Well, dear readers, when I wrote Kritzer Time one of the most fun things for me was writing about my discovery of live theater here in Los Angeles, California, USA. And writing the commentary for our upcoming Kritzerland show brought it all back again for various reasons. I’m not sure if the first theater I saw in Los Angeles was Charley’s Aunt at the Coronet, but it may well have been – I have no way of checking the date, unfortunately. That cast featured a brilliant Steve Franken, Jack Grinnage, and I’m sure other actors that I went on to know. That might have been in 1961 but it also might have been in 1962, in which case it would not have been the first. But my first real Broadway show was The Tenth Man, the national tour at the Huntington Hartford Theater, which I saw in February of 1962 – I had just turned fourteen the previous December. I don’t remember why I suddenly got it into my head to go see it but I did. I was still in ninth grade in Junior High School at the time. It had to have been on a Saturday matinee, since school was in session. I do remember looking at all the live theater ads, and, as I said, I may have already gotten the bug from seeing Charley’s Aunt. But I just took a bus down there, bought a single seat in the fifth or sixth row center and my whole world changed when the curtain rose on the interior of – a synagogue. I won’t bore you with the details of that experience since it’s very detailed in Kritzer Time. Directly after that I saw the next show, which was A Thurber Carnival, which featured Imogene Coca, Arthur Treacher and King Donovan. I was mad for that show and saw it twice. The Hartford is still there and has been the victim of several terrible redesigns – it’s now called the Ricardo Montalban. Happily, I have many of the programs from these shows I saw. Here is the program for The Tenth Man, the show that changed my life.
And here is the theater. In this photograph, Advise and Consent was playing, so it’s in the general time frame of when I began going there. See the hot dog stand next to it? That’s where I met Joel Grey before a performance of Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, another show I loved – again, I talk about all of this in detail in the book.
And then in April, I saw my first big, Broadway musical show, the national tour of The Unsinkable Molly Brown at the Biltmore Theater downtown. By that time I was hooked and Molly Brown hooked me on musicals, which I was already hooked on thanks to the cast albums I’d heard. The Biltmore would only be around for two more years before the brainiacs demolished that beautiful theater. You wouldn’t know what a jewel the theater was inside from this photograph of its marquee – again, similar time frame to when I would have gone. Both musicals and straight plays played the Biltmore, although the biggest of the musicals played elsewhere, at the Philharmonic Auditorium, somewhere I never had the desire to go because I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t called a theater – auditorium sounded like school to me. Therefore, I missed The Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed and many other shows there, until the LA Civic Light Opera moved into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center. Here’s the Biltmore.
After Molly Brown, I saw two more shows there prior to the demolishing of the theater – Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad. What a show, what a production and what a cast. Here’s the title page of the program.
I also saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf there – not with its evening cast of Nancy Kelly and Sheppard Strudwick, but with its matinee cast of Michaele Myers as Martha and Kendall Clark as George, both superb, and Ken Kercheval and Barbara Dana in support. That may have been the final show at the Biltmore. Back at the Hartford I saw the brilliant Beyond the Fringe. Here’s that program – you can see what a good cast they got for the tour.
Then it was Stop the World and that just changed my life all over again. Here’s that program.
We had some extraordinary small theaters, too, where good work was being done, and I saw lots of those shows – the Billy Barnes revues, the LA premiere of the musical A Family Affair, which starred John Gabriel and Terry Becker, and one show that I must have seen around fifteen times, first at the Ivar Theater and then the Coronet. That production actually began at the Las Palmas, where it had a healthy run, after which it changed casts and moved to the Ivar, which is where I caught up with it. The original cast at the Las Palmas featured Robert Vaughn and Richard Long, not bad for a small theater. The show was Under the Yum Yum Tree, a show I thought was hilarious back then, and not so funny now. I saw it with its second cast of Bill Bixby and Richard Erdman. I also saw Bixby do it with Del Moore. Here’s the title page of the program from the Las Palmas.
And while I didn’t see the Jerry Herman revue, Parade, which had a short life off-Broadway, the LA production, which didn’t run very long, had such a great cast I thought you’d like to see the title page of that program.
Oy and vey, I think I’d better write some damn notes – I have a recording session in the morning! Yesterday was mostly a nice day, save for one irritating thing involving someone booking an event the same evening we do our October Kritzerland show. I believe it was done willfully and it takes place across the street. The person who did this will come to regret it, but in the meantime we have to try and move our show to the next night because if we go head-to-head it’s not going to be pretty for anyone. People are really ignorant sometimes. I think I got eight hours of blessed sleep. I had a lunch meeting that was fun – I had a bacon cheeseburger and no fries or anything else. Then I picked up no packages, which was kind of irritating, too, and then Lanny Meyers arrived and shortly thereafter the East Coast Singer and her jack-of-all-trades and publicist Mona. We talked about the session and a few other things and then some young kids were selling homemade brownies and lemonade right outside my house, so we all went out there and Sandy, Mona, and Lanny all had lemonade and brownies. The kids were adorable – they live right down the street and their mom and grandma were also very nice. I gave the girls a copy of Murder at the School Musical.
After that, I just did some work on the packaging of an upcoming release, then watched the first fifteen minutes of a motion picture I’d TIVOd entitled The Soft Skin, one of my favorite Truffaut film, mostly thanks to the gorgeous Francoise Dorleac. After that, I just listened to music and stuff.
Today, I must be up early and at the studio by nine-fifteen or so. The day should go until about four-thirty or five, and then we’ll go out to eat.
Tomorrow, we begin at the same time and end a little earlier, and then I have to go directly to The Federal to see Sharon McNight’s show. Sandy and Mona are now coming, too. We do final vocals on Monday and Tuesday night, and Monday I have a teeth cleaning with Dr. Chew.
Here is the first of the Kritzer originals, which, of course, were actually written by my very own self at a very young age. This was the first song I ever wrote – I believe I was fifteen at the time, but whatever I say in Kritzer Time is accurate. I describe in detail what the process was like doing this. It’s a silly song, but I think it showed at least a little talent and actually has my sense of humor, even at that age.
Let’s all put on our pointy party hats and our colored tights and pantaloons, let’s all break out the cheese slices and the ham chunks, let’s all dance the Hora or the samba, because today is the birthday of the mostly errant and truant Miss Karen. So, let’s give a big haineshisway.com birthday cheer to the mostly errant and truant Miss Karen. On the count of three: One, two, three – A BIG HAINESHISWAY.COM BIRTHDAY CHEER TO THE MOSTLY ERRANT AND TRUANT MISS KAREN!!!
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a recording session, hopefully pick up some packages (if we don’t finish in time for me to do that I will send the helper to retrieve them), and then I’ll do a jog when I get home. Today’s topic of discussion: Your first theater experiences and do share programs and photographs if you have them. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland with my head filled with childhood Playbills.