by Barbara Cook
Shortly before I sang for the Reagans, Wally and I had decided that I should return to Broadway, but in concert. Early on, when we first started thinking of a Broadway evening for me, Wally found someone he thought should be our producer. With all of Wally’s good qualities, he was often not a good judge of people, and I never felt secure about this proposed producer. Finally, when it was time to sign a contract, I refused. Wally was furious with me. But thank God I didn’t sign. We later found out the guy was a crook.
I learned another painful lesson on the show because, although I was nearly sixty years old, I was still too trusting. We had begun to put the show together and some producers were interested, but when I learned that Wally’s partner Michael was looking for additional producers for me, I told Wally I didn’t want to be represented in any way by Michael. He had good qualities and he could be funny as hell, but he could also be a total pain in the ass and was not always good with people. Wally said, “No problem—he won’t be involved. I had a long talk with him last night and it’s okay”—but the very next day there was Michael at the production meeting about the show. I was so angry at that meeting I thought I was going to have a stroke. When Wally went to the men’s room one of the producers who was already involved picked up on my feelings and said, “Barbara, how do you feel about Michael’s participation?” I said, “I don’t like it at all. I don’t want him to be involved.” When Wally came back and found out what I had said he was livid.
The Shuberts eventually came on board as producers and we had the right theater, so it felt like now or never. We opened at the Ambassador Theatre in April of 1987 and called the evening A Concert for the Theatre. The show was a big mistake and simply didn’t work. We were usually so careful about repertoire, but we really screwed up this time. Frank Rich reviewed it badly in the Times, and I think he was right. I received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One Person Show but I knew the show should have been better. The timing was off in every way and it proved to be a terrible, terrible time for Wally. Michael, whom he adored, was dying of AIDS. We watched him disappear day by day and then he was gone. Very, very hard stuff. No way to concentrate on putting a show together.
Wally and I patched up our disagreement and continued to work together for another seventeen years. It’s a sign of how strong our bond was that in three decades of working together, we never did sign any sort of contract. Back in 1974 we just shook hands on our deal. That deal lasted for all of our thirty-one years together.
Subsequent to A Concert for the Theatre, I was singing at the Carlyle Hotel in New York—a beautiful intimate room, very Upper East Side, very elegant and expensive. Stephen Holden wrote in his review: “She’s not singing the sort of material that suits her best.” And of course he was right. From then on, there would be no more attempts at pop singing. Leave those songs to Lena. Theater songs and what is now known as The Great American Songbook—Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, and Kern—was the music that really suited me.
Concert jobs started to flow my way. I was singing not just with Wally but with beautiful symphony orchestras that he conducted. Whatever the musical setting, it seemed to work, mostly because I could sing well. And after everything I had been through, when I was singing a sad song, I knew what I was singing about.
Gone were the days of tiny clubs and changing in shoebox offices. I sang everywhere from London’s Royal Albert Hall to the Sydney Opera House. I traveled to China, and one night in Moscow, along with Tommy Tune and Wally, I found myself singing “White Christmas” to Soviet rock musicians. Not only was I earning a very nice income, but my chronic problems with the IRS were finally cleared up. When things had been at their worst I ended up owing the IRS three years’ back taxes, a figure that ran into six figures. It scared the hell out of me. I was no spring chicken—how the hell would I be able to pay them and still have money for my old age? But I paid it. I didn’t pay it all at once, but I paid it, and after eighteen months I was square with the government.
At the time I was really upset about having to pay the government all that money, and I was crying when I called Adam to complain. But Adam, as usual, put it in perspective for me. He said, “Mom, this is not your money. It never has been. It was never yours in the first place. You’ve just been holding on to something that doesn’t belong to you.” Suddenly, all the fear and anger just lifted off my shoulders and vanished. Adam is very good about things like that—he can see the big picture.
He is talented in so many areas, and happens to be very smart about finance. His first big job after college was at Merrill Lynch. When you start at Merrill Lynch you have to make cold calls, and you get hung up on nine times out of ten. Talk about a tough training ground. It was absolutely no fun, but Adam said that the training actually helped prepare him for life’s difficulties. He also had a job selling shares of oil in California, a job that landed him a six-figure salary. He also directs shows, and with his love of theater and opera seems to have found where he belongs.
Adam is a really good, honest man, and when he sat me down in 1989 to tell me, “Mom—I’m gay,” I laughed. I thought he was joking. He had been living with a lovely young woman for a couple of years and we all thought they’d get married. I was shocked, to say the least. When he said he had something important to tell me, I thought maybe he was going to tell me they were breaking up. We had a long conversation, and then, when he was at the door, about to leave I said, “Oh, Adam, what will I do when you bring somebody home to meet me?” Adam replied, “Don’t worry, Mom. It’ll be fine. He’ll say, ‘Oh, Barbara, I just love your work.’ ” But it just wasn’t funny to me. When he left, I started crying—I mean, really sobbing—and except when I was asleep, that crying jag lasted five full days.
Finally I said to myself, “What the hell is going on with you? You’ve known and worked with gay men your entire career.” After my thirty thousand years of working with several different therapists, I got out my toolbox and began to try to understand what was happening. As a young person, I had always felt like an outsider—a little girl with her nose pressed against the window, not able to get in. And then having Adam, a man-child, made me feel that I was finally plugged into the mainstream. Somehow, his telling me he was gay had suddenly unplugged me. I had a new son, a new person I didn’t fully know. It also occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t have grandchildren. That’s a hard one. But—the final step for me was when I understood that Adam wasn’t here to plug me into anything. I was here to help him be Adam—as fully as possible. That was twenty-five years ago, and I am so happy to say we have a very close, loving relationship.
As my concert career continued to flourish, I kept thinking about returning to Broadway in a full-fledged book musical. But where, I kept asking myself, was the right vehicle?
The answer came in the form of a run of only two nights, but what a two nights it was: a concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s legendary musical Follies, which was to be recorded by RCA Records. I would play the role of showgirl-turned-housewife Sally Durant Plummer.
The odd thing was that aside from my admiration for Stephen’s brilliant score, I had never been a huge fan of Follies. When I saw the original Broadway production I just didn’t care who went off with whom, because I didn’t care about them as people. Ironically, I had auditioned for the role of Sally in the 1971 original Broadway production. My drinking was nowhere near as bad as it would later become and I made a point of looking my best for my audition. I think I actually looked too good: Hal saw Follies as a show about people on the downward slide—people past their prime—and I didn’t look the part. When I finally did see the show, it just didn’t fully work for me on the bottom-line emotional level.
Same thing with Company. In fact, it took me a while to fully appreciate just how brilliant Company is; the show premiered in 1970 and was so far ahead of its time that my initial reaction was negative—I thought the show was antimarriage and antifamily. Of course I’ve revised my opinion, even if I still do find
some of the characters a little off-putting. In reality, Company’s climactic song, “Being Alive,” actually affirms the importance of commitment and relationships, but at the time it all struck me as a bit sour. The same thing happened eight years later with Sweeney Todd. When I first saw the show I thought, “Why the hell do I have to come to the theater and hear somebody sing that the world is full of shit and we’re all swimming around in it?” It took me a while to come around, but I now believe the show is Stephen’s masterpiece.
So, when producer Thomas Shepard called Jerry Kravat to ask about my participation in the Follies concerts, even though I knew that beautiful score was going to be played by the Philharmonic, I just wasn’t sure. Two nights only? A short rehearsal period of something like four days? And I’d never done one of Stephen’s shows. But I thought about it, and fortunately I realized that the concerts represented a great opportunity and said yes. This would be Stephen Sondheim, and what’s more, it was Sondheim with an incredible cast: Lee Remick, George Hearn, Mandy Patinkin, Phyllis Newman, Liliane Montevecchi, Carol Burnett, and Comden and Green. We all knew each other’s histories and had great respect for each other.
Our intense, abbreviated rehearsal period proved to be very exciting. There was so little time that it was scary as hell for all of us. My old friend Herbie Ross was our director. He was terrifically talented as both director and choreographer, and our bond was so strong after those summers at Tamiment that one day when we had a break in rehearsals, we just happened to lock eyes as we sat in that small room at Avery Fisher Hall. It was as if we both simultaneously remembered our history of thirty-five years, wordlessly crossing the room to hug each other while crying. We each knew exactly what the other was thinking. Herb was such an interesting, complex man; his marriage with the brilliantly talented ballerina Nora Kaye really worked, and yet when I first met him he was in a homosexual relationship. It just goes to show you—human beings don’t always fit into neat little boxes.
Stephen had requested that I play Sally, and thank goodness I said yes. His work reminds me of Shakespeare, because, like the Bard, you can revisit his work time and time again and there is always something new to discover. If Stephen knew I compared him to Shakespeare he’d start snorting like a bull and charge at me, but I stand by the comparison. His songs are so rich and full of wisdom that singing one is like being an actress given the opportunity to play a great scene.
None of us had done the show before, and the orchestra was situated behind us, which meant that we could get help from the conductor, Paul Gemignani, only if we turned the microphone sideways so that we were in profile to the audience. But—the concerts worked brilliantly, and those two nights at Avery Fisher Hall proved to be among the most thrilling of my entire career. The audience went wild, the ovations rolling on and on, increasing in volume until the room seemed ready to explode. It simply does not get better than performing Sondheim with an all-star cast and the New York Philharmonic.
I listed our extraordinary Follies cast above, but there was also one other cast member of particular note: singing “Broadway Baby” was none other than Elaine Stritch.
Elaine Stritch. A major, major, piece of work. Or, as the New York Times described her: “Elaine Stritch, the brassy, tart-tongued Broadway actress and singer.”
Elaine was one of the first people I met and admired when I first came to New York. She was in a hit revue at that time, Angel in the Wings, and gained notice for the wacky song “Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don’t Want to Leave the Congo).” She could be difficult to work with but she was also deeply talented. So most of the time, people were willing to put up with her shenanigans in order to add her talent to the proceedings.
I could write four chapters on Elaine alone, but a few anecdotes will suffice, beginning with Follies. It was a glorious experience for all of us, a major event, and there were a lot of big names in that rehearsal room, but Elaine still managed to make herself the center of attention. Check out the DVD of the concert; there I am, in rehearsal, singing the moving “In Buddy’s Eyes.” Everybody in the room is rapt, but there’s Elaine in the background changing her shoes and fixing her clothes. It’s like she couldn’t stop herself. “Look at me. Look at me.”
Elaine was, and remained right up until the end of her life, a force of nature and a big-time talent. I liked her very much but she could also be a major-league pain in the ass, self-centered to the max. I did respect her enormously, and she was a great performer, but boy oh boy could she make me crazy.
When I was singing at Feinstein’s at the Regency, a very smart, classy cabaret space on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, I had included a very quiet ballad, one that I felt would really mean something to audiences. I came to that moment in the show, the audience was hushed, but right there in the middle of the song was Elaine making this loud rustling, bustling sound in that big shopping bag that never left her side, because she decided she had to give herself an insulin injection in the middle of that number. She just couldn’t wait three minutes.
In 1997 I was invited by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to join them at the Royal Albert Hall in London in a concert to celebrate my seventieth birthday. I asked three people to join me in that concert: Maria Friedman, Tommy Körberg, who sang brilliantly in the London production of Chess, and Elaine.
One very blustery, sleety, awful day, she came to Wally Harper’s apartment to rehearse before we went to London. As I said, the weather was horrible that day and when she walked in her hair was in curlers and covered by a shower cap. I just assumed she was going out to dinner later and was protecting her hair. When Wally’s little dog jumped up to greet her, she said, commandingly, to the little dog: “Down! I want no love!”
She then barked: “Give me a cuppa coffee, NOW! If I don’t get it right now, I’m leaving!” So, she got her coffee and we began rehearsing, and after we’d worked a while, Elaine stopped and announced: “You know what I like about show business? I’ll tell you what I like about show business. I walked in here forty-five minutes ago with a shower cap on my head and nobody said a goddamned thing!”
She was a very hard worker. Much more than I am. She would rehearse something for hours in pursuit of perfection. I urged her many, many times to do cabaret. She was terrified. I said, “Elaine, all you have to do is find some songs you like. Go out there and be yourself—sing, talk—you’ll be dynamite.” She was, of course, a very clever lady and she took my cabaret idea and ran with it. She got all these high-powered folks like writer John Lahr and director George Wolfe to help her put an entire show together—the show that became Elaine Stritch at Liberty. It was a smash and we later ended up in competition for the same Tony Award. The joke was on me because I found myself thinking, “Why the hell didn’t I keep my mouth shut?!” She deserved the Tony for her beautifully performed show. It was then filmed for HBO and she won an Emmy. Both totally deserved.
Perhaps our most notable joint work experience came when we performed a benefit concert for Lincoln Center Theater. It was, in a word, a nightmare.
Jack O’Brien was directing the evening, and one day he couldn’t be at rehearsal. In the director’s absence she took over and was so rude to almost everybody in the room that I thought somebody was going to have a stroke, and that included me. I mean that. I decided that she was toxic. It was hazardous to work with her. She made you so angry it was dangerous to your health. I’d known her all those years, and, going into the benefit, I thought we could help raise some money for Lincoln Center Theater, and that the evening would work like gangbusters. I had even thought for a long time that we should organize some concerts together. My manager, Jerry Kravat, thought it was a great idea and that he could book us all over the place. We were so vastly different, and we respected each other’s work. I also thought she knew I wasn’t afraid of her, which I wasn’t. I told myself, “I can deal with her.” Well, I was wrong. Big time.
She was extraordinarily difficult to work with because she was extremely
overbearing. Although she often had good ideas, she was like a steamroller. She was so impossible that at one point she was actually trying to tell me how to sing a song. I finally said, “For Christ’s sake, Elaine, don’t try to tell me how to sing the fucking song. I’ve never sung the fucking song before. I don’t know how I want to sing the fucking song. I need to find out—so just leave me the fuck alone!”
Perhaps she didn’t mean to be so overbearing, and maybe in her mind she was just being helpful. But . . . Elaine’s idea of being helpful often did not jibe with anyone else’s. She just couldn’t help herself. The moment she perceived a vacuum she would rush right in. She’s one of those people—and we all know them, in and out of show business—who just instantly suck all the oxygen out of the room. It was all Elaine, all the time. Me, me, me, me.
The benefit was a big success, and the audience had a great time, but I can’t say that I did. The next day I told my manager, “I never, ever want to be inside a theater with her again, even for a benefit. If she’s in the benefit, I’m not gonna do it. I don’t want to have anything to do with her anymore.”
I was upset and very, very angry. She was so talented, but it wasn’t worth it. I had such admiration for her; she could go so deep into a lyric, that she could make it both personal and universal. I could learn from that, but the price was too high and life is too short. As time passed, I got over a lot of my anger, and in some ways I felt sorry for her.