Lehman Brothers Bailed Out by Barclays Bank-

Jim Dykes of Rich & Famous Tours in New York says:
EXCLUSIVE!!!!!!!!

I just spoke to an old friend (today, Tuesday Sept. 16) who works at Lehman Brothers and she whispered into the telephone: "Barclay’s Bank has saved us…looks like I’ll have a job thru the end of the year or maybe longer! Hooray…"

This is unconfirmed…no one has officially released it, but I’ve known this person since 7th grade and she has never been known to knowingly tell a lie.

Apparently, according to my friend, Barclay's is not taking the British part of Lehman Bros. OR the American part that deals with those bad mortgages...but everything else. Details are being worked out as we speak...today...Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 12 noon.

Michael Riedel's Interview with Hal Prince, the legendary Broadway Producer

Hal Prince was watching the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards on TV last January when he turned to his wife and started babbling in gibberish. “Get dressed” she said, “we’re going to the hospital.” On the eve of his 80th birthday, Prince,whose credits include WEST SIDE STORY, EVITA, FOLLIES and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, had suffered a stroke. But now, only seven months later, he’s back at work, feisty, charming, opinionated, very funny and gearing up for his 61st show, PARADISE LOST, which he’ll direct in the Spring, possibly starring Mandy Patinkin, John Cullum, Judy Kaye and Schuler Hensley with music by the waltz king, Johan Strauss.
At the start of the new theatre season—one that could be rocky, given the economy—I wanted to get Prince’s view of Broadway, his stomping ground since 1936, when, at age 8, he saw his first show. Asked if he thinks the boom that Broadway’s been enjoying for the last 10 years is about to go bust, he says: “Boom is an economic word; it does not mean quality. And that’s where my head is at. There have been a lot of shows, but how many of them do what theatre should be doing: ‘Astonish me!’?”
Prince is too diplomatic to mention names, but the implication is that tourist-friendly family fare such as MARY POPPINS, LEGALLY BLONDE, SHREK and GREASE hardly fit the ‘Astonish me!’ bill. He says: “The problem is that there are too few creative producers. There are a lot of people who are writing checks—and I’m glad they’re making out those checks—but can they honestly say when they are holding their Tony Award, ‘Did I create this show? Or did I just write a check?’ Broadway should be a money-earning, artistic enterprise,” he adds. “There has been a lot of money around. But isn’t it time to put the ‘art’ back in?”
His rule of thumb is that “if you think it’s going to be commercial, chances are it won’t be. FIDDLER, CABARET, WEST SIDE STORY---nobody should have done those shows. They weren’t ‘commercial.’” Prince, whose first show, THE PAJAMA GAME, was budgeted at $169,000, worries about the costs of putting on a show, although he thinks some headway was made during last year’s stagehand strike. “But,” he says, “I used to produce a show a year. If one didn’t work, maybe the next one did. I made a living in the theatre. You can’t do that anymore. You can’t produce a show a year when each one costs $14million.”
He’s no fan of reality-TV shows such as ‘GREASE: You’re the One that I want’ and ‘LEGALLY BLONDE: The Search for Elle Woods.’ “There’s only one word for them—appalling.”
Sneaky ways to jack up ticket prices—aisle seats with a $25 surcharge, for instance—also leave him cold. “I don’t think any of that is appealing,” he says. “And what about the $1.50 ‘maintenance fee’ on each Broadway ticket? Why should the audience maintain the theatre? Isn’t that what the theatre owner is supposed to do?”—M. Riedel

Curtain Up! A Broadway Update on Dolly Parton, Katie Holmes, Tommy Tune, Jeremy Piven, Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss, SHREK the Broadway Musical

Curtain Up! The new Broadway theatre season is here, so let's shine the spotlight on a few of the big names trying to conquer the Great White Way:
Hello Dolly!--Country music hasn't fared very well on Broadway but if anybody can break the "hick ceiling" it's going to be Dolly Parton. The fabled country star has written an original score for the stage adaptation of "9 to 5: The Musical," now rehearsing in Los Angeles. Dolly, sources say, isn't the least bit diva-ish about her songs. If director Joe Mantello doesn't think a number is right, Dolly heads to the piano to bang out a new one.
She's got stiff competition: Elton John's score to "Billy Elliot," still the show to beat, is the best he's written for the theatre. But if the songs in "9 to 5" are as catchy as the title number, Broadway could start to look like Dollywood.

CRUISIN FOR A BRUISIN: Poor Katie Holmes got off to a rough start when The New York Post reported that she's not exactly setting the box office on fire for the revival of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons." Compared to the box office numbers the previous Mrs. Tom Cruise--Nicole Kidman--posted for her Broadway debut in "The Blue Room", Katie's got the drawing power of a kid off the bus from Allentown, Pa. People involved in the production are starting to call it "The John Lithgow Show" (Lithgow's got the starring role) in an effort to take the pressure off Katie. But, alas, those tabloid reporters and photographers lurking around the stage door all day aren't there to find out what John Lithgow's wearing.
If ALL MY SONS doesn't make any money, Holmes will take the blame. As for her performance (that minor detail), I hear she's coming along nicely in the role, and has some lovely moments with co-star Patrick Wilson (The Full Monty and Phantom of the Opera). "She's not bad at all" says a production source, who adds, in panic: "Don't use my name!" Like everybody else in the show, he's afraid that if he speaks about Holmes without authorization, the Scientologist "goons" will pay him a visit and perhaps make him "disappear."
COMEBACK FOR A TALL TAPPER:
It's been nearly two decades since 69-year old Tommy Tune (a 9-time Tony winner) has had a hit on Broadway. His last was "The Will Rogers Follies" in 1991. After a couple of flops in the mid-90's, Tune just seemed to slip away. It's been a great loss, since his kind of show--elegant, witty, bursting with inventive dancing--is always welcome on Broadway. Tune is back at the helm of a "new" old-fashioned show: "Turn of the Century," now in rehearsals at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and is written by Jersey boys creators Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, but uses the songs of Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin and Gershwin. The show has had some financial troubles ($2million that was supposed to come from New York investors has yet to materialize). If the Chicago reviews are good, the money will appear and Tune will be back on Broadway.
Jeremy Piven plays a sleazy agent on HBO's ENTOURAGE, and he'll be playing a sleazy producer in the revival of David Mamet's "Speed-The-Plow", co-starring Mad Men's "Peggy"...Elisabeth Moss (in the role created by Madonna). Piven is a very good actor but the trouble is he'll be up against the memory of Kevin Spacey, who was brilliant in the show last year in London. That's not a performance you want hanging over your head.
DREAMWORKS Chief Jeffrey Katzenberg is shepherding SHREK, THE MUSICAL to Broadway, muscling in on territory long controlled by Disney, his former employer and current rival. The $25million SHREK is getting fairly good word of mouth in Seattle, although they've just brought in Rob Ashford to punch it up a bit.
(Michael Riedel-NY Post)

When Alison Arngrim Came to Visit

Over the years I've become fairly good friends with TV actress Alison Arngrim whose big claim to fame is she played Nellie Oleson on the hit TV show Little House on the Prairie in the 1970s from age 11-18. We met thru mutual LA friends. Now in her 40s, I'm always amazed that she is STILL able to make a decent living by talking about her long-ago career as a child star playing the evil Nellie, nemesis of goody-two shoes Melissa (Laura Ingalls) Gilbert. She was recently in Minneapolis to visit Melissa and to see her perform in the world premiere of the new Broadway-bound "Little House on the Prairie--the Musical" which sold out The Guthrie Theatre breaking box office records. She says it is quite a "hoot"...combining bits of the famed books by Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as characters and scenes from the TV version.

Sometimes when Alison is in New York she will stay with me and it's fun to have her...but being an actress-- she is almost always "on". It cracks me up. Like a lot of actress types, she's always "on" when we go out to eat, she's "on" when we ride the subway, she's "on" ALL THE TIME, with the exception perhaps of first thing in the morning before she's had her coffee.

Her husband Bob was with her on a visit last month. Bob is a professional musician (the band Catahoula) and quite talented in his own right. Bob's calm and steady and lots of fun...hardly anything fazes him. Alison travels around doing a one-woman show called "Confessions of a Prairie Bitch", again capitalizing on her natural comic ability and to regale her audience in a funny manner with endless stories of growing up on Little House....30 years ago.

Alison has stayed friends or acquaintances with many other current or former TV stars (Eve Plumb of The Brady Bunch, Paul Peterson of the Donna Reed Show, Melissa Gilbert, Dawn Wells from Gilligan's Island, Marie Osmond, and others). She renews these relationships by constantly seeing these people at autograph shows and events such as the TV Land Awards which she appeared on several months ago, flying on wires over the audience in the Santa Monica Airport hangar where they taped.

People come up to her CONSTANTLY to say "weren't you Nellie Oleson?" And Alison obligingly pulls out small pictures and with very little urging, autograph them. She claims Michael Landon always impressed on the kids how important your fans were and to always treat them well.
We were riding the subway from my apartment downtown to the Cutting Room where Alison performs when in New York and a family from France recognized her, not quite believing their luck. Apparently, Little House on the Prairie is still very hot in France. in fact Alison is always being flown over there for appearances on French TV. In Alison's words: "The French love Nellie...they don't think I'm a bitch...they just think I'm French!"