Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir (21 page)

“We switch partners daily / To play as we please,” I sang with two girls.

“Twosie beats Onesie,” sang Girl One.

“But nothing beats threes,” I’d sing and wait a beat before going on: “I sleep in the middle.”

“I’m left,” sang Girl One. “Und I’m right,” added Girl Two.

“But there’s room on the bottom,” I’d continue, looking at the crowd, “if you drop in some night.

The audience happily accepted our invitation to a ménage with the lyric. Through all of Act 1, the onlookers trusted that life was indeed beautiful, because I was their friend—until I wasn’t.

The first knife went in at the very end of the first act during a party scene when Fräulein Kost (played by Peg Murray who also won a Tony that year) reprised the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” which had earlier in the show been performed innocently by the waiters of the Kit Kat Klub. The song, which began sweetly with a melody John had invented, based on traditional German folk music, grew in force as the orchestra joined in—just as Fred’s lyrics, which had started bucolically (“The branch on the linden is leafy and green / The Rhine gives its gold to the sea”) turned nationalistic and menacing (“Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign / Your children have waited to see”). But if the audience didn’t understand the true meaning of the partygoers’ rendition, when Fräulein Kost performed it she was joined by Ernst proudly wearing a swastika on his sleeve. That was the sharpening of the blade, which I stuck in when walking across the stage as the Emcee, I looked directly at the audience and whispered, “Tomorrow belongs to … me.” Blackout.

What have we been doing? What have we been watching? Who is this character that we thought was fun, and amusing, and smart and witty?
All these thoughts were running through the heads of the theatergoers, who when the houselights came up were left staring at themselves in the mirror on stage.

For the start of Act 2, I needed to make it my mission to get them laughing and having fun again, no easy feat considering where we had left them so abruptly before the lights went out. I hid among the Kit Kat Girls, who came out in a kickline. When the audience discovered me in the line, in drag, it was a big surprise. And like that the people in their seats were shocked, surprised, and back on my side.

But they didn’t have long before I jammed in the second knife. Performing the number “If You Could See Her,” I professed my love for a “girl” gorilla (there was actually a man inside the costume) and exhorted the audience—again, my friends—to accept our union. “If you could see her through my eyes,” I sang, “she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” Not a sound, let alone a laugh, from the audience as the deed was done.

On opening night at the Broadhurst Theatre, November 20, 1966, I was emboldened by three weeks of previews, in which the audiences were screaming with horror and delight. That night, however, I got an extra boost from friends and colleagues who had rooted for me over the years. Opening night wires poured in from everywhere: Mom and Dad, Aunt Jeannie, and Cousin Burton. Even K. Elmo Lowe sent one: “Good luck, Mr. Katz. I know you’ll be wonderful. STOP. Don’t wiggle.” My favorite, however, came from my friend Buck Henry, the comedy writer and actor: “Wish I were there to observe your peculiar ways.”

Wearing the very same tailcoat Patricia and I originally chose for rehearsal and an equally worn-out dirty pink vest, I was never more peculiar than that night. Through hard work, not only in
Cabaret
but every performance I had ever given, I found the character that one could not deny.

This is what I had dreamt about, struggled for, worked hard at, and, oh, my God, here it was!

CHAPTER TEN

The nightclub career I had tried so hard to overcome was the very thing I drew upon to find the low vaudevillian that was the Emcee. As much as I fought against being a song-anddance man, it was during those smoke-filled nights at the Chez, the Copa, and even the dreaded Town Casino in snowy Buffalo, where I was heckled, that the Emcee’s utter smiling soullessness was born.

At thirty-four,
Cabaret
changed my life. In his review of the show for the
New York Times
, Walter Kerr, who was no fan of the original play
I Am a Camera
(his review’s headline:
ME NO LEICA
), raved about
Cabaret
and my work: “Master of Ceremonies Joel Grey bursts from the darkness like a tracer bullet … cheerful, charming, soulless and conspiratorially wicked.”

Cabaret
also experienced, not surprisingly, some controversy. It centered on the lyric “She wouldn’t look
Jewish
at all,” in the number “If You Could See Her (The Gorilla Song).” During previews, some Jewish groups, totally misunderstanding its true significance, opposed the last line, the punch line in the show. They thought it, in and of itself, was anti-Semitic, instead of it in fact being an ironic comment on anti-Semitism! Their protests became so emphatic that Hal decided rather than endanger the life of the whole show, during previews I was to replace the original line with “She isn’t a meeskite at all.” Meeskite—Yiddish for
ugly
or
funny-looking
—was supposed to deliver the same meaning! The change took some of the teeth out of the ugly punchline in the show, but the audience got the point. My job was to make the audience know they had been betrayed. After we opened, there were nights when I spontaneously slipped “look Jewish” back in, prompting the stage manager to scream at me, “What are you doing?” “Shit,” I would say, smiling, “I forgot!”

The set, costumes, staging, and music were so compelling and original that they kept
Cabaret
running for 1,165 performances.

When the show opened, I started out with fifth-featured billing but was ultimately moved up to fourth—an event that was marked by a party held at the Ground Floor, the cool restaurant done to William Paley’s tasteful specifications at the base of the CBS Building. Every actor on Broadway turned up. The party was a surprise, but so was the success of the Emcee. It wasn’t anyone’s plan for my character to become the focal point of the show.
Cabaret’
s story centered on Sally Bowles and Cliff Bradshaw. I was just a metaphor, and nobody expected the metaphor to become the centerpiece.

Cabaret
made me a celebrity. When Joan Crawford came to the show, she asked to meet me. So while I was still in my makeup, I heard a knock on the door and then in walked one of the greatest screen legends of all time. Heavily made up with large, black, penciled-in eyebrows, her silver hair in a high coif, and many strands of large pearls winding around her neck, she looked like a drag version of Joan Crawford. Very grand, but she couldn’t have been nicer. Her husband, Al Steele, all business in his gray double-breasted suit, accompanied her, the straight man to her star. They arrived without fanfare and exchanged the normal backstage pleasantries (“You were great…”). But having the iconic Joan Crawford come backstage to meet me symbolized the unprecedented success that I was to experience with
Cabaret
.

It even changed my relationship with Mother. Years ago, whenever I went out shopping with her, or wherever she dragged me when I visited LA, she was always quick to announce to storekeepers, restaurant owners, and the like, “I’m Mrs. Mickey Katz.” After my success in
Cabaret
, however, I noticed that she changed the line: “I’m Joel Grey’s mother! I’m Grace!”

Jo and I became the new “it kids” and were invited to all of these fancy events. On Monday nights, my night off from the show, we often found ourselves at swanky parties with people I knew more from the press than from real life. One evening was an intimate dinner at Café des Artistes, at which Mayor John Lindsay was seated to my left; another was a big fund-raiser at the Waldorf with celebrity chefs such as Marcella Hazan, from whom I had taken an Italian cooking class. (Twice a week, six of us in her kitchen in her apartment on Lexington Avenue spent all morning cooking her recipes, which we ate for lunch. It was sublime and very serious. I learned her classic tomato sauce, which I still make today.)

Jennifer, who was six years old at the time, also got a taste of glamour when she would come to visit me at the theater during weekend matinee performances. Dressed up special, she would sit in my dressing room watching me intently as I got made up. The chorus girls always made a tremendous fuss over Jennifer, who had good manners and the ability to hold her own with adults. They would make her up like a Kit Kat Girl, much to her delight. But when it came time for the production to start, Jennifer quietly stood in the wings to watch just as I had watched my father at the RKO in Cleveland. The rituals of the theater became a part of Jennifer, who always loved dancing around the apartment dressed up in costumes made from odds and ends I had collected for her from various shows over the years—including the Kit Kat Girl headband with a black velvet cat face.

The press took a new interest in me.
Women’s Wear Daily
did a style piece and
Vogue
ran a full-page Milton Greene photo of me surrounded by the Kit Kat Girls. They were also interested in Jo, who as a style setter in designer clothing by Rudi Gernreich, Halston, and Gustave Tassell, was covered by fashion magazines. Jo was thrilled with the attention. My success was hers. Very literally, I owed her a debt of gratitude for having persuaded me to stay the course and take the part of the Emcee when I had my doubts. But even more, Jo was part of the fabric of the play. As a performer, she understood all its nuances, and she had been a dear friend of Lenya’s before I knew either of them. When I wore Jo’s makeup from summer stock, it was like a part of her was up on stage, too.

Even our apartment got press.
THE EASY-GOING COSMOS OF A STAR
, read the headline of an article about our place in
House & Garden
. “Behind the Joel Greys’ discreet brass doorplate is an apartment filled with all the gaiety of a triumphant opening night.” The hype! The apartment, into which we had moved at Central Park West and 87th Street, was indeed spacious. The front apartment belonged to the actress Shelley Winters, of course facing the park. Befitting “Broadway’s newest and brightest comedy star,” as
House & Garden
hilariously dubbed me, the apartment was done by Albert Hadley, who we met through Hal and Judy Prince. He had designed interiors for the biggest names in America from Rockefeller to Kennedy. Sherbet-pink, apple-green, and bright paisley furniture stood in contrast to white walls, zebra rugs, and parquet floors. It was all very uptown—still, Jo and I retained a little Village bohemianism with our quilt-covered brass bed.

The single most meaningful excitement during that period, however, was
Cabaret’
s being nominated for eleven Tony Awards in 1967—including one for me. The 21st Annual Tony Awards ceremony, held at the Shubert Theatre, opened with “Willkommen.” Not only was I performing for an audience of the greats, my heroes in the theater, but, for the first time in the Tonys’ history, the award show was going to be broadcast live in prime time. When we rehearsed the number on the day of the show, everyone was very, very nervous—including me. On top of the anxiety about the live TV performance, I worried about whether I was going to win. I knew I had a good chance. Still!!

I don’t know how the rest of the country watching the Tonys felt, but inside the Shubert Theatre that night, the Broadway audience wholeheartedly embraced this little musical about Nazis, anti-Semitism, and homosexuals.
Cabaret
won eight Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Choreography, and, for me, Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

When the famous husband-and-wife dance team Marge and Gower Champion opened the envelope and she said my name, I bounded from the back of the theater toward the stage with all the energy of the eight-year-old Pud at the Cleveland Play House. This is what I had dreamt about, struggled for, worked hard at, and, oh, my God, here it was! After first kissing my beautiful wife, I leapt onto the stage to thank everyone who had helped me get here, ending with “Danke schön. Merci. Thank you. Thank you.”