Then and Now by Barbara Cook

Author:Barbara Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

11 • ONE FOR MY BABY

BY THIS TIME my career was in high gear, and even when a show flopped I remained in demand. Unfortunately, the problems that arose in my personal life started right around this time, too.

Those problems actually went back several years. When my career had first started to take off, in the early fifties, David’s career was still floundering, so it was a big break when, late in 1952, George Abbott asked him to appear on a television variety show he was directing called Showtime, U.S.A. We were both very excited; but at the very last minute David’s appearance was canceled, a turn of events that had a profound effect on him. After that lost opportunity he never again made another effort to perform his comedy routines, which was a huge loss because he was good. Really good. He didn’t tell jokes, but rather performed comic characters in scenes that he wrote himself. It was exactly the sort of work that Sid Caesar did so well.

I really believe that that one canceled television appearance did something to David’s basic personality—he never had the same kind of get-up-and-go after that. It exposed a very fragile place in him. In retrospect, I realize that David was like all of the men in my life who were supposed to protect me—turns out I was stronger than all of them put together, only I didn’t know it at the time. The same thing happened during my decades-long association with Wally Harper, which began in 1974. As my accompanist, arranger, and friend, Wally really helped rescue me from years of unemployment; but he, too, was really a very fragile person. He had a problem with alcohol that he simply couldn’t conquer.

When David lost that television appearance he shut down his performing career and settled into doing all sorts of odd jobs. He began studying with Lee Strasberg, and became an observer in the Director’s Unit of the Actors Studio. He was a very, very talented man and could have been a really fine director. I emphasize the words “could have been.” The problem was that he proved unwilling, or unable, to put himself on the line. He was in the Director’s Unit for nearly ten years, but only observed, never participated. I can’t imagine being in an atmosphere like that and not wanting to have my say. As scared as I would have been in his shoes, there’s no way I’d wouldn’t have said, “Let me give it a shot.”

Throughout the 1950s, as I performed in Plain and Fancy, Candide, and The Music Man, it was David who helped me work on my characters for those shows. Somehow he was able to do it in a way that never interfered with what the director wanted from me, and other actors began to notice. “Who do you study with?” they would ask. When I told them that David coached me, they asked if he would help them, too. I suggested a number of times that he start teaching, but he kept finding reasons not to.

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