New York, New York: My First Time

• Posted on 25th April 2016
• in celebrity books, celebrity stories online, Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood books, Hollywood memoirs, Love Story, New York City
• by Ben

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My virgin trip to

New York, New York

(the town so nice they named it twice) came in the middle of the Norman Luboff Choir’s first national tour. I’d gotten lucky and been hired as tenor soloist.

Here’s an excerpt from Three Stages, Chapter Six: Sin City and the Road:

“The only concert we had canceled was at Carnegie Hall. After packed houses all over the country they couldn’t sell enough tickets in New York to make the gig worthwhile. It had been scheduled for a Monday and the previous gig was in Pittsburgh on Saturday night. We were still going to New York, an eight hour bus ride, on Sunday. We would have Monday off and depart for Baltimore Tuesday morning.

“Wanting to waste no Big Apple time, I got a flight out of Pittsburgh after the gig with a connection in Philadelphia which would get me to La Guardia at 3:00 AM.”

I can’t imagine why but this funny story didn’t make it into the book. The plane from Pittsburg was a few minutes late so I sprinted through the Philadelphia airport to make the connecting flight. You could run through an airport without getting arrested in those days. Anyhow, when I got there I saw the 707 sitting there with the door open. I went down the stairs and jogged across the tarmac to the plane where a Stewardess (what they were called then) was waiting. “Are you Mr. Bryant?” she called. When I responded she said, “Good, we’ve been waiting for you.” I found that odd until I entered the plane. I was the only passenger. Those days are gone forever.

Back to the excerpt: “Beth [Ward, an old girlfriend] and Judy (Cassmore) [another old platonic friend] were now living together in NYC and had given me directions to their place in the Village.

“As the airport bus crested the hill before entering the Midtown Tunnel and I saw the real Manhattan skyline for the first time I recalled what a New Yorker had repeatedly asked me as I gave him a car tour of LA. ‘Where’s the city?’ he kept saying. Now I knew what he meant.

“I arrived, exhausted at around 4:00, the three of us talked for an hour and I got about four hours of sleep.

“The next forty-eight hours were a blur of activity. On Sunday Beth and I did a museum tour, riding the bus up Fifth Avenue (it was a two-way street then) to the Guggenheim and walking all over the place for most of the day. Both Beth and Judy were working nights so I took a woman who I knew from Vegas to see the hit Off Broadway production of The Boys from Syracuse Sunday night. There was a young woman in the show, Betsy Hepburn, whom I didn’t particularly notice.

“Four years later I would notice her. [And four months after that I would marry her.]

“Whatever I did on Monday involved a lot of walking. As a resident of LA this was a strenuous activity for me. That night I took Violetta [Landek, another platonic lady-friend], who was in Boys from Syracuse (and I also knew from Vegas) to see Albert Finney in Luther. My first actual Broadway show. It was wonderful!

“Tuesday morning reality returned and we boarded the bus.”

New York, New York would become my permanent home ten months later and since then I have never given anything but momentary consideration to living anywhere else.

There are many stories about the Norman Luboff tour, New York, New York and other showbiz adventures to read when you click here to get Three Stages.

Tags: Albert Finney, Beth Ward Howard, Elizabeth Hepburn, Judy Cassmore, Norman Luboff, Violetta Landek