by Wasson, Sam
Aside from being one of the best shows in town, year-round and forever, the New York Public Library’s Theatre on Film and Tape Archive is the Père Lachaise of Broadway history. This book’s readers know why TOFT has almost zero Fosse, but the archive seems to have just about everything else, and for free, all week (except Sundays and Mondays). Sitting in those little cubicles, I come close to patriotism. Thank you, Patrick Hoffman and the rest of the gang at TOFT. And thank you, Ned Comstock, senior library assistant at USC’s Cinematic Arts Library. Everyone in the movie-book business knows and owes Ned. Late in the game, I called him with a long-shot question, and he came through in a way that was so extravagant, I don’t want to print it here for fear that no one interested in MGM will ever stop calling him.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library made this possible. Aside from being the best in the world, the facility has a beauty and serenity that actually elevates research to a sensual plane. As always, chatting with Sondra Archer down at the periodicals was a welcome relief, and Jenny Romero and Barbara Hall, hidden away like Oz, saved me more than once. Thank you all.
From the Margaret Herrick I go up La Cienega, past the Point Blank apartments, to the Beloved Infidel house, where a couple of infidels live at point-blank range to some very crisp drinks and a view of the city that should make Mulholland feel bad about itself. Herein dwell Freeman and Gingold, F. Scott and Zelda if they’d lived longer and converted to Judaism. Every evening chez GingFree is blessedly the same, and it has been for years. As the night goes on and the porch gets cooler, we move our drinks inside and start talking about dinner, whether we’ll go for Chinese at Genghis Cohen or to Musso’s (we pick Genghis), and then David calls ahead for a table and we go. The rest of the evening is spent in a black booth eating, drinking, debating, remembering. The same names come up. Hitchcock, Wilder, Mitchum, the writer Phil Dunne, Mazursky, Tony Richardson. They are our favorite songs. Sometimes we’ll be joined by Lynne Littman, Sarah Shepard, or Jack Dolman. The others are less fortunate but no less worthy. They are Jeanine Basinger, Pablo Davanzo, Lisa Dombrowski, Maria Diaz, Bob Dolman, the Goldblatts, Alex Horwitz, Lauren Kirchner, Andrea Martin, Nicky Martin, Jocelyn Medawar, Lynn Povich, Steve Shepard, Mom, Dad, and Sophie. Thank you for asking about Fosse and, in most cases, letting me give a long answer before you even asked. Your interest and encouragement made the small victories bigger, especially in the case of Freeman, this book’s Tom Hagen, and Mom, Dad, and Sophie, this book’s Mom, Dad, and Sister. They were flares in the dark.
And also Marie Grass Amenta, Jeffrey Banks, Nikki Donen, Judy James, Nick Kazan, Jacqueline Mention, Mike Ovitz, Rick Pappas, Tracy Roe, Meg Rutenberg, Gil and Joanne Segel, Martin Short, Sally Bedell Smith, and Kenneth Turan. You did mitzvahs. Thank you.
Thank you to Kathy Robbins, whom I must owe a thousand favors. It’s hard to tell because, like Zorro or Santa Claus, she works in the shadows and never breaks a sweat. Thank you, Kathy. And thank you to my friends at the Robbins Office, Arielle Asher, Rachelle Bergstein, Katherine DiLeo, Michael Gillespie, Micah Hauser, Ian King, and Louise Quayle. I’m relieved you are behind me and proud that you want to be.
Thank you to Jon Cassir and Matthew Snyder at CAA, who got tough but stayed soft, who reexplained for the billionth time, who had instant faith and never let it wane.
And thank you, thank you, Genevieve, clown-warrior.
SAM WASSON
JUNE 2013
Notes
I AM FORTUNATE NOT to be Bob Fosse’s first biographer. An intrepid guide, Martin Gottfried’s trailblazing All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse (New York: Bantam, 1990) cut the thicket ahead of me and unearthed bones where I might never have shoveled. Now priceless, his interviews with witnesses long gone helped to recover parts of Fosse that would otherwise be gone for good, and his judicious recounting of events served them well. A complete inventory of the Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon Collection at the Library of Congress is available online at http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/special/fosse.html. In this section, the abbreviation LOC, followed by a box number, refers to the library’s Fosse/Verdon Collection.
Ethan Mordden’s magnificent multivolume history of the Broadway musical enlarged my sense of the bigger pictures and brushed up my Shakespeare (and my Abbott and Robbins and Sondheim). Tracing the musical’s artistic, cultural, and industrial progress (and regression) from the golden age to the dark age, and in many cases re-creating, magically, the century’s high points in drama, music, and dance, Mordden was the dream Emcee/professor and a blast to read.
THE END
[>] the Empress: LOC, box 1A, folder 5, All That Jazz research, Paddy Chayefsky interview.
[>] miniature black derby: Ben Vereen, interview with the author, January 11, 2011.
[>] “Bob always said”: Alan Heim, interview with the author, July 22, 2010.
[>] he’d RSVP’d no: Jerome Robbins Papers, box 507, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the New York Library for the Performing Arts.
[>] “If there is an afterlife”: Herb Gardner, Bob Fosse Memorial, Palace Theater, October 30, 1987, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Theatre on Film and Tape Archive.
[>] more likely to show up: Gwen Verdon interview, Dance in America, WNET archives, September 6, 1989.
[>] He would have called Hamill and asked him: Pete Hamill, Bob Fosse Memorial, Palace Theater, October 30, 1987, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Theatre on Film and Tape Archive.
[>] “This is incredibly sad”: Arlene Donovan, interview with the author, January 10, 2011.
[>] “I’m having the best time”: Alan Ladd Jr., interview with the author, June 7, 2010.
[>] “It was as if he was orchestrating it”: James Barron, “Follow-Up on the News,” New York Times, December 20, 1987.
[>] “with Fosse’s ghost”: Martin Gottfried, All His Jazz (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1998; first published by Bantam in 1990), 460. Citations refer to the Da Capo edition.
[>] In a quiet room: Phoebe Ungerer, interview with the author, December 13, 2012.
[>] Suddenly Ben Vereen: Ben Vereen, interview with the author, January 11, 2011.
[>] Reinking followed with Nicole: John Rubinstein, interview with the author, September 30, 2010.
[>] Fosse’s three women moved closer: Kathryn Doby, interview with the author, November 27, 2010.
SIXTY YEARS
[>] He was losing to the blank page:602 Archer Winsten, “Rages and Outrages,” New York Post, March 4, 1972.
[>] “By the time I was born”: “Bob Fosse,” The Dick Cavett Show, PBS, July 8, 1980.
[>] “It was probably one”: Ibid.
[>] When Richard died: Robert Wahls, “Bob Who? Bob Fosse!,” New York Sunday News, November 26, 1972.
[>] local Norwegian choral group: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “[Cy] would always eat”: Ann Reinking, interview with the author, November 15, 2010.
[>] 235-pound former spear-carrying: Barry Rehfeld, “Bob Fosse’s Follies,” Rolling Stone, January 19, 1984.
[>] “My mother was”: Bernard Drew, “Life as a Long Rehearsal,” American Film, November 1979.
[>] Sadie had a heart problem: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Asthma too: Rehfeld, “Bob Fosse’s Follies.”
[>] early attacks of pneumonia: Ibid.
[>] Lenny Bruce said: John Cohen, ed., The Essential Lenny Bruce (New York: Ballantine Books, 1967), 102.
[>] Sadie Fosse lived in fear: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “If I get pneumonia”: Ibid.
[>] They were a bouncy bunch: Ibid.
[>] “He used to tell me”: Linda Winer, “Shade of Bob Fosse Raised by ‘Chicago,’” Newsday, November 22, 1996.
[>] “That was one of the reasons”: “Bob Fosse,” The Dick Cavett Show.
[>] “Bob was the favo
rite”: Ann Reinking, interview with the author, November 15, 2010.
[>] “I was a good kid”: Rehfeld, “Bob Fosse’s Follies.”
[>] “I come from a big family”: Chris Chase, “Fosse, from Tony to Oscar to Emmy,” New York Times, April 29, 1973.
[>] He was told to escort: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2010.
[>] “I had a crush”: “Bob Fosse,” The Dick Cavett Show.
[>] She simply did not: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] rumored to have led: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] studied music theory with: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “I, the undersigned”: Grass/Weaver Agreement, undated. Collection of Charles Grass.
[>] “Mr. Weaver taught us how”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] A sign on the wall said: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] “And remember this” and following: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Behind Weaver’s desk: Dorothy Kloss, interview with the author, December 2, 2010.
A real-life Chicago vaudevillian: Ibid.
[>] “She filled me with”: Bob Fosse, Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, NBC, January 31, 1980.
[>] circus performers: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Fosse seemed to disappear: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] “They would accept”: Fosse, Tomorrow with Tom Snyder.
[>] “He was always told”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Bobby was reprimanded: Ibid.
[>] In Fosse’s first: Program, Chicago’s Medinah Country Club, June 15, 1936. Collection of Charles Grass.
[>] Thus Sadie and Cy: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] In November 1937: Martin Gottfried, All His Jazz (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1998; first published by Bantam in 1990), 11. Citations refer to the Da Capo edition.
[>] “Mr. Weaver really watched us”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “He’d furrow his little eyebrows”: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] Astaire and Rogers held the movie slot: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Some said it was a fad—they were wrong: For more on the history of vaudeville, see Charles W. Stein’s American Vaudeville as Seen by Its Contemporaries (New York: Knopf, 1984), a rich and colorful compendium of primary-source documents chronicling vaudeville’s fifty-year rise and fall.
[>] “He wanted to dance with him”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “Weaver didn’t care where he put”: Dorothy Kloss, interview with the author, December 2, 2010.
[>] “When we started performing”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] After piling into Weaver’s sedan: Ibid.
[>] “I played every two-bit beer joint”: William Glover, “A Director Full of Tricks,” Los Angeles Examiner, December 11, 1968.
[>] “The booker would call you up”: American Musical Theater with Earl Wrightson, CBS, January 1, 1962.
[>] At ten dollars a night: “Bob Fosse,” The Dick Cavett Show.
[>] He went to the movies: Drew, “Life as a Long Rehearsal.”
[>] The grade-schooler took out: Jan Herman, “Close Up: Bob Fosse,” Daily News, April 6, 1986.
[>] In the house were: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] his father drank himself to sleep: Gottfried, All His Jazz, 36.
[>] his mother put herself to bed early: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] In the summers he shaved: Ann Reinking, interview with the author, November 15, 2010.
[>] “He loved her so much”: Ibid.
[>] One Easter morning: Ibid.
[>] Weaver upgraded that same year: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “In those days”: Ibid.
[>] Fosse also kept quiet his crush: Ibid.
[>] “Dancing at that age”: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] “He treated me like family”: Ibid.
[>] “All of a sudden, she was gone”: Ibid.
[>] “It was another man”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] liked the look: Gottfried, All His Jazz, 24.
[>] “Ever since I was young”: Linda Winer, “Bob Fosse: The Razzle-Dazzle Director Is Planning to Jazz Up Broadway with His New ‘Deal,’” USA Today, October 30, 1985.
[>] converted to Christian Science: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] smoked his while hiding: Ibid.
FORTY-FIVE YEARS
[>] “As a teenager in high school”: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] Mary Vagos, Mary Farmakis, and Melvene Fitzpatrick: Martin Gottfried, All His Jazz (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1998; first published by Bantam in 1990), 34. Citations refer to the Da Capo edition. Also, Kevin Boyd Grubb, Razzle Dazzle: The Life and Work of Bob Fosse (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
[>] “He had two lives”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Fosse knew right away: “Bob Fosse,” The Dick Cavett Show, PBS, July 8, 1980.
[>] It didn’t get any classier: Ibid.
[>] “I think that [Draper] was probably”: Paul Draper on Tap, directed by Roger Englander, telecast by Camera Three, WGBH Boston, 1979.
[>] “When the war came along”: George Goldberg, “Bob Fosse, Not an Ordinary Man,” Faces International, Summer 1985.
[>] that burlesque: Actual and authentic burlesque culture, before the modern imagination reclaimed (and misread) basement sleaze as female empowerment, survives in Leslie Zemeckis’s documentary Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America.
[>] “The more we talked about him”: Grubb, Razzle Dazzle, 8–9.
[>] “There wasn’t much dancing”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] His mother and father didn’t really know: Moira Hodgson, “When Bob Fosse’s Art Imitates Life, It’s Just ‘All That Jazz,’” New York Times, December 30, 1979.
[>] Mrs. Grass, their stage mother: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “They’re not nice girls”: Ibid.
[>] preyed on him before the show: Paul Gardner, “Bob Fosse Off His Toes,” New York, December 16, 1974.
[>] When the girls found out: Ibid.
[>] In the tense seconds: Ibid.
[>] “They were affectionate”: Janice Lynde, interview with the author, May 4, 2011.
[>] “I can romanticize it”: Bob Fosse interview, Datebook, September 2, 1979.
[>] “It was schizophrenic”: Chris Chase, “Fosse’s Ego Trip,” Life, November 1979.
[>] “It just wasn’t the same world”: Lionel Chetwynd, “Except for Bob Fosse,” Penthouse, January 1974.
[>] at the Cuban Village: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] “Bob could charm his way anywhere”: Ann Reinking, interview with the author, November 15, 2010.
[>] “She thought you could send”: Hodgson, “When Bob Fosse’s Art Imitates Life.”
[>] “I panicked at the time”: Bruce Williamson, “All That Fosse,” Playboy, March 1980.
[>] bottom-feeding hoods: Lisa Krissoff Boehm details Chicago’s myth and image problems in Popular Culture and the Enduring Myth of Chicago, 1871–1968 (New York: Routledge, 2004).
[>] “In 1933 the world will talk”: Address of May
or L. R. Lohr Delivered Over Radio Station WGN, July 10, 1929, second personal scrapbook of Lenox Lohr, box 29, Century of Progress Papers, University of Illinois at Chicago Library.
[>] “The oversized fan poked fun”: Rachel Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 147.
[>] “He was fascinated with Sally Rand”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] use pitch-black ostrich feathers: Fan dance photograph in LOC, box 60A, folder “Fosse, First Choreography Job.”
[>] “was very sophisticated”: Beth Kellough Vandenboom, interview with the author, January 5, 2013.
[>] “But I like those sequins”: Williamson, “All That Fosse.”
[>] “Whenever I get close”: Hodgson, “When Bob Fosse’s Art Imitates Life.”
[>] “Chairman of senior class”: “Nominate Star Seniors at Six N. Side Highs: Tribune Will Query Class Choices,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 31, 1944.
[>] The students elected him: “Star Seniors Lay Plans, But Put War First: Several Interested in Journalism,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 14, 1945.
[>] Consisting mostly of sketches and songs: Gottfried, All His Jazz, 30.
[>] “I think they didn’t believe”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] took his baby brother: Ibid.
[>] “No, no”: Ibid.
[>] Fosse’s brothers had all served in the war: “Star Seniors Lay Plans.”
[>] “wrote to the Great Lakes”: Charles Grass, interview with the author, September 4, 2012.
[>] Disguised as an ordinary high-school student: “6 N. Side Highs Will Graduate 1,240 Seniors: Lane Technical Tops List With 313,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 21, 1945.