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  • • •

  On December 26, 1963—four months after John Shubert’s bigamy case was settled out of court—J. J. Shubert, age eighty-six, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in his penthouse. Around three hundred people attended the old tyrant’s funeral at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue, including producer Max Gordon and actress Jane Manners. Nobody spoke but the rabbi, who hadn’t even known J. J., and his eulogy was enigmatic. “He was a warm and princely generous man, but he was as reticent in his public benefactions as he was in his private life.”8

  J. J.’s death profoundly altered the Shubert empire. Up until then, it had been a family business. But in his will, J. J. left most of his money—and all of his theaters—to a little-known charitable organization called the Sam S. Shubert Foundation. J. J. and Lee had set up the foundation in 1945 in honor of their brother. Its mission, broadly defined, was to give away money to scientific, literary, and educational causes. Its other mission was to squirrel away as much money as possible from the United States government. There was no law (as there is now) requiring foundations to give away at least 5 percent of their assets annually. “It was a wonderful way of putting money into limbo,” said Lee Seidler, an accountant who joined the board of the Shubert Foundation in the 1990s.9

  And now the foundation controlled the theaters, which meant it controlled the Shubert empire. No one could ever own the theaters again. There would never be any equity in the Shubert Organization. From now on, anybody who ran the Shubert Organization would be an employee of the foundation and its board of directors. But a seat on that board would be a very nice plum indeed. And one day, Irving Goldman—“He had the charm of a guy who sells you used Chevrolet upholstery!”—would become the head of the Shubert Foundation.

  • • •

  For now, though, Larry Shubert presided. Though he knew he would never own the company, he strutted around as if he did. He surrounded himself with drinking buddies who encouraged him to behave as if the empire belonged to him. One of his drinking buddies was Irving “Hickey” Katz, who owned a ticket agency called Hickey’s. Hickey was available anytime, day or night, to meet Lawrence for a drink. Another crony was Walter Kaiser, an insurance broker who had an office in the Sardi Building. He’d had J. J.’s ear and John’s—and now he had Larry’s. His currency was gossip, the coin of the Broadway realm. “He was really good,” said Phil Smith. “He heard everything; he carried tales to Larry. He was known as the ‘Tale Carrier.’ ” Bernard Friedman, the comptroller at Shubert, also propped Larry up at the bar and began to feed him stories about how Schoenfeld and Jacobs were plotting against him.

  A classier crony was Howard Teichmann—“Tyke,” as everyone called him. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, he worked under Orson Welles at the legendary Mercury Theatre in the 1930s. He’d written plays—his most famous, The Solid Gold Cadillac, was a collaboration with George S. Kaufman—and would go on to write popular biographies of Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. A charming and gifted storyteller, he came into the Shubert orbit in 1962 with a proposal to write a book about the company. John Shubert liked him and put him in charge of selecting plays. Under Larry, he became an unofficial PR man, writing Larry’s speeches and the occasional article that would appear under Larry’s byline in Variety or the New York Times. Larry also put him in charge of dispensing grants from the foundation to up-and-coming playwrights. But his job description was vague, at best. “Nobody really knew what Teichmann did,” said Jerry Leichtling, who worked as Schoenfeld’s office boy in the late sixties. “He read plays, but it was a very genteel, nonfocused operation. There was no sense of going out and searching for and finding new shows.” Tyke was not a championship drinker like Larry or Hickey. After three drinks, he’d be smashed, Smith recalled. But he was available to hang out at the bar, and he entertained Larry with old showbiz stories.

  The one sycophant who could match Larry drink for drink was his cousin Norman Light. He booked the theaters—and what a booker he was! He never pursued a show, wooed a producer, courted a playwright. He didn’t much care for theater people. His attitude toward producers—his clients, in effect—was, “We’ll get them before they get us.” He read stop clauses to find out what shows he could evict from Shubert theaters. “There was an attitude, fostered by Lawrence and Norman, that it was us against them—Shubert against the producers,” said Phil Smith. On the hour every hour, no matter what he was doing, Light would say, “I’ll be right back,” then head over to the Piccadilly Bar and knock back a drink. He didn’t even have to order one. As soon as the bartenders saw him come through the door, they’d pour him a glass and leave it on the bar.

  Larry Shubert and his cronies worked (when they worked) out of the Sardi Building on West Forty-Fourth Street. Across the street in Lee’s old apartment were Schoenfeld and Jacobs, “the lawyers,” as Larry’s gang called them. Neither was a drinker; both hard workers. Since Larry didn’t come to work until late in the day, Schoenfeld and Jacobs increasingly handled most of the company’s affairs. They got to know the producers because they drew up the contracts, though Larry always insisted on initialling the paperwork. They also began to handle contract negotiations with the unions—stagehands, musicians, actors. Both were adept negotiators, something which was not lost on union officials. The most powerful union was Local One, which represented stagehands. It was run by tough, street-smart men with no education—“dees, dems, and dose guys,” said Robert McDonald, a young stagehand in the early sixties who would eventually become its president. Their leader was Solly Pernick. Since Local One also represented television workers, Pernick negotiated with William S. Paley, who built CBS. Pernick would walk into Paley’s elegant offices at “Black Rock” (CBS’s headquarters), take a drag on his cigar, and then spit on Paley’s plush carpet. “These guys came from the streets,” said McDonald. “And they never let you forget it.”

  Before Schoenfeld and Jacobs took over negotiations, the stagehands cut deals with independent producers in a catch-as-catch-can fashion. “There was no leadership on their side,” McDonald said, “which was advantageous to us. The Shuberts were powerful, but they were content to be landlords.” Schoenfeld and Jacobs turned out to be far more sophisticated negotiators—tough but fair, was their reputation—than most of the producers. As the two lawyers became more and more influential, the old guard at the stagehand union realized they needed “some college boys” on their side. “That’s why they started grooming guys like me,” said McDonald, who, rare for a stagehand, had a college degree. McDonald got to know Bernie Jacobs in the mid-sixties over a contract negotiation. What solidified their relationship was a blowup McDonald had one day with Larry Shubert. Larry didn’t respect the young union leader and told him he would only deal with “some of my friends” at Local One. McDonald held his ground. If Larry Shubert negotiated behind his back, he would examine every contract for every show in a Shubert theater and enforce every detail, no matter how petty or insignficiant. “And if you have a problem,” McDonald told Larry, “call your ‘friends’ at my union and see if they can bail you out.”

  Jacobs and Phil Smith, who were in the room, enjoyed watching McDonald give Larry Shubert a dressing down. Shortly after the confrontation, McDonald began dealing only with them.

  • • •

  As Schoenfeld and Jacobs began shouldering more and more of the work at the Shubert Organization they acquired a few allies of their own, Shubert employees who realized the company was not functioning well under Larry and his drinking buddies. Phil Smith became their most important supporter. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Smith was the eldest son of Irish immigrants. His father worked as a mechanic for the Brooklyn Union Gas Company; his mother raised him and his three brothers. His career in the theater began in 1949, when he was seventeen, in the balcony of the RKO Orpheum Theatre in Brooklyn. Smith and a friend had gone to see a movie. Back then, before the movie started, there was a live act, usually some holdover from vaudevill
e telling old jokes or singing old songs. On this particular afternoon, there were some “vulgar characters” in the balcony, Smith recalled, and they began throwing pennies at the performer. An usher appeared and told them to knock it off. One of them lunged at the usher, and a fight broke out. The usher was knocked out. Smith turned to his friend and said, “You know, I’m going to see if I can get a job here for a couple of weeks. It looks like fun.” He went downstairs and knocked on the manager’s office.

  “Mr. Feldman?” he said.

  “What do you want, kid?” Feldman replied.

  “Do you have any jobs open here for ushers.”

  “Where do you go to school?” Feldman asked.

  “Bishop Loughlin High School, down the street.”

  “OK, a job has opened up,” he said. Feldman had heard one of his ushers had been decked. “When can you start?”

  “I can start tomorrow,” the teenager said.

  “And that’s exactly what happened,” Smith recalled years later. “I put the uniform on after school the next day and went to work.”

  Within a few months, Smith became the head usher, overseeing a staff of twenty-eight. “I took my job seriously,” he said. “I made the ushers adhere to rules and regulations that the company wanted enforced.” He was promoted to assistant manager of the theater and soon caught the attention of higher-ups at RKO, which owned and operated over a hundred movie palaces in New York City. They gave him a sensitive assignment. The men’s room of the RKO theater on Third Avenue and Fifty-Eighth Street had become a gay cruising spot, especially at lunch. “The company needed someone to handle things with sensitivity and discretion,” Smith said. “You didn’t want it to become an issue.” Smith had an idea. If a man was caught with his pants down (so to speak), he was brought to the manager’s office, where Smith was waiting. Smith would tell the gentleman, politely but firmly, that RKO would not tolerate such behavior in its theater. If the gentleman appeared at the theater again, RKO would have no choice but to notify the police. “We then asked for some identification,” Smith said. “It was enough to scare them away. Most of them were family men—they didn’t want any trouble. And they never came back.”

  Smith would eventually be rewarded with a plum job—assistant manager of RKO’s flagship house, the legendary Palace Theatre on Forty-Seventh Street and Broadway. Here, Smith got to know some of the great stage performers—Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, and, his favorite, Judy Garland, whose nineteen-week run at the Palace in 1951–52 was, according to UPI critic Jack Garver, “one of the greatest personal triumphs in show business history.”

  “Judy was a sweetheart,” Smith recalled. “She was twenty-eight years old, and wonderful. But she had her problems, and when she missed a performance you had to intervene. You had to talk to her, get her to come to the theater.” Smith learned how to attend to a star’s needs. One Sunday night, Garland called him into her dressing room. “Phil,” she said, “I just realized that I only have a few bottles of Canadian Club left. And if I’m going to have guests come back here and visit me after the show, what am I going to serve?”

  “Judy, I’ll get you some,” Smith said. “We’ll make sure your guests have something to drink.” Since it was a Sunday night, all the liquor stores were closed. But there was a bar across the street from the theater that was open. Smith went in and introduced himself to the bartender. “We need some whiskey, and it’s Sunday, so we can’t buy it. But if you loan some to me, I’ll replace it tomorrow.” The bartender obliged, and Smith went back to Garland’s dressing room armed with several bottles of Canadian Club. “Oh thank you, Phil,” she said, and then lined the bottles up along her windowsill and brought down the venetian blind to hide them.

  Smith worked at the Palace for a couple of years and, to earn more money, took jobs as an admissions manager at race tracks in Yonkers and Long Island. After the racing season, he had four weeks off and decided he might pick up some more money as a stagehand. At a retirement party for an old box office man at Gallagher’s Steakhouse, Smith ran into a friend, Abe Baranoff, who was a box office treasurer. He told Baranoff his plan. Baranoff said, “Phil, you’re crazy. You’re a good box office man. Why do you want to work as a stagehand? Let me introduce you to Larry Shubert. He’s over there at the bar. He’ll give you a job.”

  The next day Smith, twenty-six, was in the box office of the Imperial Theatre selling tickets to Frank Loesser’s hit musical The Most Happy Fella. With his sharp mind for figures and his affability, he was soon moved to the company’s flagship theater, the Sam S. Shubert. And one Saturday afternoon in 1963 an incident occurred that brought him to the attention of Bernie Jacobs. Stop the World—I Want to Get Off!, written by and starring Anthony Newley, was at the Shubert. David Merrick was the producer. The show had started off strong but was beginning to weaken at the box office, coming close to its stop clause of $28,000. That afternoon, a little man showed up at the box office and bought fifty tickets. Smith was suspicious. “Nobody bought fifty tickets, especially in those days.” He waited a minute or so and then followed the little man down the street. The man darted into a small door next to the St. James Theatre. Smith knew what was up. Merrick’s office was above the St. James. The little man had been dispatched by Merrick—or, more likely, by Merrick’s general manager, Jack Schlissel—to buy enough tickets to keep Stop the World above its stop clause. Smith called Schlissel and confronted him.

  “Philip, are you crazy? I’d never do that,” Schlissel said.

  “Jack, I followed your man back to your office. I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve here, but it’s not right.”

  Schlissel hung up the phone. Smith tried to reach a Shubert executive, but he wasn’t home. Then he remembered the lawyers—Jerry Schoenfeld and Bernie Jacobs. He rang up Jacobs at his house in Roslyn, Long Island, and told him what had happened. “Very good, Phil,” Jacobs said. “We’ll meet with Merrick on Monday, and I would like you to be there.”

  On Monday, Jacobs confronted Merrick with Smith’s story. “I’m appalled,” Merrick said. “I’m appalled at Jack. I’m appalled at my friend Jack!”

  It was classic Merrick. When he left, Jacobs and Smith had a good laugh. They became friends. Both had a head for numbers—Jacobs would say Smith was the only man who could add up the figures faster than he could—and they both had a sense of honesty and fairness in a business that did not lack for shady characters. They would deal with Merrick many times in the years to come, but it wasn’t always such fun. “David Merrick is the only person in this business who gives me a stomach ache,” Jacobs would say.

  * * *

  I. Decades later, Ephron, now a celebrated screenwriter, became friendly with Jerry and Pat Schoenfeld. “Jerry told me nobody really understood how important that case was,” she said at a luncheon in 2012 at the Four Seasons Restaurant for the creators of The Book of Mormon. “He said if it hadn’t gone their way, the company would have been broken up.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Changing of the Guard

  Camelot, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s melodious tour through King Arthur’s Court, is generally thought to be the last show of the golden age of musical theater. That period began in 1943 with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!—an intoxicating blend of musical comedy, romance, and darker themes about American life. Rodgers and Hammerstein were the pioneers of the era, creating such landmarks as Carousel, about a carnival barker in Maine; South Pacific, which dealt forthrightly with racism; and The King and I, an opulent depiction of the differences between the East and the West.

  During the golden age all the elements of the musical—score, book, dance, design—served character and narrative. In On the Town, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jerome Robbins created a vivid snapshot of New York during World War II as seen by three navy men on twenty-four-hour shore leave. Though the show was played mainly for laughs, it featured Robbins’s breathtaking Fancy Free (now a staple of the ballet repertoire)
and the poignant song “Some Other Time,” sung by young men who may not survive their next tour of duty.

  A year after the war ended, Irving Berlin, who mastered songwriting during the revue craze of the early twentieth century, wrote a beautifully integrated musical comedy—Annie Get Your Gun—for Ethel Merman. Cole Porter, also schooled in revues, came up with Kiss Me, Kate, the first show he ever wrote in which his score was anchored to plot and character. And Frank Loesser fashioned Damon Runyan’s short stories about gangsters and molls into that immortal evocation of Times Square, Guys and Dolls. The golden age reached its zenith (at least for me) in Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, the perfect musical romance. Not a song, a scene, or a dance was out of step with the story and characters.

  By the early sixties, the writers who had made their mark in the golden age were winding down. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote their last show, The Sound of Music, in 1959. A few months after it opened, they met for lunch at the Plaza Hotel and Hammerstein, who had been ill for nearly a year, told Rodgers he had cancer. “I’m just going down to Doylestown [where he had an estate], and stay on the farm until I die,” he said.1 He went and died there, on August 23, 1960. Rodgers tried his hand at lyrics, writing some lovely ones for No Strings in 1962. And he experimented with new collaborators—Stephen Sondheim (Do I Hear a Waltz?), Martin Charnin (Two By Two), and Sheldon Harnick (Rex). But none of those shows ever matched the power and beauty of his collaborations with Hammerstein.

  At age seventy-four, Irving Berlin wrote the score to Mr. President, a merry romp with the First Family in the White House. It has its retro charms today—“The Secret Service makes me nervous . . .”!—but in 1962, coming on the heels of Elvis Presley, it sounded hopelessly square. The show was a flop, and Berlin retired from show business. The man who had changed American popular music with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911 could make no sense of rock ’n’ roll. “You don’t have to stop yourself [from writing songs],” he said shortly before Mr. President closed. “The people who have to listen to your songs tell you to stop.”2