Then and Now (19 page)

As my concert career continued to flourish, I kept thinking about returning to Broadway in a full-fledged book musical. But where, I kept asking myself, was the right vehicle?

The answer came in the form of a run of only two nights, but what a two nights it was: a concert version of Stephen Sondheim's legendary musical
Follies,
which was to be recorded by RCA Records. I would play the role of showgirl-turned-housewife Sally Durant Plummer.

The odd thing was that aside from my admiration for Stephen's brilliant score, I had never been a huge fan of
Follies
. When I saw the original Broadway production I just didn't care who went off with whom, because I didn't care about them as people. Ironically, I had auditioned for the role of Sally in the 1971 original Broadway production. My drinking was nowhere near as bad as it would later become and I made a point of looking my best for my audition. I think I actually looked too good: Hal saw
Follies
as a show about people on the downward slide—people past their prime—and I didn't look the part. When I finally did see the show, it just didn't fully work for me on the bottom-line emotional level.

Same thing with
Company
. In fact, it took me a while to fully appreciate just how brilliant
Company
is; the show premiered in 1970 and was so far ahead of its time that my initial reaction was negative—I thought the show was antimarriage and antifamily. Of course I've revised my opinion, even if I still do find some of the characters a little off-putting. In reality,
Company
's climactic song, “Being Alive,” actually affirms the importance of commit
ment and relationships, but at the time it all struck me as a bit sour. The same thing happened eight years later with
Sweeney Todd
. When I first saw the show I thought, “Why the hell do I have to come to the theater and hear somebody sing that the world is full of shit and we're all swimming around in it?” It took me a while to come around, but I now believe the show is Stephen's masterpiece.

So, when producer Thomas Shepard called Jerry Kravat to ask about my participation in the
Follies
concerts, even though I knew that beautiful score was going to be played by the Philharmonic, I just wasn't sure. Two nights only? A short rehearsal period of something like four days? And I'd never done one of Stephen's shows. But I thought about it, and fortunately I realized that the concerts represented a great opportunity and said yes. This would be Stephen Sondheim, and what's more, it was Sondheim with an incredible cast: Lee Remick, George Hearn, Mandy Patinkin, Phyllis Newman, Liliane Montevecchi, Carol Burnett, and Comden and Green. We all knew each other's histories and had great respect for each other.

Our intense, abbreviated rehearsal period proved to be very exciting. There was so little time that it was scary as hell for all of us. My old friend Herbie Ross was our director. He was terrifically talented as both director and choreographer, and our bond was so strong after those summers at Tamiment that one day when we had a break in rehearsals, we just happened to lock eyes as we sat in that small room at Avery Fisher Hall. It was as if we both simultaneously remembered our history of thirty-five years, wordlessly crossing the room to hug each other while crying. We each knew exactly what the other was thinking. Herb was such an interesting, complex man; his marriage with the brilliantly talented ballerina
Nora Kaye really worked, and yet when I first met him he was in a homosexual relationship. It just goes to show you—human beings don't always fit into neat little boxes.

Stephen had requested that I play Sally, and thank goodness I said yes. His work reminds me of Shakespeare, because, like the Bard, you can revisit his work time and time again and there is always something new to discover. If Stephen knew I compared him to Shakespeare he'd start snorting like a bull and charge at me, but I stand by the comparison. His songs are so rich and full of wisdom that singing one is like being an actress given the opportunity to play a great scene.

None of us had done the show before, and the orchestra was situated behind us, which meant that we could get help from the conductor, Paul Gemignani, only if we turned the microphone sideways so that we were in profile to the audience. But—the concerts worked brilliantly, and those two nights at Avery Fisher Hall proved to be among the most thrilling of my entire career. The audience went wild, the ovations rolling on and on, increasing in volume until the room seemed ready to explode. It simply does not get better than performing Sondheim with an all-star cast and the New York Philharmonic.

I listed our extraordinary
Follies
cast above, but there was also one other cast member of particular note: singing “Broadway Baby” was none other than Elaine Stritch.

Elaine Stritch. A major, major, piece of work. Or, as the
New York Times
described her: “Elaine Stritch, the brassy, tart-tongued Broadway actress and singer.”

Elaine was one of the first people I met and admired when I first came to New York. She was in a hit revue at that time,
Angel in the Wings
, and gained notice for the wacky song “Civilization
(Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don't Want to Leave the Congo).” She could be difficult to work with but she was also deeply talented. So most of the time, people were willing to put up with her shenanigans in order to add her talent to the proceedings.

I could write four chapters on Elaine alone, but a few anecdotes will suffice, beginning with
Follies
. It was a glorious experience for all of us, a major event, and there were a lot of big names in that rehearsal room, but Elaine still managed to make herself the center of attention. Check out the DVD of the concert; there I am, in rehearsal, singing the moving “In Buddy's Eyes.” Everybody in the room is rapt, but there's Elaine in the background changing her shoes and fixing her clothes. It's like she couldn't stop herself. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Elaine was, and remained right up until the end of her life, a force of nature and a big-time talent. I liked her very much but she could also be a major-league pain in the ass, self-centered to the max. I did respect her enormously, and she was a great performer, but boy oh boy could she make me crazy.

When I was singing at Feinstein's at the Regency, a very smart, classy cabaret space on Manhattan's Upper East Side, I had included a very quiet ballad, one that I felt would really mean something to audiences. I came to that moment in the show, the audience was hushed, but right there in the middle of the song was Elaine making this loud rustling, bustling sound in that big shopping bag that never left her side, because she decided she had to give herself an insulin injection in the middle of that number. She just couldn't wait three minutes.

In 1997 I was invited by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to join them at the Royal Albert Hall in London in a concert to celebrate my seventieth birthday. I asked three people to join me in
that concert: Maria Friedman, Tommy Körberg, who sang brilliantly in the London production of
Chess
, and Elaine.

One very blustery, sleety, awful day, she came to Wally Harper's apartment to rehearse before we went to London. As I said, the weather was horrible that day and when she walked in her hair was in curlers and covered by a shower cap. I just assumed she was going out to dinner later and was protecting her hair. When Wally's little dog jumped up to greet her, she said, commandingly, to the little dog: “Down! I want no love!”

She then barked: “Give me a cuppa coffee, NOW! If I don't get it right now, I'm leaving!” So, she got her coffee and we began rehearsing, and after we'd worked a while, Elaine stopped and announced: “You know what I like about show business? I'll tell you what I like about show business. I walked in here forty-five minutes ago with a shower cap on my head and nobody said a goddamned thing!”

She was a very hard worker. Much more than I am. She would rehearse something for hours in pursuit of perfection. I urged her many, many times to do cabaret. She was terrified. I said, “Elaine, all you have to do is find some songs you like. Go out there and be yourself—sing, talk—you'll be dynamite.” She was, of course, a very clever lady and she took my cabaret idea and ran with it. She got all these high-powered folks like writer John Lahr and director George Wolfe to help her put an entire show together—the show that became
Elaine Stritch at Liberty
. It was a smash and we later ended up in competition for the same Tony Award. The joke was on me because I found myself thinking, “Why the hell didn't I keep my mouth shut?!” She deserved the Tony for her beautifully performed show. It was then filmed for HBO and she won an Emmy. Both totally deserved.

Perhaps our most notable joint work experience came when we performed a benefit concert for Lincoln Center Theater. It was, in a word, a nightmare.

Jack O'Brien was directing the evening, and one day he couldn't be at rehearsal. In the director's absence she took over and was so rude to almost everybody in the room that I thought somebody was going to have a stroke, and that included me. I mean that. I decided that she was toxic. It was hazardous to work with her. She made you so angry it was dangerous to your health. I'd known her all those years, and, going into the benefit, I thought we could help raise some money for Lincoln Center Theater, and that the evening would work like gangbusters. I had even thought for a long time that we should organize some concerts together. My manager, Jerry Kravat, thought it was a great idea and that he could book us all over the place. We were so vastly different, and we respected each other's work. I also thought she knew I wasn't afraid of her, which I wasn't. I told myself, “I can deal with her.” Well, I was wrong. Big time.

She was extraordinarily difficult to work with because she was extremely overbearing. Although she often had good ideas, she was like a steamroller. She was so impossible that at one point she was actually trying to tell me how to sing a song. I finally said, “For Christ's sake, Elaine, don't try to tell me how to sing the fucking song. I've never sung the fucking song before. I don't know how I want to sing the fucking song. I need to find out—so just leave me the fuck alone!”

Perhaps she didn't mean to be so overbearing, and maybe in her mind she was just being helpful. But . . . Elaine's idea of being helpful often did not jibe with anyone else's. She just couldn't help herself. The moment she perceived a vacuum she would rush right
in. She's one of those people—and we all know them, in and out of show business—who just instantly suck all the oxygen out of the room. It was all Elaine, all the time. Me, me, me, me.

The benefit was a big success, and the audience had a great time, but I can't say that I did. The next day I told my manager, “I never, ever want to be inside a theater with her again, even for a benefit. If she's in the benefit, I'm not gonna do it. I don't want to have anything to do with her anymore.”

I was upset and very, very angry. She was so talented, but it wasn't worth it. I had such admiration for her; she could go so deep into a lyric, that she could make it both personal and universal. I could learn from that, but the price was too high and life is too short. As time passed, I got over a lot of my anger, and in some ways I felt sorry for her.

One time when asked why she lived in hotels, she said, “Look, I don't have a lot of friends. So when I live in a hotel, I can have a conversation with the concierge and the elevator man.” I think she was really sad. That was brought home to me when I was talking with Ralph Williams, who played the role of Arpad in
She Loves Me
and with whom I have kept in touch over the years. He and Elaine used to be very close, but a few years back he said to me, “I've had to give up Elaine. I can't do it anymore. It got to be too much.”

Elaine had quite a reputation for being tight with a penny, always managing somehow to get free theater tickets—even wrangling free pantyhose when she was in a show. And she could definitely make short shrift of a buffet. If it was free, Elaine was on it. Because of her diabetes she carried a full slate of supplies with her at all times. We went to the theater together once—we saw
Art
in London—and she carried a big shopping bag filled with crack
ers, orange juice, and so forth. You name it and Elaine had it in that satchel. All through the play she was rummaging through her bag. She'd reach for some food, and then she'd rub her hands with her lotion. Next would be another sip of orange juice, then some cheese. We were escorted to the queen's waiting room, because if they think you're a big deal they treat you very nicely in London; they take your tickets and your coat, show you to your seat, and ask you what you would like to drink at the interval. And what did Elaine do in the queen's waiting room? Right there in front of the man helping us she gave herself an insulin shot.

Her behavior would get under my skin big time, and yet her work could be so damn great. For Sondheim's eightieth birthday concert with the New York Philharmonic, the show featured some incredibly talented women, chief among them Patti LuPone, Donna Murphy, and Bernadette Peters, but they gave Elaine the closing slot. Her rendition of “I'm Still Here” was brilliant. I thought it was sensational, and I e-mailed Steve Sondheim to tell him so.

In the end, I just decided to get over my frustration with her. She was never going to change, and I realized that so long as I didn't work with her, when I saw her it would be easy enough to be nice. In 2010 I substituted for her at a concert she had been scheduled to give; Elaine was replacing Angela Lansbury in
A Little Night Music
and couldn't fulfill the date, so I agreed to fill in for her. The evening was a success and also was the occasion of the most memorable opening patter I've ever had with an audience. After my opening number I looked out at the audience and said, “I know some of you may have expected to see Elaine Stritch. She is busy with
A Little Night Music
. But, you're not missing much. All she does is talk about all of the famous people she's fucked. I've
fucked a lotta people, but they're not famous, so I don't talk about it!” The audience gasped—and then burst into wild laughter. I thought the building would explode! They may have expected that from Elaine, but definitely not from me.