Broadway Sayings Quotes

By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world` With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)?? And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering. Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time. Get my point?

I don’t know!” he half yells, miserably. “Am I? Do you think I’m bi?” “I can’t tell you that, Alex!” she says. “That’s the whole point!” “Shit,” he says, dropping his head back on the cushions. “I need someone to just tell me. How did you know you were?” “I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an Off-Broadway play about it.” “Really helpful.

Ah walk doon Hammersmith Broadway, London seeming strange and alien, after only a three-month absence, as familiar places do when you’ve been away. It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the wey things are in a dream. They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae really see it.

His dream is to one day be a famous Broadway star, but he says he lacks the ability to sing or act, so he’s scaling down his dream and applying to business school, instead.

Give my regards to Broadway, Remember me to Herald Square, Tell all the gang at 42nd Street, That I will soon be there; Whisper of how I'm yearning To mingle with the old time throng, Give my regards to old Broadway, And say that I'll be there e'er long.

Let us roam then, you and I, When the evening is splayed out across the sky [...] Paths that follow like a nagging accusation Of a minor violation To lead you to the ultimate reproof ... Oh, do not say, 'Bad kitty!' Let us go and prowl the city. In the rooms the cats run to and fro Auditioning for a Broadway show." (From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)

For the first time in my life, I'm doubting my faith, and it terrifies me. For the first time, I want to change the rules. For the first time I wonder: does it matter what it says on your skin, when what's at stake is your soul?

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see? Do you hear the people sing? Say, do you hear the distant drums? It is the future that they bring When tomorrow comes!

So what do you like about New York so much? That you would venture all the way here and not tell anyone?” “Two boys were dancing together in a club,” I want to say, “and nobody stopped them.” But instead I say, “I want to be on Broadway, and you can't do that forty-five minutes outside of Pittsburgh.

She thought she loved him. What do you have in your pocket?” He smiled, drew out the gray button that had fallen off her very ugly suit the first day they’d met. “See?” She couldn’t say why that stupid button moved her so damn much. “People in love keep things. Sentimental things.” “What do you have?” She pulled the chain, and the tear-shaped diamond from under her shirt. “I wouldn’t wear this for anybody but you. It’s embarrassing. And—” “Ah, something else.” “Shit. I’m tired. It makes me gabby. I have one of your shirts.” His brow creased in absolute bafflement. “My shirts?” “In my drawer, under a bunch of stuff. You lent it to me the morning after our first night together. It still sort of smells like you.” For a moment, the worry on his face simply dissolved. “I believe that’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me in all our time together.” “Well, I owed you. Besides, you have enough shirts to outfit a Broadway troupe. So, help me toss the room?” “Absolutely.

Fiyero: "Why is it that every time I see you, you're causing some sort of commotion?" Elphaba: "I don't cause commotions, I am one." Fiyero: "That's for sure." Elphaba: "Oh! So you think I should just keep my mouth shut! Is that what you're saying?" Fiyero: "No, I'm ..." Elphaba: "Do you think I want to be this way? Do you think I want to care this much? Don't you know how much easier my life would be if I didn't?" Fiyero: "Do you ever let anyone else talk?" Elphaba: "Oh, sorry ... But can I just say one more thing? You could have just walked away back there." Fiyero: "So?" Elphaba: "So, no matter how shallow and self-absorbed you tend to be ..." Fiyero: "Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow." Elphaba: "No you're not. Or you wouldn't be so unhappy.

Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

everything from Hairspray to the Academy Awards. They were also my co-conspirators on my 2006 Broadway show, Fame

We did it,” Barry says, so quiet it’s almost a whisper. Then he leaps up and shouts into the other room. “Dee Dee! Non-equity cast of Godspell! We did it! Emma’s going to the prom!

What would Samuel Becket say if he knew that Broadway musicals are all that survived of the theatre world?

He grinned with his hat on the back of his head. He looked more like a Broadway character of the Nineties than the lovely painter that he was, and afterwards, when he had hanged himself, I liked to remember him as he was that night at the Dôme. They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

In the Broadway play In Defense of the Cave Man, a man says that when he was first married, he saw his wife cleaning the bathroom and asked her, “Are we moving?” In his bachelor days that was the only time he and his roommates bothered to clean the bathroom.

I'm through accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so. Some things I cannot change but 'till I try I'll never know. Too long I've been afraid of losing love, I guess I've lost. Well, if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost. I'd sooner buy defying gravity.

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway.

Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything,” she says. “Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I’m listening. Hi.” “I don’t know!” he half yells, miserably. “Am I? Do you think I’m bi?” “I can’t tell you that, Alex!” she says. “That’s the whole point!” “Shit,” he says, dropping his head back on the cushions. “I need someone to just tell me. How did you know you were?” “I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an Off-Broadway play about it.” “Really helpful.” “Yup,” she says, chewing thoughtfully on a chip.

On October 23, 1963, Barefoot in the Park opened on Broadway. Just before his extremely nervous cast took the stage, Nichols gathered them for a final pep talk. “Everybody relax,” Redford says he told them. “You know your positions, you know your laughs, you know your lines, you know where the comfort zones are. So enjoy yourselves, and remember: Everything depends on tonight.

Baldwin told the story again and again of standing on Broadway and being told by Delaney to look down. Delaney asked him what he saw, and Baldwin said a puddle. Delaney said, 'Look again,' and then Baldwin saw the reflections of the buildings, distorted and radiant in the oil on the puddle. He taught me to see, Baldwin said, and that 'what one cannot or will not see, says something about you.

We found out yesterday that Robert has won the Drama Desk Award for Possessed, a huge Broadway honor. Jeff—who is over the moon about it—is planning a fiftieth birthday party/award celebration. Of course I have to be there . . . and of course Calvin will be, too. No way am I going solo. I need major reinforcements, and nobody makes me laugh harder than Davis. “I know where this is going,” he says once I’ve explained the situation. He lets out a long sigh. “Does this mean I need to get a plane ticket and rent a tux?” “Well yeah, because I want my date to look hot.” “That is some Flowers in the Attic stuff, Holls. Don’t be weird.

Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

So if I tell you I want to re-do our senior year in one day…to go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center and let you get to second base like two teenagers…” I erased the gap between us, kissing a sliver of his exposed neck, and his breath stilled. “And go eat at P.J. Clarke’s and move to third base in the bathroom…” I rasped the words against his hot flesh and dragged my eyes up to meet his stormy ones. “And end the day at a Broadway show where I’d do something very inappropriate under your seat…” We melted into each other, and sure enough, I felt the swelling in his slacks getting bigger against my stomach. “You’d say…no?” His face was the funniest thing on earth as it moved from surprised to eager, then finally to turned on. “Fuck,” he muttered, pressing his hard cock against me. From the outside, it must’ve looked like we were sharing the dirtiest hug ever. “I’m about to go ice-skating for a hand job, and I’m not even sixteen anymore.” “You’re totally going on a day date,” I joked. He rolled his eyes but followed me back outside and into the nearest subway station, buttoning his pea coat to cover the massive bulge between his legs. “Lead the way.

But just as much as it was a sport, it was a sideshow—a carny act that eventually made it to Broadway. So the next time you hear somebody say, “You know wrestling is fake, right?” you can tell him that yes, you know. That’s exactly the point.

It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

New Rule: Death isn’t always sad. This week, the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, and millions of Americans asked, “Why? Why, God? Why…didn’t you take Pat Robertson with him?” I don’t want to say Jerry was disliked by the gay community, but tonight in New York City, at exactly eight o’clock, Broadway theaters along the Great White Way turned their lights up for two minutes. I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I think we can make an exception, because speaking ill of the dead was kind of Jerry Falwell’s hobby. He’s the guy who said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality and that 9/11 was brought on by pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the ACLU—or, as I like to call them, my studio audience. It was surreal watching people on the news praise Falwell, followed by a clip package of what he actually said—things like: "Homosexuals are part of a vile and satanic system that will be utterly annihilated." "If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being." "Feminists just need a man in the house." "There is no separation of church and state." And, of course, everyone’s favorite: "The purple Teletubby is gay." Jerry Falwell found out you could launder your hate through the cover of “God’s will”—he didn’t hate gays, God does. All Falwell’s power came from name-dropping God, and gay people should steal that trick. Don’t say you want something because it’s your right as a human being—say you want it because it’s your religion. Gay men have been going at things backward. Forget civil right, and just make gayness a religion. I mean, you’re kneeling anyway. And it’s easy to start a religion. Watch, I’ll do it for you. I had a vision last night. The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me—I don’t know how she got past the guards—and she told me it’s time to take the high ground from the Seventh-day Adventists and give it to the twenty-four-hour party people. And that what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don’t say you’re life partners. Say you’re a nunnery of two. “We weren’t having sex,officer. I was performing a very private mass.Here in my car. I was letting my rod and my staff comfort him.” One can only hope that as Jerry Falwell now approaches the pearly gates, he is met there by God Himself, wearing a Fire Island muscle shirt and nut-hugger shorts, saying to Jerry in a mighty lisp, “I’m not talking to you.

Fiyero: "Why is it that every time I see you, you're causing some sort of commotion?" Elphaba: "I don't cause commotions. I am one." Fiyero: "That's for sure." Elphaba: "Oh! So you think I should just keep my mouth shut! Is that what you're saying?" Fiyero: "No, I'm ..." Elphaba: "Do you think I want to be this way? Do you think I want to care this much? Don't you know how much easier my life would be if I didn't?" Fiyero: "Do you ever let anyone else talk?" Elphaba: "Oh, sorry ... But can I just say one more thing? You could have just walked away back there." Fiyero: "So?" Elphaba: "So, no matter how shallow and self-absorbed you pretend to be ..." Fiyero: "Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow." Elphaba: "No, you're not. Or you wouldn't be so unhappy.

The strange thing about adulthood, when you're single, is that it's possible to go for fairly extended periods without facing blatant sin against. Sure there was plenty of sin against God but with such infrequent consequence - it was easy to self-congratulate on how much our relationship owed to my 'righteousness,' generosity, and enlightened theological views. Though for the past twenty months or so I'd been hearing a pastor who's constant theme was grace, it didn't hit home until I faced this proof of what the Bible says God considers depravity.

Some of the city legislators, whose concern for appropriate names and the maintenance of the city's landmarks was the principal part of their political life, saw to it that "Doctor Street" was never used in any official capacity. And since they knew that only Southside residents kept it up, they had notices posted in the stores, barbershops, and restaurants in that part of the city saying that the avenue running northerly and southerly from Shore Road fronting the lake to the junction of routes 6 and 2 leading to Pennsylvania, and also running parallel to and between Rutherford Avenue and Broadway, had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street. It was a genuinely clarifying public notice because it gave Southside residents a way to keep their memories alive and please the city legislators as well. They called it Not Doctor Street, and were inclined to call the charity hospital at its northern end No Mercy Hospital since it was 1931, on the day following Mr. Smith's leap from its cupola, before the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth inside its wards and not on its steps.

After graduation I probably won’t see any of these people again.” I throw him a hurt look. “Hey! What about me?” “Not you. You’re coming to visit me in New York.” “Ooh! Yes, please.” “Sarah Lawrence is so close to the city. I’ll be able to go to Broadway shows whenever I want. There’s an app for same-day student tickets.” He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “You’re so lucky,” I say. “I’ll take you. We’ll go to a gay bar, too. It’ll be amazing.” “Thank you!” “But everybody else I can take or leave.” “We still have Beach Week,” I remind him, and he nods. “For the rest of our lives, we’ll always have Beach Week,” he says mockingly, and I throw a hair tie at him.

It seems that Good Time Charley always keeps a stock of rock candy and rye whisky on hand for touches of the grippe, and he gives me a few doses immediately, and in fact Charley takes a few doses with me, as he says there is no telling but what I am scattering germs of my touch of the grippe all around the joint, and he must safe-guard his health.

In a 2011 commencement speech there, Ms. Sandberg told the graduates that whom they married would be their most important career decision. In the play “The Heidi Chronicles,” revived on Broadway this spring, a male character who is the founder of a media company says that “I don’t want to come home to an A-plus,” explaining that his ambitions require him to marry an unthreatening helpmeet.

Actors who hung out there gossiping about other actors discovered that Broadway shows that lasted for, say, one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy effect. Let me warn the reader: while the Lindy effect is one of the most useful, robust, and universal heuristics I know, Lindy’s cheesecake is…much less distinguished. Odds are the deli will not survive, by the Lindy effect.

April 13: Marilyn consults with Walter Bernstein, Cukor, and her producers about the script. She insists she needs to see Strasberg to “oil the machinery.” Physician Lee Siegel arrives to give her a vitamin injection. It is decided that shooting will not begin until April 23. Broadway composer Richard Adler calls to say he has written special lyrics for Marilyn’s rendition of “Happy Birthday.” She tells him that she will be wearing a “historical gown” for her appearance. Marilyn flies to New York.

​LORENZO :-) So I've been told," Lorenzo says. "Word around town is you're a bit of a dick-tator." --------------------------------------------------------------- "Honestly? I don't know. All of this, if you ask me, is total bullshit. You're just whacking yourselves off under the table, getting off on the theatrics, like we're on fucking Broadway. Dance, little soldier, dance. It's a joke. I'll never understand it. But Ignazio here requested a meeting, and what kind of friend would I be if I didn't show up?

Two Smartass Jews Walk into a Bar... Two smartass Jews walk into a bar in Hell's Kitchen, New York. The Irish bartender asks the first Jew, 'What will you have?' The first Jew points to the second Jew and says, 'I'll have what's he's having.' The bartender then asks the second Jew, ''So, what will you have?' The second Jew points to his friend the first Jew and says, 'I'll have what's he's having.' The bartender becomes so discombobulated, he drinks himself to death. This story has no moral ~ all we have is one dead drunken Irish bartender on the floor and two smartass New York Jews high-fiving each other on their way to a Broadway show.

You. In a dress.'' That's what I wanted him to say. He didn't end up saying it, but I said it to myself many times as I greeted my reflection in the buildings going up Broadway. My high heels rocked me like roller skates, my hair that I had spent time blow-drying was whipped up, I was suddenly vulnerable to the weather, to uneven sidewalks. I nodded to the iron wedge of the Flatiron like a prestigious acquaintance. The dress was half a paycheck. A short, black silk tunic. I was still confused about the power of clothes - nobody had taught me how to dress myself. When I tried it on and looked in the mirror, I was meeting myself decades from now, when I had grown unconquerable. All in a dress. I nearly returned it twice. I saw myself in the dark-green glass of a closed bank. I turned to my reflection: You. In a dress.

In Broadway, I suddenly found myself face to face with William de la Touche Clancey. "Well!" A long drawn-out syllable, in which fear and condescension were unpleasantly mingled. "What is the young Old Patroon about to turn his hand to next?" "The Vauxhall Gardens, I should think." My dislike of Clancey is almost physical. Yet I stare at him with fascination; note that his protuberant eyes are yellowish; that he scratches himself compulsively; that his tongue darts in and out of his mouth like a lizard's catching flies. "Of the delicious nymphs you sport with there?" "Of the delicious fauns, too — and their goatish friends." "Uh-huh..." A long, drawn-out attempt at sounding amused failed of its object. "I hope you realize that your editor's unholy passion for the Negro grows more embarrassing each day. If I were he I should beware. He might simply vanish one dark night." "Murdered? Or sold into slavery?" Clancey recently delighted his admirers by proposing that since the institution of slavery has been an integral part of every high civilization (and peculiarly well-adapted to those nations that follow the word as well as the spirit of Old and New Testaments), poor whites should be bought and sold as well as blacks. "I don't believe that poor sick Mr. Leggett would command a high price in the bazaar. Only his diseased mind would have a certain morbid interest to the special collector. You, on the other hand, ought to fetch a pretty price." "More than the usual two dollars you pay?" Two dollars is the current rate for a male prostitute. "Much more! Why, just for those pink Dutch cheeks alone!" It would be nice to record that I thought to something terminal to say but in my rage I could think of absolutely nothing and so left him with the last word.

Before becoming Sam Goldwyn’s prized possession—and during a decade and more of taking roles that put him out there to be seen and perhaps noticed—Brennan did play characters who disparaged women. But what happened when he was offered the plum role of Jeeter Lester in John Ford’s production of Tobacco Road (March 7, 1941) is revealing. Erskine Caldwell’s best-selling novel had been a huge hit when it was adapted for the Broadway stage, and now the prestigious director was casting the film version with several actors—including Ward Bond, Gene Tierney, and Dana Andrews—whose careers would benefit from Ford’s attention. In Tobacco Road, Jeeter is the shiftless family patriarch. Not only does he lack ambition, his jokes, to Walter Brennan, seemed offensive. Ada, Jeeter’s wife, is demeaned just for laughs when he says she “never spoke a word to me for our first ten years we was married. Heh! Them was the happiest ten years of my life.

Helene Hanff, an aspiring playwright who had been put to work in the Theatre Guild press office, remembered trying to generate some effective publicity for Away We Go! “This was, they told us, the damndest musical ever thought up for a sophisticated Broadway audience,” Hanff wrote. “It was so pure you could put it on at a church social. It opened with a middle-aged farm woman sitting alone on a bare stage churning butter, and from then on it got cleaner.”16 It was the kind of Americana that Larry Hart distrusted. But at the New Haven tryout he tried to keep an open mind. Of the songs in Away We Go!’s first act, five of them—“Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” “Many a New Day,” “People Will Say We’re in Love,” and “Out of My Dreams”—were destined to become instant classics, with “All Er Nuthin’” and “Oklahoma!” delighting the audience in the second act. But Larry wasn’t so delighted. He might have regarded “We know we belong to the land” as a professionally crafted line, as resonant to recent immigrants as to Mayflower descendants; but “The land we belong to is grand”?

New York is a city of eight million people, approximately seven million of whom will be furious when they hear you were in town and didn’t meet them for an expensive dinner, five million furious you didn’t visit their new baby, three million furious you didn’t see their new show, one million furious you didn’t call for sex, but only five actually available to meet you. It is completely reasonable to call none of them. You could instead sneak off to a terrible, treacly Broadway show that you will never admit you paid two hundred dollars to see. This is what Less does on his first night, eating a hot dog dinner to make up for the extravagance. You cannot call it a guilty pleasure when the lights go down and the curtain goes up, when the adolescent heart begins to beat along with the orchestra, not when you feel no guilt. And he feels none; he feels only the shiver of delight when there is nobody around to judge you. It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show

What do you think, Jemma” It takes a second to realize that she’s talking to me. I’m too focused on the fact that Ryder’s sitting beside me--just inches away--holding my hand beneath the table. “What?” I ask, glancing around at the expected faces. “Oh, the train. Yeah, maybe.” “They should go up a week early,” Laura Grace declares. “Take some time to see the city. Maybe catch a couple of Broadway shows or ball games or something. We could go with them!” “No,” Ryder says, a little too loudly. “I just meant…we should probably do it on our own, me and Jemma. Learn our way around and all that. Y’all can come up for Thanksgiving break, once we get settled and everything.” Laura Grace nods. “That’s a great idea. We could get rooms at the Plaza, watch the Macy’s Parade. And the two of you can show us around.” Ryder nods. “Exactly.” Beneath the table, I give his hand a squeeze. Laura Grace eyes my plate suspiciously. “You’re just pushing your food around, aren’t you? You’ve barely taken two bites. I thought you loved Lou’s Cornish hens.” “I do. I’m sorry. All I can think about is that English project due this week.” I look over at Ryder with a faux scowl. “We’re already way behind--you’ve always got some excuse. We should probably work on it tonight.” “Probably so,” Ryder says with an exasperated-sounding sigh. “That’s the third project the two of you have been paired up on,” Mama says, shaking her head. “I hope you two can behave well enough to get your work done properly. No more arguing like the last time.” We’d pretended to fight over a calculus project. Yes, a calculus project. Is there really any such thing? “We’re trying really hard to behave,” I say, shooting Ryder a sidelong glance. “Right?” His cheeks pinken deliciously at the innuendo. I love it when Ryder blushes. Totally adorable. “Right,” he mumbles, his gaze fixed on his lap.

Leave . . . town? Really, Mr. Skukman, that might be taking matters a bit far. Why, the social season has just begun, and ticket sales have been quite brisk. Besides that, everyone knows that Mr. Grimstone, that oh-so-mysterious playwright of The Lady in the Tower, specifically requested that I play the part of the lead heroine. He’s certainly not going to be pleased if I abandon the role before the season gets into full swing. Why, he, as well as the theater, could suffer extensive losses.” “Losses or not, Mr. Grimstone will have no say in this, Miss Plum. Quite honestly, given his obvious esteem for you and your acting abilities, I have to imagine he’d prefer to find out you’ve gone missing over finding out you’ve stopped breathing.” “Silas doesn’t want to kill me, Mr. Skukman. He wants to acquire me.” “You and I both know you’d never allow him to acquire you, and from what I just saw down in the lobby, the man seems to be on the verge of losing his sanity. There’s a look in his eyes I don’t care for at all, which is why we’re going to get you into a hansom cab and on your way to Mrs. Hart’s brownstone. Once you’re there, I need you to pack as quickly as possible. I’ll be around to fetch you just as soon as I’m able.” “You want me to hire a cab instead of traveling to Abigail’s in my own carriage?” “Indeed. It’s not a complete secret that you now live with Mrs. Hart, which means it won’t be too difficult for Silas to discover your direction after he learns you no longer reside in the Lower East Side. I’m going to try and feed him a false trail that will hopefully allow us precious time to get away.” Before Lucetta had an opportunity to voice another protest, she found herself sitting in a musty smelling hansom cab, barreling down Broadway at a high rate of speed, the speed brought about from the extra money she’d seen Mr. Skukman hand the driver. Feeling

Broadway lit up just as crazy as ever, and the crowd thick as molasses. Just fling yourself into it like an ant and let yourself get pushed along. Everybody doing it, some for a good reason, and some for no reason at all. All this push and movement representing action, success, get ahead. Stop and look at shoes, or fancy shirts. The new fall overcoat, wedding rings at 98 cents a piece. Every other joint a food emporium. Everytime I hit that runway toward dinner hour, a fever of expectancy seized me. It's only a stretch of a few blocks from Time Square to 50th street, and when one says 'Broadway', that's all that's really meant. And it's really nothing, just a chicken run, and a lousy one at that. But at 7 in the evening, when everybody's rushing for a table, there is a sort of electrical crackle in the air. And your hair stands on end like antennae, and if you're receptive, you not only get every flash and flicker, but you get the statistical itch. The quid pro quo of the interactive, interstitial, ectoplasmatic quantum of bodies jostling in space like the stars which compose the Milky Way. Only, this is the gay white way. The top of the world with no roof above and not even a crack or a hole under your feet to fall through and say it's a lie. The absolute impersonality of it brings you to a pitch of warm human delirium, which makes you run forward like a blind nag, and wag your delirious ears. Everyone is so utterly, confoundedly not himself, that you become automatically the personification of the whole human race. Shaking hands with a thousand human hands, cackling with a thousand different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning, soliloquizing, orating, gesticulating, urinating, fecundating, wheedling, cajoling, whimpering, bartering, pimping, caterwauling, and so on and so forth. You are all the men who ever lived up until Moses, and beyond that, you are a woman buying a bird cage, or just a mouse trap.

The Gates of Eden,” as he called it that night, took us furthest out into the realm of the imagination, to a point beyond logic and reason. Like “It’s Alright, Ma,” the song mentions a book title in its first line, but the song is more reminiscent of the poems of William Blake (and, perhaps, of Blake’s disciple Ginsberg) than it is of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, vaunting the truth that lies in surreal imagery. After an almost impenetrable first verse, the song approaches themes that were becoming familiar to Dylan’s listeners. In Genesis, Eden is the paradise where Adam and Eve had direct communication with God. According to “Gates of Eden,” it is where truth resides, without bewitching illusions. And the song is basically a list, verse after verse, of the corrosive illusions that Dylan would sing about constantly from the mid-1960s on: illusions about obedience to authority; about false religions and idols (the “utopian hermit monks” riding on the golden calf); about possessions and desire; about sexual repression and conformity (embodied by “the gray flannel dwarf”); about high-toned intellectualism. None of these count for much or even exist inside the gates of Eden. The kicker comes in the final verse, where the singer talks of his lover telling him of her dreams without any attempt at interpretation—and that at times, the singer thinks that the only truth is that there is no truth outside the gates of Eden. It’s a familiar conundrum: If there is no truth, isn’t saying as much really an illusion, too, unless we are all in Eden? (“All Cretans are liars,” says the Cretan.) What makes that one truth so special? But the point, as the lover knows, is that outside of paradise, interpretation is futile. Don’t try to figure out what the song, or what any work of art, “really” means; the meaning is in the imagery itself; attempting to define it is to succumb to the illusion that truth can be reached through human logic. So Dylan’s song told us, as he took the measure in his lyrics of what had begun as the “New Vision,” two and a half miles up Broadway from Lincoln Center at Columbia, in the mid-1940s. Apart from Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso may have been the only people in Philharmonic Hall who got it. I

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms*, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms*, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than one just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my time. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' comming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms", not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember abouut the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I sais they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than one just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my time. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio goin full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

Today—June the first—Robin was able to say for the first time: “I’m getting married next month.” July the second suddenly seemed very close. The dressmaker back in Harrogate wanted a final fitting, but she had no idea when she would be able to fit in a trip home. At least she had her shoes. Her mother was taking the RSVPs and updating her regularly on the guest list. Robin felt strangely disconnected from it all. Her tedious hours of surveillance in Catford Broadway, staking out the flat over the chip shop, were a world away from queries on the flowers, who should sit beside whom at the reception, and (this last from Matthew) whether or not she had yet asked Strike for the fortnight off for the honeymoon, which Matthew had booked and which was to be a surprise

The legendary Broadway writer/producer/performer George M. Cohan is supposed to have once said: “In the first act, you get your main character up a tree. In the second act, you throw rocks at them. In the third act, you get them down.” The nature of what that tree is, and what those rocks are, is key. You could even say that “story = main character + tree + rocks.

Oscar was forty-six years old, and his career in musical theater seemed at an end. In 1940 he and Dorothy had bought a seventy-two-acre cattle farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, two hours by car from Manhattan, where Broadway figures like George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart already had country homes. “I was pretty blue,” he would recall. “I just wanted to come down here to the farm and sit around and be alone and think. It’s not easy to hear people say the parade has passed you by.

Lieutenant Commander Thomas McWhorter of the navy, who fired off an early broadside against the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” asking that it be cut. “It is like drinking a scotch and soda and suddenly swallowing the ice cube!” McWhorter wrote. “You could not have interrupted the beautiful flow of entertainment any more effectively had you stopped the show for a VD lecture.” Oscar wrote back, “I believe I get the point of your letter very clearly, and I realize very well the dangers of overstating the case. But I just feel that the case is not fully stated without this song. I wish it were true that all these things are accepted by the public. You say, ‘the theme is wearing very thin,’ but in spite of this, I see progress being made only very slowly.

When did it happen? When did a form mocked as insipid, bland ‘family entertainment’ come to be associated with homosexuality? There are no statistics for these things, but, on the basis of my own unscientific research, I would say that, of the longest-running shows of the 1940s, some two-thirds had a homosexual contribution in the writing/staging/ producing department. By the 1960s, the proportion of long-runners with a major homosexual contribution was up to about 90 per cent. Certainly, it’s hard to take issue with Leonard Bernstein, who once told a friend: ‘To be a successful composer of musicals, you either have to be Jewish or gay. And I’m both.

In New York City alone, three different imaginary bombs were to drop, one of which was to land imaginarily at the intersection of Fifty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue—right in front of Tiffany’s, of all places. As part of the test, when the warning alarm sounded, all normal activities in the fifty-four cities were to be suspended for ten minutes. —All normal activities suspended for ten minutes, read Woolly out loud. Can you imagine? Somewhat breathlessly, Woolly turned to yesterday’s paper in order to see what had happened. And there on the front page—above the fold, as they say—was a photograph of Times Square with two police officers looking up the length of Broadway and not another living soul in sight. No one gazing in the window of the tobacconist. No one coming out of the Criterion Theatre or going into the Astor Hotel. No one ringing a cash register or dialing a telephone. Not one single person hustling, or bustling, or hailing a cab. What a strange and beautiful sight, thought Woolly. The city of New York silent, motionless, and virtually uninhabited, sitting perfectly idle, without the hum of a single expectation for the very first time since its founding.

Structure is an art. In some ways, it's the only art.

Does it work? Such a practical measurement . . .

Yesterday evening Mickey and I and other deluded WAAFs went through the blackout and into the wilds of Hammersmith enduring the journey with the thought of the rollicking, witty West End show, Broadway Follies, studded with stars, to which we WAAFs had been invited free. I might say frightful, I might say terrible, awful, boring, tedious, but they only reveal the inadequacy of words. After the third hour, or so it seemed, I was convinced that I had died and was in hell, watching turn after turn in unending procession, each longer, each less funny, each more unbelievably bad than the last. During the interval, Hendon WAAFs rushed to the bar, scruffy WAAFs, obviously from West Drayton, sat still rollicking with mirth in the Stalls. We tossed back whisky and ginger beer and watched in a stupor the longer, duller, apparently unending second half. After came the journey back in the blackout made blue by our opinions of the evening.

For the Broadway production, playwright Douglas Carter Beane was brought in to rework the script and Menken and Slater made a few changes in the score. The gangster was now called Curtis Jackson and he owns the Philadelphia nightclub where Deloris sings. The plot doesn’t change much until the second act when Deloris, knowing that Jackson is on to her disguise, tries to leave town but the other nuns say they will protect her. The climax is the same and the musical ends with the nuns performing for the Pope. Beane beefed up the comedy in the script, turning Jackson’s henchmen into comic buffoons, and Jerry Zaks directed Sister Act as a farce, tightening up the pace and broadening some of the characters. Patina Miller was again Deloris and Victoria Clark brought a warmth to Mother Superior that played off of Miller’s brashness nicely.

I'll spend more time with people outside of work. I'll say yes when people invite me out for drinks, and I'll take Indy to some Broadway shows. I'll stop to listen to the musicians in the park for once. I'll emulate what Sage seems to employ, and I'll experience those small joys I too often ignored.

Wrestling can be ANYTHING. It’s everything. It’s world-class athletes. It’s Broadway, Shakespeare, summer blockbusters, best-selling novels, soap operas, high art. It’s nobodies from nowhere finding a way to say to the world: “Fuck you!” It’s entertainment, it’s movies, it’s music. … It’s EVERYTHING.

Alice takes all our tapes and turns them into one top tape, and Bennie and Scotty drive from club to club, trying to get people to book the Flaming Dildos for a gig. Our big hope is the Mab, of course: the Mabuhay Gardens, on Broadway, where all the punk bands play. Scotty waits in the truck while Bennie deals with the rude assholes inside the clubs. We have to be careful with Scotty. In fifth grade, the first time his mom went away, he sat all day on the patch of grass outside his house and stared at the sun. He refused to go to school or come in. His dad sat with him trying to cover his eyes, and after school, Jocelyn came and sat there, too. Now there are permanent gray smudges in Scotty’s vision. He says he likes them—actually, what he says is: “I consider them a visual enhancement.” We think they remind him of his mom.

New York City wanted to honor the players, too. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city would hold a ticker-tape parade for the players, making them the first women’s team ever to be given the historic celebration. Within two days, there the players were at Battery Park on their respective floats, waiting for the parade to start. They couldn’t see up Broadway and had no idea just how many people were waiting to catch a glimpse of them. Then, the procession turned the corner. The sidewalks were packed 30-people deep in places—and it continued all the way up Broadway as far as the eye could see. There were thousands and thousands of people lining Broadway into the horizon. “We turned onto the street and it was like, Are you fucking kidding me? All these people are here for us?” Ali Krieger says, laughing. None of the players had seen anything quite like it. Office workers on Broadway were opening their windows and throwing paper shreds out. The air was filled with paper, floating over the parade route like some sort of festive fog. When the parade reached its destination, City Hall, the players got off the 12 floats they had been riding. They waited in a room at City Hall, finally together again and able to talk about what they’d just seen, and the players became emotional. Some players were crying. Some were in shock. “I never quite understand the following this team has until it’s thrown in my face, and the ticker-tape parade epitomizes that,” says Becky Sauerbrunn, who has nearly 150 caps for the USA. “I was like, Is anyone going to be at this parade? What if no one shows up? It blew me away.” CHAPTER 19 “It Is Our Job to Keep on Fighting” In the days after the national team won the World Cup, the players were the most in-demand athletes in the entire country.

Crazy for You opens backstage at the Zangler Theatre, New York, where Bobby, desperate to break into showbusiness, performs an impromptu audition for the great impresario Bella Zangler. This is not a ‘book number’ – that’s to say, the music is not an expression of character or plot point arising from the dialogue, the defining convention of musical theatre. Instead, more prosaically, it’s a real number, a ‘prop number’: Bobby is backstage and doing the song for Zangler. So it’s sparely orchestrated – little more than a rehearsal piano and some support; it’s one chorus; and its tap-break ends with Bobby stamping on Zangler’s foot. This is grim reality: Bobby is expelled from the theatre. Outside, he makes a decision, and sings ‘I Can’t Be Bothered Now’ – the second song, but the real opening number: the first ‘book number’ in the show. There is an automobile onstage (it’s the 1930s) and, as Bobby opens the door, one showgirl, pretty in pink, steps out, then another, and another, and more and more, far more than could fit in any motor car; finally, Bobby raises the hood of the vehicle and the last chorine emerges. The audience leans back, reassured and content: Susan Stroman’s fizzy, inventive choreography has told them that what’s about to follow is romantic fantasy. More to the point, it’s true to the character of the song, and the choice of song is true to Bobby’s character and the engine of the drama: My bonds and shares May fall downstairs Who cares? Who cares? I’m dancing and I Can’t Be Bothered Now … This lyric captures the philosophy of Ira Gershwin’s entire oeuvre – which is important: the show is a celebration of Gershwin. But it’s also an exact expression of Bobby’s feelings and the reason why he heads to Dead Rock, Arkansas. So the number does everything it should: it defines the principal’s motivation; it kick-starts the plot; and it communicates the spirit of the score and the staging. Audiences don’t reason it out like that; we just eat it up. But that’s why.

When I talked with Patti LuPone at a San Francisco coffeehouse, she said "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" wasn't a showstopper originally. The role had a big impact on her stage persona. She says playgoers didn't make a distinction between Perón and LuPone (whose names even sound similar.),

When I talked with Patti LuPone at a San Francisco coffeehouse, she said "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" wasn't a showstopper originally. The role had a big impact on her stage persona. She says playgoers didn't make a distinction between Perón and LuPone (whose names even sound similar.). She believes that her tough-cookie reputation-enhanced years later after she snatched a smartphone out a playgoer's hand-is largely due to being Evita, whom she reluctantly tried out for Kevin Kline, then her boyfriend talked her into going for it

Not simply every number is tuneful, as in, say, The Boys From Syracuse. Not even every number exhilarates character, as in My Fair Lady. Rather: every number makes the experience so vivid that we are reminded that music theatre is our highest—our most complete—art.

The war years ended the depression, but brought on many other stressful problems, such as living in a country that was at war with my parents’ homeland. Life changed, and with so many men being drafted into the military, jobs at last became available. By this time, my father was beyond the age of compulsory military service and fortunately found employment as a cook in midtown Manhattan. My parents sold the burdensome delicatessen and bought a house at nearby 25 Nelson Avenue. For years thereafter, my father worked at the then-famous Lindy’s Restaurant on Broadway in New York City. Starting as a cook, he was soon elevated to Night Chef. Eventually he became the Sous Chef and later the Head Chef at the well-known restaurant. It was a long commute into the city by both bus and train, but his steady employment, gratefully, brought in a sustaining income. Fuel and food were rationed during the war years, so there were times when he brought home meaty bones, supposedly for our dog “Putzy,” which instead wound up in our soup pot, which of course we shared with our dog. Most people we knew were poor and struggling to make ends meet, but since everyone was in the same boat, we took our lifestyle in stride. Things were still difficult, but we had shelter and food. I guess you might say we were luckier than most.

Lerner held that Brigadoon was one of Minnelli’s least vivacious efforts, despite the potential offered by CinemaScope. Only the wedding scene and the chase that follows reveal Minnelli’s unique touch. Before shooting began, Freed rushed to inform Lerner that “Vincente is bubbling over with enthusiasm about Brigadoon.” But, evidently, his heart was not in this film. Early on, Minnelli made a mistake and confessed to Kelly that he really hadn’t liked the Broadway show. As a film, Brigadoon was curiously flat and rambling, lacking in warmth or charm, and the direction lacks Minnelli’s usual vitality and smooth flow. Admittedly, Lerner’s fairy-tale story was too much of a wistful fancy. Two American hunters go astray in the Scottish hills, landing in a remote village that seems to be lost in time. One of the fellows falls in love with a bonnie lass from the past, which naturally leads to some complications. Minnelli thought that it would be better to set the story in 1774, after the revolts against English rule had ended. For research about the look of the cottages, he consulted with the Scottish Tourist Board in Edinburgh. But the resulting set of the old highland village looks artificial, despite the décor, the Scottish costumes, the heather blossoms, and the scenic backdrops. Inexplicably, some of the good songs that made the stage show stand out, such as “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “My Mother’s Wedding Day,” and “There But for You Go I,” were omitted from the film. Other songs, such as “The Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love,” had some charm, though not enough to sustain the musical as a whole. Moreover, the energy of the stage dances was lost in the transfer to the screen, which was odd, considering that Kelly and Charisse were the dancers. For some reason, their individual numbers were too mechanical. What should have been wistful and lyrical became an exercise in trickery and by-now-predictable style. With the exception of “The Chase,” wherein the wild Scots pursue a fugitive from their village, the ensemble dances were dull. Onstage, Agnes de Mille’s choreography gave the dance a special energetic touch, whereas Kelly’s choreography in the film was mediocre at best and uninspired at worst. It didn’t help that Kelly and Charisse made an odd, unappealing couple. While he looks thin and metallic, she seems too solemn and often just frozen. The rest of the cast was not much better. Van Johnson, as Kelly’s friend, pouts too much. As Scottish villagers, Barry Jones, Hugh Laing, and Jimmy Thompson act peculiarly, to say the least.

By 1932 he was a vaudeville headliner. He was on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on a radio interview and gossip show. At the time he had no great interest in the new medium, but he went on Sullivan’s quarter-hour show March 19, 1932, as a favor. His first words on the air were these: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?’ I am here tonight as a scenario writer. There is quite a lot of money in writing scenarios for the pictures. Well, there would be if I could sell one. That seems to be my only trouble right now, but I’m going back to pictures in about ten weeks. I’m going to be in a new film with Greta Garbo. They sent me the story last week. When the picture opens, I’m found dead in the bathroom.…

Don't wait until your on Broadway. Or until you reach the Olympics. Or until you're CEO of a major company. Don't wait until you're the president of something, or for the day when your life looks perfect to you and everyone you know. As I like to say: "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." Just kidding, that's a quote from Salvador Dali. I do however like to tell people, especially regarding writing and deadlines: "Don't be perfect, just be done." Which is yet another way of saying: "Don't worry so much.

So Mulhoffer was mad?” Ginger asked, as she stood in her father's office in front of his huge mahogany desk. “Yes,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “He believes if you dress like a moral man, then you'll act like one.” “Who died and made him God?” Ginger threw herself into one of the leather wingbacks, draped her legs over the arm. Her father leaned back in his chair. “Mulhoffer went to the Wednesday night Deerpath Creek service and came back with raves. He says they make Christianity fun, like going to a Broadway show or a sporting event.” “What do you think?” Ginger asked. “I've been out there. The head minister wore red suspenders and a blue striped shirt, like a Wall Street banker. They're using corporate philosophies to make everybody feel like they're moving up the church ladder, getting a raise or a promotion. But spiritual change is more subtle than that; you can't just check items off a list.” “Why'd you become a minister anyway?” “For the free wine,” her father smiled wearily, “and all those delicious tuna casseroles and Jell-O salads.” She laughed, but no matter how cavalier he acted, she knew he was worried, because the crease marks in his brow had grown deeper and that shell-shocked look never left his face. “The problem is,” he said, “is that Grace is impossible to explain.