My Lucky Stars by Shirley Maclaine

Author:Shirley Maclaine [MacLaine, Shirley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76505-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

THAT NIGHT I LAY DOWN AND CRIED ABOUT FOSSE, I HAD a premonition that he was going to die. I didn’t want to lose him and I was afraid he didn’t understand what risks he was taking with his life. I cried for hours, wanting to help in some way. So, with the man I was living with—Pete Hamill, a brilliant journalist, novelist, and screenplay writer—I sat down and we hammered out a synopsis of a musical using Fosse’s heart attack as the centerpiece for the comedy and dramatic action. We worked on it for a week. After Fosse left the hospital, we sent it to him. Weeks went by, and we never heard anything.

A few months later I heard he was making phone calls to people, imploring them to be honest and share with him their genuine opinion of what they thought of him.

When his request brought compliments, he refused to accept them. “I want degrading, scathing opinions of me,” he’d say. “Tell me the worst thing you can think of.”

Everyone knew that such an investigative approach meant Bob was getting ready to do something about his life.

When Fosse called Fred Ebb, who wrote the lyrics to Chicago and many other Broadway hits, he insisted that Freddie be excruciatingly honest about his opinion of him.

Freddie complied. He told Bob he had used him as the model and inspiration for the song “All That Jazz” from Chicago. He told him that the lyrics depicting a sleight-of-hand trickster who basically had no talent and relied on “all that jazz” to get by in life were indeed about him—Bob Fosse.

Fosse thanked him, not the least perturbed or anguished over his coworker’s opinion of him because apparently, as we’d soon learn, he’d just been given the title for the new musical he was going to do about his heart attack! All That Jazz.

• • •

AFTER A FEW WEEKS I GOT MY CALL FROM BOB.

“Hello, Shirley?” he said. “This is Bobby Fosse.”

“Oh, hi,” I said. “How are you doing? How are you feeling?”

“Good,” he said. “Really good. I’m working on a new musical called All That Jazz. It’s about me and my experience when I had my heart attack.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’re doing a musical about your heart attack?”

“Yeah. Great idea, huh?”

“It sure is. Sounds vaguely familiar to me.” I waited a beat, thinking he would cop to it. But he didn’t. He plowed right ahead, undaunted.

“So,” he went on. “The guy is me. He has a heart attack and he dies. And it’s a musical.” Bob laughed like the Peanuts character he saw himself as. “And I want you to play Gwen.”

“Gwen?” I asked. “Why can’t Gwen play Gwen?”

“Because,” he said, “you’d be better. She’s not a movie actress and there’s no one else who could be as authentic as Gwen.”

I thought, This is my chance. I took it. “But, Bob,” I said. “Don’t you think I’m too well-known as me to play Gwen? Don’t you think I’m too famous as me?”

He hesitated, vaguely realizing that I was rubbing something in.

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