JOEL GREY

My Landlord

                                                                                                                  When the name of Joel Grey is mentioned, most people think immediately of "CABARET" and the role he created of The Compere.

        Others may recall his brilliant production of "FIDDLER ON THE ROOF" in yiddish.- perhaps the best of all the Fiddlers. I remember him as my landlord.

     When I first came to Hollywood for my short lived career as a writer on Bob Newhart's  variety Show, I rented Joel's charming little Spanish style house tucked away in the Hollywood Hills. Joel was in New York, starring in a Neil Simon play. Each month when I mailed him his rent check, I included a letter telling how I watched his star every night, shining brightly in my evening sky.

       At that stage of his life, Joel was an artist in transition. Not many remember he started out as a Jewish comic headlining at New York's legendary Copacabana nightclub and was being groomed to be the next Danny Kaye. He released an album of "SONGS MY FATHER TAUGHT ME", including his hysterical rendition of the yiddish double talk musical standard, "RUMANIA, RUMANIA". I never knew what it said; I just loved the sound of it, especially when Joel sang it.

Joel did not want to be Danny Kaye; he wanted to be Joel Grey. His father, Mickey Katz, was a popular entertainer for Jewish audiences. There was a time when I owned a house on the same street as Mickey and his wife, Grace, who was a gifted artist who created artwork at her kitchen table. They were a talented family.

      By that time I was Head Writer for The Danny Kaye Show. Whenever I would run into Joel's father, Mickey, he would nudge me to get him booked on the show. I told him I was under the impression his material was very Jewish. "Nonsense!" Mickey retorted. Anybody could understand what he did. I remained unconvinced when I learned he produced a stage show called "BORSCHT CAPADES", an annual Christmas extravaganza called "HANUKKAH IN SANTA MONICA" and a hot weather perennial, "MIDSUMMER MISHIGAS."

I was never part of Joel's great successes, but I did play a small part in an ill-starred enterprise when he was trying to redefine himself. Although he was getting a lot of supporting work on Broadway, in movies and on TV he decided to create a nightclub act for himself.

         I wrote two pieces for the act. One was a monologue which I called "EARTH PARENT" in which he played the father of an astronaut who had just returned from a space voyage engaged to a creature from another planet. Joel tried to talk him out of it; there were so many different people of all different colors right here on earth. This was before it became common for earth people to marry others of different colors.

       I also wrote a musical number for the act with Jack Elliott,  arguably TV's most talented composer-arranger. "LAWRENCE OF ARABIA" was the big hit film of the day. I wrote a comedy number that was a take-off on the corny, old time potboiler, "ABIE'S IRISH ROSE".  The number told the story of how all the boys in Mecca were in love with a girl from Killarney. She was "ARABIA'S IRISH ROSE!"

      Joel engaged one of Broadways top young directors to stage his new act. The director was very creative, and very sensitive, too sensitive as it turned out. For some unknown reason, Joel chose to break in the act at a big, loud, flashy, noisy  nightclub on Queens Boulevard in Queens,  several light years from Broadway.

       The director fashioned the act to opened quietly and tastefully with a single overhead spotlight shining down on a vase with a single rose. It was artful. It was sensitive. It did not belong on Queens Boulevard.

       Joel's opening act before he went on had been selected by the club. Pat Cooper, ne Pasquale Caputo,  was a very funny, very loud, very aggressive, very coarse Italian comic who had the audience in stitches. They were laughing so hard at his jokes they fell out of their seats. They were in no mood for a quiet moment with a spotlight on a single rose. The act died with the opening spotlight. To my knowledge, Joel never did the act again.

      What he did next was sign to star in a revival of the Tony Newly musical, "STOP THE WORLD; I WANT TO GET OFF",  a very stylized show with its roots in commedia del arte. I told Joel it was a  terrible choice which would do nothing for his career. What it did was inspire Harold Prince to cast Joel in one of the most memorable roles in the history of The Theatre- the role of a lifetime in "CABARET.

A couple of years ago I had lunch with Joel near where he lives in Greenwich Village. We recalled the years we first met when he was a landlord and I was his tenant. We have both come a long way since then. It was a wonderful reunion with a beautiful, generous, loving man of prodigious talent. We should all be so glad he became Joel Grey.