Stuff That I Have Noticed #72: Working with Lenny

Saturday morning (4 November 2023) we munched our yogurt, berries and nuts, as usual and watched some of Friday night’s monologues on youtube. Then we happened upon some videos of Maestro Bernstein’s West Side Story recording studio sessions.

We were hooked. Half a dozen videos and an hour or so later, saturated in his wondrous score for that norm-shattering opus, we were once again overwhelmed by that genius polymath of music.

I particularly was moved mentally (and emotionally) back into 1966 (or was it ’65?) when I toured the USA as “Diesel” (and understudy to Tony) in a production of that ground-breaking show with Chris Walken as “Riff”. As you may assume, Chris was brilliant in the role. Michael Bennett, in his directing debut, had also created new choreography.

West Side ’65 Me top L Chris Walken front R

Here’s a brief excerpt from Three Stages:

The bulk of both [fight] scenes were fully staged with brutal dancing and realistic looking combat. In certain sections we were split into “fighting pairs” and given an area of the stage where we improvised struggles with each other. Jo Jo [Smith] was my partner in Prologue and a very strong, very gay guy was paired with me in Rumble. This was really fun, especially the fight with Jo Jo. We went at it fiercely but cooperatively and as strong athletic young men, we made it look good. The Rumble guy, whose name I’ve forgotten (we called him “Aunt Jemima” because of the red bandana he wore) was a different story. Our fight had a motivation. He told me that before the run was over he was gonna kiss me on the mouth. You want to see me put up a fight!? He was bigger than I, maybe stronger but my desire to keep my “virtue” intact always won the day.

But, as usual, I digress. This is about (“call me”) Lenny.

My second acting gig in NYC was the 1964 off-Broadway revival of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, starring Jerry Orbach.

Another excerpt from Three Stages:

One of the highlights of the production for us all was when Leonard Bernstein decided to do the cast album with us. As it turned out we did it with [our musical director] Gershon Kingsley but we had several rehearsals with Lenny and I got to show off my high C for him. He was cool.

Lenny was wonderful to work with. He was easy going and kind to all of us although very specific with his corrections and suggestions, yet he was never pedantic or bossy.

One of my few regrets about my fifteen years as a singer/actor was that I never got to work with him again.

But I do have these memories to cherish.

The whole stories of both the aforementioned shows can be found in Book One of my memoir trilogy. Three Stages.