Broadway Babylon (37 page)

J
ames Kirkwood is probably best known as the co-creator of
A Chorus Line
(1975). Solo, he wrote such cult novels as
There Must Be a Pony
and
Some Kind of Hero
, and plays like
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
and
Legends!
—which became a legendary debacle starring Mary Martin and Carol Channing. Despite its star power it never got to Broadway but inspired a fabled memoir,
Diary of a Mad Playwright
.

Like many playwrights, Kirkwood began as an actor. But then, his parents were silent-screen stars Lila Lee and James Kirkwood Sr. Jimmy’s unstable childhood—he attended eighteen high schools—and his mother’s emotional ups and downs were fodder for
There Must Be a Pony
, whose title derived from a parable about a terminally optimistic boy shoveling through a roomful of manure because underneath it all he believes “There must be a pony.”

In the 1950s Kirkwood costarred in
Valiant Lady
, Tallulah Bankhead’s favorite soap opera. His entrée into New York theatrical circles occurred after he auditioned for a minor Bankhead play,
Welcome, Darlings
, but wound up instead as the aging diva’s caddy. Although he successfully segued into writing he didn’t abandon acting, and later had small parts in
Mommie Dearest, Oh, God, Book II
, and other films. “I did the Hollywood bit, but never got many jobs out there. Just not forbidding enough, I guess.” Kirkwood performed in clubs and on Broadway with partner Lee Goodman, and did summer stock. “I love performing, putting on masks,” he said in 1986 during the
Legends!
tour, three years before his death.

Kirkwood’s path crossed that of
A Chorus Line
collaborator Michael Bennett in 1974, while he was working on a play of his novel
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
, which the closeted Bennett found “too daring” for his taste. (It involved a bisexual cat burglar.) The reaction irked Kirkwood, but they worked together, mostly smoothly, on
A Chorus Line
, which opened on Broadway a month after
P.S
. The latter closed after sixteen performances; the former broke records and made the writer a millionaire.

“Tallulah really encouraged me to write,” Kirkwood recalled, “and when I did, it gave me such a release.… Such creativity … as an actor you cannot create alone.”

Legends!
was intended as Kirkwood’s solo entry into the Broadway big-time. In view of its diva quotient, gay-audience appeal, and general theatergoers’ desire to ogle faded-but-once-major stars in the flesh,
Legends!
could have run for years, with a succession of senior actresses eventually replacing Mary Martin and Carol Channing in the same way—but twice over—that Channing had been succeeded in
Hello, Dolly!
by a parade that included Ginger Rogers, Ethel Merman, Pearl Bailey and, of course, Mary Martin and Carol Channing (who returned to the role, and then kept returning).

However, the
Legends!
production seemed almost cursed. The backstage intrigue, back-stabbing, and plain bad luck far surpassed that of the average Broadway show-in-the-making. There were clashes with producers, one of whom regularly threw his considerable overweight around. Another producer died, still another had AIDS. At one point
Legends!
was sans a director. It was constantly being rewritten, including by its stars, who couldn’t abide the performance of a supporting player (Roxie Roker of TV’s
The Jeffersons
), who enjoyed the staunch backing of a particular producer.

Most reviews were poor to dreadful, often pitting one star against the other. Channing and Martin were already quite competitive, Mary less openly so. Carol’s husband-manager was usually pushy and meddlesome, frequently clashing with Kirkwood and the producers. At seventy-three Mary Martin tended to tire easily and, worse, couldn’t always remember her lines. As during the second act of a performance in Dallas, where
Legends!
broke the box-office record for the Majestic Theatre. Kirkwood explained that Mary’s “ear bug cut out and she was not able to get her lines from Keith. I cannot describe what a muddle ensued.”

In the second act, Martin would say lines from the first act, while Channing, wild-eyed, attempted to get the show back on track. Mary, typically averse to derogatory lines, would sometimes utter the start of one insult and complete it with the end of another, so that it didn’t make sense, fracturing the play and frustrating the “mad playwright.”

Why, at her age, would Mary Martin take on a dialogue-heavy nonmusical play totally dominated by two active, highly competitive diva characters?
Several factors played a part. Mary was getting few offers, let alone for large parts. Her singing voice and the energy required for a musical were much diminished, but she wanted to take advantage of the reflected limelight from her son, Larry
Dallas
Hagman (via her first, heterosexual husband), and her friend and former supporting actress, First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Legends!
, as Martin must have realized, was perhaps her last chance at a big stage vehicle. She loved the title, and in interviews would coyly allow, “Well, yes, I guess we
are
legends.” Jimmy had tailored it for two real-life divas, later noting, “Female stars eventually love to play icons.”

C
AROL
’
S REACTION
to Mary’s trouble retaining dialogue was mixed. She would wonder aloud what was happening to her dear costar, then privately urge Kirkwood and the producers, “Can’t we try and get Julie Andrews?” to replace her. (Channing had supported Andrews in the 1967 hit movie
Thoroughly Modern Millie
, for which Channing garnered an Oscar nomination and which became the revamped 2002 Tony-winning Best Musical.) Carol got in the habit of correcting Mary onstage in front of the audience, which Martin resented but complained about privately to Kirkwood, not to Channing, whose spouse-manager Charles Lowe served as her buffer and official complainant.

The contractual pair were both devoted to Carol’s stardom. Her sole child, a son named Channing, was via a prior husband. Lowe was once asked, “Do you ever sleep with Carol?” He replied, “Why? Would it be good for her career?” In front of others, he invariably called her Miss Channing. In 1998, after over four decades of matrimony, the professional pair moved to divorce. Channing then publicly reported that they’d only ever slept together two times.

The disingenuous Carol informed Jimmy Kirkwood that she’d told her costar that a backstage visitor had said he’d had to view
Legends!
twice because he couldn’t hear most of Mary’s lines, and added the “pace was so slow.” Kirkwood asked why on earth Carol had told Mary that.

“Well, it was the truth, that’s what he said.”

“I know, but you know Mary—you didn’t have to tell her that.”

“Yes, I did. What would you want me to do—lie?” she said, her eyes no doubt as big as saucers. (Channing wore mink eyelashes and habitually streaked red lipstick across her nose to give the impression, from a distance, that it was upturned.)

On another occasion, the tall and often overpowering Channing apprised Jimmy that she’d visited Martin’s dressing room and informed her that Kirkwood said Carol terrified her. Channing said Martin denied her fear of her costar, though Martin supposedly seemed “rattled.” Jimmy was aghast, and told Channing of course Mary would be afraid of her. “But I went right in and told her,” affirmed the second-billed star.

Martin increasingly felt she was being railroaded by the younger, taller, louder, very be-husbanded Channing. (Mary’s second husband, who’d been gay and was
her
manager, was deceased.) The image-conscious Martin also objected to the more risqué lines and situations in
Legends!
She’d had to be persuaded to agree to do a speech revealing that her character had undergone a mastectomy. Mary would arbitrarily decide not to utter a line she felt compromised her G-rated image. One night during a performance, she skipped her final line to an exiting cop whom both divas were supposed to insult.

For months, Martin had been telling the policeman character, “And when your next child is born and people ask if it’s a boy or a girl, I hope you have to hesitate about an hour before answering.”

When Kirkwood reminded her later that night at a party that she’d forgotten the line, she said she hadn’t. Rather, she wouldn’t be saying the line anymore. Jimmy said the line had always earned a hearty laugh. Mary believed that the audience hated the line because it meant she was hoping the policeman’s wife gave birth to a two-headed child.

Kirkwood assured her it didn’t mean that. The line’s gender ambiguity had completely escaped her. Regardless, Mary Martin concluded that whatever it meant, she would no longer say it, and Kirkwood had the choice of either writing a new line for her or else she would skip it “and let my last line to him be the one before that.”

B
Y THE TIME
L
EGENDS
!
HIT
Chicago’s Shubert Theatre in October 1986, Charles Lowe was openly at war with the weighty producer, who was also prone to change Kirkwood’s dialogue. Although business in the bigger cities was fine to excellent due to fans of Mary, Carol, and camp—which their pairing certainly was—Martin was increasingly restive and tired. When she expressed her intention to leave the show pre-Broadway, James Kirkwood was amazed and angered, though of course he had to treat the Broadway veteran with kid gloves.

Mary was no doubt wary of her Broadway swansong being in a critically reviled effort—fluff that probably wouldn’t have had a chance minus two Names—which she had to share with another (overbearing, faster-tongued, and faster-moving) woman. Besides, Mary’s health was on the decline, though details were kept strictly confidential.

For decades, Martin’s stage shows had been vehicles, and she likely didn’t wish her final one to be half a vehicle which her hammy costar-rival was apt to easily steal. “In her way, Mary was two-faced,” said record and revue producer Ben Bagley, who dealt with but didn’t work with her. “That is, if she didn’t like something, either she’d smile or avoid it. If she hated it, she’d send a third party to tell the authority in charge. She was stubborn. You could not
push her around. Yet she hated confrontations and always wanted to seem Miss Congeniality.”

Charles Lowe eventually also got in the habit, after a Mary Martin memory crisis, of urging, “Get Julie Andrews,” who almost certainly would not have been available. Mary must have heard about Carol and Charles’s repeated treacherous comment, which may have been the last straw. “Mary wasn’t used to sharing a show,” stated
Legends!
director Lindsay Anderson, “and I don’t think she’d ever had to compete so hard in a show, on the stage and off.”

A friend of Jimmy’s connected with
Sugar Babies
had spoken with its leading lady, Ann Miller, who’d caught
Legends!
in Los Angeles. She loved the play and was eager to costar with Carol. “The only thing wrong was Mary. I know the character of Leatrice should be sweet, but only up to a point. What you need up on that stage is two cunts, and with me and Carol you’d have a couple.”

When Kirkwood contacted Miller, she alluded to Mary Martin’s failing memory, then pointed out that she and Channing had worked together on a
Love Boat
episode and “got along just fine. Now, I know she’s not all
that
easy to work with. Carol swallowed up little Mary on that stage, but I’ll tell you something right now—Carol’s not going to swallow up little Annie.”

She added, “If I play Leatrice, you gotta write me a few more bitchy lines, because I can say ’em!” Miller was ready to hop on the next plane and commence rehearsing.

Meanwhile, with Mary ready to fly the coop, Carol became more vocal about her belief that nobody had wanted her for
Legends!
in the first place. She may have been hurt by what she perceived as greater respect for a woman generally considered more of a talent, and more of a legend, than she. Part of the extra deference had to do with Martin’s age and her more ladylike, at times aloof demeanor. Ben Bagley opined, “Carol was deep down rather honored to be working with Mary Martin. And remember, Mary made Carol look younger than she was.” The Martin replacement, if there was one, wouldn’t likely be as old as Mary and would probably be more openly competitive and feisty.

Jimmy Kirkwood was cautiously hopeful when he entered Carol’s dressing room—she was “putting on her clown makeup, which was enough to paint a wall with”—in order to mention Ann Miller’s name as a possible replacement for Mary. “Carol, who had just finished slashing that red streak across her nose, laughed and said, ‘Oh, I like Ann, but really—she’s a joke.’

“I barely held off an instant of anger and cracking, ‘Turn around and check your mirror, sweetheart!,’ ” said Kirkwood.

Channing, also long unused to sharing a stage, was more ambitious than her ditzy image would suggest. When she’d lost the movie version of
Hello
,
Dolly!
to Barbra Streisand—who campaigned for the part along with her female agent, later declaring she’d been
offered
the role,
quelle surprise
—it was the second public super-blow of Channing’s stage career, for in the ’50s she had lost the film of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, the show that made her a star, to Marilyn Monroe. Though she seemed to take the loss with a grinning grain of salt, years later on TV, she announced, “I’ve enjoyed wonderful health. The only time I got sick was when I watched Barbra Streisand in
Hello, Dolly!
on an airplane.”