Broadway Babylon (24 page)

“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.”—film icon C
HARLIE
C
HAPLIN
circa 1916

“I wouldn’t become an actor again if I could change. I’m too bright for a career that runs out. I thought I’d spend my life telling good stories to an intelligent public. I must have been out of my fucking mind.”—Canadian actress K
ATE
N
ELLIGAN
, who left England for Hollywood

“My only regret in the theatre is that I could never sit out front and watch me.”—stage-and-screen star J
OHN
B
ARRYMORE

“We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, ‘Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday’?”—Irish theatre legend M
ICHEAL
[SIC] M
AC
L
IAMMOIR

“I don’t know. I’m just beginning to get the hang of it.”—S
IR
R
ALPH
R
ICHARDSON
at eighty-three, when asked what acting was all about

“You really only begin to act when you leave off trying.”—D
AME
E
DITH
E
VANS

“I have an affinity for acting, but that doesn’t alter the terror. Do you realize what happens to us actors on opening night? It’s almost a disease. I did a play with Helen Hayes, and we were waiting to make our entrance, when I looked at her and she looked like I looked: absolutely waxen. I leaned over and whispered, ‘
Still
, Miss Hayes?’ And she looked up at me and replied, ‘Gets worse every year.’ … As your reputation grows, other people can blow a line—but not the star.”—J
ONATHAN
H
ARRIS
(TV’s
Lost in Space
)

“I remember once in a rehearsal of something or other, I asked [Dame] Sybil Thorndike—whom I knew all my working life—‘Sybil, when will it get easier?’ She looked at me as if I were a half-wit and said, ‘It will only get worse, my darling. Naught for your comfort, my darling, naught for your
comfort.’ Do you know, it
does
get worse? Cruelly, nature takes confidence away instead of giving it!”—D
AME
W
ENDY
H
ILLER
, stage, screen, and TV star

“The camera magnifies Hollywood actors. Theatre actors must magnify themselves.”—
Rent
composer-lyricist J
ONATHAN
L
ARSON

“Acting is an art. It’s a responsibility. It’s a privilege.”—playwright T
ERRENCE
M
C
N
ALLY

“Every individual has a given number of heartbeats, and I don’t propose to waste any of mine apologizing.”—contentious producer J
ED
H
ARRIS

“The Broadway theatre could be greatly improved by the subtraction of most of its actors.”—producer A
LEXANDER
H. C
OHEN

“Psychiatrists are where simpleton actors go to feel they’re complex.”—producer D
AVID
M
ERRICK

“He must have been a marvelous shot.”—playwright-actor-director S
IR
N
OEL
C
OWARD
upon hearing that a not very intelligent producer had shot himself in the brain

“The real power struggle isn’t between actors and anyone else. Actors know how interchangeable they are, unless they’re stars, and even then. The real friction is between producers and directors, because they’re the ones sharing the power.”—producer R
OBERT
F
RYER
(
Mame, Chicago
)

“Most producers lie—that’s the word—somewhere between affluent accountants and artistic poseurs. They have the taste of auctioneers and the souls of playground bullies. If theatre were properly funded, we could do away with them entirely.”—critic W
YATT
C
OOPER
(a husband of Gloria Vanderbilt)

“He loves to kill. He derives joy from the kill. He is power hungry and lusts to destroy. [He’s] not a critic—a dictator, a savage dog.”—D
AVID
M
ERRICK
on critic Frank Rich

“At British awards ceremonies, unlike the Broadway Tonys, only the authors get to collect the Best Play and Best Musical trophies; the producers are kept firmly offstage, as if not deemed to be part of the ‘creative team.’ ”—theater columnist M
ARK
S
TEYN

“The most hated people on Broadway are producers. Selfish tyrants like David Merrick and, before him, Jed Harris.… Jerome Robbins is right up there, but when you have artistic vision, versus mere money and power, it balances things toward the tyrannical director. Robbins was no nicer than Merrick or Harris, but producers themselves don’t produce any art.”
—West Side Story
and film costume designer I
RENE
S
HARAFF

“Commerce owns theatre much more than it used to. The costs are preposterous, [and] it makes cowards out of producers.… It just means that as the ticket prices go up, it drives the audiences that you want out of the theatre.”—playwright E
DWARD
A
LBEE

“There used to be one or two names over the title: Feuer and Martin, David Merrick, Alex Cohen—a producer whose voice counted for something, whose taste meant something. Now you have 15 names.”—theater historian F
OSTER
H
IRSCH

“In most cases, the producer is very aloof … and distant from the process of making a show.… I think producing is to Broadway shows what a sperm donor is to the child that he’ll never know but helps enable.”—R
AUL
J
ULIA
(
Nine
)

“Your audience gives you everything you need.… There is no director who can direct you like an audience.”—F
ANNY
B
RICE

“Comes down to it, the director’s a traffic cop. If he doesn’t ramble on too long, you listen politely. Then you do what made you famous, what the audience pays to see. Nobody pays to see a director.”—B
ERT
L
AHR
, a bigger star on stage than screen (the Cowardly Lion in
The Wizard of Oz
), and a notable scene-stealer

“The advantage of working with film actors is that the director, editor, and producer can smooth or balance the actor’s performance. Actors on a stage can improvise, ad lib, overact, play tricks, and upstage their fellows. That, I contend, is why the stage is called the actor’s medium.”—G
EORGE
S. K
AUFMAN
, who got to direct only one film,
The Senator Was Indiscreet
, which archconservatives objected to even before the famous playwright was blacklisted in Hollywood

“Edward Albee as a director is a very good playwright.”—B
ARRY
N
ELSON
, directed by Albee in his non-hit
Seascape
(1975), which costarred Deborah Kerr and Frank Langella

“As a Broadway director, Alfred Lunt is a fine Broadway actor.”—attributed to M
EL
F
ERRER
, who costarred with wife Audrey Hepburn in the Lunt-helmed
Ondine
(1954)

“… we had an English director. I can’t ever remember the name of anyone of which I think so very little. We would have understood each other better if he were Chinese.”—C
AROL
C
HANNING
on Lindsay Anderson, director of the Broadway-bound
Legends!
(his films included
This Sporting Life
and
The Whales of August
)

“I want a [director with] a vision that’s like a force running through everything. [Otherwise], well, my sister told me once, when she was in third grade, her whole class went into the city. When they came up from the subway, the teacher—for a moment—didn’t know where she was. My sister saw that look, and suddenly was terrified. She lost all faith. And that’s horrible when it happens with a director, and it can happen in an instant. If they have an unshakeable vision, it won’t happen.”—stage and film actor R
OBERT
S
EAN
L
EONARD

“Good actors don’t need much directing or babying. Occasionally I trot out a sound piece of advice for certain uncertain actors: Try to imagine the audience in their underwear.”—director-choreographer J
OE
L
AYTON
(
Barnum, George M!
)

“In so many cases, the director is a person fond of the theatre but not good-looking or special enough to be an actor, and with a secret lust for power. If he wasn’t fond of theatre, he might become a policeman.”—M
ADELINE
K
AHN

“One reason I prefer the stage is that presence and talent will out. Onstage, the spectator’s eye goes where it belongs. But in TV and movies, it’s all camera choices. The
director
chooses what you focus on. Your eye is
directed
, and you get only part of the scene or picture. When you think about it, that’s a very unnatural way to view something.”—H
UGH
J
ACKMAN
(
The Boy from Oz
)