Sublime

majordomo,

croquetons—

By then, I’d heard Bernadette speak the role, and the accent suggested to me Harold Arlen. He was a Buffalo boy who kept writing southern-inflected music, and I thought, southern inflection … hey, there’s my favorite composer. And I was off and running.

the composer! Lionel Bart, who had a serious drug problem, initially wrote the music for La Strada.

I’ll often put the script on the easel of the piano and just look at it, sometimes sort of sing it in my head.

as we were walking over to the opening-night party at Sardi’s, my father said sweetly, “You didn’t tell me that you put your grandfather in the show.” I had never met his father, who passed away long before I was born and about whom I really knew nothing. “What are you talking about, Dad?” I said. “My father, Louis. He was a baker.” That stopped me

always said that Bernie didn’t bet on the horses, he bet on the jockeys. Michael Bennett comes up with a musical. Mike Nichols comes up with a play, Neil Simon with a play. You try to get their shows in your theaters. So Sondheim comes up with a musical—you say yes. William Goldman used to say, “Nobody knows anything. Every time out, it’s a guess.”