"There's Mel, There's Woody, and There's You": My Life in the Slow Lane

THERE’S MEL, THERE’S WOODY, and THERE’S YOU

My

Life

in the

Slow

Lane

Bruce Kimmel

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com\

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2010 Bruce Kimmel. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 04/12/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4520-1118-9 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-1117-2 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-1116-5 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number 2010905104

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Back Cover Photo by Kathy Amerman

Book design by Grant Geissman

CONTENTS

ALSO BY BRUCE KIMMEL

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

PHOTO ALBUM

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

OUTRODUCTION

ALSO BY BRUCE KIMMEL

Benjamin Kritzer

Kritzerland

Kritzer Time

Writer’s Block

Rewind

How to Write a Dirty Book

Murder at Hollywood High

Murder at the Grove

Murder at the Hollywood Historical Society

For Shelley Morrison… who started the ball rolling

Jenny… who made being a daddy such a joy

And for the friends who’ve stood by me,

even in the worst of times.

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence, a time of confidences

Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph

Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you

—Paul Simon

INTRODUCTION

Ever since I can remember, all I ever wanted to be was an actor. At eight years of age I would get up in the morning and pretend I was being filmed by a movie camera, specifically a Paramount movie camera filming me in VistaVision and Technicolor. I made a TV camera out of the cardboard in my father’s laundered shirts. I’d place it on a table and sit in front of it, pretending I was hosting my own TV show. I did Monday night shows for my parents and relatives, sort of my version of The Ed Sullivan Show with me doing all the acts.

But this book is not about my childhood. If you want to read about my childhood, my odd family, and how I discovered that I actually had some talent in several areas, including acting, writing, songwriting, and directing, then I’m happy to refer you to my three coming-of-age novels, Benjamin Kritzer, Kritzerland, and Kritzer Time, all thinly veiled fictions of my childhood growing up in a magical city called Los Angeles. While certain things in those books were, of course, fiction, everything about me (Benjamin Kritzer) is true.

No, this book is about my life as a professional actor, writer, songwriter, and director, up until the time I finally just said no, gave it all up and did a complete life change back in 1993, becoming a record producer and finding the kind of success, at least the kind of success I wanted, that had somehow eluded me during my career.

But as difficult and frustrating as that road sometimes was, in retrospect that career was pretty amazing. I got to do almost everything I ever wanted to do. I worked a lot. I acted. I wrote. I made movies. I wrote songs. I sang. Funnily, the first TV show I ever did was filmed at Paramount with a Paramount camera (but not in VistaVision, sadly), and the first movie I directed and wrote was released by—you guessed it—Paramount. Sometimes childhood dreams and fantasies do come true.

I’ve been blessed to have a long career in one form of show business or another for forty years. I’ve met and worked with some amazing people. I’ve had dreams come true, I’ve had dreams shattered, I’ve had the good, the bad, and the ugly. And, like the Stephen Sondheim song, I’m still here.

The impetus to write this book happened in a very strange way. Some years ago I’d thought about doing a non-fiction book about my record-producing career. I started it, but I was not enjoying writing it, so I turned that book into a mystery novel about a record producer. That was fun. After that brief try at non-fiction, I thought I’d never want to do that again, let alone write a memoir about my past life. But one day, I was doing a seminar at Los Angeles City College for my alumni association. I’d brought in casting director Jeff Greenberg for a discussion and a Q&A. I’d given Jeff his start in my film, The First Nudie Musical, in which he was a dancer—he, like many others in the cast, got his SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card on that film.

At some point we were talking about actors today and casting, and I told him that I didn’t think I’d enjoy being an actor these days, that it seemed so competitive and there were so many hoops to jump through in the audition/reading process to even get a small role on TV, let alone a major guest-starring role.

He said, Oh, it’s basically the same as when we came up as actors, it’s not that different.

I said, Oh, really? Let’s compare how I would get a guest shot back then to how it would be today.

I then proceeded to tell him exactly how I would get a guest shot. My agent would call, tell me I had an appointment for such-and-such show, tell me what the role was, and give me the time and place to show up. I’d show up. I’d get some sides (the scenes I’d be reading), look at them, read through them silently a few times, figure out how I wanted to read them, and then I’d be taken in to read for the producer, the director, and sometimes the writer. Most of the time the room seemed very friendly. Most of the time I felt no pressure whatsoever. I’d read the sides. They’d thank me. I’d leave. At some point, either before or after me, four other actors would go through the same process. And several hours after the appointment my agent or manager would call and tell me if I had the part or not. That was it. It was simple and direct, and sometimes you got the part and sometimes you didn’t.

I then asked Jeff to tell me (and our audience) how that same process would work today. He smiled his mischievous smile, and told us.

Well, first you’d have to be pre-screened by me, you’d have to read for me, and maybe I’d give you an adjustment or two.

Adjustments. It was all part of the new actor babble I couldn’t stand. If I need an adjustment I go to a chiropractor. We weren’t given adjustments we were given direction. Nobody said words like arc or journey; that just wasn’t in the lexicon. We just did our work. But, I sat and listened as Jeff continued.

Then if you get past me, I take you to read for the producer and director or I’ve put you on tape and shown them that first, or they put you on tape at that reading.

Uh huh, I said, which was about all I could muster.

He continued. If it was a smaller role you were up for, then the decision would be made and you’d get the job or not. If it was a bigger role, you might have to read for the network, or the network might have to see your audition tape.

For a guest shot?

Yep.

And how many people would be reading for this guest shot? Oh, ten or fifteen, maybe even more. Yeah, that’s sure the same as when we started out, Jeff, I said, with a hint of sarcasm (well, not a hint).

Guess not, he answered, laughing.

Had it been like it is today, I don’t know that I would have ever gotten a job, not when decisions had to be made by committee and every actor was scrutinized in a way that they never were before.

As I was driving home I began to think about my years as an actor, especially the early years. I never really thought about that time very much, but as I did I began to realize how much fun it was to be a young working actor back then. Maybe it was just the haze of memory, but the more I thought about it, the more I remembered things, and the more I remembered things I thought, yeah, it was fun. It was exciting to go on auditions—if you didn’t get that one, you’d have more auditions the next day and the day after. It was thrilling to hear you’d gotten the job, and, more often than not, it was fun to shoot the show.

And I thought that if I were a young actor starting out today it wouldn’t be much fun at all, not with the way it was done now. Casting directors have unbelievable power now; back then, they were aware of young talent, they took chances, and they booked appointments. You didn’t read for them, you read for the people who were actually going to hire you. It was a different world and a different business and, for my money, a better one.

I got home and thought, maybe I should write about that time. I’d been searching for the idea for what would be my tenth book, and I wanted to do something totally different from anything I’d done. I wanted something that was new territory and that would be fun to write. And it suddenly all just clicked and made sense.

I was lucky to be around during a simpler time. No cell phones, no text messages, no answering machines, no computers, no video. I was young, I was hungry, I wanted the world. Some of it panned out, some of it didn’t, but the road was always interesting-infuriating, maddening, exhilarating, thrilling—all of it, the whole damn thing.

The haze of memory… But the thing of it is, there’s no haze on my memory. I remember all of it as if it were yesterday, crystal clear, shot in VistaVision and Technicolor with a Paramount camera. It was 1968. I’d graduated from the theater department at Los Angeles City College. I was twenty years old. I wanted to be an actor. And this is how it happened.

And… action!

PROLOGUE

In September of 1968, on the hottest day of the year, maybe of the decade (104 degrees to be exact), in a Catholic church in Sylmar, California, I got married. My face looked like a ripe tomato because for the first and only time in my life I’d gone to a barber for a professional shave, and my sensitive skin did not react well to the razor blade or the after-shave he splashed on me. The priest forgot my name. My best man Mike Lembeck and I had trouble keeping a straight face. My mother sat scowling, mortified that I was getting married in a Catholic church and not a synagogue, and the whole thing seemed like an Ionesco one-act. Oh, yeah, and I wasn’t all that crazy about the girl I was marrying.

We’d met at LACC in the theater department. We took an immediate dislike to each other. I found her humorless and she found me obnoxious. But she did introduce me to her best friend, who I dated for a while, a terrific girl named Terrie. And then, for reasons I will never completely understand, suddenly Miss Humorless and Mr. Obnoxious were a couple. I cannot even tell you how it happened, it just did. And then just as suddenly, six months later, we were getting married.

All my friends and family told me not to do it, that I was too young, and it was too soon. The more they told me that, the more obstinate I got because, you know, I was twenty. I should have listened. I didn’t.

And that was the beginning of my marriage. Kathy Geml married Bruce Kimmel, which made her Kathy Geml Kimmel. She was very cute and very short. She liked to say she was five-feet tall. I like to say she was her real height—four-foot eleven. Close, but no cigar.

We moved into an apartment in a sketchy part of North Hollywood. I have no idea how we even found it. The address was 5754 Fair Avenue and it was near Lankershim and Burbank Boulevard. It was a modest one-bedroom apartment in one of those modest 1950s-style buildings that lined the streets of every neighborhood in the Valley. Our modest furniture consisted of a card table, some kind of sofa, a bed and a dresser.

Sometimes friends would come visit, but mostly we sat and watched The Mod Squad, The Name Of The Game or other TV shows we liked, and ate pizza.

There was an alleyway that ran east to west in back of the apartment building, and I’d awaken in the middle of the night convinced I was hearing noises out there and that uncouth interlopers were trying to break into our apartment. I’d occasionally awaken Kathy, but she never heard the noises.

I began to have recurring dreams about the uncouth interlopers trying to break into the apartment, so that even when I wasn’t awake hearing the noises, I was dreaming about hearing the noises and the uncouth interlopers trying to break into the apartment. Sometimes the dreams were so vivid I’d wake up screaming. I’m sure it all had to do with my being very insecure and unsure of everything that was happening—or not happening.

Kathy got a job as a bank teller and I got a job at a record store in Van Nuys called Sight and Sound, which was owned and managed by an ill-tempered, crotchety man with gray Brillo-pad hair. Every day, I’d take a bus over to Victory and Van Nuys. I’d have poached eggs on toast at the coffee shop next door, and then I’d sell records all day. I’d eat lunch at a different coffee shop, and then I’d go home to pizza or meat loaf or McDonald’s. I gained weight for the first time in my life. Since I’d met Kathy I’d put on thirty-five pounds. I was not happy.

I missed my security blanket of the theater department at LACC, I missed the comfort, I missed doing plays and especially musicals. Just prior to leaving the school, I’d adapted some Ring Lardner stories and play parodies into a revue called Shut Up, He Explained. I wrote songs for it and it had gone over very well. And then in the summer I’d done the Anthony Newley role in The Roar Of The Greasepaint, The Smell Of The Crowd, in which Kathy also appeared. And now I was married, working in a record store in Van Nuys, and thirty-five pounds heavier than I’d ever been.

The other interesting thing that happened as soon as I got married was that a whole bunch of young women whom I’d liked but who’d never shown me the least inclination or interest in being romantic when I was available, were suddenly sad that I was married and suddenly interested in being romantic. Go know.

One day I got an answer to a letter I’d sent to Ring Lardner, Jr. I’d somehow gotten his address and written him about Shut Up, He Explained, my revue of his father’s material.

Lardner, Jr. had had a promising career as a screenwriter, but that had been mercilessly cut short when he became a victim of the House Un-American Activities Committee blacklist and a member of the Hollywood Ten. He sent me a very nice response and told me to look him up if I was ever in New York, that he would love to hear the songs I wrote and discuss the revue-I think I’d asked him for proper rights to the material because I was hoping we could do it somewhere at some point.

I think that letter planted the seed. Kathy and I began to discuss the possibility of moving to New York. I wanted to be an actor, and I didn’t think there would be much of a career for me in television or movies (even though I really wanted that) because I most certainly was not a conventional leading man type and I most certainly wasn’t like the young actors we’d see on the television shows we watched.

Of course, I had no idea of the impact that a movie called The Graduate would have and that Dustin Hoffman’s success in that film would open the doors for a whole generation of young actors who were not conventional leading men to suddenly get starring roles in film and TV.

My Aunt Minnie and Uncle Rube lived in Brooklyn, and my mother called them at my behest; they said they could get us a reasonably priced apartment in their building on East 29th Street in Brooklyn, Flatbush to be exact. I’d only been in New York once, and that was only for one day, so I didn’t have a clue as to what Brooklyn or Flatbush meant. It was a studio apartment, and I think the rent was around $90 a month.

At some point in October or early November, we made the decision to move. In retrospect, it was a rather gutsy decision, and I have to say that Kathy was a really good egg about it. I have to imagine it was even more frightening for her than it was for me and it was plenty frightening for me. I began to feel extreme excitement coupled with extreme nervousness and anxiety because I hated any kind of change, but I could not wait to get out of our ugly apartment and I could not wait to quit my job at Sight and Sound Records, which I hated.

And so, in late December of 1968, two-and-a-half weeks after my twenty-first birthday, with hopes high we were on our way to New York.

Between what we’d gotten from our wedding, some money Kathy’s father had given us, and some money my parents had given us, we had two thousand dollars to begin our New York adventure. We arrived on a freezing-cold late afternoon just after Christmas. We were going to spend the night in the city, and then take the subway, whatever that was, to Flatbush the next morning. We stayed in a slightly dingy hotel on 44th Street east of Broadway.

After we unpacked, we walked up to Broadway. It was dark by then, and the lights and the sounds and the crowds in Times Square were amazing. We looked at stores and went into Playland and checked out restaurants. At seven-thirty we walked by the Shubert where Promises, Promises had just opened a few weeks earlier. I’d already heard the cast album and was crazy about it, as I was a huge Bacharach and David fan. Just for fun, we walked up to the box office, but there were no seats to be had, not even standing room. Then we walked a little further west to the St. James, where Hello, Dolly! was playing.

I’d seen the show about five times in LA and absolutely loved it. I wanted to direct like Gower Champion directed. David Merrick, the show’s producer, had found all new life in the show by creating an all-black company, starring Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. Kathy had never seen the show so we found the box office. I went up to the window and put on my best needy expression.

Apparently the expression worked and I was able to get us two excellent orchestra seats-they were really expensive, around ten bucks each, but I thought it would be a grand way to spend our first night in New York. And it was. The theater was completely sold out. Pearl Bailey was fantastic, as was Cab Calloway and the rest of the cast. The show sparkled and gleamed and was even better than when I’d seen it all those times in LA.

After the show, we got something to eat, went back to the hotel, fell into bed and went right to sleep. I was already in love with New York.

We moved into my aunt and uncle’s apartment building at 356 E. 29th Street. Our apartment was 1K.

I hated the subway; it smelled bad, rarely ran on time, and seemed to be filled with people who looked like they might kill you at any moment. But when you were living in Flatbush and had to go to Manhattan then the subway was going to become a major part of your life, there were no two ways around it.

Our stop was the Newkirk station and we discovered right away a great pizza joint (just what I needed) and what my aunt and uncle called a candy store, where I had my first egg cream. I quickly became hooked on them, and stopped there quite often to get my egg cream fix.

I got to know the neighborhood very quickly. We were only a few blocks from Flatbush Avenue, so I found all the wonderful movie theaters there, a good record store, and a couple of terrific used bookstores.

Our apartment was nice; we had a kitchen, a bathroom, an okay-sized sort of living room, and a little L-shaped space where we put our sofa bed, which we’d bought at a decent price. I rented an upright piano so I could still play and write, and we got a hand-me-down TV from Aunt Minnie. Kathy got a bank teller job, and I began trying to figure out how I was going to be an actor in New York.

The first thing I did after we moved into the apartment was go uptown to see Ring Lardner, Jr. I’d called him and told him I’d just moved to New York, and he told me to come over as soon as I was all settled. He lived in one of those wonderful old buildings on the upper west side, just off Central Park West. The doorman directed me to the elevator and up I went. His apartment was just what you’d imagine a writer’s apartment would be. It was huge; there was a grand piano, bookcases everywhere, and a wonderful, slightly musty smell.

Mr. Lardner, Jr. was tall and thin, angular and distinguished looking, wore thick black-framed glasses, and was dressed in corduroy pants and a baggy sweater. He asked me all about my revue and then had me play him the songs I’d written. After I finished he said, Well, they’re very, very good, but I don’t really know what they have to do with my father’s work.

He was right, of course. I’d just written some songs and stuck them in the show. We continued to chat for about thirty minutes. He was a wonderfully supportive person and asked me what I wanted to do-was it writing, acting, directing? I said, all of it but mostly acting.

He also told me that there was another Lardner revue happening and therefore could not grant me any rights. Then he invited me to see the other revue at the Theatre de Lys. It was what today you’d call a workshop or a staged reading; they were testing it out in front of an audience. Of course I said I’d be thrilled to be there and he wrote down the address and date for me.

As I left his apartment, I thought to myself, boy, if everyone is this nice this New York adventure is going to be great and maybe things will be easier than I thought. I also realized that I’d best get a new coat, because the Navy pea coat I had wasn’t doing the trick; the freezing air cut through it like a razor.

I saw the Lardner revue. It starred Orson Bean, whom I knew from TV game shows and the cast album of Subways Are For Sleeping, and a wonderful young actress named Melinda Dillon, whom I knew from the original cast album of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. The show itself was merely okay; in fact, I thought Shut Up, He Explained was a lot funnier, despite the fact that the songs didn’t have anything to do with Lardner’s work. When I saw Mr. Lardner, Jr. after the show he asked what I thought and I told him, and he thanked me for my honesty and I thanked him for the invitation. He wished me all good things.

And thus began my New York adventure, which would last almost exactly one year. And boy was it an interesting year, but not in the way I thought it would be.

I’d come into the city often. Within the first month I’d seen Promises, Promises twice, George M!, Zorba, Fiddler On The Roof, Cabaret, and a few plays, including Gower Champion’s incredible production of A Flea In Her Ear. I was astonished by the quality of the performances in those shows: Hershel Bernardi as Zorba, Joel Grey as George M!, Jerry Orbach’s wonderful performance in Promises, Jerry Jarret’s in Fiddler, and seeing Lotte Lenya and Jack Gilford in Cabaret was unforgettable.

The more I saw the more I wanted to be up on those stages, especially doing musicals. I’d always come into the city on matinee days so I could stand in the Shubert lobby and just listen to that glorious Promises, Promises overture, which was to die for.

Nathan’s Hot Dogs opened a huge place on Broadway and Kathy and I were regulars there, frequently dining with an old LACC chum, Vern Jones, who was also in New York trying to be an actor. At the time, Vern was very enamored of Hair and got Kathy and me to see it. I was not so enamored of it, especially when the actors came into the audience and climbed on the seats of the Bilt-more Theater. I did like some of the music, but I had low tolerance for anything hippie, so I’m afraid it just didn’t appeal to me.

Within a month I had my first audition for a Broadway show. They were casting replacements for George M! and I somehow got in to audition. I hadn’t liked the show very much, but had loved the staging and dancing, especially a number called Popularity, which I thought was spectacular, and which featured an incredibly electric performance by an actor/dancer named Gene Castle.

It must have been an open call or something, because I sure didn’t have an agent. I sang Nothing Can Stop Me Now from Roar Of The Greasepaint, and I sang it quite loud and I must have done okay because they asked me to stay and read a scene, which I did.

The feeling of standing on the stage of the Palace Theater was extraordinary. I felt at home. I didn’t want to leave. And they really seemed to like me. And then they asked the question: How is your tap? That was the end of that. I couldn’t even do a time step. Much later, my inability to tap dance would come back to haunt me in a very comical way.

The George M! audition proved to be a fluke because that was the last audition I had for a Broadway show. I did audition for off-Broadway and out-of-town shows, but I didn’t get them. Through Vern I met some interesting people, and through the interesting people I met other interesting people.

As the months went on I began to be depressed, and the whole crazy atmosphere of living in the New York of 1969 was starting to get to me. I so wanted to work as an actor and I so wasn’t. I missed my friends in LA. I wrote my pal Dee Dee Siegler, whom I’d met at LACC and with whom I’d become very close, and tried to explain how I was feeling.

I’m so restless here. I want to do a show so bad it’s unbelievable. But I keep auditioning and nothing happens. It’s not so bad when I know it’s been a bad audition, but when I know it’s been good. I have these wild fits of depression. Everything that I believed in myself is in question. I’m not sure anymore. And it scares me.

I wrote songs, I endured the subway, the time passed and nothing happened. I’d occasionally catch a matinee, or I’d slip into one of those past-their-prime movie theaters on 42nd Street to see a triple bill for a dollar. 42nd Street then was nothing like the Disney version of 42nd Street now—then it was repulsive, sleazy, dangerous, and even mesmerizing in its pimp-ridden, drug-ridden way.

Then, in June, I heard about a summer theater that was doing Stop The World, I Want To Get Off. I’d played Littlechap at LACC and the musical was a particular favorite of mine. It was, in fact, a life-changer for me, because after I saw the national tour I wanted to be like Anthony Newley—to write book, music, and lyrics, star in and direct my own shows.

By that time, I’d lost the thirty-five pounds I’d gained and was down to a very slim 141 and back to my size thirty waist. The audition was at some rehearsal studio on Eighth Avenue. I was very confident at the audition and I did well, I thought, but I was so used to not getting anything I just figured this would be the same.

A few hours later, I got the official call that the job was indeed mine. The producer then asked the most extraordinary question: Since I’d done the show before would I be willing to also direct it? Would I be willing? I said yes so fast he didn’t even hear it and

I had to repeat it. I had my first show-not exactly on Broadway, not exactly off-Broadway, but way off-Broadway, in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, near Lake Swannanowa. And I was being paid to do it. I hadn’t mailed the letter to Dee Dee yet, so on the last paged I scribbled in pencil:

P.S.S.S.S. I just got word. FLASH!! I’m doing Stop The World!! In Oak Ridge, New Jersey. It’s a small summer stock theatre. I’m really excited. July 22-August 3.

Lake Swannanoa was the winter home for the Ringling Brothers Circus, but in the summer they did shows there in a little theater called The Showplace. My whole attitude changed. I was going to be working, and not only acting but directing, too. I was happy. I had energy. We had a good cast and I couldn’t wait until rehearsals started.

In June, Kathy came home one night and made us one of her special dishes: tri-tip (covered with Lipton Onion Soup powder and baked in the oven in tin foil). As we were eating she casually dropped a little bombshell on me: she was pregnant. Say what? Pregnant? How was that possible? I mean, I knew how pregnancy was possible, but she was on the pill. The pill. You weren’t supposed to be able to get pregnant on the pill. And yet, she was on the pill and pregnant.

But here was the really weird thing: We’d had sex on one particular night and for whatever reasons when it was done I thought to myself, wow, that was really something. I’d never quite finished like that before. And in some weird way, I knew something had happened. So when she told me she was pregnant my first thought was I’ll bet it was that night.

I was about to go into rehearsal the following week. We discussed the options, of which there were only two:

Have an abortion or have a baby. It wasn’t a dramatic or emotional discussion. In fact, it wasn’t much of a discussion at all. She was willing to have an abortion, but as we discussed it calmly it just didn’t feel right to me and I know it didn’t feel right to her. We decided to have the baby. Just how we were going to support a baby or care for a baby, well, we had no idea. We just figured we’d figure it out.

Kathy wanted to go home and be with her parents for a week, and that was fine. I needed a little break from the constant togetherness, and I was about to start rehearsals. So she planned to see the show on opening night, and then leave and come back towards closing.

I didn’t have time to dwell on the seriousness of the pregnancy situation. I don’t even think I knew how serious it was. I went into rehearsals on July 2nd and that became my world. Three weeks later the astronauts landed on the moon, we opened, got an excellent review from the area’s one and only critic, Kathy went back to LA for a couple of weeks, and I finished the run of the show.

Kathy came back, returned to work, and her pregnant belly was growing daily. Given the impending child, I needed to get a job, and I did, as an usher at the Alber-marle Theater on Flatbush Avenue. I’d worked as an usher in LA, so I knew the routine. It was a beautiful and large neighborhood theater, and I think I lasted there about four or five weeks.

While I worked there, I saw Once Upon A Time In The West over and over again, and I also saw my hero Anthony Newley’s self-indulgent, masturbatory, surreal, autobiographical film, Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe And Find True Happiness? I couldn’t believe he put all that personal stuff on film, and no one else could either; there were literally no people in the theater. I guess seeing Anthony Newley singing a paean to himself called I’m All I Need was just not that much of a come-on. I’d later make similar mistakes when I wrote my first original musical.

The manager kept trying to schedule me for days, and I needed my days free for auditions (not that there were any). I just liked working in the evenings so I didn’t have to be in the apartment all the time. I told him I didn’t like my schedule and he told me to take a hike.

During that time, Vern introduced me to a man named James Morgan, who was writing book and lyrics for a musical version of Anna Cora Mowatt’s play Fashion. He needed a composer. We got together and he seemed like a nice enough guy. I told him that I’d never written just music, that I’d always written my own lyrics, but