Speaker I met Jerry sometime in the 40s during World War Two, I had just I hadn’t been in New York very long. I was in the Army. I had been the, you know, photographic company in Benning, Georgia, and was saved at the last minute and brought to Astoria to work in training films. And there was a soldier there named Dwight Godwyn who’d been in the ballet. So we used to go to the USO and buy tickets. And I had seen skin of our teeth three times. There was nothing much left to see. So he goes against my will drag me to the ballet and it happened to be the right night. I remember I saw a pillar of fire with Norrick, which is what I would call a literary ballet. And so we went backstage and I met Jerry Robbins, who was great fun, and for some reason he got a fix on me. I’m not implying things, but he thought I was. I don’t know what which. He also thought I was I was writing radio propaganda shows, but he got some idea that I was enormously talented to such an extent that later on when he did on the town and they’re in trouble in Boston, he wanted them to fire Betty Comden algorithm. Hire me. I was by then a sergeant, so I guess that was better, but. We went around the bed drinking, I drank, oh, God, everybody drank during the war, everybody drank and everybody had sex. It was New York at its best, and he was giggly. He was great fun. He loved to play games and he had his own little group. Nora Kay and Johnny Cretz and Mayor Muriel Bentley and people like that, and that was when I met him and we became friends and later after I got out of the army. I’m trying to remember whether it was I think was that, yes, I returned home of the brave. He wanted to do he had done fancy free, as a matter of fact, by accident. I was at the opening night of fancy free. I knew nothing about ballet. And there was a marked man and go into this. But it was a terrific woman I knew. And she’d take me to the ballet. And I think Fancy Free was late in the program and she said, well, let’s leave. And I said, Oh, I know the guy who did this thing thing. I mean, it was what I thought ballet was and. I loved it, I thought it was a little musical comedy. I didn’t think of it as a ballet. I still think it’s a little musical comedy. And that changed Jerry in a way. Nora told me that at the time she had an opening night party in her apartment and I’m Fifty Second Street and Jerry spent most of the time under the bed hiding. Success did very odd things to him, but when I got out of the Army and had my play on, then he wanted to do a musical. About a kid from Jersey who was in the ballet, wanted to make the ballet blue jeans metaphor a second, because you want that later?

Speaker Well, because you’re skipping ahead. And I know there are some good things I want to ask you. You were talking about what Jerry was like when the two of you were young, when you first met and. What you’re telling me is, uh, you know, I’ve heard before that I’m familiar, but you said something in your book that was a little bit different. You said that he was called Black Jerome.

Speaker Uh.

Speaker Jerry also was very moody, he would be giggling at one moment, and the other was his personal stock market had crashed. I don’t know what brought it on. I liked him. I was much more fascinated by Nora.

Speaker I’m interrupting myself here, Judy, because it makes me think of a story of something that comes later. But anyway, I was fascinated by Nora, who was. More intellectual and more political than Jerry, even though Jerry had technically been involved through his sister, but Nora’s parents were Russian. Her mother once said, When I dropped the banner, my daughter didn’t pick it up, but she was known as the red ballerina eventually. And I was very political then. And I thought Jerry was fun, but I didn’t think he was all that interesting, to tell you the truth. They went to see I’m sorry, there was much more depth to Nora and people like Jerry and Jonny creates a mural Bentley for fun, but I didn’t think too much of the ballet.

Speaker Again, I think it’s something that came later. But which I’ll tell you now, you can cut it in later.

Speaker No, it has to do with the cage, I’m getting to the set, so we’ll get there.

Speaker I was involved with Noor and also to be. Honest, I was having an affair with Harold Lang, so Gerri was, you know, a friend. He was the other guy, one of the other guys.

Speaker OK, but then you went to see Fancy Free, which, you know, talk about the luck of the draw. Well, opening night.

Speaker Well, I went with the opening line to this with this woman named. Evelyn’s Amir, she was an American and Jewish, despite the name, she was a Strauss, and I don’t know what we saw as one of the equivalents of Swan Lake and so forth. And then came this and she was ready to leave. And I said, no, I know this guy who did this ballet and. It went on and I thought it was a musical comedy, frankly, great fun. The audience went wild. It was terribly unconventional for the ballet in those days. I mean, the days of ballet, Roo’s and all those story ponderous story ballets. And here were young kids having a good time and. Lenny Bernstein’s score, Lenny, to me wrote then, and to this day, no one has written more exciting theater music than Lenny Bernstein and that score is sensational. And it was a marvelous evening.

Speaker Great, what made it different than maybe other ballots, I know you hadn’t seen a lot of valleys, but what many different than other ballots?

Speaker Well, first of all, what made a difference?

Speaker How do you do it? If you could talk about how it reflected what was going on in the world at that time?

Speaker It was different from other ballots. They weren’t wearing tights. They weren’t wearing tutus. They were identifiable people so far as a lot has been made of the fact that it reflected the war. Well, I was in uniform, it didn’t reflect the war to me, I mean, these were not sailors. These were people dancing and sailor suits. You have to be conditioned to the ballet to accept that stylization, I wasn’t and I loved musicals and this was a musical, you know, musicals. And those days nobody was real. Well, nobody was real and fancy free. You know, they all give each other strange looks, which is, I suppose, mime, but to me, a total neophyte audience. I thought, well, I’m having a good time, but I don’t believe one one step of this put it that way.

Speaker So your reaction to the ballet was still positive, though, right?

Speaker I had a great time. I enjoyed myself and as I say, the music carried you and the dancers in it were wonderful. Jerry was very funny. I remember his eyebrows more than anything else. He did some kind of, I think, Spanish rhythm and the eyebrows. That’s what I meant. But remember and Harold Lang did these fantastic spins. And, you know, I thought, how does this is inhuman? It’s better than the circus, but that’s when you’re a beginner at ballet. But you see.

Speaker The.

Speaker Three guys in the competition for the two girls. Well, I’ve been to musicals, I seen that. That’s why I suppose I thought it was a musical.

Speaker OK, good. How could you tell? Well, you know what, I’m going to ask you the.

Speaker Since you two were friends, you and Jerry, and it was wartime and you said that you were in the Army. What did he tell you about when he went before the draft board?

Speaker I was in the army and I knew I was homosexual. As it was called, they’re not gay, and I would never.

Speaker Have said to any draft board, I was drafted, I was in the what was called a broomstick army I was in before Pearl Harbor, I it seems to me I was in the army most of my life, five years. My guilt was I never got out of the country, but I knew.

Speaker As it turns out, Jerry Harold Lang, Oliver Smith, Monty Clift. They all. We’re not in the army.

Speaker I never asked why I assumed why, although I heard one of them, I don’t know, they had stomach disorders or. You know, strange Mexican diseases, whatever. I did not fault them. That was their business and Jerry never said anything about.

Speaker But at some point, since you were friends, he must have talked to you about his being gay, its feelings about being gay.

Speaker Jerry spoke to me about. Being gay. Much later on. We both had affairs with Norick and in my case. I’m perhaps overly moral, but I knew.

Speaker I could never be faithful to a woman, and she knew she said she wouldn’t mind if I were unfaithful with a woman, but not with a man. And I thought that was right. And I therefore could not really go on with this thing. I think Jerry had. We were both in psychoanalysis. I guess I had a better analyst in Egypt because my analysts, my I went to him and explained the problem. He was totally ignorant about homosexuality. He said, I don’t care what you are and what you do as long as you live your life with pride and dignity. And that stayed with me my entire life. And that man ended up as the head of the American Psychiatric Association. And during his tenure, they said homosexuality was not a disease or a sickness. So I lucked out. I don’t think Jerry did. He was always betwixt and between. And I think killing himself like mad when we spoke about it is largely a comes. Later when we spoke about it, it was largely to do with Buzz Miller, whom Jerry kept in a back room hiding and. There was a moment later on I was in Paris and Jerry was coming to meet me. He’d been in Copenhagen and I think some I’m not sure anyway. But was there? And I said, Jerry’s coming, he said, I’m I’m leaving. I said, why? He said, he’s coming to see you, not me. And I’ve had enough of that. And he went to London and Gerry arrived and he said, Where’s Buzz? I said, he’s in London and if you want him, you better go after him. And you went after him by that time, Bazargan. And that was that.

Speaker He.

Speaker I don’t know if he was always tortured in his emotional relationships, I personally did not think the problem was sexual so much as emotional commitment. I don’t think he could commit to anybody. There was one really horrendous moment, the Erdogan’s gave him a either a 70 years or a seventy fifth birthday party at Maxime’s, and they invited 200 people, mainly their friends. And I remember two or three nights before Jerry call me, we were not very close at the time. And he very begrudgingly said, I know it’s late, but I’d like you to come to my birthday party. And I said, OK, well, at the end of the evening, there was they they had Misso Alapatt and Jerry came out and made a thank you speech and said he was always a loner. And so forth and so on and sitting at this little table, comparatively little where his theater friends was, was his friend Jesse. Who had to sit there and hear this man say, I’ve always been a loner, I remember Phyllis Newman said if I had a gun, I’d shoot him right now.

Speaker And it was. I was so foolish he thought people didn’t know. But they do. To this day. I don’t mean about him that all those married queens. And I think a reprehensible.

Speaker Do you think that he ever made his peace with the whole thing?

Speaker I don’t think he ever made his peace with anything. Homosexuality success. With the relative quality, with the difference between Broadway and ballet, one always impinges on the other in his work and I think that was a problem.

Speaker Did he ever talk to you about you mentioned that you were both in analysis. Did he ever talk to you about that and what he was hoping to achieve by being an analysis?

Speaker No, he never spoke to me about his goals. Yes, once when he formed that ballet company, this is indirectly he talked about doing a ballet without music, which I thought was a terrific idea. But to me, it meant freedom. But instead, he did it accounts. So it was doing it’s a silent music. So what was the point then? You might as well have music. I think he also you know, he was trying to do a musical with no lyrics and no book. He wanted. It to be old Jerry, I think when I realized that, that was when I realized what was behind doing the ballet, but no music and that’s.

Speaker The mark of somebody. Who will never have enough? And I think that was one of his personal tragedies.

Speaker Um, let’s go back a little bit to you talked about fancy free, and you began to speak before about what effect that kind of success had on him. Could you talk about that?

Speaker You want me to repeat the party story, no, no, no. Well, after you did fancy free, he had really enormous success. I don’t think you could have that kind of success today. I mean, it really had an enormous effect, not only in the Valley, but this was a a a world war and people wanted something to lift them up and to believe in. And he was a kid and it was an American dream come true, particularly an American kid doing a European art form. So it was hit very hard. And at first he hid and then he began to change from Jerry Robbins to Jerome Robbins. It was nuance, but you could sense it coming he.

Speaker Would drop people. He expected certain behavior from people. None of this had much effect on me because he was had, as I said, this odd feeling about me and he was always terrific to me. And then we started to work on this. Musical.

Speaker Before you get to that musical, I have a question about you’ll never get let me get to that fucking musical. All right.

Speaker But one thing first, before that musical, I think you saw his production of High Button Shoes, because I read someplace that you talked about that amazing number, the keys, you know.

Speaker Oh, well. Well, you know, he did he did high button issues, which had. Now, I came to Musicales really with balancing in on your toes and then Agnese.

Speaker Agnes, in my opinion, wasn’t.

Speaker In that.

Speaker She wasn’t as good as bouncing or Jerry, and then Jerry did high button shoes and what Jerry had. This is almost unique in American choreographer’s. He was funny, he could be funny and dance really funny and high button shoes has this max Senate thing, which is sheer Feydeau farce. The timing was brilliant and it was bloody funny. And it was a smash and it should have been at the same time there was a dance, I remember, for Nanette Fabray and it’s Poppy, won’t you dance with me? It was the most charming, simple, touching number that almost brought tears. And he could do that as well. And that was part of his. Genius for musicals, I don’t think anybody could stage a musical as well as Jerry Robbins ever to this day.

Speaker Even Steve said that. OK. Tell me about look, mom, Dan.

Speaker So he came to me to do a musical about a an American kid going into the ballet. Really autobiographical, I thought, but so he left it to me to think about it, and I devised an outline and a title, Look Mom Dancing, and he had gotten me an agent. Was his agent. Somebody named Dick Torso, who ended up running a men’s shop in Beverly Hills, shows you what kind of an agent. Anyway, I also was in I had a first analyst named Theodore Rike, who almost made me crazier than I was. He said, You want me to go into this? No. And he said to me. I do an imitation of it, I mean it to be German comes out Japanese, he said, you’ve got to be versatile.

Speaker No, you can’t do that musical.

Speaker So I said to Jerry, I can’t do the musical, which was. Now.

Speaker Stupid, but very bad behavior, and he got furious with me. Not so is that didn’t make me sign a paper giving away all the rights. What was interesting is that years and years later. He almost did a movie for Paramount, call it mom dancing based on that not so good musical he did, and he wanted me to do the screenplay. However, I was blacklisted, so that ended that.

Speaker So speaking of him getting you to sign away your rights, what was he like with money?

Speaker Gerri with money. Personally. I don’t know, because I’ve had no sense of money myself, but when it came to business, he was boy, he was tough about royalties and this he had this hideous contract with Peter Jennings from West Side Story. He was out for every penny and he’d make you pay through the nose. Oh, he was tough. Really tough. Again, I don’t I don’t know whether it was the actual money, but again, he couldn’t get enough. Of anything.

Speaker Tell me about what you remember about two’s company. I’m sure you said to something in.

Speaker He did a review called Two’s Company, and he called me. To come and help them, they were in Detroit. And it was directed by. Julie Jassan, who later, when he was blacklisted, moved from France to France, became a dancer and starred Bette Davis. And featured talk, so they called me to help because I had known Betty Davis in. Hollywood. And she and Jerry hate each other by the time I got there.

Speaker She said this whole show is routine, so Miss Norrick can change her costumes, nor was.

Speaker Really marvelous in her sense of what was necessary in theater when I saw the show, I said, you’re wonderful. She said, how is she? That’s what matters. If she works, the show works. She was she was really smart about that.

Speaker And.

Speaker Gerri, and she, as I said, didn’t get along at all, he had done a number for her. It was rather good song called Good Little Girls Go to Heaven and bad little girls go to Magnuson’s and Bonewits and Sax and the opening night. She fainted during the No. And they picked her up and she said to the audience, well, you can’t say I didn’t fall for you. Big laugh. The boys in the number claimed that she went up in the lyrics and that’s why she pretended to faint. But Jerry had a problem with her. If you want to imitate Betty Davis, walk like a pair of bare ordinary people, walk opposite arm, opposite leg, she walks same arm, same leg. That’s how you got to Betty Davis walk. And Jerry, he handled that well. He had the boys walk like bears so nobody could tell the difference. And it was a bad time for him. And she was she was a pisser. She it was freezing in Detroit. You don’t want Patti Davis stories. Oh, tell me. Well, they brought in Jawn Murray Anderson to pull this show together.

Speaker And she had she asked for him, she had come from the theater originally and I think he had directed her in something, but by now he was the king of reviews or the queen, as you see, which way you look at it. And she had put her head out the window in this freezing Detroit weather and screamed, hoping she would get pneumonia at least. Oh, she got she didn’t get laryngitis. She got a raspy throat. She came to rehearsal and she said, Murray, but shall I do about my throat? And he said, you try putting a knife to it. That was the atmosphere around that show. And they were all like that. They were all at each other’s throats.

Speaker And Jerry did a ballet for Nora to a song called Round About. She was very artistic, and I remember at the end of it, she had a yell help, she didn’t have a very good voice for theater and help and TBWA needed.

Speaker So anyway, I want I want to ask you about Norrin, because I know she was very important to him. What was their relationship like? And they had a lot in common. Tell me about them.

Speaker Well, Jerry and Nora and Alisha Alonzo, too, were in a musical called Stars in Your Eyes. They were in the chorus tapping away by an Ethel Merman. I think. So they all came from the same place.

Speaker Jerry was more ambitious than Nora until she.

Speaker Or rather, the tutor came across her. Schine. Drank a lot. They all did. It’s amazing to me how much they drank and danced. And later I found out they all took amphetamines to get to a New York Ballet season, which they did. She was very funny and very smart. And she and Jerry were in one sense, like brother and sister, they were terribly close. I think. They loved each other, certainly in. And nonsexual way. Whether they ever did sexually, I don’t know, but they felt several times that they would be right for each other. She wanted a marriage and he wanted her marriage. She was always attracted to gay men, with the exception of Isaac Stern, whom she found boring and divorced. You can figure that one out for yourself, but they were very, very close. And I remember years later when Jerry and I were out on the outs and it says something about Nora that she told me this story herself. He was giving her a birthday party. I remember she told me this, he said, I don’t have to invite Arthur, do I? And she said no. They were not simple people, but they were close, close, close.

Speaker OK, well, she, like, is a dancer.

Speaker Nora was a. She was the best they used to call her the dues of the dance. She was an absolutely marvelous actress. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody in the ballet who could act the way she could. And that’s because she was that intelligent and knew what acting was, not what dramatizing was. She was in it. I mean, a lot of pillar of fire is walking around. She also. Was technically amazingly strong, she did the positive and Black Swan with the Igor, what was his name? You gave it Igoe, you SkyBridge, and she did those 32 forte’s on a dime and then stood there and looked at the audience, it was hair raising. She was not. Did not have the right body feet, rather, for a ballerina. I saw her do jazelle it’s quite an experience you can’t do Gisele’s Stanislavski because it’s too silly. You have to believe all that ballet world and that was tough for her.

Speaker But she was arresting she also believed the most important person in ballet was the choreographer. That’s what she always cared about. She always thought the dancers service the choreographer, which I don’t think is quite common among too many ballerinas.

Speaker Depends on the choreographer. Yeah, tell me about more in the cage.

Speaker I remember the cage because when I first heard about it.

Speaker I was visiting Jerry in snideness, landing for the day. There was a lunch with his friends, Fizdale and Gold, and they sat there saying the greatest art was ballet and I kept my mouth shut, believe it or not. But anyway, he started to tell me he was doing this ballet.

Speaker The cage and about these Amazons, as you started to describe the Amazons castrating the men, he began to laugh like a man got hysterical, giggling away is the funniest thing in the world.

Speaker And then it turned out he was doing it for Naura. And one day he called me and said.

Speaker Would you come to a run through of the cage? I said, sure. And he said, I’m having trouble with your friend at that time, I guess Norah and I were at it. So I went to see the ballet. And I thought it was stunning. And shocking in that it was so harsh.

Speaker And I said, well, what’s the matter to him?

Speaker He’s what you saw. I said what he said. She’s such a bitch, she’s doing everything I asked her, but in such a way that I can’t criticize what she’s doing wrong. I said, what is she doing wrong? Jerry was not comfortable with words, you know, he had trouble directing actors. Because you have to be specific with dancers, he could show them, he could command them, he could give them non-specific metaphors. Nor was too smart. And so I spoke to him, I said, he says, you’re not doing what he wants. He said she said, I think this ballet’s disgusting. It’s so anti woman and all this castrating thing. He should make it about bugs. And that’s where it came from. And he challenged it and the costumes changed. And the choreography changed only in that it changed in her head what she was playing, so the moment of remorse entered when she does this, the castrating thing, and then just this she’s sorry. And it made a human. The guys was bugs, and I think it made the ballet stronger. He was angry with what she was doing at first, but he was too smart not to see that image better.

Speaker People became political, really in the 30s because of the depression.

Speaker And.

Speaker The Communist Party, particularly for Jews, was the only outlet. That was against anti-Semitism and for the working man and most people, he was a curious thing about the Communist Party in the United States, it never numbered more than 80000 because you have to admit you were working class and nobody in the United States wanted to admit there were anything but middle class and except the intellectuals who had money. You want to say they were working class, but. For my myself, I remember I went to a meeting of the Radio Writers Guild and I was in uniform and I was there to agitate for the soldiers to vote. And there was a man named Russell Krauss was Howard Lindsays partner. They wrote Life with Father, and he was in Washington. And he happened to mention to some officer who was big in whatever the army equivalent of radio. And I was writing an Army radio propaganda show.

Speaker He said he thought I was a pinko and they hold me down in Washington and they questioned me and. I could have gone to Leavenworth. Now, he didn’t mean much, but most people, if not members of the party, were on the left most. Because that’s where. You could fight, you know, today we don’t have any people on the left today, it’s a disgrace to be a liberal.

Speaker They were called progressives then and. It was perfectly normal, I mean, everybody I knew. By and large, Bosio liberal. And even the liberals or the people, rather, who weren’t liberals like Lindsay and Krauze. They hired a director named Mike Gordon, who directed my first play Home of the Brave After The Blacklist and the Witch Hunt in Hollywood, they hired him to direct to play in New York because they would not have a blacklist in the theater. That’s how different it is from today.

Speaker Now, at some point after that, in the early 50s, Jerry was called to testify by the House un-American Activities Committee. And you knew him during that time. Did he talk about it with you?

Speaker Jerry told me. Quite some time after. And I remember clearly. He had an apartment on 50 something in Park, and we were sitting there and he told me he testified and that he had named I remember a girl named Letty’s something who was a secretary. And, of course, destroyed her. And.

Speaker He cried.

Speaker And I remember he said to me, I’ll never know. Four years, whether I did the right thing and I said, no, I can tell you now you were shit, but. He was my friend. And he cried and I felt very sorry for him.

Speaker And again. I thought we were friends.

Speaker And then later on, we worked on West Side Story, I found out that when whatever it is in you. That enables you to inform when you don’t have to. I can understand people informing if they’ve got two kids and a family, and I still don’t condone it, but I can understand it. But there was no excuse for Jerry informing Aurelia Kazan, informing they could do anything they wanted in the theater and make buckets of money. They wanted to work in movies. And to me. You’re not evil because you inform, you inform because you’re evil, there’s an evil streak in you and I know that’s very rigid of me, but I also come down on myself because knowing that about Jerry, I worked with him. So I’m not pristine. And I did a picture with Kazan who really screwed me. He was very good at that.

Speaker And the trouble with working with people like that is you validate them, you validate what they have done. And with Gerri, I must say. I spoke to Nora about it.

Speaker And even after we had this conversation, which I’m going to tell you, she almost married him again, she said, oh, he didn’t inform on his own mother if it helped him.

Speaker It’s odd he had that quality. That people who were close to him accepted him. For. All the really quite monstrous things he did, I think, for two reasons. One, he was absolutely brilliant in his work and the other was we all remembered. But he’d been like and there was still every once in a while the giggle, every once in a while you saw that flash. But he was. And also. He was, I thought, always deeply unhappy. I never saw him really totally happy, really. He could enjoy a moment, but he wasn’t happy because he wasn’t happy with himself.

Speaker What do you think was at the core of the unhappiness?

Speaker I don’t doubt that his sexuality had part of it. I think he had a big problem with being Jewish. I think he was. Uncomfortable with his lack of a real education. I think he was. Ambivalent about his parents. About his upbringing. I mean, he wanted Leland Heyward and his wife to be the gentile parents who never had.

Speaker He wanted to belong.

Speaker I think that’s why a lot of minorities become Republicans, they want to belong. And of course, you don’t.

Speaker Well, what do you think about being Jewish that troubled him so?

Speaker In this country, it’s not good to be a minority.

Speaker And.

Speaker All this business about being Jewish in the theater and in films, it doesn’t matter. And today, it’s much better, but today.

Speaker 2000, whatever. If you are certainly if you’re a black. And if you’re Jewish and if you’re gay, it is better, but if you have any brains, you know, underneath, you are not accepted. I’m Jerry was very aware of that as well, he should be.

Speaker Do you really think it was only because he wanted to work in pictures that he. People’s names.

Speaker I really think he at that moment, he wanted very much to be in movies. And that’s why he Gerrish. You know, both he and Lenny. I’ve been interviewed by people doing books about Jerry, and they all talk to me about his diaries, his journals, he and when he wrote journals after the fact. I know I’m not going to go into details, but Jerry put in remorse, I don’t think he felt remorse for and for me. I really don’t.

Speaker But you told me that he was crying. But you just told me before that he was crying.

Speaker Oh, he was crying, as he told me. Well, Jerry was a performer.

Speaker I fell for it. It may have been real for that moment, probably was. But, you know, we all go through this, we think, oh, God, how sad I am, cry, cry, cry. All right, what’s up?

Speaker So you don’t think or do you think that it had a lasting effect on him? The fact that he had done this.

Speaker I think that you inform have a lasting effect on anybody and wrote a book, every other page is justifying and forming. Which meant she was troubled by it. Of course, he was troubled by it because people didn’t certain people didn’t accept him. He wanted to be accepted for everything. Nobody is, is that all syndrom?

Speaker Um.

Speaker You don’t like to hear this, but you’re absolutely right.

Speaker Anyway, um.

Speaker So you started to talk before about that you weren’t so pristine either because after he testified we did West Side Story, well, there was something before that.

Speaker I just want to read you something and ask you a question about it. I read that you wrote this to him, and I’m I think I’m quoting you, this was written when he you, I think, asked him for.

Speaker You were working with him on your play called A Clearing in the Woods.

Speaker Did he have something to do with that and you wrote, I’ve never felt such joy is so sweet. I’ve never felt such joy and excitement working in anything or with anybody as I have and do on this play with you, as you say, we may and probably will have hassles in the bad periods that always seem to come up. But I think that by then we will have such a solid foundation of awesomeness that it won’t matter.

Speaker Tell me what it was in January that would inspire you to write that down.

Speaker Well, clearing in the woods was. I suppose what you could call far out and. It was very odd to me that Jerry wanted to direct it. I didn’t realize he had ambitions in that way, and it called for somebody who had a kind of balletic mind because it was non-linear, non realistic, and it needed somebody very special and.

Speaker We were friendly at that time. He was with Berzon those days and there was that period when we were. This is all Pretty West Side story, and I had accepted his informing. And then pushed it out of my mind and. It just occurred to me at this minute, maybe he was very strongly with me because I had accepted his. But it was back to and also he could be himself with Buzz with me. You know, I was. Totally accepting of that and I. Lived openly. I didn’t flaunt, I didn’t hide. I had been helped by this analyst and I thought, well, you live your life. And and so we were very close and I loved that it took us back to almost 10 years.

Speaker But this speaks about some sort of intimate collaboration, I’m talking about work, collaboration that you two must there must have been something between, you know, the work collaboration really came.

Speaker From something he said. He quoted something that D.H. Lawrence had written about a clearing in the woods, typical of Jerry. He knew a lot of. What was considered avant garde fiction, but of the classics and I was impressed that he knew D.H. Lawrence and he made the relationship, and that meant he had really thought about the play when it changed was when we met with Mary Martin about playing the lead in. Which. They’re the tawdriness and me came out because, yes, she was a big star, but I thought Mary is going to be able to play this, you must be out of your mind. Well, Jerry believes in it and will get on. You know, the terrible thing about being a playwright is to get the bloody play on. And what you do is disgusting.

Speaker And I was rather disgusting.

Speaker Of course, he didn’t do it. She was no fool. OK, Kim Stanley, to show you the difference.

Speaker East Side story, how did it start, Jerry came to Lenny Bernstein, I mean, he wanted to do a contemporary musical version of Romeo and Juliet and. I was thrilled at the idea of working with Lenny because of his music from the time I was jumped out of my seat when I heard that overture and the ballet music. That’s theater music, it’s just so exciting, I never heard anything like it then I thought about it. It was supposed to take place on the Lower East Side during Easter and Passover, is it not a good Jew? I’m not. And. I think she was Jewish and he was Catholic or vice versa. Now he was Jewish. I know that because what made me think of as a play that was even before my time there had been an enormous success call Abey’s Irish Rose and I thought, this is a bizarre Srodes to music. Lenny was overshadowed and so he dropped out and so it fell apart.

Speaker And.

Speaker Several years passed during the them Jerry never let up. He always kept bringing it up. And then Lenny and I were both in Hollywood. He was conducting at the shrine, I think. And I was to write a movie, a remake of a Garbo movie called The Painted Veil was to be for Ava Gardner. And then they switch it to Eleanor Parker and I quit, but. I went to see Lenny one day he was staying at the Beverly Hills in grand style and I remember we were sitting at the pool with our legs dangling in the pool. I was outside, so Hollywood and splendid. And we were talking about riots that had been in Los Angeles. They were filled in the morning paper. And those days they were what they call juvenile delinquents, gangs, and they had been Chicanos fighting with, quote unquote, Americans. Well, that seem to be a Romeo and Juliet that made sense. And particularly, Leny love to write Latin American rhythms, and I love to dance them. I do have a permit for dancing that kind anyway. I didn’t think Hollywood in Los Angeles was the proper setting. Nobody can take that place seriously, at least I couldn’t. So I said, let’s put it in New York where I know better, and there are Puerto Ricans and there’s Harlem and so forth. We call Jerry. He was thrilled. I think have been thrilled to be willing to set it in China. He just wanted to do it. But then it became a West Side story.

Speaker I know, but he had the idea of doing a contemporary Romeo and Juliet. Did he ever tell you where that idea how that idea occurred to the art?

Speaker Gerry’s idea apparently came from Monty Clift. Whom he was having to do with and suggests that that would be a good contemporary musical.

Speaker And it turned out to be not bad. Did he tell you how it came up between the two of them?

Speaker No, Jerry. Was very secretive about Manti. Maybe Monty was secretive about Jerry, I don’t know.

Speaker So anyway, now that we get how that sequence happened, the credit reads based on a conception.

Speaker Well, one one I remember in the summer and my agent, who was a man named Harold Friedman, who was. One of the most wonderful people I’ve met in the theater, he brought me up in the theater, what standards he had, and he said, Jerry wants the credit conceived by. And I said, well, it was his idea to do a contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet by.

Speaker Then we get to Washington, we open, it’s a big success and two things happen. One was we were given the keys to the city. Jerry Lenni.

Speaker And me, not Steve Sondheim, who was because he was not known, and when they presented them to us on television, they said this is what the show does for juvenile delinquency, which was your idea, was it not, Mr. Robbins? And he said, yes. And Lenny and I looked at each other as Jérome go on television and say, no, it wasn’t. And that was that. In the reviews in Washington, she was not mentioned, same reason he was not known, and Lenny made one of the most magnanimous gestures I’ve ever seen in the theater. He said to Steve, the credit is an important they had done the Steve hadn’t wanted to do the show from the beginning. I had introduced him. I thought he’d be thrilled. But he wasn’t because he wanted to have his own scar on Broadway before he’s 30. Everybody wants to do things before they’re 30. I can tell you what I’m smiling at anyway. Oscar Hammerstein convinced him, and by the way, he was not only not his own score, not his own lyrics, he was doing them with Lenny, sharing the credit and the writing. But Oscar Hammerstein convinced him it might be a good idea to work with the three of us. So he did. He certainly did most of the lyrics and certainly the witty ones are all his. There are others I don’t think he’d want credit for, but Lenny said to him, the credit means nothing to me and it’s important for you. I will remove my name. If you see the original sheet music, it has both their names. But he removed his name, so. With that, I went to Jerry and I said they just met, they don’t know each other a year and we’ve known each other all these years. And it would make a difference to me if you remove this conceived by credit, because it doesn’t mean what we thought it meant, he said, let me think about it. And he came back the next day. He said, it’s too important to me. And that was that. And it was the beginning of a rupture between us. I think looking back, I made too much of it. I don’t think in the end. Billing is that important? I know everybody in the theater, Gerri, was insane about it on Gypsie out of a box around his name, and we didn’t go into rehearsal until he got it. But I think I carried on too much and it really wasn’t worth it. And he’s got it to this day and I don’t care.

Speaker No, I just inside I went back and looked at my record album from the original the original production to see what it said. The funny thing is I’m literally reading to you what it said. It says, based on a conception of.

Speaker Well, I thought, oh, I think I was a little I’d like to say one thing about that, whether you keep it or not. I think that was the beginning of conceived by and musicals have suffered to this day so much by directors putting their concept. But it doesn’t come from the material.

Speaker They have to make it their own.

Speaker And should be in in the material. They don’t do it. That’s why we’ve had all these terrible failures of revival’s.

Speaker Speaking of you, OK, Tom, was Wearside difficult to get produced and why?

Speaker West Side was to be produced originally. By Gerald Crawford, who was considered a liberal progressive producer, and Roger Stevens. Roger was a real estate man who loved the theater. Didn’t know much about it, and he believed in West Side Story and we had enormous trouble raising money.

Speaker And we had an audition one night. At the home of a woman named Bea Lawrence, I think she was married to somebody who owned or drank Seagrams and it was on the East River and there was no air conditioning and it was hot and we all did it. And I think she did it and Larry did it. And we laid an enormous egg, not a penny. And Roger was going to London the next day. He said to me, I think Cheryll has grown a little cold on this, but I’m with it.

Speaker She waited till he left. And she called a meeting. In her office and we all trooped up, this was in the summer. She said. By the way, she had said to me, you should have them say that’s how the cookie crumbles, which was said in those days. And I said, Carol, I have to be very careful about using vernacular that I don’t think the last. The one.