Well, dear readers, I happened to be searching through e-mails, looking for something, and I happened to come across the e-mail Sondheim wrote me after hearing my remix of Follies. I’ve never shared it before but thought it might be of interest. Here it is:
Bruce –
I finally got a chance to sit and listen this afternoon to what you have wrought, and it is indeed a miracle. Jeff (my Significant Other) had never heard the original and was knocked out. But I was, too. All your labors have not been in vain. Congratulations and thanks.
Have you sent copies to Jonathan and Paul (who was the drummer)? I think they’d be thrilled. As would Hal and McMartin. In any event, I know it’s a limited edition, but I’d love to have ten more copies. Is that possible?
Steve
Isn’t that just the kind of note you’d want to get from Stephen Sondheim? Of course, I got him ten more copies, we’d already sold out of the initial run and I got the go-ahead to do more. I did indeed send it to Hal and Tunick and McMartin, but I didn’t have an address for Paul the drummer, so hopefully Sondheim got it to him. I heard back from all of them, and they had such wonderful things to say about it. And now, here we are twelve years later. Time flies and flies time, not necessarily in that order. I did manage to watch something resembling a motion picture, even though it wasn’t a motion picture. It was called Fanfare for a Death Scene, and it was actually a failed pilot for a series that would have been called Stryker, starring Richard Egan. This was a Daystar production, produced by Leslie Stevens, from the same folks that brought you The Outer Limits. It had a troubled production – the original director, Walter Grauman, was sacked after a week and Stevens directed. The original cameraman was also let go and Conrad Hall from The Outer Limits finished it. It was shot in December of 1963 and there are a couple of wonderful location shots in it – one of the Loyola Theater on Sepulveda not far from LAX and the entire finale of the movie takes place both outside and inside of my beloved Huntington Hartford Theater. I’d seen Stop the World – I Want to get off there in 1963, just six months prior. And just four months prior, I’d seen Beyond the Fringe there. And just one month prior, I’d seen the new play Time of the Barracudas, starring Laurence Harvey and Elaine Stritch, before it headed to Broadway – which it didn’t. Right after this pilot shot there, Seidman and Son starring Sam Levine would open, but I missed that. Here’s the Hartford in a still from the movie – Al Hirt played Reynaldo.
Want to know what else you could have seen in Los Angeles the week of November 20, 1963? Well, like me, you could have wandered over to this new theater in Culver City called Bluth Brothers Theater and seen Carol Worthington starring in Once Upon a Mattress. Less than a year after that I’d be doing shows there. No Strings with Howard Keel and Barbara McNair was playing its final few performances at the Orpheum Theater downtown. And you could catch one of the last four performances of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Biltmore Theater. I’d seen it there just a few weeks before. If you were clubbing, you could see Jackie Mason and Martin Denny at the Crescendo on Sunset or go right next door to the Interlude and see some comedian named Woody Allen appearing with “musical comedy find” Danny Meehan, who’d soon find his way to Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. At the world-famous Coconut Grove you could catch Juliet Prowse and Sergio Franchi. Trini Lopez was in residence at PJ’s on the Strip. If you’d been on the ball, just before Jackie Mason and Martin Denny opened at the Crescendo, you could have seen Wayne Newton and newcomer Bill Cosby. Wouldn’t we love to get in a time machine and go back to see all those things? I know I would.
I got eight hours of sleep, answered e-mails, and then began futzing and finessing, which took a bit of time. Then I moseyed on over to Uncle Bernie’s for a late lunch meeting. I was thrilled to see one of my favorite waitresses from Jerry’s was working there. The meeting was productive. I had a patty melt and fries. I came right home after the meeting and finished futzing and finessing. Then, with some breaks in between, I wrote sixteen new pages.
Today, I’ll be up by ten, I’ll shave and shower, futz and finesse, and then I’m meeting Julianne Pogue, beloved of former dear reader Charles Pogue for a noon o’clock lunch. That will be fun. After that, I’ll see if anything is at the mail place, then I’ll come home, finish futzing and finessing, and then I’ll write new pages and eventually watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow and the weekend are more of the same, with a lot of writing.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten, lunch, futz and finesse, write new pages, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: If you could go back in time to the 1960s, what performers would you love to see live – whether newcomers or stars? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have found that lovelier than lovely e-mail from Steve.