Free Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb by Arthur Bicknell Page A

Joe Buffalo Dances who’d come dressed for the part, I considered waiting around with them for a while. Neither of them seemed too eager to fraternize with me, so I called the Pulvino & Howard office to obtain the backstage number of the theater. A few minutes later Amy appeared from some dark recess, and, after rolling her eyes just a little bit, took me by the hand to lead me into the theater.
    This was my first time inside David Belasco’s palace, and, although it had obviously fallen into ill repair over the past several years, its spoiled splendor still managed to weaken my knees. The dark, rich, paneled woodworking on the walls was glowing warmly from the light cast by dozens of Tiffany lamps, and everywhere I turned I discovered another lavish mural—eighteen in all, I later learned, each done by an artist named Everett Shin. I remembered from my college theater history class that everything I was looking at had been designed to Belasco’s specifications. Educated in a monastery as a child, and prone to wearing faux clerical garb as an adult, the trailblazing impresario had come to be known as “the Bishop of Broadway,” and indeed, standing there in his magnificent neo-Georgian cathedral, I felt more spiritual than I had in years.
    Catching me in this reverie, Stuart approached with his head bowed, and his hands clasped like a monk. “You know,” he said, “Belasco’s old business office and private apartment take up the top floor.”
    “Can we take the tour?” I asked.
    “Nope. Closed off. Besides,” he said, dropping his voice a bit, “you wouldn’t want to.”
    “Why?”
    “A lot of eyewitnesses claim Belasco’s ghost still haunts the place. And there are some very unsettling stories about what he was like when he was alive . . .”
    Before Stuart could elaborate, Lillie called hello to us from the first row of orchestra seats. I was a little surprised to see her here, until it dawned on me that she’d probably been called in to help John determine the most credible Holloway family portrait.
    “Can you
believe
that bone structure?” whispered Stuart.
    I sat down next to Lillie just as Amy welcomed our first contender, an Erma Bombeck look-alike named Wendy Wolfe who had the kind of indiscreet charm of the upstate New York bourgeoisie I was looking for to play Snooks.
    Something had happened to Wendy since we’d last seen her. All the piss and vinegar had evaporated, and she’d turned into a real lady—more Emily Post than Erma Bombeck.
    “I haven’t auditioned for anything in over a year,” she said, after John suggested that she try to show us a little more of the brazen quality of her first audition. “I’d forgotten how horrible, how demeaning, how devastating this experience is. I’m
petrified
.”
    She opened up a little when belting out a few bars of both “Jeepers Creepers” and “People,” but she never did manage to regain the confidence that had impressed us all at the Bennett Studio.
    “I see this all the time, especially at callbacks,” Stuart said after Wendy had made a tearfully apologetic exit. “It’s the old ‘the less I do, the less they won’t like’ syndrome.”
    Holland Taylor walked on stage next.
    “What did you people
do
to that woman?” she demanded. “I think she may need a tranquilizer.”
    “She hates auditioning,” explained John.
    “Well, I’m with her on that,” laughed Holland. “Do you know how hard it was for me to leave my nice, safe, comfortable rehearsal to come here and put myself on the line?”
    The rehearsal Holland was referring to was for the Lee Kalcheim comedy
Breakfast with Les and Bess
that would be opening in December at the Hudson Guild Theatre in the Chelsea area downtown. This show had a limited run, so Holland would presumably be able to work things out logistically should she be cast in
Moose Murders
. For now, at least, this didn’t seem to be where the cards were falling. Holland commanded the stage with her