A Gift to New York

When Oscar Hammerstein died, in 1960, I remember reading that the lights of every Broadway theater would be dimmed at curtain time for one full minute, and thinking how wonderful that was—the ultimate curtain call—for one man to achieve such extraordinary recognition for a life in the theater and his contribution to the art of it. Since becoming a New Yorker, I’ve noted a number of such fitting testaments to men and women whose luster illuminated the theater world. But none moved me the way a tribute to a gift to New York did this past Tuesday evening, when Broadway’s lights were dimmed for Howard Kissel. Through the din of Times Square, I could hear his mellifluous speaking voice in his measured tones, rich with irony and warm with whimsy, as he audibly punctuated his graceful prose.

We’ve lost a cultural icon, an irreplaceable one. Broadway, New York, the world, can ill afford it. Howard knew opera and dance, theater for sure, music of all sorts, and a good film. He knew books and he knew art. And he spoke masterly in the language of all of these. He knew knowledge.

And he could tell a great Jewish joke. Sprinkled with Yiddish. Relishing one, from his lips or another’s, he could laugh quieter and more broadly—at the same time—than anyone I ever came across.

For years, Howard, dance critic Joe Mazo and I would join up and sit together at High Holiday services. Even in synagogue, Howard always seemed to have a better bead on things than we did. Perhaps it was a result of an early goal: you’re unlikely to find this in any theatrical who’s who, but Howard told me he initially wanted to be a Reform rabbi.

For many months over one of those years, we three met for dinner practically every Friday night. Initially, it was to discuss and dissect the topic beloved by us, the performing arts in New York, specifically everything we could cover (plus a few books). The evenings evolved into a notion that we could collaborate on the libretto of a musical, with one of us volunteering to do the primary research, another assigning himself to a working outline, and the third designated to start tracking down the rights. I don’t remember any of us ever producing anything we could even draw a pencil line through. After apologies and excuses as we pulled our chairs closer to the table each week, we plunged into what any three people in New York who love theater do best, “talking theater.”

Howard, whom I can’t imagine comfortable growing up in the Milwaukee of the 40s and 50s, told me he was looking through a book of Bettmann Archive photos when he came across one of a Lower East Side New York storefront shop (one of those entered by descending three stairsteps below the sidewalk), a sign above its store window bearing the proprietor’s name and the store’s merchandise—in Hebrew. “And I knew there was a place where I belonged,” he said.

More than Broadway lights have been dimmed by our loss of him. He’ll be missed. I'll miss him.

Once a New Yorker, Always...

I tell those new to New York there is a point at which you become a New Yorker. It happens either in the fifth or sixth year. Until then, you tell yourself, and try to convince others, you’re visiting or exploring the options, you’re going to school or “just taking in the scene.” According to every self-spun scenario, you’re here until you can go elsewhere.

I tell them, if you’re still here after six years you’re not going anywhere. You’re here because you belong here. Waiters, students, writers, interns—lanky women, eager tyros and wannabes—you’re stuck here. Give up the ghost of coming and going or e-mailing it in. Your adopted city has adopted you, sure as by fiat. You are no longer from anywhere else. You’re a New Yorker.

In New York, you are what you do. In Boston, you are where you went to school. In D.C., you are who you know. In LA, you are what you drive or where you live.

We live fast. It follows that we have to cut through the quick and initially get to know each other in shorthand—in a New York minute. Pass that test and likely as not you’ve made a friend for life, or at least for the life of the party, even if you never see that person again.

No one gives a damn where, or even if, you went to school—you are rigorously schooled daily and nightly by cab drivers, store clerks, waiters and doorman (from all over the world) in this city. Everybody knows someone well enough to suggest making anyone who makes trouble for him regret he did. No one who lives in Manhattan is foolish enough to maintain a car: if you drive and aren’t driven, if you use a car for any other reason than getting to the Hamptons, you’re probably a schmuck.

Once a New Yorker, you can say anything you want in the most public of places, and say it more colorfully, with a sprinkling of New York vernacular. Incomparable entertainer Mark Nadler used to hold court for fans and fellow performers Thursday nights at Sardi’s. Between songs, tinkling on the ivory keys he otherwise tickled or pounded, he would conduct running commentaries on whatever came to mind. One evening, after using a Yiddishism, Mark, originally from Waterloo, Iowa, said, “I’ve started to notice myself using more and more Yiddish words recently. I began to wonder—am I becoming more Jewish? And then it occurred to me. No, I was becoming more of a New Yorker.”

During my sixth year in New York, I was enlisted to write the lyrics for a Broadway show, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” The more I grasped who Sidney was, the more I realized how similar we were, culturally and politically. The audience discovers before Sidney does (if he ever does) that, fantasize as he may about leaving the city of steel and glass, New York, for the serenity of the countryside, he’s not going anywhere. During rehearsals, I discovered that while I had indulged in a similar fantasy, neither was I. Sidney and I were exactly where we belonged. For me, it’s been a love affair with the city ever since.