L. Sikorski wrote to ask…
What was the first Broadway show you saw? I think you may have written about this at some point so if so, what was the second? And what was the last thing you saw back there?
If you mean the first Broadway musical I saw not necessarily on Broadway, that would be the touring company of My Fair Lady, I saw it in 1961 at the Biltmore Theater (a lovely place which exists no longer) here in Los Angeles (an also-lovely place which may exist no longer if Trump wins). I wrote about that experience here.
The next one I remember was, again in Los Angeles, at the outdoor Greek Theater located here in Griffith Park. A national touring company of How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying played there from June 24, 1965 until July 10. For years after, I thought I'd seen Robert Morse and some or all of the original Broadway cast but the only performer in it who'd been in it when it debuted was Maureen Arthur, who originated the role of Hedy LaRue on Broadway. She was playing…well, Hedy LaRue, of course.
Many, many years later at a reunion of folks who'd worked on Your Show of Shows and other shows starring Sid Caesar, my date and I were seated at a table with Ms. Arthur and her husband, Aaron Ruben. They were there because Mr. Ruben was one of the many writers who wrote for Caesar and later went on to other things — in his case, Sgt. Bilko, The Andy Griffith Show and others, including Gomer Pyle, USMC. I told Ms. Arthur I'd seen her as Hedy at the Greek Theater and she was delighted that I remembered here. (How could I not? I was 13, she was gorgeous and in one scene, she was only wearing a towel.)
Before I could say something foolish like, "And it was great seeing Robert Morse in the role," she said something about being the only member of the original cast on that tour so I didn't embarrass myself as much as I could have and usually do. Online research has yielded the info that that tour starred Ronnie Welsh as J. Pierrepont Finch, Jeff DeBenning as J.B. Biggley and Suzanne Menke as Rosemary Pillkington.
I saw a number of other touring companies of shows in Los Angeles, many of them starring performers that you and I have heard of. In 1971 for instance, I saw Jack Weston in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the old Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood. He was quite wonderful.
That same year, I saw Art Carney and Barbara Barrie in the national touring company of another Simon play, Prisoner of Second Avenue down at the Ahmanson Theater. They were even wonderful-er and I wrote about that evening here.
But the best thing I saw in '71 — maybe the best thing I've ever seen on any stage anywhere — was the pre-Broadway staging of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker, also at the Ahmanson. I've written about it many times on this blog but this might be the longest post about it.
The first Broadway show I saw in New York was on or about February 10, 1983 and it was 42nd Street at the Majestic Theater.
The Majestic is kind of a fascinating theater. It opened in 1927 and has housed dozens of shows you've heard of including, for all or part of their original Broadway runs, The Music Man, Camelot, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Funny Girl, Fiddler on the Roof and 1776. 42nd Street opened at the Winter Garden in 1980, then moved to the Majestic in 1981. It played there until 1987 when it had to move again because a new show was coming in. The management of the place was probably sad to lose it because, you know, that new show might be a flop. But as it turned out, that new show was Phantom of the Opera and it played the Majestic from 1988 until 2023 — the longest run in Broadway history.
In 1983, I was in New York on a job. I was hired to develop and write a daytime drama (i.e., "soap opera") for NBC that was somewhat in the vein of Dark Shadows, filled with vampires and romance and things that go to bed together in the night. The project started out as a development for NBC's Saturday morning schedule — live-action, not animated — but someone there said, "This is too adult for kids" and it was reoptioned for afternoon viewing as a possible replacement for I-forget-which daytime drama NBC was then looking to replace.
Eventually, someone else at NBC said, "This is too childish for adults. It belongs on Saturday morning" and that was the end of that. But at the time, that's why I was in Manhattan and, of course, I spent time hanging around comic book company offices and seeing friends. In the unlikely event you're trying to chart my career from these blog posts, this was the visit to New York that I mentioned in this post about working on the Blackhawk comic book for DC.
On what I believe was Thursday night, 2/10/83, my pals Len Wein and Marv Wolfman — then both living in New York — and I went out to dine and see a Broadway show. We went to the TKTS discount ticket booth at 47th and Broadway, scanned the list of available shows and decided on 42nd Street at the Majestic. Tickets in hand, we then went to dinner at a Beefsteak Charlie's — a chain restaurant that was all over New York and adjoining states then and which no longer exists. Then it was off to the show.
I remember enjoying it a lot and that since the original cast had long since moved on, I didn't recognize a single performer's name in the Playbill. And that's all I remember about it. The next night, I was supposed to fly home to Los Angeles but a snowstorm closed the airport and then it turned into a blizzard that kept all the airports closed and me in New York for two more nights.
So Friday evening, when it was still just a snowstorm, the folks I was working with on the soap opera project took me to dinner at the Russian Tea Room. We then trudged through a light snow to the 46th Street Theatre to see the musical Nine — not my choice but then I wasn't paying.
The 46th Street Theatre has since been renamed the Richard Rodgers and it's where I later saw How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (with Matthew Broderick) and Laughter on the 23rd Floor (with Nathan Lane, as recently discussed on this blog). It's currently housing some show called Hamilton which I've never heard of but it sounds like a sure-fire flop to me.
What I remember about Nine is that I didn't particularly like it and that when we exited the theater, the light snowstorm had escalated into that blizzard and we had a helluva time walking back to our hotel. Walking was the only option because the streets were buried in snow and the subway wasn't running. In hindsight, I had a respect for the actors for being there and giving a full-out performance that evening when they probably knew what an ordeal it would be for them to get home after the show.
I decided on that trip that I wanted to see more shows on Broadway instead of waiting to see them in L.A. From that point on, I made it a point to pre-order theater tix for as many shows as I could see each time I went back to New York. It was more fun to take someone so if I was traveling alone, I invited — in some cases, badgered — folks I knew in New York to accompany me. I don't know why I didn't do that on a few previous trips to that city.
The last two trips I took there with Amber, she and I got to see The Play That Goes Wrong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the "small, immersive" revival of Sweeney Todd, Prince of Broadway, Newsical, the revival of My Fair Lady, one of the infinite revivals of Avenue Q and the revival of Hello Dolly! with Bernadette Peters. I didn't take her to see Hamilton there because I took her to see it in L.A. Yes, I know it was not a flop. That was a joke.