Born On This Day- July 14th... Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Favorite, Arthur Laurents

"Writers are the chosen people. I am happiest when sitting alone & putting my daydreams & fantasies down on paper.”

As the story goes... late for his place on a panel discussion, Arthur Laurents burst on to the stage draped in mink & announced: "Behold, a living legend!". Stephen Sondheim, also on the panel, looked up & said: "Wrong on both counts".

I just ate up his pair of memoirs- Original Story By & Mainly On Directing, chock full of great dishy theatre & Hollywood stories. He is important to me in the many ways. I admire him & his work, but most especially because he wrote the book for my favorite musical- Gypsy, which I find to be a near perfect piece of theatre. He directed 3 revivals of Gypsy,including my favorite version with my good close personal friend Angela Lansbury in 1974, & Tyne Daley in 1989 & 2009’s Patti Lupone outing.

In 2010, at 92, he directed a revival of West Side Story, a classic for which he wrote the original lean & strong book. In this production, it was Laurents's conceit to have most of the the Sharks & their girls, who are from Puerto Rico, speak & sing in Spanish & the cast would all be young & if not Puerto Rican, at least Hispanic. Laurents has explained that the idea came from his partner of 52 years- Tom Hatcher (Laurents & Farley Granger were lovers in the late 1940s), who saw & loved a production of the musical in South America. It was also Hatcher that urged Laurents to revive Gypsy! with Patti LuPone, so that the Sam Mendes directed production with Bernadette Peters would not be the last Gypsy in Laurents's lifetime.

Laurents has won 4 Tony Awards & been nominated for 6 Oscars, winning for the screenplay of The Turning Point. He was by all accounts, a real son of a bitch... but, what a talent.

His career had barely started when he was drafted into the Army in 1941. Laurents spent the war years writing training films & radio propaganda shows. He had also had come to terms with his homosexuality, & he soon lost count of the sexual experiences he had while in the Army. In Original Story By, he speaks of his lifetime of gay encounters, referring to his partners as “those unremembered hundreds.”

As a gay man living as openly as possible during some of this country's most dangerous times, Laurents was a role model of discretion & living the way he wanted to, despite public opinion & cruelty against homosexuals everywhere.

The last line of Laurents's memoir- Original Story By, speaks of Tom Hatcher, who was Laurents' partner for more than 50 years: "As long as he lives, I will." But, Hatcher died in 2006  & Laurents, in his 93rd year, adjusting to life without him. When they first became a couple, Laurents claims his mother was more disturbed that Hatcher was a gentile than that her son was gay.

Laurents led a wild life: "I drank an awful lot, I drugged an awful lot. But I think I have a built-in governor, because at any point I would say OK, I've had enough, & I'd go home to bed. I assumed everybody could do that. I was never one for going to bars, that kind of thing. I was a hopeless romantic. Well, no one could have that much sex & be entirely romantic, but the dangerous side never appealed to me."

But Hatcher was the great love of his life & their life together is one of the great love affairs. Laurents: "Tom & theatre, that's what my life has been. & that's what my book is - an effort to say thank you by doing what I can to make the theatre indestructible & to keep Tom alive."

"From Tom's pool, you can see into the heart of his garden. In summer, we swim laps every day. Often, we walk through the park, then sit on that bench, looking at the view. Yesterday, we sat there a little longer than usual, just looking at the changing light, not saying anything. But Tom reads my mind: 'You're going to live 20 more years,' he assured me."

Laurents worked in many genres. The stage was his first love, & he wrote for it for 65 years, creating comedies, romances, & serious dramas that explored questions of ethics, social pressures & personal integrity.

Laurents made his exit, upstage center, in May 2011. This is a partial list of his contribution to popular culture:

Librettos: Gypsy, Nick & Nora, West Side Story, The Madwoman of Central Park West, Hallelujah, Baby! Do I Hear a Waltz?, & Anyone Can Whistle

Direction: Anyone Can Whistle, La Cage aux Follies, The Madwoman of Central Park West, Gypsy (1974, 1989 & 2008), I Can Get It for You Wholesale (with a very young Barbra Streisand) & Invitation to a March

Plays: Invitation to a March, A Clearing in the Woods, The Time of the Cuckoo, The Bird Cage, Home of the Brave, & Jolson Sings!

Screenplays: Anastasia, The Turning Point, The Way We Were, Gypsy, West Side Story, Bonjour Tristesse, Summertime (from his play The TimeOf The Cuckoo), Anna Lucasta, Home of the Brave, Rope, Caught, &The Snake Pit

Has your life been touched by any of his work? I would be interested to know. If you are a fan, what is your favorite version of Gypsy?

This still gets to me every time... good-byes & regrets.

Warning: Watching This May Turn You Gay

Born On This Day- March 22nd... Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Favorite- Stephen Sondheim

The Husband: “ I can't belive that you still have not cracked Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes & Miscellany that you just had to have even though you never finished Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines & Anecdotes. Stephen: "Some things are so cherished that I can't bear to soil them. I am treasuring it, waiting for the perfect afternoon to spend with it. I will know when that moment is right. As Sondheim said in Into The Woods: 'I was raised to be charming, not sincere'." Today is such a day. With a light dusting of springtime snow last night, I am enjoying an unexpected day off, warm & toasty at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, drinking tea & wasting the day away.

The greatest composer/lyricist for the theatre & I have some history together.

In the spring of 1973, I saw A Little Night Music in the pre-Broadway tryout in Boston. I was my late teens, 2500 miles from home, & sporting a huge red afro; I sat in the darkened, half-filled theatre & let the magic & enchantment wash over me. This was not my 1st Sondheim. I had, of course, seen West Side Story & Gypsy!. When 17 years old, I had talked my parents into letting me go to San Francisco all by myself to see the original cast (minus Dean Jones) of Company (I had more than just a little fun freely footloose & 17 in San Francisco in 1971). I had worn out the Original Cast Album of Follies the same year.

5 years later, I would play Henrik in A Little Night Music, a fabulous role & the closest I ever came to playing an ingénue. The character plays the cello. Traditionally the orchestra’s cello plays the music while the actor mimes the playing. Because I actually can play the cello, & I was able to do my own cello work. I thought this gave my performance a bit more authenticity, although I had to practice for hours & hours to be able to the play cello & sing at the same time… in character. I found this rather daunting & I worked hard to make it work. I understand that I was rather convincing in this role.

Your Host in A Little Night Music, circa 1977

I would go on to play Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on 2 occasions, including a long run at Seattle Civic Light Opera.

I did another long run in a sold out, & extended production of Side By Side By Sondheim, a musical revue of collected songs from several produced & un-produced Sondheim musicals. Among the songs I was so very lucky to perform in that show, was my favorite Sondheim tune- Anyone Can Whistle. Via the wonders of Facebook, the director of Side by Side & I reconnected & he sent me a DVD of the show. I am not all that keen for watching myself on screen, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good the show was, how young I looked, how much hair I had, & what a captivating, compelling, curious, & clever vocalist I was 26 years ago. I was also sort of hot, with single digit body fat, curly red hair, & discreet risqué deportment. I totally would have done me.

I sang Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along for auditions for a few years in the 1980s, until I decided that singing Sondheim for auditions was cliché & too gay… even for me.

I was aware early on, that Stephen Sondheim was a homosexual, & it did give some solace when I was grappling with coming out. Sondheim came out as gay only when he was 40, & he did not live with a partner until he was 61. He shared his life with writer- Peter Jones, until 1999, living at the Turtle Bay house that has been Sondheim’s home & writing place since the early 1960s. Katharine Hepburn used to live next door. Sondheim: “up one night at about 3, pounding on the piano, writing The Ladies Who Lunch for Company, when I heard this banging on the door. There was Hepburn, in a babushka & no shoes, saying, ‘Young man, I cannot sleep with the noise you’re making’.”

Sondheim: “If I had to live my life over again, I would have children. That’s the great mistake I made. It’s too late now. The idea of being a homosexual & raising children was one that was just not acceptable until, my goodness, I’d say the 1970s or 1980s. You want to live long enough to see your children grow up, they’re not puppies. The joy is not just to have them, but to watch them change & grow. So, yes, that is a great regret. But as Bach proved to a great degree, you can have both. It would be nice to have both. But to have any outlet for creative energy is indeed a very good emotional substitute for not being able to put that energy into the raising of a family.”

There is common thought on Sondheim, that although he can do LOVE in a theatre piece, he struggles when it enters his own life. Even people who follow him closely have assumed that he was single. It came as a surprise in 2006 when he announced: “I have someone else now, his name is Jeff. We celebrated our 7th anniversary. Jeff is a great joy in my life & once I had tasted the joys of living with someone, I wanted to live with someone else when it broke up.”

There is the work though; about 20 major stage shows, music & lyrics: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984), Into The Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994), Bounce (2003) which later became Road Show (2008), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965), Candide (1973). Plus the revues: Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me A Little (1981), You're Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99) Moving On (2001) & Sondheim on Sondheim (2010) that are anthologies of his work as composer & lyricist. For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) & Reds (1981) & songs for The Seven Percent Solution (1976) & Dick Tracy (1990). He also wrote the songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) & the play Getting Away With Murder (1996). In total, his works have accumulated more than 65 individual & collaborative Tony Awards & an Oscar.


Sondheim created cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine in the late 1960s. He was screenwriter for the television series Topper (1953) & The Last Of Sheila (1973, with his friend Anthony Perkins). He appeared as himself in the film Camp (2003).


In March 2008, Sondheim & Frank Rich of the NY Times appeared in an interview/conversation in Portland, titled A Little Night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim. WCK3 & I were fortunate enough to attend. One of my revered revelations from that evening was that Sondheim & I share a favorite non-Sondheim musical in She Loves Me. He was very funny & charming that evening. I am crazy for Frank Rich & I have loved Sondheim’s music & lyrics for 50+ years. I was thrilled.


I feel so damn old. During the Company/Follies era, Sondheim appeared on the cover of Time with the caption- The Boy Wonder of the Theatre. The boy went on to an Academy Award, 8 Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards including Song Of The Year for Send In The Clowns in 1974, & a Pulitzer Prize.

Sonheim turns 82 today. We both got old & we both got lucky. Oddly enough, he shares this birthday with the British composer of that weird musical with the singing & dancing CATS. Go figure.

"I chose & my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on."
Sunday In The Park With George

Born On This Day- December 31st... Jule Styne

Readers have been in the know that my favorite musical is Gypsy, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim & music by Jule Styne. Before he left us, Styne had written 2,000 songs, published 1,500 & had 200 hits. Styne: "I'm talking about hit hits, the others were popular, but there were 200 hit hits." Those hits included: It's Been a Long, Long Time, It's Magic, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!, Time After Time, 5 Minutes More.

In Hollywood, he teamed up with Sammy Cahn on romantic ballads: I've Heard That Song Before, I'll Walk Alone & 3 Coins in the Fountain. On Broadway, he shifted from satire- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Leo Robin, to drama- Funny Girl, with Bob Merrill, also working with the great Betty Comden & Adolph Green on musical comedies- including 2 on the Aisle & Bells Are Ringing.

Styne: "I had 15 # 1 songs with Sammy Cahn. He loved that big-band sound, so every song had that big-band sound. Then I read lyrics by Yip Harburg & Leo Robin & I thought, 'I'd like to write to those kinds of words.' Yip's syllables & sounds tingle with music. Leo had a wonderful edge, a suave & very sophisticated way of comedy."

His songs often shared the stamp of the singers who introduced them: Carol Channing, Judy Holliday, Doris Day, Mary Martin, Barbra Streisand & Ethel Merman.

Born in London to Russian Jews in 1905, Styne moved to NYC & became a vocal coach & conductor for the Broadway musicals, which led to a job in Hollywood with 20th Century Fox, coaching Shirley Temple & Constance Bennett.

He said he changed his name at the suggestion of an executive of the Music Corporation of America, who told him that "Stein" seemed "too Jewish." He was also being confused with Dr. Jules Stein, the head of the Music Corporation.

Paramount borrowed Styne for the 1942 musical- Sweater Girl. He wrote songs including I Don't Want to Walk Without You, with Frank Loesser. The team turned out hits including: It's Been a Long, Long Time & I've Heard That Song Before. Many of their songs were written for Frank Sinatra, with whom Mr. Styne had a close if uneven relationship over the years.

Styne said he never liked working in the movies, even though he received an Oscar for 3 Coins in the Fountain & 7 nominations. Styne: "I didn't like a director telling me what song goes where. I was not pleased with Hollywood's adaptations of Gypsy & Funny Girl. The movies destroyed every musical they ever made from the stage.”

In 1959, Gypsy, his only collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics, the pairing brought out the best in both of them. Frank Rich: "They brought out something in each other's talent that cannot quite be found in their extraordinary separate careers."

Hallelujah, Baby!, his 18th show, finally brought Styne a Tony. He was among the 5 artists honored in 1990 by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington for their cultural contributions to the nation. In 1992, he received the New Dramatists Lifetime Achievement Award. Styne was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the American Theatre Hall of Fame, & he was a recipient of a Drama Desk Special Award.

He was still composing in 1994 when his spotlight was shut off. Styne in 1990: "I've had a goodly life & I'm working as hard as I've ever worked. A sunny day when I can sit down & write, that's what makes life so good. The brain is an amazing thing. I could sit down to write 9 songs right now, & I don't know what would come out. That's the wonder of it all."

My favorite Jule Stein song is Neverland from Pete Pan, lyrics by Comden & Green:

I have a place where dreams are born

& time is never planned

It's not on any chart

You must find it with your heart

Never Never Land.

It might be miles beyond the moon,

Or right there where you stand.

Just keep an open mind

& then suddenly you'll find

Never Never Land

You'll have a treasure if you stay there

More precious far than gold.

For once you have found your way there

You can never, never grow old

& that's my home where dreams are born

& time is never planned

Just think of lovely things

& your heart will fly on wings

Forever in Never Never Land.

You'll have a treasure if you stay there

More precious far than gold

For once you have found your way there

You can never, never grow old

& that's my home where dreams are born

& time is never planned

Just think of lovely things

& your heart will fly on wings

Forever in Never Never Land

Styne/Comden/Green

1960