Yesterday's performances of Mr. Saturday Night on Broadway were canceled and its producers are saying the next performance will be June 7. Why? Because Billy Crystal has tested positive for you-know-what. As it happens, he has great timing because they were scheduled to be on hiatus starting today until 6/7 due to some prior commitment he had. There is, of course, no understudy or stand-by for the role because who would want to see that show with anyone else?
Which reminds me, as most things do, of a story…
In 1996, there was a revival of the play Inherit the Wind produced on Broadway by the National Actors Theater, a group headed up in some way by Tony Randall. Their version starred George C. Scott in what we might call the Spencer Tracy role and Charles Durning in the part Fredric March played in the 1960 movie version.
Could you ask for better casting than that? Unfortunately, there were problems getting both Mr. Scott and Mr. Durning on that stage every night. The show wound up playing 42 previews and 45 performances before closing prematurely.
I dunno what those problems were but the person who arranged for me to get good seats cautioned me that the night I went, one of those two star roles might by played by Tony Randall holding a copy of the script. He was the stand-by for both roles but he had not memorized either. Interestingly, in the original 1955 production of the play, Mr. Randall played the reporter E.K. Hornbeck — the part Gene Kelly played in the film.
It was a gamble on my part, sure, but I figured the worst that would happen was that I'd see Scott and Tony Randall or Durning and Tony Randall. Both Scott and Durning were said to be terrific in their parts. And maybe I'd be lucky and they'd both be there that night.
I called a lady I knew back there and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner and a Broadway show with me. She said yes and asked if we could go see Smokey Joe's Cafe, which her friends had all told her was wonderful. I told her I had tickets for Inherit the Wind and she asked, "What's that about?" I told her it was a drama about teaching evolution in schools.
The topic somehow did not thrill her and she asked if I could get tickets to Smokey Joe's Cafe for us and then go see Inherit the Wind some other night either alone or with someone else. I explained to her than I'd already bought the tickets and all my other nights in New York were booked. "You'll get a chance to see at least one and maybe two of the best actors in the business," I told her.
She agreed to accompany me but she didn't sound overjoyed about it. In my life, I've had plenty of dates that went forth on that basis.
The day before The Date, I heard that performances of Inherit the Wind were being canceled left and right, hit or miss. That afternoon, I took my tickets for it down to the Royale Theatre on W. 45th Street, which is where the play was…or was supposed to be. (The Royale is now the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, if you're interested in such things.) A nice lady in the box office told me it had just been announced that the show was closing because "Tony Randall can't play both leads." She gave me an address to mail in my tickets and assured me I'd receive a full refund.
I then walked over to the Virginia Theatre on W. 52nd St. — now the August Wilson Theatre — where I bought tickets for Smokey Joe's Cafe. The next evening, I took my New York friend to dinner at Ben Benson's Steakhouse, which was just down the street from the Virginia and which is no longer there, and then we saw the show she wanted to see.
The dinner was great, the show was very entertaining and I remember thinking the evening hadn't worked out so badly. Of course, that was before I knew my refund for the Inherit the Wind tickets would never arrive. As far as I'm concerned, when Tony Randall died in 2004, he owed me $120.
Soon, the fellow who got me those tickets told me that if I'd gotten them for two nights earlier, I would have seen what would probably turn out to be George C. Scott's last stage performance ever. And sure enough, it was.
Mr. Scott passed away three years later and only did films for the rest of his life, ending with a TV-Movie version of Inherit the Wind in which he played the Fredric March part and Jack Lemmon played the Spencer Tracy part. I still wish I'd seen him in the proper role at the Royale. Or maybe my date and I could have both been happy if he'd joined the cast of Smokey Joe's Cafe and done a couple of the Elvis numbers.