Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb (2 page)

About the 1998 debut of NBC’s
Encore! Encore!
starring Nathan Lane, the
New York Observer
wrote: “It’s the
Moose Murders
of sitcoms—it won’t be here past Halloween, but the recollection of its awfulness will give you untold delight for years to come.”

In 2001, the
New York Times
readied audiences for an American Ballet Theater premiere by announcing, “The suspense is about to end. Will (David) Parsons’s new Pied Piper be ballet’s answer to the wildly successful
Producers
or to the famously ill-fated
Moose Murders
?”

Not even the culinary world has been safe, as evidenced by Douglas Hunt’s 1998 restaurant review in the
New York Law Journal
: “Mr. (Dean) Willis was the victim of one of the most capricious shut-downs in recent New York restaurant history earlier this year when the owners of the Garrick in the theater district pulled the plug on him nearly as fast as you can say mulligatawny. His run was slightly longer than
Moose Murders
, but not by much.”

So what’s in a name? Would things have gone differently if I’d called my play
Epic Proportions
or
Dance of the Vampires
? Would I be spared the constant barrage of snide references if I’d hit and run with some bland title like
Total Abandon
or
Rose’s Dilemma
?

That rationale may have worked for the first few years of my denial, but having now forged well ahead into a new millennium, it’s time to face up to the fact that there was a lot more than just a “catchy” title to set this bad boy apart from other legendary flops. Frank Rich caught on before anybody:

“From now on,” he wrote in his now famous review of the show, “there will always be two groups of theater-goers in this world: those who have seen
Moose Murders
, and those who have not. Those of us who have witnessed the play that opened last night will undoubtedly hold periodic reunions, in the noble tradition of survivors of the
Titanic
. Tears and booze will flow in equal measure, and there will be a prize awarded to the bearer of the most outstanding antlers.”

For weeks I regularly received notification from friends and family members of just about any reference the press made to my Broadway bomb. A lot of folks presumably felt strongly that I would never tire of seeing the name of my play in print, no matter what the context. Sometimes personal notes would be scribbled in the margins of the clippings they sent me, ranging from “damn the critics!” (an oath I found strangely unsatisfying) to “well, you never wanted to be a writer anyway” (so thoroughly insensitive it cheered me up a little). There were also those (a few remaining even today) who continued to give me the benefit of the considerable doubt, by holding on to the notion that I’d one day want to chronicle all this information for the official Moose Memoir.

You know, after I’d written a couple of critical and box-office hits, and could safely relegate
Moose Murders
to an anecdotal sidebar in a breezy piece for
Vanity Fair
.

While witnessing the legend of
Moose Murders
becoming an indelible part of Broadway lore, every so often I’ve been inspired to capitalize on its dubious notoriety. I’ve considered fictionalizing my experiences in another play or maybe even a novel—a scathing
roman à clef
filled with loosely disguised real-life luminaries, each one responsible in his or her own way for delivering the mortal blow to an already dying Broadway season. The major problem with this approach was that—aside from our original above-the-title star Eve Arden—there was nary a luminary to be found twinkling anywhere in the
Moose Murders
firmament. Most of us were rank amateurs, and what, I asked myself, would be the point of disguising any of us—loosely or otherwise—in a great, big, Broadway tell-all?

It just wasn’t
Valley of the Dolls
material, and I had to live with that.

Another option—the one you’re reading now—was to tell the real story to the best (or worst) of my memory. This was daunting at first because I honestly didn’t want to offend or embarrass one living soul connected with the production—regardless of the degree of culpability I personally assigned to any of them individually. More to the point, no matter how disarmingly self-effacing I may have appeared immediately after the show’s closing, I sure as hell wasn’t ready to jump on the bandwagon by truly blaming
myself
for any of this mess.

As much as I’d like to elevate myself by saying so, back then, I was definitely
not
my own worst critic. Believe me, that distinction has taken time, practice, and unwavering commitment.

Happily, though, one of the perks of prolonged public ignominy has been learning to take myself—and everybody else—a lot less seriously. And, after twenty-six years, I think it’s safe to assume that all the players in the
Moose Murders
saga have managed to move on, one way (Holland Taylor: Emmy Award for
The Practice
, 1999) or another (Eve Arden: R.I.P., 1990).

With all my favorite excuses dashed against the rocks, and with the serendipitous and rather mysterious recent reappearance of my journals from this period of my life, I’m ready now to name names and risk offending any of the poor souls who climbed aboard my vanity bandwagon as it sped toward the inevitable brick wall. I’m still concerned about tearing open old wounds, but have resigned myself to the fact there will always be at least one person in every room I enter who wants to know all the bloody details of my public execution, and probably even more who want to know just exactly how a play like
Moose Murders
winds up on Broadway in the first place.

So, slip on your commemorative antlers and pour yourselves a nice frothy glass of schadenfreude. Here’s the story I’m sticking you with, boys and girls, straight from the Moose’s mouth.

Oh, and belated thanks to you, Principal Gelder, wherever you are. I hope the journey was pleasant, whichever train ride you ended up taking.

The three planned events of my first ever trip to Hollywood in December 1982 were visits to Disneyland, Universal Studios, and to the home of a movie star. For various reasons, all three were busts—but at least Eve Arden didn’t charge admission.

John Roach, the producer/director of
Moose Murders
, had flown out to meet Eve a couple weeks before. He had been prepared to tackle certain “issues” the newly signed star had indicated she had about the script and the production that was slated to go into rehearsals in January for an early February opening (two days after my thirty-second birthday). Much to his relief, Eve never got around to talking shop, opting instead to show John and his wife Lillie Robertson slides of a recent trip she’d made to China. John was worried that I, as the playwright, wouldn’t get off so easily, but frankly, I was looking forward to kicking back with the star of
Mildred Pierce
, and was more than ready to answer any question she might throw at me. I’d dealt with actors curious about the “history” or “motivation” of their characters many times before, and knew if I got backed into a corner I could always make up stuff on the spot. That’s one of the advantages of being the “writer.”

Besides, I was accompanied by my live-in accomplice Dennis Florzak, who was then also acting as my agent. I could always defer to him, especially if any of the questions required any left brain activity.

I called the Arden home from a payphone somewhere in Beverly Hills. Whoever answered sounded like Tweety Bird’s “Granny” from the old
Looney Tunes
, and I figured this must be Eve’s housekeeper or some other member of her staff assigned to answering phone calls. I introduced myself and asked if I might please speak with Miss Arden. In a split second, “Granny” disappeared, and the unmistakable resonance and staccato delivery of Connie Brooks declared “This
is
Eve Arden.”

This was the first time I witnessed for myself Eve’s uncanny talent as a quick-change vocal artist. I’d learn soon enough that the physical transformation into Eve Arden took a lot longer, requiring the services of manicurists, hair, wig, and turban stylists, and wardrobe consultants, among others. But when she needed to, Eve could modulate the timbre of her voice at the speed of a wisecrack—and drop about twenty years in the process.

We set up an appointment for later that afternoon. “I have some ideas,” she said. “But, of course, every actress has ideas.”

“I can’t wait to hear ‘em!” I chirped, and I really wasn’t lying.

A few hours later, Dennis and I parked our rented Lincoln on a narrow street lined with terra cotta-shingled homes, and carefully began to make our way down a hill thick with exotic plants and shrubbery. Just before we reached the front door, we were intercepted by a short middle-aged man with slicked-back hair who introduced himself as Glenn, “Miss Arden’s manager-of-many-years.” We got the distinct impression this little guy had been hiding in wait behind a rubber tree plant for hours.

Glenn led us straight into the foyer of Eve’s bungalow, where we were greeted by a dapper elderly man with a paisley ascot neatly tucked inside the collar of his short-sleeved shirt. I’d never met anybody who actually wore an ascot before. He reminded me of Vincent Price in one of those creepy and lush Roger Corman films of the 60s like
Masque of the Red Death
, and I remember thinking that he and the Peter Lorre look-alike Glenn were straight out of the pages of the old
Famous Monsters of Filmland
fan magazines. “Vincent” revealed himself to be Eve’s husband, the actor Brooks West (was getting to rename your husband after the character you played on TV one of Hollywood’s perks?), who invited us to follow him into the parlor where his wife would be joining us shortly.

The four of us sat down in a room filled with Chinese landscape paintings and dragon-handled vases and lamps, and chatted about
Anatomy of a Murder
, the film in which Brooks and Eve had appeared together in 1959. Suddenly, Glenn shot up off the couch and scurried over to the open French doors leading onto the terrace. A second later Eve made her entrance, her arms laden with snapdragons presumably freshly pulled from her garden. She was dressed as an equestrian, with a white hunt blouse, khaki jodhpurs, and Isotoner driving gloves.

Yoicks!

And talk about a towering presence. I’m six-foot-four myself, so height rarely impresses me. Maybe it was the light, or the fact that Glenn barely came up to her shoulders, but I thought Eve Arden was the tallest woman I’d ever seen in my life.

It looked like the casting people back in New York hadn’t misled us when they originally pitched Eve for the lead role in
Moose Murders
by assuring us that she was still the “Our Miss Brooks” we all remembered from the popular sitcom of the 50s. She didn’t look anywhere near her real age of seventy-four—which was a relief, since she was to play (among other things) the mother of a twelve-year-old girl and the secret lover of her thirty-something son-in-law.

After a brief tour of the garden, we all returned to the parlor. Eve directed Dennis and me toward a couch, and seated herself in the middle of a larger couch on the opposite side of the room. Brooks and Glenn then sat down in tandem, on either side of Eve.

We sat awkwardly smiling at one another until Eve finally broke the silence.

“You know,” she said, “I wasn’t sure this was right for me. But Brooks and Glenn tell me it’s a very funny play and that I’ll have fun.”

“You think it’s funny,
too
,” said Brooks as he gently elbowed Eve in the ribs.

“Why, yes!” said Eve, pretending to scowl at her husband, and then setting us all at ease with a hearty three-note laugh.

“Ha, ha, ha!”

She held a beat and then cautioned: “but as I mentioned on the phone, we do have a few…ideas.”

Taking his cue, Brooks grabbed a pair of reading glasses from an end table and handed them over to his wife. At the same time, a woman we hadn’t met entered from the back of the house wheeling a tea wagon which she parked directly in front of Eve. This unidentified woman then immediately left the way she’d come, and we never saw her again.