My biggest surprise happened in 1985, when Stephen Sondheim won the Pulitzer Prize. After Merrily We Roll Along failed, he told me at a New York City Gay Men's Chorus rehearsal, which he attended to hear my arrangement of "Our Time," that he was never going to write another musical and that he was going to work on games for Parker Brothers. He liked my choral arrangement, recommended it to his publisher, and so I had my first published arrangement. Then. mirabile dictu!, his office manager Patricia told me he was writing a show with James Lapine.
When my arrangement was published, Patricia and i were chatting about a thank you gesture I could make, and i asked about the Pulitzer. He had never been nominated, and I still think he should have won for Follies, so I thought, I could nominate Sunday In The Park With George, by George! I called the NYPL Music Division and asked if they knew who handled the Pulitzers, learned it was the Columbia School of Journalism, called them for further info, and called Patricia back. I needed bios of Steve and James Lapine, a recording, and a full vocal score and libretto, and I would make the nomination and pay the entrance fee.
I wanted to surprise him, but Patricia was worried about his reaction if I did this behind his back. and he learned about it from someone else, like Mathilde Pincus, who would have to print a vocal score, or perhaps someone who had heard about the nomination. So, I called Steve and told him my idea.
His reaction, right off the bat, was "We'll never win." My response was, perhaps, but you never know, and I think it's about time you were nominated. He reluctantly agreed, promised full cooperation, and around August or September 1984, I went over to his home with the Pulitzer applications and chatted with Steve while Patricia filled out the forms. I walked out with the score, recording, libretto, photos and bios of Steve and Jim, and the application, walked down to 42nd Street, picked up the 104 bus and rode to Columbia. I paid the entry fee and forgot about it.
One very early Wednesday morning in May, 1985, my dad called me: I needed to fly home immediately because my mother was having a quadruple bypass the next morning, and he wanted me there. I spent the rest of the morning getting money together, booking a flight, clearing my calendar, and my Chinese fortune cookie at lunch said "You will hear great news today." When I got home, there was a call from Patricia that the Pulitzers were going to be announced in the afternoon, the office phone had been ringing off the hook, and she was thinking about me. I told her about my mother, and that I had a few more errands to accomplish before I left for LaGuardia around 4:00.
I got home around 3:00 to a phone message from Patricia screaming "We won!" We won!" I called her, and she said, "Where are you? Steve wants to talk to you." He called me from the theatre, and Iflew home to my mother's surgery.
