act like he did onstage. At first, both actors were apprehensive about having to spend all their free time with Riley—after all, they had the success of a new musical riding on their shoulders. But both are animal lovers and found a way to give me all they could. Only real professionals extend themselves as much as they did. As Riley got used to the company and BJ started learning the basics, the dog department was going more smoothly than any other. Arthur was so pleased with our progress that he added Riley to more scenes as rehearsals went on.

My next worry was getting Riley used to the noise and chaos, both backstage and in front of the audience—a problem when you spend so much time in a rehearsal hall. Thanks to several stage managers and my old friends in the stagehands’ union, Riley and I were able to hang out backstage at currently running shows. At
Cats
, he wanted to chase those big animals, but he restrained himself and adjusted quickly. When a dog gets bored enough to lay down backstage or in the orchestra pit, he’s used to the sights and sounds of the theater.