Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir (28 page)

Jennifer was able to relate to my work not just as my daughter but also as an actress in her own right. Ever since I could remember, even before she spent her Saturdays watching me from the wings in
Cabaret
, Jennifer wanted to act. Although clearly the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, when Jennifer didn’t want to go to college because she wanted to be an actor, I worried. Knowing how hard it is to deal with this business, I was very protective—and negative about her acting full-time right away.

She had already appeared in the films
Red Dawn
and
The Cotton Club
, but it wasn’t until I saw Jennifer in
American Flyers,
starring Kevin Costner, that I fully supported her decision to be an actor. The movie had opened right around the time I was in
The Normal Heart
. I took myself to an afternoon showing at the Sutton Theater, on East 57th. In the empty theater, watching my daughter’s one wonderful scene, in which she becomes hysterical on a blind date gone wrong, I thought,
She can do this.
This was right before the major success she would have with
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
and then, of course, her iconic role in
Dirty Dancing
, but I knew there was no stopping her. She was too good—and I loved that.

I know that my father would have felt the same way if he could have seen me in
The Normal Heart
. Dad passed away several months before I took the role. He had been on dialysis for several years before ultimately dying of renal failure, at the age of seventy-five, on April 30, 1985.

Throughout my life my father also never stopped being my dad. After we first moved to Los Angeles, he went to Canter’s deli every Sunday morning while we were still asleep to pick up blintzes, lox, bagels, cream cheese, pickled herring, whitefish, and more. His weekly shopping sprees earned him the nickname “the Goodie Man.” Years later, in fact, on my fiftieth birthday, the doorbell of my New York apartment rang and I found a gigantic basket all wrapped with ribbons. Inside were blintzes, lox, bagels, cream cheese, pickled herring, whitefish, and more; the note was signed, “The Goodie Man is everywhere.”

I believe that if he had been alive, my father would have come to see me in
The Normal
Heart
and that he would have gotten it and would have been proud. My mother, on the other hand, never came. I never expected her to. Through the play I was moving closer to a new place of acceptance and ease within myself. The fear and shame that had been such a big part of me was slowly falling away, and in its place came an empowering sense of solidarity and, yes, pride. What people thought about me became less and less important.

Alas, my mother never, ever got it. Over dinner at her favorite restaurant in LA, knowing better but wanting to give her and us one more chance, I said, “You know, Mom, now that I’m divorced, the next important person in my life might be a man.”

Without missing a beat, she looked right at me with a smile and said, “Oh, no, dear, that’s not you.” Then she finished her glass of champagne and we never spoke about it again.

In my mid-sixties, I had come to a point in my life where I realized that passion of any kind is gold.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I met someone, a guy, in, of all places, the 1987 revival of
Cabaret
.

It happened at the meet-and-greet on the first day of rehearsal for the show, which was set to embark on a seven-month national tour before opening on Broadway at the Imperial. All of the usual suspects were there: the producers, the creative team, the cast, production people, and the concessions department, which sold souvenirs, programs, and CDs—and was headed by Eddie, who gave me
the look
. A big guy in his late thirties with curly, prematurely gray hair, he was handsome.

As if the freedom and excitement of the road weren’t erotic enough, Eddie was aggressively romantic with me as we began an intense but secret relationship. I was flattered by the little love notes—one more creative than the next—that this beautiful, talented man wrote me all of the time.

The unexpected affair added a layer of upheaval to the already tumultuous experience of reviving this much-loved show, which over the past two decades had taken on mythic proportions. In the original, I was far from the top of the marquee, but now I had star billing. I was the draw, and I was also twenty years older!

In this production, Harold Prince took up his original role as director as did Ron Fields with the choreography. Joe Masteroff adapted the script to make Cliff bisexual, as he was in the movie version, which most people now thought of as the official version. Alyson Reed played Sally; Gregg Edelman had the role of Cliff; the opera singer Regina Resnik was Fräulein Schneider; and Werner Klemperer played Herr Schultz. As the only member of the original cast, I had to live up to the reputation I had built for the character long ago. With the challenge of my age and the fact that the character was no longer a surprise, I needed my storied Emcee to be as daring and dark onstage as he’d been in the film seen by so many.

I drove myself, as usual, crazy trying to achieve that goal as we performed to sold-out shows night after night, week after week, city after city. There was a lot of anticipation, since this was the first time I reprised the role of the Emcee after the film. This was a theater event, and I was at the center of it.

Facing three sold-out shows in Hartford, Connecticut, I felt the beginnings of a cold. I should have taken a few days off, but I have always feared disappointing an audience. Well, by the third performance, my throat was in so much pain I could hardly bare it. We were scheduled to open in Philadelphia in two days, the last out-of-town engagement before New York, and something felt really, really wrong. This was not just a sore throat.

I was rushed upon my arrival in Philly to Dr. Robert Sataloff, a top throat specialist, who delivered the news that I had burst a blood vessel on my left vocal cord, and would need to spend two, maybe three weeks on vocal rest, not speaking a word to anyone. And the opening in Philadelphia was in two days. Just a little more pressure: Our Broadway run was set to begin in only three weeks.

Before going on the road, I had become fascinated with the
I Ching
, introduced to me by a close Buddhist friend. The
I Ching
, or
Book of Changes
, is a 3,000-year-old Chinese text used for telling the future—like astrology or palm reading (only more philosophical and spiritual). Forbidden to speak, I sat in my hotel room in Philly, looking to the
I Ching
to answer questions about my very uncertain future. It was at least something I could do while keeping my mouth shut. Maybe there was something to that old Confucian magic, because while I was flipping through the pages my mind flashed to a news brief I had read in
Time
magazine about an opera singer, who, after losing his voice, still went on by miming it while someone else sang for him from the wings.

The next day, I discussed it with Hal. (I had a pad and pencil in hand at all times, since I could only communicate by writing.) The plan was that while my understudy sang from the box above stage left, I would lip-synch and act the role. Hal OK’d the plan, but it remained to be seen whether the audience would accept it. We never lied to the theatergoers; the program clearly stated what was happening. At the end of the show, I brought my understudy onstage, and we took a bow together. The audience loved it and gave us a standing ovation.

For the next three weeks my understudy and I were two halves of an Emcee, and not one person asked for his money back. I was grateful to be there and to have found a way to play the part and keep the audience in their seats. But it was also one of the hardest times of my life. I didn’t know if my voice was ever going to come back, and what condition it would be in if it did. The actor’s voice is his everything.

One week after seeing Dr. Sataloff, I went for a follow-up visit. The cord showed only slight improvement, and he was doubtful that I would be well enough to make the Broadway opening. I went into New York to meet with Galli, my singing teacher, who gave me some gentle exercises while I waited to get the OK from the good doctor. The cast and crew worried, some for their jobs, some for me, some for both. Lip-synching could never be a solution on Broadway. Then came our last performance in Philadelphia, a Sunday matinee. I got the go-ahead from Sataloff to sing and did the whole show without my understudy. The voice was there and ready—maybe—to open in New York.

That was the backdrop to my already anxious state of mind when at 8:20
P.M.
on October 22, 1987, opening night of the show at the Imperial, the set jammed. In the original production, back in ’66, stagehands would move the scenery behind closed curtains on stage wagons, using long push poles or just their hands. Technological advances over the passing decades meant that in the revival all the sets now moved mechanically. It was supposed to make the production smoother, more problem-free. With most of the audience members already seated, I didn’t know what to do other than take my place for the opening. I stood there waiting for the go-ahead. That’s when I heard one of the stagehands loudly whisper in the dark, “Does anybody have a hanger?”

I looked in the wings, and there I found Eddie. My beautiful, sweet Eddie. He was staring right back at me like he always did, his eyes smiling and kind; he thought I could do no wrong.

Ultimately, Eddie and I lasted longer than
Cabaret
on Broadway. The revival wasn’t an unmitigated success. It did run for 261 performances, but the critics complained it didn’t compare with the original. Life inevitably changes things. It had certainly changed me. The last time I played the Emcee, I was a married man with two children. Now I was in a full-on romance with a man.

As our relationship progressed, I introduced Eddie to many of my friends, who were supportive. But no matter how much time he spent with them, they always perceived Eddie as at best enigmatic and at worst standoffish. Whether he thought he was more interesting that way or was simply hiding something, he didn’t reveal a lot of himself to others.

I didn’t care what anyone else had to say. I was over the moon. In private, Eddie continued to be the same devoted, adoring man that I saw from the wings opening night of
Cabaret
on Broadway. To mark my birthday one year, he hand-bound an accordion book no bigger than an inch high and a half-inch wide. I was moved beyond words as I opened the muted, Japanese-print cover to find, in the tiny, perfect handwriting done by this six-footer, “Rare is true love; true friendship is still rarer.” The Jean de La Fontaine quote was followed by contributions from Lord Bryon, Alexander Pope, Heinrich Heine, and others—all on the subject of love and friendship. The theme was apt. Ours was a terrific friendship with the added dimension of a powerful physical connection. With him so romantic and me so ready, our relationship seemed like something I had been moving toward for a long, long time.

Still, I recognized some truth in what my friends had said about him. Even with me, he never totally let his guard down. After we had been together for a few years, he still insisted on maintaining a private life separate from ours.

Ironically, Eddie was the one uncomfortable with the idea that someone might think he was gay. It was as if God had played a joke on me. Here was the closest I had ever come to a real commitment to another man, and the man I chose to be with had trouble accepting his own truth.

But the heart wants what it wants, and I was in his thrall. Like anyone else in love, I was willing to settle for the conditions that had been imposed upon it. Eddie might not have wanted to let the world know I was his lover, but I did—and the first step toward that was introducing him to my family.

While I was in LA for an extended period in 1992 during pilot season, still chasing after that same bluebird of happiness, I sent Eddie a ticket so we could spend time together on the West Coast. I missed him, but I also wanted Ron and his wife, Maddie, to meet him.

My brother and Maddie had built a wonderful life for themselves in California. Ronnie, now Ron, a business genius, provided an Ozzie and Harriet–style existence for their two boys, Randy and Todd. They went to private schools and played tennis every day on their private court before heading off to UCLA. And still they were wonderful kids. Maddie was the most consistent and loving mother and person I ever encountered. When Jo and I were splitting up, and I no longer had a place in LA, I stayed with them, and Maddie accompanied me way downtown to court every day for the divorce proceedings. She made me laugh about Jo’s über-fierce lawyer, who acted in court like she wanted me dead. A first-rate cook and true balabusta, Maddie made me all of my favorite comfort foods.

It was a tribute to my nurturing sister-in-law and my brother that I told them about Eddie. “I think I’m ready to commit, whatever that entails,” I shared with Maddie. This was a time when things were beginning to change. Forty years earlier, I would have risked arrest with such an admission. Marc Blitzstein, who wrote
The Threepenny Opera
, was murdered in 1964 in the West Indies for being gay. America was slowly starting to come out of a period when being gay was considered a death sentence. Revealing to a family member that I was in love with a man was nothing short of a miracle. My brother and his wife, always knowing who I was and very much wanting to meet Eddie, invited us out to Malibu for brunch.