Sympathy for the Diva, or Joan Crawford

Mildred Pierce: The key that unlocks Joan Crawford?

The writer Shaun Considine was a tremendous help to me while I researched Madeline Kahn: Being the Music, A Life. Shaun conducted the two most important magazine interviews Madeline ever gave: her first in a national publication, After Dark, and her only public statement after her departure from On the Twentieth Century. He was a good if not always close friend to Madeline, too, and he generously shared with me his exhaustive notes from the interviews, unpublished photos of Madeline, and copious advice. As an additional, indirect way of thanking him, I bought a copy of his most famous book, Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, and found it so utterly engrossing that I bought James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce and devoured that, too.

Naturally, my thoughts turned to Shaun while I watched the first episode of Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Bette & Joan. So much of Murphy’s series seemed to come directly from the pages of Shaun’s book that I wondered whether Shaun was getting any money out of the project. Then another writer, Dan Callahan (who’s written incisive analyses of Bette & Joan for Nylon every week), broke the sad news that Shaun died shortly before my book came out. Now I know why Shaun stopped answering my e-mails, and why he couldn’t join us for the book party. Without knowing it, I’d lost a mentor.

Shaun Considine.

But the process that Shaun set in motion continued, as Jessica Lange’s performance enhanced my growing understanding and appreciation of Joan Crawford. I never expected to feel anything at all for her: she struck me as a good but not great actor, whose offscreen life didn’t interest me. I did (and still do) admire Bette Davis passionately, and even wrote a fan letter to her (and received a lovely reply), so there was never a question whose side I was on. Thanks to Shaun Considine and Jessica Lange, that’s changed.

Sarandon and Lange as Davis and Crawford.

Shaun suggests that Mildred Pierce is essential to understanding Joan Crawford: if an actor can be an auteur, then Crawford’s Mildred is an autobiographical portrait. Both the character and the actor were driven by ambition to rise above their lower-class origins. For Crawford, this ambition became an obsession. Born poor, abandoned by her father, unwanted by her mother, abused by her stepfather, Crawford endured a childhood like Charles Dickens’ telling of Cinderella. Young Joan was able to attend private boarding school only because she worked, scrubbing, washing, cooking for the other girls — so busy that she could seldom attend classes.

As an adult, Joan was proud of her willingness to work hard, and even she marveled that, rather than developing a horror of housework, she enthused in it. The rest of us may look at her neat-freak tendencies and see an obsessive-compulsive, and Joan admitted that she was a perfectionist: an impeccably clean home was part of her need for control over her environment and a symbol of her aspiration to something better.

As a showgirl and then as an actress, Crawford escaped poverty primarily through her good looks and sex appeal, her talent as an actor, and her growing skills as an actor. In these areas, too, she was a perfectionist, constantly striving to improve herself. Marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., marked the next crucial step in her evolution. Fairbanks was Hollywood royalty, highly educated and cultivated, and the stepson of Mary Pickford — who disapproved of the working-class Crawford. Joan set about compensating for her lack of formal education, reading widely, studying languages, etiquette, elocution, and (later) voice. Pickford grudgingly permitted her daughter-in-law to take a seat at the table, while Lucille LeSueur became Joan Crawford, once and for all.

The star who could not go to the supermarket without flawless makeup, hair, hat and gloves was a kind of female Jay Gatsby in Hollywood, self-created at great cost — and for Joan as for Gatsby, sex was one means to get ahead. She lost her Texas accent, she personified glamour, and she didn’t stop striving for more. Reading Shaun’s book, I got the sense of Crawford continually yearning for her own version of Gatsby’s green light, staring through the window at a life she wanted. Even at the end of her life, she spoke of getting a formal education, and it’s easy to believe she might crave respect from Bette Davis, whose gifts as an actor, as a fighter, and as an intellect the world seemed to accept without questioning.

By the time What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? began filming, both women had reached an age when Hollywood’s interest in them had waned. There was no Ryan Murphy building elaborate showcases for older actresses. Today Murphy wants to tell a story of Crawford’s looks versus Davis’ talent, and the manipulations of male-dominated Hollywood. There’s truth in this perspective, as far as it goes, and television necessarily requires simplification and condensation. But Shaun’s book makes clear that the reality was a good deal more complex, and arguably more illuminating about the very topics Murphy aimed to address.

Shaun goes so far as to question whether there really was a feud at all, whether it was cooked up by Davis and Crawford themselves to promote the movie. (The book’s title gives you a fair idea what his conclusion is, but he does raise the question.) Again, Murphy’s take is that others imposed the feud on the women, to manipulate the performances they gave and to promote the picture; soon enough, the feud was bitterly heartfelt and authentic. In the final episode, Susan Sarandon as Davis makes clear that the feud is responsible at least in part for the public’s interest in her and for the talk-show appearances that afforded her the largest audiences of her later career: she can’t afford to let it go.

What is an image when people no longer see it?
Lange as Crawford.
(In the background, the peerless Jackie Hoffman as Mamacita.)

At times, Murphy’s pretty-vs.-smart dynamic risked becoming as cartoonish as a catfight between Daphne and Velma from Scooby Doo. But Lange’s performance consistently rose above the hit-or-miss material in the scripts, it enhanced my sympathy for Crawford, and it made me want to revisit the Crawford pictures I’ve seen and seek out others I’ve thus far missed. I’ve also caught up with some of Lange’s work with Murphy in American Horror Story, at once over-the-top and subtle. What struck me here was her ability to ground in realism yet another character who is, in her way, supernatural. Her Crawford is the grandest of grandes dames, a movie star, and yet very human indeed.

What seemed clear as I read Shaun’s book was that Crawford realized too late that she was in over her head. Yes, she tried to assert herself over Davis — particularly during the lead-up to the 1963 Oscars — but she was no match for Davis. By then, it was too late to repair the damage Crawford had done, and her own later career represented a truly pathetic decline, making only a few terrible movies while descending into alcoholism, illness, and solitude. Listening to her audiobook, My Way of Life (which can be heard on YouTube), she blithely describes days spent reading scripts and fielding movie offers — when we know she was putting on a brave face.

She had just made her final feature film, TROG, which really is as bad as everyone says it is. Bette Davis may have become her own caricature, her mannerisms overwhelming her later performances. Joan Crawford never really got the chance to do that — Faye Dunaway did it for her, after Joan died.*

Some lucky ones among you may never have felt inadequate, may never have seen your inadequacies confirmed and shoved in your faces. I envy you. Joan Crawford — who spent so much of her life battling her inadequacies and the insecurities they generated — would envy you, too.

*NOTE: The great Joan Crawford caricaturist is of course Carol Burnett, whose loving spoofs amused Joan herself. “You put more production into that sketch than Jack Warner put into our entire picture,” Joan told Carol after seeing “Mildred Fierce.”

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Talking about Madeline at the 92nd Street Y

Our host, Valerie Smaldone.

UPDATE: THE EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED. CORRECT DATE AND TIME ARE TUESDAY, APRIL 5, AT 7PM.

On Tuesday, April 5, at 7pm, I’ll be at New York City’s 92nd Street Y to join interviewer extraordinaire Valerie Smaldone and three sensational actresses to discuss the life and work of Madeline Kahn. Valerie also acts, and I can hardly think of four women I’d rather talk with about the career of an actress — I expect I’ll learn a lot.

Like Madeline, Barbara Barrie was an Oscar and Tony nominee with a lifetime’s worth of credits when she signed on to co-star in Eric Mendelsohn’s Judy Berlin. Working with a young director on his first feature film, in no-frills conditions proved challenging to both actresses. Shooting at night in the cold November weather, Barbara nearly froze: she remembers still shivering even when she got home in the mornings. Her performance went on to earn her an Independent Spirit Award nomination.

Barbara Barrie.

Barbara’s son Aaron plays Madeline’s son in the film — and there’s another family tie, of which I was unaware when I interviewed her for my book: Barbara’s husband, the late Jay Harnick, produced three stage musicals in which Paula Kahn appeared (or claimed to).

Maddie Corman played Madeline’s niece — and George C. Scott’s daughter — in the Fox sitcom Mr. President in 1987–88. As a teenager working with seasoned veterans, she was all eyes and ears on the set, observing and absorbing everything around her. One happy result of her experience: she does a flawless impression of Madeline.

Maddie Corman.

Madeline hadn’t worked with a child actress since Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon, and the working relationship she and Maddie set the tone for later relationships with younger colleagues. Madeline never condescended but approached Maddie as a peer, praising her when she did well, even asking, “How did you do that?” when she admired a particular scene.

Like Maddie, Ally Sheedy was a Madeline Kahn fan even before they worked together, and both began acting when they very young. Ally met Madeline when they co-starred in Alan Alda’s Betsy’s Wedding, and they bonded when bad weather prolonged location shooting in North Carolina. They spent hours talking and taking long walks. The all-star cast of Betsy’s Wedding had opinions on how to do everything, which complicated Alda’s attempts to realize his artistic vision — and probably tried his patience, too.

Ally Sheedy.

The movie marked a reunion for Madeline with Julie Bovasso, who (until she was fired, days before opening) directed her in David Rabe’s Boom Boom Room, for which she received her first Tony nomination. Bovasso was an acclaimed acting teacher, and when Madeline decided to take classes with her, Ally went along — affording her an opportunity to contrast Bovasso’s “huge, volcanic” acting style with Madeline’s more intimate approach.

After the panel discussion, I’ll be signing copies of Madeline Kahn: Being the Music • A Life, and proceeds from book sales will benefit Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. For more information and to order tickets, click here.

Madeline as Trixie Delight, the film role of which she was proudest —
until she played Alice Gold in Judy Berlin.

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Lost Empires, the Sequel: The Life of Sue Mengers

As perhaps the world’s preeminent scholar in the work of author Brian Kellow, I long since congratulated myself for identifying the recurring theme in his work: “the pains Brian has taken to document worlds that no longer exist. …Brian is playing at Proust’s game. He doesn’t mourn the past but recaptures it by recording its details, and there’s something joyful at times in the process.”* Thus far he’s tackled outsize personalities and distinctive talents for whom the performing arts mattered: the singer Eileen Farrell, the Bennett family of actors, Broadway’s Ethel Merman, and The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael.

Brian’s latest book, Can I Go Now? The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood‘s First Superagent, didn’t seem at first to fit that pattern. Sure, I thought, the performing arts mattered to her, but mostly so that she could get a commission when one of her clients made a movie. Sure, she was an outsize personality — enough so to warrant fictionalized portrayals onscreen from Dyan Cannon, Shelley Winters, and Loretta Swit. But where did Mengers really stand within the gallery Brian has painted so far?

As I read, I understood — with increasing certainty — why Mengers mattered to Brian. She’s another representative of his Lost Empires, all right.

First, the personality. I’d heard about Mengers, but nothing could have prepared me to see her wit and audacity laid out this way. Particularly once her career is launched, there is virtually no page among the 284 in this book that does not contain two anecdotes and three zingers — or more. (If you’ve got friends who love gossipy Hollywood yarns, just sprinkle your conversation with quotations from the book, and they’ll fall at your feet.) We see instantly that Mengers was a colossal pain in the neck to almost everybody. At the same time we see that her humor, her charm, and her sheer outrageousness helped her to storm past all obstacles, including those she herself had posed.

A German–Jewish refugee and wannabe actress, Mengers rose from the secretarial pool to the highest echelons in her business. Brusque, often vulgar, she did everything people aren’t supposed to do when they want to succeed: hectoring, chainsmoking marijuana, forgoing underwear and making sure everyone knew it. Yet at the peak of her powers, she knew when she’d gone too far, and she’d come back with a quotably funny remark or with the sudden appearance of “Baby Sue,” her alter ego, the naïve little girl anyone could love. (Anyone except her mother, that is.) She knew when to sweet-talk, when persuasion was better than pushiness.

As Brian makes clear, Mengers possessed all the qualities to make her a wheeler-dealer of legend, but she backed these up with hard work. By day, it seems she was incessantly on the phone or in meetings, and by night she threw phenomenal parties and dinners. She was always on the go, and yet she devoted countless hours to reading screenplays. Always on the lookout for the next big project, she applied her astute, but not infallible, critical judgments. Her clients included some of the biggest names of her era, including Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Ryan O’Neal, and Peter Bogdanovich — and it was no coincidence that they made some of the most important films of her era, too. Brian talked to a staggering number of these folks, and every one has something memorable to say to him.

Mengers with one of her younger clients, Tatum O’Neal.
It’s fun to see how many figures from my book turn up in Brian’s.

Hardly had that era begun when Hollywood began to change. One of the changes originated with Mengers herself: for her superstars, the superagent commanded super-salaries. By our standards, the dollar amounts may not look like much, but they were far more than Hollywood actors received before Mengers came on the scene. Making a movie became an ever-more expensive undertaking.

The other changes, however, had little to do with Mengers. Even while her clients were making movies for grownups, establishing what we now perceive as a Golden Age, they were also crashing and burning, often due to substance abuse. Other filmmakers began to make blockbusters. For all their merit and craft, Jaws and Star Wars, and those that followed, required less thought from audiences than did, say, Chinatown, and thus blockbusters promised greater appeal worldwide.

A new mentality began to take over Hollywood. More and more, the studio executives were “Harvard MBAs,” who knew little (and arguably cared less) about movies. For Mengers, movies were a passion. For the new generation, movies were just another business, albeit a highly lucrative one. There was no place among them for Mengers, and long before her death in 2011, she was left behind.

In today’s Hollywood of comic books and reboots and mega-blockbusters, it’s almost impossible to imagine a filmmaker rivaling any of the classics of the 1970s. The originality and the infrastructure — and the will — simply aren’t there.

In her highly original way, Mengers laid the foundations of the infrastructure of her own Golden Age, and heaven knows she had an abundance of will. She is, in short, the very sort of person you’d expect to intrigue Brian — if you knew enough about her to begin with. Thanks to Brian, we can all understand better now the topography of another Lost Empire.

Standard Operational Bullshit:
Loretta Swit plays a character based on Mengers
in Blake Edwards’ satire of Hollywood, S.O.B.

*NOTE: I quote myself, of course. Because who else said it better?

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Ahab Lives! And Other Tales

Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman has elicited strong reactions on all sides. Even my own reaction is strong. I’m overwhelmed with bewilderment. Do I really want to read this book by a beloved author — published in questionable circumstances — radically upending the way a couple of generations have viewed the principal characters of her other novel — and what’s going to happen to all those people who named their sons and daughters Atticus and Scout? I’m still trying to make up my mind.

But while I do so, it’s important to remember that Harper Lee isn’t the only author to publish a novel that affords the reader a controversial alternative perspective into an acclaimed early work. Let us consider a few excerpts from these notable but seldom-read books.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Jordan Baker, 1935.

I told her again that I loved her and wanted to marry her. Now she turned her face toward mine and whispered, “Oh, poor, foolish Nick! You know you have no money — and how can I marry you when I know that you’ll never love anyone but Jay Gatsby? Daisy and I talk about it often. That’s why she could never run off with him. As soon as she saw all those shirts of his — what straight man has so many shirts? She’s always understood how you two felt about each other. And frankly I’m a little suspicious about your friendship with Meyer Wolfsheim, too.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Sensibility, 1819.

“Mrs. Darcy, we have been wed but some three months, and yet I find more cause for distress than for happiness,” Mr. Darcy said. “Dinner is between five and fifteen minutes late, seventy-five percent of the time. The silver is not polished after every meal, my socks have gone weeks without darning, and I see on every floor a waxy yellow buildup that is most disagreeable.”

Elizabeth bowed her head. “Yes, Darcy, but the servants — ”

“Silence, woman! I will not have you blame others for your own idleness and sloth! Go to your room, and do not come down again until you are ready to apologise.”

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Mid-Term Exam, 2010.

“Snape,” said Dumbledore, “you’re fired. And take that ass Gilderoy Lockhart with you when you go.”

George Eliot, Middlemarch Heights: A Study of Rural Life in a Luxury Housing Development, 1879.

Dorothea rushed to Casaubon’s side. She was much shocked by the change in his appearance, his sallow cheeks flushed, his cold eyes feverish.

“Thank God you have come!” he cried. “I feared I would not live to speak the words I must say to you now!”

“Calm yourself, my husband,” Dorothea replied. “I am here, and would listen to whatever you wish to tell me.”

“I have behaved most shamefully to you, Dorothea,” Casaubon said. “When I think how you have shown me every kindness, even as you refrained from pointing out the utter idiocy of my unfinished masterwork, The Key to All Mythologies. And when I compare you to the wives of other men — that awful Rosamond Vincy, for example, and the way she walks all over poor Dr. Lydgate — I tremble to think of the judgment that awaits me in Heaven!”

“Hush, hush — ” Dorothea began.

“No, I must — I shall — I tell you that I shall spend whatever time remains to me atoning for my sins toward you,” Casaubon gasped. “I have emended my testament to that effect. Everything shall go to you, without condition. And if it should please you to marry Will Ladislaw, then from Heaven I shall smile upon you both, and wish you every happiness.”

Bram Stoker, The Many Lives of Count Dracula, 1903.

Through the open window, Mina saw a ghastly silhouette against the full moon. She screamed. “It is he! It is — Dracula!”

The Count paused, then murmured, “I have come — ”

“Yes, yes!” Mina cried. “To bite my neck! To drink my blood! To make me thine — forever!”

“Er, no,” said the Count. “I’m flattered, really, but I couldn’t possibly. Actually, I have come to ask for a tax-deductible, charitable donation to the Carfax Orphanage.”

“Foul demon!” Mina shrieked. “An orphanage full of innocent virgins whom thou shalt corrupt! Little children to walk among the undead — oh, woe!”

“Good grief,” Dracula replied. “What kind of monster do you take me for, anyway?”

Harper Lee, Go Reap a Profit, Man, 2017.

“I see you now for what you are, Atticus,” Jean Louise said through clenched teeth. “I thought you were a man of principle and honor, a man committed to justice for others. But now I know you are a racist, without even the courage to admit your bigotry.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Jean Louise,” Atticus said thoughtfully. “I know that Jem and your mother would be sorry, too. But I can’t stand here all day talking about it. I’ve got to go and kill a mockingbird now.”

That damned bird has been keeping me up all night.

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Jane Austen’s Life of Peggy Lee

On simultaneously reading James Gavin’s Is That All There Is? The Strange Life of Peggy Lee and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.

CHAPTER 37

It being agreed among the party, that no other occupation would compare with the pleasure of hearing Miss Lee sing, the carriages were called for, and set out from Hedgerowe House at seven o’clock, amidst great excitement of anticipation. Only Mr. Thompson dissented, for though he could not dispute Miss Lee’s excellence as a singer, “but however, should the present entertainment in any way resemble that of her Broadway show, Peg, then we must prepare ourselves for a considerable discouragement.”

The evening was fine, but the road to 28th Street was long, and the party had occasion to reflect upon Miss Lee’s peculiarities, and to wonder whether, this evening, she would rise from her chaise longue or remain there as she sang. “It is a most excellent quality in a lady,” declared Miss Wallace, “that she should never raise her voice; in that, I think, we may all look to Miss Lee for an example.”

Reports of Miss Lee’s health, having disturbed Mr. Bennett, however, he expressed the intention, to share with her the most excellent physic, which he had got in Palm Beach the previous spring, “for there is nothing, you may mark my words, that cannot be cured with physic and exercise, such as riding, if the mount be as sound as my good roan, that is the admiration of the county; and I have heard, that Miss Lee will never leave her room all day before sundown, if then. An excess of repose is unwise.”

“I am quite sure that Miss Lee must be in want of a husband,” said Lady Randall, “for she has only three thousand a year, and such is her character, that she must have a new gown, whenever she steps out; and though the colours never vary from white to peach to pink, she has by now a great quantity. For my part, I shall tell her that a muslin frock should be most becoming, and not at all dear, with only a turban and a few feathers, or a hat; for the number of gentlemen, possessing twenty thousand a year and inclined to seek her hand, cannot at this moment be plentiful, else she would be married already.” But Louisa declared Miss Lee’s prospects a subject worthy of no regard whatever, and returned to her tambour; and Lord Randall cared only whether Miss Lee would sing “Fever” again.

Mr. Dawson’s Ballroom had never looked so gay as it did this evening, they agreed upon entering it, its narrow grey walls presenting an aspect, that must provoke the admiration of anyone, whose opinions on music, or on the cut of another woman’s frock, are strong. Yet Mrs. Collins did, with a sigh, regret the Empire Room, where the party had met so many times in the past; and “she did not wonder that Miss Lee will not at any cost remove her sunglasses, for she cannot care at all for the view, when she looks out upon the present Ballroom and recalls the former Empire.”

A servant informing them, of there being no madeira, nor even any claret, at the ready, the party generally agreed upon gin and tonics, and for Miss Julia Bennett, a Harvey Wallbanger; and awaited Miss Lee’s arrival.

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Julius Rudel’s Lasting Impressions

I met Julius Rudel several times: when I worked at the Kurt Weill Foundation, he was on the Board, and our paths crossed a few times later. He struck me always as serious and self-contained, his words and movements measured precisely to the circumstance. I’d have loved to praise him to his face, yet he really didn’t seem to require anything I had to offer, beyond a cup of coffee or the famous German cold-cuts that Lys Symonette brought to the office to serve to visitors.

Who knows whether, at 24, I had the words to express myself? Through his leadership of New York City Opera and his recordings, through his work with so many singers I admire — first and foremost Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle — Rudel did much to shape my earliest ideas of opera: not as a dusty museum or ruined temple, but as something vital. What do you say to a man who gave you so much?

Rudel died June 26, at age 93, and most obituaries noted his poignant reflection, “I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would outlive” NYCO; many articles also turned to his recently published memoir, First and Lasting Impressions, written with my friend Rebecca Paller. I’d read the book in a gulp and had meant to write about it here months ago, but got caught up in writing my own book. Belatedly, then, I’m urging you to read it — if you haven’t already.

What you’ll find are not so much insights into Rudel’s character or his personal history, nor even a succinct, compelling statement of the artistic vision that led Rudel to program wide-ranging repertoire, with a special interest in contemporary and American works, or to engage so many extraordinary artists during his long tenure at NYCO. Some things one does because they’re so right, they require no explanation. Does anyone really need to be told why a balanced repertory or a balanced diet is essential to good health? Yet Rudel’s matter-of-fact account can’t mask the revolutionary nature of his approach, one that has informed dozens of American opera companies in the years since.

Because Rudel’s economy in writing is so much like the reserve I found in his person, much can be gleaned from the subjects he chooses and those he omits, and how he treats them in his book. He writes of the effects of stardom, or the quest for it, on both Sills and Treigle; in both cases, the toll on friendship proved heavy, and in Treigle’s case, almost immediately.

Rudel writes warmly about his collaboration with Sills, and when describing her apparent collusion with a board member that allowed her alone to take over the direction of NYCO, though they’d planned to share the job, Rudel manages not to say that she betrayed him — but he does note that his wife considered it betrayal. It’s also worth pointing out that Rudel held his peace for more than 50 years, whether from gentlemanly courtesy or from an understandable desire not to get into a public debate with Sills.

The Sills and Treigle stories are remarkable, as I say, because there are few other tales anything like them in First and Lasting Impressions, and very little here that illuminates the character of any of Rudel’s associates. For the most part, the backstage account of his years at NYCO — which are, as he must have expected they would be, the most interesting parts of his book — consists of an almost dizzying recitation of operas programmed and artists engaged, from which the most famous triumphs emerge almost shyly.

What one comes to understand, as others have pointed out, is just how difficult it is to run an opera company. Thus, when Rudel publicly criticized the last director of NYCO, he understood the challenges and risks at stake: he also knew what it took to find solutions, and he saw scant sign of the necessary agility as George Steel tripped — and fell — on the path Rudel had blazed.

For me, Rudel’s lasting impression is first, and perhaps foremost, his legacy as a general director, in the form of a network of operas and singers that enlightens and sustains me still. Yet increasingly over the years, I’ve come also to appreciate him as a conductor, and above all the respect that he brought to the music he performed.* Many other conductors consider bel canto repertory, for example, singer-centric and artistically unrewarding: Rudel consistently found beauty and interest, even dramatic urgency, in the most rum-pa-tum passages, and he understood the value of singers’ own musicianship. Because I grew up listening to Rudel’s recording of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, I was surprised to learn that many conductors and musicologists disdain the score.

In Rudel’s hands, Hoffmann is at once sparkling and ominous, intoxicating and oneiric, very much the artistic masterwork that Offenbach hoped it would be. (And to an artist, is there a more terrifying theme than Hoffmann’s: that the Muse, which makes you great, is allied to the forces that will destroy you?) The long experience Rudel shared with Sills and Treigle, performing this opera together so many times, lends the recording richly theatrical characterizations — and yet when I heard Rudel conduct Hoffmann at the Met, with Alfredo Kraus, years later, he managed to create much the same magic, with artists he didn’t know as well.

Rudel was with Becky Paller the last time I saw him, following the dress rehearsal of Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, one of NYCO’s final productions at Lincoln Center. He was frail, and we didn’t speak long. But at least I had a chance to say to him the most important thing: thank you.

Sills as Cleopatra in Julius Caesar.

*NOTE: Rudel’s respect can be heard even in the recording of the score for which he’s been criticized as most disrespectful: his performing edition of Julius Caesar. With “Early Music” an institution unto itself today, it’s easy now to say that Rudel shouldn’t have made drastic cuts in Handel’s score, but in 1966, no one knew whether New York audiences would tolerate a four-hour opera (at least, not one that wasn’t Wagner’s), and NYCO probably couldn’t afford the overtime pay for it. (Special allowances with the unions had to be made a few years later, when Sills performed a restored edition of Lucia di Lammermoor.) It took a great deal of effort and imagination to bring Julius Caesar to NYCO, and Rudel could far more easily have turned to another work if he didn’t hold the opera in especially high esteem. Just listen to the recording: from the first thrilling notes of the overture, you’ll hear how much Rudel loved this music.

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Further Proof of Shakespeare’s Hand in a Disputed 1957 Musical

A scene from Shakespeare’s West Side Story:
Carol Lawrence with my beloved Larry Kert.

For nearly six decades, scholars have debated whether some part of the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story was, in fact, written by Shakespeare.

Last year, the British scholar Brian Fforbes-Garstley used computer analysis to argue that the so-called Source Material was by Shakespeare, a claim hailed by some as the latest triumph of high-tech Elizabethan text mining.

“While it’s very difficult to find entire passages that are written by Shakespeare, individual words and phrases are very clearly his,” Fforbes-Garstley said. “For example, I note the repeated use of ‘hand,’ ‘heart,’ and ‘tonight,’ all words that arise with great statistical frequency in Shakespeare’s vocabulary in the canonical works.”

But now, a professor at the University of Ronkonkoma says he has found something closer to definitive proof using a more old-fashioned method: blind speculation, not computer analysis.

In a terse four-page paper, to be published in the September issue of the journal Notes and Queries, Kenneth Oberon argues that various idiosyncratic features of the Source Material — including such characters as Officer Krupke and Anybody’s that have struck some doubters as distinctly sub-Shakespearean — may be explained as misreadings of unfinished manuscripts delivered in error to the print shop.

“The character of Maria clearly is an early model for Olivia’s spunky confidante in Twelfth Night,” Oberon said. “A rough draft, if you will.”

Only later would Shakespeare shift the primary emphasis of his play away from Maria and toward other characters, notably Viola, Oberon said. Also, in the early stages of Shakespeare’s work, he preferred a different pronunciation of the character’s name: “Ma-REE-ah,” rather than his later preference, “Ma-RYE-ah.”

The character also makes an appearance in another disputed musical, which some scholars believe to have been written by Shakespeare, Paint Your Wagon.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
According to some scholars, this scene shows
definite traces of Shakespearean authorship.

Claiming Shakespeare authorship can be a perilous endeavor. In 1996, Norman Voles, a pioneer in computer-driven textual analysis, drew front-page headlines with his assertion that Shakespeare was the author of Kiss Me, Kate, only to retract his argument six years later after analyses by Fforbes-Garstley and others linked it to a different author, Marcel Proust.

This time, editors of some prestigious scholarly editions are betting that Mr. Oberon’s cautiously methodical arguments, piled on top of previous work by Mr. Fforbes-Garstley and others, will make the attribution stick.

“We don’t have any absolute proof, but this is as close as you can get,” said Bruce Mittelschmerz, a professor at the University of Wainscoting and an editor, with Teresa Rinteria, of the British Dental Assocation’s edition of the complete Shakespeare.

“I think we can now say with some authority that, yes, this is Shakespeare,” Mr. Mittelschmerz said. “It has his fingerprints all over it. Oh, sorry. Those are mine.”

Acceptance is by no means assured. Three years ago, some scholars were skeptical when the Arlen Shakespeare published A Little Night Music, a play from roughly the same period whose connection with a lost Shakespeare drama had long been debated, in its prestigious Shakespeare series.

“There is simply not enough dancing in that show to prove categorically that it is the work of William Shakespeare,” said Titania Stern, a professor of early modern drama at Oxblood University and an editor for the Arlen Shakespeare, although she conceded that some of the language in A Little Night Music closely resembles that of other disputed Shakespeare texts, including West Side Story and Gypsy.

However, Ms. Stern said, some new attributions were driven less by solid evidence than by publishers’ desire to offer “more Shakespeare” than their rivals.

“The arguments for West Side Story are better than most” putatitve Shakespeare collaborations, Ms. Stern said. “But I think we’re going a bit Shakespeare-attribution crazy and shoving a lot of stuff in that maybe shouldn’t be there.”

NOTE: For more on the attribution of Shakespeare’s authorship to disputed works, click here. For my part, I’m not at all surprised that Shakespeare, a glover’s son, might have a hand in Kyd.

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Interview: Ed Dixon on His Memoir of a (Secret) Life in Theater

Ed Dixon has done so many things in show business — from acting on Broadway (15 shows so far) to composing opera — that it’s futile to try to invent some hyphenated descriptive phrase for him. So let us say simply that he is a Man of the Theater, in a way that very few others ever have been.

Meeting him a couple of months ago, I could hardly believe that our paths never crossed before — though I did once review a Kurt Weill show in which he appeared with his friend Bebe Neuwirth. Ed made his Broadway debut with my beloved Jack Gilford in No, No, Nanette; he opened the Kennedy Center in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, alongside two of Madeline Kahn’s favorite colleagues, Walter Willison (Two by Two) and Alan Titus (La Bohème), conducted by Maurice Peress, who led Madeline in Candide and Bohème.*

He got an important early break at Fort Worth’s Casa Mañana, just down the road from Bass Hall, where I’ll make my debut with Fort Worth Opera in May. He starred in the most famous of all Weill revues, Berlin to Broadway; and he knows every corner of the 890 Studios, where we rehearsed Rags.

His colleagues include Terrence Mann and Joanna Glushak, who worked on Rags; my sometime workout buddy Hugh Panaro; and Christine Baranski, Madeline Gilford’s beloved neighbor — I could go on. Even some of Ed’s opera connections nearly intersect with mine, I realized as I read his recollections of the Oklahoma-born soprano Roberta Knie — my first Isolde — and his accounts of performing with Santa Fe Opera, where several of my friends have sung. Now I feel as if I’ve known Ed forever.

Les Miz Mister and Missus:
Ed and Jennifer Butt as the Thénardiers.

He’s written a memoir, Secrets of a Life on Stage … and Off, crammed with anecdote and incident, from his repressively religious Oklahoma childhood to success in New York. And there’s a stunning detour through substance addiction that found Ed living in his dressing room, then on a rock in Central Park — dodging bill collectors and drug thieves all the while — even as he played the juiciest role in Les Misérables, the hottest show in town.

That’s just one of the so-unbelievable-it-must-be-true stories that Ed shares. Take the onstage flameout of K.C. Townsend, a blonde bombshell in Nanette, which reads like the scenario of some melodramatic theatrical potboiler. And Ed’s got insights into everybody from Ann-Margret to Ben Vereen, from Birgit Nilsson to John Crosby. His portrait of his dear friend George Rose stands as the best monument I can imagine to the late, great character actor.

It’s clear to me that theater not only has defined but also has saved Ed Dixon’s life. First, by getting him out of his stifling boyhood environment, and most certainly later, by making him master of his own house.

The book is just one indication that Ed has bounced back, better than ever. The Signature Theater Company in Arlington, VA, has just announced a production of Ed’s musical, Cloak & Dagger, for next season. And when Ed spoke with me, he was in Denver, rehearsing a role for the world premiere of a musical adaptation of Sense & Sensibility at the city’s Center for the Performing Arts, with book and lyrics by Jeffrey Haddow and music by Neal Hampton.

Man of the Theater.

Q: What compelled you to write the book?

ED: I actually was compelled. It’s an idea that I’d had for a long time about writing about show business. My early days when I was with Ruby Keeler and Busby Berkeley and Bobby Van and Patsy Kelly — those stories were so amazing, and I told those stories over decades. Then opening the Kennedy Center and working with Leonard Bernstein. Those people are gone. And working with K.C. Townsend, I’ve never heard a story like that. And if I don’t tell the story, there’s no one else who can do it.

Then the amazing thing of me recovering from the worst situation imaginable and then having a better life than I had before. People don’t even know that’s possible. Things that happened are so unbelievable to me, even though I was there. It feels like a novella, and so there’s a part of me that wanted to do that.

Then I was having a sort of giant renaissance where everything was going full tilt in my life. Some friends met a well-known publishing person and she encouraged me, so that got me fired up. She turned out to be a complete flake. Another company got interested, but they wanted to take the rights. At this point it was a giant sprawling manuscript, it was hardly a book.

Recording Nanette: In the background, Jack Gilford, Ed, and Patsy Kelly. In the foreground, Ruby Keeler.

A writer and blogger named Nick Cavarra told me, “You have to write these stories down. I’m going to announce on my blog that you’re going to write this book, you’ll write a chapter every week, and I’ll publish it on my blog.”

My biggest concern was how to get through the early horrors of my life and get to the Broadway part. I’d hardly submit a big chapter before he’d say, “Where’s the next one?”

I knew the book wasn’t done, and I knew I needed an editor and I needed to interact with somebody about it. At one point, I hired two different editors. Both of them did things that didn’t help with the book. They changed the meaning or altered the intention of a particular line. I ended up having to go back and do it all over again, twice. Still it wasn’t a book.

North Texans know how awesome it is that Ed has worked at Fort Worth’s Casa Mañana with the great Ruta Lee. He got his Equity card there in a show with Ruta in 1969, and years later returned with her in Best Little Whorehouse.

Then a woman offered — she had been at the helm of like forty large books. She said, “This is going to be a huge hit,” and she talked to me for about an hour and half about what it needed to be a book. She said, “Just give me $40 thousand.” I said, “Can’t you take it on the back end?” She said, “No, I need it up front.” That was the end of that conversation – and I paid for dinner! But I realized she’d just talked to me for an hour and a half and said some useful things. I sat down and started writing.

Around this time, I heard a famous writer on TV say that, from now on, he’s going to do nothing but self-publish. I started shopping around for the best self-publishing deal I could find. Dog Ear was the best deal I could find; it looked superior to everybody else. In the end, I got exactly the book I wanted. Still when I was ready to push the button and release the thing, I was in Mexico City with Mary Poppins, and I thought, “Are you really gonna do this?” I thought, “I’m 64 years old, why not?” And I just did it.

Such a cutie. Photo by George Rose himself.

Q: You’ve worked with dozens, even hundreds, of truly fascinating people.

ED: I’ve worked with everybody. I’ve done 15 Broadway shows, and two times I was in two different Broadway shows at the same time! The last time was last year. At this age, you’d think it wouldn’t be possible. At the same time, the Signature Theater is launching my most recent work: all their other writers are 24 years old, and they’re launching my new musical. It’s like a fairy tale, it’s fantastic.

Ed looked a little different as Max in Sunset Boulevard.

Q: There’s such a contrast in your story, because at the time you had a great part [Thénardier] in a hit musical that ran for years [Les Misérables], you were also going through the worst of your addiction.

ED: If it had been any other part, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, but because of the nature of that devious destroyed Machiavellian character, I was able to bring my life experience to it. I was able to keep functioning.

Q: Do you think that was a blessing or a curse?

ED: Who knows? It’s done. This is the life I had. This was the hand I played, the hand I got. It’s what I did. It has made me who I am. Honestly, I do not regret. Within a year after it was over, I thought that was the greatest blessing of my life. My life had been assembled incorrectly. I blew up the whole thing, took every brick and rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up. If it had been any less serious situation, I would have continued as I had been put together. My life now is fantastic, it’s such a blessing. I’m surrounded by people who support me and care about me and offer me jobs and offer me situations. I’m in such a gracious place in my life. And it wouldn’t have been this way, otherwise.

With Kevin Spacey in the acclaimed revival of The Iceman Cometh.

Q: Much as Proust says the past has made him who he is.

ED: Besides, you know, there really isn’t an option this is the way it went, so that’s the way it was supposed to go.

Q: Tell me about Cloak & Dagger.

ED: When I saw The 39 Steps on Broadway, I thought, “Someone needs to take this concept of an extremely theatrical concept with no scenery, a man and a woman and two character men, and make it a musical.” I thought I would take The Maltese Falcon and treat it that way, in about a 90-minute musical. Then I found out it was almost impossible to get the rights, but I thought, “What the hell, I only need the bullet points.”

I came up with a down-and-out detective, a blonde bombshell, and then the two character men. We go uptown, downtown, Chinatown, every possible locale in New York City. It moves at a breakneck pace. The leading character, the detective, is narrating in a 1950s noir style, and then all it takes is a sign that says “Chinatown” and we can move so swiftly. The two character guys play all the other characters, many of whom are in drag, so it’s really fun.

It practically wrote it self. The entire time I wrote it, I was in Mary Poppins, and I had a long break between my scene in Act I and my scene in Act II. I wrote the entire book between scenes in my dressing room, with the Disney Company paying me. That was a very nice turn of events. Next door to me was Ruth Gottschall playing Miss Andrew, and now she’s with me in Sense & Sensibility, and we’re laughing because that piece that I wrote next door is now being done.

Coming soon to a theater near you.
(Or near me, anyway.)

Q: What makes a colleague memorable to you? So memorable that you wind up writing about her?

ED: Ones that really stand out for me are the ones that are loving. I’ve met so many loving people. There are people in the book that that’s not why I chose them – I chose them because they were so unbelievably theatrical, like that business with K.C. Townsend. That whole demise of hers. Was she a loving person? No. She wasn’t a mean person, but that’s not what drew me to her. It was the unbelievable way she ran her life so theatrically.

But somebody like Ann-Margret is such a loving, genuine person. Perhaps “genuine” is an even better word than “loving.” Or Charles Durning: he wasn’t cuddly, but he was so fucking genuine. The way he was, was the way he was. When you were with him, you knew you were with him.

Q: There’s always something so sly about Durning, something going on that we can’t see — except possibly when he dances the “Side Step” in Best Little Whorehouse.

ED: He told me he was so shocked that it took so long for [professional recognition] to happen to him. He had done all of the works of Shakespeare, and nobody knew who he was. When I told him about my drug addiction, I thought, “Oh, gee, I probably shouldn’t have said so much.” He paused and said, “Well, I went crazy!” It was the war!

In rehearsal, ready for his next entrance.

*NOTE: Ed didn’t know Madeline Kahn, but he’s been heroically helpful in tracking down interview subjects for the biography I’m writing.

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Wendy Lawless & ‘Chanel Bonfire’

Wendy Lawless’ Chanel Bonfire is subtitled A Memoir, but really it might have been called “A Thrilling Tale of Survival” or even “A Most Dangerous Book for Girls.” I’ve known Wendy for years, since she began dating a friend from the Columbia Writing Program, David Kidd, and I’ve heard some of the stories she tells here: I even read a couple of chapters in manuscript. Yet I suspect that no amount of familiarity could prepare me for the full impact of Chanel Bonfire.

How on earth did Wendy survive her mother — to say nothing of how Wendy and Dave managed to construct one of the sanest households I know, inhabited by two of the coolest children I know? Wendy’s mother, Georgann Rea, was a monster of narcissism whose pursuit of her own fancy led her to upend and sometimes jeopardize her daughters’ lives again and again; she drank too much and spent too much and dated recklessly. It goes almost without saying that she suffered from mental illness, yet numberless people fell for her most outlandish self-dramatizations. Reading the book, I found myself mentally pronouncing her name “Gorgon.”

Wendy spent much of her youth apologizing for her mother and covering over her worst faults and lapses, largely but not entirely in order to protect her younger sister, Robin. But Wendy has come to terms with the truth now, and by “terms” I do also mean language, and that much at least is no surprise: any actor who can handle the furious wordplay of David Ives’ All in the Timing, as Wendy did Off-Broadway, must wield the language dexterously, and Wendy does.

One of my favorite people —
and now she’ll be one of your favorites, too.

Yet there’s not a single note of bitterness in the book, even when she’s describing, for example, how Georgann kept Wendy and Robin apart from their father for years (telling them he no longer loved them, telling him nothing at all) or how Georgann vamped Wendy’s boyfriend and drove him away. Instead, Wendy writes with a serene objectivity and a healthy dose of wit that led me to call the book “horricomic.” Her prose can be laugh-out-loud funny, even when it’s breaking your heart.

It all seems so glamorous, on the surface, as Georgann indulges in designer clothes and vintage wines and spins around Manhattan nightclubs and London salons. But there are all kinds of price tags attached to those fancy labels. Georgann is indifferent to her daughters when she isn’t actively hostile (and violent, especially toward Robin), and every time she jets off to a new man and a new address, she forces the girls to make their way in another new environment, alone. They’re perpetual outsiders, constantly on the move, and with a military-surgical precision, Georgann cuts her daughters off from everyone they care about, especially adults who might save them: their father, their stepfather, a beloved nanny.

Awful as the details may be, Chanel Bonfire is never depressing, not only because of Wendy’s wryly humorous perspective but perhaps also because at heart the book is a coming-of-age story, and we watch (white-knuckled at times) as Wendy wins her independence from Georgann. It would be rather hard to believe her victory, if we didn’t hold the evidence in our hands. And, as I say, I can testify that, in this regard, Wendy isn’t acting. She’s writing — exceptionally well — and living proudly with her own grace and intelligence.

Further proof of victory: Wendy and Dave’s children
are people you actually enjoy spending time with.
WVM, with a Lawless Kidd, Paris 2008.
Photo by Wendy Lawless©

Chanel Bonfire is available for purchase directly from the publisher, Simon & Schuster, here; you can purchase from Amazon, as well, by clicking here. The website for the book can be found here.

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Stanley Karnow

With malice toward none, with crosswords toward all.
Photo by Catherine Karnow©

Stanley Karnow has died. I knew him for about three decades; for many of those years, he knew me as “Paul Jefferson — you know, Cathy, that boy you went to school with.” But over time, he learned to call me Bill, and we became friends. At one point I was supposed to be his research assistant for a book he never wrote, on Jewish vaudeville comedians, but he was a mentor just the same, particularly because so many of the things I’ve tried are things he’d done already, and excelled at: journalism, writing books, living in France. I sometimes had the feeling that he watched my fitful progress with an especially amused and always affectionate appreciation.

Whether I was Paul or Bill to him, I found it flattering enough to have made any impression on him at all, especially at first. Cathy introduced me to her parents with pleasure and anticipation of my good fortune, a build-up and a kind of drumroll, as one might introduce a school friend to prominent actors or heads of state: if there is one trait the Karnow children share beyond the family name, it is a perfect awareness of how remarkable Stanley and Annette have been.

They were not like other people; I’m pretty sure they never tried to be. Perhaps the trick was that they never tried not to be, either. They were who they were, and they were awfully good at it.

Father and daughter at the Vietnam Memorial.
Washington, July 2009.
Photo courtesy of Catherine Karnow.

We watched them this summer, in a series of film clips that Michael pieced together and in a slide show that Cathy presented, as part of a memorial celebration of Annette, who passed away in 2009. There they are, merrily trotting the globe together, and what struck me was how glamorous and fun they made even the most ordinary activity. Annette was still a beauty to the end, and yet it was almost startling to see her young again: she’s like a movie star whose name you can’t quite remember. And always at her side is Stanley, looking absolutely tickled to be with her.

When at last they settled in Maryland, and I came to know them, I felt that Stanley and Annette’s home was a household and that I was stepping into a kind of living novel, a great family saga peopled with fascinating characters. I’ve had this sense sometimes with other families, but always with the Karnows, and for Stanley of course narrative held a privileged place, not only in the prize-winning books he wrote but also in the stories he told over the table.

In recent years it seemed he was always in the middle of a story and constantly being interrupted by the kids, who remembered the past in their own way or who had heard the story many times already. “Will you just let me finish?” Stanley would holler, and sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t, and sometimes he’d interrupt himself with another story altogether.

Stanley explains it all for you. August 2012.
Photo by WVM.

He was, as you can imagine, the biggest character of them all. He thrived on good food and good wine and good books and better friends. People and politics were puzzles to be solved — but only after he’d finished his crossword in the morning. He had an appetite for argument, and a voice that was made for it, though he did prefer to win. He could tell a joke so slyly you were hardly aware he’d done it: when “People Power” toppled the Marcos government in the Philippines, he told me, “Things are shaping up very nicely for television treatment there.” (He’d already begun his book on the subject, which did in turn become a PBS series.)

He’d traveled from Brooklyn to Harvard to Paris to Algiers to Hong Kong and Saigon and Manila; he’d rubbed elbows with starlets and philosophers, potentates and peasants, because really, what else would you do with your life?

Thus it’s no surprise that the kids wound up doing exceptional things, too. Photographing victims of Agent Orange — not to mention Prince Charles. Creating television series. Deciding the law. After all, what else would they do?

And yet the achievement for which I’m most grateful to the Karnows is simply this: they shared their parents with me. I’m proud to be Paul Jefferson.

Extended family portrait, August 2012

In 2009, Stanley and I had a long talk about his career, his books, and the world as he’d lived in it. You can find the first part of that interview here; the second part is here. Stanley’s Amazon page — which at the time of this writing omits a few of his books — can be found here.

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