Black Falling Off Broadway

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-63192-325-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 157 Seiten

'Falling off Broadway' is a witty, entertaining memoir by Tony Award-winning producer David Black of his adventures on Broadway. The book is filled with revealing personal accounts of theatrical luminaries and well-known figures such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Julie Harris, Gene Hackman, Joel Grey, Bernadette Peters, Burt Reynolds, Julie Andrews, Groucho Marx, Joshua Logan, Alan King, David Merrick, Donald Trump, and Richard Nixon. This memoir is based on David Black's one-man play, which received rave reviews in New York and London.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Black, David

Leseproben

“Stay Away from the Upper Class!”

“You can go to a small college and be a big fish in a little pond,” said my father, “or you can go to a big college and be a little fish in a big pond.” I wanted to go to a big college and be a big fish in a big pond. The big college I wanted to go to was Harvard because both my father and my grandfather had gone there, but the Ethical Culture Fieldston School was under a quota system, which meant Harvard would only accept four members of our senior class. Eight of my classmates applied to Harvard and out of our group, four had perfect scores on the SATs. I was not one of them. To be one of the select four to go to Harvard, I would have to have something in addition to relatives who were graduates.

Harvard was looking for students with extracurricular credits, in addition to academic skills, and I hoped that being president of the school and my class qualified. I sent in my application and waited patiently for a reply. One day it came. I had been accepted! I ran into the living room to tell my parents. While they were congratulating me, my brother Peter had a big smile on his face because he had written the letter.

In spite of Peter, I got into Harvard. My grandfather rewarded me with an invitation to join my grandparents at their favorite resort in Canada, which featured two lodges on a lake. One of the lodges was for “Newly Weds” and the other was for “Nearly Deads.” My grandparents stayed in the “Nearly Deads.” Alone amongst the “Newly Weds,” I met an unhappily married housewife. She told me I had “bedroom eyes” and invited me to join her in bed. I was not prepared to take full advantage of this opportunity because, at 17, I was still a stranger to the mysteries of lovemaking.

I didn’t know what to do. I held her tightly as my father had advised but nothing happened. Nevertheless, the lonely lady showered me with gifts and wrote me letters. Having an older woman in love with me was an accomplishment, and I proudly showed her letters to my father.

“Never let a woman get her hooks into you,” said my father.

I wondered if my mother ever got her hooks into my father. My father unhooked me from the Canadian housewife by writing a goodbye letter to her, and getting me to sign it. God had rescued me from my love life.

***

The big pond of Harvard seemed more like an ocean. Out of my freshman class of 1,000, I only knew three of my classmates because they came from Fieldston. But then an opportunity presented itself. The president of Harvard, James Bryant Conant, invited all the freshmen to tea in the presidential mansion. I decided to reciprocate, and I invited the president for drinks in my room. No president of Harvard had ever been invited for drinks by a freshman. President Conant came with his wife and the event was written up in the Harvard Crimson. My friends told me to take advantage of the publicity and run for president of the class. I hired a parrot and I taught it to say, “David Black for president!” Then I took the parrot to the freshman dining room during lunch. The parrot was nervous in front of so many people. It sat on its perch and didn’t say anything. When the parrot finally started to say, “David Black for president!” it shat all over the table. I lost the election.

My father had waited on tables in the very hall where I was now eating. He filled me with tales of the privileged “upper” class at Harvard, and how wealthy families paid for accommodations where their fortunate offspring could live with their lady friends. This area was called The Gold Coast, and presumably did not exist anymore, but the traditions of upper-class Harvardians continued.

One of my classmates told me about a sophomore named Bill Perry who wanted to be an opera conductor. His father gave him an annual birthday present of an orchestra, chorus, and soloists to conduct. This year, he was using his birthday present to conduct a production of Johann Strauss’s operetta The Gypsy Baron. The well-known Polish soprano Polyna Stoska had just been kicked out of the Met and Perry had recruited her to sing the lead. The rest of the cast was unknown, including a singing actor named Fred Gwynne, who later went on to star in the TV comedy The Munsters. I auditioned for the role of Pali, the head knife-wielding gypsy, and got the part. My voice lessons with Clyde Burrows had paved the way for my first extracurricular activity at Harvard. I was about to swim in the ocean.

***

At the first rehearsal of The Gypsy Baron, I met a young woman who was a dancer in the chorus. Her name was Linda but she didn’t smoke or play the piano. I followed her home on my bicycle. Linda’s last name was Cabot, which meant nothing to me except it did not sound Jewish. She was a junior at Radcliffe and was three years older than me. Linda was living in a cozy rented room with a fireplace in an old house in Cambridge and she was majoring in music. We found we shared a love of music that went beyond The Gypsy Baron. Linda seemed interested when I described my experiences at the Met as an extra. She listened intently as I told her about my grandfather and his uncle, Karl Goldmark, who had composed the opera The Queen of Sheba, which held the record for the most performances in one season at the Met. On another evening, I brought a recording of Goldmark’s Violin Concerto and we listened to its beautiful Hungarian melodies. We rode our bicycles to The Gypsy Baron rehearsals and chained them together. We blended our voices rehearsing the music by Johann Strauss, another composer from the fabled city of Vienna, where Karl Goldmark had been a drinking companion of Johannes Brahms.

I started thinking about The Gypsy Baron rehearsals while I was attending classes, but my thoughts were no longer centered on Polyna Stoska. During rehearsals, I found myself looking at Linda whenever the tenor sang, “There’s a world on a string, if you’re young and alone. You can live like a king, if your heart is your own.”

I told Linda about my search for musical gods to help me express my feelings and we shared our admiration for Richard Wagner. I had attended his Ring cycle at the Met, where I stood in line for hours to buy a ticket for the right to stand for more hours at each of his operas. We listened to Tristan and Isolde in front of the fire and as the music of the Liebestod surrounded the crackling flames, Tristan’s longings became mine.

When I mentioned Linda to one of my classmates, he told me the Cabots were a famous family. He said they were considered the ultimate bluebloods of Boston and to prove it he recited a poem: “Here’s to Boston, the land of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God.”

The news of Linda’s exalted upper-class status inspired me to action. I began championing my father’s causes. I described how he was devoting his life to helping the poor and minorities by fighting for their rights, and I recited the litany of Ethical Culture as if it were my own: “Man makes his own hell or heaven on this earth. There is no God who will solve the problems of the world!” Ethical Culture had become the white horse on which I hoped to ride into the upperclass world that my father had warned me to stay away from. The Cabots were Wagner’s Ring of Fire surrounding the Walküre rock, which protected the sleeping bride I hoped to carry off.

After a few months, Linda invited me to meet her parents. My father had told me the best way to recognize an anti-Semite was when someone said, “Some of my best friends are Jews.” We drove up a long driveway to a medium-sized mansion. Linda’s parents were standing on the front lawn.

“I’m happy to meet you,” said Linda’s father, Tom Cabot. “Some of my best friends are Jews.”

During lunch, Linda’s father told me the family spent a lot of time fox-hunting, white-water canoeing, sailing, and riding horses over mountains. He invited me on a fox hunt. Tom Cabot loaned me a pair of riding boots, riding pants, a black-and-white vest, a hard hat, and a riding crop. I felt as if I had joined a secret society and was about to go on a very important mission. After I got dressed, I had my picture taken on a horse to send to my parents.

The fox hunt began with everyone riding through the woods, as the hounds trotted along next to us. Suddenly, a fox ran under my horse, and I took off after it. I planned to jump off my horse, grab the fox, and present it to my fiancé. My horse became excited and started to gallop. I had never been on a galloping horse. My only experience with horses had been on pony rides at the Central Park Zoo. I tried to stop my horse but he just went faster. Trees were flying by and I had to duck to avoid the branches. Ahead of me was a huge stone wall. I could feel my horse gathering himself for a mighty leap. I hung on for dear life. As I sailed over the wall, I passed the rest of the hunt in mid-air going in the opposite direction.

“No one is allowed over a jump ahead of the master of hounds,” said Tom Cabot. “You have been expelled from the hunt!”

***

“There is only one thing to remember in white-water canoeing,” said Tom Cabot. “If you tip over, never let the canoe come between you and the current. If that happens you will drown, and lose the canoe.”

Sitting in the stern of our canoe, with Linda in the bow, I could see more Cabots, including her parents and brothers, paddling canoes in front of us. The river was calm and so was I. I was eager to redeem myself after fox hunting and...