Authors: Garson Kanin
“It’s not?”
“No.”
“Well, fix it up, then. Make it clear that it means everyone connected with the production in any way. On- and offstage.”
“All right. Anything else?”
“Not for now.”
I went back to my room to type up some bulletins and catch up with a mound of paperwork.
I thought a lot about Larry and about how misunderstood he is in many quarters of this organization. Art, for instance, has no ideas as to what he does or how he does it. He thinks a director is a sort of traffic cop who tells everyone where and when to come and go. The subtle parts of Larry’s work are lost on him. Some of the others? Well, Chris is too cold to think of anything much. Hy and Fred only of themselves. Ivan knows and Alicia cares, but they are
themselves
misunderstood.
SHINE ON, HARVEST MOON
Company Bulletin
Wednesday, October 17
RUNNING ORDER FOR THE THIRD PREVIEW
: The present running order includes “Merry-Go-Round.” It also includes the old version of the dressing-room scene preceding “Falling Star.”
“Sweetie” is, for the present, eliminated from the running order.
REMINDERS
: Please make it a point to review your material at least once a day away from the theatre.
Mr. Monroe reminds all singers that in musicals, the pronunciation of
fruit
is “fruit-tah” and
credit
is “credit-tah.”
We still hear errors in the pronunciation of Everleigh. It is never “Ever-lay”—always “Ever-
lee,”
except for Nora’s maid, who says “Never-lee.”
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
: There will be a run-through with music at the theatre at 2:00 P.M.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21
: Will be the scheduled day off for all members of the company.
COMMENDATION
: Alas, there is hardly enough time for praise, even when it is richly deserved. For the time being, it seems necessary to correct mistakes.
However, I want you all to know that I appreciate your efforts and that actions above and beyond the call of duty do not go unnoticed.
The more close-knit a unit we become, the more effective will be the performance on the stage.
Moreover, I am grateful to the company for its adherence to the necessary disciplines.
L.G.
QUOTE TO REMEMBER
:
“I’d rather have run the scene eight times than have wasted that time in chattering away about abstractions. An actor gets the right thing by doing it over and over. Arguing about motivation and so forth is a lot of rot. American directors encourage that sort of thing too much. Instead of doing a scene over again that’s giving trouble, they want to discuss—discuss—discuss.”
Laurence Olivier
PREVIEW AUDIENCES
: Preview audiences are traditionally unpredictable. They may respond too much or not enough. They seldom hit the norm of a regular audience. We are to consider these performances try-out performances and not concern ourselves too much with responses or lack of responses. The reason for preview performances is not so much to test the play, but to give the players and the crew an opportunity to work under performance conditions. We have a great deal of detail work still to be done, but in the main, we are in good shape. Play confidently. Godspeed.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP: HARRY SILVERMAN
(Detective Stone)
One of the social activities of the ILGWU (International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union) is the Drama Society. Right after joining the Union, I joined the Drama Society and soon became a leading player. We did a lot of Odets: WAITING FOR LEFTY, AWAKE AND SING, ROCKET TO THE MOON. Also WINTERSET and WHAT PRICE GLORY and DEATH OF A SALESMAN…Then I began to direct…Then both…Mr. Lee Strasberg attended my production of THE HAIRY APE by Eugene O’Neill in which I also played the lead. He invited me to try out for The Actors Studio. I did and was accepted and am still a proud member of the Studio, which has opened up a new world for me…I am also still a member of the ILGWU, although I practice another craft. You never can tell.
There is now 1 day remaining until our Boston opening.
There are now 40 days until our Philadelphia opening.
Boston. The first time with an audience tonight. What an experience!
For a clear account, it is necessary to go back three days. Where did I get the idea that dress rehearsals are always chaotic? From the movies, I suppose. Those backstage musicals I have doted on all my life. Well—turns out the real world is different. The three days of dress rehearsal and previews were smooth and quiet and utterly professional. All seemed to know precisely what they were doing. I sat beside Larry and was impressed with his grasp of the overall situation, and the firmness with which he dealt with every crisis, usually nipping it into the bud. He is a man who knows his stuff and, what’s more, who surrounds himself with top-notch people.
On the first day, he had Russ take the company to the ballroom of the Bradford next door and simply run through the whole show twice without interruption.
“Get it down firm and pat,” he said to the company, “so that in a day or two—when you get hit with the sets and lights and costumes and all the rest of it—you won’t be thrown. If we do it right, the production should
enhance
what we’ve got—not rip it apart. One more thing—for these run-throughs with Russ—take it at a fast clip—faster than usual, faster than normal. The reason is that the production is likely to slow you down—and on Friday night the audience will slow you down still more. Try not to let it. Lead the way. Keep it moving. Hold it together. That’s our watchword for the next few days: Hold It Together.”
Russ went off with the company and at the theatre Larry rehearsed the stagehands. The sets had been put into place earlier in the week under the supervision of Ivan and Nadia. Then Millie and her staff did the beautiful, atmospheric lighting. Now Larry started from the top and went through the whole show—every cue, every change. On the more difficult ones, he went back for a second or a third or a fourth time, until each member of the crew knew exactly what he had to do.
Art hovered about nervously, upsetting everyone with idiotic criticism and hopeless suggestions.
“I never saw a sky
that
color!”
“I can see all the bare lights from here, for Chrissake!”
“Why’s that set so big?”
“Why’s that set so small?”
“Jesus, is it gonna take
that
long for the change?”
And so on. Fortunately, everyone was too concentratedly occupied to reply or it might have led to friction or even physical assault. As it was, he yelled or whimpered mostly to the surrounding air while the artists and craftsmen went about their work.
By 4:30 p.m., we had set Act I. Larry broke until six, then tackled Act II, which took until 1:15 a.m. To my surprise, no one was tired. The excitement and activity and the achievement seemed to generate energy. In addition to everything else, I kept timing, timing, timing—until I had a small blister on my thumb from pressing the stem of the stopwatch.
The next day—Act I with the company. No orchestration, just piano.
“Keep going,” said Larry before it began. “We’re out here noting all errors. Just plow ahead no matter what. Pretend it’s a performance. O.K. Overture, Phil.”
Larry has often said that actors are a gallant, courageous breed, and that dress-rehearsal day proved to me that he is right. From the very opening, the company magically turned into a championship team, a cohesive entity. Every single member of the company was pulling in the same direction. The concerted, communal effort was so intense that it damn near made me cry—no, not damn near, to tell the truth—I
did
cry.
Then. At last. The first preview.
“It’s one of those cut-rate clubs,” Larry explained to the company before the performance. “So don’t expect too much help. And if they turn out to be screamers—don’t let them poison you. An audience can do that, you know. Just play the show. It’s good and so are you.”
Now I am stumped. How to report what happened? All went well. No technical errors of any kind. No fluffs. But somehow I knew, and so did everyone else, that the show as a whole did not get over.
Company onstage afterward.
“All right,” said Larry, “settle down. Look, we’re all thinking the same thing. Let me put it this way. We’ve done it. Call it a practice shot, call it an icebreaker!”
“Call it a
ball
breaker!” Art chimed in. “It was lousy. The whole thing lousy. Just fucking deadass. The way you all played it it was like
you
thought it stunk—so how can you expect
them
not to. Jesus, what a catastrophe!”
“Finished?” asked Larry.
“For now, yes. And if things don’t improve around here the whole goddamn
bunch
of you will be finished!”
He stormed out into the auditorium and buried himself in its comforting darkness.
Larry continued. “The show didn’t get over tonight. Agreed. It didn’t get over because it stayed up here on the stage. It wasn’t projected and that, by the way, has nothing to do with volume. It has to do with what’s going on in your heads and hearts. Concentration. They’ve got to know how and what you’re thinking and feeling. I’m sorry about tonight. I know how hard all of you tried. I’m disappointed. But not upset. Tonight—and it’s understandable—tonight you all had too many extraneous things on your minds.”
Star said, “I thought
I
was sensational.”
The company laughed, then applauded.
“I thought so, too,” said Larry. “Now tomorrow night let’s make
them
think so.”
But the second preview was worse, and further complicated by a jammed turntable and by a faulty body mike on Star that set up an ungodly yowling, was killed, thus forcing her to perform without amplification while everyone else around her was blasting.
Art left before the first act was over, distraught and shaken.
Hy and Fred and Jenny started out at the back of the house, but kept leaving and returning all evening, each time a little more sloshed. By the middle of the second act they got the collective giggles and had to go out into the lobby.
“I like it,” said Ivan in the intermission. “What is wrong, it can be fixed. Usually what is wrong
cannot
be fixed.”
The record boys were silent, mysterious, noncommittal.
Cindy Sapiro kept asking everyone, including the ushers, “How do you like it?”
And then. And then opening night—like an advance Christmas present for everyone, onstage and off.
The color of the night changed, death turned into life. Down was up. Lazarus rose.
V
for victory.
Backstage, I said to Larry. “I’ve never seen so much hugging and kissing.”
“Wait,” said Larry with that wry little smile of his. “Wait. Now it all begins.”
The Barracuda had dictated notes on the dress rehearsal until after midnight, never using one word when he could find seven to say the same thing. He then asked me to type them up. I did so. He looked them over, said, “Perfect,” and handed them back to me. (I suppose by “perfect,” he meant his opinions, not my faultless transcript.) “Twelve copies,” he added, and pointed to the IBM 2400 Copier in the sitting room of his suite. (God Almighty! A full-size copier in the sitting room. And how he uses it! Like a part of his anatomy. Sense of power? Every letter, memo, note, whatever—reproduced in threes or three hundreds. Does it give him a sense of being more than one? More than himself? Influential? Blanketing the world with his thoughts, ideas, opinions, pronouncements?) I got to work at once. He went into his bedroom. In a minute, I heard the sound of “The Tonight Show.” A door sound, and soon after, the shower splashing. In my state of advanced bleariness, it seemed to me that the three going sounds: TV, copier, and shower were somehow perfectly coordinated rhythmically. Now, the singing on “The Tonight Show,” the splashing (in the right key), and the copier—all on the beat. I shook my head, hand, five or six times in an effort to stay awake, and found I was shaking my
head
to the beat. Well,
I
was beat. He came back into the room and stopped just as the copier spat out its last copy. Life was turning into one big number, staged by the choreographer of the week. AC was wearing a tent-size terry-cloth robe. He was rubbing his wet hair vigorously with a huge Turkish towel—still keeping perfect time. I saw that he was standing in a puddle, and it occurred to me that he had had a nasty accident; but no, he was simply dripping. I collated the notes into sets. From the bedroom, the McDonald’s commercial came on. AC sang along with it, almost drowning it out. As it ended, I handed him the copies.
“Unless you want
me
to,” I said.
“You to
what?”
“Distribute them.”
“What’re
you,
the producer?” he asked.
“No.”
“So?”
“Is that all for tonight?” I asked.
“How’d you like the show?”
“The dress, you mean?”
“What’d’y’mean, 'dress’?”
“Dress rehearsal.”
“Well?”
I stalled, then said, “Well, what?”
“How’d you like it, God
damn
it?”
“I thought it was a great dress. Dress rehearsal. But remember, I'm new at all this, so—”
He used his head to beckon me closer.
“C’mere.” I moved to him. He looked at me in that disturbing way of his: both his eyes on both of mine. “Lemme ask you something, cookie…” He laughed suddenly, startling me. “Funny!” he said, grudgingly, pointing to the sound emanating from the bedroom. “He comes up with good stuff sometimes, Carson.”
“He certainly does.”
“Only not
his
. Writers. You know how many writers he’s got feedin’ him those cracks all night? Maybe fifteen, sixteen. And people think, what a wit! What a wit,
shit!
Sixteen, seventeen writers. So he comes up with these great ad libs. Ad libs, my ass. He couldn’t ad lib a belch after a full-course Hungarian dinner.”
“Was that one of yours?” I asked. (I was
exhausted
and had turned waspish.)
“What one what?”
“‘Belch—Hungarian dinner.’ I think I read it somewhere.”
“So?”
“Nothing. It just seems peculiar. You bad-mouthing someone for using other people’s funnies, and doing it yourself.”
“What’d you take up there at Vassar, a course in Fresh?”
“Yes. Except they didn’t call it that. They called it Assertiveness Training.”
“You’re gonna assertiveness yourself right out on your Vassar ass, y’know it?”
“What were you saying?” I asked, switching gears.
“Saying when?”
“Before. We were talking about the dress, the rehearsal, and you said you wanted to ask me something and then you laughed and then you got sore at Johnny Carson and then you got sore at me. What did you want to ask me?”
“I wanted to ask if you were playin’ with me or tryin’ to, or playin’ with yourself, or what. You don’t snow
me,
Vassar ass. I’ve been around the block more than several times. I’d ask you how’d you like the show, you give me it was a great dress. Dress rehearsal.”
“It was a great show,” I said. (It was getting late.)
“God damn right! Those Broadway bums. They think they own the combination to the safe. Christ—they’re
yesterday. This
is a show. What time’s the call?”
“Ten.”
“Ten. Be there.”
“Sure.”
“And listen.” He handed me the copies of his notes. “Pass these around. I’m too goddamn busy. I got my hands full with the costumes tomorrow. That cunt really fucked up. Did you hear Star Baby burst into song when She saw that green one? She claims She told that limey bitch a thousand times green was her jinx color. I may have to get rid of the cunt altogether.”
“You mean Star Baby?”
“Take off!”
“Good night.”
“See you at ten.”
“Right. And by the way,” I said, “I thought the costumes were the most beautiful part of the evening.”
“You’re fired!” he said.
“See you at ten,” I replied.
When I got down to my room, I broke the world’s record for Showering, Laundering, and Getting to Bed. All through my ablutions and preparations, the phone kept ringing. I knew who it was, of course, and thought, to hell with him. I’ve had enough for one night. And anyway, I’m fired. Maybe he’s calling to rehire me? Or maybe to say
really
fired? In any case, I decided to let it ring.
My head just made it to the pillow. Out.
I sat with Larry at the opening last night. Fifth row on the aisle. His method of giving notes changed drastically. He explained that on a first night, it was best to let nothing interfere with the atmosphere. Moreover there were some big critics: newspaper, magazine, TV, and radio who might be disconcerted by a whispering director, and might think that the number of notes related to the quality of what they were seeing.
“They don’t understand,” he explained, “that at this point, it is the entire performance, including audience reaction.”
Early this morning, we played the cassettes against my notes and I was astounded at Larry’s ability to recall what was wrong at each point.
No rehearsal call until 2:00 this afternoon, and that one is Jenny’s for one hour. Larry takes over at 3:00.
“But let’s go over at two,” he says. “You mind?”
“Of course not.”
He smiles, and adds, “I just want to see if we can run true to form. If we do, you’ll see them rehearsing at two the number that stopped the show last night.”
“Why that?”
“I don’t know. Comfort, I suppose. And you can hardly bear to face the bad stuff. You’re not sure what to do sometimes. But the good stuff—you like to stay with it and play with it and pat it and pat it and enjoy it like a new toy—that works!”
Sure enough, when we reached the theatre at two, there was “Midnight Waltz” in full blast on the stage. It had gone over sensationally last night.
Larry laughed, and said, “Well, at least we’re normal.”
The notices. I thought they were fine, but there is a lot of sulking.
“Depends how we read them,” says Larry. “I’d say they were about what we deserve at this point. Even when they’re good—they’re never as good as you think they ought to be—and when they’re bad, they’re always worse than you think you deserve.”
“They’re great for
her,
aren’t they?”
“Sure. Right now She’s a pet, a fashion. If you pan her, it means you’re square, not with it. Actually, She is far from her potential.”
“But they said—”
“Sure, sure. But listen, there are damn few critics—hell, damn few
people
who can tell the difference between a good part and a good performer. They’re reviewing her part—without knowing it. Do they think She’s making it up as She goes along?”
The play’s production is highly praised: sets, costumes, lighting.
Reserved enthusiasm for the score. Hy sulks.
“Tin-ear creeps!” he says. “When we’re one, two, three on the charts they’ll begin to hear it, maybe.”
Different players singled out by different commentators.
“Eliot Norton,” says Art, “he’s the only one up here means a goddamn thing. That other idiot—what’s his name? He wants to play it safe. I never saw so many ifs and buts and maybes in a review. What’s his name?”
(Later, Larry says to me, “Do you know why he can’t remember Kevin Kelly’s name?”
“No, why?”
“Because Kelly didn’t remember
his
name!”)
“All the radio and TV are quite good, but Paul says they don’t matter.”
“Nothing matters right now except the audience,” says Larry. “Wooing and winning the audience and eventually getting the show and the audience
married!”
“They
liked
it!” says Art. “I watched them. I know.”
“Of course they liked it, Art. They want to like it. They’ve paid for it in advance. They can’t just shut it off or switch to another channel.”
“They like it,” Art insists stubbornly.
“All right!” says Larry. “But it’s not enough. They’ve got to
love
it—not
like—love.
Passionately, sexually—”
“What?” asks Art, confused.
“You don’t marry someone you
like
, for God’s sake. You have to
love!”
“All right,” says Art. “So make them love it.”
“I will,” says Larry. “I
will.”
“How?”
A pause.
“I don’t know,” says Larry.
But I can see that he is thinking and feeling hard.