Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb (15 page)

My relationship with the star took another change for the worse that Thursday afternoon. We were purposefully postponing work on what we referred to as Eve’s “transitional scene” near the end of the play—what I suppose you might call the
denouement
, if you really want to attribute such a disciplined structural device to this play. Here’s where Hedda reveals both her romantic interest in her son-in-law Nelson as well as her role as the true mastermind behind all the “moose” murders. It was verbally and physically demanding, and the one scene Eve had never really come to terms with, even after my hefty rewrites. John, understandably, had been avoiding it like the plague.

Friday morning we would finally tackle this killer scene, and John was prepared to devote the entire day to it if he had to. After the morning rehearsal on Thursday, Eve pulled me aside.

“What are your plans for lunch, son?” she asked.

I was thrilled! And Scott wasn’t even around, so it looked as if I’d be enjoying Miss Arden’s company all to myself.

“We need to go over that . . .
scene
.” she continued, making the word “scene” sound like something she needed to scrape off her shoe.

“I’m free,” I said. “You want to go to Charleys or Barrymore’s?”

“I think we’d get a lot more done if we stayed right here,” she said. “If you’re a good boy, it shouldn’t take too long, and you’ll still have time to grab a bite somewhere.”

The emphasis on
you’ll
wasn’t lost on me. Scott was probably already at Barrymore’s, reserving their usual table for two.

So Eve and I sat down with our scripts and went over that
scene
line by line. This time she didn’t bother suggesting changes. She’d already cut, edited, and rewritten when necessary all on her own. She seemed genuinely shocked whenever I attempted to butt in, as though after the previous discussion with John, and my subsequent revisions, my unconditional acquiescence was now contractually understood.

My nose was so out of joint after this session I was probably permanently disfigured. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t come up with good ideas, either. She
had
, and I knew it. By now she’d become very caught up in the show, and had a good handle on her character and how best to sell this final, crucial scene to the audience. The trouble was she wanted to sell it as Eve Arden,
not
Hedda Holloway—which would have been fine for something like
Hellzapoppin
’ or
Sugar Babies
, I suppose. In fact, we might all have been better off if we’d simply gone ahead and jobbed in Mickey Rooney to play Nelson and added some brassy burlesque numbers—but this vision totally escaped me then. At that moment I felt patronized, pulverized, and pissed—very, very pissed.

And it showed. I did some serious pouting. But that was the extent of my aggression; I maturely accepted all her changes by muttering something like “fine, do whatever the hell you want,” trudged out of the Minskoff like Eeyore, and decided to take the rest of the day off. Obviously I wasn’t needed here.

“At least you
can
leave,” said Dennis at home later that evening after I attempted to engage him in a pity party. “I have no lines, but I have to sit there like a fool the whole day, anyway. I’m nothing more than a living prop. I don’t even have to learn blocking; wherever I’m going, somebody wheels me there. I’m bored out of my fucking mind!”

Things were tough all over, I guess.

I toyed with the idea of staying home the next morning, too, but my curiosity got the better of me. Besides, when everything fell apart (as it was
bound
to, I just knew), I’d need to be on hand with my needle and thread to stitch the Moose back together again.

No such luck. Not only were Nick and Eve both at the top of their games, but each and every one of Eve’s edits worked–sometimes brilliantly. She even threw in some business right there on the spot–including a nice little red herring of a moment that cleverly suggested to the audience that Sidney might still have some life in him, and just might be capable of foiling Hedda’s plans yet. She was so excited about this contribution that she insisted John call in all the other actors to watch it played out. He did, and they loved it. His “shared event” directorial concept was finally paying off.

Eve was so damn cute during all of this that, try as I might, I just couldn’t keep that chip on my shoulder. She was finally having fun—just as Brooks and Glenn had promised she would, so many weeks ago. And there was no question that she had now succeeded in making a bid to own the play herself.

I decided to be magnanimous and share it with her.

We broke for lunch in great moods, all of us. This would have been the perfect moment to make amends with Eve, but, unfortunately, Dennis and I had already promised this time to Don, who wanted to discuss the role of Howie “in depth.”

We ended up at Charleys, across the station from Eve and Scott. Don began by telling us how all his friends had read the script and agreed unanimously that he was Howie. Most of the conversation, however, dealt with Don Potter himself: his house and lover in Los Angeles, his vaudeville act, his age (just turned fifty), the delight his parents had experienced by his landing this job, his eternal optimism. “I know it’s a cliché,” he said, “but there really are
no
people like show people.”

Shortly after making this pronouncement, he nearly fell off his chair greeting a conductor friend who was passing by our table. I noticed that this small commotion had caught Eve’s attention, and I used the opportunity to make some sort of contact with her. I waved, idiotically. She waved back, and then blew me a kiss. Aha! We were friends!

Or at least civil acquaintances.

Things were good. There was a full runthrough after lunch, and, with very few exceptions, everything continued to flow smoothly. Afterwards John congratulated the entire cast for a “remarkable” first week, encouraged them all to get some rest over the weekend, and reminded them that they were all to be “off book” for Monday morning’s rehearsal of Act One.

“Off book.”

He
had
to press our luck.

Let’s just start by admitting that being “off book” as early as possible is of critical importance to the success of a farce. You’ve got doors to slam, costumes to change, weapons to shoot, hurl, or discharge, and people to chase from one end of the stage to the other. The last impediment you need is the script in your hand. And the dialogue—whatever else you may say about it—had better come when and where it’s supposed to. One flub, one missed cue, and you set off a domino effect of collateral damage that’s impossible to recover from. You just can’t afford to tap dance your way through a farce.

Unless, of course, you’re Mara Hobel.

Ironically enough, Mara was the only cast member completely off book from day one. The rest of the group took that first week to learn their lines while simultaneously learning their blocking. The play had become cumbersome with blocking at this point, including an inordinate number of added interjections and exclamations (“Look out!,” Over there!” “Ow!” “Duck!”)—all of which had to be coordinated and executed with painful precision and lightning speed. If you give the audience a moment to think–even in a
good
farce–it’s death, pure and simple, cut and dry, over and out.

There are so many opportunities to fuck up something like this—even under the best of conditions.

Which is exactly why I was more than willing to give Eve the benefit of the doubt as she struggled—sometimes heroically—to keep up with the others throughout that second week. For the first few days, she refused to rehearse without her script in her hands, or in one hand, or tucked securely under her arm. She’d obviously at least attempted memorization, and would, from time to time, keep her eyes off the page and focused on whichever character or characters she was speaking to.

But, more often than not, if she wasn’t reading from the script, the lines just wouldn’t come. At first this was rather endearing; she had a particularly comical sound she’d make on these occasions that cracked us up–the first few times. It was a deep, long bellow similar to that made by a foghorn.

“Unnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

She’d do this while staring straight ahead. Then she’d pause, turn her head in another direction, and bellow again.

“Unnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“She’s signaling the other ships,” Ricka whispered to me one time. “Storm’s ahead.”

We kept waiting for her eyes to light up and cast oscillating beams across the room.

By the end of the week, John insisted (nicely) that she try leaving the script behind. Perhaps, like Dumbo the Flying Elephant, she’d realize she could stay aloft without clinging to this magic feather with her Isotonered trunk.

What we got was Operation Dumbo
Drop
.

The foghorn was on loud and steady as ever, and when she wasn’t bellowing, the strangest words were coming out of her mouth. Stranger even than the words I’d written for her, which, though many would argue might have been all for the better, wasn’t providing much help for her fellow cast members, listening carefully for their cues. Despite Eve’s frequent “warnings,” the other ships were crashing and splintering against the shoals, one by one.

Nearly in tears, Eve came over to me afterwards. She patted my shoulder and said, “I apologize, son. I’ve just never had this problem. I’m beginning to think I may just have to learn these lines by
rote
!”

It was a heartbreaking moment, and I felt miserably inept and phony as hell as I tried to comfort her by saying things like “it’s no big deal,” and “it’ll all work out.” What I was thinking was the exact opposite: This was a
very
big deal, and things were definitely not working out.

“By
rote
?” I thought. “How else did she expect to learn her lines? By telepathy? By deep, fervent hope? By
osmosis
?”

In fact, yes—soaking up lines had been quite easy for Eve in her younger days, on the few occasions when she hadn’t had the luxury of cue cards to bail her out. As it was, she was playing
Moose Murders
as if it were a
Bob Hope Christmas Special
, where all that’s required is to stand still and read quips off a teleprompter. She was horribly distressed and becoming more so by the minute. As a result, John, Ricka, and Lillie all began to talk about extending previews and even taking such drastic measures as hiring an on-stage prompter or sewing a radio feed into each of Eve’s turbans.

One of the worst moments came when somebody circulated an Associated Press photo taken at the
Mildred Pierce
press luncheon, where Eve was looking straight at the camera while proudly pointing her thumb at a portrait of Joan Crawford behind her. The caption underneath this piece of company contraband read:

“Line?”

Brooks swore to me that he had been faithfully running lines with Eve every night at the Wyndham, but I had trouble buying that story. Brooks was as bored as Dennis. Eve herself had often bemoaned the fact that her husband was all too eager to “play” after feverishly inventing things to keep himself busy all day during rehearsals. “So we’ll go out,” she’d say, “have a bite, and . . . you know.” Here she’d pantomime knocking down a few. “After that,” she’d say, “it’s toddle on home and . . . .” Here she’d drop her head and make snoring sounds.

Dennis itched to take a crack at Eve’s problem himself. He was convinced we were all just a pack of suck-ups, and that what Eve needed was a little old-fashioned discipline. “Better yet,” he said, “we should have Mara’s mother take over. Have Eve join Mara’s homeschool sessions. And keep her there until she’s learned every fucking line. If nobody wants to play ‘Daddy,’ then let’s have ‘Mommy’ handle this!”

One night Dennis returned from rehearsal and confided that although he continually laughed at the bits all the actors threw in regularly from day to day as he sat watching them rehearse, he sometimes wondered about the general effect of the play as a whole. How will all this nonsense play to an outsider?

“You mean an audience,” I said.