by Susan Lucci
CHAPTER 10
Life Is a Cabaret
Shortly after I was featured in a TV Guide article in June 1971, I received a call on the set of All My Children asking if I’d like to cohost a local New York City morning show with Alan Alda, who was filling in for the regular host. This was my very first appearance on a talk show since being cast as Erica Kane. I wasn’t even a guest—I was a cohost! It was thrilling to be asked, but even more thrilling to have the opportunity to work with Alan. He was an absolute dream and an effortless, gracious cohost. He, of course, recognized that I had never done anything like this before and made it very easy for me to relax. Anytime you get a chance to work with a professional like Alan, it is an ideal setup to go on and do more of the same.
I met Regis Philbin for the first time in the early seventies when he was hosting A.M. Los Angeles. His producers asked me to come on his show and do something domestic because it was so against Erica’s nature. I was newly married and All My Children had just made its debut. It is fair to say that my husband was the real cook in our family. Helmut and I always laugh about my attempts in the kitchen during the early days of our marriage, which is a good thing, because if we hadn’t laughed at my earnest efforts, we might have gotten into some very dramatic exchanges. Frankly, we are a perfect match because Helmut loves to cook and I love to eat, especially the foods he makes.
When we were first married, I didn’t know how to cook anything. I wanted to prepare delicious meals for my husband, but I lacked the skills and knowledge to pull it off. All I knew how to cook was spaghetti sauce, tuna casserole, and frozen chicken potpies. The first time I made dinner for us as a married couple, I was in the kitchen stirring canned mushroom soup into my fabulous tuna casserole, when Helmut came up behind me at the stove, looked over my shoulder into the pot, and said, “I love you, honey, but I can’t eat that shit!”
Thinking I had to up the ante, I attempted to make a roast pork dish because I knew it was one of the national dishes of Austria. I mistakenly ordered a smoked pork from the butcher and tried to roast it. I didn’t know the difference between these two varieties of pork, so I popped it in the oven and turned it into a completely inedible piece of shoe leather that smelled nearly as bad as it tasted.
I made another effort to surprise Helmut, this time with a beautiful apple strudel, which was a total disaster as well. I had been inspired by watching Helmut’s sister-in-law Erna make this dish in Austria. Erna is the quintessential European wife. She works, comes home, irons, cooks, and keeps the most gorgeous home. I admire her very much, and as a young newlywed, I wanted to be just like she was around our house. Erna spread her dough out on her kitchen table, sharing with me that you cannot work it too much or it will get too hard. I watched her every move, carefully taking notes so I could re-create her strudel for Helmut when we got back to New York.
The first time I tried to make the strudel on my own, I was in the kitchen for five hours. I should have known right then and there that something was very wrong. By the time I finished, my eyes were bloodshot and I was unable to really “see” what I had created. I thought it looked pretty good for a first attempt. I was very proud of my finished product.
Helmut took one look at it and said, “Honey, you have a gift for being an actress. I’m a cook. Why don’t we stick to the things we know.”
And you know what? I think that has been one of the secrets to making our marriage last for more than forty years.
So, when Regis’s producers were looking for something for me to do on his show, we ruled out a cooking segment pretty quickly. Thankfully, my mother was very good at flower arranging, especially ikebana, a traditional form of Japanese flower design. With some quick tips from my mother, I figured I could pull something like that off, so I agreed to go on the show to create a floral masterpiece. The segment was terrific.
Just as Alan Alda had done before, Regis made me feel like I belonged on a talk show. I will never forget how warm and encouraging he was. He was fully aware of my work on All My Children, even back then, and has remained totally supportive of me throughout the years. He is very funny, always makes me laugh, and is absolutely wonderful.
Many people credit Regis Philbin with coining my nickname, “La Lucci”—and while it is true that he was the first to publicly call me that, long before he and I met, I was often called to the set of All My Children as La Lucci by one of the producers or director. Somewhere over the course of time, La Lucci became my moniker at our show. Whenever actors are wanted on the set, someone announces it over a loudspeaker so you know your scenes are coming up next.
“Next up, item twelve, Phoebe, Chuck, Mona, Tara, and Erica—LaLucci to the set, please” was quite common.
It wasn’t until Regis began calling me La Lucci outside the set of All My Children that the name became so well known. Ever since then, it has just stuck. It feels so natural whenever I hear it. It’s become so synonymous with Susan Lucci that there’s even a La Lucci panini named for me at Hoffman’s deli in my hometown.
Regis Philbin and I became very friendly over the years. Although we don’t socialize that much, we do occasionally see each other at functions in New York or meet for dinner. Now that I am in Los Angeles, those opportunities are rare, but I always look forward to spending time with him and his gorgeous wife, Joy, who I think is a great lady. There is a lot of warmth between us.
Much to my surprise and delight, Regis and Joy attended my opening night of Annie Get Your Gun. After the show, he came backstage to congratulate me. It was on that same night that he broached the subject of doing a nightclub act with him.
“Are you asking me to open for you?” I replied, thrilled at the prospect, but not sure I was really hearing what I was hearing.
“I don’t want you to think of it as opening for me—let’s do an act together.” He was being very kind and generous.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a nightclub act. I thought it was really great that Regis was proposing that I do one with him, but I had never tried anything like this before. I had just enjoyed my first night performing live on Broadway. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to jump right into another commitment. I graciously thanked Regis for the offer, but thought it wasn’t the right thing to do at the time.
“C’mon, Susan. Let’s do this. Why don’t you get an act together and we’ll take it on the road!” he coaxed.
It didn’t take a lot of cajoling before I said, “Okay.” I explained that I needed to get through my commitment to the Weisslers, but when I was done, this would become my next project.
John McDaniel was the first person I thought to call. I knew he would know just how to put together an act. We began working together in his downtown Manhattan loft. John and I shared our thoughts on song selection and style. We picked a wide variety of music that worked for my key and range, including “If I Were a Bell,” “You Better Love Me While You May,” “I Can Cook Too,” and Marvin Hamlisch’s original composition for me, “Winning Isn’t Everything.”
John had access to the very best musicians in the city and used his influence to get them to agree to accompany me using his orchestrations. He was absolutely terrific to work with because he helped me get out of my comfort zone and challenged me to create this type of show. This nightclub act was another dream come true.
We decided I’d do my first show at Feinstein’s, an intimate venue inside the Regency Hotel in New York City, where I’d perform for two consecutive weeks in late September and early October 2001. I was very excited about the show. However, the closer we got to those dates, the more nervous I became. Once again, I wasn’t sure I was totally up to the task at hand. I had been working hard all summer on the material, but as the show dates loomed, so did my nerves.
I went to work on the morning of September 11, 2001, as if it were just another beautiful sunny day in New York City. The skies were the bluest of blue without a single cloud in sight. There was a crisp fall feel in the air as I made my way from the car in
to the studio on the west side of Manhattan. Shortly after I arrived in the hair and makeup room, I saw on one of the monitors that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. Val Reichenbach, my hairstylist, and I looked at each other, asking, “How could this happen?” It was a picture-perfect day outside. We started formulating various theories. Maybe the pilot was lost or had a heart attack and died. We didn’t realize what was really happening. How could we?
Fifteen minutes later, we all understood that this was not an accident. It was shortly after nine o’clock in the morning, when a second plane crashed into the other tower. Something inside me knew right away that this was the handiwork of terrorists.
When that second plane hit, we all felt immediately vulnerable. The largest Red Cross in Manhattan was located just a few blocks away and Con Ed was across the street. We had no idea if that made our neighborhood a target or not. Still, our beloved city was under attack and there was nothing we could do. Word of what had just happened began to spread around the set. There was no protocol for this. We had no idea what we were supposed to do next.
Were we supposed to keep working?
Would it be better to stop and try to get home to our loved ones?
Although we were hearing bits and pieces of what was happening practically outside our stage door, no one in the studio had really clued in to the impact or severity of the situation quite yet. There were still people arguing about where to move a set or when to get a camera in place. It all felt so wrong. I wanted to make some phone calls, to check on my family, but I was told that cell service was out and getting through on a landline was next to impossible. When I tried to use my phone anyway, for whatever reason, it worked. I was able to reach Helmut and then Liza at her apartment on the east side of Manhattan, and then Andreas, who was at school in Georgetown. I was worried that he would wake up and hear what was happening in New York from someone else. I wanted him to know we were all fine. I had no idea that he would soon be dealing with another crash, at the Pentagon, a short distance from where he was living.
I told Andreas to go to the college campus and stay there. I wanted him to be with his friends. I lost our connection right after telling him that. I tried to call him back, but there was no service. There was only silence.
My inclination was to go to the basement of our building, where the production offices were located, so I could check on everyone down there. It didn’t take long before we were all gathered in the basement and watching together as the world changed in front of our eyes.
Once both towers came down, we were asked to stay in the building until two o’clock that afternoon. Everyone on the set was very emotional and in pieces. There was so much anxiety about the safety of our loved ones, but we all hung in there together.
When we temporarily lost power in the studio, people began talking about whether or not we should keep working or go home. Canceling a day of shooting can cost a network hundreds of thousands of dollars. It simply isn’t done. Once the power was restored, it was decided that we would try to carry on and keep shooting. That decision reminded me of the play I did in high school a few days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when we were told that the show must go on. So, as wrong as it felt, the cast and crew at All My Children did what we were told to do and tried to get through that very sad day. But despite everyone’s best efforts, we just couldn’t do it. The cast and crew—everyone was in tears. This was the second and only other time in my career that the show did not go on.
We stayed in the building and waited, trying to reach our families while making our plans to get home. There were a number of us who had gathered in the hair and makeup room that day. Jack Scalia, who played Chris Stamp, was among them. I vividly remember us looking at each other and saying, “The world will never be the same.”
New York City was on full lockdown. The airspace had been closed, the bridges and tunnels were blocked, and the subways padlocked shut. There was no possibility of getting back to Garden City that day. Thankfully, our wardrobe department was able to outfit almost everyone with comfortable walking shoes, sneakers, and anything else we needed to make the trek to wherever we could get to after leaving the studio.
“No-No”—our wonderful and warmhearted wardrobe mistress whose real name was Nanette, but everyone called her No-No—had a car in the city and offered to drive as many people home as she could fit. I took her up on her offer to drive through Central Park and drop me off at Liza’s apartment.
When we finally all piled into No-No’s car and got to the east side, it was as if no one there knew what was happening. It was strange and surreal. Some of the stores were still open, so I stopped and bought a dozen bagels just in case Liza and her friends needed them to hold them over for a few days. I had no idea about the far-reaching impact of the attacks on New York City. No one did.
As the grim situation continued to unfold, like many of my fellow New Yorkers, I wanted to go downtown and offer help, but since I am not a nurse or a medic, I knew there wasn’t much I would be able to do, and truth be told, there wasn’t much to do. However, the show gathered sweatshirts and other items from the wardrobe department and brought them to the Red Cross to distribute to volunteers.
By six o’clock that night, we heard that the Triborough Bridge had been reopened and we could leave the city to go home. We piled into a borrowed SUV and made our way toward Long Island. When we were crossing the bridge, I looked behind me at my beautiful city. There were two gaping holes in the skyline and billowing smoke that had created the darkest cloud I had ever seen over the lower third of Manhattan—one I never want to see again.
A week or two later, I was asked to participate in a television commercial that would help the country and the rest of the world know that New York City was alive and open for business. Since I had been on Broadway, they asked me to assemble with the “Help Broadway” community to bring audiences back to New York. After the attacks of 9/11, all of the Broadway shows had gone dark, resulting in millions of dollars in losses every single day. Theater is an important tourism draw in New York City. And, for a time, people were afraid to come.
I felt so happy to be involved in this promotion. Joel Gray, Bernadette Peters, and Michele Lee were just a few of the Broadway greats who participated. On the day we were set to shoot the commercial, we were all being held in one of the local theaters until the producers were ready for us to head out to the heart of Times Square, where the piece was to be shot. I sat next to Michele Lee, who is a marvelous performer and someone who I knew had lots of experience doing nightclub acts. I told her I was working on a nightclub act, too.
“Where are you trying it out?” she asked.
It wasn’t a strange question, but it threw me for a loop because I didn’t expect it. Was I supposed to try my act out? I was so focused on working at All My Children during the day and then singing at night with Joan Lader, my voice teacher, that I’d never considered the notion of testing the show outside of Manhattan.
“I haven’t done that yet,” I said.
“Oh.” That was her response.
Uh-oh was the first thing that came to my mind as I felt my stomach sink right down to my toes.
I felt ridiculous. I was scheduled to open at Feinstein’s in a couple of weeks and I hadn’t tried the show out in a “soft opening” anywhere. Michele was absolutely right. But I momentarily reassured myself by recalling all the challenges I had successfully met before. I have always given my all to everything I do, I reasoned. So I might as well do this big, too, right? I suppose that type of thinking was really my lack of experience talking. I had no idea how much you learn each night that you perform. I am used to working quickly—even when I did Annie Get Your Gun, I essentially learned my part in three weeks. I live in a world where I am handed a new script every day. I am expected to learn that script, rehearse it, shoot the scenes, and move on. It never dawned on me that people actually take their time and work through the kinks before they open at one
of the top venues in New York City. Besides, with everything that was happening in the world, maybe the question wasn’t “Should I have tested the show somewhere else?” Maybe the question was “Is this the right time to do the show at all?” But then I remembered why we were all sitting in the theater that day. We were promoting tourism and bringing visitors back to New York City. If I didn’t go on with the show as planned, I’d be giving in to the terrorists. I wasn’t going to let that happen. No, I would find the strength and courage to do something that would make people feel good again. So once more, the show would go on.