Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr by Robert Hofler

Author:Robert Hofler [Hofler, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Performing Arts, Biography & Autobiography, Reference, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Social Science, Film & Video, Art, Popular Culture, Individual Director
ISBN: 9780306818943
Google: Q6dZHAU3m7oC
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2010-03-02T08:00:00+00:00

twenty

Make It a Croissant

Back in New York City, La Cage aux folles’s triumvirate of Jerry Herman, Arthur Laurents, and Harvey Fierstein held to a disciplined regimen, meeting once a week at the songwriter’s townhouse on East 61st Street. Years earlier, Herman had converted the brownstone’s fourth floor into one large floor-through studio. It was a spectacular room, especially for space-restricted Manhattan. A balcony overlooked a small garden in the back, and skylights bathed the room in an afternoon sun that often blazed against the cool, neutral tones of the walls. Herman called them “stone and mushroom,” which he felt emphasized the bright, primary colors of the posters from his tuners Mack and Mabel, Mame, and Hello, Dolly! which decorated the walls.

Each week, Laurents made his critique as Fierstein read a new scene, and Herman, in turn, sang whatever song he’d written for the material that Fierstein had given them the week before. Herman did his own singing and piano playing, seated at a huge Mason & Hamlin grand piano, which had been hoisted up four flights and lifted through the front window of the studio. On especially chilly afternoons, Herman’s housekeeper, Damian, lit a fire in the fireplace, and otherwise busied himself serving home-cooked meals as the three men worked on La Cage aux folles. “Damian kept us well fed and up to date with the latest gossip from Broadway and Hollywood,” says Fierstein.

Laurents and Herman would suggest a bit of stage business or dialogue, but if it was terribly clever, alarm bells went off in Fierstein’s head. “Is that from the movie?” he shot back. He continued to pride himself on never having seen the movie La Cage aux folles, from which Herman and Laurents had, on occasion, inadvertently pilfered. Fierstein feared violating the movie copyright, not to mention his own prickly sense of originality. When it came to guarding against plagiarism, “I became the arbiter of that!” says Fierstein. Laurents admits, “It got ticklish, but we never infringed.”

Regarding arguments with his director, Fierstein claims, “I only walked out of Jerry’s house twice.” It was, all in all, a quick pregnancy. At the end of three months, Allan decided it was time to hear and see something. “I’ve been patient,” he told them.

At that very first reading, Herman played the piano and sang, while Laurents and Fierstein divvied up reading the roles. It was an extraordinarily small audience: Allan attended with his executive producers, Barry Brown and Fritz Holt, and his lawyer, John Breglio. “He wanted to keep a tight control on things until he felt [the show] was ready to be exposed. Which was very smart of him,” says Brown.

Sometime during Act II of the reading, Allan began to hyperventilate, and it was genuinely feared by those present that their obese producer was suffering a heart attack. But Allan waved them away. “I’m all right,” he whispered dramatically. When they finished the reading, instead of joining in the applause of a dozen hands slapping together, Allan escaped to the nearest sofa to sprawl himself out on the pillows.

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