TRANSCRIPT
- In 1935, my Uncle Joe drove a Parmalee Cab.
It was a big checker cab, very big cab.
And in the front, there was a place with straps where you could actually put your luggage on a big kind of running board.
And he was the driver.
But in the back, there was room, there were folding seats, and there was room for about four people.
When a Parmalee Cab came down South 3rd Street and Hooper, where I lived in Williamsburg, and there was no driver!
And it appeared to be driving by itself.
We knew it was Uncle Joe!
Because Joe was about 4'3" and had to sit on many telephone books.
Remember the telephone was just invented, so you needed (chuckling) many books, there was nobody in the book!
Many telephone books to get high enough to get to the wheel, and he could just about see over the wheel, but we couldn't see his head.
Joe was given two tickets to Cole Porter's new show, which was "Anything Goes."
And I was about nine or nine and a half.
And he said, "How would you like to see a Broadway show?"
And I said, "Wha, wha, wha, what is it?
What's a Broadway show?"
And he says, "Well, people sing and dance on the stage," and you know."
I said, "Oh!
Oh, it's like a movie!"
A guy only knew movies, I didn't know what Broadway was.
He said, "No, it's better!
Melvin, it's thrilling!
I'm gonna take you to see your first Broadway show," my Uncle Joe.
So, he puts me in his cab, and went South 3rd Street and Hooper, I get in his cab, he says, "Lay down in the back!
Because I got the flag up!
If they see a person in the back with the flag up, we're both arrested!
We can't, it's illegal."
So, he doesn't throw the flag, he leaves the flag up!
I'm on the bottom!
I can only see from the bottom of the cab, I see.
When I began to see girders, I knew we were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge!
So I said, "That's good!"
And then I saw a glimpse of the Chrysler Building, I knew we were going uptown!
And so, things were good!
But then you could park!
1935, the street, you park fine!
There's no signs, there's no nothing!
There were no cars!
I mean, you were probably the only car on the block!
Then I see right outside the Alvin Theater, parks the cab.
We go in, they tear the tickets, we turn left, we go up some stairs, we go around, we go up some more stairs.
We go around, we go up some more stairs!
I'm beginning to find heart to breathe.
We are in (chuckling) the top of the Alvin, we're in the top last row of the Alvin Theater.
They start to play.
We sit down, the lights hit a maroon curtain, rich, velvety maroon curtain, and they play an overture.
One song after another.
Anything goes itself.
(humming) (hands tapping) Anything goes!
And then you're the top.
♪ You're the Colosseum, you're the top ♪ ♪ You're the Louvre music ♪ I mean, it's just one lyric, one song after another, and then.
♪ All through the night, ladada ♪ Well, all these Russian Jewish melodies that came from Cole Porter was amazing!
Anyway, I loved!
(hand swishing) With just one song after another!
And then the curtain opened, and there was William Gaxton, and there was Ethel Merman!
And I had no mics!
And I was sitting in the last row with Uncle Joe of the balcony!
And Ethel Merman started to sing, and I had to hold my, she was very, (chuckling) she had a big voice!
Anyway, it was the most thrilling experience of my life, and I said to Joe, yelling from the back of the floor, "I'm gonna do that one day, Uncle Joe, I'm gonna do that, I love that!
I've never seen anything like that!"
And he said, "Okay, kid, you can do it!"
And that's one of the songs and the producers, you can do it!
So.
And I did do it!
It took me maybe 60 years to get there, but I did it.
Musical comedies are diamonds!
The other shows I talked about may be rubies, may be emeralds!
And they may be amethysts, but they're not diamonds!
A musical comedy is so hard to do and so hard to get right that when you get "Bells Are Ringing" and you get an honor way to the forum, or you get "Guys and Dolls," maybe the greatest musical comedy, you're getting a diamond!
Because not only are you being touched by some of the emotion, but you're laughing your head off and you're keeping time to the most wonderful music in the world.
Look at the musical comedies we have exported!
They say happiness, they say hope.
They say esprit de corps, they say all the things they say, we're tough.
They say we can survive.
They say, we're sharp!
We're hip, we're America!
And it's the Broadway musical!
That is the most unique, artistic event that distinguishes us from every other country in the world.
Nobody can make a musical comedy like Americans.
And you ask George M. Cohan, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," he'll tell you.
And so I'm very proud to be part of it, even in a small way!
