Broadway Tails (17 page)

The show opened in May 1997. Madison Square Garden threw a huge opening-night party with searchlights and hundreds of guests. The show ran until June, and during that time, over 200,000 people came to see it. It was an immediate success. I got a huge chuckle out of the
New York Times
review. In a very positive review of the show, this is what they said about Toto: “Move over, Sandy, there is a new canine star in town.” How cool is it to have two of your own dogs competing for reviews in the
New York Times
?

Roseanne had come to enjoy the theater and being part of this cast so much that her dressing-room door was always open, and she invited people in to hang out with her. Jessica, Plenty, and Max became a real team. Jessica, at fifteen years old and with that remarkable presence, always kept the dogs on their marks and the show moving forward. She really held her own with the Broadway veterans she was working with in the cast. And, of course, my wife Dorothy came through with flying colors—but everyone kept trying to give me the credit.

Because of the show’s popularity, Madison Square Garden decided to bring it back for the summer of 1998. They also reworked it so that it would be able to tour. That was a challenge, because the set had been designed for the large
stages at Paper Mill and Madison Square Garden and was filled with special effects, from pyrotechnics to flying. They had to revamp it so that it would be easy to move. In February 1998 we were reassembled to start rehearsing for the national tour—except this time, it starred Eartha Kitt as the Wicked Witch of the West and Mickey Rooney as the Wizard. We rehearsed for a month, then went to Chicago and Detroit before coming back to New York for a limited run, from late April to the end of May. Then it went out on the road for another year.

By then our daughter had been born, and as much as Dorothy wanted to, she wasn’t able to travel. Max retired after his first year of performing. He had started to slow down, so he went to live with my mom as a pampered pet for the rest of his life. We went back to the breeder, who had a five-year-old dog she was willing to give up. Ashley had stopped producing puppies, so it wasn’t worth it for the breeder to keep her. She had been overbred, which depleted the calcium in her body, so she had brittle bones and bad teeth—and very bad breath. But she was a very sweet girl and went out with Plenty for a great tour.

Eartha Kitt in the 1990s was in her seventies, but the energy and spirit she had as a performer was amazing to be around. Mickey Rooney always had a funny joke and a smile on his face—but you could never be certain what he was going to do next. Onstage he might ham it up or even improvise, which made it very difficult for the other actors. But whatever he did, the audiences loved him. All in all, the extended eighteen-month tour of
The Wizard of Oz
brought joy to many people around the country. Even though Madison Square Garden was not Broadway, this was still a major New York show that marked yet another turning point in my career—we proved to everyone in New York that we could take a dog and turn it into a character that could be onstage for an entire evening.

Having a child changes your life. Having a child when your career involves going out on tour and caring for twenty animals
really
changes your life.

I had never been fond of the road, and after Jenna was born in 1997, I really wanted to be at home to help raise her. I made a promise to Dorothy that I wouldn’t take any tours or other jobs that required me to be away for more than a month. So, for the next three years I concentrated on more film and TV work—for example, we started handling the animals for
Sesame Street
—as well as setting up a new
Annie
tour. Dorothy, meanwhile, went back to the Bushnell Theater.

I also extended my relationship with the Humane Society of New York. I had been doing benefits for them for twenty years, and they had been my partners when I set up the “Stray Mutt” program for the twentieth-anniversary production of
Annie
. Now they asked if I would come in and make some suggestions to the staff to help them train some of New York’s neediest pets. I was honored that they would ask me at all because I was just a show business trainer. After a few months, they hired me as a consultant and gave me the title director of animal behavior. I would go in once a week and set up training programs for problem dogs, as well as review intakes and adoptions. This is a post I still hold today.

I was involved with two failed Broadway tryouts during this time. One was a musical based on the Danny Kaye movie musical
Hans Christian Andersen—
we opened and closed in San Francisco. The other was
Paper Doll
, a new play about the life and times of author Jacqueline Susann and her dog, Josephine. It starred Marlo Thomas and F. Murray Abraham and had tryouts in Pittsburgh, Raleigh, North Carolina, and New Haven, Connecticut.

In October 2002 I got a call from one of the original press agents from
Annie
, Barbara Carol. We had stayed in touch over the years, and she had always followed my career. Now she was the press agent for Lincoln Center. She called to say they were doing a revival of a George S. Kaufman play called
Dinner at Eight
, to be directed by the famous Gerald Gutierrez. The actress who would be handling the dog in the show was my old friend Dorothy Loudon, the original Miss Hannigan on Broadway. We hadn’t worked together since
Annie 2
closed after tryouts in Washington, D.C.

By the end of the month I had arranged a deal, spent time with the director, and found out he wanted a Pekinese for the part. The dog was being carried in, so I felt that two weeks of rehearsal would be enough. I would then turn it over to a handler to run for the final eight weeks. My rehearsals started in early November. We would make it to the stage a week later, and the first performance was a week after that.

As soon as I got the first call, I immediately started looking for new dogs, using a great new tool. In the late 1990s, something wonderful happened to the animal adoption problem. Betsy and Jared Saul, a married couple, set up a website called Petfinder.com. They were able to attract corporate sponsors and take the site national. Today it’s a search engine for pets. Shelters from all over the country list the animals they have available for adoption. On Petfinder.com you can search on the type of animal, breed, and gender and get a list of all matching animals close to where you live. It’s probably one of the best uses of the Internet I know and a great tool for helping animals.

It’s also a great time-saver for me. Now, instead of getting on the phone and calling animal shelters, I was able to go on the Internet, type in “Pekinese” and my zip code, and find all the Pekinese that were available for
adoption in a hundred-mile radius. I found a small, five-year-old Pekinese named Noelle. She was a victim of a divorce and long working hours, meaning she was being left alone for long periods. Many nights she was tied out with another dog all night long. She was cute and just needed a little one-on-one attention.

She had been taken in by a group called Amanda Connection that did foster care in Newtown, Connecticut. When I called them and told them the situation, they were very happy to place her with me. Even though she got along with people, she wasn’t that good with other dogs, but I said I would work on that and she probably would spend most of her time alone in New York City. When the show was over, we would find a good placement for her with the help of the humane group.

Three days after I located Noelle, I met her and adopted her. She had been shaved down because her coat was a mess, but she was healthy, personable, very calm, and very loving. After we cleaned her up, we brought her in. The director liked her and thought she would do well on the show, and we were set. Meanwhile, I was once again staying with Sarah Jessica Parker’s family in New Jersey. Sarah has seven brothers and sisters, and even though they’re all grown up, her parents still live in a big house with lots of bedrooms for when the kids and grandkids visit. Whenever I needed a place to stay, I was always welcomed as one of the family.

When I came into the rehearsal hall in Lincoln Center the first day, there, lying on the couch, was Dorothy Loudon. She saw me coming, stood up, extended her arms, and gave me a warm, welcoming hug. It was good to see her working again. She was a very talented actress, but at nearly seventy, there weren’t a lot of roles for someone her age. She hugged me like I was a long-lost friend. She said, “Billy, it is so good to see you.” It seemed to me like she held the hug a little longer than usual, as though she needed the support. I thought she was just happy to see an old friend, so I held on as long as she did. Then we sat down and talked.

The first thing she said to me was, “I’m so glad it’s you, because when I got the part, I was afraid of working with a dog. You remember I’m afraid
of dogs.” It came back to me then that while we had worked together on
Annie
, she told me she hadn’t grown up with dogs and felt uncomfortable around them. I’m sure she was worried some stranger would come in with an out-of-control dog, and she would have to deal with it. I told her immediately that I would do anything she needed in order to feel comfortable, and she was very grateful.

When it came time to go in and do our scene, we went into the rehearsal hall where I introduced Noelle to everybody. Gerry, the director, had his Yorkie, Edna, with him, his constant companion. At first I was surprised that there was a dog in the rehearsal room, since no one had mentioned it to me. When I asked the stage manager if we could ask Gerry to remove his dog, she said, “Oh no, oh no. The dog stays at every rehearsal. Gerry is never parted from that dog.” Now, when I had adopted Noelle, they had told me she wasn’t good with other dogs because she had only lived with one dog all her life. When I brought her to my farm, with our twenty other dogs, we made certain we didn’t overwhelm her. We matched her up with dogs her own size and temperament so she wouldn’t feel the need to protect herself. She had gotten along well with little dogs her own size in our home but bigger dogs scared her, and if a dog of any size barked at her, she immediately became defensive.

Well, after spending an hour or so sitting with Dorothy on the couch and letting Dorothy pet her and see how nice and calm she was, just as Noelle felt relaxed and we went into the rehearsal room, Edna started to bark. Of course, Noelle became agitated and barked back. This was going to be a problem. The whole time that Dorothy was trying to do her blocking, Edna would start barking, and then Noelle would bark and squirm. I didn’t blame the dogs. Edna was used to being the only dog when she went to the theater with Gerry. She was fondled, she got treats—she was really the alpha dog of Gerry’s theatrical world. Now here was an intruder in her space, so of course she would protect it and bark. Noelle, on the other hand, had been prepped to believe
she
was an alpha dog because we needed her to be courageous in front of an audience. She had been doing
some preliminary training and getting lots of treats, so she was also protecting her space.

After the first day of rehearsal, I went up and spoke with Gerry, because once Noelle started barking, it unnerved Dorothy. It made her feel insecure about the dog and wonder if Noelle was going to bite her. I was afraid Noelle would unbalance Dorothy, since she already seemed a little frail and unsteady on her feet, and she was afraid she’d drop the dog. But when I asked Gerry if we could remove Edna from the room, he looked at me as if I had asked a really inappropriate question. He said, “No, of course not. You just have to train that dog to ignore Edna.”

While I appreciated his devotion to his dog, I didn’t understand why he would let his personal feelings get in the way of the show. We were only talking about having Edna go to someone’s office while we did this one scene, and then she could return. But since he was a famous director, he could make demands and the producers would make sure those demands were met. In this situation, I had to make Noelle stop barking.

Now, if it had been another actress in another situation, an actress who liked dogs or was a little steadier on her feet, she would have been able to say to Noelle, “No—stop that,” and Noelle would have stopped. Unfortunately, Dorothy didn’t feel she could do that. I kept stepping in and interrupting the action to make the dog stop barking, even though she was generally just responding to Edna. But however we did it, I was able to reassure Dorothy that once we got onstage, Edna wouldn’t be around, Noelle would calm right down, and I’d be there to help her get through it. She would always hug me and thank me for my kindness and for helping her.

I tried to keep an eye on Dorothy that week. I’d go out and get her lunch. Sometimes I’d see her sitting by herself, so I’d sit down and talk with her. We would reminisce about old times, and she would tell me wonderful stories about her career. It was fun just sitting with her and hearing about the theater. At the end of the week, we moved upstairs into the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center to begin tech rehearsals. The set was a rich apartment in New York City, and there was a stairway
in the middle of the stage that went down into the basement, which is where the dressing rooms were. When people entered the apartment, they either entered through the front door or they came up the stairs, as if they were coming from another floor in the apartment. Dorothy’s first entrance was up these steps.

These were the first rehearsals using the sets, costumes, and lights. Tech rehearsals are very painstaking; you go from cue to cue, from beginning to end. By the end of the first day, we had just made it up to Dorothy’s entrance. I had heard the cues coming, and I went over to her dressing room to meet her and walk with her to where she would make her entrance. She needed to navigate three steps to get there, and when we reached them, she turned to me and said, “Billy, give me a hand.” I extended my arm and she held on and she had quite a bit of difficulty getting up those three steps.

It alarmed me. Dorothy was acting like a much older person. She put so much pressure on my arm that I was concerned she might fall. When she looked up at the full flight of stairs that would take her to the stage, she said, “I can’t do it.” At that point I ran to get the stage manager and her dresser. The stage manager said they had someone there to assist her, but it didn’t help. She was already uncertain about holding on to Noelle, and now she had to climb these stairs. Dorothy panicked. She finally made her way up the stairs for her first entrance with the help of her dresser and the stage manager. When she got onstage, Edna started barking from the audience where she was sitting with Gerry. Then Noelle started barking. I had to go onstage to calm Noelle down.

Dorothy was worried. But what concerned me was that she couldn’t make it up the stairs without assistance. I was worried about the safety of my old friend. When I spoke to her about it later, she assured me she’d be fine as long as someone was there to help her. But as rehearsals continued over the next two days, it was obvious she was having more and more trouble. On the third day she actually fell and twisted her leg. It was becoming apparent to everyone that she wouldn’t be able to do the show. The producers started calling around to find a replacement.