Letters, we get letters! (part 2)
[further adventures in correspondence and housekeeping]
These last few days—as, if you’ve been hanging on my every precious word here, you already know1—I’ve been sorting through decades’ worth of boxes and folders of accumulated paperwork, trashing the trash (lots of it) and carefully setting aside the good stuff (a slender but precious pile). One item I was mightily on the lookout for and almost overlooked (I’d forgotten that it was just a little bit of a cardboard card of a thing) did eventually materialize, and I possibly literally sighed with relief at the sight of it. As I said yesterday of the mighty Joan Crawford missive, I knew it was around here somewhere; I just couldn’t remember where I’d stashed it.
And so a(nother) story:
On Sunday evening, June 7, 1987, a bunch of us were crammed into a friend’s tiny Upper West Side apartment to watch the Tony Awards. We were (and I suppose that this is key, or at least partly key) thoroughly stoned. If what remains of your memory goes back to 1987, you may recall this as the Tonys ceremony during which host Angela Lansbury and special guest baritone Bea Arthur re-created their “Bosom Buddies” duet2 from Mame, which was certainly a rollicking treat. But for me the key moment had already come when Linda Lavin and Jonathan Silverman performed a scene from Neil Simon’s memory play Broadway Bound.
I tend to refer to it now as The Dining Table Scene, in the way that Billy and Julie’s extended first encounter in Carousel tends to be enshrined and institutionalized as The Bench Scene. You can see The Dining Table Scene for yourself online, in somewhat fuzzy reproduction; I recall—and as I rewatched it just now I’m happy to report that it doesn’t disappoint in the slightest, or at least it didn’t disappoint me—turning to the assembled parties that Tonys night and saying, of Lavin’s sternly nostalgic Kate Jerome, “That is the most finished piece of acting I’ve ever seen in my life.” And, in the moment, I meant it.3 I don’t recall that anyone in the room disagreed with me.
Perhaps I was surprised. I knew Lavin from the sitcom Alice, to be sure, and I’d also grooved for years on her delectably outlandish performance of the delectably outlandish Mary Rodgers–Stephen Sondheim song “The Boy from . . .” on the original cast recording4 of The Mad Show.5 But this I was not prepared for.
Mind you, as I said, we were baked. And yet, mind you as well, she copped the Best Actress award that night out of an impressive field of nominees. So late the next morning, unbaked, I went straight to the Broadhurst Theatre6 box office and picked up an orchestra pair, for my then fellow and me, for that Friday night.
It was, in full, a dazzling performance, and I remember how impressed I was at her adamant refusal to, for even a second, sentimentalize a woman who’s grown, of necessity, rigid to the point of bitter steeliness in middle age, and also her refusal to, as a friend once memorably phrased it, unleash any of the little love-me tricks with which some actresses (more than actors, I’d say) punctuate their ostensibly implacable portrayals of implacable characters to keep an audience on their side.7
That Saturday morning, then, I did something I’ve done maybe a handful of times in my life, and it would probably still be a handful if I were missing a digit or two: I wrote her a letter—I wrote a fan letter, ye gods, posting it to her c/o the Broadhurst Theatre—and tried to express how much, and particularly why, I was so moved and devastated and enchanted by her work.
And what do you know but that a few weeks later I received from her a kind note in response, on her very own Linda Lavin stationery. I won’t post a photo of the note here because, well, it’s personal, and also, more important, because I don’t have her permission to post it, but it’s, to use one of the words she wrote back to me, thoughtful.8
Flash forward: It’s 2013, I calculate, and four of us have made the pilgrimage to the 54 Below cabaret (it’s below Studio 54, thus) to see her in what proved to be an utterly superb jazz set. (Yes, she sang “The Boy from . . .” Yes, she sang “You’ve Got Possibilities,” her showstopper from the notably punctuated musical It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman.9 She also, sang, as I recall, an absolutely rockin’ “Walk Between the Raindrops.”) Afterward, as we’re about to head for the exit, I note that she’s receiving well-wishers off in a corner of the room, and me being me I really, really need to say hello. I wait my turn to congratulate her on the evening’s performance, and I also (me being me, encore) burble at her that once upon a time I wrote her a fan letter.
“Did I write back?”
“You sure did.”
“Oh, thank God!”
P.S.
Thank you for being here, thank you for following, thank you especially for subscribing. All of this substackery of mine is free and will remain that way, which means that if you have chosen to contribute to its and my upkeep,10 in larger or smaller ways, you are doing something you don’t have to do, which makes your generosity that much more resonant, and I am profoundly grateful. If you’re not yet part of that contributing crew and there’s a part of you that’s thinking “Who would have thought that apostrophes and old movies could be so much fun?” and you choose to join the crew, I will be eternally (or at least monthly or annually) in your debt.
Also, this is my third post in three days, and rather than wear out my welcome (the last thing I want is that you should greet my arrival in your email in-box with “Oh lord not him again”), I’ll take advantage of the long weekend about to commence and . . . do something else. Like finishing throwing out all the rest of the flotsam, jetsam, and other assorted detritus with which I seem to have surrounded myself.
See you next week, I’ll wager.
Happy Labor Day Weekend!
Benjamin
🙄
In 1990, on my first trip to London, I got to see Angela and Bea* perform the duet live and in person (and, mind you, in the exact same gowns they’d worn at the Tonys three years earlier) during a starry benefit concert (Elisabeth Welch singing “No Time at All”! Maria Friedman singing “I Happen to Like New York”! Perhaps these names and song titles mean nothing to you at all! But perhaps they do!) one Sunday evening at the Shaftesbury Theatre. (Attending this gala was a happy near accident. There’s almost nothing to do in London on a Sunday all day and particularly in the evening, so mostly I was just looking to fill a schedule gap.) By then, I dote on noting, Bea Arthur had perfected her underdelivery of the killing line “If I kept my hair natural like yours, I’d be bald” to the point that she was barely muttering it, a virtually homeopathic punchline. And it brought the house down.
*I’ve tried and failed to type “Lansbury and Arthur,” as if I’m some sort of New York Times journalist or heterosexual. It’s just not working.
For the record: Yes, absolutely, Jonathan Silverman is great too, playing sweetly to a woman who’s not going to return the sweetness, not one particle of it.
I’m not going to do the whole “Don’t call a cast recording a soundtrack!” thing here. We’re all better than that. But you may, if you’re inclined, look up the word “apophasis.”
The Mad Show cast recording is easily found hither and thither, but check L.L. out, just a few years ago, putting over the number, as sly and loose-goosey as ever, in honor of Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday. Remember when we were all locked in our homes watching online performances? Remember when Stephen Sondheim was still alive? That was a time.
Don’t ask me why I remembered, just now, that Broadway Bound had played at the Broadhurst. (I did, of course, look it up to be sure. Once a copy editor, always a copy editor.) But also don’t ask me what I had for lunch yesterday, or what day of the week it is today.
I immediately became her besotted devotee and have done my best since to keep up with her every performance in New York City, from her titanic Rose in Gypsy to her hilariously monstrous anti-mother Rita Lyons in Nicky Silver’s The Lyons (which should be titled The Lyonses, but that’s an argument for another day), whose parting shot—aimed at her own children, mind you—“And you can shout bon voyage, or, frankly, you can both go fuck yourselves!”—is one of my favorite lines in all of American theater, and oh boy you should have heard my own mother laugh when I took her to see the play. And the throughline of Lavin’s work has always been, from where I sit, that unwavering integrity and truth telling I witnessed in Broadway Bound. Plus of course she’s funny as hell.
Here’s a thing that a lot of people who don’t work in publishing don’t know, and I’ve found, over the years, as I’ve explained it, that the response to this simple fact is often surprisingly and actively (I can think of no other word but) hostile: The contents of a letter—and the right to publish those contents—do not belong to its recipient; they belong to the person who wrote the letter. You, recipient, own the paper; you, recipient, don’t own the words.
Truth to tell, a little controversy swirls around the title of that 1966 musical, which was, in its day, the biggest flop in Broadway history. According to the Playbill and the cast recording (and also according to composer Charles Strouse), the show’s official title is the unwieldy “It’s a Bird It’s a Plane It’s Superman” (yes, including the quotation marks).
In any event, here are a couple of photographs of Linda Lavin in the show, with her leading men good guy Bob Holiday and boo-hiss Jack Cassidy.
And Sallie’s!
Please keep these coming. At 64 years of age I still love discovering new (to me) words, and "apophasis" did not disappoint. Thank you, and thank Sallie for being Sallie.
Todd’s mother was her friend, so we know her a bit.
Here’s something she told us: whenever LL’s mother returned home from a trip, as she turned her key in the door, she’d say, “Good to get away… good to come home.” (You must hear it with the solemn Yiddish accent.)
Now T and I say it whenever we come home from away. Because it’s so true.