JULIAN SCHLOSSBERG – A CAPITAL GUY By Peter Filichia
Nice press conference at Sardi’s for julian schlossberg.
No, I did not make two typos when putting his name in lowercase letters. That’s the way they’re printed on the cover of his new memoir My First Book – Part Two – a follow-up to his first autobiography.
In using “little letters” for his name, was schlossberg paying tribute to k.d. lang, who has said that she uses lower case letters in honor of e.e. cummings? Or was he just being modest, despite his splendid career that has had his name on stage musicals (BULLETS OVER BROADWAY), Hollywood films (Ten from Your Show of Shows) and TV documentaries (Mike Nichols: An American Master).
At the press conference, moderator Elaine May asked the audience for questions. Many a man has been said to have “a twinkle in his eye,” but schlossberg, while entertainingly answering, showed us that he had many twinkles in both eyes.
And because by question-time, schlossberg had already said that he grew up in the Bronx – “just a stone’s throw away from Broadway, the theater capital of the world,” as Sylvia Schnauzer stated on a memorable 1962 episode of Car 54, Where Are You? – I put my hand up there and asked, “Do you recall the first Broadway show you ever saw?”
It’s a question I always ask of people who claim they have an affinity for the theater. And when a person says, “Huh! Let me think about that… was it… um, ah…?” I immediately lose substantial interest in him or her.
As it turned out, schlossberg will keep my interest now and forever because he didn’t even need a split-second before answering: “PETER PAN with Mary Martin when I was 13, and after that, I was hooked,” he said. There was yet another twinkle when he suddenly realized that he could get a good pun in there, too: “Hooked by Captain Hook!”
Well, who can blame him? Many a kid felt the same when seeing the most famous musical that relied of not one but two sets of composers and lyricists.
An aside: So many assume that the best songs were written by the team that Jerome Robbins brought in: Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. They had the Broadway experience and know-how that Robbins believed that first-timers Moose Charlap and Carolyn Leigh didn’t possess. No, although Styne and his lyricists created the excellent “Neverland” and “Wendy” among eight other winners, the rookies wrote the equally memorable “I’ve Gotta Crow,” “I’m Flying,” and “I Won’t Grow Up.”
Back to schlossberg. Eight years after experiencing that gateway theatrical drug, he and a buddy decided to attend the final performance of CAMELOT. Weren’t they astonished to learn that each orchestra seat would cost nine dollars and ninety cents.
Considering CAMELOT’s extraordinarily elaborate, Tony-winning sets and costumes – not to mention the glorious score that yielded the most elegant cast album of them all – the producers, in asking for less than a sawbuck for a first-row orchestra seat, were essentially giving it away.
Mary in MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG mentions “sneaking in at intermission to the plays you wish you could afford.” Yes, many second-acted in those days, but schlossberg and friend found a way to first-act the Lerner-Loewe classic. It’s a terrific story.
schlossberg also told of his astonishment many years later when he arrived at a film shoot of Saturday Night Fever: “All these people were there to see the young man who’d made such an impression on Welcome Back, Kotter,” he said, before reminding us that it was, “John Travolta.”
Another aside: I’d like to think that the hundreds or so that were there had seen Travolta in OVER HERE! and wanted more of him. The 1974 musical by the famous Sherman Brothers sported several stars-to-be in its cast, in addition to Travolta: Marilu Henner (who just did an off-Broadway show about Adam and Eve that was much better served in THE APPLE TREE); Ann Reinking (the first Roxie in the still-running CHICAGO); Treat Williams (so good as Berger in the film of HAIR); and Samuel E. Wright (the original Sebastian in THE LITTLE MERMAID).
Interesting that Tom Moore, the director of OVER HERE!, saw Travolta as a “Misfit” as his character was named, and not the sex symbol that the actor became after Saturday Night Fever. Did the young man who sang “Dream Drumming” in the musical ever dream that a mere three years later he’d be drumming up lusty emotions from men and women?
Again back to schlossberg, whose surname was the inspiration for his 1978 film distribution company. Its first syllable translates to “Castle” and the second to “Hill”; link those two words, and you’ll get the name of the organization that restored and/or revived such valuable films as Al Hirschfeld: The Line King.
schlossberg’s writing style is the best sort of casual; a reader might well feel that he isn’t reading but is instead having dinner with a marvelous raconteur. You’ll see that, along the way, schlossberg has rubbed elbows with many a famous radius, ulna and humerus. Find out what actor made an aging Sondheim unhappy. Read what an understudy said to Lauren Bacall after a performance of WOMAN OF THE YEAR. schlossberg doesn’t tell us what happened to him after that, but we can guess…
See how Beatrice Arthur’s performance as Yente in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and her Tony-winning stint as Vera Charles in MAME made schlossberg hot to meet with her and produce her one-woman show… and why he didn’t. We may better understand the anti-hero of WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN? in both the novel and the 1964 musical after what schlossberg has to say about its auteur Budd Schulberg.
He also tells how his admiration for Betty Buckley began when he saw her play Martha Jefferson in 1776, and about a future backstage experience that she gave him that he won’t forget. And, when asked to give his opinion on a few early scenes from the still-filming A Little Night Music, how he had to finesse until he really had to come clean.
A final aside: schlossberg undoubtedly did not see the scene where Fredrika sings Sondheim’s new take on “The Glamorous Life.” They alone justify the existence of the soundtrack album.
And so goes My First Book – Part Two through 303 pages, with one terrific adventure after another and, of course, the occasional misadventure, too. Someone at the press conference asked schlossberg if there’d be yet a third memoir. Here’s hoping. After all, any writer who ends a book with a quotation from FUNNY GIRL is Just Super – with a capital “J” and a capital “S.”
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new book – BRAINTEASERS FOR BROADWAY GENIUSES – is now available on Amazon and at The Drama Book Shop.
