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[0:00] Richard Maltby Jr: Welcome back. We're here with Richard Maltby Jr. talking about the Longacre Theatre. Hi, I'm Richard Maltby, and you're listening to me on Jennifer Ashley Tepper's podcast, The Untold Stories of Broadway.

[0:33] Richard Maltby Jr: You know, the Longacre does have a pretty interesting stage door. It has that long alley that leads to the stage door, where I know in current days they have like barbecues and get-togethers sometimes in that alley. Oh, but the big secret. It's a secret connection to the Barrymore.

[0:50] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I was hoping you would say that.

[0:51] Richard Maltby Jr: It backs up on the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. And the Schuberts wanted, I guess Ethel or whoever was in the theater. They made a connection to the alley of the Longacre so that the stars could get out of the Barrymore without having to face the crowd.

[1:12] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Love it. Did you ever interact with anyone at the Barrymore during or, you know, because you did that, you played the Barrymore later with Baby.

[1:18] Richard Maltby Jr: Ring of Fire. Up with these other theaters. All these other shows are interlopers. Well, did you ever interact with the Longacre or the Barrymore when you were at the other?

[1:30] Richard Maltby Jr: The only way that we interacted was that I think I may I think that Lettuce and Lovage was playing at the Barrymore. And with Maggie Smith. And the finale and the applause from Ain't Misbehavin' always occurred in that big climactic scene. And it could be heard. And we got complaints from Megan. And I don't know exactly what they did, but they did something to soundproof the back of the wall so that we wouldn't disturb Maggie Smith.

[2:15] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: That's I'm sure other shows were grateful for that.

[2:18] Richard Maltby Jr: I guess I would love to have so I'm gonna read a story from the Longacre chapter upcoming of the Untold Stories of Broadway, and I would love for you to read one too. I'm gonna hand you yours so you can look over it while I'm gonna share a story from Joan Shepard. You have a story from Elizabeth Ashley, and they're both about the Longacre.

[2:39] Richard Maltby Jr: So Joan Shepard is an actor who played the Longacre quite a while ago, and this is her story. I almost died at the Longacre. In January of 1943, when I was 10 years old, my father died. My mother was devastated. He was 48 years old, and they had been married for 20 years. We went to the funeral in Indianapolis where my father's family lived. When we got back to our apartment in Jackson Heights, it was about seven o'clock, and the phone was ringing. I answered it. It was John Farrell, who had been the stage manager of a big flop I was in that closed out of town called Life Laughter in Tears. Life, Laughter and Tears was comprised of three one-act plays. Eddie Dowling and Julie Hayden were in it, and the three one acts were written by William Saroyan and Sean O'Casey.

It had closed in 1942 in Boston. John got me on the phone and he said, Where have you been? We've been trying to reach you. We're saving a part for you in our Broadway show. This doesn't happen. It's very rare. But I think in this case, they wanted me because the part was a great fit. I started rehearsal the next day for this play called The Rock. It was the most magical thing at the time. My dad had just died. My mother and I were not in particular financial trouble, but it certainly didn't hurt for me to have a job. The whole thing just took the weight off of both of us. When we were in Indianapolis for the funeral, I stayed with my cousins who had the chicken pox. Our family said they were over it, but clearly they weren't, because there we were in rehearsal at the Longacre, and I came down with chicken pox.

My mother made up a bed for me in the dressing room at the Longacre on the very top floor, furthest to the right. It was basically some chairs pushed together and covered in coats. Everyone went out for dinner break, including my mother, but I wanted to lie down and rest. The lights in every room at that time were controlled by the stage doorman, so we couldn't turn them off. Before my mother left, she put her gloves over the light so the room would be darker and I could sleep. I fell asleep on the top floor of the Longacre with no one else there in 1943, and the gloves caught fire on the light. There was another child in the show, Richard Leon, and luckily his mother, Miss Leon, brought him back early from dinner break, and they saw smoke coming from underneath my door. She tried to pry it open, but it was stuck. Finally, she and Richard wrenched the door open and found me. I was unconscious and they dragged me out. That was at the Longacre.

[4:46] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Oh, what a good story. Joan Shepard. Isn't that wild? Um, she has some incredible stories. So she was a child actor on Broadway and actually worked with Oscar Hammerstein on Sunny River, the last show he did before Oklahoma. So I was very lucky to interview her. Um, and yeah, I would love for you to read if you wouldn't mind Elizabeth Ashley's story.

[5:07] Richard Maltby Jr: A cold reading. I love it.

[5:09] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: If there ever was one.

[5:10] Richard Maltby Jr: That's the idea. So Elizabeth Ashley wrote, in 1959, I was in my second year studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse. The Playhouse took 75 people for the first year, but would only ask 25 of them back for the second year. So everybody worked like a demon to be in the 25, and thank God I made it. At the end of the second year, the students did a showcase for agents. I did some scenes from The Crucible, and I got myself an agent. The summer before, I had done a play in Westport for the Theater Guild called Marcus in the High Grass about James Dean, which was written by Bill Gunn, who had been James Dean's roommate. During the time of the showcase, the Theater Guild was putting up a show called The Highest Tree by Dora Sherry in Philadelphia.

A wonderful actress named Barbara Loden had a tiny scene in it. It was a cast of 15, and she had what you might call an under five, meaning that she had about five lines and understudied other parts. Barbara was this beautiful, unusual, strange, wonderful kind of actress, and Elia Kazan wanted her for his next movie. It was a film called Wild River with Lee Remick and Montgomery Clift about Tennessee Valley and the Depression. And no one wanted to say no to Elia Kazan. He was one of the greatest directors who ever lived and a very powerful man. He and Barbara later ended up getting married. So she went and did the film, and because the Theater Guild knew me, they called my agent and asked if I could replace her.

The agent I'd just gotten at this student showcase called me and said, You've got to get to Philadelphia. It was a Thursday, and I had to get to Philadelphia and start performances on Saturday. I went to the agency's office to pick up the two scenes I was in, and I got on a train to Philadelphia. Three days later, I was on stage. Then we very quickly came to New York, and I was making my Broadway debut at the Longacre. I was 20. The Longacre is very straight up and down. There's almost no room backstage for anything. There's barely a crossover. I had to climb seven or eight flights up to my dressing room, which I shared with a much older guy who was an understudy. I had never been through the whole Broadway thing before.

We went to Sardi's on opening night, and I had never been there. They stuck us in some table in the back, and everybody waited for the New York Times review. When it came out, Sardi's thinned out. A seasoned actor yelled, The reviews must be bad, everyone's leaving. And that was it. The New York Times review was bad. And most of the other reviews were not good either. But Eleanor Roosevelt loved our play. And at the time she had a column in the New York Post. The Highest Tree ran for about a month just on the strength of Eleanor Roosevelt. I just couldn't believe I had a job on Broadway. Robert Redford was in the show, and he was only a little older than me. Michael Douglas's mother, Diana Douglas, was in the show, and I remember on our first day in the theater, she climbed all the way up to the dressing room top floor to welcome the low-hanging fruit, which was us.

Since The Highest Tree closed so quickly, I didn't have enough equity weeks to get unemployment, so I started waiting tables in Greenwich Village. Fifty-five years later, I came back to the Longacre for You Can't Take It With You. And I just kept thinking about those eight flights of stairs. Luckily, they gave me a dressing room on the second floor. When I walked backstage all those years later, so many things were different. Stage managers need dressing rooms now, which they didn't used to, and so many of the dressing rooms had been chopped up and divided into more spaces.

[8:49] Richard Maltby Jr: Wow, that was a great cold reading. Excellent work. I would cast you.

[8:53] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I'm going to do that. I think I should do that for you.

[8:56] Richard Maltby Jr: That was great. So what is it like? Did you see shows? Oh, by the way.

[9:00] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[9:01] Richard Maltby Jr: Because Eleanor Roosevelt came up. Please. When did she see at the Phoenix? Did she see Sap?

[9:05] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: The Sap of Life.

[9:08] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, Sap of Life ran for six weeks. And in its, you know, fifth week we announced that we were closing. Somebody knew Eleanor Roosevelt. And she wrote a whole column about how sad it is that The Sap of Life has to close. And that it's such a wonderful thing, and it should stay open. Eleanor Roosevelt was the Rosie O'Donnell of her time.

[9:33] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Who knew?

[9:34] Richard Maltby Jr: It was. Who would have known she was?

[9:37] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I love that. Um, so I'm always curious. Um, if you remember, I'm I think you would probably remember afterwards, but did you see shows at the Longacre before Ain't Misbehavin'? And I'm sure you did afterwards. What was it like to kind of return there and, you know, see other shows?

[9:51] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, the experience of the theater was so odd for me. I mean, it was so much just a theater that I don't have a lot of connections. I've gone to other shows at the theater. It never seems quite like the same theater that I was in. You know, it all happened so fast. I mean, we moved into the theater. I mean, John Lee Beatty had designed the set. I was supposed to start tech on a Monday. They hadn't finished building the set. They didn't finish building it, and we didn't start tech until Thursday, and there was a performance Friday night, and I had never done a Broadway tech. Plus the general manager in Manny Eisenberg's office. He had told Manny, it's my first show. Just get me the best stage manager in New York.

So his general manager instead got me an ex-alcoholic, a guy who had dropped out of the business because he was an alcoholic, and had decided that he wanted to come back, and the general manager wanted to give his old friend a job. He did not know how to count to eight. I mean, he could not, he was lean over my shoulder and I would say, you know, it's fun to pow. And he would go, wait, what was that again? One, two, three. Oh no. And I thought it was me. I thought if I knew anything about teching a show, I'd be able to be clear because what did I know? But it was. But we, um, as a result, the first performance on Wednesday night, we also had a great, there was a reason, a union reason why Luther Henderson, who had been playing the show at the Man Theatre Club, couldn't play on Broadway.

You can't, a musical director couldn't be the orchestrator. There was some usual union rule. But there it was. So we had the great Hank Jones, one of the great jazz musicians of all time. And he did play the show wonderfully, but he wasn't a musical director. He didn't know how to pace it, he didn't know how to cue things, he didn't know how to, you know, breathe with the actors, he didn't know how to support, he just didn't know shows. So we did a dress rehearsal at four o'clock. We had to do a dress. It was horrible. And I was a moment when I know that the director is supposed to go up, call the company together, stand in front of them and say, it's all gonna be wonderful. So I called the company together, stood in front of them, and I couldn't say nothing came out of my mouth.

I just said, excuse me, and I went over to Luther's dressing room and said, get a costume, you're going on tonight. Oh gosh. And he did, and we went through it the in that first performance, the light cues were just all over the place.

[13:19] Richard Maltby Jr: I was so embarrassed, and it got okay in the first act, but as the show went on, and we'd been sloppier and sloppier, it just got worse and worse.

[13:30] Richard Maltby Jr: And the show hit the last big finale moment, and the lights went out late, and the entire audience leapt to their feet screaming, and they just couldn't stop screaming. And I thought, oh my god, they don't care about the light cues. Not when the show's that good. No, they just didn't, you know. And we had one week to sort of fix everything, which we did.

[14:01] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, I just want to say for listeners who probably have seen shows at the Longacre, or perhaps, you know, at least know about them. Some of the shows that have played the Longacre recently, of course, The Prom. You might have seen Boeing Boeing there or the Lakaage revival. Interesting. I always find this interesting, but some of the people who've played the Longacre over the years, John and Ethel Barrymore, Stocker Channing, Ruby Dee, Robert De Niro, Clark Gable, who had a very quick run there in a show that I think, you know, if you want to do some deep Googling about the Longacre, look up that one. Julie Harris, James Earl Jones, James Mason, Zero Mostel, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, and the show we talked about, and Diana Rigg have all played The Longacre. I know it's quite a good list. Of course, The Lightning Thief is about to play there, followed by Diana.

[14:51] Richard Maltby Jr: But also for listeners, just these are shows you might have seen recently: The Prom, Bronx Tale, Allegiance, Living on Love, You Can't Take It With You, starring Elizabeth Ashley, Of Mice and Men, First Date, The Performers, Mike Tyson, Undisputed Truth, Magic Bird, Chinglish, Lakaage as mentioned, Burn the Floor. So it's had quite a few shows in recent years. Interesting because the First Date and Chinglish I saw, and I don't remember they were. I don't think it's a good thing. The Longacre's quite different. And in fact, you know, in 2008 it had a significant renovation.

[15:22] Richard Maltby Jr: Yes, it's a much, much more attractive theater. I mean, in the late 70s, theaters were dingy. Right. Yeah. And they were often uncomfortable. They were, you know, the lighting was terrible, and there were often beautiful murals that had darkened over time, and the Longacre was like that. It's quite a beautiful theater now.

[15:50] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, I want to know what you remember about the Tony Awards that year, because of course, you know, as you said, it was a rocket ship on Famous Haven, but it was quite a year at the Tonys with dancing and On the 20th Century and Runaways and The Act and you guys. Um, what do you remember about that?

[16:08] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, obviously not a whole lot. I mean, you know, it seemed like we were gonna win because it just seemed like that. I didn't think that I would win director because there's Hal Prince and there's Bob Fosse. And I thought, you know, crazy. So when they announced my name, I went up and I mean, it's all a blank. The only person who's the house lights are up when you're on the stage so that you know you can see. I couldn't, but I didn't recognize anybody except Hal Prince. It's the only face that I saw that I thought, I mean, it was like I can't have this thought.

[17:04] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, and you don't get to prepare for them. Yeah, you know.

[17:11] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, I did want to share, so also, you know, the Longacre, there will be a Longacre. But they also Alinda Lavin gave me the award. Yes. And they, after you get the award, you can watch this on YouTube, by the way. You are whisked away across the street in the Sardis of that time, because it was at the Schubert. But you are taken away. And you don't return to the theater for a good long time. Sometimes you don't return at all.

[17:41] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, so the Longacre, you know, as mentioned, I haven't had written in Longacre Chapter, but I've interviewed some people. One of my favorite stories that I heard was from Terrence McNally about The Ritz, which played the Longacre. Apparently he was so nervous on opening night of his play, which did quite well at the Longacre, that the director said, Well, just put on a towel and just be in the play and smoke a cigarette and walk on stage in the bathhouse scene. So anyone who saw The Ritz on opening night saw Terrence McNally as an extra, and equity never noticed and no one ever noticed, but he was on stage, which I thought was a great Longacre story.

[18:14] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, I just have one more thing I'd like to read, and then any final thoughts about the Longacre or anything we've talked about. Um, so another show that I've heard about over the years that played there was the Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm. Um, really? Which, uh, what is the oh ahead? So that show reimagined a lot of Gershwin songs and put them in new context and had quite a crazy cast of Sada Ramirez and Patrick Wilson and Michael Barress, who I interviewed about it, and played a very short moment at the Longacre, but it was never recorded. I've always found that interesting. One of those shows that, you know, stars so many people that go on to other things that, you know, this is what Michael Barress had to say about it, um, specifically about the Longacre.

[18:56] Richard Maltby Jr: Theaters have their own personalities, and the Longacre has a history of flops that precedes it. A lot of theater owners will reserve their favorite houses for shows they think are most likely to be hits, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's such a great victory now when a theater like The Longacre has a hit. I'm just so happy for it. I'm proud of it for enduring because it's through no fault of the theater itself, which is incredible that it has a reputation one way or the other most of the time. I did the Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm at the Longacre, and it was special in plenty of ways, but had a short run. I was one of those people who contributed to the Longacre's poor self-image, but I love the Longacre.

I love what it's meant for decades and what it will mean for decades to come. Going to Broadway is like going to a park. You see all of these oaks still standing, despite the fact that there's been damage to the park around them. They're survivors.

[19:42] Richard Maltby Jr: Oh, it's totally. No, it is totally, totally true. The houses are just houses. Yeah. They're just places where this thing happens. And this week that thing happens, and a month later, another thing happens. This one's a play, that one's a musical, this one is thrilling, this one isn't. And the fact that the magic changes, that the theater is a constant shell, and then these other things occur are just, if you have any sense of the symbolism of the theater, it always strikes me that the thing that you have that happens in the space doesn't alter the space. The space is there and then these things happen. I don't know if I've said that very clearly, but it just, it's part of the magic that I think never goes away.

[20:53] Richard Maltby Jr: I love that. Any final thoughts about the Longacre, Ain't Misbehavin', How Do You Do? My favorite musical. Well, I mean, you know, those are the major ones. I mean, there are countless anecdotes of going backstage and trying to give notes to the cast. The cast, you know, we were just doing a show at the Manhattan Theater Club. That's all we were doing. There was no sense that it was gonna go to Broadway or something.

[21:27] Richard Maltby Jr: How many did that seat? It was this very small theater that you started in. It was a cabaret space. I don't know, maybe 75. Right. And then to end up on Broadway. And, you know, nobody had any expectation of it going anywhere. We had one week of previews, and yeah, as I said, no truncated tech with some really scarily bad performances at the beginning. The cast just came together out of self-defense. They sort of clung together. And part of the magic of the show was this incredible connection among all of these people.

[22:13] Richard Maltby Jr: A week after the show opened and got all these reviews was a little bit different. Yeah. Was a little bit different backstage. I would go back and give a note to Nell, and she would say, Well, yes, I'll do that, but can you have tell Andre to do this and tell Ken to do this? So then I would go to the next place and I'd give them my note plus another note, which they knew had come from Nell. And then I would get seven more back. So by the time I got to every member in the cast, I had five times more notes than I had when I was going in. Plus, I noticed that whenever I gave a note, nothing, the note I gave never got better. However, everything around the note got better. You know, the lines in front of the lines are back.

So I thought I'm gonna go back and give a note about something about the line in front of the note I want to access. And that I don't care about at all. It's perfectly fine. So I gave this sort of silly note about something. And indeed that night the thing that I'd given the note about did not improve. But the thing I really wanted to have improved got better.

[23:34] Richard Maltby Jr: Oh my goodness. I got really smart. The psychology of notes. The psychology of it. It was really, oh, they were glorious individuals. And I don't know if you, well, you saw the video well, or did you see the reunion? Yes, yeah. With Armilia couldn't come in, but Andre, Ken, and Charlene now 40 years later. Wow, um, and those three were so spectacular. I mean, Andre did every single thing in Viper. Just, and Charlene, who said she hadn't sung in 40 years, I told her, honey, if you want a career in cabaret, yeah, you've got one. I mean, you can break everybody's heart because she's such a great actress.

[24:33] Richard Maltby Jr: See, that's the magic of the physical spaces, is that now I'm picturing times when I've been backstage at the Longacre, and that at some point you were giving people notes in those very rooms I was in, and you know, showed it. It's a very, very cramped space. I think allegiance played there, didn't it? Yeah. And I went back to see Lea Salonga. Um, and in what pretty much the you decide to do when there are, you know, a crowd of people who come back, is the stage managers will clear the stage and bring people out onto the stage, and then the cast comes out and talks because the lobby area of the Longacre is really small, and it's got like two staircases in it, one going up and one going down. So you um, there's not much room to loll around.

[25:28] Richard Maltby Jr: Right. Well, thank you for joining and talking about the Longacre. Jennifer, I could, I'm I just love theaters.

[25:38] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I love that you love theaters. I think, you know, you just can't get enough of them.

[25:45] Richard Maltby Jr: No. I mean, they have personalities.

[25:46] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: They do.

[25:49] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, and, you know, I mean, if anybody who started out with a marionette theater as I did, you know, you just know that it's a home for something. Um, it's great. And I think this project is spectacular.

[26:08] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Untold Stories of Broadway, and thank you to our producer, Dori Berinstein, my publishers of the Untold Stories of Broadway, Varisa Trincaro and Roberta Pereira, Zach Zadek for that theme music. And thank you to all of you for listening to the podcast. You can buy the Untold Stories in book version on Amazon.com.