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laughing and
cursing all the way. There were no dressers
but us, and in those days, the costumes came
by way of someone's good will or Goodwill.
    Dee Hoty.

    My worst experience was forgetting the words to the new Cats parody; I was overwhelmed by so many other additions to the show, and I guess I just snapped. The
next day, Gerard gave the number to Bill. I was relieved, if embarrassed.
    Anyway, back to Bacall. She was on Broadway in Woman of the Year. I hadn't seen
the show and had no idea how to "do" her, but when I discovered the "head back,
eyes half open" stance, she was mine! How I miss those days. Forbidden Broadway
was the best on-the-job training I ever had, and I will never forget it.
    P.S.: In the "You KnowYou've Made It When ..." department, the best compliment
I've ever been paid was that Gerard mentioned me by name-quite nicely, thank
you-in the lyrics for his Stritch parody. Everyone in town called to tell me about it.
How cool is that?!

     

When Forbidden Broadway started, we were just kids, and we did the show because
it was fun. But, suddenly, everyone in NewYork was coming to see it. I think some of
the initial charm has been lost over the years; now, we need seasoned performers to
do all the imitations effectively. But in the beginning, it must have been very delightful
to see twenty-four-year-olds making like Merman and Martin and Yul Brynner.
    We did the first edition of Forbidden Broadway right around the time when Dreamgirls was opening, but we didn't spoof that show because we were already set with
numbers from The Pirates of Penzance, Woman of the Year, and Evita. Those were the
big-ticket items that everyone had seen. I began to realize that you have to wait about
six months after a show opens and give everyone a chance to see it-or, at least, read
and hear about it-before you can make fun of it, so we didn't get around to Dreamgirls until almost a year later.
    By that time, Jennifer Holliday was all the rage; she had won the Tony, although
Nine had won over Dream girls for Best Musical. They were both wonderful shows,
but Dreamgirls was spectacular and a mainstream triumph. There was a feeling that
Nine had sort of stolen the Tony. I remember being in a taxi headed to an interview.
We pulled up alongside a bus that had a huge poster on the side. It screamed "See
Dreamgirls!" I thought to myself, "We should call it'Screamgirls."' So I wrote a parody
titled "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Singing."
    Chloe Webb was still in the show, and the Dreamgirls number turned out to be her
particular masterpiece. She really pulled out all the stops. We invented this huge pink
costume that was about eight times the size of Jennifer Holliday. As I remember, we
didn't really hesitate to have a white person play a black person. We were all in our
twenties and somewhat naive. Also, I had known Chloe since college, and she was never
very concerned about being politically correct. We may have become more sensitive
about that sort of thing later on. But Jennifer Holliday's performance in Dream girls
transcended race; she immediately became a theatrical icon, like Merman or Liza.

    Chloe Webb as "Jennifer Holler-day" in "Screamgirls:'
    Altogether, I think we added three numbers
to the show: 'Screamgirls,' a Cats number ("I Enjoy Being a Cat"), and a parody of "Be Italian"
from Nine, called "Be a Catholic." Once word
got around that there was new material in Forbidden Broadway, lots of people came back to
see it again. And from then on, we pretty much
followed that pattern.
    I really enjoyed updating the show, and I
think the cast had a good time trying out new
material. We would change the order of the
numbers and switch off; I originally did the Rex
Harrison number, then Bill Carmichael took it
over, and so on. But it wasn't until later that I
decided to start doing whole new editions with
catchy titles.
    In the spring of 1983, we thought we would
see how the show would play