Setting the Stage. David Hays
in Philadelphia, I spent the next few days finishing the painting. Union rules forbid this. The set designer doesn’t paint his own scenery; and a local union paint crew should have been called in. But we had no money. I was staying at a cheap hotel, at management expense, of course, and every night when I went there to sleep briefly, a note waited for me: “DAVID GO HOME.” The prop man became sick, but phoned me from the hospital and, with what might have been his last breath, croaked, “Don’t lay out your own money.”
The steps to the bedroom were stingy because I needed every inch in the courtyard. Our wonderful Geraldine Page, not a complainer, had some difficulty. I suggested that she place her feet in a more sideways manner, but that was uncomfortable and we rebuilt the steps.
When lighted, the stage actually looked good. But there was more trouble: we had no theater reserved for us in New York. This was a time of a major “theater jam.” Too many shows; not enough theaters to house them in New York. And even the theater we were playing in Philadelphia had another show scheduled and we had to relocate while we waited for a spot in New York. The only “interim booking” I’ve ever heard of in Philadelphia. So we moved down the street, set up, and lighted again. Then our producer arrived with the good news that we had secured a theater in New York. It was good until the next morning, when we read in the newspaper that our booking was the shortest in history: we would open on a Tuesday and have to move out Saturday night. Of course if we were a giant hit, things could be shuffled, but unless the reviews were raves, there was no chance of our audience growing over time, fueled by that famous publicist, “word of mouth.”
So we went into New York and opened at the Golden on Forty-Fifth Street. Reviews were bad. We closed Saturday night.
WHAT I LEARNED
When I started the design of THE INNKEEPERS, I realized that all the work I had done was in prepared theaters that were already in use. Here, we were renting empty theaters and it was up to us to create what happened downstage in the first two feet behind the proscenium, where the asbestos curtain, the house border, the house curtain, the inner-stage portal, and the first pipe and booms of lights must live. In that order. I went to Jo Mielziner and he showed me what to do. We became friends, and twenty years later his ashes stood on my piano for a week.
I met Jo because my father knew Richard Rodgers from college, and had taken me to see him. Mr. Rodgers’s Connecticut home was beautiful, but somehow I had stepped in dog shit on the way in. I noticed this gob sticking up from my shoe when I sat down in a comfortable armchair and crossed my leg. An omen, predicting the rigors of the first musical I would designed for Mr. Rodgers. And I forgot what Roger Furse would have boldly and appropriately exclaimed: “Yech, dog shit!” I just sat there.
That’s all I remember about the brief, awkward meeting, except that Mr. Rodgers suggested that I meet his designer, Jo. He would send a message introducing us.
Jo lived and worked in the great Dakota apartment building on West Seventy-Second Street, where John Lennon was later shot. Jo’s apartment was above the Romanesque arch of the entry, and his studio was on the right side of the courtyard. It had two workrooms, one for Jo and a larger one for his assistants. We liked each other immediately, and he suggested I might work for him when not designing on my own.
I also learned about kickbacks while working on THE INNKEEPERS. As my damp, unfinished scenery was being loaded into the trucks, bound for Philadelphia, Chester Rakeman handed me an envelope. There was a hundred dollar bill inside, a lot of money then. I asked Ray Sovey what that was all about, and he said that it was common practice, that Chester wanted to build my next show. I gave the money back and did not participate in kickbacks — although once I asked a prop shop to help me finish a table for my home, and I’m ashamed of that.
When we rebuilt the steps to the bedroom, the producer asked me how much it would cost, and I guessed too little, which placed our carpenter, Joe Harbuck, in an awkward position. He gave me a dressing down: “My job, not yours.”
Darren McGavin, the show’s co-star, took me aside after I gave Geraldine the failed lesson on step climbing. He said he had once been a designer, and cautioned me to be careful of defending your scenery — it makes you look like a sore loser. A good lesson. I sometimes remembered it when I was defending my scenery.
I had been smart enough to say to the producer, as we drifted in Philadelphia, that the set would fit into any theater in New York except the tiny Golden. As bad luck would have it, that was the theater chosen for us. I reminded the producer of my warning, and he said, “Tough shit, that’s where we’re going. Stuff it in.” I said I would, but it wouldn’t look so good. “Would it look better in the dump?” he asked. So Joe Harbuck stuffed it in, and it looked okay from most seats during its brief pause on Broadway on its way to the dump.
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