Razzle Dazzle

by Michael Riedel

  Though he had Fosse as his director, Ostrow had difficulty raising the money for Pippin. It was an expensive show, and the country was still in the grip of recession. Schoenfeld and Jacobs decided to help. But to do so they had to ignore a stipulation in J. J. Shubert’s will that limited investments in shows to no more than $25,000. Ostrow needed more, so they gave him $50,000. “We did so timorously,” Jacobs recalled. The day before Pippin opened, Jacobs asked Ostrow if they could sell off their investment. “So much for faithfulness,” Ostrow wrote.

  It was a mistake. Pippin was a smash, made even more so by a pioneering TV commercial, directed by Fosse, that, for the first time, featured performers doing an actual dance from a show. The announcer said, “Here’s a free minute from Pippin”—as Ben Vereen began to dance. At the end of the commercial, the announcer said, “You can see the other 119 minutes of Pippin live at the Imperial Theatre. Without commercial interruption.” (Pippin detractors said the only thing you needed to see of the show was Fosse’s one-minute commercial.)

  Pippin ran four and a half years on Broadway and earned $3.5 million. Had the Shuberts held on to their investment, they would have made a nice profit. Still, they got the rent from a hit show in one of their largest theaters. They got something else as well: a lesson in producing. Schoenfeld and, especially, Jacobs spent a lot of time at the theater watching Fosse work. What Jacobs grasped was that a director-choreographer of Fosse’s stature is essential to a musical’s success. He had no illusions about the script to Pippin. The music was fine but the show was not built with the precision of My Fair Lady. Fosse took what many of the newspaper critics dismissed as second-rate material and turned it into first-rate entertainment. If the material was the horse, Jacobs was looking for the jockey who could ride it to the finish line. As his friend Manny Azenberg would say, “Bernie Jacobs learned to bet on the jockeys.”

  Another decision the new regime made was to change Shubert curtain times. For years, Broadway shows opened at 8:30, which gave people time to have a couple of martinis and dinner. But that was a tradition from a safer Times Square. By 1972, “the neighborhood became unsafe after seven thirty,” Jacobs recalled. “We realized we were chasing our customers away.” The new curtain time would be 7:30. Producer David Merrick, however, set his curtain times at 8:00, so he could scoop up whatever business remained after the other shows had started. Eventually, everybody else followed and the curtain time was established at 8:00 p.m.

  During the run of Pippin, Schoenfeld and Jacobs discovered that the booking deal was more favorable to the producer than the theater owner. As long as anyone could remember, the basic deal was that the producer took 70 percent of the box office receipts and the theater owner took 30 percent. The costs were split the same way: 70 percent on the producer’s back, 30 percent on the theater owner’s. The theater owner paid for some of the stagehands as well as the doormen, porters and ushers, and other theater personnel. This meant, in effect, that the theater owner was the producer’s partner. Their interests dovetailed. But during the run of Pippin, the new Shubert management noticed that, with all their expenses (plus taxes on their theaters), they were getting just 10 percent of the revenues. And sometimes less. Or nothing at all. “There came a time when we were losing $2,500 a week on Pippin, and Stuart Ostrow was making $25,000 a week,” Jacobs said. “So we changed the agreement.”

  From the late seventies onward, the Shuberts took a smaller percentage of the box office receipts—originally 10 percent, but when business conditions worsened, dipping to 7 percent—but paid none of the costs. Everything—stagehands, doormen, ushers, insurance, lightbulbs, even toilet paper—was billed to the producer. “We thought we had invented the wheel,” Jacobs said. “Then we went to London and discovered they’d been doing it forever.” Nobody objected at the time. After all, 10 percent was less than 30 percent. But the new agreement altered the relationship between the producer and the theater owner. They were no longer partners. And their interests began to diverge. As Schoenfeld and Jacobs solidified their position as Broadway’s chief labor negotiators, producers began to complain that they were “giving away the store” to the unions. They negotiated the contracts—and then passed on the expenses to the producers. “They never wanted a strike because that would mean dark theaters,” said a veteran producer. “So they gave too much away. And as the costs escalated over the years, we were left with the bills.”

  Schoenfeld and Jacobs scoffed at such charges—were they not becoming producers as well?—but in time, the new arrangement would alienate the Shuberts from many producers. The seeds of resentment and bitterness had been planted.

  • • •

  As they scrambled on all fronts to shore up the Shubert Organization, Schoenfeld and Jacobs had one more round to go with Larry Shubert. The deposed king stewed for five months and then in December 1972 struck back. Murray Schumach of the New York Times called the Shubert executive offices on December 20. He wanted a comment from Schoenfeld and Jacobs about a complaint Larry Shubert had filed with attorney general Louis Lefkowitz charging his adversaries with illegal seizure of power, conflicts of interest, and excessive disbursements of Shubert Foundation funds to pet charities. Though Schoenfeld and Jacobs had not seen the complaint, they dismissed it as “utterly groundless.” In his article the next day, Schumach wrote that Larry Shubert’s complaint amounted to a “virtual declaration of war.”3

  When Schoenfeld and Jacobs got hold of the complaint, it must have scorched their hands. “Free this great business from the Schoenfeld and Jacobs vice,” it thundered, “through which they have perpetuated themselves as directors and principal officers of the subsidiaries, as attorneys for the subsidiaries, as member-directors and officers of the foundation and thereby ensconced themselves and their cohort [Irving] Goldman as dictators of each and every charitable bequest which the multi-million-dollar Foundation makes in their lifetime.”4

  Larry Shubert was charging his assassins with activities bordering on the criminal. “I, my family, the Shubert business and charitable beneficiaries have all been betrayed,” he said. “Schoenfeld, Jacobs, and Goldman are using this public interest for their private interest.”5 He claimed Schoenfeld and Jacobs, while each making $150,000 a year from the Shubert Organization, were doing outside legal work that netted them another $250,000 to $500,000. (Betty Jacobs, in an interview in 2013, laughed at that figure. So did Phil Smith, who said, “Nobody at Shubert ever made that kind of money!”) Larry Shubert claimed Goldman gave a $1 million contract to a paint company. He noted Goldman was in the paint business, but conceded he could not prove Goldman had profited from the contract. He accused Schoenfeld and Jacobs of double-dealing, representing both the Shuberts and producers who wanted to book Shubert theaters. And he claimed that a handwritten note found in J. J. Shubert’s desk a few days after he died expressed his wish that “there should always be a blood member in the Shuberts in charge.”

  Jacobs responded to the charges, telling the Times, “For selfish reasons and out of personal pique, [Larry Shubert] has leveled unjustified and untruthful charges against his fellow directors in the foundation . . . . His charges are baseless . . . the foundation’s affairs are being conducted [in] the best interests of the American theater.”

  Attorney General Lefkowitz told the paper, “I will look into every point raised . . . . If we find any evidence of crime, we will turn it over to the office of the District Attorney.”

  In the end, Larry Shubert’s “virtual declaration of war” didn’t even amount to a skirmish. Three months after it was filed, a state supreme court judge threw it out, partly on a technicality (it had not been filed in time to meet a four-month statute of limitations on corporate elections) but also because the charges against the new Shubert leaders were vague. The judge could find little evidence to support Larry’s allegations of “pay-offs,” “manipulation,” “undue influence,” and “self-aggrandizement.” Schoenfeld, Jacobs, and Goldman were safe—for now.6


  That was the end, in the Shubert universe, of Larry Shubert. He slipped away, eventually retiring to Boca Raton, Florida, where, according to Shubert biographer Foster Hirsch, he kept a book titled The Terrible Truth About Lawyers on his coffee table.

  Larry Shubert died of cancer on July 18, 1992. But in true Shubert fashion, there was a battle for his estate, pitting his sons, Larry and Lee, against his companion, Gloria Anderson. Gary Pearlman of the Palm Beach Times attended his funeral. “No one cried,” he noted. He overheard two women discussing the battle for Larry’s estate. Speaking of his sons, one woman said, “They are ruthless. I hope they choke on the money.”7

  Lawrence Shubert Lawrence Jr., an incompetent drunk, was never much of a threat to Schoenfeld and Jacobs. But his complaint against them pricked the attention of Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz. Using the power of his office, which regulated charitable foundations, Lefkowitz began investigating the Shubert Foundation and its new leaders. A real enemy was on the march.

  • • •

  Up at the Shubert offices, the search was on for shows to fill empty theaters. A manager representing Neil Diamond came to see Phil Smith about booking the Winter Garden Theatre. “Quite frankly, we’d never heard of him,” Smith said. “I knew ‘Sweet Caroline,’ but that was about it.” The manager took Smith over to Colony Records on Broadway and Forty-Ninth and bought him three Neil Diamond albums. “Listen to them, and get back to me,” he said. The Shuberts booked Diamond for a sold-out, month-long concert at the Winter Garden in October 1972.

  Schoenfeld and Jacobs began looking around for something they could produce. They decided they needed some help. Bill Liberman, a young general manager who had overseen many Broadway shows for the producer Hillard Elkins, impressed them. Jacobs invited Liberman up to his office one morning and told him that because of the consent decree against the Shubert Organization stemming back to the 1950s the company had been discouraged from producing on Broadway. “We’re looking to test that consent decree,” Jacobs said. “We want to produce something with our name above the title. But we’re lawyers. We’re not producers. We don’t know everything you do.” Jacobs offered Liberman a job, albeit a vague one as there was as yet no show for him to work on. Even so, Liberman agreed to work for expenses—about $250 a week—until they found a show.

  “When do you want me to start?” he asked Jacobs.

  Jacobs laughed. “Well, you’re working for nothing, so start tomorrow.”

  Within a few months Liberman had a lead. In 1973, Liza Minnelli was at the height of her popularity, having just won the Oscar for Cabaret. She’d also scored a triumph with Liza with a Z, a television special taped at the Lyceum Theatre, in 1972. In October 1973, Liberman went to see Stevie Phillips, Minnelli’s agent at ICM. Phillips told him Liza had a few weeks open in January 1974 and wanted to do a Broadway concert. As it happened, one of the Shubert’s prime houses, the Winter Garden, was free. But Minnelli’s terms were tough. She wanted 90 percent of the profits. Still, Jacobs leapt at the chance. He told Liberman, “Our aim here is to get a show on. We don’t care if we make money. Just break even. We want to say, ‘The Shubert Organization Presents Liza Minnelli at the Winter Garden.’”

  Jacobs gave Liberman near autonomy. But there wasn’t much time. It was October, and the concert was scheduled to open the first week of January. Another of Minnelli’s demands was that there had to be a full-page ad announcing the concert in the New York Times. Liberman and Phil Smith went to Blaine Thompson, a Broadway ad agency, and met with illustrator Joe Eula to come up with the poster art. Eula took out a sketch pad and a red marker and scribbled an elongated L followed by i z a in smaller letters. On top of the L he drew a tiny face with cropped black hair, black eyes, and black eyelashes. “It was perfect,” Liberman recalled. “That meeting took five minutes.” Liberman showed the poster to Jacobs.

  “It doesn’t say Minnelli!” he snapped.

  “Bernie, she just won the Oscar for Cabaret,” Liberman argued. “It’s like ‘Sammy,’ it’s like ‘Frank.’ ”

  “It has to say ‘Minnelli’!” Jacobs said.

  They compromised. Above the big red “Liza” Liberman wrote, “Liza Minnelli records for Columbia Records.”

  “OK,” said Jacobs.

  The ad ran in the New York Times one week before the box office was to open. It offered, as all ads did back in those days, to sell tickets through the mail. As phone sales did not exist yet, there were only two ways to buy tickets—via mail order or at the box office. The mail orders came in that week, but only at a trickle. Schoenfeld and Jacobs began to panic. They were producing Liza Minnelli—and she wasn’t selling. Liberman begged them to calm down. People would come to the box office, he said, where they could be sure of their seat locations. Secretly, though, he was worried. The following Monday, the day the box office opened, Liberman decided to bike to the office from his apartment on the Upper West Side. The box office opened at 10:00 a.m. and Liberman thought he’d go by the theater at 9:30 to see if there was a line. As he came down Broadway, he saw a line of people that snaked down Broadway from the Winter Garden box office to Forty-Ninth Street, then over to Seventh Avenue, then up to Fiftieth Street and back to the theater. Minnelli fans circled the Winter Garden. “Boy, was I a happy camper,” he said. By four o’clock that afternoon, the concert was sold out.I

  Liza opened at the Winter Garden on January 6, 1974. The opening night credits read: “Produced by the Shubert Organization (Gerald Schoenfeld, Chairman; Bernard B. Jacobs, President).” It was the first time the name Shubert had appeared above a title since John Shubert put his name above the play Julia, Jake and Uncle Joe in 1961 (it ran one performance). The United States government said nothing.

  The name of the third member of the Shubert triumvirate—Irving Goldman—did not appear above the title. But he was at opening night with his pal Abe Beame, the city’s new mayor. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a guest that night as well, and the theater was crawling with Secret Service. Goldman worried Kissinger would overshadow the mayor. Phil Smith was standing at the back of the theater when a porter came up to him and said, “Mr. Goldman is outside and he wants to see you.” Smith found Goldman in his car with the mayor.

  “Phil, I’ve got to bring the mayor in, but I want him entering with fanfare. I want you to get him a big round of applause. Can you do it?”

  “I can do it, Irving, but you have to follow my instructions,” Smith said. “Stay in the car with the mayor until I come and get you.”

  The crowd was getting restless, everybody was looking for Henry Kissinger. Smith decided to take advantage of the excitement. He lined up a bunch of Shubert employees and told them to start applauding when he came in with Goldman and the mayor. “I figured that would start the whole place applauding because they’d think Henry Kissinger had arrived. Goldman was short, his wife was short, and Beame was short, so nobody would be able to see them. We walk down the aisle, the place is cheering, Beame is waist high, everybody’s standing up looking for Henry Kissinger!”

  Goldman was thrilled. “That was fantastic, Phil! Now I want you to arrange to have the mayor photographed with Liza after the show.” Smith did as instructed, bringing Kissinger, Beame, and others backstage to meet the star. The next day photographs of Minnelli, the secretary of state, and the mayor of New York appeared in all the newspapers. “My God, Irving had an orgasm that day,” recalled Smith. “I think he would have given me the company if he could have.”

  Aside from looking after the mayor on opening nights, Goldman didn’t do much around the Shubert offices. “He had a nothing job,” said Smith. “Bernie and Jerry ran the company. Irving was along for the ride.” He was also along for something else—ice. Goldman called Smith into his office one day. He had a list of ticket brokers he wanted to have access to Shubert seats. Smith said the company already had a list of approved brokers. “I can’t make changes to the list, Irving,” Smith said. “We have to watch this thing very carefull
y.” Goldman was blunt. “Phil, these overpayments I hear about to ticket brokers. I want a piece of it.” Smith replied, “Irving, if I find anybody here taking such payments, I will fire them. We are not going to be a part of that.”

  “Irving was just a bad guy,” Smith recalled. “He was rotten to the core.” But Schoenfeld and Jacobs had made their deal with the devil, and “they had to tolerate him,” said Smith.

  Soon, though, the devil overreached. In March of 1974 Mayor Beame rewarded Goldman by appointing him commissioner of cultural affairs for New York City. Broadway producer Alexander H. Cohen supplied a bus to shuttle theater people from Shubert Alley to the swearing-in ceremony at City Hall. Goldman took up his new post to the applause of Harold Prince, Carol Channing, Arlene Francis, Joseph Papp, and Vincent Sardi Jr.

  Harvey Lichtenstein, the head of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was on hand as well. He told the New York Times, “I don’t know Mr. Goldman. I don’t know anything about him.”