Civil libertarians and disgruntled city agencies fired away at Baumgarten. But he had cover—the Midtown Citizens Committee. “We could not have done what we did without the backing of Jerry Schoenfeld and the Shuberts and the committee,” Baumgarten said. “Having that group of prominent citizens behind us gave us political power. If we didn’t have their backing, we would have been considered a bunch of renegades going off and doing our own thing. But we had Jerry and others, including Alex Cohen, the producer, supporting us. They could not be ignored.”
Which is not to say all criticism was muted. One misstep involved the Shuberts and Cohen. The police department had a rule that an undercover officer could not disrobe to obtain a solicitation from a prostitute. The rule had been in place for years, going back to a time when the police force was largely Irish and the Catholic Church thought it immoral for a policeman to remove his clothes in a whorehouse. The hookers got wise to the rule and “the minute a guy walked in, they’d say, ‘Take off your clothes,’ ” said Baumgarten. “If they refused, they knew the guy was a cop.”
Then Baumgarten remembered an incident that had occurred at the Commodore Hotel on Forty-Second Street (the site of the Hyatt next to Grand Central Terminal today). The Archdiocese of New York held all of its functions at the hotel. But there was a whorehouse on the mezzanine, and when Cardinal Cooke found out about it, he told the hotel to get rid of the place or the church would take its business elsewhere. The hotel hired a law firm to start an eviction proceeding. The law firm flooded the whorehouse with private investigators, who later gave affidavits to the court about sex acts. The hotel was granted an eviction order.
Private investigators were not, of course, subject to the police union’s no-disrobing policy. Baumgarten wondered if his task force could employ private investigators. But he worried that the private investigators could lose their licenses by engaging in illegal sexual encounters. Baumgarten sought guidance from the secretary of state of New York, who licenses private detectives. The secretary was Baumgarten’s old friend from their Queens neighborhood—Mario Cuomo. “I sent Mario a formal letter asking for an opinion whether using private investigators to engage in sexual acts in order to close up offending premises would endanger their licenses,” Baumgarten said. “And I got back a formal reply saying it was perfectly okay.”
Then the question arose of how to pay for the private investigators. It was not, after all, an approved line in the task force’s budget. Baumgarten turned to his two ardent supporters—Jerry Schoenfeld and Alex Cohen. They went out and raised private funds, much of it from the Shubert Organization and the League of New York Theatres and Producers, to pay for the private detectives. “We used them for six months, and really knocked the hell out of a lot of places where the cops couldn’t do anything,” said Baumgarten.
But the program remained controversial. Robert Morgenthau said the practice would “repel and disgust” a grand jury.8 Beame ordered Baumgarten to discontinue it “immediately.” Baumgarten himself came under heavy criticism for what detractors called “Nadjari-like tactics,” a reference to Maurice Nadjari, the zealous special prosecutor.
Another controversy—embarrassing to Schoenfeld and his Midtown Citizens Committee—erupted when Baumgarten discovered that Seymour Durst, one of the most prominent members of the committee, owned the notorious Luxor Baths, Times Square’s largest whorehouse.
Durst said he’d take care of the situation, which he did by selling the building to Betty Vicedomini, the madam running the whorehouse. Baumgarten and Schoenfeld were furious. “We threw him off the committee,” Baumgarten said. “The mayor made the announcement that he was resigning.” Durst laughed it off, telling the Times, “I hear I’ve just lost another job.” Schoenfeld, who considered Durst a good friend, never spoke to him again.
Despite relentless press criticism (Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein thought Baumgarten was a First Amendment–trampling “ogre”), the controversial use of private detectives, and the embarrassing Vicedomini-Durst affair, Baumgarten’s task force was effective. More than two hundred sex stores and massage parlors shut down, never to reopen. But when Ed Koch was elected mayor in 1977 he unceremoniously dumped Baumgarten. “Just before he was sworn in, somebody walked into my office and said, ‘Give me the keys to your car and clear out.’ Swear to God. He took my city car. I had to ask my wife to come in from Long Island and pick me up.” Koch dispensed with the sharp-elbowed Baumgarten, but he kept the Midtown Enforcement Project. He replaced Baumgarten with another lawyer, Carl Weisbrod, who was far more sensitive to ruffled feathers.
“Syd probably did a lot of things right, and a lot of things wrong,” said Weisbrod. “But it was, to his credit, the start of a sustained effort to address Times Square’s problems. We continued a lot of the innovative civil enforcement techniques that Syd introduced, although in a much more collaborative way with the district attorney and the police department. I would have to have been Attila the Hun to be hated more than Syd was.”
Weisbrod took a more expansive view of his new job. The focus should not be solely on the sex industry, he thought. You could drive the smut out, but law enforcement crackdowns could only get you so far. Businesses, legitimate businesses, had to be lured to Times Square for the neighborhood to thrive. And that meant redevelopment. Schoenfeld was coming to the same conclusion. On a trip to Washington, D.C., he met with officials at the U.S. Department of Commerce. They told him, “You have to create a climate for redevelopment in the theater district and Times Square.”
In December 1977, at Schoenfeld’s urging, the League released its first serious study about Broadway and its economic influence on the city. It was titled The Broadway Theatre: A Key to the Redevelopment of Times Square, and it began: “Wherever one travels the transcendent image that emerges of New York City is Times Square. This gateway to America, whose music and comedy attract millions yearly, is now playing a tragedy whose sets are vacant hotels and buildings, whose players are prostitutes and pimps, and whose theme is sex, crime and violence. The unfavorable notices warn of retardation in the exceptional growth rate Broadway has experienced over the last four years (100 percent), and the phenomenal increase in tourism it has generated.”
The League pointed out that Broadway was the “single greatest” tourist attraction in New York, generating $217 million annually for the city. The theater business boosted revenues for restaurants, hotels, taxis, parking lots, airfares, bus rentals, and tours. But, the report concluded, Broadway’s attraction was being undermined by the sex, crime, and violence engulfing Times Square. Redevelopment—improving “the physical and ambient qualities of . . . Times Square in order to foster public confidence”—was the solution.
Soon, a project would come along that both the city and the Shuberts could embrace, a new hotel, in the heart of Times Square, designed by an architect who believed in airy but insular urban spaces that kept tourists safe from the filth on the streets.
• • •
The effort to rehabilitate Times Square was underway by the late 1970s, though it would take another fifteen years before tourists would consider the Crossroads of the World as safe and fun as a theme park in Orlando. The perception of Broadway, however, changed sooner. The turning point was a 1978 television commercial featuring actors from Broadway shows, a catchy jingle, and a slogan that became famous all over the world.
Success has many fathers, and the I Love New York campaign is no different. It seems that every New Yorker who had anything to do with government, marketing, public relations, or Broadway in the late 1970s was the genius behind it.
Publicist Bobby Zarem, the “superflack” of the seventies, was walking home in January 1976 after a late-night dinner at Elaine’s when he “realized you could roll a quarter down Second Avenue and there wasn’t a car or a person to stop it.” The city Zarem fell in love with as a boy in Savannah, Georgia—the city of the Stork Club and the Copacabana, Walter Winchell and Broadway—“was dead and dr
opping into the East River.”
Zarem wanted to do something. He claims he came up with the I Love New York slogan that night. On Monday morning he wrote a proposal for a campaign to save New York. It was inspired by the one thing New York had that no other city had—Broadway. The first three people he wrote to for help were producers Alex Cohen, David Merrick, and Hal Prince. “Alex and David never wrote back,” he said. “Hal Prince did, but he said he was in Boston with Pacific Overtures, and couldn’t get involved with anything else right now.” Eventually, Zarem got his proposal to Charles Moss, creative director of the advertising agency Wells Rich Greene. The agency took charge of the campaign and got Albany on board.
That’s one version of how it all began. Here’s another. Accepting her award as a New York City Living Landmark in 2013, Mary Wells Lawrence, a founder of Wells Rich Greene, recalled having lunch with Governor Hugh Carey after Ford, in Daily News parlance, told the city to drop dead. Carey was upset. “I love New York so much,” he said. “If I get your agency a lot of money can you make everybody love New York?”
Wherever the truth lies, everybody credits Charles Moss and William Doyle, deputy commissioner of the Department of Commerce, for putting the campaign together. Moss called Steve Karmen, who’d written many jingles for Wells Rich Greene clients, including Budweiser and Nationwide (“is on your side”). Moss told him, “We’re doing a campaign for the state. The line is ‘I Love New York.’ We need a song. Call me tomorrow.” Karmen, born and raised in Brooklyn, sat down at his piano and began his jingle with a dramatic and catchy major ninth chord. He finished it that afternoon and sang it over the phone to Moss the next day. Moss gave him the green light to go into the studio with an orchestra and singers and make a full-blown recording. His budget, Moss told him, was unlimited. Karmen knew he’d come up with a winner when his handpicked singers said the tune was fun to sing. “These guys sang everything,” he said. “A Budweiser commercial in the morning, a Miller commercial in the afternoon. If they liked something, you knew it was good.”
For the logo, Doyle and Moss turned to graphic designer Milton Glaser, who designed New York magazine, and had cofounded it with Clay Felker. Glaser came up with two black lozenges side by side. The first contained the words “I love,” the second, “New York.” But as the printing presses rolled out the logo, Glaser, doodling in the back of a cab, came up with a better image: I ♥ New York. Stop the presses, he told Doyle. It put the campaign over budget, but Doyle agreed the new logo was better.
The state’s initial budget for the I Love New York campaign was $4.3 million. The logo would appear on posters and T-shirts, and the song would be heard in bars, hotels, taxicabs, and airports in the city. But the centerpiece would be a television commercial.
The first commercial opened with a fisherman saying, “I live in New Hampshire, but I love New York.” There was also a woman from West Virginia. She loved New York, too. And a man from “Cape Cad.” There was footage of the Hudson River Valley, the Adirondack Mountains, Niagra Falls. The spot promoted New York State as a place to vacation in the summer. There wasn’t a single shot of a Broadway show or New York City. And then somebody—again, everybody takes credit—had the idea of spotlighting the theater. The second commercial Wells Rich Greene produced focused exclusively on Broadway.
Shooting took place during the week of January 25, 1978, at Stage 2 West at 460 West Fifty-Fourth Street. A blizzard was pounding the city, but the show must go on, so the League of New York Theatres and Producers arranged for a fleet of cars to ferry the Broadway actors to the taping. Michael Bennett was on hand to direct the snippet from A Chorus Line (dancers in the “One” formation), the first show to appear in the spot. Joining the cast of A Chorus Line were actors from Annie, The Wiz, and Grease. Yul Brynner was there, too, surrounded by the boys and girls in the revival of The King and I. Frank Langella, Broadway’s newest star as the title character in Dracula, worried about appearing in a commercial dressed as a vampire. He didn’t want to be typecast as a villain.
The New York Times covered the taping. “The theater is simply the carrot because it is the most unique and most desirable thing about New York,” a Wells Rich Greene executive told the paper.9
The actors were instructed to sing “I Love New York.” They were not allowed to say the name of their show or sing a song from it. The point was to advertise Broadway, not individual shows. But Yul Brynner managed to sneak in one “et cetera,” and Sandy got to bark during the Annie segment.
The final shot was to be of Frank Langella, as Dracula, engulfed in fog. His line was, “I love New York. Especially at night.” But Langella didn’t like the word “night.” Dracula, he said, would never say “night.” Dracula would say, “evening.” True enough, but this was a one-minute commercial, timed to a fraction of a second. “Night” was one syllable. “Evening” was two. It added a shade too much time. Langella did several indifferent takes saying the word “night.” To keep him happy, the director let him do one take his way. Langella looked straight into the camera and purred, “I love New York. Especially in the eeee-ven-ing.” Then he turned his back to the camera, swirled his cape, and walked off into the fog.
Joshua Ellis, the press agent for Dracula, watched the take. “It was glorious,” he said. “The smoke and the cape, that one take was superior to everything else. They asked him to do it the same way again but using the word ‘night.’ He kept doing crappy versions so they’d have no choice but to use the one he liked. It required internal surgery to fit it in, but the effect was immediate and thrilling.”
The Broadway version of the I Love New York commercial was unveiled February 14, 1978, at a luncheon at Tavern on the Green. Zarem, who did the press for the launch, rounded up fifty New York celebrities and placed them at tables representing the state in which they were born. (Diana Ross sat at the Michigan table amid dignitaries from that state.) There was plenty of behind-the-scenes jockeying for a position on the dais. Governor Hugh Carey, who hosted the luncheon, refused to invite the city’s newly elected mayor, Ed Koch. Koch had defeated Mario Cuomo, Carey’s handpicked candidate. Zarem feared the press would zero in on the mayor’s absence from an event celebrating one of his city’s greatest assets, Broadway. “I had to beg the governor to let me invite the mayor,” Zarem recalled. “Finally, at eleven o’clock, one hour before the lunch, they gave me the go-ahead.”
At 12:30 the curtains were drawn at Tavern on the Green and the lights turned down. A screen at one end of the banquet room flickered. The first shot was of a conductor in a Broadway pit leading the orchestra as it played the “I Love New York” theme song. The conductor pointed to the viewer and then, as the dancers from A Chorus Line appeared, the narrator said, “There’s only one Broadway. It’s in New York.” The crowd cheered. By the time Langella swirled away in the fog with his “Especially in the eeee-ven-ing,” they stood and applauded. The next day, newspapers around the country carried a photograph of Yul Brynner, Koch, Carey, Diana Ross, and Frank Langella holding the sheet music to “I Love New York” and singing the song.
The commercial ran in markets throughout the Northeast for a little over a month. Within two and a half weeks of its first airing, gross weekly theater revenues jumped 30 percent, the New York Times reported. Restaurants in the Theater District reported a revenue increase of 15 percent. Thirteen thousand travel agents requested Broadway package tour brochures after seeing the commercial. In July, Deputy Commissioner Doyle announced that the spot was so successful it was going national. He estimated that the $4.3 million the commerce department invested in the I Love New York campaign had generated $14.3 million tax dollars for the state, and another $8 million for New York City and other local governments. “It’s a profit-making operation,” he said. “For every dollar we’re spending we’re getting three or four back. Every other state but New York seemed to know that until now.”10
The I Love New York campaign spread across the country, and then the world. A couple of ye
ars after the launch, Steve Karmen, who donated the royalties from the song to New York State, took his children to Egypt. He was astounded to see I ♥ Cairo T-shirts all over the place.
By the close of the 1970s, Broadway was in better shape than ever. In 1979 attendance hit 9.4 million. Not since 1968 had that many people taken in a Broadway show. The Shubert coffers were swelling, and Schoenfeld and Jacobs were on the prowl for more shows. Michael Bennett was planning his next musical, which everybody was sure would be a hit. Jimmy Nederlander was flying off to London looking for shows. While there he made a deal with the Royal Shakespeare Company for first dibs on productions. The RSC was putting together an eight-and-a-half-hour adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, to be directed by an up-and-comer named Trevor Nunn. It hardly seemed commercial, but Jimmy was game. As his father told him, “Nobody can pick ’em.”
Back in New York, over lunch at the Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel, a Broadway impresario who’d been out of the game for several years was plotting his comeback. His ticket would be a musical about Broadway itself.
* * *
I. Ten years later, when the city aggressively offered tax breaks to retain corporations, Schoenfeld would rant to city officials: “Morgan Stanley can threaten to leave the city and get millions and millions of dollars in tax breaks. The Yankees can threaten to leave the city and get millions and millions of dollars in tax breaks. We get nothing because we can’t threaten to leave the city!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Coiled Cobra
Schoenfeld and Jacobs’s dealings with David Merrick stretched back to their days as lawyers for J. J. Shubert. It usually fell to them to negotiate terms for Merrick’s latest show. They found him by turns exasperating, duplicitous, nasty, hilarious, and ridiculous. Schoenfeld once observed that Merrick’s power came from the fact that “he didn’t give a damn what people thought about him. Most people care about the impression they make on others. David did not.”
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