I was hanging on by my fingernails, living in New York City’s Greenwich Village, auditioning for plays and musicals and singing in small clubs at night to pay the rent as well as sending money home to my parents back in Philadelphia when I saw an ad in Backstage, the paper which in those days was sort of a low rent version of Variety. It was an announcement of open auditions (what is known in the industry as a “cattle call”) for a new musical called “Henry, Sweet Henry”. The music was being written by Bob Merrill, who had also written the musical for the latest flop I had been in – a musical version of “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” starring Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain and which closed after 4 previews, never officially opening. Not everything Bob Merrill had done was a flop or failure – he had written several successful musicals including “Carnival” and also collaborated with Jule Styne on “Funny Girl”.
The day of the “cattle call” dawned and I went to the theater - to find a line of auditioning actors 5 city blocks long. At the theater end of the line, I handed a note to the young assistant and asked him to give it to Mr. Merrill, and then walked the 5 city blocks to the end of the line. The note simply said that I was in the line and hoped to get a chance to work with him again. After being in line just a few minutes, the young guy I had given the note to ran up, told me to come with him and headed back to the theater. I walked past the 5 city block long line of actors, getting more than a few evil looks. Going inside, I was led right to the stage and a voice from the dark said, “Rich, how are you? What have you been doing since ‘Tiffany’s’?” It was Bob. I briefly described my club work and he said, “First rehearsal is Tuesday. You’re in the chorus” – and that was my audition. (I always felt I got the job as a kindness since I had been a survivor of “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”. Bob was notoriously loyal to people who had worked for or with him in the past.)
First rehearsal is what is known as a “table read”. The entire cast sits around a large group of tables and reads through the script aloud. The songwriter plays the songs he or she has written and you get introduced to all the other people. Being that the world of performing arts is a small one, almost everyone in the room knew everyone else, either personally, casually, or by reputation.
First dance rehearsal was, for me, a disaster. I was born with (figuratively) three left feet and the choreographer, Michael Bennett (who would become famous later for “A Chorus Line”), was doing his first show as a choreographer. He demanded I be fired after seeing me “dance”. Bob Merrill, bless him, insisted he needed my singing voice so the result was that every big production number I was in, I was as close as possible to the back wall of the stage so the audience couldn’t see my feet.
We opened on October 3, 1967 and closed 80 performances later on New Year’s Eve, so I guess that qualifies it as a “flop”. A few good things came of it: I got to renew my working acquaintance with Alice Playten who had been with me in “Oliver!” in 1963 and who won the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Henry Sweet Henry”; I had a brief but intense relationship with another chorus member, Pia Zadora; Louise Lasser who had a small role in the show was married to Woody Allen at the time and I got to meet him and another chorus member, Priscilla Lopez, helped tip me off to a musical the following year “Her First Roman” which turned out to be my last show on Broadway.
The worst things about “Henry Sweet Henry”: I was the only straight guy in the chorus (that I am aware of), and many of my fellow male chorus members died in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's and Bob Merrill, who had suffered from depression much of his life, committed suicide in 1998.
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