Collision: When Reality and Illusion Collide

By Ron Bruguiere

Hidden in a theaters orchestra-level wall is the pass door. Step through it, and you will enter the backstage area, but beware, once you enter, you will encounter the realities dwelling in the kingdom of make-believe.

In this seriocomical look at life, with a whos who in the theater during the 1960s and 70s, attend the final days of the Golden Age of Theater and the beginnings of its new sounds Hair and Company.

You will read about Carol Channing prior to her acclaim in Hello, Dolly! Liza Minnellis stage debut and Judy Garlands final stage appearance. Be a spectator during Hairs first year. Reach for something other than a glass of Remy Martin as you watch cognac shatter a relationship with Maggie Smith. Observe a coterie of distinguished Broadwayites destroy a gift from the United States Government. Be a witness to Deborah Kerrs strength knowing that shes in a failed play, and Billy Dee Williams, the then hot-hunk with the chiseled body, take on the role of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Also appearing (in order of appearance) are Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Barbra Streisand, Barbara Cook, Stan Getz, Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, Elaine Stritch, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, James Baldwin, Kim Stanley, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Fidel Castro, Doris Day, and Mae West.

Fly to 1960s Havana; drive through France; experience the London of 1974, and visit Venice Beach, CA before it became an in-place.

Youll see reality warp into illusion, then comprehend how a young boy, whose own family turned to illusion during World War II, spiraled to drugs and alcohol at adulthood. Youll also view that young gay man, who ignored reality in favor of illusion, immerse himself into a dark hole whose force of gravity was so intense that escape seemed improbable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456725242

Ron Bruguiere

Ron Bruguiere, during his 42-year theater career, served as business, company, general, and house manger on Broadway and on tour. 5 of those years were with Richard Rodgers’ Music Theater of Lincoln Center and 4 years with the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA). He ended his career serving 25 years at the Music Center of Los Angeles County. He is a past resident of New Jersey; Manhattan and Connecticut; Honfleur, France and London, England. He now makes Los Angeles , California his home.

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Contents

Preface

The Initiation

New York City – December 1960

Fast-Forward – Los Angeles –

December 1977

New York City – Winter 1961

Cape Cod – Summer 1961

Fast-Forward –

Los Angeles – March 2002

Cape Cod – Summer 1961

Fast-Forward – New York City – November 1968

On Tour – Winter 1962

New York City – Spring 1962

Fast-Forward – New York City – April 1965

On Tour – Winter 1963

New York City – 1963

The Actors Studio Theatre – 1964

The Senator’s Wife –

October 1964

The American Place Theatre – October 1964

Summer Musicals

Music Theater Of Lincoln Center – 1964-69

South Pacific – Summer 1967

West Side Story – Summer 1968

A Hiatus With Hair – January to April 1969

Return to the Establishment – May 1969

Return to 52nd Street –

September 1969

Continuing – September 1969

A Short Intermission –

November 1969

Henry Fonda in Our Town – November 1969

Jimmy Stewart on Stage –

February 1970

Publicity – May 1970

Lost in Transition – May 1970

That Road - Summer 1970

The White Elephant

Me

Flashback – June 1960

The Londoner – 1973

London, England

The Return – August 1974

Private Lives, the Tour -

September 1974

From the Atlantic to the Pacific – May to September 1975

Elusive Illusion; Capturing Reality – September 1975

Next – November 1975 to

January 1976

Cocaine and Other Matters

Whoa! Apply Brakes! Stop!

New York City – September 1976

December 1976

Fast-Forward – Venice Beach – November 1978

The Interview – April 1977

Afterword

Acknowledgements

To Jim

Preface

Aren’t we fortunate that inanimate objects don’t collide? What a fix we’d be in if they did; all those objects that we love, and can’t part with, moving about willy-nilly; falling all over each other. But, think about that poor sofa: Your animate butt hits that inanimate cushion in the same spot every time, and so often, that you have destroyed your inanimate sofa’s structure. Collisions can be destructive.

However, it doesn’t only involve objects. Scientists’ theories collide; political ideologies smash up against one another. There is the never-ending battle of theology. Of course, wars between nations and those who fight them are collisions of enormous magnitude.

They can also occur when one’s judgment collides with one’s blindness to life. Those aren’t simply a one shot bang-up; prolonged, the damage can be substantial, like when the aperture of a camera had been left open at its fullest too long, allowing in all the light; ruining the film.

Then, there’s the collision between reality and illusion. That type of collision happened to me when I sat on the audience-side of a theater, and eventually went through the theater’s pass door – that mysterious, slightly hidden, door in the wall that separates reality from illusion.

When I stepped through the theater’s pass door, I gained access to the backstage. That is the space where the magic, the make-believe, and the illusion are created. Yet, as the years passed, and as I continually stepped through that door, distinguishing reality from illusion became problematic and further collisions with common sense, took place.

For one to go backstage in a theater, illusion needs to be parked outside before you enter. Once you enter you will encounter the realities dwelling in the kingdom of make-believe, and those realities may not always be desirable.

In life, illusion resides in one’s mind. Where reality challenges illusion, a person’s need or desire to pretend may not always be welcome.

"Reality is merely an illusion,

albeit a very persistent one."

- Albert Einstein

The Initiation

I have come to the realization that I crawled into illusions and adventures to hide from the reality and disillusionment, which as a child, I had observed my parents tolerate in their own lives. Was it the boredom and loneliness that my parents endured, which led me to search for a magical world to provide the escapism I sought?

Escape had been introduced early into my thoughts; I was eight. World War II wasn’t over yet, but a friend who was nine years old, Nancy, lived in a house at the corner of the street, in Newark, New Jersey, where I grew up. Through her father, an import/export agent, she had access to the addresses of foreign embassies and their offices of information, which provided us the route to obtaining their catalogues and brochures, some with pictures, describing the countries and their major cities. Those geography lessons that arrived through the mail-slot from mysterious addresses, some with foreign stamps, were like explosions, opening my mind, creating imaginary and exotic worlds.

Ensnared in my mother’s distrust of my father and his philandering; I became his substitute when he wasn’t there, which was most of the time. Nancy’s house was the serendipitous place that offered escape because I wasn’t allowed to go further than that corner.

I can still hear my mother’s constant admonitions, Never cross the street or go around the corner. There were kids on the street that lived behind us: I’ve seen them, I don’t think you would like them. There were kids across the street: They play too rough. Six houses up the street from our house: They aren’t very nice. On that, maybe she was right, one of them stole my bike… he also called me Mommy’s Boy.

Her words confused me for it mattered to me, and yet in a strange way it didn’t. They were her rules; I never fought back. I was obedient and did all the correct things. And, I only had three playmates; two of them were girls.

In the early 1940s, my mother, along with my aunt and my grandmother, began my theatrical experiences by taking me into New York City. Some of our trips were aboard a Lackawanna Railroad train that took us from Newark to Hoboken, New Jersey. As we rode, I pressed my face against the train window as the steam engine chugged us to our destination. In Hoboken, we transferred to a ferry that would take us across the Hudson River. I watched the hustle and bustle as the people disembarked when the ferry arrived in New York City. The ordinary had disappeared; my imagination took me away from my parents.

On those trips we might be part of the live studio audience of the Saturday’s morning radio broadcast of Let’s Pretend, having sent for tickets months in advance, or we waited in block-long lines at the Roxy or Radio City Music Hall to see a movie and stage show. The Music Hall presented lavishly elaborate, spectacular shows. After that, we sometimes went to a second show, which meant a meal in between. The waiter staffed Brass Rail on 7th Avenue at 49th Street, was fancy, but sitting at a table by the window at the self-serve Horn & Hardart’s Automat on Broadway at 46th Street brought to my young eyes the magic of Times Square. I would stare with wonderment up at the gigantic signs that sat atop the buildings.

To eat at the Automat you needed nickels; lacking them, a woman at a booth made change. The food was displayed behind a wall of small glass windowed chrome doors with coin slots and knobs. For my favorite, a creamy macaroni and cheese casserole, I’d drop two nickels into the slot, twist the knob alongside; the door popped open and I’d take it out. I didn’t drink coffee, yet I was intrigued by the dolphin-headed spout the coffee flowed from when you pressed the brass handle after inserting a nickel into the slot.

If we attended a second show, it might be at Times Squares’ Strand, Capitol or Paramount Theatre. Not only did they have a first-run film, but also the big bands of the 1940s were featured on their stages. The possibilities included Benny Goodman — The King of Swing, Count Basie or Duke Ellington, Harry James, Jimmy or Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa or top-hatted Ted Lewis, famous for the song Me and My Shadow. Headliners were an added attraction: The Andrew Sisters, The Ink Spots or The Ritz Brothers to name but a few. I saw the Sonja Henie ice shows at The Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center but never a Broadway show; perhaps, my mother thought they were only for grown-ups. But, as I consider today some of the movies I was taken to; were they thinking that the goings-on in those grown-up films would be beyond my comprehension?

My aunt, eleven years older, was a bobby-soxer and an avid Frank Sinatra and Perry Como fan. She was one of those screaming teenagers when Sinatra made his appearance at the Paramount. When Perry Como was signed for a live evening radio broadcast, the cigarette sponsored Chesterfield Supper Club, she secured tickets for it, and we went numerous times.

My mother took me to the Ringling Brothers Circus, and the Rodeo, at the old Madison Square Garden on 8th Avenue and 50th Street, tickets courtesy of my father. The excitement surrounding those treats included being taken to the Hotel Astor on Broadway at 44th Street after the matinee performance. On the mezzanine level, overlooking the Astor’s lobby was a gallery with tables and chairs. Mom would order herself a Manhattan and me a soda. We were always lucky getting a table by the railing so we could peer over, watching the people come and go. The hotel’s lobby was considered a rendezvous spot during World War II; many Armed Forces personnel met their dates there. Mom would speculate about the person they were waiting for – what they might be like, and she would invent stories about them. We’d watch people pace back and forth, some of them constantly checking the time on their wristwatch. When the date arrived, we witnessed happiness, tears, anger, and sometimes – great passion. Each was a meeting having a story of its own. Little did those who we observed know that they were actors on a stage, performing solely for us.

Were those events my initiations into illusion?

In the spring of 1952, a revival of Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey was at Manhattan’s Broadhurst Theatre on West 44th Street. I was in my junior year at Weequahic High School in Newark, New Jersey, and was seeing a Broadway show for the first time. My date and I sat in the mezzanine. The overture began, and I wasn’t in the real world any longer. When the curtain rose, my flesh was a-tingle. I felt a high that I’ve rarely ever experienced again. Bewitched by the make-believe world in front of me, I forgot that the seat I occupied was in the land of fact.

My memory of the Pal Joey experience didn’t include any great passion to gain immediate entry into illusion, yet it probably was the seed my escapist identity sought. The child that grew to sit in that theater seat pored over, like most kids, comic books and fantasy stories. Another dimension was added by my mother, who attended Broadway shows, always bringing home the theater’s program, Playbill. I’d look at them attempting to comprehend what the printed words: Act I, Scene I and Musical Numbers, meant. Among the programs I recall paging through were Lute Song and One Touch of Venus, both with a picture of their star, Mary Martin, on the cover.

Looking at the credits for those shows today, I found that Mrs. Ronald Reagan, the former Nancy Davis, was in Lute Song. Cheryl Crawford produced One Touch of Venus; Agnes de Mille choreographed, and Jean Dalyrmple was its press agent. Little did I know when I read Mom’s programs that those three people and I would work together some twenty years in the future.

In the summer between my junior and senior high school year, when my parents asked me what I wanted to study in college, I blurted out that I wanted to be an actor. My father said, Be a gym teacher like your Uncle Harold. Of course, he added, No son of mine is going to be an actor!

I was nineteen in March 1954, and had talked my parents into allowing me to move from Newark to New York City, providing I got a job. Attendance at Michigan State College, following my June 1953 high school graduation, was to escape my parents, not to study the hotel management course I had registered for. After the fall semester, I dropped out. I had no idea what my future held.

I don’t recall how many interviews, or where I sought work, but I always liked to be nicely dressed. Brooks Brothers Clothiers at that time was the epitome of masculine fashion and good taste. That suited me, and I became a stockboy at their 346 Madison Avenue store.

Brooks Brothers were the originators of the button-down collar and the diagonal repp tie, which they copied from British regimental ties, simply by reversing the direction of the stripes. Brooks also sold sacks; a euphemism for sports coats, some of which had a leather patch stitched on at the elbows. The coats weren’t sold from hangers, but stacked on tables, inside out. During my employment there, I adopted the complete Ivy League Look: Gray flannel suit, wing-tipped shoes or loafers with tassels. Socks, known as hose there, were over-the-calf, not those awful anklets, please! – and I attached garters to them. Of course, I held up my trousers, not pants, with braces, i.e., suspenders (for those uninformed). I felt I was quite the sophisticate, and although I didn’t know it at that time, was setting myself on an illusory course.

I found my apartment through a New York Times roommate wanted ad. It was a one-room studio on the top floor of a brownstone on West 70th Street, just off Central Park West. The room had two daybeds right-angled in a corner; the place resembled a living room. I don’t remember ever cooking a meal there except for making morning coffee. It was mainly a place to sleep.

Jack was my roommate’s name – his age, maybe mid-thirties. I don’t recall what kind of job he had, but six years later, I bumped into him at a bar in Havana, Cuba.

Billy Ropes, an ex-vaudevillian, lived on the second floor of the brownstone. He was, probably, in his late fifties. A small, thin man with white hair, and dancing eyes on a face that always held a smile. I later learned he decorated windows for the Lerner Shops, a chain selling woman’s clothes.

Billy and I usually left for work about the same time, saying Good Morning, as we met on the hall stairs. One evening when I came home, his door was open. He invited me in. We had a drink, and he told me about himself. It appeared to me that he was somewhat lonely. The many photographs on his walls attested to his stage career, and his life. The photographs revealed what had been, but not the present. Billy, I came to learn, wanted companionship – nothing more. He wanted someone to go to the theater with; he’d pay for the tickets. Can Can, By The Beautiful Sea, Kismet and The Teahouse of the August Moon were among the shows we saw together.

Billy’s talk of his career in vaudeville, the people he shared the bill with – he was part of a dance act – held me captive. I’m certain Billy’s enthusiasm, and his love of theater was extremely influential in my future decisions. Billy Ropes was my first hands-on contact with the world of show business.

A seed had taken root, but the growing process took time, and I did crave the fantasy; reality had been jettisoned.

There’s no business like show business

- Irving Berlin

New York City – December 1960

Lucille Ball opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre in the musical Wildcat.

I went to a Christmas party.

There I met a male model who, when bookings were slim, ushered at the all-male staffed Alvin Theatre, now the Neil Simon Theatre, on West 52nd Street.

I said.

He said.

Two days later, I, a twenty-five year old advertising agency traffic manager at Cohen and Aleshire Advertising Agency, was interviewing with Al Jones, theater manager (the profession calls them House Managers) for the Alvin Theatre; I was going into show biz, joining its ranks – moonlighting as an usher!

This new position enabled me to shed my daytime uniform for a few hours – The Establishment’s Ivy League Look that I had become addicted to in 1954.

During the day, I could be mistaken for a Wall Street broker or banker, whereas the fit of my new nighttime uniform gave me a dashing, military look – sort of 1950s Movie Theater – except the stiff collar scratched and choked me. I never asked myself which job I enjoyed more.

One evening, when my ushering duties finished early, I walked down the aisle, opened the pass door, went up the step; Lucille Ball was leaning against a wall waiting for her cue to go out and sing Hey, Look Me Over!

She watched me as I entered, then asked, How’s the house?

OH, MY GOD!, Lucille Ball’s speaking to ME!

Naïve me, Oh, three empty rows in the back of the orchestra.

On stage she went.

Next night, as I was putting my uniform on, the head usher told me to report to the house manager’s office.

In I went, You are never, never to speak to Miss Ball! sez he.

Ouch!

Wildcat didn’t get the greatest of reviews; I Love Lucy fans sold out the balcony, but the sophisticates for the more expensive seats just weren’t buying, and this, just a few days into its run.

Obviously, her handlers weren’t telling her all. I learned my first show business lesson: Never tell the STAR the performance isn’t sold out – hedge.

That lesson, DON’T SPEAK TO THE STAR, set up a mental barrier between them and me. I wasn’t ever going to be caught up in a situation like that again. I would limit my conversations to strictly business. Did I set a trap for myself with that thinking?

Fast-Forward – Los Angeles –

December 1977

Although I was now the House Manager of the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center of Los Angeles County, through contacts, I had started moonlighting as a television production manager. This enabled me to learn the duties of a TV associate producer, a position similar to the general manager of a Broadway production — keeping an eye on the budget.

I was working on a one-hour TV special, Gene Kelly – An American in Pasadena (aired March 1978) with some of Kelly’s co-stars and friends from filmdom. It was taped live at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, California, as a black tie fund-raising benefit for WAIF. Founded, in 1955, by film star Jane Russell, WAIF’s original purpose was to provide the necessary funds to establish a children’s division for the Refugee Act of 1953 that Congress had then recently passed. The monies would be earmarked for personnel needed to process the adoption and admission to the United States of homeless children – waifs – from war-torn Europe and Asia. In 1977, it evolved in helping children with alcohol and drug problems.

Lucille Ball was the premier guest star and was never without her sunglasses.

The dressing rooms and our production office were in the basement. The dressing rooms were nicely outfitted with soothing colors and lighting. In our production office however, normally a rehearsal space, the ceiling was hung with many bright florescent lights. The doors were of the swinging, restaurant type. All the better to enter and exit with no noise.

Taping day and the tension is intense. I’m in the production office, the swinging door opens, a redheaded woman without make-up OR sunglasses, enters and screams, OH, MY GOD! as she shields her eyes from the florescent lights and runs out. Lucille Ball’s line, Oh, my God! became the staff’s fodder for the rest of the day; it didn’t go away quietly, just as she had not.

We never spoke about my Wildcat connection — you don’t remind stars about their flops.

The TV special’s star, Gene Kelly, was one of my favorite movie people; I would have spoken to him! I thought him an athletic, sexy and charismatic person. Watch him in On the Town, The Pirate or An American in Paris. He became a star on Broadway in the original Pal Joey (1940). Now I was working with him.

Rehearsals were over, it was time to eat and rest. Mr. Kelly needed his dinner brought to him, and I did so. I knocked on the dressing room door. A disheveled, puffy faced Mr. Kelly, his toupee askew, opened it and took the tray. I was crestfallen!

Lesson: Reality is always lurking somewhere backstage.

New York City – Winter 1961

Diagonally across the street from the Alvin Theatre was Confucius, a Chinese restaurant. It was a post-show hangout of show people — actors are desperate for food after a performance — that served the juiciest barbecued pork loin along with other terrific eats, and it stayed open late. I had been introduced to Confucius when I started ushering, having made friends with the dancers in Wildcat. At the restaurant, I met other chorus dancers (usually referred to as gypsies) from other current Broadway musicals. It was an impressive line-up: My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Bye Bye Birdie, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Camelot, and Carnival! We stayed late into the night, Thursday’s and Saturday’s being the most popular. In the 1960s, payday was Thursday, in cash, and no Sunday performances!

Bowling at the Roxy Bowling Center, located below street level, on West 50th Street, across the street from the famous movie palace, the Roxy Theatre, was another diversion following a Thursday night performance; many of the actors in musicals and plays bowled in teams. I joined those dancers I had met, and became friends with – Jere Admire, George Marcy, Larry Fuller, and Wakefield Poole, at the bowling alleys. At 11:00 P.M., it was an empty and peaceful place, then a crew of semi-rowdy performers arrived, and let loose. Wakefield on occasion would shock the men and women by exposing himself. In 1971, Wake made the breakthrough gay porn film, The Boys in the Sand. Method in madness? Marvin Shulman, who I met at the Roxy, and who later prepared my income taxes, would become the producer of Wakefield’s films.

Many nights, the dancers only needed a beer or two to wind down after a performance. Ralph’s, a bar on West 45th Street, east of 8th Avenue, served that purpose. It was brightly lit, the beer was cheap, and the atmosphere relaxed. I went to Ralph’s alone sometimes, and it was there that Jere Admire introduced me to the stage managers Tom Porter and Randy Brooks; both became close friends.

Chorus dancers had little concern for daylight hours except on matinee days – show-time was their all-important hour. During the day, they might take a dance or acting class, perhaps a singing lesson, or do nothing at all. The career of a chorus dancer had no permanence; usually they went from show to show; and I’m sure, all aspired to greater fame. But most, when the time came, went home to where they hailed from; opening a School of Dancing, or maybe getting married.

The star’s free time was governed by the producer’s needs of promoting the show. Great stamina and lots of rest are essential when doing eight shows a week. Yet, no matter what time we left Confucius, a limousine was parked in the street by the Alvin Theatre’s stage door. Lucille Ball did her entertaining in her dressing room. The apartment she had rented for the duration of the musical’s run housed her mother, eleven-year old Desi and nine-year old Lucie.

Miss Ball’s late night entertaining took its toll; she needed a rest. Wildcat closed for two weeks in February 1961. When it reopened, I still used the pass door, and she still stood waiting for her cue, but she no longer looked like a June Bride, more like a Weary Widow. Broadway is an entirely different world from television.

My daytime job continued, and as much as I wanted to party I knew I had to find my way home, to be at work at nine o’clock in the morning.

Cape Cod – Summer 1961

Every Wednesday, Variety’s national edition of the news-of-the-entertainment-industry was published. The Legit section, in the rear of the paper, held the latest Broadway information. It was Broadway’s Bible, and I read it religiously with the hope of seeing a help-wanted advertisement in need of my services. That ad never appeared, but what I did see in early March 1961, was an ad announcing that beginning on the first Saturday morning in April, a four-week course in Summer Musical Theater Management would be offered. I paid my fee, and took the course. Lutz & Carr, an accounting firm that did the auditing for the majority of East Coast summer theaters was its sponsor. On the course’s final Saturday, representatives from various summer theaters conducted interviews for anyone interested in a summer job. I interviewed with Peter Candler, general manager of the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis, Massachusetts. I must have impressed him, as he hired me as that summer’s business manager. Wildcat closed, goodbye advertising agency, I bought a used car and drove northeast to Hyannis. The journey that I embarked on would transform my future; second thoughts concerning what I was doing were never contemplated.

The Cape Cod Melody Tent resembled a circus tent but with only a center ring. It was theater in the round with the stage at the bottom of a pit. Ramps leading down to the stage enabled the actors to make their entrances and exits, and to provide ticket holders access to get to their folding-chair seats that sat on concrete ledges – the topmost at ground level. The tent was made of canvas with side flaps that could be opened or closed, depending on the weather.

The backbone of summer theaters are the technical apprentices; they build and paint the scenery, set-up and strike sets, rig the lighting, repair and press costumes; they work 25 hours a day. They are young and extremely eager even though many receive no pay. Entry-level show business. It’s the excitement, the thrill of being there and taking part that really matters. Liza Minnelli was one such eager beaver, and although only 15 years old then, her age was never discussed.

Liza’s pre-arrival caused much buzz among us; we all knew that Judy Garland would be around. Judy had rented