Narrator: The games that Stephen Sondheim and Tony Perkins conceived in Manhattan are being played out on the French Riviera by their friend Herb Ross in locations that seem innocent in their context. In their hands and minds, however, the seemingly innocent can suddenly assume the aura of fear and murder in The Last of Sheila.

Barry Joseph: Welcome to Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast.

I'm your host, Barry Joseph. Today's episode will focus on Steven Sondheim and The Last of Sheila. Wait, what have you not heard of The Last of Sheila? The 1973 murder mystery film, chockfull of Hollywood stars, from Raquel Welch to James Coburn, to Richard Benjamin? Steven Sondheim's only produced movie script, co-written with actor Anthony Perkins? The film based on Sondheim's parlor games and treasure hunts with original art from Al Hirschfeld that served as inspiration for plays, movies, and more? Oh, it's all too much!

I can't do it. Someone find me a new topic. I, I just can't do it.

James McCusker: Maybe I can help Barry.

Barry Joseph: Why? Who is that? Who's there?

James McCusker: I am a fan of Sondheim for over 45 years, a huge fan of mystery thriller plays. I actually once stepped up to Steven Sondheim and expressed my love for The Last of Sheila.

Barry Joseph: Wait, is that James? James McCusker, who has been sending me rare Sheila tidbits that were instrumental for my book?

James McCusker: Yes, indeed.

Barry Joseph: Well, that changes everything. You have been my guide to Sheila for years.

Perhaps today you can be the guide for both me and our podcast listeners.

James McCusker: Oh, it'd be an absolute pleasure, Barry. I'm ready for it.

Barry Joseph: Wonderful. Well, James, is there anything else before we start that our listeners should know about you?

James McCusker: I am a college composition professor at Monroe Community College here in Rochester, and a big theater buff and film buff as well. So Sheila fits right into that sweet spot.

Barry Joseph: Lovely. And anything we need to say before we get started.

James McCusker: Yes. If you have not seen the last of Sheila, please dismiss yourself immediately. Go stream it. It's on several services. I recommend you checking out the closed captions. You can really appreciate the dialogue and hear everything. Barry and I can wait for two hours. We'll wait and then you just come on back.

Barry Joseph (2): Welcome back.

Alright, we're gonna start by talking about the origins of this movie, the Last of Sheila. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna take an audio clip from the promotional featurette. We're gonna return to this featurette a few times over the course of this episode.

Narrator: The French Riviera playground for the beautiful people, chic industrialists, Hollywood stars and directors, the rich and super rich. The resorts that dot that fabulous shoreline are familiar to most: Nice. Villefranche. Antibes. Cannes. Cap-Ferrat. Behind the shiny veneer. The so-called beautiful people amuse themselves. They're intrigue and the games they play often become so intense as to take on a reality of their own.

A man whose familiarity with that world of wealth and games tied him to the French Riviera and a unique project. Lives here on the east side of Manhattan.

Stephen Sondheim: A girl I know gave gave me a game about 20 years ago, and then people started to gimme games and I occasionally go and buy them myself. Most of the parlor games of the 19th century, are very pretty to look at, and so they make good wall decorations.

Narrator: His name is Steven Sondheim.

Stephen Sondheim: Essentially, what I like to do more than play is invent games.

Games I invent are strictly invented for friends.

Narrator: One of his friends, producer, director, herb Ross, was so intrigued by the game Sondheim invented that he asked him to write a screenplay about the murder game a movie producer plays to uncover the real life murderer of his wife.

Stephen Sondheim: The way that the picture arose was that Herbie Ross called me and asked, would I be interested in doing an entire script based on a murder game? So I called Tony and asked him if he'd be interested in helping me

Narrator: That Tony is actor Anthony Perkins.

Stephen Sondheim: He'd never done any writing at all, but I knew he had exactly my kind of mind and take, and he's much more into murder mysteries than I am. So we started to plot it. We spent a couple of months plotting and had such a good time. We decided to go ahead and write it. I think the most fun I've ever had writing anything was writing the screen play.

Narrator: They collaborated on inventing and testing different kinds of murder games, selecting the best of each, and when they were done plotting they called the movie script The Last of Sheila.

Barry Joseph: The Last of Sheila. Wow. I love the music, don't you, James?

James McCusker: Fantastic. Very swinging, very seventies.

Barry Joseph: So when we talk about the origins of The Last of Sheila, we have to start by talking about Stephen Sondheim's relationship with Anthony Perkins, with whom he co-wrote the script and that was the first time they wrote something like that together, but they'd already worked together in their own fun, playful ways.

They first started on kind of a satire of 1960 happenings for Leonard Bernstein's wife, Felicia. It was a birthday present in the West Village, and they created this kind of fake show that was going on that was kind of a parody of what you might've seen in this kind of off off Broadway space at the time.

And, at a certain moment, everyone was supposed to put on a pillowcase. And meanwhile, while Felicia has a pillowcase on, all the fake denisons of the West Village disappeared, and then all of her friends who were hiding in the bathroom came out. So when she took off the mask that she was wearing, all her friends said Surprise.

And Stephen Sondheim knew Anthony Perkins because Anthony was dating and living with Grover Dale, who was a dancer in West Side stories in 1950s.

So Sondheim had a connection with Grover and through that met his partner Anthony Perkins, who of course we all know from the movie Psycho. Sondheim got a sense that Anthony Perkins was fun for doing these kind of experiences. And that led Sondheim to work with Anthony Perkins on what will become his 1968 treasure hunt for Halloween called the Eleanor Clark French Memorial Treasure Hunt.

A long name, but relevant 'cause it's gonna have to do with Sheila. That began a relationship between the two of them, where they would actually come back again in 1973 and do a treasure hunt for the cast of a little night music. So with this going between them, this fun way of working back and forth with creating fun, playful experiences and opportunity came to then write The Last of Sheila and Sondheim did not wanna do it alone. He reached out to Anthony Perkins and he said, Yeah. let's do it.

James McCusker: Sondheim, having a companion to work with, right? Collaboration is something that is throughout Sondheim's career. So when Herb Brass played the murder game he stepped up to Sondheim and said, Hey, geez, this would make a fantastic movie. Why don't you do it? Sondheim stepped up to Anthony Perkins because Sondheim and collaboration are incredibly important and they put together a screenplay.

Barry Joseph: Nice. The game that Herbert Ross played was called The Murder Game, and Stephen Sondheim created it, on his own. But Anthony Perkins did play it with him, and in fact, one of the first times he played it, if not the first one, Anthony Perkins ended up being the murderer.

James McCusker: We can discuss later, uh, Anthony Schafer also played that game as well. It seemed like that game became very popular with a lot of Hollywood types, actors, producers, you name it.

Barry Joseph: So what do you know, James, about how the two worked together in their collaboration? We know collaboration was so important for Sondheim. What do we know about how this collaboration worked? Clearly Sondheim wasn't doing the music. Well, Anthony Perkins was writing the book. So how did it work for a movie?

James McCusker: Right. That wonderful promo feature at you shared with us states that Perkins was a big mystery novel reader. Sondheim was not. Sondheim, really was obsessed with plot. So many sources state that Sondheim was interested in the mystery angle. It's Perkins, because of his Hollywood connections and being in so many movies, he added that layer of narrative and story to it. So they kind of split their ideas that way. And of course, with collaboration, one fed off the other.

Barry Joseph: The movie is intentionally making fun of stock Hollywood types. What do we know about how much that was Stephen Sondheim's take on people in Hollywood? Or was it really Anthony Perkins kind of giving it to the people who he was forced to work with?

James McCusker: Yeah, that's a great question. He just liked pure plot. He wasn't interested in characters. He was kind of interested in archetypes. So I'm wondering that if Perkins did devise those archetypes, Sondheim felt very confident and comfortable with them.

If you look at old reviews of the film, they talk about how the actors are like pawns in a game or they're very empty, as you said, stock, and I disagree with that completely. But they do fall into types, right? The ingenue, the broken down director, the writer who's doomed to do rewrites.

Barry Joseph: And yet you disagree.

James McCusker: I disagree in one way. 'cause I think that's a cheat, you know, it comes up again and again with Sondheim's work that, oh, the character is flat or the character is this. And I think the characters really tell you who they are throughout Sheila. I think it's a very, it's a group of very cold and cruel individuals.

interesting to note that originally, Sondheim wanted Lee Remnick and Ryan O'Neill to play Lee and Tom. And I wonder if Lee is named that because of Lee Remnick big friends with Sondheim. And if you think of the film, she's probably the most character in the piece.

Barry Joseph: Yeah.

James McCusker: And other than that, I, I think the rest are all very ruthless and despicable, which I love.

I I just love that cruelty to it.

This is something that of course, being a Sondheim fan, I see again and again in his work, it shows up in Company, Follies. Here We Go has that great line: brunches are hell. So you get this idea of this group of insufferable, bourgeois, self-centered, sitting around drinking cocktails, gossiping, which is very important in this film.

And, that's part of the mix. I mean, think of A Little Night Music too, right? When they all descend upon the house. So this idea of the idol rich gathering, and what are they up to, is something that I find interesting.

Barry Joseph: So all of this came into the mix. It came into the script that Anthony Perkins and Steven Sondheim wrote initially setting it on Long Island and Herbert Rush shifted the location with the two writers and moved it to the French Riviera to see what was gonna happen.

So James, how does the movie introduce these themes to the viewers?

James McCusker: The film starts off with typing out the secret cards. What's wonderful about the opening credits of the film is you hear a typewriter and a lot of meta stuff goes on in this film. And when Steven Sondheim and Anthony Perkins name appears, the typewriter stops, and Herbert Ross gets his own credit in silence.

So that's how the kind of the credits roll out. And it's interesting to note the film closes, which is the sound of a uh, clanking away with the Warner Brothers logo as well, so that I just find an interesting artistic decision

Barry Joseph: Interesting. I'm of course thinking about what's being typed in the beginning of the movie and contrasting it with what's being typed at the end. And, for those who haven't seen it, if you didn't follow James' instruction, I'll just say that it's pretty dark.

James McCusker: Yeah, it may actually be the, well, it is the script to The Last of Sheila, but we could discuss that later.

Barry Joseph: Oh, the metaness of the metaness.

James, I'm sure you were as excited and intrigued as I was when this summer we got to see the most fascinating elements inside. The new collection at the Library of Congress that was donated after Stephen Sondheim passed away from the Sondheim Estate.

I'm specifically talking about a number of sheets created in Sondheim's own hand. That looks like he's maybe creating some kind of, what is that? Like a crossword puzzle for the credits.

James McCusker: It is incredible. When you showed this to me a few months back, I was very moved. I mean, this is the artist playing with prototypes. You know, we always say Sondheim is finishing a hat. And, it didn't even seem finished. So what it was was it was a big sheet. With crossword puzzle boxes on it, about six or eight to a long legal pad.

And Sondheim in the first box just did this wonderful scribbling with his blackwing 602 pencil, and then he just started filling out the crossword puzzle boxes with the cast members' names, trying to connect them. It was just a wonderful artifact to see.

Barry Joseph: And we don't know why he did it. Maybe he was just having fun with the names for a puzzle he was making. Maybe he was thinking about creating something or proposing something for the opening credits. But we worked with a number of game designers and puzzle constructors, and they put together what It would have looked like if this was in fact the opening credits.

And it looks great. It's quite brilliant.

James McCusker: It is very wonderful. And there is also that one that I so enjoyed where he piled all the actors' names on top of each other and dead center, it spells out murderers,

Barry Joseph: right.

James McCusker: which there are multiple murderers in last of

Barry Joseph: Yeah,

James McCusker: not just murderer.

Barry Joseph: indeed.

James McCusker: wonderful. Wonderful.

Barry Joseph: So let's shift from talking about the origins of the last of Sheila and let's spend some time talking about the games in Sheila. We've alluded to a little bit of them, but let's go back to the featurette and hear what, back in 1973 they had to say.

James Coburn: I call it the Sheila Green Memorial gossip. Now, I dreamed up six secrets, one for each six little pretend pieces of gossip.

Now, keep them secret.

Raquel Welch: Gimme, gimme.

James Coburn: Well, the idea is to discover everybody's secret without speaking, of course. And prevent the other players from discovering yours.

Raquel Welch: And how do we do that?

James Coburn: Well, every day we park in a different port where you can discover the proof of one person's secret. I'll announce what secret it is to look for and give you a clue which will tell you what to do and where to go onshore. Now if you solve the clue properly, it'll lead you to where the proof is

Narrator: This yaht and the French Riviera were chosen as the setting to play out the Game of Murder by producer, director, Herb Ross.

Herbert Ross: About two years ago, Steve had invented a new form of of murder. The Game of Murder. It seemed to me a terrific premise for a mystery movie.

In the film, there were six people playing the game.

They play it over a six day period every night. They play the game in a different port of the Riviera

At each port on the Riviera, he leaves the ship to set clues and prepare another part of the murder game for the players.

Dyan Cannon: Is this the only clue we're going to get?

James Coburn: It must open the door somewhere.

Raquel Welch: Brilliant

Stephen Sondheim: The key is a clue for the game. Within the picture. The guests on the yacht are supposed to find a certain piece of information to play the game. Their clue is this key. If the audience interprets the key properly, they will know where that piece of information is, as indeed some of the game players in the script figure out.

But that's for the audience to play the game with the actors.

The idea was to, to hopefully to, to let the audience have a lot of fun playing along with the actors, concentrating, trying to figure out things, make logical deductions, et cetera.

James McCusker: I love that beginning where Clinton introduces the game. Right? That's just fantastic. Uh, and it, the whole film is set up for the audience to play along.

Barry Joseph: Yeah.

James McCusker: Heim and Perkins were incredibly successful with that aspect of it.

Barry Joseph: Yeah. As cheesy as it could feel at times. Like that soundtrack, the puzzle solving in it and the game playing for the audience is really tight and still holds up after all these years.

But when I see people writing about the last of Sheila, this is the thing they most often get wrong, and I understand why it's confusing.

Even the promotional material is confusing. You heard them talking about The Murder Game, but what Clinton is describing in the beginning of the movie is actually something quite different.

In the end, there's three different games that Steven Sondheim and Anthony Perkins

pulled from. The first one is the murder game. In the murder game, people are given roles. Someone's a murderer and everyone else is to avoid the murderer and they have a task to do But that's it. When Clinton is talking about giving people

secrets , now he's doing something else. And in fact, the promotion material for the movie called the game Guilty Secrets, which we know is actually a game that steven Sondheim called Hostilities. The game of Hostilities has been well documented in the book Shy by Mary Rogers, and in it she describes a game in which a group of intimates, and that's important.

People have to know each other, get together and ask in their words, imp pertinent questions of each other. And the way it would work is people would write down a question for each person in the circle that's targeted just for them and designed to embarrass them. People would then get their cards, answer those questions, and put 'em back in the middle.

So at the end of this round, there was a bowl in the middle with all these impertinent questions with embarrassing answers, but it didn't say who asked the question or who responded. The game would then proceed with people taking up those questions and answers, reading them out loud, and then trying to figure out who they were.

And the game is called Hostilities for a reason. It's meant to be a mean game. It's meant to get people to feel uncomfortable. Some people would talk about leaving that game and that party in tears because they couldn't take it. And that is what Clinton is doing.

He's giving people roles to make them uncomfortable. At the beginning of the movie, we don't know why he's calling someone a shoplifter, a pedophile, a homosexual. But we learn over the course of the movie that each of the characters has a secret that Clinton knows, and he's putting them out there to play with them.

So in that way, we are seeing a combination of The Murder Game with hostilities, with the murder game everyone has to figure out who the murderer is. In the Sheila version, everyone's trying to figure out who the person is for that day. Maybe that day it's the homosexual or it's the pedophile, right?

And then finally the thing they do to identify the person does not follow the mechanics of The Murder Game and doesn't follow the mechanics of Hostilities. It follows, here comes that long phrase again, the Eleanor Clark French Memorial treasure hunt. And in fact, in the movie they call it

James McCusker: The Sheila Green Memorial Game.

Barry Joseph: And that's an explicit connection back to again, the Eleanor Clark French Memorial Treasure hunt. What the characters are being asked to do is essentially go on treasure hunts each day. And the key we just heard them talking about is part of that treasure hunt. And so what Sondheim and Perkins were able to do is work with things they both had created together, like the Eleanor French hunt and things that Sondheim liked to play, like hostilities and things Sondheim had created on his own, his version of the murder game, and wrap them all together into something that would be fun to watch on the screen, Something that would drive the plot forward, and would be a puzzle that people watching in the theaters could work through on their own.

James McCusker: I like you bringing up Hostilities and cruelty. Uh, Billy Goldenberg, who wrote the music for this, not participate in these games because he thought they were too cruel. He was very uncomfortable with them at that time that they were being done, which is kind of interesting. So, it's not for everybody.

You've mentioned before that games are about building community and bringing people together. So what exactly is going on here on this yacht? Why are we all getting together a year after Sheila has been killed by hit and run driver? There's just a lot of things going on in the first 10, 15 minutes of the film.

Barry Joseph: And Clinton is not only a widower who lost his wife a year

ago, but he's the game master and he's the party host. He essentially is in power of everything and of them, he is the one who can decide if a movie's gonna be produced and if they're all gonna be in that movie, he tells them in the beginning of the film, I'm gonna make a movie called The Last of Sheila, and you're all gonna be in it.

You're gonna direct it, you're gonna write it, you're gonna star in it. He has the power, and what we're seeing him do through the games is abuse that power to embarrass them, to scare them, to create anxiety.

James McCusker: This is repeated again and again throughout the film. Clinton talks about looking at islands where he could be a king, but they don't deserve to have someone like him as a king. at the very beginning where a photograph is taken at the bow Sheila's boat, he talks about everybody or you'll be out of the picture.

And I don't mean this one. So you're right again. And again, there's this cruel game master being played.

Barry Joseph: And so when I think about the fact that Sondheim and Perkins are writing a character who is a cruel game master based on games that Sondheim used to create and play as game master, is he trying to purge something? Is he trying to comment on something? Is it autobiographical?

James McCusker: I, I wonder about that. really do. You know more about these history of games making because he did kind of turn a corner in these types of hostility, gossipy type games. Really, he left in the dust as he moved forward.

Barry Joseph: And that's what I find most interesting. I'm not that interested in the fact that Sondheim used to play emotionally challenging games with people. I'm interested in the fact that he left them behind, that as he got older in his life, the people who played games with him wouldn't describe games with names like Hostilities.

They would describe an experience that was most often referenced by the word generosity, that he was creating space for people to have fun to play, to put the competitiveness aside a little bit, to be more jocular, to give people a chance to make mistakes, to find their way through to the puzzles he'd created for them. And that to me says something about the arc of his life.

Of going from playing games that were hostile to playing games that were generous. I almost wish he had done not a sequel to the last of Sheila, but another property that had used his games and puzzles, and one that had reflected those values of generosity and as you said, connection.

James McCusker: And Tom says of Clinton, with Clinton it's always about getting points, earning points and what you just said with Sondheim's later game designs, it was really nothing to do with collecting points.

So I couldn't agree with you more

Barry Joseph: It is about having fun with the people you love and creating opportunities to do that through gameplay.

James McCusker: community of being together and laughing a lot over a couple of

Barry Joseph: That's right.

James McCusker: I couldn't agree more.

So we were just talking about the games. Let's look at the mystery and mysteries in Sheila.

Let's run the featurette again.

Barry Joseph: Hit it, Frank.

Narrator: The gothic ruins of a 14th century monastery are selected by Herb Ross as a suitably macabre setting for the murder in the game. What we wanted in the film was to play fair with an audience, to make a game between us, meaning the authors and the actors and the audience, and to make it fair. That is to say a murder mystery in which all the clues are not only presented once to the audience, but the significant clues are presented twice.

Stephen Sondheim: There are two huge clues in the picture of which Tony and I are very proud, and that is to say they're terribly fair and they tell you something very significant if you interpret them correctly.

I'm not a playwright. I don't know how to write plays, and I have no ambition to write plays. I don't even have ambition to write libretto. I really only want to write songs, but I've always been fascinated with the possibilities of doing a murder mystery either on the stage or on the screen.

Raquel Welch: Hello? Is somebody there?

What's going on?

Stephen Sondheim: Really, I think the fun is to find out. I think the fun is to be surprised. That's something I, I believe about art. I think the fun of the theater is a surprise. I think the fun of movies is in a different way, a surprise. I think the fun of life is surprise.

James McCusker: Sondheim in just that clip is speaking with, I think the best part of the film, and that is the idea of playing along. This really is a filmed mystery novel. We go back to John Dixon Carr. His novels were very convoluted. Uh, there were accidents constantly happening and circumstance. in a few interviews even said that he liked the idea that the characters were just described with an adjective. He was interested in the plots of the stories. And what's great about Sheila, it is this very dense, I if, take out your stopwatch. The last hour of the film is explanation. John Dixon Carr loved the idea of what could be called a false solution. So in the nine wrong answers, what happens in that novel is he keeps leaving footnotes.

So you, the reader, when you think you've solved something, he suddenly starts speaking to you Sondheim said he like waves his finger at you saying, oh, no, no, no, you're not as smart as you think you are. This is actually something. You have no idea what it is yet. He's constantly almost showing off how clever he is. So if you think of Sheila, it's structured that same way. There's a half hour spent on a false solution, and then the last 20, 25 minutes of the movie is the actual solution. this idea of the mystery gathering all the suspects in the room, like every Agatha Christie novel ever written. Well, it's a false ending, right?

Because we're sitting there in the theater watching Sheila going, well, that's it? Lee was the killer. And but then you look at your watch and say, how can this be? There's 25 minutes

Barry Joseph: Yeah, and to reveal the spoiler, and we're just gonna do it now. You just mentioned Lee is the killer. We are told Lee is the killer. Lee thinks she's the killer, and it turns out the person she kills was already dead. I don't think I've ever seen a story like that. It's one thing for someone to fake you out within the movie, but for the movie to fake out a character to make them think they were the murderer when they weren't.

I love that.

James McCusker: When Tom goes through the solution, the false solution. Everything he says makes sense, right. He has them go through the cards. He withholds the last card. He talks about why would somebody want to kill Clinton? Well, because the last card happens to be hit and run killer. It makes complete sense, not only to us, but as you were mentioning, also Lee who's confused by it as

Barry Joseph: That's right.

James McCusker: there's this falseness. So that's kind of, I think wonderful about that structure of that scene as well.

Barry Joseph: And I know we're supposed to be talking about the mystery side of the movie, but this for me goes back to the game design component. 'cause what Sondheim did to give us an opportunity to solve the puzzle is the same thing he did in, for example some of his games. They have puzzle elements in which our job is to figure out what the pattern is that Steven Heim has set up for us.

And once we identify the pattern, our solution is going to arrive when we find something that breaks the pattern, and that's how it is solved in Sheila. And that's how it also happens in some of his other puzzles and games as well.

I think that's such a wonderful scaffolding for a puzzle constructor to create an environment where you have to think laterally. And suddenly notice there's a pattern going on. And as soon as you notice the pattern, it's like a snowball rolling down the hill, picking up speed, where you suddenly start feeling great because you find that pattern everywhere.

But then something is wrong, something doesn't fit the pattern. So you start having this moment of incredible excitement where order is being formed outta chaos. But then there's a little nugget of chaos left that is niggling at you. And if you keep playing with that thing that feels off, that will give you the final answer. So it isn't just that there's a pattern and you find it and you're done. That's just one level before you finally hit Nirvana.

James McCusker: It is also this idea of removing yourself as a games player from the emotion. 'cause as an audience member, we're running around with all the treasure huns finding stuff, and we're not recognizing that if we just stepped back, if we got emotion out of it and just used deduction. In fact what, uh, sometimes says in the he says that two important clues are repeated in the film.

Barry Joseph: know,

James McCusker: Wonder what those are. I have some ideas,

Barry Joseph: James? Tell us, what are your ideas?

James McCusker: I do think the idea of the last of Sheila and the anagram clue is one of them that's repeated again and again. The idea of Lee being an alcoholic being her secret. When the secret cards are shown in the beginning of the film, we see the alcoholic card and we never see it again.

In the movie, when Tom lays down the cards, Tom's card is not alcoholic. It's

Hit-and-Run Killer.

Barry Joseph: Tom has taken her card, destroyed it, and replaced it with this new one that he creates during the movie,

James McCusker: And this gets into a lot of elaborate visuals that, uh, pepper the film as well because in the beginning of the film when the the secret card is pulled out with alcoholic, it is specifically a man's hand holding that card. I think that's really interesting too. The script refers to that and re rewatching the film. You notice it too. So I think that's one of the repeated things. She was in aa, she was in aa. A coming up again and again, but what is that second clue that's repeated in the piece that's of importance.

Barry Joseph: You mentioned the cards being the first one. Does the second one have to do with the photo itself? The photo of them standing under the letters and Clinton says, what is the phrase? You can solve it sitting down?

James McCusker: You, you don't have to move.

Barry Joseph: You don't to move. That line then is repeated by

James McCusker: Philip.

Barry Joseph: Philip reminds Tom, which is reminding us that that was said, so that must be the clue being said twice. Because what can be seen without moving is looking at the photo that Clinton sets up in the beginning of the movie where he has all his guests stand in front of the boat, which says Sheila, that's the name of the boat.

And he arranges them to stand under the letters. And that's the pattern we were just talking about. Everybody was standing under the letter. They received.

James McCusker: And that pattern is broken when the hit and run driver card is laid

Barry Joseph: Because Tom has not figured out the pattern.

James McCusker: Correct. You know, one of the scripts for the film brings up, and it's not in the movie where Philip says to Tom, if you had only notice that Clinton was playing a game, you just had to come up with something for hit and run driver. That started with the letter A, and then he says like, automobile killer.

I mean, so Philip is clever enough to come up with that A and that broken pattern. That's what I love about the second solution, that great long conversation between Tom and Philip. Philip says Clinton was playing a game for himself. Tom didn't notice the game that Clinton was playing, which was to come up with secrets that spell out Sheila, and that's kind of wonderful.

Barry Joseph: That's the problem I have with so much of the promotion about the movie. It describes it as Clinton is throwing a party so he can figure out who killed his wife. A year ago, his wife was killed. He's gonna have a party a year later on his yacht and invite everyone who was there. It suggests that he's doing it to figure out who the killer was, but he couldn't care less.

That's not what he's doing.

James McCusker: Tom hijacked the game right by, as you said, by changing that card.

Barry Joseph: Clinton is not trying to get to the bottom of who killed his wife.

James McCusker: at all.

Barry Joseph: I, in fact, he thinks he knows. All he wants to do is humiliate these people through abusing his power over them. And that's fun enough for him.

James McCusker: And showing how clever he is as well.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

James McCusker: That's all part of this.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

James McCusker: You know, saw time with Sheila. He only gives the last of Sheila one sentence, maybe two. In his collected lyrics

Barry Joseph: Wow.

James McCusker: he says it was not well received, but that didn't matter. Writing a murder mystery is something I always wanted to do,

Barry Joseph: Hmm.

James McCusker: and he also, in another interview, talks this beautiful idea that. He believes the reason crossword puzzles and mysteries are so important is the idea of since life is not organized, it creates a solution. It creates a pattern. And he then says, but of course life isn't like that. He has to end it that way. Right? It's a false sense of security we have when the puzzle is solved, when the killer is revealed, and I think Sheila plays with that as well. It's interesting how the murderer is punished at the end of the film, right? He doesn't go away with handcuffs.

Barry Joseph: The punishment is designed to fit the crime, which is to say, Tom, the murderer, was trying to avoid something. And so the punishment was designed to be the punishment that was specific for him. It's a type of poetic justice. He's trying to escape a relationship He has. Writing movies, he doesn't wanna write for Clinton In the end. His punishment is doing just that. Even though Clinton has been murdered by him.

James McCusker: he's not a writer. He's a rewriter. That's Tom's last line in the film Rewrites.

Remember Clinton is holding Freak Show, a screenplay he wrote over his head and won't give it back. And one wonders is that really the only original thing Tom has written? Because throughout the film there's ideas that he's writing, but it's just not going anywhere.

Barry Joseph: Now one of the fun things about Last of Sheila isn't just the film itself, but it's all the things a studio did to promote it, many of them involving games and puzzles. The feature rep we've been listening to, of course, is just one thing that they used to talk about how games and puzzles created the movie.

I think the most exciting aspect of the Sheila promotion material is called the Press Book. The press book is a collection of materials to give content to people who are writing about the movie and what this material did was not only put together all sorts of posters that they might cut out and run in a newspaper or information about the promotional campaign, which included a car that you could win. It had a fold in. The fold In was a fake broad sheet as if there was a newspaper that you were gonna read on your subway commute full of articles, puzzles, and games that were fake and all about the last of Sheila. And for me, the best part of that was the original Al Hirschfeld.

I wish we had someone who could talk with James and I about how Hirschfeld might have ended up creating this beautiful portrait of the cast.

Wait a second. I think someone just joined us. We have a guest!

David Leopold: Yes, indeed.

Barry Joseph: Creative director for the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, David Leopold.

Welcome David.

David Leopold: Oh, glad to be here. It's a real mystery how I ended up here.

Barry Joseph: Bah duh bum. David, can you solve

the puzzle for us? How does Al Hurst end up in the promotion material for this cheesy mystery movie?

David Leopold: Hirschfield had been doing publicity drawings for films starting when he was 17 years old in

Barry Joseph: Wow.

David Leopold: One of the first times he did drawings for an American release of a film was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for its American release in 1921. Hirschfeld was synonymous with Broadway for a very good reason. His drawings of the theater appeared in The New York Times on average every other week for 75 years. And his drawings were as much a part of the Broadway experience as sort of opening night. So it's very clear why there is a Broadway theater name for Hirschfeld, but the time he did his first theatrical caricature in December, 1926, he was a six year veteran of doing drawings for movie studios and not just one he worked for about a half dozen movie studios.

We tend to think of him as a New York Times artist, but in the 1930s they would refer to him as an MGM artist because by the end of the 1930s, he was doing drawings and or posters for over half of MGMs output.

And that would cont continue through the 1940s. He did his first work for Warner Brothers who I believe released Last of Sheila, in 1925.

James McCusker: Wow.

David Leopold: Hirschfeld was someone who was ubiquitous in a way that I can think of no other artist in his century or any other century.

You know, his career coincides with mass media print publications. And so while so many people in New York just saw him as a New York Times artist, his work was being seen all over the country. Hirschfeld never lacked from work for movie studios because they understood that his drawings had an audience alter their own. So to have Hirschfeld do a drawing for your film meant that you could send it out to publications all over the world, they would publish it and people would look forward to seeing it.

That Warner Brothers would turn to Hirschfeld for a film that was written by Steven Sondheim. Seems like a natural and then of course, Al made it even better. By adding a little game to it.

Barry Joseph: Can you talk about the game of Nina that he included in his art and how he took it to a new level with the Sheila?

David Leopold: Sure, sure. In the fall of 1945, Hirschfelds wife was pregnant. Al's lucky number was nine and they decided if it was a girl, her name would be Nina. And, spoiler alert, they had a girl, Hirschfeld was coming home from Philadelphia where he was doing sketches of a musical that was opening out of town. Once he was at the hospital and he saw that his wife and new daughter were fine he went back to his studio and did what he did in good times and bad times. He drew because he never missed a deadline. And it was a musical that took place in a circus and on in the back of the drawing is a wall with circus posters, including one of a baby reading a book.

And it said, Nina the Wonder Child. He called this an infantile prank that was meant. Exclusively for family and friends. But, as anyone who has had a child, you're very proud of that fact. You're very delighted with the child. And so the next drawing he did, he found another way to hide her name in the drawings.

He had been doing this for years, putting his friend's name and drawings.

In 1936, Hirschfield was dating, the musical comedy actress Paula Lawrence, and he was in London doing a drawing of Ruth Gordon and the country wife. And in the background, in the set decoration, there was a painting on the wall and he made it a portrait of Paula. Now Paula and her friends and Al's friends would know that and it was his way of saying, I'm thinking of you.

And he sent the drawing back, The Times, published it, but when he got back to New York, the, his editor called him into the office and told him that the paper was not a place to send messages to his girlfriend, which Hirschfeld listened to and completely ignored because he was doing this all the time.

So he started adding the word Nina to his drawings. Again, just as something for his family and friends. He would just hide it in the background or in the folds of, uh, a dress or in someone's hair, or if they're holding a script, you know, it might say Nina on there. He was always finding different ways to put it but he thought the joke could run its course after a couple of weeks, and he decided to stop doing it. And, he got a ton of mail. People say, you know, writing, I spent all Sunday looking for the Nina, where is it? And he, it was the first time he realized that somebody besides his friends, had seen this. It became, as he described it, the worst kept secret in New York. And he decided to keep doing it because there was so much mail he thought it was easier to keep doing it than to answer the mail. And over the next couple of years, he tried to stop it several times and each time the same thing happened except the pile of mail got bigger and bigger. And, he said he learned the hard way to put her name in the drawing before he put his name in the drawing 'cause nobody was looking for his name. And this went on for years. So we started in November, 1945. And in the spring of 1960, a reader writes to the publisher of the New York Times saying how wonderful Hirschfeld's drawings were, and you know how much she got out of them and how perceptive they were.

She said, but it would be a real big help to know how many Ninas are in the drawings, because Hirschfeld would sometimes include more than one. And she wrote saying, sometimes I find three and my husband finds four, and we're not sure who's right. Well, the publisher of The New York Times thought this was a great idea, sent the letter to Hirschfeld and said, good idea.

You should figure out how to do this. Hirschfeld's idea was to put a number next to his name when there was more than one Nina in the drawing. He started it, it was never announced.

There was no explanation. It was unheralded. yet, within a few weeks, everybody understood what the number next to his name meant. And if it said Hirschfeld and the number three next to it, you know there were three Ninas the word Nina hidden in the drawings. And so this became an incredible ritual for people to have.

And Sondheim loved it. I mean, he acquired a number drawings for himself and for his collaborators. He gave the hirschfelds drawing of company to Hal Prince. A little night music. That show opened actually on a Sunday, and Hirschfeld' drawing appeared that same day and that night, Sondheim had already arranged to buy the drawing from Hirschfeld, got the whole cast and crew and creative team to sign the drawing and gave it to Hugh Wheeler on opening night.

And he did this frequently, and then sometimes he kept the drawings for himself. of the drawings he kept for himself was the last of Sheila. And I know that because I tried to borrow at one time for an exhibition we were doing at the Academy in Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The academy wrote to him and he was very nice instead, of course he'd be happy to lend it, and then he wrote them back a few weeks later and said, um, I'm not sure I can do that, because the frame that the piece is in is built into the wall. He didn't know how to get the piece out, and I thought it was probably not a good idea for us to ask Sondheim to take apart his house.

For this, I wanted to include it for a variety of reasons. A, it's Sondheim, B, there's something special to this drawing that anybody who's looked for a Nina would be interested, and this is the real reason why I wanted the piece. So in the drawing, that you can see, I have a new book out called Hirschfeld Sondheim.

It's a poster book in which there are 25 full page reproductions that are of Sondheim shows and films and portraits of Sondheim that can be easily removed. And you can frame, you can tack 'em on the wall there. It's 11 by 14. It's a beautiful book. Biased as I am. You can look in that book and you can see next to Herschel's name.

It says Two plus One. What does that mean? There is no explanation to what that means, but here's what it means. There are two Ninas hidden in the drawing. There's one Sheila hidden in the drawing because what would be the perfect thing for a Sondheim Murder mystery film? But to put a little game in the drawing that is used to promote the film, and I'm sure Sondheim felt that way, which is why he bought the work and had it hanging on his wall from 1973 until the end of his life.

Barry Joseph: Fantastic.

David, is there more you want people to know about this new Al Hirschfeld book and art related to Steven Sondheim?

David Leopold: Well, I think it's a wonderful companion to your book, Barry. You know, there you tell all these wonderful game stories and takes you behind the veil to find out about Sondheim's games. the the Hirschfeld Sondheim book is a companion of that because it shows you all those shows.

Hirschfeld captured all of Sondheim's career. Every new Sondheim show that appeared on Broadway in either Hirschfeld or Sondheim's life was drawn by Hirschfeld, and that goes all the way up to passion. In 1994. So this book has 25 full page posters of just about every show you might might want.

There's a classic portrait that Hirschfield did of Sondheim in 1977 that I'm sure you've seen. If you've ever seen a Hirschfield drawing of Sondheim, it's probably this one. he did another portrait, in 1999 that has never been published, and that is included in the book as well .

Barry Joseph: David, it is truly a marvelous book. I picked it up, planning to just look at the cover and then put it down to read later. I couldn't put it down once I opened it up. I read it from cover to cover. I was entranced. It was a wonderful experience.

David Leopold: I'm so glad you liked it. Well, thank you for having me on.

Barry Joseph: Such a pleasure. Thanks David.

Wow, that was so fun. I loved hearing about Al Hirschfeld from David.

James McCusker: I love the idea that there's the two for the Nina, but what the heck does the plus one mean? They must have really been scratching their heads. It's fantastic.

Barry Joseph: So with that, it's kind of hard to go back to the press book. It's hard to follow up with that. After the Al Hirschfeld, I really like this one. This is a connect the dots, right? But why are you laughing? What makes it funny?

James McCusker: Well, first of all, it says any number can play, any number can die. And then when I connect the dots, it ends up being, I'm assuming that's Sheila's

Barry Joseph: That's Sheila's body. Yep. Yep. And you know, it's like a chalk outline in the ground, right?

James McCusker: It's exactly what it is.

Barry Joseph: And, and the caption says the name of the game is murder. Get ready for this. Here's your chance to draw your own conclusion by connecting the dots from one to 53. Someone must have had fun putting that together.

James McCusker: Oh, and finish the statement. You will become involved in recreating The Last of Sheila, so we have to drive that home as well.

Barry Joseph: Yeah, I like that you said Drive. Was that intentional? 'cause you are now the driver who hit her with your car.

James McCusker: Oh, very good. Very good. Well, I love the press book because you get the different poster designs. My favorite poster design is by Robert Tanenbaum. He designed the original one sheet, but he also did what used to be called a Day Bill. Very thin poster, and it's great. It's a felt game board. It says on it, the next move is murder, which is kind of neat. And each of the players are pieces and the felt board is kind of worn and it's got bumps in it. It's just very clever for the film. So really driving home this game idea through all its advertising.

Fantastic.

Barry Joseph: Did you tell me, James, there were also the kind of mobiles that were supposed to be hung in the movie theater.

James McCusker: It's my understanding these mobiles were humongous. We're talking about, I think the, the pieces are like 12 inches in diameter and much like the jigsaw puzzle, each one had a character's on it with the idea of what's their secret. Philip, he's a director. What's his secret? And the idea of putting this giant, I mean, it's like a Calder mobile, this giant thing up in your local movie theater.

Very few of those around.

Barry Joseph: That's a lot of promotional material that was put together for last Sheila.

So, James, i'd love for us now to talk about the impact Sheila had in the world beyond just the world of Stephen Sondheim.

Sondheim, when he would talk about the movie, would usually talk about the fact that it wasn't successful financially, and that would be the end of the story. But you and I know James. That's not where the story ended. The story had all sorts of impact beyond the economical. Which ones are of interest to you?

James McCusker: The interest to me would be Anthony Schaffer's Sleuth . Schaffer played The Murder Game with Sondheim. In the play , Andrew Wyke is a standin for Sondheim. There's a great story of Olivier stepping up to Sondheim and saying I'm playing you and Sondheim thought, what show album is he playing of mine? And Olivier says, no, I'm playing you, which is kind of wonderful. And I think the last of Sheila in recent years has moved from curio to curiosity to kind of cult favorite. And another great example would be there was the recent Netflix show, The Residents, where one episode was titled Knives Out and the episode after it was called The Last of Sheila. So just bouncing around in our cultural collective. Slowly but surely.

Barry Joseph: And then we hear stories of people who were impacted by it, right? There was a Los Angeles movie goer who watched Sheila in 73, and that inspired him to design his own multi-city scavenger hunt. And that apparently inspired Disney's 1980 movie called Midnight Madness, which inspired one of its own moviegoers to create a similar game.

Which he eventually took to Microsoft, which then in turn inspired David Fincher's 1997 film The Game. It just keeps going back and forth between the movie, inspiring something in the real world, inspiring a game, being documented in a movie fictionalized, and going back and forth in circles. 'cause of course, The Last of Sheila's not where it started.

It started with a number of games, including his treasure hunts.

James McCusker: And then of course we have to mention in Glass Onion, Sondheim is playing among us. So on and on it goes.

Barry Joseph: Thank you for mentioning among us. Let me describe in the book how I talk about what Steven Sondheim is doing in the Glass Onion.

The sequel to Knives Out opens by introducing a new cast of characters one at a time, as each receives an invitation to a remote party to solve puzzles and play a murder game. In structure, this start is nearly identical to Sheila's and like Sheila, it is full of games right from the get go.

Barry Joseph: The invitation is hidden within an elaborate, oversized puzzle box that can only be opened through the collective intelligence of the invitees. From there, the movie continues to mirror many aspects of Sheila in deliberate homage. Both feature a photograph of the guests identically staged that plays a key role in the plot.

Both include private ships and islands. Both feature a party orchestrated by a character, despised by the others, and the list goes on. The one carryover from Johnson's first film is Detective Blanc to whom we are reintroduced adrift in his bathtub unexpectedly.

Blanc is playing a video game on his laptop. Even more unexpectedly. Blanc is not alone. In fact, he's with Steven Sondheim in his bathtub playing among us. And I think I have an audio clip from that.

Benoit Blanc: Wait, hold on. What just happened?

Angela Landsbury: Blanc? I saw you go in the engine room. You are the imposter. We all know it. Case closed. We are done.

Benoit Blanc: I don't understand this at all. So Angie called me and now the game's just over.

Stephen Sondheim: Sorry, Blanc. You're throwing out of the airlock. It's a no brainer.

Barry Joseph: And of course it's so perfect that it's Among Us. 'cause Among Us is a version of The Murder Game that Steven Sondheim created that inspired the last of Sheila. I'm not saying that Among Us was based on Sondheim's, The Murder Game. I'm saying that they both come from the same tradition of games in which someone is secretly told they're supposed to kill everyone else. Those games, Sondheim found rather boring and wanted to figure out a way to give everyone something to do. So in the murder game, the people who are not the murderers have a job. They have to go get a photo and bring it back. Among Us is so great because that's the same concept.

You are on a spaceship and you have tasks to do. Meanwhile, someone's trying to kill you. So I love that. In his last Hollywood movie appearance, in this homage to The Last of Sheila, he's playing Among Us.

James McCusker: I love his lie. It's a no brainer, right? I'm more clever than you. Which is the beauty of Last of Sheila too, though. Your book brings this up again and again as well. This idea that it's fair play as you move through it. It's fair play. You have a chance to solve it. I just love that clip.

Barry Joseph: And for me, what you're talking about, James, is what I like to describe in the book of Sondheim's game design values. He is generous in giving you space to try and solve whatever challenge he's putting in front of you, and he is doing it in a way to not make him look good, but to make you feel good about yourself.

James McCusker: The purpose is to build community, to have fun. see if you can outsmart me and I hope you do outsmart me.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

James McCusker: it's wonderful. It's wonderful.

Barry Joseph: So part of what I do in my book, James, is I look at Stephen Sondheim's puzzles and I asked myself, what do his puzzle designs tell us about how his mind worked and about what kind of experiences he wanted to create for the people in his life.

When you think about the puzzles in the last of Sheila. I'm wondering how you would answer those questions.

James McCusker: Wow. That's a great question. The idea that there are three different games being played in the piece, but the final game being acronym spelling out Sheila. I think we spoke about it earlier, this idea of fairness with Sondheim, that you're part of it. At the end of the film, Philip lays the Polaroid on the corner of the table and he has all the cards under the Polaroid.

So you see Sheila spelled there as he's laying down the cards for Tom. And by the way, when Tom lays out the cards in the false solution, Tom spells out Sheila as well. He says. "Shoplifter, homosexual, ex-con child molest- oops! Little child molester."

Barry Joseph: Yes,

James McCusker: yeah, he calls attention to the word little.

Barry Joseph: that's right.

James McCusker: Worst is, does Philip notice the word little being there because that card refers to him. So back to your question, I think Sondheim wanted us all to be having as much fun as he was having constructing this with Perkins. That though at times he's wagging his finger at us, that I'm smarter than you actually, we can solve it.

Just take our time. So I think there's that wonderful relationship. And also again, as I've done with this film, I just return to it again and again and again and constantly find new. Ideas and clues and secrets buried in it.

Barry Joseph: That's lovely. James, before we go, I wanna call back to something you said right at the beginning of this podcast. If I remember correctly, you said, I stepped up to Sondheim to express my love of Sheila.

What happened? What was that about?

James McCusker: I went to see John Guire's play Three Kinds of Exile, and they had just opened their basement bar. So I went down there and I kid you not there, sits Steven Sondheim. And I found myself alone in a bar with Steven Sondheim. So I was like, do I do? I stepped up to him. I got very emotional I, I babbled, I just said thank you. Thank you for everything. And I looked up at him and he kind of like nodded his head kinda like, I didn't understand what you just said. I said, thank you for everything. If the last of Sheila was the only thing you ever wrote, and he staggered backwards, grabbed his chest, looked at the heavens, nodded his head back and forth smiling And he just looked back down at me and said. What a wonderful compliment. Thank you. And as I was walking away, attorney went, what a wonderful compliment. I made song time laugh and I shook him because it's a beautiful piece of art he made with Perkins that isn't discussed as much and it's just wonderful. It's just wonderful.

Barry Joseph: That's lovely, James.

Alright, so throughout our discussion of The Last of Sheila, we've been drawing from The Last of Sheila Featurette. So why don't we conclude our episode today by listening to the last few lines.

Narrator: The games that Stephen Sondheim and Tony Perkins conceived in Manhattan are being played out on the French Riviera by their friend Herb Ross in locations that seem innocent in their context, in their hands and minds, however, the seemingly innocent can suddenly assume the aura of fear and murder in The Last of Sheila.

Barry Joseph: James, thank you for being our guide today through the last of Sheila.

James McCusker: Oh, thanks for having me, Barry. This has been an absolute pleasure. What a gift. Many thanks.

Barry Joseph: And thank you dear listeners for joining us today for Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast. I would also like to thank everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this episode, specifically the musical stingers composed by Mateo Chavez Lewis and the theme song Tower podcast with lyrics and music by coma, Loy and sung by the one and only Anne Morrison, who created the role of Mary in Merrily We Roll Along..

And of course, I also wanna thank David Leopold, creative director for the Al Hirschfeld Foundation.

If you can't wait for the next episode to drop, go ahead and watch the last of Sheila. Hit us up on the socials, Facebook and Instagram, and please comment and like the podcast on whatever platform you use. It helps us out immensely. Until next time, remember, someone is on your side, especially when matching minds with Sondheim.

George Lee Andrews: We were there.

Marty Morris Lee: Oh, it's so much fun.

Etai Benson: There's no better way to represent his brilliance than through puzzles.

Colm Molloy: I feel like he was probably more obsessed with puzzles than musicals. Maybe that's heresy.

Will Shortz: He was a brilliant puzzle solver. and a great mind.

George Lee Andrews: It was quite amazing when you walked Into his apartment because it was full of games and puzzles.

Michael Mitnick: When Sondheim started to build the cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine,

Stephen Rodosh: his treasure hunts were legendary.

George Lee Andrews: Everybody was just running around screaming and laughing and having

Erin Ortman: it's almost ridiculous to be like, yeah, I went on a. Scavenger Hunt created by Stephen Sondheim.

Michael Counts: You know, in some ways you could almost consider him like the sort of inventor of the, very form of escape rooms because he

Taylor Myers: Stephen Sondheim blurted out when the final exit door opened, but I wanna stay.

Marty Morris Lee: How cool that we're sitting here trying to figure this game out.

Again,

Richard Maltby, Jr.: I, have to say, I'm so grateful to be invited to, participate in this. I can't tell you. It's just such a gift. You know, and he's here, you know, he's here.

Ann Morrison: Matching minds with Sondheim. Tell a friend and quiz him. Test him on his anagram. He's pure hedonism. His songs and his shows. Mary Flynn, Mama Rose. Everybody already knows they're superbly designed. But where would we be without a puzzle to bring us glee. Even someone in a tree would believe we need Steve and his mind.

Barry Joseph: I'm sure you were as excited as I was when we learned from the Library of Congress this summer when they finally revealed some of the amazing elements in the new collection that had been donated to their location in DC from the Sondheim Estate... Sorry, I forgot where the sentence started.

Ha ha.