by Barbara Cook
One time when asked why she lived in hotels, she said, “Look, I don’t have a lot of friends. So when I live in a hotel, I can have a conversation with the concierge and the elevator man.” I think she was really sad. That was brought home to me when I was talking with Ralph Williams, who played the role of Arpad in She Loves Me and with whom I have kept in touch over the years. He and Elaine used to be very close, but a few years back he said to me, “I’ve had to give up Elaine. I can’t do it anymore. It got to be too much.”
Elaine had quite a reputation for being tight with a penny, always managing somehow to get free theater tickets—even wrangling free pantyhose when she was in a show. And she could definitely make short shrift of a buffet. If it was free, Elaine was on it. Because of her diabetes she carried a full slate of supplies with her at all times. We went to the theater together once—we saw Art in London—and she carried a big shopping bag filled with crackers, orange juice, and so forth. You name it and Elaine had it in that satchel. All through the play she was rummaging through her bag. She’d reach for some food, and then she’d rub her hands with her lotion. Next would be another sip of orange juice, then some cheese. We were escorted to the queen’s waiting room, because if they think you’re a big deal they treat you very nicely in London; they take your tickets and your coat, show you to your seat, and ask you what you would like to drink at the interval. And what did Elaine do in the queen’s waiting room? Right there in front of the man helping us she gave herself an insulin shot.
Her behavior would get under my skin big time, and yet her work could be so damn great. For Sondheim’s eightieth birthday concert with the New York Philharmonic, the show featured some incredibly talented women, chief among them Patti LuPone, Donna Murphy, and Bernadette Peters, but they gave Elaine the closing slot. Her rendition of “I’m Still Here” was brilliant. I thought it was sensational, and I e-mailed Steve Sondheim to tell him so.
In the end, I just decided to get over my frustration with her. She was never going to change, and I realized that so long as I didn’t work with her, when I saw her it would be easy enough to be nice. In 2010 I substituted for her at a concert she had been scheduled to give; Elaine was replacing Angela Lansbury in A Little Night Music and couldn’t fulfill the date, so I agreed to fill in for her. The evening was a success and also was the occasion of the most memorable opening patter I’ve ever had with an audience. After my opening number I looked out at the audience and said, “I know some of you may have expected to see Elaine Stritch. She is busy with A Little Night Music. But, you’re not missing much. All she does is talk about all of the famous people she’s fucked. I’ve fucked a lotta people, but they’re not famous, so I don’t talk about it!” The audience gasped—and then burst into wild laughter. I thought the building would explode! They may have expected that from Elaine, but definitely not from me.
Elaine would call me from time to time, and the surprising thing was that she would greet me as if we were bosom buddies. It was as if she assumed we were much closer than we really were. At the very end of her life she moved back to her native Michigan to live near her closest relatives. When she died, in July of 2014, her death was front-page news in the New York Times, which seemed only fitting. She’d have loved the placement. There will never be another like her. She could make me crazy, but a part of me loved her, too.
After the Follies concerts in 1985, I took on a full-scale musical in 1988, the infamous and ill-fated Carrie. The show was a Royal Shakespeare Company production based on the best-selling horror novel by Stephen King, and was to play in Stratford-Upon-Avon. From the start, everything went wrong, and the show became the stuff of legend for all of the wrong reasons.
This was offbeat material to begin with, a musical about a girl with telekinetic powers seeking revenge on those who have abused her. I was to play Margaret White, Carrie’s fanatically religious mother who ultimately tries to kill her daughter to save the world from her destructive power. It was all a long way from Marian the Librarian. At the climax of the show there was going to be blood everywhere onstage as lives were ended or ruined—it was all pretty far out. And yet . . . I liked some of the score a great deal. Actually, there were two scores: one for Carrie and her mother, and the other, a 1950s rock-and-roll score, for the high school students. The relationship between mother and daughter had the potential to be complex and emotionally involving. The key word here is “potential”—because I think it didn’t turn out that way.
Fran and Barry Weissler were originally slated to produce the show, and it was they who first asked me to sign on. I turned them down, but then director Terry Hands came to speak with me; Terry is a very smart, seductive man, and he explained certain scenes in such clear detail that I could see myself in them. I knew I could perform the show he described, and it was exciting to think of appearing in a Royal Shakespeare Company production. I said yes, but the one smart thing I did was sign only for England. There was no mention in my contract of my appearing in the transfer to Broadway. The company manager mentioned to me he was aware of my not being signed for New York and brought it up several times with the producer, who always said, “Later, I’m busy now.”
In Terry’s first meeting with Fran Weissler, she told him she wanted the show to have the feeling of Grease. He thought she meant “Greece” and the next time they met he had costume designs for the gym teacher and girls with all kinds of classical-era drapery. Fran and Barry dropped out, but by then Terry was wedded to the Grecian drapery and helmets. He was convinced that Carrie was a Greek tragedy. It’s hard to believe this next point, but, please, believe me, it’s true: sometime after Carrie Terry left the RSC, and was being interviewed about his career. When the subject of Carrie came up, he said: “I realize I made many mistakes with Carrie. Chiefly among them I thought the show was a Greek tragedy. I was wrong. It’s a Roman tragedy.”
Soon after we started rehearsals I realized that not one person involved had ever put together a new musical from scratch. The most basic, essential building blocks eluded the creators, and at one point during technical rehearsals the entire company and orchestra sat doing absolutely nothing while Terry Hands lit the show. Tens of thousands of dollars were flying out the window. I actually went to the lead producer, Friedrich Kurz, and told him, “These people don’t know what they’re doing. Put whatever deutschmarks you have left in your pocket and walk away. It will be a disaster.” Friedrich didn’t listen—he felt he had to honor his commitment.
I went to Terry and said, “There’s nothing wrong with asking for help—everyone does it all the time.” But no one was willing to acknowledge the need for help in nearly every department. They didn’t even have a dance arranger lined up, and I asked for Wally Harper to come over to London and begin work on arrangements. The composer, Michael Gore, was furious when Wally arrived. He felt I just wanted Wally with us to join my camp, and I think he was afraid Wally might want to change some of his music. But the existing dance arrangements were far from the only problem. Debbie Allen, the choreographer, had also never put a new show together before. Since Oklahoma! back in 1943, musical numbers have had to further the story, but the numbers in Carrie came across like nice dances for television—nothing more. Matters were not helped when I gave an interview and, when asked how it was all progressing, blurted out: “We’re doing a lot of work but it’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
I began keeping a journal because the entire experience soon became utterly surreal. I said to the production stage manager that no one could believe what was happening, because they would have no frame of reference.
I knew from day one that I was not doing my best work because I never felt comfortable with the material. As rehearsals continued I told the creators that the mother—namely, me—needed a song about how horrible it would be to kill her daughter. Better yet, I said, give her a song during which she makes the decision to kill her and we see what her thoughts are. They agreed and then wrote a beautiful
song about how quiet the house would be without Carrie. WRONG. It was a lovely song, but it didn’t touch on what I had asked for. I think they didn’t always know which parts of the story should be musicalized.
No one had thought through any of the practicalities. One of the early scenes took place in the doorless showers of the girls’ high school locker room, so while they were in the shower the audience could clearly see their microphone battery packs and that they were wearing their underclothes. Believability went right out the window. When the same girls put on their Grecian clothes for gym class in present-day United States, you had to be thinking, “What the hell is going on?”
In the end, we had a show made up of two separate and distinct musicals: one was about the kids in Carrie’s high school, and the other was a serious musical drama about Carrie (played by the terrific and very young Linzi Hateley) and her mother. The two shows never came together, and audiences were justifiably confused—and sometimes provoked into fits of unintended laughter.
I left the show at the end of the engagement in England, but I did go to see it during its very brief run on Broadway in May of 1988. It was still a disaster, and they hadn’t solved any of the basic problems, let alone details like why the gym teacher was leading class in high-heeled pumps . . . I was incredibly relieved not to be a part of the show but found myself moved by Linzi, who at the very young age of seventeen gave a strong, solid performance. She had turned in a terrific professional performance in England and was even better in New York. There was so much chaos putting this show on, and she was the rock that held us all together, but she couldn’t make this wrongheaded show into a hit. Carrie had been a very popular, successful book, and a very popular, successful movie. The musical proved to be neither. In 2012 it came back as a much smaller-scale musical. The reviews were far from vitriolic this time, most of them remarking on how bland the show now seemed, as if all the juice had been drained out of it. It ran for one month and then quietly disappeared.
In 1994, six years after Carrie, I returned to London to appear in concert at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. I had a great time, the show was recorded live, and I received perhaps the most laudatory review I’ve ever received, from Alastair Macaulay in the Financial Times: “Barbara Cook is the greatest singer in the world. . . . Ms. Cook is the only popular singer active today who should be taken seriously by lovers of classical music. Has any singer since Callas matched Cook’s sense of musical architecture? I doubt it.” I know we’re not supposed to take reviews seriously—good or bad—but I ain’t gonna forget that one. I was grateful for the praise, but I also maintained a healthy dose of self-doubt—was I really that good? I knew I was singing well, but I always feel there’s more to learn. What I do think is true is that by this time I felt so free onstage that it was like entering a kind of zone, my own world, where sometimes, when the song ended, I didn’t really want to come back, because it felt so good in there.
In the same year as the Sadler’s Wells concerts I was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame, in a ceremony at New York’s Gershwin Theatre. It was a great honor, but I don’t think of myself as being in a “hall of fame.” I feel like I’m still a work in progress. (I felt the same way in 2002, when I was named a “living landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, for “having defined the city in my own legendary way.” Those are very nice words, but obviously I can’t begin to think of myself that way. A living landmark? I just want to keep working. And maybe learn to swear a little less.)
Wally and I continued with a busy schedule of concerts and recordings, including an appearance at the Sydney Opera House as part of the 2000 Summer Olympics Arts Festival. The biggest milestone, however was the show we called Mostly Sondheim, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2001 and was subsequently released as a live recording that sold very well.
Both the show itself and that inspired title were Wally’s ideas. He’s the one who remembered an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine in which Stephen Sondheim listed a lot of songs he wishes he had written. Wally said “Let’s do a show—half the songs will be by Stephen and half will be those he wishes he had written.” We could call it Mostly Sondheim. It was a brilliant idea.
After Carnegie Hall we took the show to London’s West End, to the Lyric Theatre, and I received two Olivier Award nominations, one for Best Entertainment and another for Best Actress in a Musical. I didn’t win either award, but that was fine with me; I was performing material I loved, singing songs that were so complex and sophisticated that I discovered new facets at every single performance. After London we took the show to Lincoln Center, where we performed it from December 2001 until August 2002. I received a Tony nomination for Best Theatrical Event, and although I didn’t win I was thrilled with the reception the show received. It wasn’t just the chance to explore Stephen’s gems like “In Buddy’s Eyes” from Follies; it was also the sheer fun of singing songs none of us ever imagined Stephen might have wished he’d written, like “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” and “Hard Hearted Hannah.” Mike Nichols came to see the show and wrote me a lovely letter about how much he had enjoyed the evening: “You and Wally breathe together and it’s impossible to know where one leaves off and the other begins. Together you are immortal. You gave us something we will never forget. I had Judy at Carnegie Hall, for which I was there, and now you at the Beaumont. Thank you.” I was overwhelmed. Coming from Mike Nichols, that letter meant everything.
Wally and I then put together one more conceptual concert, Barbara Cook’s Broadway!, which we performed in 2004 at Lincoln Center Theater. I received a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, but what I remember most clearly from the show is the extraordinary present Wally gave to me.
I talked in the show about always having wanted to see my name in lights—real electric lights, real old-fashioned bulbs—and it was Wally who made that happen. I was onstage at Lincoln Center, chatting with the audience, when they all started to applaud; I didn’t know what was happening until I turned around and saw, descending from the flies, a sign composed of brightly lit bulbs that spelled out Barbara Cook’s Broadway! I was thrilled, and at first I thought it was the theater that had come up with the sign. In fact, it was another of Wally’s wonderfully generous gestures. He couldn’t say “I love you” to me, but he expressed that love through the gift of that wonderful sign.
16 • LOSING WALLY
THROUGHOUT MY THIRTY years of working with Wally, alcohol abuse remained a severe problem in his life. There’s no other way to say it: Wally was a major, major drunk from the moment I met him. He was what is called a high-functioning alcoholic. Very dangerous. He tried to fool himself into thinking otherwise. He thought, “So I drink. So what! I show up. I do the work. Leave me alone.” I continued to drink throughout our first three years together. But in the very first weeks we worked as a team, he’d ask me if I wanted a drink. And when I asked him if he was going to have one, he’d say, “No—Max [his friend] and I have decided that if we don’t drink for a month, then we’re not alcoholics.” It’s a ridiculous statement. If you need to play that game, then, sorry, you are an alcoholic. If you don’t have a problem with drinking, that game wouldn’t even occur to you.
I said to him one day, “You know, I’ll bet you became a drinker as soon as you left your family and went away to school.” “Absolutely,” he said. “I was seventeen.” Which means that he drank alcoholically from age seventeen until it killed him at age sixty-three. He would not go to a doctor for help with his problem. He had bleeding hemorrhoids and refused to have a checkup, yet would somehow find a way to get doctors to give him drugs. He had a pharmaceutical book and he would look up what drugs were right for which condition, and he would treat himself.
His fear of doctors was pathological, and it went beyond not trusting them. He would make up lies about doctors, something I found out about in a strange way. Wally became very close friends with Pete
r Matz, the orchestrator and arranger famous for his work on the early Streisand albums. Wally and Peter were really close. They were like brothers, and when Peter died from cancer, Wally was devastated. He continued a close friendship with Peter’s wife, Marilyn. At some point after Peter’s death, Wally was telling several of us about how Peter had died, describing how the doctors had actually made his condition worse. When I happened to mention this to Marilyn—“I’m so sorry that the doctors did that”—she was totally mystified. “What? That never happened.” Wally had invented it. It was just a flat-out lie.
Lying becomes a way of life for alcoholics, which I certainly know firsthand. When I was drinking, I would phone and say, “Oh I’m so sorry I can’t come to the dinner party.” This would be at the last minute, completely disrupting the hostess’s plans. I just couldn’t get it together because it was hard for me to function, and hard to be with people, so I lied in order to break the commitment.
I adored Wally, and, honestly, through all those years when we worked together I never felt I was the star of the show—he was. He always called the shots. I usually don’t hand over control, but I had such great respect for him musically, as he did for me, that it was hardly ever a problem to do so. Which is not to say it was always smooth sailing.
In the recording studio, for example, he could be really mean. We were always under the gun in the studio because our recordings were made on a minimal budget. We didn’t have time or money to waste, so it was always push, push, push. The problem was that if we were slipping behind schedule, Wally would sometimes excoriate me in front of the band. Here’s what would happen. We’d have a first read-through of the orchestration. I would have notes based on what we just did, but Wally would often want to record the second time through, before I had a chance to voice my comments. As a result, sometimes I would stop during the second take to fix something, and then Wally would explode with anger. I think a lot of other singers, after being treated harshly in front of the orchestra, would have just said, “Shut the fuck up. I’m getting somebody else.” I didn’t, and couldn’t, and we worked through it, but it was often unpleasant.