--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung <no_re...@...> wrote: > > Judy, > > I'm touched that you responded fully. Maybe we have > something going that we can continue here. > > I would assume that fairness requires that you get to > ask questions, too, instead of risking that this become > an "Edg grills Judy" event.
Edg, I'm sorry, but I'm not the least bit interested in grilling you. If I ever do have a specific personal question about you that I'd like answered, I assure you I won't hesitate to ask it. > Your turn! Talk about a melding of "truth or dare." > Heh, maybe my newbie questions are far more acceptable > now, eh? Not to me. > And, neat work history. I'm envious of your insider- > shop-talk scenarios -- you must have heard tons of > stories about the goings on behind the curtains of > theatrical circles. You betcha. I was working in NYC theater--all off-Broadway except for the "Mame" stint--from 1964 to 1970; also in 1958 as a volunteer for the NYSF when I was in high school, befoe the family moved to Boston; and for a bunch of Boston productions during my senior year there, mostly for pay. This period was when many of the folks who have since become big stars of Broadway and Hollywood were just starting out. I was tempted to reel off a list of names of the people I worked with whom you'd recognize, but I restrained myself (except for Celeste Holm, because I wanted it to be clear I wasn't dressing Angela Lansbury, the original Broadway Mame). But now I'm tempted beyond endurance, so I'll mention just one: Dustin Hoffman asked me for a date when he was in a weird play called "Harry, Noon, and Night" at the American Place Theater in NYC, where I was doing wardrobe. http://www.americanplacetheatre.org/stage/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=125&Itemid=28 http://tinyurl.com/arvd3e I turned him down because at the time I was having a heavy-duty affair with the company electrician. (Full disclosure: Hoffman was known at the time as a skirt- chaser. None of the skirts I knew were interested. He was short and funny-looking; and in this play he had the role of a neurotic crippled Nazi faggot, so he wasn't exactly carrying around a romantic leading-man aura.) The electrician, in stark contrast, was *hot*. Oh, OK, one more, though not about an up-and-comer. I did wardrobe for one other Broadway production, I just remembered--a two-week revival of "Harvey" in 1970, starring Jimmy Stewart and Helen Hayes. (I should point out that wardrobe staff, while absolutely essential members of the backstage crew, are not exactly high in the theatrical hierarchy, especially on Broadway.) Not much of a story, but an encounter I treasure: As wardrobe lady for "Harvey," after the play started each evening I didn't have anything to do until the act break. One evening I was sitting on the stairs that went up to the dressing rooms reading a book when Jimmy Stewart came down the stairs for one of his entrances. When he got a couple of steps below the one I was sitting on, he paused, turned around. and gravely said, "Good evening," with a little bow of his head. I said, "Good evening," and he asked me what I was reading. I told him (can't remember what it was now), and he said, "Are you enjoying it?" I said yes. He said, "Waall, good!" and continued majestically down the stairs. That was my only personal encounter with him during the run of the play. What got me was that he was so utterly *Jimmy Stewart*. And theatrical etiquette most certainly didn't require him to greet me at all, much less have any conversation with me. It also occurs to me just now that the reason he went down a couple of steps before he turned was so his face would be on the same level as mine, rather than looking down on me from above. Just perfectly spontaneous courtesy, and the most amazingly unassuming natural dignity.
