A Daly Affirmation

2/21/15

Today is Tyne Daly's birthday, and I have many thoughts I'd like to share about her, but it's 3AM, and my thoughts are all jumbled, so I'm going to go the bullet point route.

• I first became aware of her watching her as half of the police detective team Cagney & Lacey
  
• Like most red-blooded American teenagers at the time, Tyne often appeared in my dreams as I slept. That wasn't a thing? It was just me?
  
• I'm not proud of this, but I once threw my bedroom slipper at my mom (it missed) because she wouldn't stop talking during the climax of a particularly intense episode. I can hear her like it was yesterday, "It looks like Tyne lost some weight." To her credit, my mother did not tell my father, which was a big threat for me even at 19 or 20. And eventually we did laugh about it. Eventually.
  
• If you go to the Paly Center for Media in New York, you can find me on a tape there from 1994 asking Tyne why she wouldn't reboot Cagney & Lacey into a full time series and not just occasional TV movies.She said she didn't want another hour long weekly gig. I reminded her that her then current show Christy was an hour long. She laughed and said, "I already got an hour gig; I'm lookin' for a half hour gig!"
  
• As something of a show queen (I really don't like how reductive that term is, but it's apt) I have often heard and participated in heated discussions regarding who was the ultimate Mama Rose in Gypsy. I've seen six live productions, including three Broadway revivals; I've seen a movie version; I've seen a TV version;  I've  studied hours of Youtube videos of various productions and performers tackling the score, and for my money Tyne Daly was the most authentic, chilling, awesome Rose ever. It's been 25 years, and I can still see her in my mind's eye leaping off the stage in frustration and yearning during her climatic number, Rose's Turn. No, she doesn't have the singing chops of some of the other Roses like Patti and Bernadette. It simply doesn't matter; for me, she was thrilling and indelible. 

She's The Top

2/20/15

Today is the 91st birthday of designer, painter, author, mother Gloria Vanderbilt. And if she'd done nothing else in her storied career and fabled life, she'd still be the woman who gave us Anderson Cooper. 

My Mildly Amusing Valentine

2/14/15

I'm in the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street. There is tension in the newsroom. Someone is trying to get us (yes, it seems I work here!) to keep from publishing something damaging to a politician. The particulars are very vague, but everyone at the paper, including myself, is very smug and no so gracious in victory.

I hear the sound of music. I see on the sidewalk below my office Dinah Washington in a red dress performing a Valentines Day concert. A woman approaches the makeshift stage and tries to shake Dinah's hand, but she is shooed away by security. At first I think they don't want the woman to realize that this isn't Dinah but rather an impersonator. And then I realize it's even worse than that: she's a hologram!

(Note: When I woke up this morning  my radio was on and tuned to the local jazz station. They were in the middle of a twenty song Dinah Washington set. I would consider that an outside assist. Also, this is the second time in two weeks I dreamed that someone turned out to be a hologram. What the hell?? Or what the holl!)

Happy Birthday Kathy Najimy

Today is Kathy Najimy's birthday. I had the good fortune of meeting her a few times through my old job as Gloria Stinem's assistant. Gloria had actually performed the wedding service for Kathy and her husband Dan.

I remember telling Kathy that her wedding day was the same as day as my birthday and she said, "which one? We got married a bunch of times."

A few months later I got to go backstage at the Helen Hayes theatre on Broadway to meet Kathy. She was appearing in "Dirty Blonde" in a dual role as Mae West and one of her Mae's fans. I've been backstage at a few theatres but this one was different from others I'd been to. Most that I've visited are pretty utilitarian, but the Helen Hayes had a sitting area that was kind of like a Victorian parlor. I half expected someone to offer me tea.

My conversation with Kathy wasn't particularly memorable, just friendly chit chat. But while I awaited my turn with her, I witnessed an unusual site. Julie Kavner happened to attend the same performance, and when Kathy came out of her dressing room and into the parlor, she first spoke with Julie while I looked on. It was a little surreal listening to the voices of Marge Simpson and Peggy Hill chat about the state of Broadway.

[SIDE BAR: I didn't get to talk to Julie, but if I had I probably would have told her about that time I was in high school and I accidentally wrote a musical version of "Rhoda."  I didn't realize that's what I was doing, but when I read it back, it was pretty clear: two young Jewish women finding their way in New York, one of them a chronic overeater with self esteem issues, dealing with their overbearing mother. (and now I'm having a senior moment--did I write about this before??) ]

Once again I digress! Happy Birthday to the uniquely talented Kathy Najimy!

A Blythe Spirit

2/3/15

Blythe Danner was born in Philadelphia on February 3, 1943. I'm very glad we were born in the same city, though I imagine she's from a nicer neighborhood than I.

I saw her leaving a theatre once, but I've never seen her perform on stage; I had a ticket to see her in Follies in 2001, but alas her understudy went on at the matinee I saw.

Over the years she's shown up in my dreams a few times, both involving public transportation and Pennsylvania.

In one dream it's very late at night and it's some time around 1960. I meet Blythe on a bus. We're on our way to Philadelphia to try to find the next great girl group.

In the other dream, which I had about 6 years ago, I'm riding in the dining car of a big old train and playing cards with Blythe Danner and Tony winner Joanna Gleason (Broadway's Baker's Wife in the original "Into The Woods". For my non theatre friends, oh my God she is a treat. But I digress.)

We're on our way to Valley Forge where we'll be making a historical film. I realize now this dining car is actually our dressing room. As the train pulls into a lush, hilly patch of land, Blythe tells us, "you know my father was a Jewish baker in Philadelphia." This seems highly unlikely.

The train comes to a stop. I open a door to peak outside. There is already filming underway, and I have just apparently ruined a shot because I'm not yet in costume. I scramble back inside, closing the door behind me. Blythe and Joanna laugh at my mistake, but really how was I to know the train would leave us right on the set?!

Bruised Cherries: Foreign Visitors in the Auditorium

[NOTE: Like anyone who writes, I edit my work, even my dreams. It may not seem like it, but I do cut bits and pieces to make the narrative more clear. I wont make things up, but I will remove small moments that may be confusing, like a quick location change, or when one person turns into another and then back again in an instance. If I didn't, I think most dreams would be very difficult to follow. I know it can already be taxing enough to sit through someone else's dreams. However, today I am putting away my editor's pen and writing this morning's dream as just as I remember it. ]

2/1/15

I'm in the auditorium of my old high school. Sister M. is there. She was the sometimes kindly but more often foaming at the mouth-scary nun who acted as the assistant director of our high school plays. Also in attendance is President Obama. Wait, is he our principle AND the president? And is this the auditorium AND the chamber of the House of Representatives? Oh man.

Everyone is discussing what to do with the extra thousand dollars in the budget. The president wants to build a small satellite stage in the middle of the auditorium. I help him move some bleachers around to get an idea of how big it would be.

Sister M, doesn't think we need it. I explain to the president that we used to built two smaller stages at the side of the main stage for every show, but they're really not needed. "What about the lights? Maybe we could update some of the lights," I suggest.

"Or the sound." Sister chimes in. "I know it's not that old, but the sound system isn't very good."

We're outside on a field now, but somehow it's still part of the auditorium. I see Vanessa Redgrave and her sister Lynn walking down a hill in period costumes, though I'm not sure what period, and enormously teased 1960s hairstyles. I feel like what I'm seeing is real, but also maybe a hologram.

The president is upset because there was supposed to be an unfurling of the Union Jack and a band playing God Save The Queen when they arrived. He runs to the back of the auditorium, and within moments a group of red coated soldiers takes the field/auditorium and plays the British anthem.

The president welcomes the sisters and asks where they grew up. Vanessa tells him it was in a small town north of London. Mr. Obama tells her he had once lived not too far from there. [i don't think any of that is actually true!]

Meanwhile, some sort of mock hearing has started on the stage. The president reads a list of charges against a student/congressman and begins to ask questions. The student gets up, yelling and screaming. He objects to the line of questioning. He threatens Obama with a hockey puck.

"If you throw that at me, you will be sorry."

The fair skinned student, an athletic but pudgy type, forcefully tosses the puck in Mr. Obama's direction and catches him square in the crotch. The red coated British soldiers pounce on the student. As they drag him away, the President, doubled over in pain, calls out, "You need to find a new school; I'm expelling you!"

The president looks up and wave to the crowd. "I"m okay. All the fruit is accounted for."

"But now you've got bruised cherries," I laugh.

The Redgrave sisters have been watching, but now they walk briskly up the side of a hill. I try to follow them, but I loose sight of them as we approach a baseball diamond. I see one of my aunts and her husband playing softball with a bunch of their kids. What are they doing? Don't they care about the Redgraves?

On the far side of the baseball diamond, I go down a small embankment and find Vanessa in modern clothes. It seems clear now that Lynn was just a hologram.

Vanessa is holding court and giving each person she encounters a few minutes of private conversation. My turn arrives and I tell her how much I enjoy her work and the work of her entire family. She thanks me, but I continue, specifically mentioning Lynn, and how inspiring I found her work, and her efforts to carry on and do her best even when there was no good work to be had.

Vanessa collapses on the ground clutching her chest. But suddenly she is no longer herself; she now resembles an elderly Jean Stapleton. She asks me to get a doctor. There happens to be one standing right behind us who kind of looks like Phil Collins. I tell Vanessa/Jean to hold my hand, which she does. The doctor checks her neck for a pulse but can't find one. It seems she has slipped away.

"Give her some digoxin," I demand.

"There's nothing we can do, she's gone."

But just as I'm thinking how glad I am that her last thoughts were happy ones about her sister, Vanessa/Jean's eyes pop wide open and she gasps, taking a loud, messy breath of life.