by Sam Harris
I learned the complicated and wordy song “Ya Got Trouble” for the audition, thinking that already knowing it would give me an advantage and save them the agony of teaching it to someone else. Seniors were usually awarded the lead roles and I couldn’t take any chances.
I sang both Harold Hill’s part and the townsfolk’s echoed melody in the chorus with gusto, and immediately knew I’d won the part from the relieved sparkle in the eyes of the drama teacher, Mr. White.
What a coup! We began rehearsals the next week and I was so excited about a full cast and costumes and a real band. However, since I was used to directing my own extracurricular shows, being in a production that I wasn’t overseeing proved a bit of a challenge. The keys were too low for my first tenor voice and I sounded terrible on most of the songs. Transposing the music for the entire orchestra was out of the question, so I struggled, unsuccessfully, to hit the long, low notes in “Marian the Librarian,” which mostly resembled an elongated burp. But I figured I could act my way out of it. There were other matters of concern. My little brother, Matt, was cast as Winthrop, the lisping trumpet enthusiast, and I knew he’d deliver. But the rest of the cast was suspect.
The Music Man must be performed with energy and zeal and rhythm, especially in the opening number, “Rock Island,” which is basically a fast-paced rap between traveling salesmen in a train car. However, most people in Oklahoma talk slow. Really slow. No matter how much we rehearsed, my fellow cast mate David couldn’t wrap his mouth around “Whadda-ya-talk, whadda-ya-talk, whadda-ya-talk, whadda-ya-talk?” and the song would plunge from the cadence of a quickening train to a dreadful dirge every time he spoke. It gave you the feeling the train had hit a deer or a small bear, and then it would rev up again with the next salesman.
David was a handsome boy and one of my first teenage crushes. He’d lived next door to us on Washington Street and we’d been lab partners on a biology project where we made a life-size human body out of papier-mâché with the vascular system painted on. We’d named it after our social studies teacher, Miss Liptack, and gave the dummy ample breasts to solidify the likeness. David had one silver-capped tooth right in front. It gave him a pirate kind of look that I found very manly and slightly glamorous. Even with our history, my crush, the Liptack bond, and his shiny tooth, I couldn’t forgive his tardy tongue. It was exasperating.
But I wasn’t directing so I just kept my mouth shut.
The role of the mayor was played by someone very tall whose name I have blocked from memory but is forever etched as the Guy Who Never Made a Cue. Ever. If there was a lull, it was because the mayor had dropped a line or failed to make his entrance.
But I wasn’t directing so I just kept my mouth shut.
I began to attend all rehearsals, including scenes I wasn’t in, simply as an observer. One day, when they were rehearsing “The Wells Fargo Wagon” number, a boy in the ensemble who sang the line “I got some salmon from Seattle last September” pronounced the l in the word “salmon.” After the song, I privately and politely pointed out that the l is silent and the word is pronounced SAM-on.
The next time they did the song, he blurted out “I got some saLmon from Seattle last September.” I waited until the song was finished and tactfully corrected him again, but this time in front of the company. “Sam-on,” I said. And then enunciating, ever so slowly, “Saaam-ooonnn.”
The next time they ran the song, I had my eye on him and he knew it. Just before his line he saw me arch an eyebrow nearly up to my bicolored hairline (my orange-blond mop was growing out), but he buckled under my glowering intimidation and sang “I got some saLmon from Seattle last September.”
I jumped up onto the stage in one furious leap and threw my hands in the air, yelling, “Hold it!! Hooold iiittt! It’s sam-on! Sam-on! ” The music stopped. “Have you never heard the word sam-on? It’s a fish. A fish called sam-on. It swims upstream! Like me! Saaam-on! Now do it again and get it right this time!”
Mr. White stared at me, flabbergasted. He said nothing. I was back on my game—back in the director’s seat. No one dared stop me. Having thus far only been in shows of my own design or productions with real adults, and now working with these amateurs who looked at the show as something “fun to do,” I was a living, breathing terror. The Jerome Robbins of Charles Page High School. But we would never hear the word “salmon” pronounced incorrectly again.
I suspect that, to this day, the saLmon culprit has not so much as ordered the fish at a restaurant for fear that I would creep up from behind his booth at Red Lobster and strangle him.
As the school year progressed, Mr. White was becoming somewhat of a Jesus freak. I’d heard it had begun the previous year when he’d chosen Godspell as the musical, but now his devotion had accelerated as he grew longish, scruffy blond hair and his lenient blue eyes took on a tranquillity that reflected either redemption or quaaludes, I couldn’t know. He started wearing baggy linen pants and leather sandals and walked with a staff. In drama class, he insisted we cut all curse words in all monologues we performed, and even the word “damn” was replaced with “dern” when we did Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.
New Yorkers don’t say “dern.” Ever.
Mr. White started hosting prayer circles and Bible study meetings and Jesus hayride retreats with bonfires. One step away from sacrificing a goat. He painted JESUS LIVES! in giant, bold letters on his teal-trimmed garage door. At the end of the term, rumor had it that he would not be returning. “He was let go,” it was whispered, “for being too religious.” Being too religious in Sand Springs was hard to do. One would have to be medically diagnosed with OCJD—obsessive-compulsive Jesus disorder—to be considered too religious. Unlike regular OCDers, who can’t wash enough or clean enough or turn off lights/stoves/toasters too much, Jesus OCDers can’t testify enough or get God-fearing enough or morally good enough. But even in the nucleus of unquestionable religious zealotry, Mr. White’s devoutness rode the fine line between sainthood and crazy. And crazy won. If Joan of Arc had lived in Sand Springs, she might not have been burned at the stake, but she would definitely have been labeled a lesbian and her house would have been egged. But then, she probably would have had the good sense not to paint VIVE JÉSUS! in giant, bold letters on her garage door.
• • •
Sand Springs was feeling more and more beneath my professional and sanity standard. It was clear that if I was going to pursue my dream of acting and singing and dancing, I needed to cross its borders. While visiting relatives in Dallas, my family had been to Six Flags Over Texas, a theme park which featured multiple live shows that played several performances a day. I begged to audition. Sure, I was a hotshot in Sand Springs, but who knew if I was even qualified for the next step outside our little world? There was only one way to find out, and since my parents had no knowledge of legitimate acting programs or any real theatrical opportunities, Six Flags seemed the most accessible option. I was only fifteen and the minimum age was sixteen, but my parents recognized that my lust for a real stage could not be restrained, so my father agreed to back me in lying about my age and make the five-hour drive to Dallas for the cattle call.
Three days before the audition I came down with mononucleosis: the kissing disease. If only. My throat was practically swollen shut and I was feverish and weak and couldn’t sing a note. But nothing was going to keep me from my big chance and, as usual, my parents let me forge ahead like King Henry V unto the breach, Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, or Barbra Streisand on the bow of a tugboat.
My father and I began our trek before sunrise and arrived midmorning at the hotel where the auditions were being held. We entered the enormous ballroom, an entirely new, breathtaking world, where hundreds of hopefuls were humming and bleating, stretching like Gumbys on row after row of stackable burgundy banquet chairs. At the front of the room was a long production table, behind which sat a dozen directors, choreographers, and staff. I signed up and got a number and my father and I found a place among the
throngs to wait my turn. In the back of the room were camera crews from local news stations covering the event, as this was the largest turnout in their audition history.
The auditions began. One after another, names were called and singers and dancers, ages sixteen to twenty-five, dashed to the front of the ballroom to sell their wares, often barely heard over the distracting chatter of the crowd. Regular warnings to be respectful were ignored.
After several hours, my name was called. The antibiotics had kicked in somewhat, but I could still barely swallow. I wondered what would come out. My father gave me a nervous pat on the back and I walked to the pianist and handed him my music: a medley I’d constructed specifically for this audition of “Be a Clown” and “The Hungry Years.”
“Be a Clown” is a zippy Cole Porter song written in the 1940s about the foolish jubilation of show business. “The Hungry Years” is a dirgy but catchy Neil Sedaka ballad written in the 1970s about looking back on one’s salad days and missing the struggle after having made it. I was fifteen. I’d neither accomplished anything nor suffered salad days. In fact, I’d probably never even eaten a salad. (Iceberg on a burger was as close as was legally allowed in Oklahoma.) And—I was a little fat.
I was singing “I miss the hungry years” and I was a little fat.
Sensing I had to change things up or I’d be just another drowned-out wannabe in this mass of competition, I told the pianist to forgo the introduction on the page and just give me a low bass roll, after which I would come in on two high notes, long and out of tempo, to get their attention, and then go into the song.
I found my spot and introduced myself, though I was uncertain I could be heard above the commotion. The pianist rolled the low note for my pitch. I planted my feet and took a deep breath and belted, at the top of my lungs. “Be-e-e-e- a-a-a-a clown, be a clown . . .”
My out-of-the-gate, powerhouse notes quieted the room like a gunshot. I had ’em. Who was this short, fat kid and where did that come from? I made my way through “Be a Clown” for sixteen bars and then moved into the tearjerker:
I miss the hungry years, the once upon a time
The lovely long ago, we didn’t have a dime
Those days of me and you, we lost along the way
I held out the last vowel and slid into a key change, tears welling in my eyes.
Oooh, how could I be so blind not to see the door
Closing on the world I now hunger for
Looking through my tears . . . I miss the hungry years
I finished the song and lowered my head as though I’d divulged my deepest truth. Actually, I had. All of the depth and drama of my life was laid out, messy, for all to see.
For a brief moment, it was pin-drop quiet. Maybe they thought I was dead. Then it happened. Applause erupted from the crowd of auditioners. The production staff rose from their long tables and came to where I was standing, beaming, shaking my hand. One man hugged me. A woman cupped my face in her palms and just stared into my eyes. The local news crews ran to the front of the ballroom. Camera lights switched on. Photos were snapped. Flashes flashed. I was asked to do television interviews. But not until I’d finished my paperwork and my contact information had been verified.
My father watched.
• • •
That summer, I left home at fifteen to perform at Six Flags Over Mid-America in St. Louis. Whatever trepidation my parents felt about their little boy going off to a new city with no supervision, to live in an apartment and have a job, was masked by enthusiasm. I was free at last—the canary flying cheerfully into the mine shaft, oblivious to the prospect of gas.
The show was called Ramblin’ thru Missou!, a hand-clapping, foot-stomping revue that I performed five times a day at an outdoor amphitheater in the prickly Missouri heat, costumed in a red checkered shirt and denim overalls. I’d escaped Oklahoma but I was still wearing its uniform. None of it was remotely glamorous in the way I’d hoped, but I was doing what I loved and I thought of myself as a seasoned pro.
When I returned to Charles Page High the following fall, I was thrilled to find that our new drama teacher, Mr. Briscoe, was not religious. Given a choice, he would have preferred the label “anti-Christ.” He was a Vietnam vet with a salty tongue that wagged nonstop about brutal battles, blown-up body parts, blookers and big boys and boom boom—but not much about acting.
“Briscoe,” as we were asked to call him (perhaps to reinforce his military station), had a handsome, broad, slap-cheeked Irish face with sandy, floppy hair that he pushed away from his expressive eyes at the end of every heated sentence. He stood in a perpetual slump that accentuated the beginnings of a deserved postwar belly and planted his duck-footed heels at shoulder width, but was forever in a state of motion—slightly pitching left and right, as if he were at sea.
Briscoe saw me as a kindred spirit, out there in my own trenches fighting for what I loved. The fall musical was The Fantasticks and was perfect for me to play young Matt, who hankers for something outside his village.
It was also perfect for Briscoe and his choir director colleague, Mr. McConnell, who decided they would actually play parts in the show. Briscoe thought that since he was going to make his teaching debut, he may as well be front and center to really display his thespian qualifications. However, there are only eight characters in The Fantasticks—a small show for a high school of twelve hundred students—and Henry and Mortimer, two of the showier roles, were taken by teachers.
As the school year progressed, the differences between Briscoe and his predecessor became more and more evident. Whereas Mr. White had substituted profanity in all material, even classroom monologues, Briscoe encouraged expletives and obscenities and suggested scenes from American Buffalo, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (though there was not a single black girl in class), and my favorite: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? There is nothing quite like the sound of Edward Albee’s dialogue coming from the lips of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old Georges and Marthas with thick Oklahoma accents:
“Don’t shoot yer may-outh off about yew-know-whut.”
“I’ll talk about any goddamn thang I wanna! Any goddamn thang!”
“What’ll it be?”
“I’m gunna stick to bourbon.”
George and Martha. Sad, sad, sadder than Mr. Albee could ever have imagined.
I loved everything about Briscoe’s sensibilities. He was a rebel, if not so much an acting teacher; more Kerouac than Stanislavski. But he knew to play it safe for proper school productions. The Fantasticks had been a big success and I was feeling my oats. So was Briscoe. The next production was Bye Bye Birdie and I was set to play Albert Peterson, the English teacher/manager of the Elvislike Conrad Birdie. I asked Briscoe if he intended to be in the show this time. He said there were certainly several parts he could play and it would really be a chance to show the students and parents that plays are fun for everyone. “Oh,” I said, looking at him blankly, and let my silence hang like a mirror.
Briscoe did not appear in Bye Bye Birdie.
Though not my intention, it seemed a turning point for him, and me: the moment when the fire that had, long ago, inspired him to make the theater his life was officially and permanently snuffed out, enlisting him to fully embrace the significance of his role offstage as a teacher, mentor, pathway to a generation that might go further than he had. And from that day on, he gave me free reign to do anything, try anything, and fully embrace the significance of my role as the incessantly curious, ferociously driven student.
He allowed me to have all my song keys reorchestrated to fit my register. He let me choreograph, supervise costumes, and throw in my two cents on direction and set design. And of course I would need my own dressing room.
There were only two changing rooms—one for boys and one for girls, but between them was a five-by-eight storage closet with costumes hung from floor to ceiling. The space was windowless and claustrophobic, like a moldy locker that reeked
of decades of greasepaint and unventilated flop sweat. But with a little redecorating and some Glade Rose Garden air freshener, I knew it would be perfect.
I cleared racks of wardrobe from one wall and set up a makeup station and mirror against a bank of unpainted, chalky cinder blocks. A small side table sat empty to receive flowers and telegrams from opening night well-wishers. There was no one in my world who would possibly send a telegram, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Michael Bennett or Mike Nichols or Bob Fosse would hear of my performance and wire:
SAM STOP COME TO BROADWAY IMMEDIATELY STOP STARDOM IS WAITING STOP
I taped my name to the outside of the door, but not in the shape of a star, so as not to appear pompous.
• • •
Briscoe had given me a playing field with no rules and had stomached and even rallied my puffed-up teenage attitude, so twenty-odd years later, as a real seasoned but hopefully less pretentious veteran, I was beyond thrilled when I got a call saying he was coming to New York with his wife, Marva, for a jam-packed week of Broadway.
I was appearing in Mel Brooks’s The Producers at the time, which had become one of the biggest hits in musical theater history. I had replaced Roger Bart in the role of Carmen Ghia, the swishiest, most outlandish gay part ever written for the stage and, terrified of stepping into another actor’s calf-skinned pointy-toed boots, had taken the advice of my onstage counterpart, the wonderful actor Gary Beach, who told me, “Just go out there and scare them!” One can’t really be too scary or go too far in The Producers, where nothing says musical like a human-formed swastika reflected in an overhead mirror like a shot from a Busby Berkeley movie. The audacity of mincing and prancing and long sibilant s’s was oddly freeing for me. I was a professional sissy!—on Broadway!—paid and applauded for the very blemishes I’d desperately sought to cover for an entire childhood.
