More Rosebud - New York City Diaries with Gyles and Harriet, and Tales from Broadway with Josh Ellis

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1:10So it's a private sleepover, but you are invited. Staying up with Taryn and Cammie. New episodes weekly. Follow wherever you listen. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcast everywhere. Acast.com. This is Giles Brandreth. This is more Rosebud. It's Tuesday. Well, that means it's diaries. But it's diaries with a bit of a difference this Tuesday. A couple of weeks from now, we'll be continuing my boyhood diaries from back in the 1970s. Well, today it's diaries from 2026, because Harriet Jane, my producer and I, we've come to New York City. So these are diary days from New York.

1:56New York. Cue the music.

2:19Welcome to More Rosebud. More Rosebud is what comes out on a Tuesday. I don't know when you're listening to it, but we're recording it on a Tuesday. Possibly a Tuesday a while ago, by the time you're listening to this. I'm Giles Brandreth, and I'm in New York, New York. And of course, I couldn't be here with Rosebud without being with my producer and friend. It's Harriet Jane. Yeah. Wow. You didn't tell me you were going to just pack me in the suitcase and put me in the hold of the plane, though, Giles, with the recording equipment. Can I tell everybody, she is so petite. She came on as hand luggage.

2:55The equipment did go in the hold. But she came on with me in my hold all. And we had fun, didn't we? Funnily enough, we think about Rosebud 24-7 all the way in, all the time. We're thinking of Rosebud. And we came on Virgin Airlines. Very nice flight. And very sweetly, in the lounge, they put us in something called the Royal Box, which was rather nice. They did, didn't they? They said it had been designed by Richard Branson personally. And in fact, in the corner, there was a postcard sent to him by Diana Prince as well in a little frame. Have you got one of those? I do. I think she obviously was good on postcards.

3:37Yeah. Just thanking me for a jumper. Oh, wow. Because she had a couple of my jumpers that she bought from a shop. And I subsequently met her. She bought them from a shop in Kensington High Street near Kensington Palace. Wow. and anyway so the Richard Branson Royal Box was rather fun and the guys from what interested me about the guys from Virgin was um almost all the people we met who were looking after us had been there for 10 18 one of them I think 22 years so they must like working there yeah very good sign isn't it good sign we had a good flight over where we worked in fact it was an amazing day because uh harriet said to me you have this rule about immediately going on to new york times so we got on in at ethereo and he said change your watch someone told me that's the best way to deal with jet lag or it's one of the ways you've got to forget the british time as soon as you get on the plane don't spend the whole holiday some people do this going it's two o 'clock in the morning i've got a friend who comes to stay with us from california she spends the entire trip on California time.

4:47So she's sort of getting up at 4am, going to bed at 2 in the afternoon. It's chaos. So I was told, as soon as you get on the flight, doesn't matter where you're going, even if you're going to Australia, change your watch and you're in that time zone and forget about England. Well, you made me do that immediately. And we had actually a fabulous flight. There was a little bit of turbulence, but Harriet helped me through that. We had some fabulous meals. We were really well looked after. And we did some good work right at the beginning of the trip. We have discovered on this journey, I think we've discovered in life, that, well, I think I'm a morning person and I have high energy in the morning.

5:26I think I am. Yeah. Yeah. And we did two hours working on our show. We're doing a live show at the Edinburgh Fringe this August. We should have made that in the morning, Giles. It's in the afternoon. It's at 4pm. That's my sleep time. It's mine. 4 o 'clock. Well, can I tell you? Oh, dear. It may be the audience's sleep time. Yeah. They don't mind watching us sleep, do they? They'll love it. Do you remember, there's a famous work of art at the National Portrait Gallery of David Beckham, Asleep. Have you seen this work of art? It's just a film of him, I think, resting on his hands, and he's asleep.

6:04And people watch that as a kind of work of art. Well, I went to watch someone there or the National Gallery live, asleep in a box. Marina Abramovich or someone. Yeah, that was her art. She was sleeping there for weeks. Do you know, I don't think there's going to be a big audience for us asleep in Edinburgh. So what I'm going to be doing, and I will be doing this every day, is I will have a power nap after lunch in Edinburgh. So when the show goes up, a proper power nap, you know, seven minutes to get to sleep and then 20 minutes of sleep. Oh, is that the power nap? That's it. You mustn't get beyond that.

6:38Otherwise, then you've got to go for an hour and a half. So it's a whole sleep cycle. So a power nap is seven minutes winding down, 20 minutes of sleep. So within the half hour, you can do it. Great. You can get up and then you go. And we are going to go to its assembly, George Square. We will be doing a matinee every day at 4 p.m. It's called Up Memory Lane with Harriet Jane and a tryst of Rosebud. Because it won't be an episode of Rosebud. It will just be us maybe with a few Rosebud recollections. But it'll be me telling some of my stories, you telling some of your stories and maybe there might be a song or two and i'll be doing some name dropping i am sure and am i right have you said that you're going to give me a sort of bonus either of smarties or cash i don't know for every name that i drop of somebody who is still actually alive i must remember to take five pounds out of the cash point I am so sorry.

7:36I think one of the reasons I tell stories about people who aren't here anymore is that they can't sue. No, is that I was told that people are still alive so long as people still know their name, still mention their name. Oh, that's nice. So I like to tell stories about people, you know, I mean, I love theatre people, as you know, that people may not have known about now, but I knew about when I was a boy, because that, for me, keeps them alive. And often I think it really doesn't matter if the story's a funny story or an interesting story or there's something revealing within the story. It doesn't matter if you haven't actually heard of the person.

8:18No. It's just fun. So we're doing that in Edinburgh in August every day at 4pm. So we got on the aeroplane. we did a couple of hours of good work and then we just chatted we had a really great day of chatting i think we did i calculated 15 and a half hours of you and me non-stop talking we had an extra six hours didn't we because the clocks went back because you had said that's why it went on so long because you would say we got to live on new york times we got onto the airplane and suddenly we gained six hours anyway gosh that was a long day and we ended up at a kind of was it a chinese diner where did we end up oh in a restaurant yeah late at night didn't it was very nice it was it was very late it was it was even late at night by new york standards the point was you made us go to bed at the correct new york time yeah that was the whole idea yeah four o 'clock in the morning after dancing all night and eating in a chinese diner whatever that is it was a bit a bit like that um and then we began recording some of the episodes of rosebud that we will be dropping now and again over the next few weeks and months and we've had some really quite exciting and fun guests but our trip coincided with the visit to the united states of america of king charles iii and queen camilla i know it's very nice of them to accompany us on on this trip isn't it we did We both feel that.

9:45We felt, you and I, we felt that was rather raising our game. I think they heard we were coming and thought, Why not? Maybe we should go. That's quite possible because the decision to come was made at a very late date. Because it was, were they going to be able to come or not going to be able to come because of overseas developments? And it was decided they would come almost at the last minute. Yeah, because they only heard us talking about it a couple of weeks ago, I think. And they thought, hmm. Oh, Harriet and Giles are going to New York. I wonder if we can still get tickets. and amazingly they managed that's probably why we were on virgin and they were on british airways yes that's the way it goes um anyway we got here and because i'm a trustee of a charity called the queen's reading room which is queen kimila's charity for encouraging the joy of reading and they were going to have an event at the new york public library we were invited both of us to go along to the New York Public Library to be part of the event.

10:46And it was interesting, wasn't it, seeing the crowds in the street and the security was very tight. Well, they closed all the roads. They did close all the roads. There was a lot of traffic jams. There were a lot of traffic jams. We walked, didn't we? We walked. It was only a few days after there'd been that incident in Washington, D.C. at the White House Correspondents' Dinner where there was a shooter, as they call them. I don't like that word. I think actually journalists are there to make things clear. I would say gunman or gunwoman because that indicates this shooter thing. Anyway, there was a shooter there.

11:22Unfortunately, beyond one of the security people being injured, nobody was killed, but they doubled the security. The security was heightened. But we went along to this event, and we first, well, it was quite exciting. As we arrived, who did you first recognize? There was a Rosebud connection. As we arrived in the New York Public Library, we climbed the stairs. It's a beautiful building on the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. It's one of the largest libraries in the world. It's got everything you could imagine there from the American Declaration of Independence through to, oh, Charles Dickens' desk.

11:59It's got millions of books and artifacts. We climbed the stairs and who did we first encounter coming to the Queen's Reading Room event in your public library? The first person was the beautiful and very friendly, which is good for me because I was a bit nervous, Rachel Sterling. Diana Ring's daughter, a Rosebud alumna, who was so funny when she was on Rosebud, wasn't she? and she's in New York because she's on Broadway appearing in the play Giant, all about Roald Dahl. Brilliant play that we saw, didn't we? We saw it in London. So it was lovely to be recognised. She saw us. Do you know what she said about her Rosebud interview?

12:48Which is, by the way, have a listen to that one. It's so fun, isn't it? She said her father had heard it and told her, I wish you hadn't been so coarse, Rachel. Oh, no. Because I think she spoke about... She did, intimate matters. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. It was very fun. It was huge fun. She spoke about her past love life in some intimate detail, but falling about laughing. Yeah, it was fun. It's very good-hearted. But her father, who is Archie Sterling, maybe even Sir Archie Sterling, there's some aristocratic connections there. He probably found out some things he didn't want to know. Of course, yes.

13:22Of course. But we don't want to hear that about your children, do we? No, or your parents. You really don't. No. I mean, you know, imagining one's own conception is a real turn-off. Anyway, so we saw her. Oh, and then who else did we encounter? Well, straight away, we've met some more Rosebud people, didn't we? Lee Child. Yeah, it was a gathering of the Rosebud family. Yeah. And we met two brilliant authors he was with, Harlan Coburn. Yes. And the Korean writer. Min Jin Lee. And they. I'm going to read one of her books. They did a presentation together, didn't they? And I have to say, I've been to a lot of, listened to a lot of book panels, and I'm accustomed to all the cliches that come around.

14:05I found it really resting and interesting. It was brilliant. And Jenna Bush, the daughter of George W. Bush and Laura Bush, she was the sort of host for that panel. So the panel was interesting, and Harlan Coburn was amazing. and I thought, let's seize the moment. Let's seize the hour. And I grabbed hold of Harlan and said, you were so good. You haven't done Rosebud. Everyone else here seems to have done Rosebud. You haven't done Rosebud. He didn't say, what's Rosebud? He said, Lee Child has told me how great Rosebud is. When am I doing it? I said, you are coming over tomorrow, please, to Essex House overlooking Central Park where we've got our own studio and you're recording Rosebud if you'd like to.

14:56But he said, my New York apartment is only 20 minutes across the park. I'll come. So that was a treat securing him because he's one of the world's best-selling thriller writers. And his views on writing are very intriguing. I mean, he's a great plot twist merchant. In fact, he's doing a memoir of his life called Plot Twist. So we met him. and then, Harriet, the most exciting moment of the day, possibly of my year, it could be said of my life, what happened? I actually couldn't believe this happened. This, everyone, was amazing. So we all knew Anna Wintour was going to be at this event, didn't we?

15:39Who is Anna Wintour? She's the editor of the US Vogue. She's devil wears Prada. She is. She wears sunglasses all the time. she's famously formidable slash terrifying and she probably never compliments anyone else's outfit i mean maybe she does maybe she does maybe if she saw that to sell a mccartney she'd say nice jacket whatever giles is standing there chatting to someone i'm sitting there looking a bit sheepish suddenly this woman with an amazing bob, a pair of sunglasses and this sculptural jacket that must have cost about$700 ,000 turns around, looks at Giles and goes, I love your sweater.

16:29Unbelievable. And I'm very proud of that moment. Of course, to have an endorsement from Anna Wintour is just amazing. but the sweater I was wearing is one I designed in the 1980s so it's a classic it's a simple red sweater with on the front of it Winnie the Pooh and I had it made when in the 1980s I wrote a play about A.A. Milne the creator of Winnie the Pooh and his son Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear and there's a picture of me and the real Christopher Robin who was then a guy a man in his 60s together and so that's the sweater that she loved and I was wearing it for a reason because Queen Camilla was there to celebrate the Queen's Reading Room the joy of reading, spread the word but also she was going to visit Winnie the Pooh because the original Winnie the Pooh lives at the New York Public Library and indeed I took you down to see Winnie the Pooh because he was on another floor in part of what is called the treasures of the New York Public Library because in 1947, Winnie the Pooh and the other animals that were the toys of Christopher Robin came to America to do a tour of America at the behest of A.A.

17:47Milne's publishers. And they'd never gone back home. So that's Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Kanga, Eeyore, and Piglet. And they now live in the New York Public Library. And that's, in a way, I think that's why the Queen came to New York Public Library because a year ago I'd come to see if it was going to be possible for Pooh to come on a visit in his centenary year because the books were published 100 years ago to the UK and the Queen had very sweetly said, well, he could come to stay with us at Windsor Castle or at Buckingham Palace. Tell them we're still changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. That might be quite fun.

18:25So I came a year ago to meet Dr Tony Marks, who is the president of the New York Public Library, and suggest this to him. and it might happen it might happen one day but i think it's going to be pretty tricky because boo bear is 100 years old and he also is the most popular exhibit at the new york public library so letting him go isn't going to be easy so he couldn't necessarily go to england but the queen came to new york and went to see him and it was very fun because i had told the queen that animals that were there, but I explained to her that Kanga, who is the only female character in the Winnie the Pooh stories, had a baby called...

19:03Rue. Exactly. But Rue is missing. Rue disappeared in the late 1920s in an orchard near Cotchford Farm, where A. Milne and his family lived in West Sussex, and believed possibly mauled to death by the family dog. So there was no Rue. Poor Rue. So Queen Camilla turns up in the New York Public Library and produces from her handbag a replacement rue, which she has organized, made by Mary Thorpe, who made the original toy, with a bit of fabric that they claim was from the original roll of fabric. They recreated rue, and so she turned up at the public library. I orchestrated some children from a local school all to say, when she said, hello, boys and girls, they all said, hello, your majesty.

19:49and they cheered when Rue appeared and a good time was had by all. In fact, you filmed me with some of the children. They were a nice bunch, weren't they? Lovely. So that was all great fun. So we saw the Queen, we saw Winnie the Pooh, we saw Anna Wintour. And I saw Sarah Jessica Parker. I know. I know. Pretty amazing. And we took a picture together. Sarah Jessica Parker. move over sesty bestie i've got a new bestie sjp well anyway i took a selfie with her yeah we took a selfie and she's gonna come on rosebud so she says yeah and which would be fantastic we've got some fantastic people on rosebud now this today which is fun we met real royalty and we walked back from the new york public library we had to walk because the streets were closed to traffic We walked back, we walked along 42nd Street, which is Show Business Alley.

20:47Yeah. We came to Broadway and we met royalty, literally, on 42nd Street. And we began talking about Broadway royalty. When do you remember the first Broadway show you ever went to? I think it was The Producers, actually. Yeah, with Broadway royalty, Nathan Lane. Oh, who has promised to be on Rosebud sometime, which is fantastic. We were introduced to him by the great Sigourney Weaver, who knows him, who emailed him saying, will you be on Rosebud? And he said, yes. So that's something to look forward to. And I told another, I mean, we're name dropping now, but these are people who've been on Rosebud.

21:29Gary Oldman, who became a great friend of Rosebud and was one of our best ever episodes. He has a producer called Doug Obansky. I've told you about Doug before. yeah great talker great producer and i was saying to doug we are going to new york who should we get on to rosebud and he said giles you love broadway you love old show business don't you and i know you love names but i want to introduce you to a guy who isn't a name particularly but he's known all the names he's called josh ellis and he was according to doug he said he was one of the great press agents and the sort of heyday of Broadway.

22:09What's a press agent? A press agent is a PR person. And funnily enough, it wasn't called PR in those days. He would have been a publicity guy. He'd have been, well, I suppose public relations, but he'd have been thought of as a press agent. The guy who gets the press in, organises the press, makes sure the photograph is taken in the right way. He looks after the press site because it was before social media. Yeah. And then makes all the papers talk about the show. It makes the papers talk about the show. That's the era Josh Ellis comes from. And, you know, he was the press agent for David Merrick's 42nd Street, People Into the Woods, which was famous for Stephen Sondheim, Lena Horne, The Elephant Man, you name it.

22:49He did big, big shows. And Doug said to me, get hold of Josh. He's retired now. But find a corner, sit him down in a corner, and just get him to tell you one or two. just throw a few names at him or just get him to tell you one after the other just a few of his tales of old broadway backstage with the people he was press agent for and he said i think you'll be surprised you'll get a little little taste of what it's like and he didn't like everybody he looked after he said see if you can get him to tell you his ricks harrison story anyway i cornered Josh, and I said, just tell me a few tales. So this isn't, this is for more Rosebud, just a few tales from Josh Ellis.

23:35I think you'll like his company. I did. He's a very sweet guy. Josh Ellis with Tales from Broadway.

23:52Josh, you are the press agent of all press agents. You know Broadway backwards, forwards, upside down, inside out. I want you to cast your mind back and give me, well, the most impactful memory you have of coping with the stars on Broadway as a press agent. Okay, we'll start with a story about when I worked with Ewell Brenner and he was doing The King and I on Broadway. Ewell Brenner, The King and I, I like it. It was a special edition of the Merv Griffin Show, and it was being done out of the very tiny Ed Sullivan Theater, where they now do Stephen Colbert, very tiny backstage area too. Merv Griffin late night chat show.

24:40Yes. I remember loving it when I was a boy. He used to be in New York. He went to California, came back to New York. He wanted to do a week of the legends of New York. and Ewell Brinner was one of the legends. In fact, he was on the first episode that they did and Ewell Brinner had a way of how he wanted his dressing rooms to always be. They had to have a refrigerator with certain beverages, fresca in cans, so forth. I mean, if they could, they would paint it for him. I mean, he got the star treatment. We go to the stage door, come in, and I say, I'm with Ewell Brunner, and they say, he's in dressing room one.

25:29And I go, well, where else would he be? So we go to dressing room number one, and the door is locked, which is very strange because always the door is opened and ready for the star. and I knock on the door and I hear an unmistakable voice. Who is it? Ewell Brinner and I immediately realize it's Ethel Merman. Oh my gosh. And Ethel Merman is in Ewell Brinner's dressing room and she opens the door and she goes, I guess we're bunking out tonight together because they have no more dressing rooms to spare. So I'm in this tiny dressing room. And when I say tiny, I mean closet size. And there is Ewell Brynner, myself, and Miss Merman.

26:23No one else is in the room. And Ewell Brynner goes, Joshua, get a chair. And Ethel Merman goes, forget it. I'm wearing my standing up and singing dress. So I'm not going to sit. So Ewell Brynner and I sit. and Ethel Merman stands. And before she goes on, they interview a New York baseball team that had just won the pennant and the orchestra from the Merv Riffin show is playing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. And we can hear it through the speakers. And Ethel Merman in full voice is singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. And there's a line in it, buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. And I'm going, oh my God, Cracker Jack is such a merman word.

27:18And she has never recorded Take Me Out to the Ballgame on all those albums, never recorded it. I'm just beside myself. And you, Brenner, is like barely tolerating it. He cannot stand it. Somewhere between not standing her doing it and can't stand it, I'm so excited about it. They finally come to Ethel Merman and go, you're on next. So she goes, see you later, guys. And out she goes. And you, Brenner and I watch her on the screen, this little tiny screen. And she does her long, long medley, the one that she used to do originally. that's like every song she ever sang in the theater. And the audience goes absolutely crazy at the end of the song.

28:09She comes back into the dressing room and says, Out! So Ewell Brunner is like, Okay. And he leaves the dressing room, and the door slams in our faces, and the door stays closed for about two minutes. And then she leaves the room, goes back to sit down with Merv Riffin for the talking part of the section. And we walk back into the dressing room. And there, standing there, absolutely frozen stiff like a statue, is her other dress. The dress has her form, her hips, her bosoms. it's her dress that she wears but it's so stiff because of all the material inside it it can stand by itself and i say to your brother what do you think this is and he goes it's quite obvious josh she told us she was wearing her standing up and seeing dress this is the standing up and seeing dress and then we look at the screen and there she is in the quote-unquote same dress but it is the same dress, clearly in a larger size, and, you know, for her to be able to sit down.

29:33And he goes, and that is her sitting down and talking dress. Well, we've discovered the secret of Ethel Merman, how she did it.

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31:04Did you have any insane people where the madness was overwhelming you? Oh, goodness gracious, yes. Well, give us the maddest. Okay. Rex Harrison. Oh. Now, Rex Harrison to me was like a god. My Fair Lady, but so difficult because he was working with Claudette Colbert, and the level of competition between the two... This is Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert together. Right, together in a play called Aren't We All by Frederick Lonsdale. And she never competed with him, but he was always competing with her. If we got to the theater and she was in her dressing room, and we spent any time in her dressing room, and he happened to come into the theater while we were there, when we leave, he'd say, has the meeting of the Claudette Colbert fan club ended yet?

32:00He just wanted everything his way and didn't seem to have humor about it. Even the difficult, difficult people, Maggie Smith was difficult, but he was just what he said went. Is it true the story about him in the 1950s when he is on Broadway, leaving with all the autograph hunters waiting for him? And this is a story apparently told by Stanley Holloway, who played the part of Doolittle, and sees Rex Anderson going to his limousine ignoring all the autograph hunters, one of whom is so irritated to be ignored, he actually warps him on the arm, prompting the remark from Stanley Holloway. That's the first time in recorded history that we have seen an example of the fan hitting the shit.

32:52It rings true. Oh, absolutely. It would take very little to put him off, but just a quick flash into the opening night party at the Rainbow Room. Claudette makes her entrance. They play lovely music. He comes in. She's already had her, made her entrance. We have TV crews. we have still photographers. It was a big press event. And then we finish with her and then we go, it's time to bring Rex into the party. But of course, he's standing at the elevator. Again, is the meeting of the fan club over yet? And we bring him in and absolutely everything that can go wrong went wrong. And I have to admit that if I was Rex Harrison, I actually would have been angry too because he came into the room and he crossed the dance floor and the orchestra broke into i'm getting married in the morning oh it was not his song right show wrong song i don't want to use all the words that he used that day as he was being escorted across the room with TV cameras picking up every word, but he was not a happy camper.

34:13Oh, dear. You mentioned that Maggie Smith could be difficult. I have to say, when we interviewed her, we found her charming. But give us your worst experience of the great Dame Maggie Smith. We did a show called Night and Day by Tom Stoppard. It was booked into the Virginia Theatre, which is now the August Wilson Theatre, after considerable renovation. She didn't like her dressing room. She didn't like the toilet in her dressing room. She didn't like the sink in her dressing room. And she was sitting at the edge of the stage looking into the audience. And she said, this theater doesn't hug me.

35:01And that's a hard order to fill. because how do you make a theater love you? But she hated the theater. She also disliked two of her co-stars, and when we were in Washington, D.C., we actually replaced three. Oh, at her behest. What? You got rid of three of the actors. You're saying at her behest? Yes, was it? Well, who else, darling? Oh, my gosh. I mean, it wasn't like they were bad. She just didn't like them. And she liked two of the actors in the show quite a lot, and the others were just accessories. Another of the greats, I mean, Maggie Smith was a great, I'm sorry to hear the story, was a great, was Catherine Hepburn.

35:55Is your story about her a positive one? Yes. Catherine Hepburn loved to go to the theater. and she went backstage all the time, but we had this little code. I would see her in the lobby and I would say, good afternoon, Ms. Hepburn. Good afternoon. And would you like to go backstage and visit the actors after the show? That would be lovely. Thank you. I said, well, I will be glad to escort you backstage. Fences, starring James Earl Jones. Okay. After the show, she goes backstage to meet James Earl Jones. And then she says to me, I want to see the woman. And I'm assuming she means the woman who plays his wife in the show, Mary Alice, a wonderful actress.

36:45And I said, well, you know, she's two flights up. Fine, lead the way. We take her up to Mary Alice's dressing room. The door is shut. I knock on the door and she says she had a very gentle, sweet personality. And she says, who is it? And the voice comes back, it's Catherine Hepburn. And she says, oh, please, I'll be right there. Can you wait? So we wait, probably I'm going to say two or three minutes till she kind of gets herself together. And she opens the door and she is holding her autograph book because every famous person who came to see Fences, she has asked for an autograph. And she holds the autograph book up to Catherine Hepburn.

37:34And the first thing she says is, would you please sign my autograph book? And Catherine Hepburn looks at her like she has just turned, the woman has just turned into a pile of garbage and goes, I don't sign autographs. And poor Mary Alice is like, I guess I just said the wrong thing at the wrong time. And then Katharine Hepburn realizes her gaffe. I mean, and quickly is equally embarrassed. And she says to Mary Alice, what I meant to say was, I do not sign an autograph unless I ask for one in return. Would you please sign my playbill? Oh. Well done. She saved the day. It's that kind of stardom.

38:27And you go, where do they learn that? You're just there watching it and going, boy, she really is Catherine Hepburn. Theater royalty. It's in these early days you meet people like, am I right, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly? Are they in your repertoire? Yes, yes. I'm more attuned by that time. I have been seasoned. So it's for the movie of That's Entertainment, the very first movie of That's Entertainment. A compilation of great moments of MGM movies. MGM musicals, yes. And a week of celebration of the movie. And we finally get to the opening night at Radio City Music Hall and the parties at the Rainbow Room.

39:13All the press wants is a picture of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. That is, no matter what other stars were there, and there were plenty of them, that's the picture they wanted. But for whatever reason, they were never adjacent at all the whole evening. And for a press agent, you know what your job is. Your job is to get that particular picture. And if they're not next to one another, it's not a picture. So pretty late in the evening, I have to pee, and I head off to the bathroom. And who is in the bathroom together? Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire at the urinals. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is my moment.

40:04You know, what do I want to do first? Pee myself or ask them if we can do a picture together. And as a press agent, that is a large decision. Let's not minimize how much I wanted to do both at the same time. So I wait till they're finished, and I explain that I am one of the press agents of the show, and we have been waiting all night to get a picture of the two of you together. Would you mind if we take the picture right outside the bathroom, just moving a little bit so you don't see the sign that says men, and what I'd like is two minutes to go out and get my boss and let him round up all the press.

40:45We will stay in the bathroom for about three minutes. He'll knock on the door when it's ready, and then we'll take the picture. And they were both lovely and just wonderful about it. I mean, it was like not a big deal to them. I go out to my boss and go, I have them in the men's room. I have them in the men's room. Get the photographers. Get the video crews. Get everyone. The moment is about to happen. And I'm looking at the door, and he clearly says, gentlemen. And I'm going, just move them down the hall a little bit, you know? That's all we need to do. And about three minutes later, and he goes, we're ready.

41:30And I take them out, and we get the picture. Well done. So, you know, it's like, and then eventually, I did, in fact, go to the bathroom. Oh, good. But it was like, it was like not even a concern. For that relief, much thanks. That's it. You know, you do your job. That's it.

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43:05I once spent a night with Cher. We were in a hotel in Glasgow, and there had been an explosion during the course of the evening. She didn't know who I was, I knew who she was, but she knew that I'd been doing a TV show in Glasgow, and she thought I was some big TV star. She'd been doing a stage show in Glasgow to an audience of 20 ,000 people. and during there was this explosion which had been reported uh on radio in america so she was getting calls she'd come back to the hotel we were both having a drink she was treating me as i were a great british star and i was treating her as a great american star and the message came are you all right and she discovered there had been an explosion a gas explosion uh somewhere near Glasgow and she felt it incumbent upon her to go and help the people she said we must go we must go out now it was two in the morning and she was determined to go and I eventually persuaded her not to by saying uh Cher Miss Cher you are not wearing rubble clothes it would look inappropriate in the photograph what is what is your favorite Cher story I found her easy okay I found her well let me just tell the story and not make an adjective up front.

44:24She went to see the elephant man. And again my little spiel you know do you want to go backstage after the show? Can we take pictures? At intermission she finds me and says I just can't go backstage after this show. I have been crying all through the first act. Do I look like Cher to you? I said, I think you look fine. She goes, I can't do it. But can I come back tomorrow night? And can we set up pictures tomorrow night? I promise I'll look like Cher tomorrow night. And I said, well, here's my card. And I thought, well, nice way to get out of it, Cher. But, you know, I think nothing of it, frankly.

45:13I don't make any plans. and then maybe 2 o 'clock in the afternoon, my secretary says, it's Cheryl on the line. And I go, she says, are we still on for tonight? Whoa. And I think, I say, are you serious? She goes, I told you last night I was going to come back. And I arranged for her to get a parking space in Shubert Alley, which was adjacent to the box office of the Booth Theater. Of course, need to say, I alerted the press, But I also told the cast, who was beside themselves, because the idea that she would come back a second time only for the pictures, not to see the show a second time, just for pictures.

45:57They were just beside themselves laughing and were delighted. And she came back, and we got wonderful pictures of her looking exactly like Cher. Well done. So God love her. You know, she actually made good on the promise. Well done, Cher. Was David Bowie a nice person? I adored him. Adored. Absolutely. He came from a totally different world than I lived in. I didn't understand or know his music. I didn't know very much. I researched him, but I wouldn't exactly say I was dealing with him like fan star. He was David Bowie who wanted to do The Elephant Man. And I watched him craft the Elephant Man in rehearsals, out of town, and then back in New York.

46:52And I can only say he was a master craftsman who could probably do any role from Hamlet to Peter Pan. But he was so incredibly nice. And he had the best parties backstage. Everybody, I've never. Look, backstage parties can be unbelievably fabulous, but so many stars in one place at one time, and it was like, that is where to be. And do you think the stage, the doorman minded? No, he was like the doorman at Studio 54. I mean, this is like, he lets in or not let in the creme de la creme. And David wasn't boastful about that or uncomfortable. He was just a lovely host in his dressing room. And I can't say enough wonderful things about him.

47:59Now, look, I've got to ask you a couple more questions, but is there anybody, any of the great stories here that we should have touched on and we haven't? There's so many wonderful names here. Eartha Kitt. Okay. I loved Eartha Kitt. I did too, but she was wily. You know, she was unpredictable. And we did a show called Timbuktu, which was the remake of the musical Kismet, but set in Africa. And her co-star was Melba Moore. And Miss Moore and Miss Kitt did not get along with one another. and I was desperate for a publicity stunt. It's how do you get the press into the theater when there's nobody interested in doing interviews?

48:45We had one critic that said, take a bus, take a train, take a subway, take a camel, but get to Timbuktu. Oh, nice. Leads me to renting two camels. It has nothing to do with the show. There are no camels in the show, but they're very visual. So I get two camels. One is for Eartha Kitt and one is for Melba Moore. And we're in Times Square and Melba Moore does not show up. And Eartha Kitt says to me, I refuse to ride down Broadway alone. Joshua, get up. And so the camel is placed down on its legs and hoists me up onto its back. And I have a camel ride down Broadway with Eartha Kitt. Well, that must be your proudest hour.

49:42Camel riding in Broadway with Eartha Kitt, it doesn't get much better than that. It really doesn't. And the advertising agency sent me a picture of Eartha on her camel the next day. and it said, the camel that broke the press agent's back. So it was like, oh my God. People will go, did you really do that? And if you knew me and you knew how involved I was, I loved press stunts, particularly ones where there's nothing and then we make an event and then the next day it's in the paper, which is exactly what a press stunt was in those days. I mean, the press is too... They don't... I mean, with the internet, they don't do that very much anymore.

50:27I want to leave myself with the picture of you and Arthur Kitt on Camels on Broadway. Well, I love theatre stories, and I love your theatre stories. And so to have a sprinkling of them in more rosebud is marvellous. Well done, you. Thank you for letting me share them with you, because I have loved the theatre so long. My sister and I would see every Saturday matinee in Philadelphia growing up. But it wasn't enough that we would just see the shows. We would see the shows and then we would go backstage to meet the stars. And since I was probably 10 and she was like 7, we had no problem going backstage.

51:10But our favorite one was meeting Beatrice Lilly and Tammy Grimes. and we went to Mr. Lilly's dressing room. Literally, they just let us backstage. We went to her dressing room, and Miss Lilly said something to my sister. My sister had an autograph book, and she said, I wish you could sign the album, but the High Spirit's album isn't out yet, and you haven't even made it, so would you sign my autograph book? And B. Lilly said to her, don't you have an evening with Beatrice Lilly? Which made no sense to my sister. She thought she was being yelled at and she started to cry. And Beatrice Lilly then is stuck with a seven-year-old child in her dressing room who's crying, which is not exactly what she really wants between matinee and evening.

52:06So she goes to her drawer and takes out beads, It's her beads, the famous beads. Why she has it in her dressing room drawer, damned if I know. But she does her whole little routine with taking the beads and swinging them around her body and makes my sister laugh. And when my sister started to laugh, Miss Lily let us go. So diagonal to Beatrice Lily's dressing room is Tammy Grimes' dressing room. And the door is open. so that there's no need even to knock. But we do knock on the post. And we go in, and it's my first experience of talking to an actor in a mirror. You know that experience where, like, they are looking at the mirror, and you're looking at them in their reflection in the mirror, which happens all the time if you work in a theater.

53:02But the first time, it's kind of a little weird. And she's talking to us, and while she's talking, She's wearing a robe. And while she's talking to us, quite animatedly, her robe opens. And the two of us see her nipples. And we are like, we're seeing Molly Brown's nipples. I mean, this is like, we are in shock. But needless to say, the idea of going backstage only becomes more and more thrilling because that's how we were as little kids. And we saw everything. Can I say all these years later, I think you are still a little kid in love with the theatre and I think we've had a treat hearing some of your stories, George.

53:55Thank you. Thank you. Curtain down, but encore privately in the bar afterwards. Thank you.

54:07Thank you.

54:56We'll be right back.

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