Hi everyone! I know I’ve been MIA for a while. I’m going to post my backlogged columns from over the next weeks. You may know that my dad passed away on September 30 and I will do a column about him soon. Until then, here’s the column I was working on when I was with him in the hospital.
Hello from beautiful Palm Springs! I’m here visiting my dad and loving the weather when it’s not the title role in Hell’s Kitchen. Right before I got here, it was a constant 110, but now it’s a “cool” constant 95 degrees.
I love that there are so many theatre people who live in Palm Springs, including the fabulous Lucie Arnaz. Recently, I had Lucie on Seth Speaks, my SiriusXM radio talk show, and I asked her about her first big musical theatre gig, which was starring in the national tour of Seesaw as Gittel Mosca (the role that Michele Lee originated). If you don’t know the dramatic history (herstory!) of Seesaw, lemme start with that.
The show was out of town in Detroit and having trouble, so the producer brought in Michael Bennett to direct and choreograph. Michael didn’t think Lainie Kazan was right for the leading role of Gittel, so he (devastatingly) fired her. However, Lainie had to keep playing the role out of town while they tinkered with it before bringing it to Broadway (with her replacement). Of course, Lainie had that thought we all would which is, “Maybe he’ll see me doing all these changes, realize how good I am, and keep me in the role!” Sadly, for her, it didn’t happen. Instead, Michael hired Michele Lee. The horrible part was Michele and Lainie were best friends! And for those who think Michele should have passed on the role, if she had turned it down, Lainie would still have been replaced. Unfortunately, the whole ordeal ruined their friendship…but not forever!
Michele told me that about 30 years later they were at a New Year’s Eve party at Lee Remick’s (!) and the guests started singing “Auld Lang Syne.” Suddenly, Michele and Lainie saw each other across the room, locked eyes, started crying, rushed into each other’s arms, and now they’re best friends again! #BetterLateThanNever
P.S. Here’s an incredible clip of Lainie on The Bell Telephone Hour in the early 1960s recreating her audition for Funny Girl.
And here is Michele Lee’s phenomenal performance of the finale from Seesaw on the Tony Awards.
Something similar happened with Tommy Tune and Seesaw. He told me that, in the early '70s, he walked into his apartment one day, after being away for a while, and the phone was ringing. It was Michael Bennett! They knew each other because Tommy was a dancer in the show A Joyful Noise that Michael choreographed. Tommy told me that Michael asked him if he would fly to Detroit and choreograph some numbers for Seesaw. (Even though Michael was the choreographer, he knew he wouldn’t have time to do it all.) Michael told Tommy he’d pay him something like $500 for each number. Well, Tommy choreographed one of the numbers, and showed Michael how it would look by playing the role featured in the number. Michael felt Tommy was fantastic singing and dancing, immediately hiring him to play the role. Which means he also immediately fired the man who was already playing it! The even more horrific part is, Tommy told me that he had just been at that man’s wedding as his best man!
P.S. That story doesn’t end with a reconciliation at Lee Remick’s. As a matter of fact, Tommy told me he hasn’t heard from him since...1974.
Anyhoo, it paid off for Tommy, who won his first Tony Award for that performance! Here he is.
Lucie wound up being cast on the national tour of Seesaw and told me that it was all happening while Michael Bennett was creating A Chorus Line. Soon, he began to take people out of the tour to do the workshop (i.e. Nancy Lane, the original Bebe, and the late Sammy Williams, the original Paul). Otts Munderloh was the sound designer for the Seesaw tour, and Lucie said it was so cool, because he would bring recordings of the workshops and play them for everyone! So, Lucie and the Seesaw touring cast heard those amazing Marvin Hamlisch/Ed Kleban recordings way before the public knew them!
And, speaking of songs, the tour wound up cutting the song “Ride Out The Storm,” which was in the original Broadway run of Seesaw, and Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields wrote a new song that Lucie debuted. Michael realized that Lucie’s character needed a reason for why her ulcer was acting up—so the song is about her drinking, smoking, dancing up a storm, and landing in the hospital. Lucie told me that she thought there was a “life imitates art” aspect because the lyrics Dorothy Fields wrote were, “Everybody drink up…we’re gonna get stoned tonight.” After Dorothy presented the song, she went home, poured herself a drink…and passed away! Here’s the song.
The character of Gittel Mosca is a dancer, but Lucie told me she never officially studied dance, and neither did her mom, Lucille Ball. I told her that I was surprised because her mom was always dancing on her show. Lucie said that during The Lucy Show, they each had a dance stand-in who would learn their dance routines and teach it to them. Her mom’s stand-in was Anita Mann, who became the choreographer for Solid Gold. Lucille would have Anita stand right out of the camera range and perform it during the show. “Anita, don’t move your ass!” she’d playfully yell so she could follow the steps while they filmed.
Check our Lucy and Lucie…with Anita off camera!
Lucie and I also talked about They’re Playing Our Song, in which she originated the role of Sonia. The backstory Marvin Hamlisch told me is that he lived next door to Neil Simon in L.A. Marvin would chat with him about what it was like being a composer in a relationship with a lyricist (he was living with Carole Bayer Sager at the time). One day, Marvin opened his door, and there was a typewritten script sitting there. Marvin began to realize that the script was filled with the personal stories and feelings he told Neil. But, instead of being outraged at the violation of his privacy, he thought, “This is good!” And he and Carole wrote the score to Neil’s script!
Lucie told me that she was the first woman to try out for the show (and she got the part). The other person I know who auditioned first and got the part was Andrea McArdle. I guess the 1970s was the time to be first and book it!
Interestingly, Lucie’s costar at first wasn’t Robert Klein. Her costar was supposed to be former Pippin, John Rubinstein. Years later, when Lucie was doing the national tour of Pippin (she was the grandmother and he was the king), John told her what happened.
They offered the part to John and he really wanted to do it. His agent asked for a higher salary, the producers said no, and his agent was like, “Then you can’t have him.” The producers were like, “Okay, we’re asking Robert Klein!” John’s agent didn’t even ask John if it was okay to (pretend to) pass. He just did it, and lost John the job!
After Lucie and Robert were cast, there were salary negotiations about whether she and Robert would make the same salary or if he deserved more because he was more well-known. In the middle of that, her agent told her that, in lieu of a higher salary, Neil Simon was offering her two of his royalty points for $15,000 a piece. That was lot of money for Lucie, basically all she had. She asked her agent what she should do. Her agent asked her if she thought the show was good. Amazingly, it never had a workshop or a reading. It just rehearsed a few weeks before it’s out-of-town tryout in L.A. Lucie told him she thought it was great, and her agent advised her to do whatever she could to get those points. So, Robert got his salary bump, but he left after around a year and that was the end of the money. Whereas Lucie got those points and made money from the entire Broadway run, the tour, the regional productions etc.!
Here is Lucie singing one of her big songs from They’re Playing Our Song on my radio show. Talk about #StillGotIt!
Back in 2010, I got to do They’re Playing Our Song opposite Sutton Foster as a one-night fundraiser for the Entertainment Community Fund. Paul Wontorek made this really cool compare-and-contrast of me and Sutton dancing the title song with Lucie and Robert directly above us. I love it!
Let me end with some updates! On Election Day, November 5, James and I are going to do a Vote-A-Thon again on Stars In The House. That means we’ll be live from noon to 6 PM ET on Stars in the House with lots of celebs and performances to ease anxiety and remind everyone to go vote! Tune in at Stars in the House.
I’m also going to be doing my concert series with J. Harrison Ghee at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ on November 9! Tickets are available here.
Here's his amazingness in Some Like It Hot with Christian Borle. Watch, then peace out!
