Broadway Tails (16 page)

Our next town was Montreal. There were seven of us who were furious over the way the whole thing had been handled. When we got to Montreal, we were each brought into management’s office and told that if we continued our protesting, we would be fired. No good reason was given. We affectionately called ourselves the
Montreal Seven. At about this time, just as the tour was coming to an end, Dorothy and I found out we were going to become parents. It was a shining light in a very difficult time.

Although Brittny had been working with Zappa, he really missed Joanna. With my first child on the way, I wondered what I would do if my daughter was hurting as badly as Joanna. At the end of the Montreal run, we drove back home on a Monday, and the next day Dorothy and I drove to Philadelphia and surprised Joanna by giving her Zappa. She fell on the ground and hugged that dog in an embrace like I had never seen. Her mother said, “Bill, you can’t do this; they’ll fire you.” What she didn’t know was that my contract stipulated I had to “provide a trained dog to play the role of Sandy.” It didn’t specify
which
dog. Cindy Lou was accomplished and had worked with Brittny, so I knew the performance wouldn’t suffer—but Joanna deserved something no Annie had ever had: a Sandy that would be her own personal dog.

By the time we reached Broadway, there was still a cloud over the show. We didn’t get the kind of press coverage or reviews the producers expected. Many members of the original cast who had been invited to attend as part of the anniversary boycotted the opening. I tried to find something to make a bad situation better. I came up with an idea that I thought would generate good publicity and help animals at the same time. Right before Sandy comes on in the show, there’s a scene called “The Stray Mutt.” While Annie is standing on the street, a dogcatcher walks by carrying a dog he says he’s
taking to the pound. I had actually asked the creators to write this scene into the original production—it was a way to get our understudy onstage to prep him in case he had to go on.

In this production, our other understudy, Sparky, already had experience. I thought, What if we could get the Humane Society to bring over a dog a week, let us carry it on, and make an announcement that it was up for adoption? I contacted the Humane Society of New York, which is a no-kill shelter in the city that I had been helping for more than twenty years. They jumped at the chance. So for the twenty-six weeks we ran on Broadway, an announcement was made before each show that said, “The role of the Stray Mutt will be played by so-and-so, who will be available for adoption from the Humane Society of New York in the lobby during intermission.” It would get a great round of applause right before the overture started. My Stray Mutt program was a huge success. Twenty-six dogs were featured, and many more went home with great families. The Humane Society took applications at intermission, and their adoptions increased by 200 percent. We were back in the good graces of the press.

In October the show closed on Broadway due to lack of business and went back on tour, but Dorothy and I didn’t go with it. Our small two-bedroom house was already overcrowded with fifteen animals—there was no room for a baby. In August we had the roof torn off and we added a second story. We lived in a small guesthouse in the back. We finished construction three weeks before our daughter, Jenna, was born in November 1997.

Something about being a dad made me even more protective about kids. During the summer of the Broadway run, I had arranged for Joanna and Zappa to do a production of
Annie
at the North Carolina Theater—the last theater that the original Sandy had ever seen. She went on to a lucrative recording deal and has a CD of her music out now. Unfortunately, it was a while before the unpleasantness completely ended. Joanna’s family sued Macy’s, because the contract they had signed at the audition guaranteed Joanna would play Annie on Broadway. The day before the trial was slated to start, they reached a settlement. Terms were never revealed, and we still
don’t know the real reason why Joanna was fired. All I know is that Zappa lived a happy life with the Pacittis until his natural death, we managed to save a number of homeless dogs, and I became a father—so I guess the twentieth-anniversary production of
Annie
had its good side, too.

In May 1993 we were contacted by Theater by the Sea, a small theater in Matunuck, Rhode Island—they were doing a summer stock production of
The Wizard of Oz
. Throughout the 80s, I got occasional calls about productions of
Oz
, but it’s a difficult show to do because of all the special scenic effects, so a lot of smaller theaters aren’t interested in producing it. When I did get a call to do it, I’d send out Bugsy, my little schnauzer mix.

We had a trainer in Rhode Island who was interested in doing this production because it would be close to home for her. But, by then, Bugsy was too old to do the role, and I didn’t have a “Toto” dog. In the L. Frank Baum book, Toto is a Scottie, but in the movie they used a cairn terrier, so that’s what everyone thinks Toto should be. We tried searching pounds, but in the short amount of time we had—performances were going to start in June—we weren’t able to find one. As we have done in similar cases, we contacted the breed rescue organization, a wonderful resource when you want a purebred dog. Through them we found a breeder in Holyoke, Massachusetts, who had a six-year-old female named Plenty that she was willing to sell to us. We purchased Plenty and trained her in a month to do the summer stock production. We also had her grandfather, Wolfy, as the understudy.

The production was so popular that this little theater put together a non-Equity tour that traveled the country from 1993 to 1994. Breed rescue put us in touch with a breeder in southern New Jersey. Max was eight years old and no longer producing as a sire, so we bought him. Plenty and Max were very sweet, very calm, and did well in that tour.

When Dorothy moved to Connecticut in 1994, I had fourteen dogs. I had acquired them all, they lived with me, and they all pretty much ignored her—except Plenty, who really became her dog. She was the dog that followed Dorothy around and slept on her side of the bed, so Dorothy felt she had her own dog in the midst of this pack. When we decided to go out on tour with the twentieth-anniversary revival of
Annie
, Dorothy was upset that she would be away from Plenty for such a long time. The solution was simple—if we were going to travel with two big Sandy dogs, why couldn’t we travel with one more little cairn terrier? So we did. Plenty came with us on the national tour of
Annie
before it came into New York. She was great to travel with. Her only problem was when we were in Minneapolis for Christmas it was 15 degrees below zero, and she refused to go outside in the cold weather—we thought she was going to burst! But other than that, Plenty was a joy to have on the road.

In January 1997 we heard that Madison Square Garden was mounting a huge production of
The Wizard of Oz
. It was going to be a revival of a production that was done out at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the state theater for New Jersey. I’ve worked there a number of times over the years. When Paper Mill did
The Wizard of Oz
, they hired a local dog trainer to come in with a little black dog to play Toto. While the dog was fine for that production, the plan was to greatly expand the show for New York and make it much more like the movie. We contacted them and they were very interested in our services.

We set up a meeting with the director in New York City. The only day we could do it was the day that we were traveling between Baltimore and Boston for the
Annie
anniversary tour in early February. It was fate that we had Plenty with us and that New York was on our way during that trip. We left Baltimore, came in, met the director, and showed them what Plenty could do. He was very impressed and very interested in working with us. Rehearsals were going to begin in New York in April. One of the things he stressed, though, was that he really wanted to make the play resemble the film. By that he meant that he wanted Toto to be onstage in every scene, just as she is in the film.

By that time, in my twenty years of providing animals for the theater, the only thing that came close to this was
Nick & Nora
, where Asta was onstage more than any other dog I had trained. But Toto has to perform a wide variety of actions, from sitting quietly in a handbasket to escaping from the witch’s castle. It was clear to me that while we could train one dog to do a lot of things, we couldn’t get one dog to do the number of things that were needed for this particular production. I proposed training two dogs that looked alike to play the role—one dog that would be calm and quiet, and another dog to do the action scenes. Plenty, who was younger than Max, would be the action dog, and Max, although he was a little bigger and a little grayer, would be the quiet dog.

With all the problems that had been associated with the anniversary production of
Annie
, plus the fact that Dorothy really loved Plenty, she asked if she could be the trainer on
The Wizard of Oz
. I couldn’t think of anyone better to handle a show of this magnitude for me, and to handle it in a way that I was accustomed to. We worked side by side preparing Plenty and Max, but she never got the credit for it in the press like I did. Dorothy gave her notice to the
Annie
producer before the show came into New York, so that she could be free to start rehearsals for
Oz
in April.

I did have one concern—Dorothy was in the first trimester of her pregnancy. But she insisted she could easily handle the limited run of sixteen weeks, and no one would ever have to know. She also insisted I not tell a soul for fear they wouldn’t hire her. We began an intensive rehearsal period, trying to devise a way to have an animal play a character onstage for the entire show. This was an expensive show to produce because of the large set and all the special effects. Plus, the run was going to be limited, meaning less chance for the producers to get a return on their investment. So, first they decided they would do twelve shows a week, compared to eight a week on Broadway, at a discounted price. Then they also made a bold casting move—they decided to hire Roseanne Barr to play the Wicked Witch of the West. Roseanne had just completed nine successful years with her sitcom. No one could figure out why she would want to come to Broadway and work for a fraction of the money that she could make in Hollywood, but she did.

Now, as I’ve said, what’s great about the theater is that there’s generally a real sense of family—we’re colleagues, we all work together, and we all live together. My experience with films and television is just the opposite. You come in, you do the job, and you get out. When we first met her, you could see that’s where Roseanne was coming from—she was surrounded by bodyguards, dressers, personal assistants, had to have a private dressing room at the rehearsal room, and stayed to herself. Plus, Roseanne had been taking a lot of criticism for some of the choices she had made in her career, so I think she thought she would be meeting that same sort of resistance when she came to work on Broadway. Along the way, we also found out Roseanne had never done a live show before—she had done stand-up, of course, but this would be her theatrical debut, so she was nervous. Slowly but surely, as Roseanne got a chance to work with this cast and crew, she realized that none of that mattered. We didn’t care who she was or what she had done before—we were all there to do a job, and we were all pulling for her. By the time we opened, she’d warmed up and was a funny and gracious person to work with.

For this production they also held a nationwide search for the role of Dorothy. After auditioning more than 300 girls, they found fifteen-year-old high-school student Jessica Grové, born and bred in Columbus, Ohio. She had a presence, an innocence, and sincerity that were appealing, and a voice that was just unbelievable. They brought her to New York and introduced her at a press conference at the Rainbow Room, where she sang “Over the Rainbow.” Also in the cast were Ken Page as the Lion, Michael Gruber as the Tin Man, and Lara Teeter as the Scarecrow—three very accomplished Broadway character actors.

While a lot of the cast and crew came from the Paper Mill production, many people were new, and there was a growing excitement as we went into
rehearsal. Each year Madison Square Garden had been successful in presenting a production of
A Christmas Carol
, which became an annual event for many families. Their idea was to take one of America’s most beloved stories,
The Wizard of Oz
, and make it an annual event for the summer. There was a lot of publicity leading up to the opening. But we worried whether a 15-year-old could learn how to do the role, sustain the role with Broadway veterans, and handle two dogs at one time. This young actress, Jessica Grové, was just amazing. Her sweetness and kindness were real. She loved the dogs, and she worked on her own time, both in rehearsal and out, to make these dogs love her and to perform the necessary behaviors.

There was one other unusual challenge about this show—we would be trying to re-create moments from a beloved film that most of the audience would have engrained in their memories. It was our job to be true to those memories. For example, the movie opens with Dorothy running home with Toto close behind her. To achieve that, Jessica would show Plenty a treat, then run out onstage with Plenty close behind. My favorite part was during “Over the Rainbow.” In the film, after Judy Garland sings the first chorus, she walks over to a piece of farm machinery, where Toto is waiting, and the dog extends her paw toward the girl. I wanted to capture that small gesture—and it actually proved to be pretty simple, using Plenty’s natural reaction. After sitting quietly for most of the song, Plenty was pretty bored. So when Jessica approached her, she naturally put out her paw, as though to say, “Let’s do something already.” But to the audience, it was that moment when Dorothy’s closest friend tries to console her. It got a reaction from the audience every night.

The very next scene also has a favorite moment, when Toto steals Professor Marvel’s hot dog. That was Plenty’s favorite scene. All we had to do was keep her in Jessica’s arms until the right moment, then put her down—Plenty would run over and grab the hot dog with no prompting. When Mickey Rooney took over the role of Professor Marvel, of course he turned this into a bit. Instead of letting Plenty get the hot dog, he would carry it around with him while she jumped after him, much to the audience’s delight.

There’s an example like that in almost every scene, from when they meet Glinda the Good Witch to the moment when Dorothy wakes up in
her bed and says, “There’s no place like home.” The only place where we deliberately changed a scene is when Professor Marvel is revealed as the Wizard. Unlike in the movie, where Toto pulls the curtain open, in our version Toto just went under the curtain and started barking. For those
Wizard of Oz
fanatics who think Toto pulls the curtain open, if you look closely, you’ll see that the curtain is tied to the neck of the dog. When I pointed this out to our director, he laughed and said, “Well, she can just go under the curtain, then.”