Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (25 page)

Fred Ebb would call Verdon and Fosse geniuses but also both difficult to work with and abrasive, Fosse especially. He told himself that what you had to remember was that kind of attitude is only offensive when there is no talent behind it, and Ebb said that ultimately it did not bother him a lot. He said that you got your money’s worth for what you put up with. The relationship between Fosse and Verdon was a complicated one, as they were complicated people. Despite the problems, Ebb still loved them both. Fosse had co-written the book with Ebb and their working relationship was good until they came to a couple of difficult scenes in it. Ebb said the director on a couple of occasions would take out his frustrations on him when he was the handiest. John Kander was spared this treatment because he always knew when to leave the room. Later Fosse told Ebb that he picked on him because he was vulnerable. Kander said that their friendship with co-star Chita Rivera helped them cope, since she made them laugh and the three of them held each other up a lot.

The July 28, 1974,
Times
reported that
Chicago
was scheduled to open on Broadway on December 10 at a theater soon to be announced after a four-week tryout in Philadelphia. Joining Verdon in the cast were Rivera and Jerry Orbach and rehearsals were now scheduled for September. Rivera had been a replacement dancer in
Can-Can
; she said that she watched and idolized Verdon in it. She said that when she auditioned, Verdon advised her to find her own role, which is something that Rivera did not forget. Apparently the advice was meant to be good-natured and not as resentful as it sounds. Verdon is said to have asked for Rivera’s part to be enlarged in
Chicago
so that the show would be a two-hander and take some of the pressure off her. She also felt it better, given her age, that Rivera be given the more athletic dance moves. On September 18, 1974, the
Times
reported that the venue for the show would be the 46th Street Theatre and the opening date would now be January 7, 1975.

Dance rehearsals for
Chicago
began at Broadway Arts on October 26. In November the cast had their first table read, Tony Walton presented his model of the set, and Kander and Ebb played their songs. Verdon was shocked when she saw Fosse: He was puffed up and he had a funny voice. Fosse had recently had another seizure and pain in his upper arm. He asked Phil Friedman to make him an appointment with physician Harold Leder. After the reading Fosse clutched his chest and he was taken to New York Hospital. One source says that the doctor’s appointment was made for 2 p.m. that day and after the reading Fosse attended a dancers rehearsal. Halfway through it he told the show’s general manager Joseph Harris that he was unable to continue because of chest pains. Another source claims that Fosse had also been experiencing numbness in his left hand and shortness of breath for weeks. He went to the hospital’s emergency room with Harris and producer Robert Fryer. It was supposedly Harris’ idea that they go to the hospital rather to Fosse’s doctor’s office, after Friedman had been told by Leder to do so. The doctor was waiting in the emergency room when the three men arrived. After examining Fosse, Leder paged staff cardiologist Edwin Ettinger. He in turn made an examination. An electrocardiogram test showed that Fosse was going to have a heart attack.

In the meantime the show’s rehearsals continued. Verdon reportedly asked where Fosse was a dozen times and was told that he had yet to return from an appointment. She and Rivera worked on the “All That Jazz” number, although other sources claim that they worked on the trial scene, and Verdon was practicing knitting. At 4.30 p.m. Harris supposedly called from the hospital and asked that Verdon go there. Friedman found her and told her. Calmly she changed her shoes in the rehearsal room and her clothes in the ladies room and left the building, careful to keep the news private and contained. Friedman said that she went through the experience like an actress. She supposedly considered that a heart attack was, in a way, what Fosse wanted. Not to die, but to come to the cliff’s edge of death, kiss it, then turn back. Verdon thought that it put him in touch with his talent, like fighting producers, who in a sense were like heart attacks and terminal illnesses, with their cruel and insistent reminders of time running out.

Fosse was put into the Intensive Care Unit. When Verdon arrived, he asked her to not keep him in the hospital. He hadn’t officially suffered a heart attack yet, but his doctors felt that it was inevitable. The chest pain was a sign of clogged arteries and a reduced blood flow to the heart. He was angry at being kept against his will and he was desperate to go back to work: Verdon told the doctors that he was staying and asked for the medical papers to sign. As his legal wife she had authority over certain medical matters and presided over the paperwork, later worrying that the hospital would not release Fosse after his surgeries if the bill wasn’t paid.

Rehearsals for the show were cancelled and the company was told about Fosse. Some sources say that they were told he had had a heart attack, but others claim that they were told he was suffering from exhaustion. Whatever the case, he would need four months to recover. Verdon said that the company would be looked after in the interim. Fosse is said to have given some of the dancers personal loans. Verdon was described as being like their mother, holding them close, and she threw parties to keep up their spirits. She was presumably afraid that if one dancer left, it might inspire more to go. Although Verdon wanted them to get pickup gigs, she knew that if the company disintegrated, schedules would disappear. She also presumably feared that the show would be delayed further and she would be too old to do it. However, putting aside these fears, Verdon threw the cast a party. Fred Ebb said he also threw them a party which Verdon and Rivera co-hosted.

After being given an angiogram, Fosse was told that Ettinger recommended immediate surgery. He was to have a single cardiac bypass performed by Dr. William Gay. Ettinger wanted to take a vein from Fosse’s leg to put into the heart muscle to bypass around the area of artery narrowing. The patient protested. As a dancer, he didn’t want his legs tampered with. So an artery underneath the chest cage was used instead. At the time Ann Reinking was herself in Roosevelt Hospital for a back injury, and she kept in touch with Fosse by phone. Verdon also kept her informed, which the younger woman found extraordinary and generous.

Fosse’s open heart surgery took place on November 15, 1974. He was visited by Verdon in the recovery ward where he was put on an ice mattress to reduce his temperature. She said that he had shakes and tremors in convulsion. On the other side of Fosse, a nurse bathed a 22- year-old man and splashed water all over Verdon and the patient. She took in the sight of Fosse with a tube in his nose and wires and a heart monitor with a white dot blipping across the screen. Two young women appeared and asked for his autograph and Verdon shouted at them to get the hell out and ran into the hall to get help. When she returned, they were gone. Nicole tested her father’s love, telling him that if he really loved her, he wouldn’t die.

Verdon stayed with him and slept on a sofa in the lounge at the end of the hall. She saw herself as Fosse’ wife again after five years and, despite the circumstances, felt that this wish had come true. She even reportedly told Ethel Martin, her old friend from her Jack Cole days, that she thought that she and Fosse would get back together. Verdon assumed this came from how happy Fosse was that she was with him in this crisis. Despite what may have been wishful thinking on her part, Ettinger was amazed by Verdon’s sensitivity to the situation since the ward was visited by Fosse’s many girlfriends. Ettinger didn’t know which one was more important and to whom he should relate information about the patient’s condition, but he saw how Verdon treated them all with warmth. It seemed to him that she considered them all family, and she was the brood hen.

After Fosse was moved into a private room, the staff had a strict “immediate family” only rule for visitors. Verdon broke the rule by bringing in the girlfriends, like Kim St. Leon, who she fibbed was her daughter. Some sources claim that children were not allowed into the room, which necessitated Verdon sneaking Nicole in. This provided for the anecdote that she painted her daughter’s eleven-year-old face with makeup, strapped chunky platform shoes on her feet with heavy-duty rubber bands, supplied bust pads, and had her wear a wide-brimmed floppy hat. However some sources say that Nicole as one of the immediate family
was
allowed in, even after Verdon had passed off St. Leon as her daughter, explaining that Nicole was her other one. Naturally she accompanied her daughter when she was at Fosse’s bedside so that the child would not be too upset by the sight of him connected to machines by wires. Soon the immediate family rule was relaxed and Fosse received many more visitors.

After Reinking was released from her hospital stay, she came to see Fosse. She was nervous about his wife being there but Verdon supposedly put her at ease. Reinking said that Verdon knew how things should be and did the right thing. Ettinger observed the two women together and considered that their confidence was like that of two sisters. However, unlike Verdon who had natural dignity and formidable powers of self-control, Reinking erupted at the sight of her rival, St. Leon. Reinking reportedly yelled at her to leave because she felt that she didn’t belong. Verdon insisted that she stay, because she cared for him and he cared for her. Reinking was unconvinced. Verdon took them into the corridor while Fosse slept. St. Leon was no match for the older Reinking, but Verdon said that she felt like a lady gangster, laying down the law to the two girls. They were pacified enough to return to the room and although the two remained unfriendly, Verdon managed to keep the peace. The situation made both St. Leon and Reinking evaluate the kind of person Verdon was. Reinking was afraid that there would be competition between them but instead she found a reserved graciousness. “Friendly-careful” is the phrase Reinking used. St. Leon was more deferential, saying that Verdon transcended being Fosse’s lover and that she was always the one for him, being his alter ego. St. Leon thought that it was his need for physicality with other women that broke the marriage though it would break any marriage.

Fosse had a second heart attack. Some sources claim that this was due to his not taking his recovery seriously, like his continuing to smoke. Another claims that it was a reaction to seeing a bad television review of the film
The Little Prince
(1974) for which Fosse had done a dance sequence as the Snake for director Stanley Donen. Reinking told Tom Buckley in the
New York Times
(January 4, 1980) that she was sitting with Fosse when he had the second attack.

The dolling-up that Verdon was said to have done to sneak in Nicole to see her father is described in another source as having being done for the Thanksgiving dinner that Verdon held in Fosse’s hospital room. This source describes Nicole as wearing eyeliner, false eyelashes, mascara, and green eye shadow. She is said to have worn her mother’s jazz pants, her mother’s shoes (secured with rubber bands), and a hat. Reinking would also be invited to the dinner, to show that Verdon acknowledged her relationship with Fosse. For the meal, Verdon set out a tablecloth on his bed with silver and dishes. She also provided a kind of wine which was crushed fruit punch with 7 Up in a carafe, and the accompanying food was (to no one’s surprise) completely organic. The only wrinkle in the proceedings occurred when the chief nurse refused to admit the violinist that Verdon had engaged. Fosse recovered and was discharged from the hospital on December 10, 1974. A Christmas party was thrown by Verdon for Fosse with the company of
Chicago
at her Central Park West apartment. However he had not moved back in with her since he had decided to go back to his own home on West 58th Street.

In January, Verdon, Fosse and Nicole attended the nightclub act that Chita Rivera had put together at a small West Side cabaret room called the Grande Finale. Rivera had been unable to hold out for the
Chicago
postponement. She had to pay for her daughter’s enrollment in a private school, and devised an act with dancer-choreographer Tony Stevens (Fosse’s assistant choreographer on
Chicago
). This act was also written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. Rivera would perform her act for two months, which included taking it to Los Angeles, and by the time she returned to New York, Fosse was ready to start up again.

Verdon made the first of two guest appearances on the CBS children’s program
Captain Kangaroo
on March 5, 1975. It was filmed in New York.
Chicago
resumed rehearsals in March 1975 after a postponement of three months. It was thought that the normal anger and depression that anyone would experience after heart surgery flavored Fosse’s new take on the show: make it more edgy and bitter. His relationship with his wife had also changed. Although he had begun the show for Verdon, Fosse now behaved resentful for having to go through with the obligation. However this resentment was also linked to his reverence for her. Their relationship had always been strongest when they worked together and it was said that their love was rekindled in the rehearsal room. It wasn’t easy because there were arguments, pushing and pulling, passive aggression and misunderstandings but also total trust. He was trying to get Verdon to dance her best but he wasn’t yet completely fluent in her older body. He could be impatient with her and once she responded by saying, “They can pack his heart in a sawdust box for all I care.”

Others observed the tension between them. At first they behaved like old friends and then she would say something bitter to him. Fosse may have been Verdon’s number one fan as an artist and a performer but Tony Stevens saw that there were personal issues going on underneath. The hurt and pain that they had seemingly inflicted upon each other was apparent. Stevens was surprised that some of the things Fosse asked Verdon to do were so unattractive and nasty. But she did them. An example was the staging of the number “Funny Honey.” He felt that the number was tawdry and that Fosse made Verdon look unattractive in Roxie’s drunkenness. It may have been appropriate for the number but some felt that it appeared that he was trying to destroy her. This ignored the fact that Verdon was no doubt aware of his intention, knowing him so well, and she could salvage herself no matter what he asked. Perhaps that was the reason he was doing it, so that she would do something to outshine him and showcase her talent further. Verdon later told Bob Aurthur that Fosse’s apparent cruelty and inflicting of pain had a purpose. He did it to get a response that would advance the creative process. She also felt that there was a connection between this behavior and his self-destructive habits since they put him in touch with his talent and it was the way he was creative. Stevens saw the struggle between the two of them over the number. Verdon would try to raise the style and Fosse would lower it. Stevens found that she had a dark side too and she thought some of it was funny, but not all. Chita Rivera was particularly upset by how she felt that Fosse was presenting his wife among dancers groaning and humping in the “Razzle Dazzle” number. She commented to Fred Ebb, “That’s the great Gwen Verdon up there and look what they’re doing.”