Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb (17 page)

The cast was now all off book . . .
including
Eve. She was off it, but that didn’t mean she was following it. One day I read along in the script just for laughs (a little harder to come by now that we’d hit the third week), and was not surprised to discover that not one of her lines came out even remotely as written—if it came out at all. It was uncanny the way she paraphrased every stinking thought. Still, she was often rather engaging first thing in the morning. It was only after lunch and her customary glass of Chablis that we had on our hands what closely resembled a zombie in a silk turban.

On Thursday I arrived for the afternoon runthrough to discover the sidelines of the studio crammed with all sorts of people. All the designers and their assistants were there, including Kent the fight master, Ken the musical director, and Pat Collins the lighting designer. Plus many new and strange faces belonging to folks I may have never been introduced to. It was a little disconcerting, so I wasn’t surprised when Ricka told me about Eve’s reaction to this assemblage. She (Eve) had apparently asked Ricka to clear the room at once of all the intruders.

“You know, Eve,” Ricka reported saying, “previews begin in a little over a week. These people here today all have to see the show so they can start doing their jobs.”

I squeezed into a spot between Jerry Bihm and Marj, and tried to brace myself for whatever was about to happen.

Act One soldiered on at a reasonably appropriate rate—Eve made it through with less faltering than usual. Audiences
do
help. Act Two, however, was ruinous, pure and complicated. It wasn’t all Eve’s fault, by any means. Several scenes had never been seriously rehearsed or even blocked, lots of new business—including chase scenes—had not been timed.

But, primarily, Eve could simply not paraphrase her way through this farcical obstacle course.

The reaction to the first act was mildly favorable. A lot of healthy laughter. A we’re-with-you-all-the-way-and-it-looks-like-maybe-we’ll-be-pulling-a-few-paychecks-out-of-this-sucker-after-all kind of laughter. “Gee,” I thought, as I watched folks like Marj and Betty and Pat titter and guffaw, “maybe the play
does
work. Maybe it can hold up,
despite
the Mad Paraphraser.”

This self-satisfaction totally deteriorated during the second act. But something prevented me from taking it out on myself, even privately. I grew angrier by the minute, glowering at everybody on the stage, and a lot of the folks in the audience, many of whom, I was quick to note, were now glowering right back. I wondered how much real effort Eve was putting into this process, and if, in fact, she realized just how dependent everyone else was on her getting it together.

I went up to her afterwards. She was just as irritable as I was, and just as distracted by our rapidly dispersing audience.

“I simply don’t have enough time!” she snapped. “I finish here and go out to dinner with Brooks, have a tiny glass of wine, maybe two—and then…” She lowered her chin to suggest “beddie-bye.”

I was getting to be quite good at guessing her charades.

“And the mornings!” she continued. “Why, do you know it took the girl two and a half hours to do my nails this morning?”

I struggled to be empathetic. I felt I’d accommodated this woman again and again, and had made both additions and omissions to the script when called on by her to do so. I also knew that many of her “events” had been canceled at the expense of the show’s overall publicity campaign. But what really pissed me off was to hear that she still wasn’t going over her lines at night, and was apparently still expecting simply to absorb the play. I knew at that moment that it wasn’t ever going to happen. I felt like a caged animal.

Trouble was, I had no idea where I’d run to if somebody lifted the latch and set me free.

While I was listening to a litany of similar complaints from Eve, Jerry came over with the star’s pay envelope. “For a real good job today, honey!” he quipped. She hit him playfully on the arm (she did this a lot), and sighed loudly with frustration (she did that a lot, too).

I wasn’t the only one pissed off. Lillie left the studio with us that evening, and began to spit venom.

“It’s not the Eve Arden Fan Club anymore!” she fumed. “That woman is being paid five grand a week—you’d
think
she’d give us a little in return!”

So. It was out. Now we knew the star’s salary.
Five thousand dollars
—and delivered in cash every week—which Dennis told me was an old Hollywood custom. Figured. So much of this experience had reeked of old Hollywood from the beginning.

Lillie’s current tantrum was par for the course these days. Both Lord and Lady Roach had been showing us their dark sides the deeper we hacked our way inside the Moose jungle. Saturday afternoon we had lunch at Joe Allen’s—already famous for its posters of infamous Broadway flops like
Kelly
and
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
.

Welcome, Arthur, to the House of Fore Shadows!

Despite Eve’s small improvement at that afternoon’s rehearsal, Lillie was on a tear about how she felt serious advantage was being taken of all of us. Bad-mouthing Eve had become something of a cause célèbre for Lillie. I’d noticed that Ricka would often feed this particular obsession and that John would often let it go—thereby encouraging it, in my estimation. I suspected that this might very well be part of the attraction John and Lillie had for each other—her spitfire moments complimented the perpetual cool on John’s part. Jane, incidentally, was convinced that John’s unflagging serenity was the result of always being better off financially than his peers—that certain obligation the very rich appear to feel not to make waves, not to exploit their God-given advantage over the rest of us rabble.

It now appeared, however, that even John had his limits. He’d let everyone off for the afternoon, but not as a reward. “There’s a condition,” he said, actually sounding a bit forceful. “There will be no more ‘memory work’ on Monday. If you have your lines I can help you further. Otherwise, there’s nothing more I can do.”

He even dared to glance directly at Eve when he said that.

After lunch, Lillie hurried off to her first costume fitting, and John, Ricka, Dennis, and I all climbed into John’s little Saab and sped out to Brooklyn to visit the scene shop where Marj’s set was under construction. John’s driving reflected his mood; he reminded me of Cruella DeVil chasing after all those Dalmatian puppies. We got hopelessly lost, and as Lillie’s directions became less and less useful, John’s passion rose and rose until Dennis and I at long last got a glimpse of the inner aggression he so adroitly concealed most of the time. Dennis mentioned this revelation to Ricka, who seemed much more interested in getting back to the city to celebrate her birthday with her husband.

The scene shop was cavernous. After trouble initially finding a suitable ingress, we walked in like the meek and mild Dorothy and her pals to genuflect before the work of the Wizard of Design. Marj Kellogg’s set—let me just tell you, folks—was and
remains
to this day the best thing about
Moose Murders
. I swear she must have been hiding next door to my family’s camp at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. Every detail was flawless, down to the warm earthen color scheme. Dennis and I stood together and grinned like little boys; all four of us scampered about the set in unabashed delight. We climbed up the stairs, strolled across the balcony, took turns sitting at the window seat or standing on the “live entertainment” platform, came in and out of all the doors and opened all the windows, all the while admiring the enormous stone fireplace and the birch latticework and the wealth of whimsically rendered animal pelt-and-bone furnishings. I stood in the middle of this magnificent creation, raised my arms high over my head, and exclaimed, “Broadway is great!”

And I meant it. I was ready to move into that set. We all were, I think. What a wonderful break from the unspeakable stress and tension this hellish week had brought so far.

We all chose separate corners of our new home and sat in happy silence for quite some time. Finally one of us moved, and the rest reluctantly followed off the set, out of the shop, and back into the gray winter day.

We drove back to lower Manhattan to visit the costume shop. Lillie was there, modeling Lauraine’s very tasteful lavender suit. Dennis was whisked away to try on his Brooks Brothers monogrammed robe and slippers, and became despondent over the flab he had been determined to lose before opening.

“Don’t worry,” encouraged John. “Body bandaging hides a multitude of sins.”

John Sullivan timidly took us on a tour of the shop and we viewed most of the other completed costumes. Eve was to have three separate ensembles, including a handsome business suit and a more relaxed outfit featuring a pair of those leather pants she’d always wanted for the first act, and a Chinese affair (again per her request) for the second. All three were on display, and all were equally lovely.

The visits to both these shops had been so much fun, and so damn encouraging, that I wondered if we might possibly get away with opening the show with just the set and costumes. I mean, think about it. The audience could sit admiring all these marvelous
accoutrements
for two hours; who needed a script and actors?

Monday morning the cast was joined by the understudies, all two of them, Suzanne and Andy. (Dennis, of course, was present as always, in his “chair.”) It had been my understanding that others would be hired after the opening depending on how the show was received. This went the way of other such “understandings” I’d had with John when I overheard him advising Andy which roles to learn first, now that time was of the essence.

“Howie first,” he said. “Then Stinky.”

Suzanne, in turn, would be responsible for all the female roles except Gay, but, as far as I knew, no plans were being made to find another little girl to take Mara’s place should she choke on a chicken bone or something. Sue would learn Hedda’s part only in case Eve became ill in the middle of a performance—it was presumed the star would begin each show no matter what condition she was in. The past several days had obviously taken their toll. Why throw good money after bad when your ship had already sprung a fatal leak?

I visited Marc that evening, intending to come clean about what I had learned. But, once again, I wimped out. Telling him that Scott had been cast had been hard enough. Dennis had warned me that it would be cruel to withhold this information, since Marc’s life seemed once again to be on hold until he assumed the role of understudy.

“You think ‘and Lillie Robertson’ is bad,” said Marc. “Just wait until ‘for Marc Castle’” (from the dedication page) “takes over!”

Squirming a little, and trying to come off as nonchalant as possible, I asked him about his “upcoming projects.”

There were none. True to his word, he’d quit smoking and (perhaps as a result) was eating a lot of Entenmann’s baked goods and drinking an inordinate amount of milk—even for him. He’d dropped a recent idea of writing a book. The Equity board was bare. His unemployment benefits had been extended for another three months, but he wasn’t going to worry about that.

“Why should I panic until I find out whether or not the show is going to run?” he asked.

I nodded, knowingly. I encouraged him to keep looking for some sort of diversion, and the conversation immediately turned south.

“I found a copy of the
Sunday Times
in the garbage yesterday,” he mentioned, “so I finally got to see the ad.”

“What?” I said, trying not to appear insulted. “You didn’t rush right out to buy your
own
copy as soon as it hit the stands?”

“The border is good,” said Marc. “But the moose itself could be a little more . . . zany.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. And my friend Barbara called and said ‘they’re not spending a lot of money on this, are they? It looks
inexpensive
.’”

It occurred to me that this would be the perfect time to hit him with my news. But I let it go. In fact, I never did tell him. Why bother? I think we both knew the subject was just about as moot as a subject of this sort could get.