I have spent 1 ½ weeks going through only 2 boxes and another half a shopping bag full of plays. I eagerly awaited the next set of files. Another almost boxful arrived in stacks, and I went through them in 2 hours! And that is it! I am done! Where did all the files in storage go? Turns out, the only files from storage were in that shopping bag. The shopping bag did contain the 78s of Harvey, so no offense to the shopping bag, but really, is that all?
So I am done. I have a day off. I do plan to go in this morning and talk to one of the literary agents, Joanne, about where I need to go from here to land an agent, and any general advice she wants to give me.
The rest of the day I plan to organize my files, backup files to our web server, and then hike to Central Park, if it doesn’t rain on me. The skies now are grey and drizzling. Supposed to clear up by noon, though, so I am hopeful. Maybe the rain will help clear out the allergens that are bothering me. Then I’ll try the lottery for WICKED one last time…
On Wednesday, I met up with my friends, Bark (Mark & Barbara) in Hoboken and we caught up over some beers and dinner. I took the NY Waterways ferry over from 38th street at the Hudson. It was a short ride, but as I sat on the wooden bench seats with the wind from the open doors and windows blowing through my hair, I was reminded of 2 movies. Who can tell me why? The first is Disclosure And the second is The Spanish Prisoner.
On Thursday, I found some great background on two political theater debacles. One was the failure of the musical SAY HELLO TO HARVEY in Toronto, at the end of which, the producers were at each other’s throats. The other was the failure of the Bonfils Theatre to get permission for Equity Actors to play in their non-professional theater and, therefore, the cancellation of Mary’s play, THE WICKED PIGEON LADIES. Anyhoo, after I finished Mary’s files, it was 5:40pm. I had just enough time to pack up my bags and say goodbye to Selma and hike it to the Gershwin, where they are playing WICKED, and enter the lottery. I didn’t get in. So I hiked back to my hotel, hit the stationary bike, showered, changed, and then hiked to Studio 54 (where they are actually showing ASSASSINS) and got the very last seat: in the orchestra. Except in Studio 54, you sit at little cabaret tables in the front orchestra seating. Those of you hip to the trip of the 70s may remember that in its younger days, Studio 54 was a dance club and center for decadence (drugs, etc.) and the owner’s were finally completely busted and their club shut down. Now it is a theatre where you can buy a split and enjoy 2 glasses of wine with the show without getting up (ASSASSINS doesn’t have an intermission, so that’s appropriate).
ASSASSINS is strange, but I really liked it. I love Sondheim, so I guessed I would like the music. And I did. The chords and harmonies reminded me of the music in INTO THE WOODS and SWEENEY TODD. Very intense, hitting minor keys often. It was a dark musical like SWEENEY. The story involved several characters, all assassins. There was John Wilkes Booth, who started it all, then the guy who killed Garfield, the guy who killed McKinley, and then those who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and FDR (the events were not in chronological order). They saved Lee Harvey Oswald for last, and you will find out why if you see it. There is humor in the book, which makes it very bearable as a story. There is no attempt to excuse these folks for what they did, but there is an attempt to explore their psyches and why they might, in America, feel they needed to kill their president.
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I’ve had the meeting with Joanne. Blast of reality. I was ready with questions for her regarding working with agents: 1) what would she think if a writer came to her after trying to find a publisher? 2) Does the agent help in gaining legal or editing advice, etc? The first thing she said as she sat down was, “OK! Tell me what you got.” Flub glub glub…..
I started telling Joanne about what research I’d done. And she’s like, OK, that’s fine, but why should I care? Oh, well. So, I know I need to rehearse a pitch. I also know that I am in research mode. I have changed my focus, and changed my focus again. That’s OK. It was a good shot in the arm. She said she’d be happy to give me advice as I go along and send me a list of agents who are registered with a national society of agents, etc., that specifically handle biography. So, I don’t think I lost any footing here with my wonderful book: MARY COYLE CHASE, or HARVEY’S MOM, a biography by Ellen A. Wilkin.
BTW, her answers to my questions: 1) it wouldn’t make a bit of difference and 2) no.
I am sitting at the only Starbucks so far that has not had a t-mobile hotspot. I cannot do email or post my blog, but I can write it! This Starbucks is closer to my hotel, and had some outdoor seating, so I succumbed before I realized they did not have a hotspot. The tables are outside near a busy route – West 45th between broadway and 8th ave. But the important thing is that I now have a steaming vente coffee in front of me and am munching an apple fritter.
Yesterday, Tuesday, was a day full of little setbacks, but also some delightful discoveries. I did not have time to do my hotspot visit at Starbucks on my way to the office, so at lunch I went back to the kiosk in the lobby of my hotel where you can enter $1 bills or credit cards and access the internet for $1 for 5 minutes ( I know – it is outrageous, but this is NYC, and they know when they gotcha. People pay for conveniences around here because they don’t have time but they have money—tourists and the white collar workers who fill the skyscraping office buildings. But, I digress. I would use the wi-fi in my hotel room, but it doesn’t exist. But, again, I digress.)
I just wanted to send a quick email, so I put in a $1. I managed to finally navigate my way through the kiosk interface to their browser to my web hosting site, but beep! My 5 minutes were up! So I shoved another $1 in and had to navigate to the web site again. This time I made it – got the email sent, all the time cursing the hotel and their money-grubbing confederates. I was so frustrated, I didn’t want to go back to the office right away. (I had planned a quick lunch so I could take off a bit early and enter the lottery for tickets to WICKED that night.) Anyway… I just started walking down West 46th street passed 8th avenue where I had seen a series of restaurants and cafes a couple days before. I found a little French restaurant called Les Sans Culottes (how’s my French?) and had a yummy and sizable lunch for only 12.95: an appetizer that consisted of as much as you could eat from a basket of fruits and vegetables, a basket of bread, a stand of various cured meats including sausages and pepperoni, Dijon sauce for dipping, and pate. Then you ordered an entrée to go with all that. I had salmon with rice. Can’t remember the name of the dish, but it had a spicy mustard sauce. By the time I was through, I felt much better!
Man it is cold …. 55 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve moved down the street to the Starbucks that I usually go to that has indoor tables, but only one outlet near a table. Doh! We’ll see how long my battery lasts. Yesterday evening, I went to the theater playing WICKED at 6:00pm to join the lottery (you had to be at the box office 2 hours beforehand. They took your name and you were entered into a drawing. If your name is drawn, you get 2 tickets for $25 apiece in the front of the orchestra). Unfortunately, the show started at 7:00, so the lottery had been over since 5:00. So, I stood in the cancellation line for an hour. No joy. Then I went in search of ASSASSINS. I heard from Selma that it was wonderfully chilling. But I couldn’t find it – the theater on West 43rd where I had seen a big poster earlier in the week was not the theater at which it was playing. So, I switched gears and went to JUMPERS. When I walked into the lobby of the theater, I was immediately greeted by a couple who had tickets in the orchestra to sell! For $65, I got a great seat and saved $25. JUMPERS was strange. Written by Tom Stoppard and starring a big british star, Simon Russell Beale, it was delightful in its use of language in twists and turns. But I had a hard time following it. The first Act took so long to set up any sort of story, that if the second act hadn’t started out strongly, I might not have sat through it all. The couple who’s extra ticket I purchased left after the first act. Stoppard created an illusion from the beginning, proved it as an illusion enough for the audience to believe it, then disproved his earlier proof and made it real, but was it actually all in the main character’s mind? Who knows? My head was spinning by the end: we went through logical sequences of arguments about the existence of God and whether there is an absolute definintion for good and evil or ethics. The main character, played by
Beale is a philosophy professor married to a fallen stage star who is nutty as the day is long. Or does she even exist? At one point there is a live turtle lose on the stage, which made me nervous the whole time. And then, supposedly, there is a lose rabbit (no, not Harvey – Thumper!) during the whole show. It must be a metaphor of the turbolence of life and man’s quests for answers, which when got, are not as definitive as he could wish. I think I need to read the book before I can say I got all the words….
Is it “theater” or “theatre?” Around here, it is “theatre.” Seems kind of pretentious at first glance, but I do recall as a child reading many books by English authors, so for a while I wrote “theatre, “grey,” etc., like it was born in me. Now it seems like artifice after years of American schools and American literature. But from what I have read of Mary’s correspondence, it was always “theatre” to her. So I am guessing it is an old-fashioned American spelling of the word, perhaps originally a British import. I’ll have to look that up.
But, here, on Broadway, the feel of the “theatre” still lingers ….
I saw GYPSY, BOY FROM OZ, and I AM MY OWN WIFE this weekend. Sigh. I am now “theatred” out for a couple of days at least. GYPSY with Bernadette Peters was wonderful. I was not familiar with the story line, but I certainly was familiar with the classic songs such as “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” “Together, Wherever We Go,” and “Let Me Entertain You.” I was nervous because Bernadette cleared her throat a couple of times in the second scene of Act I. Yikes. But she was great. My sister saw her perform when Bernadette was sick and she did fine. There’s no people like show people! Bernadette can belt them out and finesse them! I have already talked about the story and the players, so I’ll move on.
BOY FROM OZ was a great vehicle for Hugh Jackman. Great music—half of it the original pop hits of Peter Allen, the real-life entertainer/composer Jackman was portraying. Unfortunately, the book wasn’t very strong. There was no character development to speak of, although the first Act with the young Peter and his mom (played by a dynamically wonderful Beth Fowler creator of Mrs. Potts in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) were interesting and heartwarming. However, once the story moved to New York with Peter hanging out with Judy and Liza, the text kind of dragged. I thought that Stephanie J. Block as Liza was terrific, and so was Isabel Keating as Judy (although she was not always well-miked). Jackman plays a charismatic, no-holds-barred Peter Allen, and I’ll have to take it from him that that is how Peter was because I know nothing about the man, except now I know he wrote the hits “The Best That You Can Do (Arthur’s Theme),” “I Go to Rio,” “I Honestly Love You,” and “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
[Since writing the above I talked to one of the dramatic agents in Freedman’s office – she has seen Peter Allen in concert many times and he really was that flamboyant—talks to the audience, gave the baseball scores during one performance because it was during the world series the last time the Mets won it…]
On to the Sunday matinee: I AM MY OWN WIFE. This was awesome. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Both the writer, Doug Wright, and the actor playing all the parts, Jefferson Mays, are wonderful! I didn’t know anything about the story before, so I had no idea how to prepare. It turns out the play is about the author finding out about this person, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite, living in what was East Germany who has a museum full of circa 1890’s furniture and furnishings who had hidden and saved them not only through the years of the Iron Curtain, but through the end of World War II. Sounds crazy, huh? Well, it is. But the author traveled to Germany and interviewed this “woman.” The stories she told were outrageous, such as how she first learned that she was really a woman (her grandmother felt she was really a man, so Grandma gave all her female clothes to her grandson). And then there was how she escaped the Nazis. And then there was how she stayed out of prison during the Cold War AND hid an entire gay and lesbian bar (all the furnishings anyway) in a cellar under her house. She was the center of the gay/lesbian culture from the ‘50s until the ‘70s. But it is a controversial story, and I defy anyone to know what the actual truth of her story was. The play leaves you wondering how well you know her by the end. GO SEE THIS PLAY. I hope it travels. It is amazing. For more info, see http://www.iammyownwife.com/.
Today I read some of the most intense of Mary’s correspondence: letters she wrote to her agent right after HARVEY saying she was so depressed in Denver. Her friends were no longer her friends, and perfect strangers wanted to be her friends. She also wrote an intense note to a friend and fellow writer about how she crafted HARVEY, and why she could not actually show the moment when Dr. Chumley begins to believe: she could not write it in any way that made sense. It was too artificial and made the doctor’s character too much of the center of the play when it was truly Elwood’s play. It is much better to show the before and after, and let Elwood describe the actual change as it took effect. What’s that? Don’t have your copy of HARVEY handy? No worries. I’ll loan it to you.
Finally got to some meatier stuff in Mary’s files. The Phoenix Theater took on a revival and tour of HARVEY in 1971. The production starred Gig Young as Elwood, Shirley Booth as Veta, and Jessie White, returning in the role he created in 1944, as Wilson, the burley asylum orderly. One night, Young referred to Jessie on stage by something other than his character’s name. Jessie was furious. Once offstage, he pounded Young with insults. Young ignored him, but the director joined in and, as a result, Jessie left the production. The producers and Mary Chase herself, were not really happy with Young as Elwood, and the tour ended shortly after that, never opening in New York, as was the original plan.
I am speeding through the files now. I feel I have established what happened with HARVEY after Mary died: he soared on to play on every legitimate stage across the western world. He even made it to Rhodesia and Kenya. Mary’s agency, however, continued to turn down request after request for both professional and amateur productions. Their concerns were for the success of those productions they did approve, and wanted to keep any other productions that might compete with them at the box office or even on television, video, radio, and at the movie house, from happening. It is a very tightly run ship, even today. The HARVEY property alone could keep Mary’s agent busy almost full time. Now I want to turn my attention to the day-to-day workings of Mary’s professional writing life.
I came across one very precious letter from Mary to Bob Freedman, her agent, when I reached 1975. Mary and Bob had received several requests for approval for adaptations of the Harvey character, or for sequel works to the play, HARVEY. One such request was sent directly to Mary. The gentlemen making the request had admitted to taking the idea and “lifted a lot of the lines and business but he assured me this was done ‘with love not thievery.’” She asked Bob to tell the young man what he could do with the idea, and closed with a p.s. in which she admits that it had been so long since she had read or seen HARVEY, that as she read through the script, she was thinking, “this is a good play.” She then “came to and remembered it was my own play I was reading.”
Last night I saw GYPSY. Bernadette Peters as Rose was wonderful. The story is rather sad, though, and there is only one rip-rousing number, the encore of “Everything is coming up Roses” towards the end. Bernadette stopped the show at that point, of course. I was also intrigued by the young woman playing her daughter, Gypsy Rose Lee. Her name is Tammy Blanchard, and she won an Emmy for her performance as young Judy Garland in the ABC mini-series about Judy Garland’s life. She has made a Lifetime movie and been on a soap. But she got her start in a high school production of WIZARD OF OZ playing, guess who?, Dorothy Gale. She does look a lot like Judy Garland. She has that lanky, sultry, innocent look of the young Garland. But she is very soft-spoken. Even though she can belt out the tunes, she has almost a dead-pan, soft, vocal expression. But this might just be the part she was playing in GYPSY: the shy, gawky, untalented, overlooked older daughter.
My mother and sister arrive this afternoon from Rochester. We will see BOY FROM OZ with Hugh Jackman tonight. More later!
Day 3 at the Robert A. Freedman Agency was long. I got there early – 9:15 - but the office was locked. And I didn’t get an answer to my knock. I waited almost 30 minutes until someone came out and pointed out the bell. Geesh. I noticed people don’t explain things to you here. You just figure it out as you go….
I managed to finish going through another folder, this time filled with Mary’s letters as well as letters from lawyers and agents. It still wasn’t the mother lode, but I wanted to document what I looked at so that I knew what was in each folder and give me an overview of the research – as well as give me a CYA with the agency. I had promised to leave everything as is, and because no one else but me knew exactly what was in there, I figured if I have a clean list identifying, in order, everything in the “collection” (a term I use loosely, then they cannot argue that I messed anything up (how would they know anyway, right?).
Selma, the agent I am working with, took me to lunch at a Chinese restaurant, right around the corner from the agency. It was good food, but very crowded and noisy. We managed to carry on a conversation about theater, books, children’s education, and having children. I think we understood most everything that was said.
That afternoon, I made a discovery which may or may not be astounding: four 78 rpm recordings, two labeled “Harvey & the Wilson girls” and the other two labeled only as “Part 2A” and “Part 2B.” All four discs are brand-spanking-new. Not only not a scratch anywhere, but as shiny as the day they came off the recorder. Does anyone out there have a working phonograph player that can handle 78s? Selma knows nothing about them, but Bob Freedman will be back in the office next week, so I plan to ask him if there is a way we can play them in the office. Perhaps I could even make a recording of them if they are interesting.
Last night, I went to see SLY FOX, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Eric Stolz, and Rene Aberjonois (Odo on the old Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series). An adaptation of Ben Johnson’s VALPONE, SLY FOX was a farce about lecherous, greedy men and women taking advantage of less clever lecherous, greedy men and women. One character was quite religious, but she was labeled a “bimbo” early on (can you see evidence of the modernization?) It had quite a few funny lines, and Dreyfuss was extremely good, but I think I would have enjoyed it more in its original form.
The SLY FOX was playing at the Barrymore, which is right across the street from my hotel! I couldn’t help myself. I had to do it. I showed up at the box office at 7:30pm, got a “cheap” ticket for one, and enjoyed the show.
‘Til next time!
I have so much more freedom at the Robert Freedman Agency. Perhaps there is something in a name. I can copy as much as I want as long as their copy machine continues to work. I can scan as much as I want until my hand falls off. Selma, the agent who is helping me this trip, brings me legal pads to take notes on and file folders to hold the copies I make. It is quite a contrast to working at the Theater Collection at Harvard Library – not that the librarians were not helpful, but they had so many rules to contend with. Here is an untapped library full of unknown treasures.
Today and yesterday I catalogued many letters requesting licenses to produce Harvey all over the country and all over the world. I am working backward from the year 2000 and I am now on 1980. Mary died in 1981, so I am glad to be back in an era when she was still alive because her letters are always so delightful. She always manages to pull off true warmth over the miles her letters travel.
The focus of the papers I have looked at so far is the musicalization of Mary’s play, Harvey. Mary had once stated that she would never approve of a musical version of her play, but then she met Michael McAloney, a producer and fellow “shanty” Irishman, who convinced her that the concept would work. After that, she was a complete champion of the idea. A production, SAY HELLO TO HARVEY, was mounted in Toronto in 1981 starring Donald O’Connor. It lasted through several preview performances and 4 real performances before it closed. Mary was working on a rewrite of the first act curtain the day she died. It was still sitting in her typewriter when her husband, Bob, returned to her attic study for the first time after her death.
The trustees of Mary’s estate formed a legal trust to handle any legal rights and royalty issues surrounding Mary’s works. An amendment, dated December 1981, to the original contract McAloney signed, giving him the right to create a musical version of Harvey, also gave him a deadline: the contract would be terminated unless he had “agreements with a bookwriter [sic], composer, lyricist, and director approved by the estate on or before June 1, 1982.” Apparently, McAloney never got these agreements. He had a falling out with the other producer of SAY HELLO TO HARVEY, as well as Leslie Bricusse, the book writer. McAloney hoped he would be able to come back with another proposal to the trust for a musical version of Harvey, but as far as I know, he never did. The rights have freed up and have been handed to Miramax in the form of an option to make a film. So far, no specific plans have been made for this film. Miramax did start a conversation with John Travolta about playing the lead role in late winter 2003, but I haven’t heard a thing since then. Bob Freedman, Mary’s dramatic agent, assures me these things can take a very long time.
Look for the next epistle, which will continue to move backward through Mary’s life as I read her files in reverse order. Hope your heads can take it!
I am sitting in the Rochester Airport, waiting for my plane to La Guardia. It is 8:40 am on Monday, May 17, 2004. I just spent almost 4 days with my sister, Wendy, and brother-in-law, John, and their 4-year-old twins, James and Kate. What charmers those kids are. I think I saw every toy in the house. At least the ones that were in favor at the moment. Wendy, John, and I managed to get out of the house on Friday to celebrate Wendy’s birthday. We went to a wonderful restaurant called Two Vines. It had been an incredibly warm day, and the evening was balmy. We sat outside and enjoyed the ambience. One of the servers is training as an opera singer. He obliged us by singing an Italian love song to Wendy. It was lovely. I sat right beside him as he sang, and enjoyed his technique: his full breaths supported by his entire body, and his rich, clear voice.
We met up with a friend and then headed for a bar called Tapas. We smelled something malodorous (I won’t go into detail) as we stepped across the threshold. So, we went next door to a karaoke bar instead. Despite the fact that I have my own karaoke machine at home, I had never sung karaoke in a bar before. I was encouraged to do so now. What the heck! So I sang “’Til There was You” for John because I know how much he enjoys the Music Man.
When we were karaoked out, we returned to Tapas and a much more pleasant smell, and enjoyed a drink and some salsa (dancing, guys). Then we called it a night. We got home about 1:00am, which was later than I had stayed up in a long time. I still felt tired 2 days later. But it was quite worth it. It’s good to let your hair down once in a while..
Yesterday, Sunday, we celebrated the twins’ birthday. We had just the immediate family members who lived nearby – grandma and grandpa on both sides, and Uncle Todd and Aunt Sharon and their two kids. We had a pleasant, kid-filled late afternoon celebration, complete with one rocket cake and one mermaid cake – both chocolate, of course. Guess whose cake was whose?
Now my thoughts turn to my impending research. The collection of Mary Chase’s papers has not bee viewed in about 30 years. I imagine the worst. All kinds of letters, manuscripts and other correspondence and papers all intermingled without even a nod to chronology. Oh, well. That’s where I come in. But I am not to re-arrange anything. I mentioned this to my sister, and she suggested I use post it notes of different colors to flag different categories. She is amazing! I am going to give that a try. But the librarian in me is cringing at the thought of the disarray that I must maintain. Some of you who have known me long enough may remember my eighth grade class “prophecy.” The class voted unanimously: when I grew up, I was going to become a librarian. Perhaps that prophecy is now coming true? Not what they had in mind, I don’t think!
When my husband first introduced me to it, I thought this blog thing would be pretty cool. Get to write on any topic you like and get people to read it, comment on it, and start a web dialogue! I'll write about gardening, I thought. I'll write about movies. I'll write about the little and big things going on in our lives. Stuff we might not share otherwise.
My husband was the first to blog, of course. Outstanding, I thought. He'll write about photography. He'll write about juggling. He'll write about politics. He'll write about the little and big things that are going on in our lives, stuff we share with each other but not necessarily with others, etc.
Little did I know that my husband's blog would turn out to be a major mode of communication between us. Case in point:
We were chatting with friends at a local brewpub, and they mentioned my husband's gross description of the bursting of his last cyst. "Oh, yeah?" I asked. "When did he tell you about that?"
"It was in his blog. You should read it." I was dumbfounded. My friends knew details about my husband that I did not. And all because they read his blog? I couldn't stand it! Admittedly, I'd been very busy attending to multiple personal projects, including the planning of my latest trip to New York, but for goodness' sake! I wasn't so busy that I wasn't paying enough attention to my husband. Or was I?
So, I read his blog. Yikes! This was a husband I didn't (want to) know! Political extremities! Cranky commentaries. Gross descriptions of bodily functions. But there was also the extension of what I already knew about the man I loved: astute observations, parody with panache, all punctuated with bouts of modesty. So, if I want to dwell on those other less savory characteristics of my husband, I have his Digital Flatus to keep me up-to-dave. Otherwise, I still have the analog version.