Free Madeline Kahn by William V. Madison

satirical sketches that were, frankly, smarter than they were hip. At the same time, Danner points out, a more radical change was in the works on Broadway.
New Faces
opened at the Booth Theatre on May 2, just three days after
Hair
(which had been a hit at the Public Theater downtown in the fall of 1967) arrived at the Biltmore Theatre, two blocks away. Though
Hair
itself is a kind of revue, the contrast between the shows could hardly be greater. One cast of young performers was in formalwear and the other in tie-dye and blue jeans (and birthday suits). One show featured opera parodies and the other rock. One show focused on sassy topicality, while the other issued a call for social change.
New Faces
made youth a selling point;
Hair
made youth an instrument of revolution.
    An actors’ strike gave
New Faces
a dignified excuse to close. Though Maggart insists that the show’s failure wasn’t predetermined or intended, Klein doesn’t dispel the widespread legend that Sillman was a model for the flop-happy Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’s
The Producers
. Sillman, like Bialystock, shared an affinity for widowed investors, and like his fictitious counterpart, Sillman produced many Broadway productions that lasted only a few performances. 31 Klein calls Sillman “an amateur” and a con man who, as a patient of Max Jacobson, the legendary “Dr. Feelgood,” was “dealing with a loaded deck.” Regular treatment with “miracle tissue regenerator shots” (the ingredients of which included B vitamins, amphetamines, and painkillers) affected Sillman’s decisionmaking, prompting his insistence on “more ping” and sped-up tempos on the cast album, Klein says.
    Sillman was a skillful enough promoter to land a feature in the fashion section of the
New York Times
just as
New Faces
began previews. In an account of the producer’s efforts to find appropriate designer gowns for each woman in the cast, Sillman told the
Times
that he didn’t want Madeline “to fall into the clichés of what is happening in fashion.” Her “effective but unadorned” “puritan look” can be seen in the accompanying photo of all eight
New Faces
women, including Elaine Giftos (later of
The Partridge Family
) and Gloria Bleezarde, who wears the only miniskirt in the company—though she’s posed so as not to reveal that the dress is backless, a calculated titillation that Sillman exploited during the show. 32 For an aspiring actor, this sort of free publicity is welcome, even when the show doesn’t run. Another benefit was Madeline’s first commercial recording. Anticipating another success along the lines of
New Faces of 1952
, Warner Bros. produced an original cast album. In the liner notes, musical theater historian Miles Kreuger opines optimistically that “in 10 years, there will probably be a big Robert Klein film festival . . . there will be a Madeline Kahn–Brandon Maggart Comedy Hour on 3-D color television. . . .” 33
    Members of the cast—“a mixed jar of pickles,” Danner says—didn’t have time to get to know each other well, though Danner did get a glimpse of the “real” Madeline, calling Paula for a voice lesson over the phone. But Klein and Madeline had known each other for about two years, and they already socialized together often. She introduced him to Brenda Vaccaro, whom he dated for a while. And once, when he and Vaccaro weren’t seeing each other, he slept with Madeline. In the 1960s, he says, “you just did not have that long a relationship between two young, single, attractive people without finding out what it was like.” The interlude was brief, however, and they resumed their platonic friendship. “It was one of those things that goes against the books: it did not affect our relationship one iota. We were not to be partners, you know, but [it] was dignified and great. Somehow I have a big smile about it.”
New Faces
marked the beginning of their professional collaboration, one of the most