It was a dark and steamy night: Wednesday July 13, 1977. Forty years ago, tonight.
It had been a busy day at the office, being a general management office on Broadway. A revival of Man of La Mancha, starring Richard Kiley, had just gone on sale for an August tryout at the National Theatre in Washington. (This turned out to be a record-breaking success, on the road and Broadway.) A revival of Hair at the Biltmore was three weeks away from previews, with a story featuring a photo of a near-naked chorus boy with extra-long hair in that very morning’s Times. (This careful restaging of the ten-year-old musical turned out to be a dismal failure.) I had spent the afternoon refining the budget for the upcoming musical Spotlight, which was booked for a winter opening at the Palace. (This turned out to be an ignominious fiasco, which shuttered after only three nights in Washington. Not helped by the reviews, along the lines of “Gene Barry dances like an arthritic pugilist.” Which, in fact, he did.)
Already on the boards was Larry Gelbart’s hit comedy Sly Fox, at the Broadhurst. My colleague on that show had taken the night off, so I left the office (on 46th Street, in the Actors’ Equity Building) at seven and walked over to 44th Street to cover the show. First, I checked in with star Robert Preston, who had taken over the role from George C. Scott, and who—in my opinion at least—gave a considerably stronger performance. I had met Preston two years earlier, in the bathtub. That is, we were in the wings of Mack & Mabel, next door at the Majestic; he made an entrance in a soapy prop bathtub, with a big prop cigar.
I stopped in the box office; chatted with the stage manager; watched the show go up, from the rear of the orchestra; and went up to the house manager’s office to count the deadwood (unsold tickets) and sign the nightly box office statement. I then walked over to Joe Allen’s, a then-and-now popular showbiz eatery on 46th Street, to meet Gene Wolsk—general manager of the three shows, and producer of La Mancha—at 8:45 to go over the Spotlight budgets during dinner.
Our juicy cheeseburgers had not yet arrived when the lights went out. (9:36 PM, the news reports would later say.) The crowd—including various Broadway types whose jobs were over as soon as the curtain went up—whooped a bit; the waiters clucked, quickly emerging from the kitchen at the back of the room with extra candles for the tables. The kitchen, apparently, occasionally blew a fuse. Conversation soon picked up, and everyone went back to drinking and talking by candlelight.
After a few minutes, the maître d’ stepped into the center of the tables. The lights were out all over the block, he said; they had reports that the whole theatre district was out. We could finish our drinks and whatever food had been served, but they were unable to complete our orders or process credit cards.
Our immediate thought, though, was: what’s happening at the Broadhurst!
We gulped our drinks and hotfooted it over to 44th Street. It was somewhat eerie outside, but only slightly. The traffic lights on Eighth Avenue were out, of course; but the street was still filled with cars, the road lit by headlights. There was lots of honking, as the traffic signals never turned green (or red). It was a bit of a challenge to cross the avenue—we basically had to walk out in front of the cabs and buses and stop them by hand—but quite a few pedestrians were doing the same thing.
We turned onto 44th, which indeed looked eerie: no street lamps, none of the bright electric marquees that usually turned night into day. We rushed past the Majestic (home of The Wiz, which looked desolate) to get to our house. We slipped in the stage door and heard: roars of laughter. The entranceway, which consisted of a payphone, the bulletin board, a little closet for the stage doorman and an open set of backstage stairs, was lit by an emergency light—basically a bread box-sized battery with two light bulbs on top—on the upper landing.
“No power?” we asked the doorman. “No power,” said he.
We walked through the heavy pass door, and then the inner door to the stage. Another roar.
Backstage was dark; but we are all very much used to walking backstage, during performances, in the dark. A crowd—actors, stagehands—was standing in the wings; a couple of dressers pointed their flashlights at our feet. Since we were management, they made way so we could peer out from between the proscenium and the stage right wall of the set. Dialogue could be heard; muffled, unamplified, but clearly enunciated.
There on stage was a sight to be remembered: Preston, a revered old trouper who was just about the charmingest man ever, center stage. Stage left was Jack Gilford, a revered old comedian who was just as charming although as different in style from Preston as you could possibly get. Jack said something which I couldn’t quite catch, to a big laugh.
I looked out at the house, wondering. Sitting on the steps by Row A in the front mezzanine were two of the Broadhurst’s veteran usherettes, each with a strong usherette’s flashlight: strong enough to throw light onto Press and Jack. We moved onto the edge of the stage, the better to appreciate the moment; nobody could see us, anyway.
The audience was enrapt. They had been roaring at the jokes, loud enough to hear from the stage door. But while the actors spoke, the place was pin-drop quiet. Even unamplified, Press and Jack knew how to project.
We were treated to about five more minutes of this impromptu sketch, which began fifteen minutes earlier when the pair were stranded onstage late in the first act. Press was an old hand from Hollywood; Jack was a blacklisted master impressionist whose style was more Borscht Belt than legit. The pair slugged out gags and straight lines as if they had been a team for years; a literate Abbott and Costello, somehow, came to mind.
Henry Velez, the stage manager, sidled over to us and said that the Shuberts—the theatre owners and producers of Sly Fox—had sent word to all their houses to dismiss the audience and close down. He went over to Press, onstage, and relayed the news. Bob gave a graceful speech, telling everyone that the power was out citywide, and asking the patrons to calmly exit the theatre and carefully go home.
Bob and Jack received a wild, standing ovation; they returned a two-man ovation of their own to the twelve-hundred playgoers, all of whom had gladly waited in their seats for what turned out to be an unforgettable after-show.
Most every New Yorker old enough to remember 1977 remembers where they were when the lights went out. What I remember is Preston & Gilford, lit by flashlight from the mezz, ad-libbing a letter-perfect comedy routine to a warmly receptive and altogether captive audience in the night of darkness.