Michael Kantor: So, you know, from your perspective, why is Cabaret a landmark? And when you think about Broadway musical theater, sort of seems to be coming at the cusp of, you know Fiddler and those kinds of shows. Speak to that.
Joel Grey: Cabaret probably occupies the special spot that it does because it. I would say push the envelope of what people were seeing in the Broadway musical. As a matter of fact, it was a highly unlikely success. Most people thought it was terrible idea. You know, how could that possibly be a musical about Nazi Germany? Even just the idea of musical and Nazi Germany seemed sort of. Anathema and like springtime for Hitler in a way to to people before they saw the show, but They had no idea that how and John and Fred and Joe Mastroff had this very vision, and they wanted to tell a story, a cautionary tale. And they found a framework with which to tell it in terms of the cabaret songs. And that didn’t always, that wasn’t always the way it was going to be. That those five cabaret numbers were originally to be in Act Two, in one section, sort of like the Loveland section of Follies. And Thank Heavens, just before they began rehearsal, they got this idea of spacing them throughout the show and having them either comment on the action or let us know what was coming or what had just passed, commenting on the future or the past of the… Of the scenes, and no one had ever seen anything quite like that before. They’d never seen thighs on chorus girls with garters that were hanging over the proscenium arch and over the footlights that those girls sat there in this very garish makeup. It was actually… Shocking. It was shocking. And people still say, I’ll never forget what that looked like, because I don’t think anyone had ever seen it before.
Michael Kantor: In a way, if you can summarize and then lead into. My question is, what’s Cabaret really about, as a story? But what you just said, which was interesting, is that it was innovative for two reasons. One is the content, Nazis and so on, and the other is form. So if you could just reiterate that briefly, that it’s about, that it innovative content and what it’s really about.
Joel Grey: I think Cabaret was probably as important as it was because it dealt with two very new things, form and content, you know, the idea of a Nazi subject matter, and the way in which the structure of that piece was, in which the musical numbers commented on the action, those were two of the probably the biggest parts of what made it so unique in its moment.
Michael Kantor: And just briefly, what would you say the actual story is, without going into all the different subplots, but it’s essentially about…
Joel Grey: Cabaret was a stage version of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories, which spawned Julie Harris’s I Am a Camera, John Van Druten and Julie Harris. But they took quite a few liberties with Isher wood. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he ever liked it very much. Didn’t much matter. But they They took, they took some of the characters and did what they thought was best for a Broadway show and like one of the aspects of the show that was daring in its moment was Isherwood and the character of Hare Isivu or Clifford Bradshaw as he became known was homosexual. But that was never dealt with in 1966 because it wasn’t being dealt with in let alone plays, certainly not musicals. And then when we did the 20th anniversary revival in 1987, all of a sudden he was homosexual. And it was okay. So it was a story of a guy who comes to Berlin at the beginning of Nazism, falls in love with this very unusual, holly-go-lightly heroin, Sally Bowles, and their lives are changed by, you know, the rise of Nazis during the couple of hours of the play. Until what happened at the beginning was you saw this cabaret life as something kind of seductive and interesting and fun and you realize at the end that all of that tawdryness and all of that overt sexuality and all of that excessive behavior ultimately was a sign of the disintegration of the society. And what you thought was fun at first was horrible at the end. But that was sort of a metaphor for Adolf Hitler too. He presented himself. As, you know, there’ll be food on every table and, you know, come with me. And I always thought of my character as a very similar character in terms of what I offer the audience. Come with me, in here life is beautiful. The orchestra is beautiful, and at the end, see? Didn’t I tell you? It’s all beautiful. And of course, the world was collapsing. But he has a kind of… I told you so, kind of dark, and I always thought he was a bad guy, but there were people who come to see that show who keep thinking, oh, he’s fun. People read into it what they like.
Michael Kantor: Tell me if you would just lay out, you know, you played the character of, you know, just give me that, and you mentioned that it was shocking. Describe the first, you know, the opening number and how, what you could feel from the audience when you introduced those girls who would hang over the stage. And just, just take me through that open, like what it must have felt like.
Joel Grey: I will never forget the first preview in Boston. And we all knew that we were doing something that we thought was interesting and that we were proud of, but we had no idea how an audience would respond to it. And of course, out I came in this very extreme pink pancake. The name of the grease paint, actually, was Juvenile Pink. And with these very, very heavy eyelashes, patent leather hair slicked back, and sort of Clarebo beasting. Almost blood red or darker, lips, and some rouge, and a tuxedo, and a pink bowtie. I don’t think anybody had ever seen that before. And out I came, and they were, you kind of felt this, whoa, where are we, because it starts really, and Boris Aronson had done a very amazing set in which, The audience was looking at themselves in a mirror before the show began. It was sort of, it was right here. And all during the time before the lights went down, they saw themselves sitting down into the orchestra. And so that was brand new. And it was something, of course, Hal had devised with Boris, which came from some kind of European tradition. And Then I said, and here they are, the Cabaret Girls, and out they came, and I introduced each one. And the audience sort of didn’t know whether to laugh or be titillated or be afraid, but ultimately they were just so stunned by it that the number built, Ron Field had done a fantastic opening number. And, of course, the song itself is pretty. Pretty incredible. And at the end of the number, I remember I was lifted up, and I’m sitting in front of this mirror in the mirror tip. Cabaret, and the whole, it was just a big, big moment. And there was this blackout. And it was silence. And then this cheering began. And this applause that was deafening that none of us were ready for or even prepared to do anything. As a matter of fact, the show couldn’t go on for a few minutes. And that was just the opening. So we sort of knew that we were on to something quite special. And it was very chilling for us, because it came at us. We had no idea what we had, except what we all felt in the studio.
Michael Kantor: Wow, you know, just quickly say at the beginning the audience comes in and they’re welcomed, and then we’re…
Joel Grey: The genius of the show from the creative standpoint of people who put it together is that it very slowly comes on the audience how bad things are going to be. At the end of Act 1. There’s a party in the fruit shop and This character Ernst Ludwig comes to the party and for the first time we see a Nazi armband and We know that Herr Schultz is Jewish and it’s it’s a Party for Herr Scholtz and Frawling Schneider played by La D’Alenia and Jack Guilford and It’s it their engagement party and all of a sudden we see this look on Lenya’s face like, maybe she can’t do this. Maybe it’s too dangerous to marry a Jew in the present political situation. And they are singing this song, this sort of beer garden song that’s very friendly. And all of a sudden, it becomes this horrible, horrible song called Tomorrow Belongs to Me that was sung earlier in the show as a beautiful quartet. And at the very end of that act is a freeze and the MC walks across the stage just like this, goes to the end of the stage, takes his cigar out, looks at the audience and says. So that’s the first time that they know something very bad is going to happen. And then it just progressively gets worse with every cabaret number. The beginning of act two is a kick line, very fun and girls kicking and it’s quite wonderful. And somehow in the sequence, The MC is in drag and he finds himself in that kick line. The audience doesn’t know that he hasn’t been there the whole time. And so he reveals himself. And that number turns into a goose step. So we see. The next cabaret number, as things get worse, is the gorilla song, which is a beautiful song called If You Could See Her Through My Eyes. And it comments on the relationship of Schneider and Schultz falling apart. And it’s sort of a plea for understanding for the Jewish character. If you could see her through my eyes using a gorilla. He talks to the audience and he said she wouldn’t look Jewish at all. It’s an absolute killer. I mean, it’s a kick right to the groin to the audience. And they were, they never were anything but shocked. However, when we first opened, there was such a negative reaction to that, that they changed the line to she wasn’t a Mieskite at all, referring to the Jack Guilford character, which said the same thing but without the real punch and the real horror of it. And that was always a real source of frustration and sadness to all of us was that that had to go. And then, of course, in 87, it was back in and I fought along with a few other people in the movie to make sure that that was there. But it was the Oddly enough, it was the Jewish community, in the first place, in 66, who didn’t understand that that was an anti-antisemitic remark. They just took it literally.
Michael Kantor: How does the money song function?
Joel Grey: Well, the money song was about the political situation, you know, where money was so difficult to get, and it was about capitalism, and, you know. And there’s going to be money for everybody if you follow Hitler. So it was, that was its place.
Michael Kantor: How would you describe, you mentioned Howe and Joe Mastroff and the others had a vision for the show. How would describe Howe Prince’s vision? I mean, this is in a way, it’s his first directorial effort. I know he did it, yes he did, he worked with. She loves me. Right, right, and he worked with John and Fred on a William Goldman piece. Yes. But really, this was much, wouldn’t you say this is a significant undertaking for him? I mean it’s a step, it is a big step for the musical.
Joel Grey: Yes, yes.
Michael Kantor: Comment on where he took the piece and what was important to him.
Joel Grey: Well, this was, I don’t think anybody knew exactly how important cabaret was gonna be to all of the creative people. Everybody was just doing the work at hand. Leg over the other. And they had had this idea for this musical and Hal had been in the service in Germany during the war and remembered a lot of that and somehow very, I think his background is German. And something about this piece really spoke to him and he was the spearhead. Of that, and he had this vision of a physical production with Boris that was to be, you know, as I said, prophetic and made history.
Michael Kantor: Great. The film version directed by Bob Fosse. Speak to who Bob Fosse was and what his genius was. What was important to him?
Joel Grey: Say it again.
Michael Kantor: What was Bob Fosse’s genius? He was a complicated guy, but what? Why, you know.
Joel Grey: Well, I think Bob Fosse’s particular. Was so well used in Cabaret because I think he was very underrated and people didn’t really know what a fantastic director of film that he was. He was a great song advancement as a performer himself in the MGM musicals. And then he made a film of Sweet Charity that was not very successful. And it was kind of excessive, I guess. And spent a lot of money and did not do well. So he was sort of under the gun. It was sort of a big, big chance for him. And he came from a really sleazy, burlesque background as a kid. So he knew all about that darkness and that chorus girl thing. And I think he loved it. And I mean, you know, he loved it with sweet charity. And his work on the stage was always very, very rich and somewhat stylized. There is no room, really, for that kind of stylization in film. And I never knew that he would become such an incredible film director of even non-musical films. I thought Lenny and Star 80. I just think he was a first-rate film director. So he had that story to tell. And they changed the screenplay vastly. From the stage version. They cut out the Lenya and Guilford characters. They added two other young characters because I think they thought that was better for a general audience. And they took out all the musical numbers except for what happened in the cabaret or what would happen in a sort of a dream sequence. But all the places where people ordinarily sing to each other. That was a thing of the past, and it has remained such ever since. Once again, it was an iconic film musical in that it changed how people look at musicals forever. So Cabaret was to do that in both on the stage and in the film. And so his particular talent, knowing that burlesque. Background and having this secret genius for directing actors and creating a new form for a musical, you know, just put him right at the top. Well, I remember Hal put a big picture of the race riots and the civil unrest on the bulletin board for everyone to see. So we knew we were talking about something very political. But I do believe that cabaret and the story, the darkness of the early 30s in Germany continues to speak. To every generation. I mean, it’s a scary story, a cautionary tale that needs to be told. And that’s why I think that that piece has such longevity. Well, that was Vaudeville, you know, that was early on in early Cohen and Irving Berlin. It was the way they talked about each other, the immigrants.
Michael Kantor: Well, and yet.
Joel Grey: And yet they didn’t even think that they were being.
Michael Kantor: Well, let’s talk about that. It doesn’t have that. When Kohan began, there was racial stereotypes that we, it’s hard for us to understand today. Kuhn songs, and speak to that. Kohan came out of a time where.
Joel Grey: Yes, well, you know, with the mix, the whole mix of immigrants here, it wasn’t a bad thing to call an Irish person a mick, or an Italian a wop, and Jews were called kikes. And it was kind of the vernacular. And that very slowly stopped, but very slowly until just fairly recently, where we start talking about African Americans. We don’t even say blacks, let alone colored people or whatever horrible expressions. But I don’t think that they had the same, I don’t think they had a kind of viciousness at the time. Or maybe the viciousness was equal. Everybody was just vicious. You know, but it was sort of the way it was. Life was hard.
Michael Kantor: Uh, who was Cohen just briefly.
Joel Grey: With George M. Cohen was It’s hard to say because all I really know about him is that all he ever wanted to do from practically the minute he was born and his parents were certainly in on it is that he wanted to be on stage and he was put on stage almost, they brought him out for a when he was like maybe one or two years old. And I think that’s all he ever really cared about or knew was the audience and the theater. And he became an absolute giant. Because ultimately what he ended up doing was not just being a fantastic hoover and a singer, but he started to write his own songs. And then he started to write his own shows. And then he started to produce his own shows and direct his own show. And sometimes he had four and five shows on Broadway at one time. They were cohen shows. I mean, there has never been anybody like that.
Michael Kantor: What was it like to play Coen? Tell us, so that we can feed him into a clip and what have you, that you played him in a Broadway show. And just describe the energy, the sort of, what’s sort of an aggressive, what kind of character.
Joel Grey: Well, when I was asked to play George M. Cohan in that musical at the Palace Theater in 1968, I was somewhat reticent to do it because I just thought Jimmy Cagney, he was my idol, and I thought his Yankee Doodle Dandy could not possibly be. Joe Layton and Mike Stewart, who created that show, had this notion that there was a story to tell of a kind of burning passion for the theater, where practically everything in his personal life went down the drain, but he left such an amazing treasure of… Somehow, I guess, they believed that he was willing to play that game, to lose in love, or lose at love, in order to be tops and have his name in lights. And he was able to sustain that for a very, very long time. But of course, things changed. He no longer was top dog. He became very bitter, and… It was not a great end, but he had a very, very brilliant and long run.
Michael Kantor: How would you say he revolutionized Broadway musical comedy? You know, at the time he’s there, there’s operetta and sort of, you know, far away stories.
Joel Grey: Well, I’m not speaking as a Kohan expert. I know how to play him. I know who he was as an actor and as the character that I played in the show. But the fact that I think he wrote plays and musicals that had stories and a narrative that was quite different. From operettas, and that what he was doing is he was giving Broadway a different sound, a different kind of music from the frimmel, you know, what was that, Rudolf Frimmel.
Michael Kantor: A new sound, a new energy, as opposed to the European operator. Right. Cohan.
Joel Grey: What George M. Cohen did in his moment and in his time was there was a big sea change of the kind of music and shape of shows and narrative and just the sound of the Cohen melodies from the European-based operettas. And he prevailed for quite a long time in his… Of very specific work.
Michael Kantor: He seems obsessed with Broadway, you know, 15 minutes from Broadway, man who owns Broadway, give my regards to Broadway, it’s almost as if Broadway is another sort of symbol of America, or he creates it. Would you agree with that? That he sort of-
Joel Grey: I think Broadway for Cohen probably was America. Everything happened there. That life on stage, that preeminence that he was able to occupy in his moment somehow made him believe that that was it, that nothing was greater than to do what he did. And, um… Ultimately, he started to write about America in the same way, you know, Yankee Doodle Dandy and you’re a grand old flag. Very similar to his odes and valentines to Broadway. Say hello to dear old Coney Isle if there’s a chance to be. When you’re at the Waldorf, have a smile and charge it up to me. Mention my name every place you go, as round the town you roam. Wish you’d call on my gal, now remember old pal. When you get home, give my regards. That’s how he felt. And it was all about home, Broadway, America. And that song was written for little Johnny Jones. And he was in England. And of course, England is not America. Not to George M. Cohen. That’s quite a hymn.
Michael Kantor: Yeah, is that one?
Joel Grey: Musical Comedy Man. No, I don’t know that song at all anymore.
Michael Kantor: Um, what about the, there was something there.
Joel Grey: There he goes on his dancing toes. That’s all I remember.
Michael Kantor: He hated the idea of actor’s equity. Why was that? I have no…
Joel Grey: Well, I think he, you know, all union was resisted in that time, and people are very afraid of their territory and of losing control. So I think that’s really what it was about. So beware, say a prayer, it’s very cautionary, very interesting.
Michael Kantor: Just take it from early on, Cohen’s entirely associated with Broadway, but as he gets more into America, it’s his song that becomes the call to arms in World War I. Just set that up for us and then we’ll be going to some recording and doing it probably.
Michael Kantor: Can you do that for us?
Joel Grey: When Cohen wrote Over There, it was probably part of his intense feeling about the war and his feeling of identifying with enormous pride as an American. And that whole idea of pride in our country has so changed.
Michael Kantor: What did Broadway symbolize?
Joel Grey: When I was, you know, ten, eleven years old, I was a child actor at the Cleveland Playhouse and I was in a play called Unborrowed Time written by Paul Osborne. And I knew about Broadway as a… I only knew about Broadway as the place where great theater was done. I never thought I would be in a musical and I never had even ambition to sing and dance. It was the theater that absolutely captured my imagination and has been my passion ever since. I don’t know how I ever moved into the other world. Luckily, I’ve been able to manage both, and oddly enough, I think in Cabaret, I was called upon to use both of those. Experiences. Anyway, for me in Cleveland, Broadway meant theater. Great theater. And I always wanted to go to be a part of the theater. And later on, as Broadway musicals became so popular, I too was, you know, heard about them, but it was still the theater, I think it was Hollywood musicals. That really captured me in terms of the musical world. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire. That’s what made me think of being a musical performer. But for me, as a kid, the reason to go to Broadway was to be in.
Michael Kantor: Was there a favorite musical show you admired or thought that’s the best? What was the first one you saw on Broadway Musical?
Joel Grey: I think the first musical I ever saw was in Cleveland, Ohio. It was Porgy and Bess. And I thought that was amazing. But that was more like an opera. So that, I didn’t really relate particularly to that. But then when I went to New York, I saw, you know, the Death of a Salesman. I saw all the great, the great plays. The Glass Menagerie. I was 11. 9, 10, 11, 12, my mom took me. And I just thought that was amazing. And then later on, I saw shows like Pal Joey. And I thought, wow, if I could sing or dance, that would be fun to do too.
Michael Kantor: And here we are. What do you think the Broadway musical represents about America? You think, you know, it’s commonly cited as one of the three, you now there’s abstract expressionism, jazz, the Broadway Musical, uniquely American art form. What do think it sort of says about us as people, or our spirit, or what?
Joel Grey: I think the Broadway musical is such a specifically American art form because I think we’re so sort of fearless in a way to. Put together story and song in the way that we did that wasn’t an operetta, that wasn’t in the European style. It was kind of like our country which was young and brash and adventurous and then there was this incredible group of people. That made Broadway what it was, you know, the Hammersteins and the Hearts and the Berlins. That was, that was, it was. That was New York and they, they were like. 20 musicals to see. Each season, there was a world that made Broadway. That doesn’t exist anymore. Now there’s a half a dozen people, and they do it sometimes. I’ve seen a lot of musicals in Europe and in England and for the most part, except for rare occasions, it really is our art form.
Michael Kantor: So Kohan starts in Broadway and ends up, you were meditating on how people had a patriotism that doesn’t exist anymore.
Joel Grey: Right.
Michael Kantor: Back in 19, the mid-teens, let’s say.
Joel Grey: Yes, when George M. Cohen wrote over there, it was a much simpler time where patriotism was what most Americans felt. It was kind of, it wasn’t tainted with questioning one’s patriotism or looking at the flaws in our country that exist in every country. It was like. We looked at ourselves as if, in a certain way, that we were right. We were right and everyone else was wrong. And that was sort of an accepted way of looking at the American flag and at patriotism at the time. He wrote over there. We’ll be over, we’re coming over and we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.” Those were his words and it had a kind of finality and a kind of narrowness and not unlike some of the patriotic talk that we hear today.
