This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jill Gold: Well, here's an example of the importance of a stage manager and getting it right, because you can really make or break a moment. And I had called the show many times. It wasn't like I was new at it. And Buddy Fidler, who's the producer, Hollywood producer, he is on the phone with Stein. And the set is just this huge desk with him on the phone. And he's got a writing crop in his hand, very Cecil B. DeMille, right? And he's yelling at Stein on the phone because he wants changes and he wants things to happen. And Stein hangs up on him. And he says, Stein, Stein, goddammit, writers, and he hits the crop on the desk. And when he hits the crop on the desk, a character, Avril, pops up from under the desk and says, what was that?

Blackout, right? So that's the punchline of the scene. And it's like, I see what's going on. She's under the desk, making sure that she's under the desk of their producer. We all know what's going on, right? So that's the scene, simple enough. So I'm calling it one day. And I've got all my scene shift ducks in a row ready to do the shift out of the scene. And I say, electrics, 47 with the lilt. So, you know, the next word is go. And then the blackout will happen when I say that. But I prep it. And he says, Stein, Stein, goddammit, writers. And when he hit that crop, something about it scared the crap out of me. And I said, go. Blackout. Oh, no. There is no girl. There is no punchline. There is no laugh.

There's applause. But it's kind of, you know, Chuck Levin, who was playing Buddy Fiddler, was a handful. Great in the part. But he came off stage. And I'm doing a big scene shift. Very precise. Lots of cue lights to cue different things to move. And I'm talking the whole time. He comes and he is screaming at me. Oh, no. Now, I understand why. And if he had done it at intermission, I totally would have taken it and said, I'm so sorry. It was totally my mistake. Right. But that is an example of how a stage manager is critical in a situation. Yeah. And look, I'm not saying you did it on purpose. Right. But you can also make or break an actor. So be nice to your stage. Exactly. Be nice to your stage managers, people. Your jokes aren't going to land in the dark.

[2:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome, everybody, to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today, we are talking about City of Angels. And look, I know. I know. I am so past due in terms of having a guest on that is a stage manager. I admit to this. I take full responsibility. And today I make up for it because not only is my guest a stage manager, she wrote the book on stage managing. Everybody, please welcome Jill Gold.

[3:28] Jill Gold: Thank you. Now I feel the burden for all stage managers of all times, but I'm going to try to do us proud.

[3:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You will not be the last stage manager on the show. So don't worry. You are the first.

[3:41] Jill Gold: Great. Now you are a production stage manager. I got to say you are one of those people when I walk into a rehearsal in which you are the stage manager. I feel taken care of. I feel confident that things are going to be done and there's nothing better. So thank you.

[4:00] Jill Gold: Well, that's the goal. So that's nice to hear. What many people don't realize is that the union, the actors union for theater actors is also the union for stage managers. And I've always loved that. I love that we are in the same union because it means that you're not necessarily some police officer that's trying to get me in trouble. We are literally on the same team.

[4:24] Jill Gold: It is great. It's sort of a double edged sword. There's actually a big push right now on a lot of stage manager group chats and Facebook pages and things to add stage manager to the title somehow or to make it a more all inclusive title as opposed to actors equity.

[4:42] Jill Gold: I completely understand that. Because while we are members and I agree with you, I can say to you, if you have a complaint, I totally agree. I am part of your union as well. I will fight for those hours to be reduced or for us to get overtime. And you should trust that I will do that because honestly, it's self serving for me to write. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But on the other hand, most of the rules in there that I've found are specific to actors. And we are in our contracts. It says stage manager referred to as actor, right? We are called actor throughout. And we are. What that means is in the equity contracts in the rule books, anything that says actor should apply to us as well. But it doesn't always.

We're always there before you are. We're always there after you are. We're doing more things than are designated in those rule books. So I understand people's point. It doesn't bother me personally as much, maybe just because I'm used to it. I've been a member for 36 years this July. So and my union has done a lot of wonderful things for me. But I do understand the dichotomy of wanting to feel like you're more a part of it.

[5:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, yeah, that's really fascinating. There are people who have brought up our own union that I disagree with for the reason you just said. I think then it's a more us them situation. And we're already sort of in an us them because we work for the producer and we work for the director. But we also work for the cast. And how do you keep everybody working together towards the same common goal without pissing somebody off? Right. So that's that's the whole job in a nutshell right there.

[6:22] Jill Gold: Yeah. I mean, you you did just put it in a nutshell so beautifully. But what are the attributes that most successfully make that happen?

[6:31] Jill Gold: Personality. Yeah. And by personality, I include sense of humor, not taking things personally, finding ways to deal with stress, because there will be stress and how you deal with that in the room needs to be not the way you deal with it when you go home and put your fist through the wall because you've had a horrible day. But really, I was just talking to a student on Zoom the other day. I mentor a lot of students and she was talking about interviews and she said, what do you look for when someone comes in to be a production assistant? And I said, personality. Right. So that's sort of the key thing in my mind. Everything else you can learn.

[7:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. Absolutely. In theater. And it's one of the things that I love so much about it is that it is an in-person art form. Our audiences are there live, which means the actors are there live with other actors and with their costumers and technicians and dressers. Everybody is participating in interpersonal relationships that can either make or break an experience. And that's what makes it so fun. You know, when I like to call shows offstage in the wings as opposed to isolated in a booth somewhere. And if I have the option, I will always choose that. That also comes from touring a lot. I'm used to it. But I love standing there and I can focus on my cues and still have you walk by before an entrance and give me a pat on the back or give me a thumbs up.

Or you come off after a scene where something's gone wrong, but nobody knows it. But you and I and we wink at each other and we know. Yeah, I love I love that interaction. And the other thing, why don't you miss live audiences? The other thing that I love is even though 90 percent of the audience doesn't know I exist, calling the button right at the end of a big dance number and hearing the roar of applause, I contributed to that. Right. If I had not called that button at exactly the right time, the moment wouldn't have been as exciting. You know, it's just knowing and taking pride in that and contributing to the live different every night situation that just makes it for me.

[8:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Ah, I'm so happy you're here. Now, let's talk about your relationship to City of Angels, which I know is a show near and dear to your heart. It's my favorite show for so many reasons. I was looking through my old script and some ephemera. I have clippings of reviews and the opening night, so society column and paperwork from running backstage and cues and things like that. We opened May 20th, 1991, at the Schubert in L.A. So it's been 30 years next month. So this is a very, very apropos time to be talking about City of Angels. Totally by accident, but I'll take it.

[9:23] Jill Gold: Yeah, good on you. I was not part of the rehearsal process because I was in New York rehearsing the Bye Bye Birdie tour with Tommy Toon and Anne Reinking.

[9:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No way.

[9:34] Jill Gold: So they hired me as the second assistant in New York, even though they knew I already had City of Angels and was going to have to jump. Talk about two amazing shows. And let me tell you quickly, the three kids in that show, my Kim was Susan Egan, my Birdie was Mark Kudisch, and my Hugo was Steve Zahn.

[9:50] Jill Gold: Well, Tommy Toon and Anne Reinking. They did okay. And Marilyn Cooper were the draws. Marilyn Cooper. Those three did okay.

[10:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I've heard stories about Anne Reinking in Bye Bye Birdie that she could get applause for just like bopping her head.

[10:07] Jill Gold: She's so precise. And I mean, with her with her passing away recently, you saw clips all over Facebook and stuff when she and Tommy danced, because she's also tall. You know, I mean, she's still not tall compared to Tommy. Right. They both got like Marilyn Cooper. That alone was a sight gang. You saw Tommy standing next to Marilyn Cooper and it was a laugh.

[10:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, my gosh, that's fantastic. Okay, so you're in New York. No, so you're in New York rehearsing Bye Bye Birdie. And then and then they went off on the road. And I started in with City of Angels at the Shubert. It had already opened in New York.

[10:40] Jill Gold: Was it already a big hit? And you knew what was coming?

[10:45] Jill Gold: Here's the thing. It was a big hit. And we knew what was coming. And it was about LA. And we all thought, Oh, well, if it did well in New York, it's going to do even better here because it's about that. And that was not the case. We ran about four months, which I don't really know if that was planned, although I don't think it was. But that company then became the national tour. So we got another year and a half out of it. But we did have to start in LA, we were lucky enough to have some of the original Broadway cast. So we had James Notton and Randy Graff and Karen Feynman who'd gone in for Rachel York and people who had done it before.

[11:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's awesome. Was the rehearsal process shortened because of that?

[11:26] Jill Gold: Because just so everybody knows, this is one of, at this point, probably one of the most technically complex shows that Broadway had ever seen. And also very hard to replicate in a rehearsal hall.

[11:38] Jill Gold: Fair enough. With just tape on the floor. But even if you had all the small movable set pieces, all those, there were sliders moving and big scenic pieces moving in and out. And like any big musical, you know, but there were 37 scenes in the show. So it was a lot to put on the actors, which meant they really had to know their stuff going into tech so that they didn't get thrown off.

[12:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, you're not going to be figuring stuff out.

[12:07] Jill Gold: Exactly. Once you get on stage. Now, in musical theater, we have a lot of shows about movies. In general, though, those are all based on pre-existing films. Singing in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard. These are shows about the film industry, but they were films first. And none of them are considered wildly successful. However, City of Angels is an original musical that is paying an homage to film. And so it didn't have to replicate the flow of a film that we already know. It could create its own thing and still make it incredibly entertaining.

[12:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, now this is the moment in the podcast where we usually talk about the history of the show and the creators of it to give some context to the cultural and emotional impact of its storytelling. And today I get to bring in someone to the conversation that knows a couple things about the show and its creation because he's literally one of the creators. He's an Oscar nominee. He won a Tony Award for writing the lyrics to City of Angels. And let's face it, anyone who comes up with zero to hero is a hero of mine. Everyone, please welcome David Zippel.

[13:24] David Zippel: Yay!

[13:26] David Zippel: Thank you for that lovely introduction.

[13:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Of course, my pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm just delighted to have you here. Many people who are listening to the show maybe don't know City of Angels because it doesn't get produced very much. But we all know you from Hercules because we grew up with that show and have been singing.

[13:47] David Zippel: And This Perfect Package packs a pair of perfect packs for our entire childhood. I believe.

[13:51] David Zippel: It does kill me a little that you said you grew up with Hercules because I worked on Hercules with David.

[13:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Did you really? Yeah. Wait, so you guys not only work together on City of Angels.

[14:03] Jill Gold: Oh, by the way, I should say that, Jill, it's because of you that David's here. So thank you as well.

[14:07] Jill Gold: My gosh. My pleasure. How did you guys work on Hercules together?

[14:13] David Zippel: I was working at Disney Animation then.

[14:14] Jill Gold: And I started as the production manager on Hercules, and then I moved to more of a sort of a company manager position. But David and I were in some of the same meetings and recording sessions and things. Holy cow. We got Disney history right here.

[14:31] David Zippel: Okay, so for those familiar with the musical City of Angels, there's this character by the name of Elora Kingsley. And she's like the femme fatale. And she's married to a very rich, very old man who hasn't died yet because he's literally in an iron lung being spoon-fed soup. Now, I can think of no better metaphor for the state of musical theater on Broadway in 1989 than Luther Kingsley in an iron lung. The musical season on Broadway before City of Angels is considered by many to be one of the worst of all time. You had one colossal flop after another. Carry the Musical, Legs Diamond, Chu Chen, and a musical, David, that was written by your City of Angels collaborator called Welcome to the Club. So I wanted to begin by talking about what were your memories or what are your memories of the culture of musical theater at this time when you're writing City of Angels and it's about to be given birth?

[15:26] David Zippel: Well, Broadway was past its golden age, let's put it that way. American Broadway. And it was the time of the British musical. So there was Phantom and I think Miss Saigon at that point. Is that correct?

[15:40] Jill Gold: I think Miss Saigon was just about to cross the pond.

[15:44] David Zippel: And it was an era where the Brits were kind of running the show. And on the other hand, here I was a younger person writing with two of my musical theater heroes. Speaking of heroes, Cy Coleman and Larry Gelbart. And so I thought, you know, if there's a chance that we could revive the American side of this equation, working with these two amazing men, we had a really good shot. Although everything is a risk in theater. And there are very few truly original musicals that are written from scratch, not based on other existing properties. Ours was inspired by Mickey Spillane novels and detective stories and film noir, but the story itself and the telling of two stories. That's one of the things about the City of Angels. It takes longer to describe it than to sit through the entire show.

[16:40] Jill Gold: Exactly. I've taken so many notes for this episode and sometimes I can record an episode and just speak off the cuff. With this show, trying to translate it into a podcast form is really challenging. So congratulations and thank you for that.

[16:56] David Zippel: Well, and essentially, I'll take a stab at it. I haven't done this in a while, but the writer named Stein, who's written a series of detective novels about a detective named Stone, and he's coming to Hollywood to turn that first novel into a screenplay. And we see Stein, the writer, writing that screenplay in living color as we see the screenplay come to life on stage in black and white. So it sort of unfolds in a lot of interesting, complicated ways that aren't complicated if you're watching it, but to describe it is confusing.

[17:33] Jill Gold: Absolutely. It's very, very visual in terms of storytelling. In fact, I think Jill would probably know this as well as I, but there were more set changes in the show than had ever been on stage in a Broadway theater up until that moment. I think there were 35 or 36. And Larry Gelbart actually had a quote about that. Quote, the stage manager has a cue every eight seconds, said Gelbart. It's like O'Hare Airport backstage.

[18:02] David Zippel: Yes. And that's why you are the guest on this episode, Miss Jill Gold. Absolutely.

[18:08] Jill Gold: David, let's talk about your collaborators, shall we? Because of the three, you're the only one left.

[18:16] David Zippel: Boom. And I'd never got the chance to meet Cy Coleman. You're the closest chance I'm going to have to meeting Cy Coleman and Larry Gelbart. So tell me about these guys. We did an episode last year because it was an election year all about Will Rogers Folly. So we went into a deep dive on Cy Coleman. He usually worked with, or I guess not usually, but a lot of his big hits were with female lyricists like Carolyn Lee and Dorothy Fields, Betty Comden. So what was it like working with him? And did you feel like you two complemented each other?

[18:48] David Zippel: Well, we got along really well. I was really lucky to have a shot at even writing this show. And essentially it was a bunch of people that knew me that kept calling Cy and saying, you should write with this kid. I wasn't in fact a kid at the time. And it took him about five years to finally pick up the phone and call me about doing something. And he called me about a different show that really didn't interest me, but writing with Cy Coleman interested me a lot. Of course. I went with him two or three times on the other show and said, you know, I was hoping when you called me that you were calling me about what I had read in the New York Times was a detective story musical with a jazz score that you were writing with Larry Gelbart called Death is for Suckers. That was the title.

[19:40] Jill Gold: Oh, how funny.

[19:41] David Zippel: And Cy said, well, we're talking to a lot of big shots for that show. And I said, well, would you consider me? And he said, you know, I'll talk to Larry. And then three months went by and he called me up and said, let's take a shot at this. Let's see if our collaboration works. And what they proposed was that we would write three songs after which we would stop and look at what we had accomplished and decide whether we would all go forward together, which was a very polite way of saying whether or not I was fired at that point, Larry had only written a detective story and he wasn't planning on writing the framing story about Stein that he hadn't even crossed his mind about the writer writing a detective story was just a spoof.

And so I wrote, there was a melody that Cy gave me and I wrote the lyric and it was, it turned out to be lost and found. And I loved it. Larry loved it. So we went on to the second one, which was another melody first song. And I heard this melody and I thought, oh my God, if I can write this song, if I can write a lyric that they are happy with, not only will I get this job, but I will have written a standard. Cause I thought the melody was so beautiful and that was with every breath I take and they loved it. And we never looked back from then on it. Should we just move forward together?

[21:04] Jill Gold: Um, you're killing me. You like, like, I don't know baseball metaphors, but like, that's like hitting them out of the park two in a row, right in the way off the top. And with no dribbling at all, it was really exciting for me. And I, it was always the entire experience was a pinch me experience. Can this really be happening? Um, Larry and, and Jill can confirm this was the warmest, most charming, amazing man. Cy was delightful in a very different way. And, uh, Larry from the get-go treated me like I was a colleague, an equal side treated me like a treasured protege. Eventually our friendship changed as, you know, as we, after the success of city of angels and, and he was very kind to me through the whole experience, uh, we became colleagues and, and, and friends and, and move forward on that basis. But I still was proving myself to Cy and Larry Gelbart, on the other hand, acted as if I had already proved myself, which was very generous on his part because there was a lot of faith involved.

[22:16] Jill Gold: Sure. Sure. But I mean, you also came back with, if you're not celibate, we can raise hell a bit. So it would be like, all right, I think you know what you're doing.

[22:21] David Zippel: Wow. Well, and I had just had a conversation with somebody asking me whether we made up Mallory's name to rhyme with salary. And I said, Oh, her name is Mallory Kingsley. And I found the rhyme from her name. You're like, that's my job.

[22:36] Jill Gold: That's so great. Now, uh, Larry Gelbart, we haven't done an episode on funny thing happened on the way to the forum, but that's probably what he's, uh, up at this up until this point, what he's best known for in the Broadway musical world. And, uh, I mean, king of comedy, in movie land, he had been nominated for Oscars for Tootsie and, um, Oh God, is that right?

[23:03] David Zippel: That, uh, and he created mash for television and I mean, mash, right? Exactly. Now I didn't realize that he was born and raised in Beverly Hills. Basically he, he grew up in Beverly Hills. And so the knowledge and the kind of satirical wealth that he had to pull from in terms of spoofing Hollywood was pretty deep.

[23:30] Jill Gold: Yes. And he was also, as I think you can see in the television show mash had some pretty progressive ideas that he was always trying to get into his work. And, you know, with what David said about Larry treating him as, as an equal, Larry was like that with everybody, a lot of creative teams, even directors to some extent sometimes, but, but especially writers, lyricists, composers, um, don't always acknowledge the stage managers, except to say, I need a rewrite, you know, that sort of thing. And in rehearsals, the other stage managers, I got their comments and the things they remember are Larry and Pat Gelbart loved being in rehearsals. Larry was the most fun when he and his wife, Pat would hang out in the stage manager's office before a show and he would crack one-liners at everything.

Um, I was lucky enough, he and I got along very well. And he hired me to do a couple of just reading workshops with him after City of Angels. Um, one was a Lenny Bruce musical that he was asked to show doctor. And then we, uh, David and Larry put together a Cy Coleman review called the best is yet to come. And I did that with them and just a lovely man. He gave me a huge coffee table, film noir book with a inscription of gratitude for my work. I mean, just a love. And I was the third stage manager. I wasn't the big boss on that one. Right. And just a lovely, lovely guy.

[25:01] David Zippel: That's so beautiful to hear. I love that. And I honestly wouldn't have guessed with his wicked sense of humor. That's what made it so fun to hang around him.

[25:07] Jill Gold: Now with his, uh, knowledge and upbringing in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, was this whole thing, his idea?

[25:15] David Zippel: Oh, um, well, absolutely. Going back to the story about the moment we decided to move forward as a team, uh, we'd written three songs. I think we may have done the fourth song. And Larry said, you know, what you and Sire doing is going to be new for Broadway. I mean, no, one's really done a true jazz score. And what I'm doing is just a spoof of detective stories or film noir that that's been done before. I want to figure out a way to do something that holds my interest. And that, that I think will live up to, to be as fresh as what you're doing. And he said, give me a few months. So he took, he paused for three months, Larry Assay and I continued to work on the outline of the detective story.

We found another spot or two that would, that would be part of whatever Larry came up with. And he invited us to come out to Los Angeles about, about, uh, three months later. And he pitched the idea of Stein and stone and the black and white and the color and the two stories going together. So we thought that was great. And we started together from the very beginning and outlined the entire show. Then we went back and spotted all the songs. So we, we were part of this thing that all three of us from the very outset, and we're very pleased with ourselves and we're excited about the outline. And, and Larry told me, he said, this is going to be some, some people's favorite musical. And I said, not just mine. And he said, no, people are going to love this show.

[27:47] Jill Gold: David's raising her hand. How long did it take to write it? And were like, was welcome to the club that that whole flop was that happening at the same time? Because they happened in the same calendar year, right? So I, um, so I liked to, he taught me this. You have to just keep a lot of pots boiling on this, on the stove, because you never know when something's going to go. And, and I can tell you that because whoever counted on COVID, we were in preview City of Angels for revival in London. A year ago was March with Vanessa Williams playing a Laura Kingsley, the femme fatale. And it was a beautiful production, really great cast vocally as good, or maybe better than we've ever had. And we, the previews were sold out and we got through our eighth preview.

I think it was a matinee on a Saturday. And I came back to my hotel and turned on CNN while I scarfed down some dinner. And they announced that they were on the following Monday, they were going to end flights between London and the UK and the United States. So I called the producer and said, I think I'm going to, can you get me a ticket? I want to go home the next day. And I did. And the following Monday, they shut down the West End entirely. And so, yeah, there are a lot of unexpected things that happened in the theater. So it's good to keep lots of projects going. So I followed through with Welcome to the Club while we were casting City of Angels. I think.

[28:21] Jill Gold: Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Did you have any expectations or were you just like, I'm living the dream? Who cares what happens?

[28:25] David Zippel: Well, actually, I was living the dream.

[28:28] David Zippel: I was very aware that it had been 10 years since I finished law school that I was trying to be a lyric writer for the theatre, and I realized that this show was going to open, and if it did not succeed, it could take me another 10 years to get a show on Broadway, which also has a 1 in 8 chance or 1 in 12 chance. I'm not sure what the current statistics are. I thought, this better be a success. What an opportunity. If this didn't work, then I thought the chances that I could actually stay in this business as a lyricist were pretty slim. Did you have any idols or people that you looked up to in terms of your lyric writing? Absolutely. Stephen Sondheim, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Alan J. Lerner, and probably my favorite is Sheldon Harnick.

[29:19] Jill Gold: Oh, that just made me happy. We love to talk about She Loves Me on the podcast. In fact, we look for an opportunity at any chance to drop She Loves Me, so thank you for giving us that opportunity. The She Loves Me moment is always when people are talking about writing lyrics that define the character. There's a line in She Loves Me where the young man is talking about the woman that he writes love letters to. He talks about looking for the time, quote, when I meet my lady of the letters who puts tiny faces in her O's. That just says everything about him and the other character. It's so beautifully written. Anyway, I love Sheldon Harnick and She Loves Me.

[30:04] David Zippel: That's fantastic. Okay, I'm already loving this. A couple more things. You go into rehearsals. Talk to me about the tech. Jill, I'm sure you can add a few things here. We can always talk more about this later. With it being such a huge show in terms of scene changes, what was that tech like?

[30:16] Jill Gold: It was insane. First of all, we didn't go out of town because of the enormity of the show. Also, Larry and Cy and Michael Blakemore, the director, didn't want to go out of town. I, of course, being young and excited about it, was desperate to go out of town because I thought it's the best way to get a show in good shape. We were opening cold in New York, which was terrifying. The set was so huge and it took so long to get it into the theater that tech was very long. By the time we did our first preview, intermission was probably 35, 40 minutes because Act One was in the alley behind the theater, Act Two. Then they would do the changeover. It took at least two weeks before they could actually figure out a way to get all of it in its place. Jill can tell you better than anyone.

[31:24] David Zippel: David and Larry and Cy did not make it easy on the stage crew or the stage managers. Act One has 20 scenes. Act Two has 17 scenes. Some of those are 55 seconds, 40 seconds, 35 seconds. Each one of those involves some sort of scene change. Sometimes it was just a phone folding out from the proscenium so that we could do an onstage change while Uli was on the phone for 45 seconds or something. Every single one of those involved a change. Most were changing from the film world to the real world and vice versa. It was color to black and white. Mistakes did not go unnoticed because of the drastic change in look.

[32:09] Jill Gold: I'll say something else about it that was genius though on their part. This was Robin Wagner as well, a set designer. We have to shout out Robin Wagner who was one of the great designers of Broadway. Absolutely. And what made this so worth it, we had winches. We didn't have automation then. We had winches. Can you explain what those are?

[32:28] Jill Gold: Winches are when you have a set piece. It can be a flat piece that you put furniture on top of called a pallet. And what you do is you have what's called a dog which is basically a slot, a metal slot that's attached to a cable in the floor. It's like a cable car. And you drop another piece of metal, a knife, through the unit into that dog. And then when the cable moves, the unit moves, you hope. It doesn't always happen. A knife and a dog, what a terrible image.

[33:05] David Zippel: I know. Seriously. I think somebody who had issues with them named those purposely. But let's knife the dog. But nowadays, you still do that. But it's all computerized. Someone pushes a button and the cables move and everything happens. Back in the day, someone had to hand crank those cables backwards and forwards. I just want you to know, Jill, that my dog is within earshot of this. So be careful.

[33:31] Jill Gold: So sorry. Don't terrorize the poor puppy, please. But the genius of using units that travel side to side and up and down. And we had sliders. So it was very cinematic. We did lots of pans. We did lots of sweeps. We did irises with the sliders coming in. So everything looked cinematic and it was beautiful. One of the most amazing moments was when the detective goes to the billionaire, I guess millionaire at that point, mansion. And you see him walk through a series of sliding doors. She goes, this way, please. And all these doors open. And as they walk through them, another set opens and another set opens. I think there were three sets. And finally, they were in this space where they're wheeling in the iron lung. And it was the solarium. It was quite dramatic. And she walks up to him, the gold digger and says, you look wonderful.

[34:31] David Zippel: I think that that is what I love most about this show is that this was the moment when American musical theater finally made some progress in synthesizing the power of design and spectacle that shows like Phantom, you know, that had come from England, fusing that with the traditions of musical comedy, because the intelligence and wit of the writing is every bit as impressive as the design and vice versa. They are complimenting each other constantly throughout the show. As collaborators, all the kudos to you guys.

[35:02] Jill Gold: Well, thank you. It was a very happy team. Everyone loved one another and everyone got along beautifully. And the cast also was just filled with wonderful people. We were very lucky.

[35:17] David Zippel: That's amazing. So the show opens, you guys get maybe one of the best reviews that Frank Rich has ever given in the New York Times. Frank Rich, who was known as the butcher of Broadway, right? He could take down a musical with just one review. And with City of Angels, he gave you guys such a glowing review that box office soared after that review came out. And we had very little sales prior to that review. So and thankfully, most all the reviews were pretty good. Ironically, there was one kind of lukewarm review and it was Clive Barnes who was in The Post. But and it shows you how precarious theater was, particularly at that time. If he had still written for The New York Times, that review would not have saved the show. And The New York Times was pretty much everything wrote on what The New York Times thought. So we were very lucky that the butcher of Broadway had replaced Clive Barnes in Frank Rich's book.

[36:20] David Zippel: That is kind of a collection of all of his reviews at the end of the City of Angels one. He writes an addendum that the night that he saw the show, the heat was broken and the entire audience was freezing and bundled up in their parkas. And he still enjoyed the show that much. And it really proved to him the power of theater and transporting you to a place of true enjoyment. It was so cold that the bass fiddle cracked.

[36:44] Jill Gold: Oh, crap. Wow. That's crazy. Which speaking of instruments, can we talk about this band? Because oh, my God, Billy Byers, who is the orchestrator with Cy Coleman, both on this and Will Rogers, right? He created if you haven't people if you haven't heard this cast album, the original cast album, go listen to it. It is one of the snazziest sounding things you'll ever hear in your life.

[37:06] David Zippel: Well, Billy used to refer to the orchestra as his wet dream orchestra. Best musicians in every category, the best horn players, the best string players, everyone was stellar. The pianist size to say, you're my second favorite pianist.

[37:30] Jill Gold: That's great. So now it comes to Tony Award time. You guys are a hit in the town. So is Grand Hotel, which was another show that very intelligently used design in its storytelling. So you guys, between the two of you, you really are creating momentum back in the musical theater world. Once we get to Tony night, Grand Hotel wins some, you guys win some, including you yourself. Can you talk to us about that evening?

[37:57] David Zippel: Sure, it was thrilling. We won all the major awards, best book, best score, best musical, best set. That's right. Best actor and best featured actress. That is that's huge. I totally downplay that. You're right. You guys swept in for all intents Grand Hotel, I have to say, was a gorgeous show and, and we didn't have any choreography. So Tommy won for that. I think, I think Tommy won best director. I won't say Michael Blakemore was robbed, but it was certainly his contribution to the show was extraordinary. And, but he, he made it up. He won best director for play and best director for a musical on the show. So that's director for play and best director for a musical on the same night, several years later. So that was the kiss me Kate year, right? Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Good for him. He's he knows comedy. He originally did noises off. So if you want somebody who understands how to visually give a theatrical audience, some comedy, Michael Blakemore's your guy.

[39:12] David Zippel: And although I was the newcomer on the team, I will proudly take credit that Michael Blakemore was my idea. Because I really, that's awesome. He hadn't done a musical, certainly not a big Broadway musical. Sure, sure. And, and we were looking for a director. And I had seen a play called made in Bangkok that was in London that had 25 scenes in it. And it was so elegant and seamlessly done that and noises off, of course, was so funny, that I thought we should talk to him. And, and, and Michael always says, when I started doing City of Angels, that was the first time I was really in show business. Up until then, he was in the theater, but now he was in show business. That's another lovely man. Another lovely person that you just wanted to be in the room with and not only very smart and very funny and very good at what he did, but also just charming.

[40:31] Jill Gold: Yeah, this is so fantastic. Because I feel like on this podcast, when we're talking a lot about shows in our history, including shows directed and choreographed by my friend Jerry Robbins, there's this generation that's like the generation of great manipulators, who are true, true geniuses, but create trauma while they do it. And it's so great to hear about a team that it was exactly the opposite of that.

[41:22] David Zippel: I will tell you one instance where it wasn't. Years after the LA production and the national tour, we did a production of the McCallum Theater in Palm Desert. David and Larry were both there, I believe I know Larry was. And it was the last time that the three of us were together. Right. And, and it was sort of like a reprise slash encores version in that the band was on stage. But we still had staging, we still had some scenery, we had the desks that were sort of all important and that sort of thing. But it was a very truncated version, no drops or anything. And so we also did some trims in the show itself, because we didn't need all the incidental music because we weren't doing big scene shifts and that sort of thing.

And my standalone memory from that production is being in this very small, narrow stage management office with Larry on the phone, landlines back then, with Sai. And Larry had made trims and, and you know, there were things and Sai was saying, I'm not cutting anything. And Larry and they got into a yelling argument, which I had never heard Larry yell. I mean, and I could hear Sai through the phone from the other side of the room. And I was just like, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here. But it was also fascinating.

[42:11] Jill Gold: Oh, I bet. I bet. Well, especially when your score is like being touted as this jazz masterpiece, and then they're like, alright, so we need you to cut 20%. Like, wow.

[42:17] David Zippel: It was only scene change music and underscoring. Oh my gosh, really? Okay. Brilliant, I have to say. I mean, part of what Sai did that was so spectacular, it was like scoring a film. There's a scene where there's a party, and there's an onstage cocktail pianist. And even the underscoring of that scene is spectacular, because each moment is scored with the theme of the real life person. That's, I mean, it's really clever. And so I can understand him not wanting to do that. But on the other hand, what we're supposed to do sit there.

[42:43] David Zippel:

[43:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[43:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[44:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[45:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[45:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[46:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[46:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[46:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[46:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[46:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[47:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[47:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[47:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[47:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[47:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[47:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[48:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[48:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[48:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[48:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[48:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[48:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[49:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[49:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[49:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[49:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[49:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[49:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[50:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[50:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[50:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[50:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[50:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[50:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[51:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[51:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[51:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[51:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[51:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[51:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[52:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[52:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[52:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[52:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[52:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[53:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[53:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[53:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[53:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons:

[53:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But for the most part, we'll be gliding through it. And if there are any moments that you want to talk about or have memories of, by all means, I have favorite lines and some scenes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. Favorite lyrics scenes. Absolutely. The show begins and we're in the world of the film. You got grayscale costumes, scenery, lighting is cool, so that it has that very stark quality. And we meet Stone, who is a private eye, right? He's an investigator. He's just been shot. But even though he has like a bullet in his shoulder, he couldn't be cooler. Like this is the coolest cat you've ever met in your life. Played by James Norton, won a Tony for it. Any memories about Jimmy?

[54:14] David Zippel: He was lovely. He probably inwardly rolled his eyes a lot because he knew the show and we were having to remount with a lot of new people. But he had Randy Graff still from New York to play off of. And they were a well-oiled machine. But it never seemed like they'd done it before. I mean, Randy Graff told a story at Stars in the House. They did a City of Angels reunion, which everyone should watch if you like the show, the original cast. And every night, Uli wrote a note to Stone as part of the action. And every night that note went off stage in Stone's costume pocket and his dresser would take it out of his pocket and save it, unbeknownst to them. And at the end of the run, he presented Randy with every note she had ever written over the course of the run in like a scrapbook. And then she gave it to Jim Norton.

[55:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh.

[55:28] David Zippel: I think that's the story. Watch the video and make sure I'm right. But it's something like that. And it's lovely.

[55:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's so freaking cute.

[55:35] David Zippel: Here's, here's a story. So, we were trying to rehearse a replacement for James, who would go on the road with us while we were still playing at the Shubert obviously because we needed to have people in place. And they hired David Soul, who was Hutch from Starsky and Hutch. I don't know if he'd ever done a musical. I don't remember. But he was a well-known actor and they thought he would be a draw since everybody knew him from TV and Starsky and Hutch was still in the vocabulary. He came in. He was a nice enough guy that I recall. I was, I was playing all the parts opposite him, while the production stage manager was working with him to teach him the blocking. And he would do fine in the room. He would, you know, learn his stuff and we'd walk through it and he'd write it down. And the next night he'd come back and it was like he'd never done it.

[56:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh no.

[56:27] David Zippel: And that happened over and over. And we realized he had quite a drinking problem. And we had to fire him, but we didn't have the right to, you know, it was like, how do we tell our general manager that we want to fire Hutch? You know, because, but he just couldn't, he wasn't retaining. And so, Cy Coleman bailed us out. The PSM, Scott, called Cy and said, what are we going to do? And Cy said,

[56:58] Jill Gold: I'll take care of it. I have casting approval, so I will just call the producers and say I don't want him. And that's what happened. So David's sold. Then we got Jeff McCarthy, who was the Javert in Les Mis at the Schubert, and I had worked on that one as well. But going in, I didn't really like Jeff. It wasn't that I didn't like him. He was just, when I had worked with him on Les Mis, he wasn't very friendly. He was very standoffish. He didn't mingle. So I just thought that's how he was. He came in and he was lovely and personable and had a sense of humor and was terrific in the role. And he admitted to me once that he actually played Javert for so long that he inherited a lot of the traits of Javert.

To the detriment of his relationships and his mental health. And you know, he just became that character so much that he couldn't shake it. So that was lovely. He was terrific. And then this is near and dear to my heart, especially, we were in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. And Scott came to me and said, We have a new stone. They just hired him because Jeff was leaving. And he said, I will tell you, but you have to promise not to scream. Okay. And he said, Barry Williams. And I screamed because I am a huge Brady Bunch fan. Oh, my gosh. The great Brady. Barry came in and I got to run the entire show in his hotel room with him playing all the parts, including all the romantic interests.

And it was the highlight of my life. Don't tell my husband. No, he does. But it was great. And Barry is a lovely guy and was very kind to all his fans, growing up Brady came out while we were in Louisville. I have a picture of him holding his first copy. When we were in St. Paul, Danny Bonaduce was doing his comedy act in Minneapolis. So Barry and Phil and I jumped in a cab after the show and Barry took us to his show. So I have a picture standing between Danny Partridge and Greg Brady. These are the perks of show business, friend. What a great memory. So James Nott and Stone, aka Barry Williams, aka Jeff. He's a cool cat. He's also got just some of the best Larry Gelbar dialogue and voiceovers.

The one that I really wanted to talk about was his description of Los Angeles. It's fantastic. Here we go. He says palm trees finger the sky and there's enough sunshine to lay off some on Pittsburgh. But that's all on top. L.A., truth to tell, is not much different than a pretty girl with the clap. That's it. And New York thought that was funny. L.A. lives it right. Randy Graff actually had a great quote from it was in the Opening Night Society column talking about our opening night party. And Randy Graff's quote was in New York, they laugh here. They laugh like they know. Oh, shoot. That's revealing.

[1:00:00] David Zippel: Yes. I feel like that line hits at the top of the show. And if you get a belly laugh, you know it's going to be a good show.

[1:00:13] Jill Gold: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So at that point, of course, because it's a film where we flashback to see how this all went down, right, why he was shot. And we see Stone's secretary, who's named Uli. Uli, who is played by Randy Graff, who won a Tony Award for this role. She's the original Fontaine in Les Mis. Oh, my gosh, Les Mis is coming up left and right this episode. Giving She Loves Me a run for its money. Right. And a great, great character. She ushers in a Laura Kingsley, who's like we said, the femme fatale. And Laura is hiring Stone, the private eye, to find her stepdaughter. She's married to this, like we said, this older gentleman who's not well. And he has two children. The daughter has gone missing.

And so now she's hiring Stone to find her because it's upsetting the husband. Stone feels from the get-go that he should not take this case, but she offers him a lot of money. And she also has great legs. So he decides to do it. Now, this is when that first rewind moment happens. We see Stein, the writer, come out on his desk. And now this is all in color. The costumes are in color. The lighting is warm. And he starts, you know, X-ing out on his typewriter what he just wrote. We see the actors do all of their stuff backwards. It turns out that Stein had written this book called City of Angels. A producer by the name of Buddy, who's also a director, loved the book and wanted to turn it into a movie.

So he is working on creating the screenplay. Now, Buddy is like the stereotypical horrible Hollywood producer-director, like a Cecil B. DeMille who's just power hungry and has all of the money and awards to show for it. Like he gets stuff done. It's not that he's bad at his job. In fact, he's probably too good at it. And so now he has all of this unwieldy power that nobody can say no to, including the writer himself. Even though Stein is the writer of this movie, it seems that Buddy is completely running the show, making him change things that he doesn't want to make. And Stein is going along with it for the exact same reason that Stone is going along with taking the case because of the money.

Now, his wife, Stein's wife, who I always forget, I always get these names confused. So I'm going to skip the names and say his wife doesn't like it. And like you said with David, these women are smart and don't take BS from anybody.

[1:03:00] David Zippel: Exactly.

[1:03:00] Jill Gold: Now she has to go back to NYC to do her job. And before she leaves, she very bluntly says, and by the way, while I'm gone, if you cheat on me, I'm going to know because I always know. And you're like, oh, boy, you feel that in the gut. And it sets up that he's had infidelities.

[1:03:20] David Zippel: Exactly. This guy, he seems lost, man. You know, Stein is just lost. And it really brings into play these really beautiful themes of how do we use our art to make up for our own insecurities? And how do they play off of each other? It's a really beautiful theme that amidst all of the comedy, we see throughout the whole show.

[1:03:41] Jill Gold: Yeah, it's his growth and story arc. Now, Stone's secretary is not happy that he's taking the case just because he likes Elora and the money. And Stein's wife is upset about his infidelities and money. So these two women have this great song called What You Don't Know About Women. And I got to be honest, this is one of the songs that will not leave my mind. In fact, it's the very last button of the song is the thing that gets stuck in my brain from the show most. These two women are singing about their similar experiences, one in black and white, one in color. And they go, you're in need of a little enlightening on ladies in love, but you can't see what you don't know about women is frightening, and you don't know nothing about me. Get stuck in my head every time. Good job, David Zippel.

[1:04:37] David Zippel: Absolutely. And you I think you can watch them do that. Maybe they did. Yeah.

[1:04:43] Jill Gold: So amazing. Theater's great. Now after this, we go back to the movie. And Stone is at his apartment and he turns on the radio. And that's when we run into this Greek chorus that is essentially Manhattan transfer, right? This amazing quartet of jazz musicians and the melodies that Cy Coleman came up with are insane in terms of jazz music. A lot of them sound like Ella Fitzgerald scats. But in four-part harmony.

[1:05:16] David Zippel: Exactly.

[1:05:16] Jill Gold: And that's they also start out the show. Oh, right. The prologue. And then and scat in the dark as you're and it's it sets the whole tone for the musicality of the piece. It's so sophisticated. Crazy, crazy. I think another reason I mean, we've talked so much about the set. But one of the other reasons why I think this show doesn't get done very often, because my gosh, the musicality, the musicianship that it requires of its actors is incredible.

[1:05:45] David Zippel: Yeah, absolutely. Our Greek chorus comes out, they sing, you got to look out for yourself, which is ironic, because just as he's listening to them sing that in quotes on the radio, two thugs break down the door and beat up Stone telling him he should quit this case. Which is the Tommy Toon, Marilyn Cooper joke in that one of them is named Big Six, and one of them is named Sonny. Big Six is huge, Sonny is not. So again, they're a sight gag. But Sonny is the brains.

[1:06:11] Jill Gold: Right, right, right. And the other guy's the brawn. Cut to Buddy, who's once again, the producer of the film. And he's reading that scene and his secretary comes in. Now this is the moment that we realize that these characters exist in both worlds, because Buddy's secretary is also Stone's secretary, aka Randy Graff, aka Fantine. Aka Uli or Donna. Who isn't Randy Graff?

[1:06:38] David Zippel: Right. Next in the story, the important things that we got to cover is that Stone keeps the case of the missing girl, even though he got beat up because Allura promises him even more money and a little nookie on the side. And they do that by singing the tennis song, which is a great metaphor for their flirting. And the double entendres are so clever. Once again, your 10-year-old won't get them, but you will find them hysterical. And another one that could be inappropriate, except Allura is leading it. The woman is doing the flirting to get her and it's not the guy being creepy.

[1:07:15] Jill Gold: That's so true. It could have been baby, it's cold outside, but it's not. We also have another flashback to learn about why Stone is a private eye. It turns out he used to be a cop. And he was in love with this woman who was a lounge club singer who wanted to be a star. Her name was Bobby. And Bobby is played by the same woman who is Stein's wife. Everybody still with me? Good. Now, this is when we hear that amazing song that David was talking about, With Every Breath I Take, which is also I think one of the lowest songs any females had to sing in a musical. There's not a morning I won't open up my eyes. It makes me laugh every time. What ends up happening is she sleeps with a producer director by the name of Irving, who is also played by the producer director from real life.

In order to get a role, Stone comes in, there's a fight, a gun goes off, and the producer director dies. So because he was involved with that he gets kicked off of the police force and is forced to become a private eye. And he loses his girl in the process. The irony being that because the same actress plays Gabby and Bobby, Bobby is having an infidelity to get what she wants. And Gabby is telling Stein he can't. The projection is deep. You can find all sorts of ties like that, that don't necessarily matter in the storytelling, but they were smart enough to put them in there.

[1:09:01] David Zippel: Yeah, so smart. Now we're back in the present. Stone is still looking for the missing stepdaughter. The Greek chorus sings, everybody's got to be somewhere. That leads into this montage that finally brings him back to his own apartment. And lo and behold, what does he find in his apartment but the stepdaughter, aka Mallory, in his bed wearing just a sheet singing Lost and Found, which we just learned was the first song that Cy Coleman and David Zippel wrote together. And the surprise music that Phil picked as the first dance at our wedding reception. He proposed to me with Stay With Me on stage with some of our cast members of City of Angels in a show that was not City of Angels.

[1:09:48] Jill Gold: Speechless. That's so cute. He did. He did good.

[1:09:55] David Zippel: That's so, so sweet. So Mallory tries to seduce Stone. She gets far enough that somebody comes in and takes a photo of them. A very compromising photo. He's angry about it. His gun gets stolen. Then the next thing we learn is that the doctor of the guy in the iron lung has been shot with that gun. Dun dun dun! That means that Stone is once again involved with a murder, which brings in one of the people that I really want to talk about, Munoz. Munoz is obviously a Latinx police officer. He has an axe to grind with Stone because he believes that Stone got away with murdering the dude in his girlfriend's dressing room. Now he's been just waiting for the opportunity to arrest him. He has this whole speech where he says, the only reason you got away with murder is because of the color of your skin. Us brown folks don't have the same privilege. He's lecturing Stone on his white privilege. 30 years ago. 30 years!

[1:11:12] David Zippel: This is what I'm talking about in terms of Larry Gelbart and his social commentary. Buddy, the producer slash director, chimes in and tells Stein, you gotta change that. Like, we can't be talking about these social issues in this movie. People are going to hate that. And I just want to read from the script here. Buddy says, "This town's crawling with congressmen. The last thing I need is for you to get blacklisted. You got any messages? Put them in a letter. Then don't mail it. I don't care what it is. Just change all that brown, black, and yellow to red, white, and blue."

[1:11:48] Jill Gold: Which is also interesting because the coroner in that scene is Asian. In the script, we had an Asian actor. Obviously, Alvin Ng was great, but it's actually Yamoto in the script, purposely Asian.

[1:12:01] David Zippel: Wow, wow, wow. So, this is really potent stuff that I think is really interesting and also reminds me that there was a time in which social commentary was considered politically incorrect. We have now completely reversed that. And now if something is politically incorrect, it's because it isn't being sensitive to some of these social issues. But it wasn't that long ago when being politically incorrect had the exact opposite definition. Crazy. So, Stein caves and changes that whole speech, which is the moment that Stone, let's face it, it's his alter ego, it's his doppelganger, breaks through the barrier of movie and real life and verbally chastises Stein for caving. He's like, come on, man. You know that this is what you want to write.

What are you doing? It gives way to one of the great numbers of the show, "You're Nothing Without Me," in which they're telling the other person, basically, that they're nothing without them. And that's how the first act closes. It's a great one.

[1:13:09] Dina Srebotnjak: And again, the lyric writing, I've got to find another word than clever, smart, intelligent, witty, but they all still apply. David wrote for Stein, the creator of the character that he is verbally dueling with, "You are a novel pain. I tell you, you're out of my mind." I mean, it's just so damn good. Absolutely. So smart. So great. Now, Act Two has twists and turns galore. We're not going to go through them because they make your head spin. But we can say that that includes meeting the actual actors who will be playing some of these parts that we got to know in Act One in the future movie. Is that a good way of saying it?

[1:13:54] Dina Srebotnjak: Absolutely. And that gives the opportunity for Larry Gelbart to write things like when they discover that Jimmy Powers, the crooner, is up for the role of Stone, "a tenor I wouldn't give you two fives for," right?

[1:14:09] David Zippel: Oh my gosh, I missed that one. That's hilarious. One of my favorites is, and I've actually quoted it since reading the script, Elora is going to be played by this woman named Carla, who is the wife of Buddy. Oh my gosh, you guys, I'm so sorry if you can't keep this straight. She has these big earrings because she's also having an affair with Jimmy Powers. So she has these big earrings and Buddy's like, "You shouldn't wear those earrings. They make your head look big." And she's like, "Really? I like them." And he says, "Talk to me later when someone wants to put cream cheese and locks on them." Great, great line. Such fun stuff. One of the really important plot points, however, is that the secretary starts sleeping with the writer.

And despite the wife warning him, he is insecure and needs somebody to make him feel better. And so he starts sleeping with her. And this character, you know, who's the secretary in both worlds, she finds herself in this place of what's the right way of saying it? Always being the second fiddle, always. Sort of always the mistress, never the bride.

[1:15:30] Jill Gold: Fair enough. That's quite a new phrase. Always the mistress, never the bride. Maybe that's a T-shirt. It comes to a head of this great song that Randy Graff sang called "You Can Always Count on Me," which has now, I think, become a Broadway standard. This one has so many of my favorite lyrics. So she's talking about all of the men she's had in her life, for better or worse, mostly for worse. And she says, "When Joe, who swore he's single, got me sorta crocked, the beast. I woke up only slightly shocked that I defrocked a priest." I mean, come on. The interior rhymes all over the place. And then if that wasn't good enough, then she goes, "Or else I attract the guys who are longing to do my hair.

You can always count on me." I mean, oh my gosh. You can dig into the script and score and never find your way out. After we realized that that affair is happening, the wife finds out she's, you get the feeling that she's done with her husband, the writer, because this is, once again, he's cheating on her. And that's when we can probably skip to the film being made, the film being made, which is how we get the whole resolution of both the story that we've been seeing in the movie and in real life. The ending of the movie is that Alara, the femme fatale, I mean, we knew she was evil all along, was getting her stepson to plan her stepdaughter's disappearance. Like she was kind of facilitating this whole disappearance thing with the hope that they would all inherit the sick, rich husband's money.

However, Alara didn't tell the stepson that she was then planning to get rid of him and the stepdaughter and the husband and take all of the money herself. Is that a fair way of saying it? There are more spoilers we could throw in there, but I won't. This will give you a reason to investigate the show even more. But that is kind of the ending. And as they're going to film this ending, because for some odd reason the director wants to film the ending first, Stein is on set watching all of these actors who are horribly miscast in their actual roles. He yells cut, which is obviously a huge no-no. Only the director gets to yell cut. But he does. He tries to take control back. And the director, of course, loses his mind and orders him off the set.

At that point, Stone, the detective, the private eye who we've loved all of this time, appears at the typewriter. And he starts writing in the way that Stein has been writing and creates a happy ending for the real life. As Stone has been crafting the movie world, now the movie world is crafting the real world. And that gives way to a finale in which the wife comes back. Stein and the wife and the private eye, Stone, are kind of this happy threesome. And they sing "You're Nothing Without Me," like a reprise, but now it's a positive reprise. It's interesting because some people have trouble with the fact that Gabby does come back to Stein so quickly and easily. There's not a total resolution of that infidelity we've made up sort of thing.

But it never really bothered me because Stone is writing it. You know what I mean? So it's a new scene. Maybe he's tossing out everything that went before, if you want to get really sort of metaphysical about it. And that's another instance, that grand finale. You see the picture in a lot of the reviews or online of everybody in the cast standing around on the film set, and Luther in the iron lung, and Stone, Stein, and Gabby all up on a big cherry picker lift. The three of them are in this basket up high like a crane. Well, guess what didn't happen on tour? Or some cities had one or something, you know, we would try to do something, but that's something that got cut pretty quickly in any city.

Well, of course it did now that I think about it. But it is such a really beautiful stage picture of what happiness looks like. In the reality that we've been seeing, Stein is not a whole person. But with these other attributes, either from his art or from his marriage, he is well on his way to claiming back his life. And in a very literal way, he's now above all that.

[1:20:10] Jill Gold: Yeah, he's above it. You're absolutely right. Because he does leave Hollywood. He says like, screw it. I'm not interested. This is not my story. You can make this movie, you can make as many millions as you want, but I need to have some integrity in my life.

[1:20:27] David Zippel: And what a great symbol for that cherry picker to take him up above it all.

[1:20:32] Jill Gold: Well said, Jill Gold. Thank you. Oh my gosh, I hope everybody is still listening. Thank God you edit. Anything else you want to say about this really interesting show? I mean, we've talked so much about it. Stage management is often a thankless job. You need to sort of have inner pride and do your job well and know that you've accomplished it. And there's not a Tony Award for it there. You know, people who know about it will give you kudos, but that's not why you do it. You do it for things like the perks of "City of Angels." You do it for getting to be a part of a show that is just so good. I could have been running it for the past 30 years and never get tired of it. But then it's also sitting in the room with that creative team and that director and watching them work.

And so many of us from that L.A. production and that tour are still friends on Facebook and in real life. And you'll see if you watch the "City of Angels" stars in the house, that Broadway cast has that bond still, too. And I think it's just a show that brings people together in so many ways. And many shows do that, I understand. But this one was just special for that group of people at that time. And I really hope that the London revival happens. I gotta see Vanessa Williams as Laura Kingsley. Are you kidding me? For everyone's sake, especially David's, but for everyone's sake. But then I hope that also leads to more productions being done, especially with today's technology without the millions and millions of dollars of the original.

[1:22:04] David Zippel: That's incredible. Me, too. I can't wait to see it. I've never seen it on stage. I was going to ask if you'd ever done it.

[1:22:14] Jill Gold: No, read the script for the first time to do this episode. And I can usually read a script pretty quickly. This one took some time. It's dense. This script reads on the page. The actors made it better and funnier. They elevated it even more. But the starting, the ground level was already wonderful. So yeah, you just never get tired of it.

[1:23:05] Jill Gold: David Zippel, stage manager extraordinaire. How do we follow you and everything you're up to?

[1:23:10] Jill Gold: I am very fortunately the co-author of a book called "Stage Management." It's by Lawrence Stern and Jill Gold. Lawrence Stern wrote the original in the early, early 70s. I read it in college. And he asked me to be the co-author a couple of editions ago. We have drastically rewritten it, ripped it apart, updated it. It's a beginning stage manager book. It's great for students. A lot of people use it as textbooks, but it's coming out this fall. So even if you had an older version of the book, get it. I think every actor, designer, playwright, producer should know what a stage manager does so that you respect that position. But also, you know, the millions of things we're doing behind the scenes for you. So buy the book or get the e-version or steal somebody else's copy. But that's my plug. I do have a few things sort of in the works, but they're all just fingers crossed still in pandemic land. So I'm not going to bring any of them up.

[1:24:09] David Zippel: We will keep our fingers crossed with you. And thank you for everything that you've done and continue to do. And I hope that this was a small token of our appreciation for all of the stage managers out there.

[1:24:23] Jill Gold: Well, if I can't do what I love to do, talking about it is the next best thing. So thank you for giving me the opportunity.

[1:24:28] David Zippel: My pleasure. My honor. And to everybody out there. Everybody's in a movie. Sometimes we just turn the camera on.

[1:24:42] Jill Gold: Mind blown.

[1:24:49] Jeffrey wondered what phrase we had stuck in our head. Can we do the, um, the, um.

[1:24:56] Jill Gold: You're quite a masterful tattoo. And it's your lucky day to stumble on us. You'll find us a blessed, hearty, sings a grand, happy song. And it's your lucky day to stumble on us. You'll find us a blessed, hearty, sings a grand. Your wife says we won't refuse. So take off your shoes.

[1:25:22] David Zippel: That's been going through our heads over and over and over.