Senator Joe

For decades, composers and writers have been bringing history to the stage. There’s shows like The Sound of Music, Bandstand, Cabaret, and South Pacific that use historical events as a background to tell a story. Then there are musicals that focus on particular figures in American history, like the mega-hit Hamilton and the other founding fathers musical, 1776. Then there’s Assassins, Parade, Fiorello and others that also focus on singular individuals and explore their stories and motivations.

But one unusual musical from 1989 chose a notorious politician from the 1950s as its central character. Senator Joe was based on the political life of Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, who was a ruthless anti-communist firebrand. He rose to public prominence by alleging that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the US State Department and other federal agencies as well as universities and Hollywood.

Joe McCarthy speech: One communist on the faculty of one University is one communist...and even, even if there were only one communist in the State Department, even if there are only one communist in the State Department, that would still be one communist too many.

This is McCarthy speaking at the 1952 Republican National Convention, and the rhetoric only escalated when he was re-elected and started holding his infamous hearings to root out communism from the government and American society. Civil rights and free speech be damned, McCarthy was determined to bring the accused in front of his Senate committee and expose the Commies one way or another.

Mccarthy’s particular firebrand was certainly theatrical. His rise to fame and power and his ultimate downfall were even more dramatic. And so a musical about him emerged from the ambitious collaboration of the renowned director of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, Tom O’Horgan, and a young actor-turned-writer named Perry Kroeger.

Perry Kroeger: Senator Joe was never meant to be a Broadway show. We wrote it as an off-Broadway political cartoon and a sort of Brechtian pastiche for the 80s.

Theater historian and friend of the podcast, Mark Robinson, wrote about Senator Joe and says, “At best, O’Horgan’s work was lively, abrasive and all encompassing. At worst it was gaudy, pretentious and downright incoherent. And none of his Broadway outings showcased his weaknesses more than the incomprehensible 1989 fiasco Senator Joe.” And to illustrate just how outlandish and unconventional this show was: it included a musical number where famed journalist Edward R. Murrow guides the audience through Joe McCarthy's alcohol-ravaged liver…yeah, a choreographed song that take place inside a liver.

McCarthy did fatally succumb to his alcoholism in 1957, just three years after being disgraced on live television and losing his power in Washington. Ironically, Senator Joe the musical also met a dismal end after just three Broadway previews and closed its chapter with the show’s producer being arrested in a Manhattan phone booth. As you will hear, the story of this unlikely musical demonstrates that the Broadway theater in New York City can be just as intense and corrupt as the political theater in Washington, DC.

"Welcome to Season Two of Closing Night, a theater history podcast that dives into the stories of Broadway's famous and forgotten shows that closed too soon. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, an actor and producer based in New York City, and this season I'll be your guide as we uncover the mysteries of productions that never even made it to opening night. Whether they closed out of town or during previews, you'll hear firsthand from those involved, revealing just how unpredictable—and unforgiving—the path to Broadway can be."

TWO CHARACTERS

The 1960s were undoubtedly a tumultuous time in American culture, politics, and even theater. For Broadway, 1969 was a pivotal year as traditional shows competed against newer, edgier works at the Tony Awards. On one hand, James Earl Jones won Best Actor for a racially-charged play called The Great White Hope, which also won Best Play. While on the musical side, Kander and Ebb’s classic musical Zorba was up for Best Musical alongside other traditional shows like Promises, Promises and the eventual winner 1776. But in that mix was a subversive, rock musical that would influence a generation and ultimately change the direction of Broadway, and that was the musical Hair. It’s director Tom O’Horgan was also nominated for Best Director.

Now, O’Horgan was a free-spirited gay hippie, who began his career at Chicago's experimental Playwrights Theatre Club before becoming a key figure in New York's downtown theater scene at La MaMa. There he directed, performed, wrote music, and built sets for numerous productions put on in the club, new plays by Rochelle Owens, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and others. But his goal was always to shake up Broadway, and with the groundbreaking success of Hair still playing to sold-out audiences, O’Horgan’s career exploded in 1971 with multiple projects, including Lenny, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Inner City (at one point all four of these shows were running simultaneously). And interestingly enough in each of these productions, O’Horgan assistant was none other than Harvey Milk, and the two even lived together for a time. And come to find out, Milk had acted in some of O’Horgan’s plays back at La MaMa in the 1960s, and had even landed a role in the film Chafed Elbows, scored by O’Horgan and directed by Robert Downey Sr. in 1966. How about that?

Ok, back to 1972—the writers of Hair brought a new rock musical to Broadway called Dude. And Dude was a dud, and will definitely be the subject of a future episode. But suffice it to say for now, this chaotic show in the round about heaven and hell started out as a 2,000-page manuscript, whittled down to a still-hefty 200 pages. The 23-year-old lead actor of the musical was replaced with an 11-year-old. The original director, choreographer, and costume designer were all fired. And that is when Tom O’Horgan was brought in to save the day, but there was nothing he could do to stop this musical from eventually being labeled “Broadway’s most monumental disaster.”

O'Horgan found his stride again, though, in 1977 by directing a revival of Hair, however it only lasted a month on Broadway. But it was during this revival that he met Perry Kroeger, a young actor who would become his protégé. The two collaborated on many projects as Kroeger transitioned from performer to set designer and eventually writer. But O’Horgan’s influence on Broadway had steadily waned. He directed a show in 1981 that opened and closed on the same night, and three years later directed a stage adaptation of The Three Musketeers that closed after week. Nonetheless, he still maintained his creative and musical ambitions.

On a side note, the walls of his 3,000-square-foot loft apartment were covered with an impressive collection of musical instruments from around the world…and in 1985 his loft was visited by none other than Fred Rogers on an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, where they talked about several of his more unusual instruments.

Fred Rogers: (Instruments playing) Each one has its own voice.

Tom O’Horgan: It sure does. Now these things up in the ceiling her are quite interesting. (Ringing bells.) These are Burmese bells. (More bells ringing.)

Rogers: Love to listen to them. Tom, what was it that got you so interested in these things?

O’Horgan: Well, when I was in fourth grade, there was a teacher came to our school. His name is Mr. Sheehan, and he sort of really guided my interest towards music. I was a singer, and I became very interested in musical instruments and playing together and singing together, and it's been my life ever since.

Rogers: You've done this all over the world, found these things, haven't you?

O’Horgan: That's right.

And it was around this same time that O’Horgan was planning his Off-broadway comeback. However, despite his longstanding connection with La MaMa, O’Horgan wanted to break free from the experimental theater world and take his work in a new direction and to larger audiences than La MaMa could accommodate. But of course he needed money to do that, so he reached out to Broadway producer Adela Holzer.

Now, similar to O’Horgan, Holzer was also this quirky and notorious figure in the world of Broadway, except Holzer was an actual criminal. An assistant attorney general of New York would call her “one of the cleverest and most successful criminals in the history of this state.” Her high point came in 1975, when The New York Times published a glowing profile of her as a sharp, savvy outsider navigating the male-dominated world of Broadway producing. In that article, Holzer claimed she was 41, had once taught at Columbia University, had earned $2 million from her investment into the musical Hair, and that she had made her fortune from commodities like rice and sugar.

However, none of it was true. She was actually 52, never taught at Columbia, had only made about $125,000 from Hair, and her fortunes actually came from duping investors with promises of wealth. What was true is that she did produce a few hits on Broadway and claimed to be $300,000 in the black, but Holzer had also been a producer on the disastrous Dude. That show’s failure was “the only thing I feel bitter about,” she admitted — yet added, “Naturally I came back to the theater. The theater is an emotional orgasm.”

Well, just two years after that flattering profile in the NY Times, Holzer faced indictments on 248 counts of investor fraud. Her townhouse was repossessed, her marriage fell apart, and as creditors were coming after her for nearly $13 million, she declared bankruptcy. But her lawyer, Roy Cohn (the same Roy Cohn who had been chief counsel for Senator Joe McCarthy), argued that Holzer was merely “an extremely imaginative woman.” And that defense mostly worked, but she was convicted on seven of the charges and began serving her sentence in 1981.

Six years later, Holzer was out of prison and that’s when O’Horgan reconnected with her. He told her about his plans to start an Off-broadway theater company, which could bring his work to larger audiences, and invited her to a backer’s audition that was to showcase three musicals he was working on. Of the 50 people that came, Holzer was the only one who showed any interest in producing the shows.

THE WORKSHOP

Here is Perry Kroeger talking to a live audience at Caroline’s in New York City about these three shows composed by O’Horgan, which were then given to three different writers to draft the librettos.

Perry Koeger: ’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore based on the Ford play was going to be written by Eve Merriam. Nimrod was to be written by Jonathan Walker. Now, you may know him as an actor. He just did Divine Sister opposite, Charles Bush. And Senator Joe was to be written by me.

Holzer was able to pull together some serious cash—about half a million dollars. The fact that she was a convicted con artist didn’t seem to bother her new investors, or maybe they just didn’t know. Either way, the money was there, and no one asked too many questions, especially since Holzer liked to drop hints about being close with David Rockefeller, even going so far as to suggest they might be secretly married. However, in April 1987, when no off-Broadway venues could be found to house these shows, Holzer announced she was bringing the three O’Horgan pop operas to Broadway. In fact, that was the name of O’Horgan’s theater company: Pop’ra (p o p apostrophe r a) which he trademarked.

Now, Eve Merriam never finished ’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore, so that left the other two musicals to go through rewrites and get ready for workshops that would begin in 1988 at a church basement in the East Village. Nimrod and the Tower of Babel was about an anti-hero who builds a tower to shoot arrows at the face of God. And Senator Joe was a musical satire with 16 actors playing 56 different characters. As one example, here is a list of the various roles of actor Richard Coombs: he played a chicken, Attorney, Office Boy #1, Enzyme, Lenin, Huck Finn, and Ronald Reagan. The show had pink bicycles, a wedding, and of course the infamous scene inside McCarthy’s liver with actors portraying enzymes and blood cells.

Here is one of the actors, Ric Ryder, who ended up replacing the original actor playing Roy Cohn as well as taking over the lead role of Nimrod. I asked Ric what is was like working with O’Horgan.

Ric Ryder: Super loose. He'd watch and see what you would do, and then he would just kind of, like, you know, just move this in here, move that. He would mold from the outside, not really from the inside necessarily, if that makes sense. Mhmm. There were…exercises that we would do. It was sort of like the a little like theater class at the beginning of not every day, but of some days. He would he told me in one of our many conversations that he would get up at about 4 o'clock in the morning. And that's when he would write.

In fact, O’Horgan was constantly working on the music for both shows, since both Nimrod and Senator Joe were being rehearsed at the same time. The lyricists and book writers of the two shows were also there, but most of the work came from O’Horgan, in association with the music director Gordon Harrell, because these were sung-through musicals. And so O’Horgan was writing new pages every day that he would pass off to Harrell who would then distribute to the five musicians in rehearsal with them. Their basement workspace was partitioned off into different sections, so the cast would learn music in one section, and then put it on its feet in another part of the basement. And that’s how the process went for about 5-6 weeks, when Holzer announced in March 1988 that these two shows would go on a national tour the following month.

After the break, we’ll discuss what happened and didn’t happen once Senator Joe and Nimrod went on the road.

THE NATIONAL TOUR

To prepare for the national tour of Senator Joe and Nimrod, Holzer had arranged a pre-tour stop in Port Chester, NY, which was the first real sign of trouble for this production—the sets weren’t built, designers hadn’t been paid, and there were only a few costumes for Senator Joe and none for Nimrod. Kroeger told New York Magazine that apart from being really difficult to perform without most of the costumes and props, what made matters worse was that there was no audience either, just a few friends and others who happen to show up.

But Holzer would not be deterred, and the shows headed to their first tour stop and world premiere at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh on May 12, 1988. And once again things were off to a disastrous start—she had barely arranged any advertising or promotion, which meant hardly anyone knew the show existed. For that opening night, only about ten people were in the audience, and for the Saturday matinee, just one ticket had been sold, forcing them to cancel that performance. And as if things weren’t bad enough, in one scene the cast was forced to use cardboard cutouts of a champagne bottle and glasses instead of the real thing. And now, we finally come to it, the infamous musical number that took place inside McCarthy’s diseased liver.

Ric Ryder: I was Roy Cohn in that scene in a trench coat with a rifle searching to kill red corpuscles, leaving the white ones alone. So I did that Elmer Fudd thing in, Bugs Bunny. And I just I literally, like, this was my machine gun with my hands pointing. And, you know, and I just tiptoed around the inside inside of the diseased liver…and it was just it was funny, and it worked…(43:46) That set basically was risers. It was metal risers with various backdrops that came down. Because, again, it was supposed to be self contained.

And the theater critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was there to watch it all. He called the show “scrappy and sometimes half-baked,” saying the first two acts had "energy and grotesque life" (whatever that means), but that the third act fizzled into a preachy civics lesson—which all in all is not as bad a review as it could have been, considering the mess going on backstage and onstage.

By this point, O'Horgan could see that the production was spiraling out of control, describing the atmosphere as filled with "dread and doom." But Holzer? Even with costumes and props still incomplete, she continued to reassure everyone, even though nothing ever seemed to arrive on time. Somehow they managed to get through four performances in Pittsburgh before completely running out of money. The plan had been to move the show to the Chicago Opera House, but that that wasn’t gonna happen. So everyone went home, and the tour was finished. But that didn’t mean paychecks ended.

Ric Ryder: We come home and we're on this pay or play contract, and we've got 3 more months of it. So we were paid on a weekly basis, because the money came, you know we got paid. And we got paid by checks. Sometimes we got paid in cash. Because, like, I remember, we would go we would actually show up at the office because it was like, where's the check? And, I I feel like I was told Adela has just arrived with the money, and I know there were paper bags. I just don't recall seeing it.

Now, the reason the cast was still being paid was that the show wasn’t under an Actors Equity contract, which is the customary union representing actors and stage managers in New York productions, of which I am member. Instead, Senator Joe and Nimrod were under an AGMA contract, or the American Guild of Musical Artists, and their contracts were “pay or play.” This guarantees payment to an actor regardless of whether they are actually used in a production, or if the project is canceled. And that's not how an Equity contract works, usually there’s a 2-4 week out that gives either the actor or producer a chance to end the agreement. Equity doesn’t have pay or play contracts. Although now I’m wishing we did.

BACK TO BROADWAY

Ric Ryder: We got paid through the end of the summer, and then there was this dead time. And that's, I believe, when she entertained us in her Tudor City apartment trying to, just trying to stay connected to us: “I want you all to come back because we are going to Broadway.”

That’s because in Holzer’s mind, Pittsburgh was just a bump in the road. She announced that Senator Joe was coming to Broadway in the fall of 1988 and even put down a $50,000 deposit to secure the Virginia Theatre (now called the August Wilson). O'Horgan was against it from the start. He knew the show wasn’t ready and feared it would close after just a couple of performances. And besides that, he had already signed a contract to do a show in Denmark and wouldn’t even be there during the preview process. Kroeger also never envisioned Senator Joe as a Broadway show, especially in an era when the biggest musicals were mega productions like The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables. But no amount of pleading could stop Holzer.

And that’s probably because all her shady wheeling-and-dealing behind the scenes was starting to become unmanageable. I won’t bore you with all the financial nuts and bolts, but essentially by the summer of 1988 investors were pouring money into her ventures, convinced by promises of lucrative returns. But each time profits were supposedly due, Holzer encouraged them to roll over their earnings into new deals for which they’d receive congratulatory letters detailing impressive profits—on paper, at least.

However, summer came and went, and somehow the costumes and props still were finished. So ultimately, the show’s fall opening was canceled, and Holzer had to forfeit her $50,000 deposit. But even that didn’t affect her resolve, she quickly secured the theater across the street, the Neil Simon for a December 15th opening. This was after reportedly borrowing $500,000 from European banks to fund the $4 million musical.

Ric Ryder: And then that happened very quickly at the end of the year. We went back into rehearsals, like, Thanksgiving time...And we did lose some people. I don't know who. I don't remember who came and went at that point, but we assembled most of the original cast, at that point.

By December it had become clear that Senator Joe was nowhere near ready, so the opening was pushed to January. Normally, this would be the time for frantic rewrites and late-night rehearsals, but O'Horgan had already checked out and was getting ready to head to Denmark. The show's music director, Gordon Harrell, was frantically outsourcing songs to different orchestrators, who—like the musicians—were wondering when they'd actually get paid. Meanwhile, the cast and crew moved form the rehearsal studios to the theater stage, and according to Kroeger, there was one tech rehearsal when Holzer came in through the stage door with a garbage bag full of money and paid everyone with a wad of bills in a last-ditch attempt to keep the whole thing from collapsing.

Nonetheless, come Friday night, January 6, 1989 the first preview of Senator Joe was set to happen, and Nimrod would begin its previews at a later date. But as you could probably guess, there wasn’t much of an audience to perform for.

Ric Ryder: Sparse, very sparse...We still had, like oh my god. We didn't have finished anything…Set, props. We didn't have finished anything. It was like we were still in the rehearsal room, and now we were on these risers...And so I think we were just kinda, like, finding our way. It would have been like watching a dress rehearsal…It was, it was like what are we doing? Because we've done as much as we possibly could, and, like, we were cooked. We were overcooked. We were overdone in the rehearsal room. Everything that could have been done was done.

Now even though there were no official critics there for these preview performances, Mark Harris, a film and theater journalist, did attend that first one and this is what he wrote in an article for Vulture:

Audiences coming through the door were handed Playbills that seemed to promise two musicals on the cover — Senator Joe and Nimrod — and weren’t sure, as they took their seats, if they were seeing two one-acts or one full-length show. Once the performance started, the reaction I remember was not derision but bafflement: Senator Joe felt under-rehearsed and chaotic, and the actors looked jittery and unsure of their movements.

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By that weekend, Holzer still hadn’t funded the bonds that Broadway unions require to guarantee payments to their members. And so the next day, when the cast came in for what they thought was a Sunday matinee, what they got instead was a closing notice.

Ric Ryder: There was a meeting, and Adela was there, I think. Yeah. I'm sure she delivered the news, and it was actually quite civil. You know? Like, the head of props or head the tech heads were like, we don't have paint. We can’t even give you a finished product…like we can’t help.

Nimrod was in even worse shape than Senator Joe and never got a preview performance. And so it was all over on January 7, 1989 after just 2 days and three previews. O’Horgan was over in Denmark and kept trying to reach Holzer, but she wouldn’t return his calls until the end of January, when she told him she had $750,000 and they could try again.

But the following month she had a rather contentious meeting with a few nervous investors, who unbeknownst to Holzer were working with the Manhattan District Attorney and recording the conversation. They confronted her about her time in prison (which she blamed on Roy Cohn), and they wanted to see documents showing where their money had gone. She instead showed them canceled checks from the 1970s, proving she had made money for other people, and inferred that their funds were guaranteed by the banker David Rockefeller, with whom she claimed to be in a relationship. She even kept a silver-framed photograph of him by her bedside, which turned out to be a magazine clipping.

The district attorney was afraid she was going to try and leave the country. So just nine days later, on February 16, 1989, Adela Holzer was arrested on her way home from an American Express office. She spent several weeks at Riker’s Island trying to find a defense attorney. Finally, she hired an attorney whom she had met when he worked in Roy Cohn’s office. Her bail was set at $1 million, and she was eventually convicted and sentenced to 4 years. In a 1991 Vanity Fair interview from Riker’s Island, the reporter stated that “reality is what Adela wants it to be.” Throughout that interview, Holzer remained resolute and seemingly unrepentant. She said: “I think people care more for me than I care for them. I never get attached. People say I'm cold. I don't think I'm cold. I'm very careful not to get too close to anybody.”

CONCLUSION

So with Holzer in jail and Senator Joe shut down, you might think the story ends there. Well, not quite. Here’s Perry Kroeger once again…

Perry Kroeger: In 1992, producer David Buckley, and the only thing I know that he produced previously to this was, Debbie Does Dallas…In 1992, David Buckley took Tom and me to Moscow. I stayed on at the Moscow Art Theater, and this time, as the show's designer. And actually that gave me the distinction of being the first American to design for the Moscow Art Theatre. And for four months we built the show there. Back in America, David Buckley was, again, some producer who was unable to raise the funds to bring the New York actors to Russia. And for the second time, the entire show was trashed.”

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Perry Kroeger continues to work as a designer to this day, serving as the artist in residence at The Children’s Theatre of New Jersey, where he creates stage sets, puppets, fantasy costumes, and graphic art.

As for Tom O’Horgan, he continued to direct readings Off-Off-Broadway and host workshops in his expansive loft apartment. As his health declined, though, and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in later years, O'Horgan moved down to Florida. But he did attend the 2007 concert of Hair in Central Park before eventually passing away in 2009.

Senator Joe may have been a disastrous train wreck of a musical, but it was certainly audacious and unique as well. And directors like Diane Paulus, who helmed the Broadway revival of Hair in 2009, recognize the profound influence of O'Horgan’s groundbreaking work. Ben Vereen was one of his original stars in Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, and he once noted that many of today’s most daring shows owe their existence to the bold, unrestrained genius of Tom O’Horgan.

Ric Ryder: It was very congenial in the room. The process was really, really congenial. It was such a it was such a great thing until it wasn't. It was such a great thing to be a part of…I remember personally people were you know, said interesting good stuff, you know, exciting stuff…The vocal arrangements and orchestrations are so great. It really captured, you know, the era, and and O'Horgan was a great composer. The score to Nimrod, the Tower of Babel was spectacular. It was thrilling to sing. Absolutely thrilling.

Adela Holzer, on the other hand, left a much different legacy. In 2001, she racked up her third conviction: this time for defrauding Spanish-speaking immigrants with promises of permanent residency. She was sentenced to 9 years in prison, and after her release in 2010, she retired to Boca Raton and died in 2020. But even in death her truth was elusive as obituaries said she was aged somewhere between 90 to 95. Because she had given out different birthdates throughout her life, no one knew when she was actually born.

In the end, Senator Joe was a wild mix of ambition, chaos, and unintended irony—crashing and burning as quickly as it arrived. But in its own strange way, it serves as a reminder that theater is often at its most fascinating when it dares to take risks, even if those risks lead to disaster. O’Horgan’s reputation as a theatrical provocateur remains intact, while Holzer’s remains a cautionary tale. And somewhere in between, Senator Joe lingers as a bizarre footnote in Broadway history—a show so misguided, it’s almost impressive.

“For a full list of all resources and materials used in making this episode, you’ll find a link to that in the show notes. Closing Night is a production of WINMI Media with yours truly as writer and executive producer. Dan Delgado is editor and co-producer, not only for this podcast but also for his own movie podcast called The Industry. Much appreciation goes to Ric Ryder for sharing his experiences with Senator Joe and to the voice talents of our very own Dan Delgado. Join us next time as another production makes its way to closing night."

Ric Ryder OUTRO: Adela would come in in a mink, well this is wintertime, and we went to the Benedum Center in the early spring in in, like, beautiful spring weather. And she would fall asleep. She would be she'd be in the mink, which never came off and and just it just kind of, like, nod out. I she had a lot I mean, it's it's not completely outrageous that something like that would happen, but it's not encouraging, you know, to actors. And then she would randomly just show up with people, with, you know, investors, potential investors.