Master of Ceremonies Read online

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  Author’s Note:

  This is a true story, though some names and details have been changed.

  For K. Elmo Lowe

  PROLOGUE

  October 1966, New York City

  The nightclub comedian mopped his sweaty forehead with a breast-pocket hanky one too many times—the linen as yellowed as the teeth in his desperate smile. Everything about this man—the sweat glistening through the pancake makeup; his thinning, dyed-red hair; the tasteless jokes that fell just short of his dropping his pants—was proof for the audience of how hard he was working for them. Men who were drunk and still drinking sat beside their rouged women on burgundy leather and gold button-tufted banquettes, everyone’s head thrown back in overenthusiastic laughter. The spotlight on the small parquet dance floor that doubled as a stage was broken by the crossing of harried waiters trying to keep up with drink orders and the delivery of the roast beef special. The clatter of forks and knives against dishes competed with coughing from cigarette smoke and laughter …

  I awoke soaking wet, wrung out from what was not just a disturbing dream but also a memory of a real event. I was now a thirty-eight-year-old man with a beautiful wife and two wonderful children I was able to support with an established career assembled from an eclectic mix of stage, screen, and TV work. The dream’s vivid details, however, catapulted me back a decade, to the early fifties, when I was still trying to make it.

  I had been on the road back then with a nightclub act developed around the idea that I was too young to be in a nightclub, let alone perform in one. I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger, because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and jokes such as describing current events as “ancient history.” Boy, did the audience roar at that one. I had been worried that my naive material wouldn’t work in the bawdy atmosphere of the nightclub circuit. But in city after city, they ate it up. One of the newspapers called me the “comic comet.”

  On my night off during a tour stop in St. Louis, I went to see a well-known performer at another club. I had heard that he was the hottest thing in town and wanted to know what the competition was up to. As I sat watching the comedian in the loud, smoky room, the spotlight illuminating his aging face, I was stunned. His broad delivery employed every virulent stereotype: take-my-wife jokes, fat jokes, crude sex jokes (but not Jewish jokes, since the obviously Irish comic was playing to a mostly Jewish crowd). When he did his fag impression, lisping and mincing, in a bit about “fresh fruits,” and not the kind you find in a grocery store, I felt sick to my stomach. But it wasn’t his crassness that offended me most. It was his effectiveness. He would do, and did do, anything for a laugh, battering the audience into loving him. I couldn’t believe that someone so willing to pander, someone who stooped to the lowest levels of “entertainment,” offering the most base and hackneyed material in exchange for the audience’s affection, was actually getting it. They were in his thrall, screaming with laughter.

  Perhaps the crowd-pleasing entertainer onstage hit a little too close to home. He was the epitome of everything I had been trying to escape ever since the moment I became an “overnight sensation” at the age of sixteen after doing a wild song-and-dance act in my father’s variety show, Borscht Capades. I had first fallen in love with performing as a nine-year-old actor at the Cleveland Play House, one of the country’s best professional regional theaters. Although fame and financial success came to me first by working nightclubs, I never wavered from my desire to become a legit theater actor and return to that early, formative experience on the stage. I wasn’t sure what it would take to make it in the theater, but despite the struggle that was all I ever really wanted.

  And here it was. After more than fifteen years of struggling, I was finally about to fulfill that dream—to create my own role on Broadway. The subject matter of the show, Cabaret, was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn’t have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.

  I shook the image of the “Jerk of St. Louis” out of my head and pushed back the covers. It was deadly quiet in the apartment. The rest of my family had already gone off to their individual lives—my wife, Jo, to her morning yoga class, Jennifer to school across town, and James to the park with our housekeeper. I showered, shaved, dressed, and went into the kitchen for my espresso and toasted bialy. Then I started putting together my stuff for the day: script, dance shoes, an extra shirt, Sen-Sen, and a Hershey’s Bar with almonds.

  As I boarded the M10 bus in front of our apartment on 86th Street and began traveling down Central Park West, I felt slightly hungover—from the dream or anxiety about the show; I couldn’t tell which. There were only a couple of weeks of rehearsal left before we were scheduled to open Cabaret in Boston for the out-of-town tryout before Broadway. I was still wrestling with my part, a fact I couldn’t admit to anyone. I knew my songs and the choreography. And, thanks to the German icon Lotte Lenya, who was playing Fräulein Schneider, my accent was becoming quite convincing. Still, something important was missing—the man underneath the makeup.

  The basic idea of my character was conjured from a master of ceremonies at a seedy club in Stuttgart where the show’s director had been stationed in the Army. The director told me that this small man, who wore too much makeup, was bigger than life. But there were no specific notations or descriptions in the script regarding my character. It didn’t specify his connection to the narrative of the show or even if he had a name. He was simply referred to by the abbreviated form of “master of ceremonies”: Emcee. With five musical numbers that played in between the book scenes, yes, the Emcee was clearly a metaphor for the corruption of the Weimar Republic, which paved the way for the Nazis’ rise to power. But go play a metaphor—not possible.

  For the past four weeks, the ensemble, dancers, and I had been working long hours on John Kander and Fred Ebb’s brilliant songs and Ron Field’s edgy choreography in a big, cold dance studio ten blocks away from the George Abbott Theatre, where the director, Hal Prince, held the main rehearsal with the actors in the book scenes. Today, however, was the first run-through in which the cabaret numbers would be integrated with the book scenes. As the bus drew closer to the George Abbott, I found myself getting anxious. Everyone would see that I hadn’t fully found my way as the Emcee. What had been passable in isolated rehearsals, as pure music and dance—showbiz numbers—wouldn’t work when combined with the drama of the show.

  I got off the bus at 54th Street and Seventh Avenue and walked two blocks east to the theater, where Hal, John, Fred, Ron, and the rest of the group were assembled. There were the principals, Jill Haworth, Bert Convy, Lotte Lenya, Peg Murray, Jack Gilford, and Edward Winter. There were the Kit Kat Girls, and there was me.

  “Places, please, for ‘Willkommen’!” the stage manager called.

  As the cast went to the
ir places in the wings, I nervously looked at Hal Prince, who was about to get off the stage and make his way into the house, where he would watch and take notes. Suddenly, I had an idea. I grabbed Hal and quietly said, “I have something I’d like to try.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  Silence.

  Drumroll …

  Cymbal crash …

  Vamp.

  Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah

  Oom-pah-pah-pah, oom-pah

  Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah

  Oom-pah-pah-pah, oom-pah

  … And there was I in the sweaty body of the comedian from my dream.

  “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! Fremde, etranger, stranger…”

  There he was; there was I; there we were. Everything that was a bit too much—overly friendly, leering, shocking, and in your face.

  “Leave your troubles outside. In here it is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful.”

  And on comes the all-girl band, pushed by the Kit Kat waiters. This new, different Emcee had no compunction about manhandling the girls. Although I had no makeup and was wearing only a tailcoat over my rehearsal clothes, I became another person by fully discovering the inner life of this character. The change took the dancers and ensemble off guard. I could feel a bristling of discomfort as I lifted up a Kit Kat Girl’s skirt with my cane and an intimidated resistance as I sat down on the lady piano player’s lap. The choreography was the same, the same steps I had repeated many times in rehearsal, but the spirit in which they were done was mercenary, lascivious, and menacing.

  I embraced everything that was in poor taste and not acceptable, and the ensemble responded in kind. They, too, were changed.

  Near the end of the first number, the music pulled back to half time.

  “Willkom-men! Bienvenue, welcome. Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Ca-Ba-Ret.”

  I sang the last words—seated on a chair lifted into the air by the waiters—as the stage manager yelled “Blackout!” and the sleazy comedian slipped away. Now just Joel Grey, I ran to the back of the stage, looking for an escape, all the while thinking, You’re a crazy person. Look what you just did. Say goodbye to a career. Nobody wants to pay good money to watch a creep.

  I had just shown the crème de la crème of the legitimate theater—that place I had wanted to be since forever—all that I had worked for years to rise above: the cheap tricks of the vaudevillian, the vulgar jokes among the musicians in my dad’s orchestra, the fag impersonations of a sleazy nightclub comedian. All the things I didn’t want to be.

  Panicked and overwhelmed with shame, I tried to lose myself, hiding behind a flat at the back of the stage. I had one last horrible thought: Everyone will think that is me.

  I felt a presence coming up behind me and turned around. It was Hal, who put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Joely,” he said, “that’s it.”

  “You’re just like me,” she would say. “You’re your mother’s son.” I was yet another reflection of how special she was, her prized possession for whom nothing was too good.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Great platters of food covered the table. There was herring, glistening pink with onions and swimming in sour cream; warm, homemade coffeecake; and sour pickles from the barrel. Chewy bagels and garlic-centered bialys and a seeded rye sliced thick and fat, dense pumpernickel. Big slabs of sweet butter, pot cheese, eggs, fruit (dried and fresh), everything top-of-the-line.

  “Morris! You forgot the whitefish,” my grandma Fanny said to my grandfather, who ran his own fruit-and-vegetable stall in Cleveland’s Central Market. Having the pick of the produce, he always brought home perfect specimens of apples, pears, pineapples, cherries, or whatever was special and costly. Grandma Fanny wouldn’t take anything less than top-drawer. Using elegant china and starched, white linen almost blue in its cleanliness, she arranged the bounty so that her table was as beautifully composed as a Brueghel painting.

  That Grandpa Morris had a job in the first place during 1938 was not so easy, but selling produce was backbreaking work. He’d leave every morning at three o’clock to head downtown to the market where, in Cleveland’s freezing cold or scorching heat, he’d lift and lug gigantic boxes of potatoes, cauliflower, and onions. Despite his punishing efforts for the benefit of the family, Grandpa Morris did not get a lot of sympathy from its members.

  “War is everywhere, and your mother wants whitefish,” he said.

  “Sha!” Grandma snapped. “My soup is getting cold.”

  Life had never been simple for either of my grandparents, who had arrived in Cleveland as part of the great migration of Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms and poverty. But the Depression and increasing anti-Semitism at home and abroad brought an uneasiness to the city’s East Side, where most Jews, including my grandparents, lived.

  If anyone could weather trouble, however, it was the Epstein clan. With their dukes-up hostility, they were one tough bunch—and the toughest of all was Grandma Fanny, née Borodofsky (changed later to Borad). A small woman with a strong presence, she made the long trip from Russia to Cleveland all alone at sixteen. In America, she found herself with no immediate family members or education, but Fanny was a fighter and raised five daughters with very little money and even less English. What a force she was. Even though she could barely read English, Fanny got a driver’s license (“I gave da guy a couple bucks”), which she used to drive Grandpa’s truck.

  Fanny ladled out her signature barley soup, finishing each bowl with a large pat of butter that melted into the velvety, salt-and-pepper-speckled surface. With her hair cropped short in a no-nonsense style, she wasn’t one to make a fuss over appearances. Her favorite accessory was the apron she always seemed to be wearing.

  A natural in the kitchen, she was highly specific about how her food was prepared and consumed. And that included Sunday brunch, which was a non-negotiable event. Every week, all members of the family were expected for better or worse to sit and enjoy Grandma Fanny’s fantastic spread, which was her singular form of mothering. No matter how tough times were or how cruelly they treated one another, as long as everyone was present and there was an abundance of food, Fanny felt the family was all right.

  Sunday brunch at the Epsteins’ was a kind of battlefield. My four aunts—Helen, Esther, Frieda (who called herself Fritzi), and baby Beverly (whom everyone called the “mistake” because she was born eight years after her older sister)—were always present. The Sisters, as they were known, took their mother’s side against Grandpa Morris, who could do no right. Whether forgetting the whitefish or losing an entire day’s pay in a pinochle game, there was always something to criticize.

  If the weekly gathering at Grandma and Grandpa’s brick house on Grantwood Avenue was a combat zone, then Mother was its biggest offensive. Sitting next to her, my baby brother, Ronnie, and my dad at the big dining room table, I could see The Sisters jealously appraising the charming dress and matching coat Mom had sewn for herself from a Vogue pattern. Wherever she was, my mother, a small, dark beauty, always made sure all eyes were on her.

  Everywhere we went, the butcher, the baker, the grocer, people fussed over her not only because she was so pretty but also flirtatious and eager to be seen. At the market, I noticed how the owner, Mr. Friedman, would look her up and down while personally fulfilling her request for large pearl tapioca. She made the most of her feminine powers and charm, but it wasn’t just men who found Mother appealing. She also had tons of friends, like Bea Sandson, who looked up to her, copying her daring style and recipes. The phone never seemed to stop ringing in our house, and it was always for Mother.

  My mom’s charisma was just one aspect to the trouble between her and The Sisters. There was also the matter of Grandpa Morris. The man her sisters considered a bum was nothing short of a prince to my mother, and she was naturally his favorite. A very tight pair, both were olive-skinned, attractive, and always pulled-together (at the table Grandpa wore a snappy bow tie, white linen sh
irt, and pleated trousers as if he were a Southern gentleman rather than a Midwestern fruiterer). They both also loved gambling (Grandpa played pinochle and poker; Mother and her circle played mah-jongg) and dancing. She was her father’s daughter, Grandpa would say to Mother, which galled not only The Sisters but also Fanny. Their criticisms only strengthened the bond between my grandfather and mother, and they frequently defended each other to the rest of the family. Case in point:

  “Why are you wearing a tie,” Grandma Fanny said to Grandpa Morris. “It’s brunch.”

  “Leave him alone, Ma,” my mother responded sharply to her mother before training her big, lovely smile on her father. “I think he looks very handsome.”

  The Sisters pounced on my mother in retaliation. Ronnie and I put our heads so close to our soup bowls that we nearly dove in.

  “What? You didn’t have enough money to add buttons?” said Fritzi about my mother’s swing coat. “How do you close the thing?”

  My aunts snickered, but Mother was undeterred.

  “There isn’t meant to be a fastening. It’s the style. I made it from the same pattern Carole Lombard wore in Fools for Scandal.”

  “Listen to her,” Aunt Fritzi said, shaking her fork in my mother’s direction. “Now she thinks she’s a blonde movie star!”

  My aunts never held back their hostility toward the sister they had nicknamed the Schwarze Jabbe (“black frog”), because she had darker skin than the rest of them. Instead, they laughed at her expense over their barley soup. In the open war between my mother and her sisters, each side gave as good as it got. (When Aunt Fritzi was on her deathbed, suffering from emphysema and barely able to talk, lying there ashen and frail, she beckoned me to come closer. I thought she intended to kiss or embrace me, but instead she whispered in my ear, “I always hated your mother.”)