Born On This Day- August 22nd... James Kirkwood

In an interesting reversal of our usual bedtime ritual, The Husband went to sleep early & I stayed up late & watched a very remarkable documentary- Every Little Step. The film travels behind the scenes of the auditions for 2006 revival of A Chorus Line to investigate the the interplay among the hopefuls. The film establishes a parallel between the events of the play itself & the offstage experiences of the aspiring performers who are auditioning. The filmmakers also work in a layer that pertains to the original inception of the musical, & its evolution from an idea by gay director/choreographer- Michael Bennett, who recorded an ensemble of dancers speaking confessionally & used that as the basis for the book of the show.

The filmmakers play those original tapes back, on-camera, resurrecting old ghosts. Composer Marvin Hamlisch also turns up revealing a racy little nugget about the history of the song- Dance: 10; Looks 3 . The film features extensive footage of the auditions themselve, on songs such as At The Ballet & I Can Do That, interweaving an aura of suspense throughout the narrative of who will eventually cast in the production itself. The title of the documentary is a reference to the lyric of that old war horse of a musical number One ("One singular sensation, every little step she takes").

Writer James Kirkwood reached the peak of his fame when A Chorus Line*, the celebrated musical, opened at the Public Theater in 1975. Executing a concept by choreographer Michael Bennett, with music by the late, great Marvin Hamlisch & lyrics by Edward Kleban, Kirkwood joined with co-writer Nicholas Dante to develop a script based on the tape-recorded reminiscences of Broadway "gypsies," the young men & women who sing & dance in the chorus lines of musicals. In 1976, his contributions to the show brought Kirkwood a Tony Award & a Pulitzer Prize.

James Kirkwood was a born in LA. His father was a director & his mother was silent film star- Lila Lee. Kirkwood was well known in the world of theater through his work as an actor, playwright, & comedian.His novels include P.S. Your Cat Is Dead (1972), Good Times, Bad Times (1968) & Some Kind of Hero (1975). He was a capable creator of popular fiction & most have gay elements, & a most of his work was adapted for the stage or screen. There Must Be A Pony is a thinly disguised story of his life with his mother that was made into a TV film with Elizabeth Taylor & Robert Wagner.

Kirkwood will always be best known for writing the book for a A Chorus Line, for which he won a Tony in 1976, as well as a New York Drama Critic's Circle Award & the Pulitzer Prize. A Chorus Line is credited with being the first Broadway musical to deal with homosexuality in a matter-of-fact way - the concept for the show came from gay choreographer Michael Bennett.

Frank Rich: "A Chorus Line was also the first Broadway musical to deal matter-of-factly with homosexuality, & from an inside point-of-view that makes its gay men seem far more accessible than the martyrs & oddballs that typified stage homosexuals in mainstream American drama of the post-Boys In The Band, pre-AIDS era."

Like The Wizard Of Oz, A Chorus Line shares the myth of finding acceptance & identity as an outsider seeking a place that feels ineffably like home.

A Chorus Line was still playing when James Kirkwood died from AIDS-related cancer at his home in NYC in 1989.

*Tiny footnotes: I auditioned for the first touring A Chorus Line in LA & didn't get very far, as I am only a serviceable dancer ("he moves well for not being a dancer"). My pal Walter Kennedy made the cut & was offered a role at the same time that has was asked to join a well known dance company. He chose the dance troupe, without regret, I believe. When I lived in NYC in the mid-1970s, I was briefly friends with Rebecca York who played Diana on Broadway.

Born On This Day- July 14th... Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Favorite, Arthur Laurents

"Writers are the chosen people. I am happiest when sitting alone & putting my daydreams & fantasies down on paper.”

As the story goes... late for his place on a panel discussion, Arthur Laurents burst on to the stage draped in mink & announced: "Behold, a living legend!". Stephen Sondheim, also on the panel, looked up & said: "Wrong on both counts".

I just ate up his pair of memoirs- Original Story By & Mainly On Directing, chock full of great dishy theatre & Hollywood stories. He is important to me in the many ways. I admire him & his work, but most especially because he wrote the book for my favorite musical- Gypsy, which I find to be a near perfect piece of theatre. He directed 3 revivals of Gypsy,including my favorite version with my good close personal friend Angela Lansbury in 1974, & Tyne Daley in 1989 & 2009’s Patti Lupone outing.

In 2010, at 92, he directed a revival of West Side Story, a classic for which he wrote the original lean & strong book. In this production, it was Laurents's conceit to have most of the the Sharks & their girls, who are from Puerto Rico, speak & sing in Spanish & the cast would all be young & if not Puerto Rican, at least Hispanic. Laurents has explained that the idea came from his partner of 52 years- Tom Hatcher (Laurents & Farley Granger were lovers in the late 1940s), who saw & loved a production of the musical in South America. It was also Hatcher that urged Laurents to revive Gypsy! with Patti LuPone, so that the Sam Mendes directed production with Bernadette Peters would not be the last Gypsy in Laurents's lifetime.

Laurents has won 4 Tony Awards & been nominated for 6 Oscars, winning for the screenplay of The Turning Point. He was by all accounts, a real son of a bitch... but, what a talent.

His career had barely started when he was drafted into the Army in 1941. Laurents spent the war years writing training films & radio propaganda shows. He had also had come to terms with his homosexuality, & he soon lost count of the sexual experiences he had while in the Army. In Original Story By, he speaks of his lifetime of gay encounters, referring to his partners as “those unremembered hundreds.”

As a gay man living as openly as possible during some of this country's most dangerous times, Laurents was a role model of discretion & living the way he wanted to, despite public opinion & cruelty against homosexuals everywhere.

The last line of Laurents's memoir- Original Story By, speaks of Tom Hatcher, who was Laurents' partner for more than 50 years: "As long as he lives, I will." But, Hatcher died in 2006  & Laurents, in his 93rd year, adjusting to life without him. When they first became a couple, Laurents claims his mother was more disturbed that Hatcher was a gentile than that her son was gay.

Laurents led a wild life: "I drank an awful lot, I drugged an awful lot. But I think I have a built-in governor, because at any point I would say OK, I've had enough, & I'd go home to bed. I assumed everybody could do that. I was never one for going to bars, that kind of thing. I was a hopeless romantic. Well, no one could have that much sex & be entirely romantic, but the dangerous side never appealed to me."

But Hatcher was the great love of his life & their life together is one of the great love affairs. Laurents: "Tom & theatre, that's what my life has been. & that's what my book is - an effort to say thank you by doing what I can to make the theatre indestructible & to keep Tom alive."

"From Tom's pool, you can see into the heart of his garden. In summer, we swim laps every day. Often, we walk through the park, then sit on that bench, looking at the view. Yesterday, we sat there a little longer than usual, just looking at the changing light, not saying anything. But Tom reads my mind: 'You're going to live 20 more years,' he assured me."

Laurents worked in many genres. The stage was his first love, & he wrote for it for 65 years, creating comedies, romances, & serious dramas that explored questions of ethics, social pressures & personal integrity.

Laurents made his exit, upstage center, in May 2011. This is a partial list of his contribution to popular culture:

Librettos: Gypsy, Nick & Nora, West Side Story, The Madwoman of Central Park West, Hallelujah, Baby! Do I Hear a Waltz?, & Anyone Can Whistle

Direction: Anyone Can Whistle, La Cage aux Follies, The Madwoman of Central Park West, Gypsy (1974, 1989 & 2008), I Can Get It for You Wholesale (with a very young Barbra Streisand) & Invitation to a March

Plays: Invitation to a March, A Clearing in the Woods, The Time of the Cuckoo, The Bird Cage, Home of the Brave, & Jolson Sings!

Screenplays: Anastasia, The Turning Point, The Way We Were, Gypsy, West Side Story, Bonjour Tristesse, Summertime (from his play The TimeOf The Cuckoo), Anna Lucasta, Home of the Brave, Rope, Caught, &The Snake Pit

Has your life been touched by any of his work? I would be interested to know. If you are a fan, what is your favorite version of Gypsy?

This still gets to me every time... good-byes & regrets.

Born On This Day- June 10th... Terence Rattigan

He would become a success at just 25 years old with a light farce- French Without Tears (1936), but Terence Rattigan wanted to be considered a serious writer. His next piece was a satirical drama After the Dance (1939), attacking the cynical generation of Bright Young Things for their failure to stop another war. Success brought more success, & among his very well received plays: The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, The Deep Blue Sea, & Separate Tables, were all made into even more popular films. He served as the writer of the screenplays of most of his plays & by the 1960s, he was Hollywood’s best paid writer.

He was nominated for 2 Oscars. But just as his works struck out at the older generation, in 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger knocked cold the character of the Rattigan generation: the collected, composed, chastened, creaky characters that held back emotions. Rattigan fell deeply out of favor with the critics who had championed him, just as he was hitting his best notes.

In 1957 he wrote his first play that directly addressed his homosexuality, Variation on a Theme, & it was not well received. Rattigan learned to keep his own relationships well hidden, perhaps to the point of being emotionally cut off even from his partners.

Rattigan enjoyed plenty of lovers but no long-term partners. His work is essentially autobiographical, containing coded references to his sexuality, which he kept secret from all but his closest friends.

Rattigan alternated between comedies & dramas, all works of understated emotions, & craftsmanship. When seemingly overnight his sort of theatre fell into disfavor, Rattigan responded with bitterness. His churlish remarks only confirmed that he had no sympathy or understanding of the new, more modern world. Yet, his later plays: Ross, Man & Boy, In Praise of Love, & Cause Célèbre, showed no decline in his considerable talent.

No longer feeling at home in the swinging, mod London of the 1960s, Rattigan made his home in Bermuda, where he continued to write. He lived off the proceeds from lucrative screenplays including The V.I.P.s & The Yellow Rolls-Royce.

He was diagnosed as having leukemia in 1962 but recovered 2 years later, but fell ill again in 1968. Rattigan died of leukemia in his beloved Bermuda in 1977, at 66 years of age.

Rattigan was knighted in1971 for services to the theatre, being only the 4th playwright to be knighted in the 20th century (after William Gilbert in 1907, Arthur Wing Pinero in 1909 & Noël Coward in 1970).

Rattigan’s plays have enjoyed a renaissance in the 21^stcentury. I love his work & I hold him as one of the last century's finest playwrights, an expert elicitor of emotion, & an anatomist of human emotional pain. A string of successful stage revivals & films in the past decade include a West End production of The Winslow Boy, Man & Boy on Broadway with Frank Langella, In Praise of Love & Separate Tables at the Royal Shakespere, A Bequest to the Nation, starring Janet McTeer & Kenneth Branagh, After The Dance at London's Royal National Theatre, & Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic last season.

In theatres right now & getting terrific reviews, is a new film of The Deep Blue Sea starring Rachel Weisz.

I highly recommend the 1958 film version of Separate Tableswith Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, Windy Hiller, winner of the best Supporting Actress for the role, Burt Lancaster & David Niven, who won the Oscar for Best Actor. I also very much enjoyed 2000’s The Winslow Boy with Jeremy Northam, & the 1994 film version of The Browning Version with Albert Finney.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

In my 45 years of working on stage I only played in a few works by The Bard of Stratford-On -Avon, all of them small roles: Prince of Aarogon in The Merchant Of Venice, Verges in Much Ado About Nothing, Andrew Auecheek in Twelfth Night, Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream & 3rd witch from the left in that Scottish Play. Among the list of roles I never got to play, at the top would be: Malvolio, Shylock, & Caliban... I was probably too short, short on talent & short on chances in my short lifetime. 

More has been written about William Shakespeare than any other writer, & it is still being debated whether Shakespeare was Shakespeare. Entire books have been dedicated to the subject, on both sides of the issue. The 3 strongest possibilities for the true identity of the Bard: Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, & Christopher Marlowe were all homosexual.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, apparently not intended for publication. 126 of these sonnets address the poet's love for a young man. I, of course, claim him as one of The Gays: handsome, dressed well, preferred to live, work & travel with male companions rather than be home in Stratford with his wife, wrote & acted in plays, & enjoyed cocktails, gossip & shopping. But the real tip off is when he outed himself at the Tony Awards when he thanked his boyfriend with this acceptance speech:

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
& for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
& by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love & thy love's use their treasure.


William Shakespeare was born on this day- April 23rd. He turns 448 years old.

Born On This Day- April 13th... Playwright Lanford Wilson

I spent a certain amount of time in the late 1970s, early 1980s trying to get a production of the beautiful play- Fifth Of July off the ground, one of those opportunities that slipped away. I remained a fan of the work of playwright Lanford Wilson for the past 45 years, since seeing his play- Balm in Gilead in 1965. Many of Wilson's characters were desperate eccentrics whose fears & needs were portrayed with sympathy.

Wilson was born on this day in 1937, in Lebanon, Missouri.  After living for 6 years in Chicago, where he studied at the University of Chicago & worked briefly in advertising. Wilson emerged as a playwright at NYC’s Caffe Cino in 1964, where his play The Madness of Lady Bright  was a major hit & a significant milestone in the development of gay-themed drama. In 1965, Wilson attracted attention with The Madness of Lady Bright. Its protagonist, Leslie Bright, is a middle-aged gay man confronting a wistful past, a lonely present & an uncertain future.

Many of his early play- The Hot L Baltimore, Serenading Louie & Balm In Gilead were associated with Circle Rep, where he was founding member in 1969.

Wilson’s work is earthy, realist, greatly admired, widely performed. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for drama for Talley’s Folly. Talley’s Folly was one of a trilogy- The Talley Cycle along with Talley & Son & Fifth of July.

My personal favorite- Fifth of July is a bittersweet comedy that explores the disillusionment of the Vietnam era. The Broadway production starred Christopher Reeve as Kenneth Talley Jr., a gay, paraplegic Vietnam veteran,  & co-starred Jeff Daniels & Swoosie Kurtz. It was TV movie in 1982. His work reminds me of Tennessee Williams, in the best way.

Wilson’s other Broadway plays include Burn This (1987), Angels Fall (1983) & Redwood Curtain, which premiered at Seattle Rep in1993.

His Off Broadway work included The Hot L Baltimore, about the residents of a seedy residential hotel. The play was the basis of a short-lived TV sitcom of the same name, broadcast on ABC in 1975.

Actors associated with Wilson's work include Judd Hirsch, William Hurt, Kathy Bates, Barnard Hughes, Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, Cherry Jones & Cynthia Nixon.

Wilson’s work was filled with authentic, gritty, often overlapping  dialogue & characters concerned with dissolutions large and small & the loss of life, love, companionship & sanity.

His characters tended toward the socially marginalized. They were drawn from a playwright whose identity as someone from the Ozarks, a child of a broken home & gay at a time when it was very tough to be gay. He was pushed the margins of mainstream culture himself.  Wilson was one of the first mainstream playwrights to create central, meaningful gay characters.

His prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts & urban night people who populate his plays were unusual theatrical subjects in their day, but were sympathetic. He also made it clear that the subject matter of many of his plays was drawn from his own life.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Wilson lived in a small apartment in West Greenwich Village. In the 1970s, he bought a house in Sag Harbor. He lived in both places, using his Manhattan apartment mainly when he had a play in production there. He also became active in a community theatre company in Sag Harbor.

Wilson was openly gay all of his professional life. Brave for the time. My research finds nothing about a boyfriend or partner. In 2004, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

Last spring, Wilson died, at age 73, from complications of pneumonia, at his home in Sag Harbor.