Part 31

I meet the author on a recent evening at Backstage on West 45th Street. "The thing about this book," he says, "is that whether people know the actors or not, they find the stories amusing. You know, I never thought of writing these stories down. I used to tell them to other members of the company over drinks after the show, and everyone loved them. But I'm an actor, and I thought what made them funny was the way I told them. I didn't know how they'd look in print. A good friend of mine finally convinced me to write about a hundred pages, and I said, "If anyone wants it, I'll write the whole thing." The first publisher I sent it to -- Doubleday -- accepted it."

Those who have seen portions of the Ginger Rogers chapter in a recent issue of New York magazine might think the book is malicious, but this is not the case. Says Kennedy: "It just tells what happened, and some people come out better than others."

The chapter begins: "It seems that Ginger Rogers never smiles. It may be that someone has told her it would crack her face. It may be more likely that she's a lady devoid of one smidgin of one inch of a sense of humor." The author describes her as "colder than anyone else I had met. Totally unlike her screen self -- which only goes to prove what a good actress she is."

He reveals Rogers at her worst when she attempts to make an actor out of her no-talent fifth husband, G. William Marshall, at the expense of Kennedy and everyone else in the cast. The couple were still on their honeymoon, and Rogers demanded that Bill be given the role of her leading man in Bell, Book and Candle. The results were disastrous. Detroit's leading critic wrote after the opening: "The program lists Mr. Marshall as having been acquainted with many phases of show business. Last night he showed not even a nodding acquaintance with any of them."

Kennedy writes at the chapter's end: "Hopefully Ginger will find another husband. As it turned out, the last one apparently worked out worse for her than it did for me." Rogers is apparently considering a lawsuit against the author.

Still very active in the theatre at 64, Kennedy is undertaking three productions this summer -- Barefoot In the Park with Maureen O'Sullivan and Donny Most, The Marriage-Go-Round with Kitty Carlisle, and Bell, Book and Candle with Lana Turner. He is directing all three and acting in two of them.

Two years ago he directed John Travolta for a summer stock company that opened to hordes of screaming teenagers in Skowhegan, Maine. Whenever Travolta made in entrance or an exit, Kennedy tells in the chapter titled "John Who?", he caused such a commotion that the play virtually came to a halt. "John is a darling. He's such a lovely boy," says the author. "He'd kiss me full on the lips when we met and parted. And I say that with no sense of implication. In the theatre, we've always been relaxed about an expression of affection. ... I thought in Saturday Night Fever he was a star in the old tradition -- in the tradition of Tyrone Power. ... I couldn't call John intelligent, but he'll own the movie industry in two years. And he has things in his contract that no other stars have had, like approval of the final cut of the movie."

A native of Holyoke, Massachusetts, Kennedy worked his way through Dartmouth College and the Yale School of Drama "and came out with a profit." In 1937 he moved to New York; he has lived on the West Side ever since. Among his close friends are some of the merchants and artisans in his area. "They care about theatre and they know we have special problems," he says. "There's Mal the Tailor on West 72nd Street, for example. If I'm doing a play and need something right away, he'll drop everything and take care of me."

No Pickle, No Performance has already received many favorable reviews and has been partially reprinted in the New York Post. Kennedy is planning to hit the talk shows soon with some of his leading ladies. What seems to be uppermost in his mind at the moment, however, is whether Ginger Rogers will sue for libel.

"I kind of wish she would, just to get some publicity for the book," he muses. "Of course, she's a fool if she does, because she'd never win, and the people who haven't heard of the book will rush out and get it. ... But I can say one thing: if there's a package from Ginger waiting for me in my dressing room, I'm going to have it dumped in water."

********

WESTSIDER ANNA KISSELGOFF Dance critic for the New York Times

6-9-79

It was 3 p.m., and as usual, Anna Kisselgoff was sitting before the computer-typewriter at the New York Times' newsroom, putting the finishing touches on her latest dance review. She had spent the morning doing research, and had arrived at the Times building around noon to begin writing the article directly on the computer terminal, using her notes taken the night before at a dance performance. At 8 o'clock that evening, she would be attending yet another performance, but for the moment at least, Miss Kisselgoff had a little time to herself, and when we sat down to talk in her three-walled cubicle office facing the relatively quiet newsroom, she seemed noticeably relaxed and cheerful, notwithstanding the pile of opened and unopened mail piled high on her desk.

"We get no help: that's the problem," she said, in a clear, even voice with a tone that recalled Mary Tyler Moore. "We have one secretary for nine people in the arts and architecture department. She's terribly overworked," Anne went on, sweeping her hands like an orchestra conductor toward the stack of mail. "You're looking at what's left after I've thrown away half of it. I make up the review schedule for the week based on these releases."

Petite, attractive, and looking somewhat younger than her 41 years, the effervescent Miss Kisselgoff soon got to the root of her problem.

"This time of year, everybody wants to be reviewed. The tragedy is that dancers do wait until the spring, and then they give their one-shot concert that they have been preparing all year, and it's on the same night that 17 other dancers are giving theirs. I think it's suicidal. ... We have three dance critics at the Times -- Jack Anderson and Jennifer Dunning besides myself -- and in the spring, all three of us are working every day, and we still can't keep up."

Anna herself attends up to nine performances a week during the busy season. Besides her regular pieces in the daily Times, she is responsible for a long, comprehensive article in the Sunday edition. "There has been a tremendous increase in dance activity in the past 10 years," she explained. "In 1969, the year after I joined the paper, I was asked to do a rundown of dance events, and I found there was not a single week in the year that was free from dance. That was the first time it happened.

"I think the decade of the 1960s had something to do with it. That was when choreographers like Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, who used pure movement, became most popular. The audience that came to see them was a new audience that was already comfortable with abstraction. They didn't require story ballets. One of the problems with dance in the past was the people thought they wouldn't be able to understand it. But if you like plotless ballet, you don't have to understand any more than what you see. I think Marshall McLuhan was right: this is the age of television. This generation is used to watching images without getting bored."

She has no favorite dancers, but her favorite choreographers come down to two -- George Balanchine and Martha Graham. "You don't have any young choreographers now who are really the stature of the old ones. I can't give a reason why, except that it happened historically that the 1930s turned out to be the most creative period in dance -- not just in the United States, but in most parts of the world. That's when the modern dance pioneers became active. People like Martha Graham are revolutionaries, and you just don't get them in every generation. ... This applies to the other arts as well. Who are the great opera composers of today? And frankly, are there any Tolstoys?"

Born in Paris, Anna arrived on the Upper West Side at the age of one. She attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and later spent four years in Paris as a general reporter for several English-language newspapers, but otherwise she has been a lifelong Westsider. Dance has always been one of her prime interests: she studied ballet for 10 years while a child, and remained an avid fan long after realizing she would not become a professional dancer.

In the mid-1960s, Anna wrote an article on a major dance festival for the international edition of the New York Times in Paris. This led to similar assignments. In October 1968, shortly after she returned to Manhattan, the Times hired her to assist chief dance critic Clive Barnes. She quickly found herself writing many first-string reviews, and when Barnes resigned almost two years ago, Kisselgoff was named to replace him.

One of the disadvantages of her job, Anna pointed out, is that she is frequently approached by strangers at intermission. "I feel that everybody who agrees or disagrees with me can do so by mail. I don't want to have long discussions with people I don't know, because I think it's an invasion of my privacy as a person."

The advantages, however, far outweigh the inconveniences. "I can even enjoy bad dance," she quickly added. "That's why I'm very happy doing this job. The day that I'll no longer be interested in watching a dance performance, I think I should quit and go on to something else."

********

WESTSIDER GEORGE LANG Owner of the Cafe des Artistes

8-4-79

George Lang, artist and perfectionist, could have become a success in any of a hundred professions. In 1946, when he arrived in the U.S. from his native Hungary, he got a job as violinist with the Dallas Symphony. But Lang soon discovered that the orchestra pit was too confining for a man of his vision. He might have turned to composition or conducting; instead he decided to switch to a different field entirely -- cooking. Today, at 54, he is the George Balanchine of the food world -- a "culinary choreographer" with an international reputation for knowing virtually everything relevant that is to be known about food preparation and restaurants.