Introduction
Introduction to a Whip-Cracking American Showman's Memory Montage-Covering More than Seventy Years of Backstage and Onstage Involvements!
Do I possess a musical or theatrical heritage? The answer is no. Yes, my wonderful father (of blessed memory) did provide me with weekly piano lessons when I was a motherless little boy, and I did learn to play "Bob-O-Link, Spink, Spank, Spink!" I lacked the basic talent, however, and soon gave up. Neither of my Lithuanian-born parents had any arts background. Yet even though I began with no family show biz-performing arts connections, as the years progressed I seemed to develop a slew of them. The Newmans arrived in Chicago, USA, in 1888. My father Jacob Newman, then fifteen, immediately became an entrepreneur, supplying choice fruits and vegetables to the wealthy in their south-of-the-Loop mansions. Eventually, he became a wholesale tobacconist, prospering briefly. My mother's family came here early in the new century when its patriarch-and my grandfather-Benjamin Waldman became an economically ruined, displaced, and uprooted old-country distiller through Czar Alexander II's decision to nationalize the Russian Empire's lucrative vodka industry. So Grandpa Ben began his American career as a Halsted Street wholesale grocer-a neighbor of Jane Addams's Hull-House, where clarinetist Benny Goodman was spawned. I believe that it was in 1919-the year of my birth-that my mother's cousin Benjamin Kubelsky, destined to become Jack Benny, the suave, big-time vaudevillian and star of radio, movies, and television, left for the navy. I didn't catch up with him until years later, when I publicized one of his personal appearances. By then, my only sister, Marcella Marks, her husband, Sherman Marks, and I had exchanged our bourgeois status for Bohemian glamour. We became, respectively, a New York-Hollywood casting director; a stage, radio, and television writer and director; and a theatrical manager-press agent. My niece, ballerina Dianna Marks, danced with the American Ballet Theatre, National Ballet of Canada, Pennsylvania Ballet, San Franscico Ballet, and Chicago City Ballet, of which she became executive director.
Dina Halpern, my late, Warsaw-born actress wife, was part of an East European theatrical dynasty. Her great-aunt, the actress Esther Rachel Kaminska, founded the Warsaw playhouse that still bears her name, originally constructed with the proceeds of her pre-World War I American tours. Her son, the violinist virtuoso and composer Josef Kaminsky, was the Israel Philharmonic's concertmaster for many years. Her daughter, Ida Kaminska, headed the Polish State Yiddish Theatre and was the star of the Academy Award-winning Czech film The Shop on Main Street. Ida's chanteuse-daughter Ruth is the widow of the European jazz trumpet star Eddy Rosner, once known as the "Soviet Union's answer to America's Louis Armstrong." Rosner's career was cut short when Stalin (who had previously decorated him) suddenly declared jazz to be a degenerate, imperialist musical form and sent Eddy and Ruth off to ten years of Siberian exile. Erica, their toddler daughter, was raised by family friends in Moscow. She later became a graduate in English literature at Warsaw University; came to America as the ward of Dina and me; and studied film direction in New York and stage technique at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, where she collaborated with actor/playwright Jerome Kilty in drama adaptations. Now Erica has a grown daughter of her own, Amaris, who has two strapping young sons.
Alyce, my multilingual wife who speaks seven languages and uses them all backstage at Lyric Opera of Chicago, was born on the steps of a Krakw hospital where her mother had just been refused entrance by the then politically correct officials. The Holocaust era was drawing to a close, and Alyce's father, Leon Berger, a prominent physician, had recently been murdered by the Germans. Alyce's indomitable mother, Malwina, eventually brought her to Israel; then to Belgium, where Alyce became a child diamond sorter in Antwerp; then to England and France; and, finally, to Chicago, where she became the teenaged bride of physician Josef Katz, also a Holocaust survivor and a close friend of mine. Their union produced two now-grown sons, Andr and Leonard.
Our family's connection with the arts continues, with Alyce delighting in listening to recordings of her martyred great-uncle, the famed Bayreuth Festival bass-baritone Hermann Horner, that I found by inserting an appeal in a leading German-language opera journal. Horner had been summarily executed-along with his nine-year-old son-as he was bravely but vainly attempting to rescue him from the murder-bent Hitlerians who had gassed to death the rest of Horner's large family in a railroad car converted into a mobile gas chamber and rolled into the main railroad station of Alyce's hometown. All her remaining relatives were stuffed into it and immediately murdered.
More than sixty years have now passed since those cruel and bestial perpetrators of wholesale atrocities obliterated millions of human beings. Yet those who deny the Holocaust are everywhere, including on university faculties. I recall an evening in the 1970s, when we heard a tenured professor stating on television news that there never was a Holocaust. My late wife Dina, whose entire family was murdered at the death factory of Treblinka, screamed at our TV set, "Then, where is my father? Where are my sisters and brothers? Where are my uncles, aunts and cousins?" By then we had long known where they were done to death, because the Germans sometimes kept meticulous records of their savage depredations. We had visited those death camp sites to recite our traditional memorial prayers for each and every family member.
In mid-2002 I resigned from the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers (ATPAM) after sixty-one years of membership, receiving a gold lifetime membership card and a lavish luncheon. I had previously withdrawn from the Screen Publicists Guild after ceasing to handle the midwestern premieres of major motion pictures. ATPAM is a labor union, yet-paradoxically-its manager members are, on behalf of the producers, employers of labor. Although ATPAM is an affiliate of the giant International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), it has, I believe, the smallest membership in the entire A.F.L./C.I.O., the highest minimum wage in uniondom, and only one local-in New York City. Obtaining membership when I came in was next to impossible, and there were only a few hundred ATPAM members in North America, thus keeping employment high for those on the inside. I truly felt honored to become a part of this select group of "Boswells," as our publicist members were often designated. The talent quotient of the membership was high. Some manager members had vast experience with all manner of show business, and some press agents were superb writers whose work was highly regarded by editors of newspapers and journals.
Overall, ATPAM was a fraternity of astute theatrical managers and high-level publicists, many of whom had impressive journalistic backgrounds and sometimes returned to that field. For instance, Clarence J. Bulliet, who had been on the road for Shakespearean repertory companies, was later a distinguished fine arts critic for the Chicago Daily News, a pioneering enthusiast for the work of Pablo Picasso, and author of a book about him, Apples and the Madonna. Lloyd Lewis, an alumnus of major film promotions, became the drama critic, sports, and then executive editor of the Chicago Daily News. He was a distinguished historian of America's pre-Civil War Abolitionist movement and, with Sinclair Lewis, co-dramatist of the Broadway production Jayhawker. Lloyd was my dear friend and one of my main mentors.
I was happy that ATPAM was soon so proud of me that it used a praise-laden letter about my work to convince union-shy theatrical producers to sign its basic agreement contracts during the 1940s. That particular letter from banker Abner J. Stilwell, who was then board president of the Chicago Opera Company, stated, "If Danny is an example of what your members offer, we wish that you had organized us years ago." Stilwell, a hard-drinking, florid-faced, former coal miner, had achieved education and success. In his youth he had become the main support of his impoverished siblings. I liked him at once, and he soon recognized my value to the opera company. His presidential box 16 was, at his wish, given to me for almost all performances.
Recently, in re-reading other encomia from leaders of art organizations, I noted how often they referred to the spiritual aspect of my ministrations in their behalf. The Indiana Repertory Theatre communications director wrote of Danny's "faith in us, ... qualities ordinarily ascribed to a rabbi, priest, or minister." The Dallas Opera's Lawrence V. Kelly said, "You started a fire. We follow your procedures like a religion!" The Northern New Zealand Arts Council praised, "You really can perform miracles!" "You had a tremendous effect on popularizing opera in this country. By God, we needed you!" the Australian National Theatre added. The Louisville Ballet proclaimed me "the greatest missionary for the arts in this century," and for the Minnesota Monthly I was "the Messiah of the Arts." Forbes Magazine heralded me as "a world class evangel" and ran one of Al Hirschfeld's caricatures of me as its centerfold to illustrate critic Martin Mayer's tribute to my far-flung audience-building projects. "He's the Godfather of the performing arts in Canada" stated the Toronto International Festival. For the Houston Post, I was "virtually a god to literally hundreds of performing arts groups world-wide," and Variety declared, "He's the St. Paul of subscription sales." "Arts administrators queue up to meet him like Pilgrims to the Vatican for an audience with the Pope," noted the Vancouver Sun. And the Ravinia Festival of Highland Park, Illinois, affirmed, "As savior of so many arts organizations, you are Saint Danny. Boston was right to make you its Arts Angel."
Perhaps my ancestors preached in ancient Israel's "high places," and I've inherited their spirituality. And, speaking of the Holy Land, I more than doubled the subscribership of Haifa's Municipal Theatre, which thanked me for "inspiring us with the enthusiasm and faith which were so necessary for our success." "He's been likened to Moses, the prophet Mica, the Biblical Daniel, who conquered the lions, the Pope, John Cardinal Newman, Billy Graham, and the Messiah," reported the Chicago Tribune. "The Lord has given you a great talent and a soul which feels deeply and echoes all the joy and suffering of the artists" attested famed actress Eugenie Leontovich. "You radiate faith and wondrous creativity," glowed the Canada Council for the Arts. "Like St. Christopher, you are carrying us across the stream," waxed author Alberto Da Cruz. Stagebill attested, "In the church of subscribership, [you are] both high priest and theologian."
I have long been a defender of human rights, starting with my own. When I was but five years of age, in 1924, my kindergarten teacher, Miss Kindellen, at Chicago's Nathaniel Pope School denied my human right to go to the toilet. "You don't own this school," I told her, "the Board of Education does!" I stalked out, only to be given a harsh note to take home to my poor mother, who was then in the last year of her life, fast losing her struggle with breast cancer. Although I was but a child I already knew the biblical injunction "justice, shalt thou pursue," because my wonderful father was constantly and conscientiously inculcating me with our people's age-old ethical values. But how could I pursue justice for my manifestly unjustly stricken and suffering mother? As I now write, more than seventy-seven years have passed since I lost her on October 10, 1926. In 1989, my wife of more than forty years, Dina Halpern, also succumbed to cancer, as did my casting-director sister, Marcella, in the year 2000.
After my mother's death when I was six and a half, I began attending the prescribed eleven months of daily religious services to recite the age-old Aramaic memorial prayer of kaddish-in its authentic, pre-Allen Ginsberg form-for my mother. Many men who came to the minyan at the small synagogue right across the street from where I lived in Chicago's leafy Douglas Park area were elderly Eastern and Central Europeans. I would perch on their knees while they proffered sniffs of the snuff they carried in ivory-lidded little boxes and told me fascinating tales of their lives in the Old Country under Czars Alexander and Nicholas and the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef.
For the next several years I went to public elementary schools most of the day and to Hebrew schools in various neighborhoods during the late afternoons. I also roller-skated; ice-skated; bought, recycled, and sold old bicycles; and helped my dear father care for his failing octogenarian father, whom I dearly loved. After my grandfather's death in 1929 I worked during the late afternoon and evening for a grocery store and also for a pharmacy-until the stock market crashed and previously generous tips (one nice man gave me a $10 gold piece every time I delivered his prescriptions) dwindled to thin dimes.
The Great Depression was on. I was heartbroken when a neighborhood bank closed when I was ten, obliterating my tiny savings. Federally insured bank accounts did not yet exist, and any proposals along those lines, along with ones like government-sponsored unemployment insurance, healthcare insurance, and supervision of the securities markets, were branded as socialism by Republicans. I recall the vehemence with which a Lyric Opera season wealthy contributor, usually a pleasant fellow, fulminated against such "left-wing" concepts as Social Security and Medicare.
In 1928 we lived next door to the Legler Branch Library in Garfield Park, where I devoured most books it housed in intense, highly pleasurable, and protracted sleep-starved reading splurges that, fortunately, succeeded in half educating me. As it turned out I would not be having much further higher learning. I had also plunged into amateur theatricals, for which I evidenced emerging talents and tendencies that would be important to me in the years to come.
By age fourteen I had become a precocious boy-prodigy, theatrical manager/press agent, and ever since I have worried about the economic survival and career destinies of the many artists I have encountered and also about those attempting to aid them in their aspirations-managers, publicists, and, where nonprofit organizations were involved, volunteer leaders. In contrast to many of my older professional colleagues (whose work was often good but emotionally detached), I saw myself, somehow, romantically, as fighting for the actors, singers, dancers, musicians, conductors, directors, choreographers like a medieval knight in combat for the honor of the ladies fair.
Some of those theatrical press agents were highly respected and even brilliant writers. In the commercial legitimate theater, however, press agents who toured in advance of their shows were often quite cynical, claiming that "either the public was going to come or it wasn't" and that nothing could be done to make a difference-a view I have always contested. One veteran publicist laughed at my youthful idealism. He was contemptuous of actors because, he said, "They put paint on their faces." (I later learned that he had been an actor and had certainly often used theatrical makeup.)
I proved my point many times. As one example, the 1946-47 touring Lute Song-a superb Broadway production starring Dolly Haas and Yul Brynner-died at the Chicago box office despite its rave reviews. Months later, however, it returned to enjoy sellout success after I took it on and "broke" newspapers with pictures for thirty-seven consecutive days, generating a head of steam that kept us happily hurtling forward for months at the 1,300-seat Studebaker Theatre.
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Excerpted from Tales of a Theatrical Guruby Danny Newman Copyright © 2006 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission.
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