Broadway Tails (4 page)

The first night of any new show is always a disaster—that’s what summer stock is about. The show was changing every day—we finished the sets, the script was rewritten, new numbers were added, and old ones taken out. Then, two weeks into the run, the creators made a major decision. They decided, in order to get the audience really rooting for Annie, they needed a different kind of performance. They needed a kid who was tougher, with street smarts, someone optimistic enough to survive the Great Depression. While Kristen Vigard was a very bright, talented actress, they didn’t think she could give that kind of performance. So they replaced Kristen with Andrea McArdle, who had been playing one of the orphans.

After the Sunday-night performance, Martin Charnin took Kristen aside and told her what was happening. She was upset, but like a true professional, she understood it was for the good of the show. Then Martin went to Andrea. With Sandy by their side, he asked her if she would like to take over the role. She said, “Sure.” They started rehearsing that night. We worked all day Monday and all day Tuesday. I was worried because I had spent almost six weeks getting this dog to think that Kristen was the little girl he should love, and now a brand-new kid was coming along. But
Andrea had a dog at home and she knew what to do. She hugged Sandy and kissed him and played with him, and in twenty-four hours, not only did she take us all by storm, but she had Sandy falling in love with her, too. By Tuesday night, instead of going out for a treat from Kristen, Sandy was going out to play with Andrea, which was a totally different feeling. At that point things really began to change. The audience started cheering for Annie instead of acting like they were watching a comic strip. We started to feel that maybe this musical had a chance.

As the season drew to a close, I began to worry about what I would do with Sandy. I was going to be sharing a New York City apartment with two other people from the Opera House. I didn’t see any way that I could afford to take Sandy with me. I thought that my parents would take him, but they already had a dog at home and didn’t want another. I was shocked because I never thought my parents would turn him down. I thought I’d be able to see him every time I came home.

A week before the show was scheduled to close, the creators told Michael Price they wanted to extend the run. They thought the musical was going in the right direction. Michael said he couldn’t afford it—reviews had been poor, the box office was bad, and the show was over budget. The only way it could continue was if the creators paid everyone’s salary. The creators agreed to pay for a two-week extension. This was another problem for me—I couldn’t stay past September 1. I had classes at NYU, and I didn’t want to miss my first day at Stella Adler’s studio. Patrick O’Leary, one of my friends who would be sharing the apartment, offered to stay, take care of Sandy, and continue trying to find him a home.

It was very hard, but I slowly started to pull myself away from Sandy. But every time Patrick would lead him away, he would look back at me over his shoulder with those sad, sad eyes. At the same time, we were putting up adoption posters and asking friends and family if they would take him, but we couldn’t find him a home.

Then I was contacted by one of Goodspeed’s board members, a wonderful lady named Norma Terris. She had been a famous Broadway actress,
appearing in the original production of
Showboat
, along with many other shows. Now she was in her seventies, lived locally, and spent her time promoting animal welfare. She had followed the story of Sandy, and when she heard that I was looking for a home for him, she invited me over for lunch at her mansion on the banks of the Connecticut River. All during my visit, she kept saying that Sandy belonged with me and I couldn’t give him up. No matter what excuse I made, she stuck to her point: “If you really love someone, you’ll find a way to make it work.”

As I said good-bye to Sandy, I cried very hard. He didn’t understand why I was upset. As I drove away, I could see him in the rearview mirror, straining against the leash as he tried to follow me.

The night I moved into my fifth-floor walk-up, I called Patrick to see how things were going. He had bad news. Sandy wasn’t eating. He was lethargic. He barely went out onstage, and he was no longer jumping up on Andrea. No one had come forward to adopt him. As the week progressed, things just got worse. On that Friday I got a call from Norma Terris.

“Young man,” she said, obviously concerned, “this dog is very upset that you’re not there. You must take care of this dog.”

“But Miss Terris, I can’t afford …”

That’s when she made the best offer anyone has ever made to me. She said, “Young man, I will make a promise to you if you will make a promise to me. I will fund the cost of having the dog with you, if you promise to take care of him for the rest of his life.” At first I tried to refuse, because I didn’t want to take money from a stranger—but she insisted. So, on Saturday, I drove back to Connecticut to do the final shows. Sandy was thrilled—he jumped all over me, knocked me down, and licked my face. On Sunday evening, after the final curtain, Patrick, Sandy, and I got in the car and drove to New York City. I looked down at Sandy lying across the backseat with his head on my lap and thought, Well, if I’m going to be a starving actor, I might as well have a dog that’s going to starve with me.

In September 1976 I had moved to Greenwich Village in New York and was living my dream: I was a starving actor. I had my Equity card. I was attending NYU and studying with acting legend Stella Adler. I had my dog. Life couldn’t have gotten much better.

Then in November I got a call from the office of the famous director Mike Nichols. Mike was making his producing debut with the Broadway production of
Annie
—would I be interested in working on the show? It would have an out-of-town tryout in Washington, D.C., in January 1977, and then open on Broadway in April. It took a while before the shock wore off, and when it did, I realized the only way for me to work with Mike Nichols was to drop out of school and pretend to be an animal trainer. The last time I pretended, I got my Equity card and a great dog out of it. This could be my lucky break.

A few days later I was in the office of Peter Neufeld and Tyler Gatchell, the general managers for the show. At first, I think they were just as surprised to see this kid walk in as I was to be in a real New York theater office. As we talked, they must have sensed the sheer terror I was feeling. Peter finally came right out and asked, “Can you train this dog?” I told them I had made the whole process up at Goodspeed and had no idea if I could do it again. They said they couldn’t hire a novice for such an important part of the show and asked if I would work with a “real” trainer. “Gladly,” I said. Then they asked how much I wanted.
How much?
, I thought.
They were going to pay me?
It must have shown on my face, because they realized they had a sucker. They offered me $300 a week plus my hotel in Washington, D.C. Wow! I thought I’d hit the jackpot. Little did I know, the actor’s minimum was $600 a week for chorus, and I was working with a star. But I gladly took it. Even if I did the show for ten weeks, I could finance college for a year!

The “real” trainer they hired had handled dogs in the military—he was big, bad, and bald. His training method was all about intimidation. He showed me how to use a metal choke collar on a dog—I remember him dragging Sandy away from me and turning quickly and jerking the collar, which flipped Sandy over. I was horrified. I didn’t have the heart to hurt Sandy like he did. Sandy started to shake but didn’t leave his side. In that moment I felt I had made a horrible decision. If this was what animal training was about, I wanted out.

I never went back to finish the class but learned a lot about how I wouldn’t train a dog. I went back to the general managers and said I wanted to quit because the training was so aggressive. They said they didn’t care how I handled the training, just get it done or they’d sue for breach of contract. I remember calling my mentor, Norma Terris. When I told her about
the trainer, she scoffed. “Young man, you don’t need anyone to tell you what to do. You and Sandy have something special. Trust him, and yourself, and it will be fine.” That was the best advice I ever took from a human about animal training.

The crazy thing is, if you look at the original credits for
Annie
, this guy is listed as the trainer, even though he never set foot in the theater. I was only listed as Sandy’s owner. That was before we became a hit and they changed the credits.

The general managers reminded me I needed an understudy in case Sandy got sick. Holy cow; two dogs to train. I had promised myself that if I ever got another dog, I would rescue one. I went up to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Manhattan. The first dog I found was a calm, six-month-old puppy that had brown, scruffy fur. He was very cute. He had been a stray, was thin, and they said he had a cold. He slowly walked out of his cage and let me pet him and pick him up. I thought this little guy was sweet and had a personality that would be easy to train, so I adopted him. I thought maybe my luck was changing.

But the puppy’s cold got worse. Two days later I took him to the vet and found he didn’t have a cold, he had distemper. It was so advanced, the vet recommended euthanasia. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was incurable and he was going down fast, so I had to agree. It was the first time I ever had to make that decision. After it was over, the vet asked if the puppy had come in contact with any other dogs. He had just spent two days with Sandy in my apartment. Fortunately, Sandy had been vaccinated for distemper but we had to wait ten days to make sure he was clear. I was a wreck worrying about him the whole time.

Rehearsals were getting close. I had Sandy doing his old tricks, but I had no understudy. After visiting shelters all around New York City, I found a healthy red collie mix with pointy ears that looked like the dog in the comic strip. I adopted him and called him Arf.

When rehearsals began, I was mesmerized. They had brought in famed choreographer Peter Gennaro, added a few more chorus people, and Dorothy Loudon was now playing Miss Hannigan. When Sandy saw Andrea McArdle, he went crazy. He loved her so much. In fact, as happy as Sandy was with me, he seemed even happier to be back in a rehearsal room. As I sat down in the semicircle surrounding the piano and heard the show read and sung, I felt I was a part of theater history being made. Imagine my surprise when I heard Sandy’s part had gone from two scenes to four! A scene had been written where he barks to protect Annie before he gets lost. Then halfway through the first act, after a number called “NYC,” Martin Charnin read, “Sandy enters slowly from stage right, sits center stage, looks right, looks left, and exits stage left.”

I almost fell off my chair. Because we had gone against conventional wisdom and successfully put a dog in the show, the creators thought we could do more. Getting Sandy to bark wouldn’t be hard. At Goodspeed, he had shown an immediate dislike for one of the actors when he wore a policeman’s uniform. We could use that by having the actor threaten to
take Annie back to the orphanage. Sandy would bark to protect her. The real problem was the big “NYC” cue, which sounded so simple when Martin read it. I couldn’t think of a way to get Sandy to stop at center stage. If I put him in one wing and called him from the other, he was going to come running right to me. Then, one day, I inadvertently dropped a treat on the floor. Sandy came running, skidded to a stop, ate it, then continued to me. Aha!

I asked Martin if I could get someone to drop a treat onstage as they were exiting, and he said sure. When we used hard treats, they bounced. As a poor, starving actor, I was eating lots of bologna sandwiches for lunch, so we tried that, and Sandy went right for it. When he reached the treat, I would whisper, “Sit.” Someone would make a sound stage right, he would look that way, then I would make a sound stage left, and he would look that way. Finally, I would call him off. It became affectionately known as the “Baloney drop,” which was a play on my last name. That small piece of processed meat created one of the most moving moments in Broadway history.

We went to Washington, D.C., not knowing what to expect. The cast was excused from dress rehearsal so we could go to the White House and perform for President Carter and all fifty governors. I remember walking up the driveway to the East Room, feeling a sense of pride that I was going to meet and entertain the president of the United States. Then I was jerked back to reality when Sandy pulled on his lead to leave his mark on a tree by the White House lawn.

The rest of that spring was a blur.
Annie
was a huge hit and broke all box office records at the Kennedy Center. We came to New York on a cloud. The reviews acknowledged Sandy’s performance, and I became a famous animal trainer at the age of twenty. The other trainer was never mentioned again, and soon the credits were changed. It was all strange and exciting, but Sandy and the kids kept me grounded.

Andrea and Sandy, of course, became a legendary Broadway couple. For the next year she and Sandy would do eight shows a week, multiple television appearances, award shows, charity events, and countless other public appearances—and because they loved each other, it all seemed effortless.
When he was tired, she helped him out; and when she was sad, he’d come over and give her a kiss. (Sandy never kissed anyone except Andrea and me.) Through it all, though, they remained a kid and her dog, and I did my best to keep it that way. Andrea loved practical jokes and was constantly pulling pranks—like the time she made a smiley face with cotton balls and stuck it on the back of “Daddy Warbuck’s” black tuxedo during curtain call. Or the time she brought in a new toy called Slime and shook everyone’s hand onstage with it.

Sandy had his moments, too. Our original conductor, Peter Howard, opened the show using his favorite old wooden baton. About six months into the show, it broke, and the cast replaced it with a brand-new white one. That night, as Andrea sang the hit song, “Tomorrow,” Sandy noticed something different in the pit. He sat up and started watching this white stick. As it went up, his head went up—as it went down, his head went down. The audience very quickly caught on that he was watching the conductor and started to laugh. And when this white thing didn’t stop, Sandy started doing little “woofs” at it, which happened to fall on the beat of the music. Andrea handled it like a pro, and “Tomorrow” never received as much applause as it did on the night that Sandy sang along.

For our first year, all the stars got applause when they first entered. One night it was raining heavily, and we held the curtain because the sold-out audience had had such a hard time getting there. As a result, they weren’t in the best mood. When Sandy made his first entrance, he got halfway to Andrea and stopped dead. He knew something was different but couldn’t figure out what it was. I could see him think,
Where is all that noise those people make
? So he slowly turned his head and looked out into the theater. The audience soon realized Sandy was checking them out and ignoring Andrea, who was saying
Come here, boy
, over and over. They began to laugh. He stared. They laughed harder. He still stared. They were roaring now. He still stared. They finally applauded, and he went on with the show.