Rich & Famous Tours

Chris Noth Spotted on Eighth Avenue Looking for Car?

2011-04-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

On my way to the gym today about 5:30pm I saw the actor Chris Noth at the corner of Eighth Ave. and 54th St. looking exasperated while on his cellphone and out in the street waving his hands in an excited fashion. He didn’t look like the calm, collected rich guy he plays on Sex and the City…”Mr. Big.” He also didn’t seem like the cool-headed cop he played on Law & Order or the arrogant lawyer/politician he plays on The Good Wife. I recognized that look….it appeared he was trying to locate his car service driver and was on his cellphone frantically trying to talk to either the driver or the dispatcher. I know that look…I’ve been there myself! What did we ever do before cellphones? I suppose he was trying to meet someone for drinks or dinner before he was due at the theatre on West 45th St where he’s one of the stars of the Broadway hit THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON. I thought to myself “why don’t you just walk, take the subway or just go to the theatre and chill out”…he only had 90 minutes or so before he was due there anyway.
He finally closed the cellphone and tried to flag a yellow cab, of which none were available. Cabs flew past him for several minutes and he finally appeared to give up and marched down W. 54th Street and disappeared into the Café Iguana Lizard Lounge. Accordingly, I disappeared into my gym next door…finished with my little “celebrity snooping” incident. Just wondering: Who tries to get a cab at Rush Hour in midtown Manhattan? I wondered why he didn’t just take the subway? Does he think he’s too famous? At Rush Hour, nobody cares who you are…they are all just looking down at their papers and counting the stops till they get off the train. Besides, I’ve seen lots of famous folk on the subway--people more famous than Noth: Julia Roberts, John Lithgow, Caroline Kennedy and others. In fact, just that morning I’d seen his Sex and the City co-star Mario Cantone on the Eighth Avenue subway platform (I’d seen him there before).
Incidentally, Noth also needs to hit the gym again (I should talk)…that nice slim body he had for the last Sex and the City film is gone and he’s got the middle-aged man’s gut again, pooching out under his beige polo shirt. I heard the filmmakers told him to get a trainer and get in shape a few months before principal photography began. Perhaps walking would have done him good.

Chris Noth Celebrity Spotting on Eighth Avenue

2011-04-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

Ethan Hawke Spotted in Chelsea--Area becomes new Celebrity 'hood

2011-04-27T21:04:00.001-07:00

Movie & Stage star Ethan Hawke (ex-husband of Uma Thurman) was seen today on West 21st Street in Chelsea, strolling along and entering a very nice apt. building. Hmmm...does this mean Hawke has relocated? Following the divorce with Uma, he has been known to jump around from place to place, eventually living in a hotel.
Does this new sighting mean he's finally moved into a permanent address in this very gay block of the very gay Chelsea neighborhood? Does this mean he's now gay? Questions, questions....
He is known as a "serious" theatre type and is involved very much with his Off-Broadway theatre troupe lately, directing various projects and putting his movie career on the back burner.
Other big stars who have made Chelsea their home in NYC include Kate Winslet, Javier Bardem & Penelope Cruz, Kelsey Grammer, Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban and others too numerous to mention here.

The Ride Provides Needless NYC "Street Show"

2011-04-27T21:02:00.000-07:00

There's a new tourist attraction in NYC called The Ride...it's basically a midtown bus tour that covers no more than 20-30 blocks. Along the way through traffic they have set up street performers...a ballet dancer, a break dancer, a couple of mimes, etc. Instead of a guide, you've got TWO stand-up comics "narrating" NY as you drive by these staged performers. TWO comic/actors pretending to be guides! They do a verbal back-and-forth which must be even more confusing to the tourists on board who are already dumbfounded by the ordinary sites and sounds of our metropolis! They are basically using New York City as the "backdrop" to their little Off-Off Broadway show.
MY question: why go to all this trouble? New York is already a stage show with things to see everywhere without having to "stage" events. The people who dreamed up The Ride probably took the awful GrayLine double decker tour and thought "we can improve on this" (anyone could improve on that). And perhaps they improved on Gray Line, but they have obviously never had a really good tour with a talented guide. A talented guide like me (Jim Dykes) or my friends Jane Marx, Robert Fields, Hardy Phippen, Marta Cooper, Mike Brennan or any number of others can make the city come to life using what is there already! A good guide can simply help a group make sense of the existing craziness and give you a nice historical, fun perspective on how it all got that way.
Why add "staged events" to the madness which ARE the streets of New York on any ordinary day? To summarize, a good guide can verbally paint pictures and create a "show" with much less effort and expense than these people responsible for The Ride have done. Plus you are paying a LOT ($75? $85?) for something which is basically a 20 block bus tour from 42nd St. to 59th St. BIG DEAL! At least with GrayLine's tour you get the whole city for your money and can jump off the bus whenever you feel like you've had enough.

Sarah Jessica Parker moving across from Mr. Big?

2011-04-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

OMG-- I just saw an item that Sarah Jessica Parker and Mathew Broderick, who have been hunting for a new house for a long time, have apparently bought a 19th century townhouse on East 10th Street next door to where I once lived! And...wait for it....directly across the street from Chris Noth's apt. in the Brevoort East Apartment Building on University Place near NYU in Greenwich Village!!

Sarah and Mathew have lived in the Village for years over on Charles Street...Mathew grew up in the Village at nearby 27 Washington Square North (same building as my acting teacher, the late great Uta Hagen) and their Charles Street home is, by coincidence, right around the corner from the location used on SEX AND THE CITY as "Carrie Bradshaw's apt."...66 Perry Street.
Funny how these things happen!
In my mind's eye I still remember Sarah and her Mom and family...we all worked together in the Alvin Theatre back when a young teenage Sarah was the third "Annie" on Broadway, promoted from her role as "July" in the orphan chorus. I'm sure she doesn't remember me at all, even though I used to hang out in her dressing room with her brother Toby and his friend Robert Klein. As a teenager in acting school, I sold souvenirs and Annie dolls in the lobby for Ray Fanning and lived in a cold-water flat on nearby Ninth Avenue. I also helped Sarah & her Mom and Brooke & Teri Shields empty out her dressing room and load the car on Sarah's last day as Annie (she was growing up too quickly) but I'm sure nobody remembers me. Now I'm one of New York's best guides with wonderful memories and stories. I worked as an extra on Sex and the City several times, even though I begged my old friend Camille Hickman (Sex and the City co-casting director) several times to give me a small part---and Sarah Jessica looked at me on the set as if she remembered me, but it wasn't the time or place to go into "old time remembrances from our childhood." She was the "star"...I was the "extra."

Celebs in the City-- Lady GaGa & the Kardashians

2011-04-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

LADY GAGA?? KIM KARDASHIAN?? As a tourguide in New York these days, we are constantly changing our information especially concerning celebrity names and movie references. With the constant flow of reality shows, internet news and pop culture information spewing out PLUS younger tourists, celebrity names that used to mean something no longer spark interest from most groups.
Gilda Radner (long dead) means nothing, Meg Ryan (career dead...means nothing), Madonna (has-been, gets mild interest), Tom Hanks (mildly interesting), Barbara Walters (might as well by dead), and many other names which I used to mention in my tour 5 years ago get very little eyebrows raised on the tour these days.
Young, hip celebrity names are the answer! I recently did a tour where every young person on the bus dozed thru celebrity names like Tom Hanks, Kelly Ripa, Regis Philbin…even Madonna got a few yawns…they are yesterday’s headlines.
As soon as I mentioned Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian.…the bus erupted…they love it when you show them Gaga's old high school on Fifth Avenue (Convent of the Sacred Heart). Her given name is Stephanie Germanotta and she is 25 years old. She shot to international pop star fame very quickly with her first two albums and many high-profile appearances like wearing an evening gown made of MEAT. Just a few short years before, she was one of those Upper Westside high school girls waiting in her uniform for the crosstown bus to her school at 91st and Fifth Ave. (you’ve all seen those groups of kids on the street).
Like many New Yorkers, I don’t replace my Verizon telephone directory often, even though they bring stacks of new phone books to my building lobby yearly. As a matter of fact I realized I still had a telephone book from 2005—six years ago, which today is an eternity. Six years ago, Lady Gaga was a freshly graduated senior living in her own apt. at 176 Stanton Street in the Lower Eastside and working in hole-in-the-wall Greenwich Village and Lower Eastside nightclubs like The Bitter End. She’s listed in the phone book, as is her Uncle Frank at 45 Wall Street. Her parents are listed as: Joe & Cynthia Germanotta, of 135 West 70th Street. I used to live around the corner at 111 West 68th Street so that area is still a favorite of mine (but I just couldn’t afford the rent increases.)
Her parents love the local restaurant VINCE AND EDDIE’S which I also adore, located on W. 68th St. Apparently, Gaga/Stephanie has happy memories going there every week with her parents-- When she heard they were closing forever, she recently swooped in and bought it and gave it to her parents!
Another sure-fire thing people enjoy is to drive down Spring Street and point out the DASH store, owned by the Kardashian sisters Kim & Chloe and made famous on their reality show KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS. They live over in Tri-beca in a rented loft. They are famous for doing NOTHING, except being beautiful, wearing beautiful clothes and being on TV. But fame is an incredible mistress...people want to know about them!!
On a tour you must give the public what they want!

Footnote: God save us from those awful double-decker tours in NYC. They have so much money to spend on advertising but are the McDonalds of the tourbiz...people hop on but quickly hop off when they realize they have been taken for a ride (literally) with guides that know nothing and have no education. Finding a personal/private guide online means searching beyond the first page of google!

How I met Joan Rivers and became dubbed "New York's Celebrity Tour Guide"

2010-07-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Recently on my tours we’ve seen Ricky Gervais, Barbara Walters, Jennifer Garner, and my “pal” Joan Rivers, who was the first one to call me the Celebrity Tour Guide of New York. Joan Rivers is, at age 77, like a phoenix.….her career has crashed and burned several times over the years, yet she re-emerges each time from the ashes reborn with a new look, hairstyle, new gimmick or yet another facelift. She is the ultimate showbiz survivor in one of the hardest businesses in the world. I’ve met Joan several times over the years and I actually like her a lot… She is intelligent, elegant, well-read and well-educated (Barnard). If you spot Joan when touring by all means say hello to her, and introduce your group. She loves her fans and is a former Rockefeller Center tour guide herself, as she told me.
JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK is a new documentary (great reviews), where a camera crew followed her around for almost a year revealing the good, the bad and everything else about the woman who is legally known as Joan Alexandra Molinsky Rosenberg. Born in Brooklyn, she resides on the Upper Eastside, just off Central Park in a fabulous triplex perched on top of a gilded age townhouse. Her home is very opulent (Louis XVI) in style or as Joan says: “this is how Marie Antoinette would have lived if she’d had money.”

My friend Bill Reardin had produced Joan’s TV talk show and another friend produced Joan’s red-carpet events on E! TV, but I actually met Joan on a rainy, cold New York evening when she hosted a call-in radio talk show on WOR talk-radio (7.10 am) in their former Times Square studios.

One night I was leaving my midtown gym and I strapped on my Sony walk-man to tune in Joan’s show. I soon discovered Ms. Rivers in quite a nervous state…the station’s telephone lines were down because of the storm and she was facing 3 hours live without any callers to chat with on air. She then (in desperation) said “can anyone hear me who is nearby and would like to come over and chat live in the studio?”

I heard her and promptly strolled over to 1440 Broadway to the rescue. Joan’s producer was thrilled to have me especially after I dropped some familiar names of my producer friends. That evening I stayed for the entire show and Joan and I chatted about New York vs. LA, our favorite sites and restaurants around town and my New York tours. We chatted about celebrities and many other things.

The time flew by, and at the end of the evening, I had a new friend! Joan kissed me and said “I owe you, Jim…you were a life-saver tonight! Any time you want to come on the show or promote anything, you let me know!” I was on her show a couple more times and she always introduced me as: “my friend Jim Dykes, New York’s celebrity tourguide!”

Rockettes are still hot!

2009-12-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

I worked at Radio City Music Hall a few years ago and have seen many incarnations of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. For awhile, it was very "heavy" on the traditionalt Nativity but recently I attended the 2009 edition and noticed they've cut the Nativity a bit...most wouldn't notice. It still has the 3 camels, 2 burros and a smattering of sheep, as well as the entire Radio City chorus decked out in the drag of ancient times a la Cecil B. DeMille. They cut the reading of One Solitary Life to make room for yet another Rockette number...a grand finale. One criticism of the show was that there was never a proper curtain call....you want to cheer for everybody after 90 minutes of breathless spectacle and endless costume changes. SO THEY FINALLY added a curtain call and it's a real crowd-pleaser. My favorite number is still the dance number with 500 dancing Santas.
Several weeks ago I got a telephone call out of the blue from a former Rockette who I used to hang out with when I worked at the Music Hall...she now is married and settled with a family in Florida. Her name is Lois and she told me she misses being a Rockette dreadfully-- "especially at this time of year!"

Look for Jim Dykes in the new Fall TV Season

2009-09-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

I've had my SAG and AFTRA union cards which allegedly show that I am a professional actor but after busting my butt for years to obtain union status, I haven't really worked in several years as an actor. Various reasons beginning with 9/11/01 when suddenly two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and when those buildings fell, they also took a lot of opportunity. Agents left the business (my agent Ellen left to teach YOGA for God's sake!), production companies scaled back and/or relocated OUT of New York to what they deemed were safer locations. Non-union productions and even union productions started cutting corners and hiring NON-union talent (because it's cheaper) proliferated and North Carolina, Texas, Canada and other tax havens became more and more popular. New York City has always had this idea (just like L.A.!) that "we are the great New York and the entertainment business will always be here, no matter how much we tax it and regulate it." Actually, the opposite is true...show business is BUSINESS first and producers simply go where it's cheaper to work and where they can make more profit.

Recently I started doing "extra" work or "background" work...I registered with several casting agents that specialize in this and they've been calling me quite a bit. Now mind you...the reason I'm SAG/AFTRA is because I've had prinicipal or LEADING roles in national TV commercials and worked in other shows. But that was THEN and this is NOW. Most actors who have worked in "principal" contract roles do NOT do "extra" work...like many, I was always told that you don't want to do extra work for several reasons:
1. you don't want to get pigeon-holed as just "human furniture"
2. the money is not great and there are no residuals for extras
3. you don't want to get "stuck" on a set all day in case your agent calls with an audition for a really good job. You can't leave sometimes for 15 or 16 hours till they are finished. Extras are also treated shabbily by crew...you are literally treated like you are "less than human" but when you're a "principal" perforner, you have your own dressing room, assistants running around getting you things, RESPECT plus much more money and residual payments.
These are all good reasons to not do "extra" work but recently I threw caution to the wind and did a bunch of extra jobs. I was a "TV reporter" in a horde on Law & Order SVU, I was a security guard in the new Jennifer Aniston-Gerard Butler movie The Bounty (a romantic comedy for release next summer), a comedic Icelandic camera-man in Tina Fey's hit sitcom 30 Rock and I just found out that I'll be playing a camera-wielding tourist Tuesday on the SEX AND THE CITY 2 movie! Not only is it fun, it pays so-so, the on-set food is WONDERFUL (catered by some of the best catering companies), you're rubbing shoulders with some great stars and working on some exciting sets, with a true "insider's" view of things.
Also, when I give the Rich & Famous Tour (and my other tours) it's great fodder for chit-chat and first-hand stories from the set for my tourists who enjoy "insider celebrity" stories.
I have more info on my Adventures in the World of movie/TV extra work on my other website: http://www.JimDykes.com/blog

A Blog is a Journal (Diary) and is made up of MY thoughts & opinions

2009-08-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, there are reports of people criticizing bloggers for "whining" and "complaining" etc. Blogs are, quite simply, a personal journal or diary...just online so anyone can read it. When I blog, I'm talking about my day, New York tourism (my field), showbiz and celebrities (also my field) or any other damn thing I want to talk about. If I feel like complaining or criticizing something, this is my place to do it. Anybody who doesn't like it is free to simply "exit" and read somebody else's blog!

I recently saw the fabulous movie "Julie & Julia" which tells two stories side by side: the story of how Julia Child (in the 40's and 50's) learned how to cook, wrote her book and BECAME the Julia Child we all know and love. Interwoven is the true story of a young woman (a BLOGGER) who simply cooks her way thru Julia Child's famous French cookbook and blogs about it and learns more about herself in the process. Many critics referred to her as a "whiny blogger" which I think is really unfair. This isn't merely "the Julia Child story" it's Julia Child's story told thru another woman's eyes (and kitchen). An interesting concept. Julia Child is played by the wonderful Meryl Streep and the girl (Julie) is played by the delightful Amy Adams (Disney's ENCHANTED princess).

I've met both women and am fans of both of them. I first met Meryl Streep as a young teenager when she was on Broadway in The Happy End at the Martin Beck Theatre, now the Hirschfeld. I hadn't yet moved to New York permanently...I was visiting a woman in her dressing room (Grayson Hall)who was the leading lady in the show and Meryl was the soprano ingenue (she sings!), freshly out of YALE, and still hadn't been stolen away by Hollywood. She was down-to-earth and lovely as I recall. Years later I had a teensy-weensy part in the movie SHE DEVIL with Meryl and she was just as lovely to me on set. She remembered our meeting (or said she did anyway). I've also met her at industry events and screenings. Both ladies (Meryl and Amy) are total pros...first on the set, completely rehearsed and ready to go, however many takes are needed.

Manhattan Island-a brief chronology/time line

2009-04-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

Manhattan Island Chronology—Some basic dates to make it all make sense

1600’s and earlier- Manhattan Island inhabited by Lenape Indians. Used as a hunting ground-14 square miles, 62 bodies of water including streams, creeks, ponds, lakes, swamps. By modern times, the island is 22 square miles with landfill all around.
1626-Dutch West India Company establishes New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan. Shortly afterward, Harlem and other country towns established on the island.
1664-British take over New Amsterdam, renaming in New-York. Within a few years, most of Manhattan is parceled out in land grants and the real estate booms: farms, villages and country estates cover Manhattan, north of the baby Metropolis “New-York” (still hyphenated).
1703-Bloomindale Road is built, along the lines of an old Indian trail now called Broadway.
1753-New York’s FIRST Broadway theatre is built: The Park Theatre.
1776-Revolutionary War rages all around New York…the city is burned on Sept. 4, many people flee north to the countryside and across the rivers to New-Jersey and Brooklyn.
1789-George Washington inaugurated in New York on Wall Street. New York is the nation’s first capitol.
1792-New York Stock Exchange founded on Wall Street.
1795-Yellow Fever epidemic sweeps New York City. Thousands die.
1804-Alexander Hamilton killed in duel with Aaron Burr.
1806-The Staten Island Ferry is started by 15-year old Cornelius Vanderbilt, beginning the legendary Vanderbilt fortune.
1811-Commissioner’s Plan is adopted, laying out Manhattan’s system of streets and avenues by John Randall, but it will be decades before most of these streets are anything more than lines on a map. The island’s hills are gradually graded and flattened.
1821-The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum is opened on the site of what is now Columbia University and St. John the Divine. The area in the country, near the suburbs of Harlem, Manhattanville and Bloomingdale.
1825-Erie Canal opens which connects New York’s harbor to the vast mid-west and west of the growing country.
1826-Lord & Taylor (New York’s oldest dept. store) is founded.
1827-Slavery is abolished in New York.
1837-Tiffany’s is founded
1838-The Croton Aqueduct is built, opening in 1842, giving New York City fresh clean water from the mountains upstate—just what it needs to thrive as a modern city. Public bath houses and decorative fountains open all over.
1850-Cast Iron Buildings become all the rage. Pre-fab construction.
1852-Elevator invented in New York City by Elijah Otis.
1853-Cornelius Vanderbilt consolidates 12 railroads into The New York Central Railroad, later builds Grand Central.
1856-New York City acquires the land to build Central Park.
1858-Macy’s founded.
1867-Nation’s first Elevated trains built in New York City.
1868-Broadway is opened, replacing the old Bloomingdale Road.
1872-78- Sewers and water mains are laid in most of the streets, more to follow.
1870’s-80’s-Improved city services: electricity, trash pickup and more.
1883-Brooklyn Bridge opens, connecting the two cities…a 17-year construction project.
1884-The Dakota building, kicking off luxury apartment houses on the West Side.
1886-Statue of Liberty unveiled.
1888-Great Blizzard of 1888 happens in March, killing dozens of New Yorkers and paralyzing the city. City Council decides that all electric cables, telegraph, etc. are placed UNDER-ground.
1880’s-‘90’s-Upper Westside develops into an elegant residential district for “new” money as opposed to the “old” money districts on the Upper Eastside.
1892-Ellis Island opens to process immigrants.
1898-Harlem, Brooklyn and other areas vote to become part of the new 5-borough metropolis New York City.
1900-Subway construction is begun…3 separate lines built by private enterprise, later incorporated into a city service as the MTA. Subway construction spurs a huge growth of more and bigger apartment buildings in the far-reaching parts of the city which will now be easily accessible. IRT is first to open.
1902-First skyscraper opens: The Flat-Iron Building.
1907-Pennsylvania Station
1912-Titanic sinks, taking many of New York’s wealthy and famous citizens: John Jacob Astor and many others.
1913-Income tax and other taxes along with zoning law changes cause the giant mansions of the rich to come tumbling down (or turn into tax-free buildings).
1915-Harlem begins changing from an all-white enclave to become the most famous black community in America.
1913-1920’s-Huge luxury apartment buildings go up around Central Park.
1929-1938-Rockefeller Center constructed, re-inventing a huge section of midtown.
1931-The Empire State Building opens during the Great Depression, the tallest structure in the world for 42 years. For many years it’s only 10% occupied, nicknaming it The Empty State Bldg.
1932-Eighth Avenue subway line opens along Central Park West.
1934-LaGuardia Airport opened
1940-Ninth Avenue Elevated in closed and torn down.
1945-Many latinos from the Caribbean become the newest immigrants to settle in NYC.
1950’s-City is prosperous and thriving, many people leave for the expanding suburbs.
1960’s-Vietnam War, Flower Children, much social change begun.
1969-Stonewall Riots, beginning the modern era of Gay Rights.
1970’s-City Fiscal crisis. Drugs, crime, deterioration and the abandonment of buildings besets various neighborhoods.
1973-World Trade Center constructed.
1990’s-City attracts new businesses and private investment and real estate thrives. 42nd Street is restored and the city becomes cleaner and safer than in decades.
2001-World Trade Center attacked by terrorists.

Natasha Richardson Dies Tragically--Star Lived on Rich & Famous Tour Route in New York City near Central Park

2009-03-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Like everyone else in New York, I am sadded and grief-stricken at the sudden death of beautiful star Natasha Richardson, wife of Liam Neeson, daughter of Vanessa Redgrave. Last night the lights of Broadway dimmed for a minute for the great star (winner of the 1998 Tony Award in Cabaret). Her friends such as Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick turned out on West 45^th Street to witness the event and share in their sadness. Only 45 years old, the papers have been filled with stories and pictures of this lovely woman who I so enjoyed in her many stage and film appearances. I didn’t know her, although I was acquainted with her mother Vanessa Redgrave (a lovely, warm, quirky person) but everyone says Natasha was truly a delightful person and the world is certainly a sadder place without her.

Natasha Richardson resided in a high rise on my Rich and Famous bus tour and Central Park West walking tour routes. She originally lived at 91 Central Park West (with celebs such as Armani and Imus) but several years ago they moved to their new place a couple of blocks away in a much more modern building. The new building is jammed with celebrities such as Regis Philbin, Alan Alda, Celine Dion, Howard Stern, Julie Andrews and many others…reportedly all the building residents are shocked and saddened by her sudden, accidental death at age 45 leaving behind her husband and two boys, age 12 and 13.

I lost my partner of nearly 10 years suddenly and I know the pain and grief one goes thru in this type of situation. I only hope the media leaves Neeson and the boys alone to grieve in private. It takes years to work thru this kind of pain. It’s like a hole in the center of your being (your heart?) and over time if you are grieving properly the hole gets smaller but never entirely goes away. Blessings to the Neeson-Redgrave-Richardson clan.

Henry V; The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd; ENTER LAUGHING; The Story of My Life

2009-03-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

HENRY V by Shakespeare
Brought to NYC by the Guthrie and NYC’s Acting Company, this was a fabulous production of this Shakespearean classic…the young guy who plays Henry (Mathew Amendt) is destined for great stardom in movies & TV (you heard it here first). This is a star-making role (it’s where Kenneth Branagh was first spotlighted). I was fortunate to have a friend who writes for theatre publications invite me to the last performance on last Sunday afternoon. Completely “stripped down” Shakespeare…the entire world is created by the actors, costumes, a simple stockade set with openings and lighting. It’s a bit confusing because 12 actors play ALL the roles: noblemen, soldiers on both sides, royalty, etc. but I suppose to do Shakespeare these days you’ve got to be economical.
THE WIDOWING OF MRS. HOLROYD by D.H. Lawrence
Another small production, this is a small show at the tiny MINT THEATRE, which is located up in an office building on West 43rd St. I attended this with a friend who is a critic and theatre writer and there were several other “press” people in the audience that day such as the TIME OUT New York theatre reviewer. This is a dark play with a simple premise: In 1910, an English woman who is caught up in a bad marriage to a coal miner, who is a drunk and philanderer, fantasizes about his death and is shocked when it happens. The play’s dramatic highlight is when the husband’s “corpse” is brought into the house and spread out on the floor for the wife to clean him and prepare him for the funeral…an old practice which modern audiences are not aware of. Apparently Lawrence only wrote a few plays and this is an early one…the subject matter shocked people at the time and he had trouble initially getting it produced. Again, some of the best acting in New York is Off-Broadway and this cast is no exception.
ENTER LAUGHING
Finally, the small YORK THEATRE COMPANY has a hit…a BIG Hit with critics AND audiences. In any other economy, it would transfer immediately to Broadway but producers these days are skittish, so we must wait and see. This is a sweet, old-fashioned musical about a young man, “David Kolowitz”(played by Josh Grisetti) who is dreaming of leaving 174th Street in the Bronx and getting into the theatre. Apparently, it’s thinly based on the life of Carl Reiner. Other actors include Jill Eikenberry and her real-life husband Michael Tucker (L.A. Law) as the parents. It’s a very thin story, really just an excuse for some laughs and nice songs with great scaled-down production values for a small theatre. Just goes to show you don’t need a ton of money for scenery to get the point across. Watch for this show to move eventually…especially if they can keep Grisetti.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
Last month I got a free ticket at Actors Equity to see THE STORY OF MY LIFE at the Booth Theatre on Broadway…a sweet little two-person show about two lifelong friends told in flashbacks. The show opens with one friend writing another friend’s obituary and Eulogy. It’s a bit sappy and maudlin and feels like you’ve seen it before. The show closed only a couple days after opening, which I could have predicted. The music feels like the composer Neil Bartram is aping Sondheim and it’s irritating that so many young composers do this. My friend leaned over during one song and said…”that melody…isn’t that directly from FINISHING THE HAT from Sunday in the Park With George?” It’s a sweet show but I knew it was too small to last in a big Broadway house…it should have opened in a small space such as the Westside Arts Theatre or Manhattan Theatre Club. The two actors are FABULOUS…Will Chase and Malcolm Gets…just to prove that if you have wonderful people, even pedantic crap is watchable and has “heart.” I leaned over to my friend and said “this show was obviously written by somebody who went to a good music school and knows how to turn out a lavish score, but is ANYthing memorable?” So many young composers today forget what Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin knew…give the audience a song or two (or three) to hum and take home with them!! MUSICALS first and foremost should have some good MUSIC not just endless recitative aping the best of Sondheim. Recitative should be used sparingly, not making up the entire show. This was directed by Broadway composing veteran Richard Maltby Jr. who knows the value of a good tune and should have sent Bartram back to the piano to come up with a good tune or two.

Winter Spent Seeing Lots of Theatre Around Town: First Up: LOOKING FOR THE PONY, OTHELLO, HEROES

2009-03-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

Lately I’ve been spending the quiet winter months going to various intimate, Off-Broadway shows which can be a crap shoot…some are wonderful, some not so good. I’ve had a great lucky streak, however and am doing a “round up” here:
LOOKING FOR THE PONY by Andrea Lepcio.
Small show (4 people in the cast) at a tiny theatre on 74th and Broadway about two sisters, one of who has been diagnosed with cancer and is dying…and her sister who is helping her live her life and die with dignity. This feels autobiographical…I wonder if the playwright herself lived thru this, since the “sister” in the story is a writer…hmmm. There are two additional people in the cast and they play ALL the other people (doctors, nurses, neighbors, patients, etc.) which adds a light touch to this serious show.
OTHELLO by William Shakespeare
My friend Elizabeth Rouse is in this! Playing at the intimate DUKE THEATRE (Doris Duke’s $$$ funded it) on West 42nd St., this OTHELLO is one to see…powerful, well-staged, riveting acting by mostly unknown professionals. My friend Elizabeth has a small role (Bianca, the courtesan) but she’s just one reason to see this stripped down production which isn’t weighed down with a lot of scenery and production values…simply speaking, it’s Shakespeare done well by people who know how (directed by Arin Arbus). It originally was a limited run and recently closed but got such good notices in the Times and other papers , Elizabeth tells me it’s re-opening in April!
HEROES by Gerald Sibleyras, translated by Tom Stoppard
One of the good things about a shaky economy where big, expensive shows and musicals are being scrapped, is really good actors are suddenly available for small, quality productions in tiny theatres. Finely acted, small production with big Broadway names (John Cullum, Ron Holgate, Jonathan Hogan) and a heart. It’s a French show that was translated by Stoppard and won the Olivier award in London, but this is the first NYC production. It’s about a group of elderly men in a retirement home for old soldiers (set in the 1950s) and how they are slowly coming to grip with their own impending deaths. It makes the audience think, because aren’t we all eventually coming to grips with this?
FOOTNOTE: John Cullum is currently in two New York shows at once…he’s in AUGUST OSAGE COUNTY at the Music Box Theatre on W. 45th St. with Estelle Parsons, Elizabeth Ashley and a great cast. His character dies after the first scene, which allows him to leave the theatre and go 3 blocks down to West 42nd St. to do HEROES. I spoke to Cullum at the reception after the show and he said he was hoping the press would downplay this because audiences seeing AUGUST OSAGE COUNTY aren’t aware that the character he plays dies until much later in the play.

Blithe Spirit with Lansbury- A True Late Winter Treat on Broadway PLUS comments on Ebersole, Everett, Lane, Lansbury

2009-03-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Saw Blithe Spirit last night starring Angela Lansbury, Rupert Everett, Christine Ebersole and a great cast in this fabulous comedy by Noel Coward from 1945, now revived again on Broadway with just the right “light” touch. A wonderful treat for audiences who need to laugh and forget their own problems.
I actually did this play years ago in stock and the last time I saw it was with Geraldine Page as the dotty medium Madame Arcati (the summer she died in the role) at the Alvin Theatre. It’s still early in previews and the actors (notably Rupert Everett) were screwing up and dropping lines here and there but recovering nicely, as true stage pros do. Even though in previews, there were celebrities all around, giving this revival the whiff of a 2009 “event on the verge.”
I’ve admired Angela Lansbury from afar for years and try to never miss this working actress when she appears anywhere…but I’ve only had one personal contact with her: Years ago I attended a Christmas party tossed by Angela Lansbury on the stage of the (then Uris) Gershwin Theatre where she was doing Sweeney Todd.
FOOTNOTE: I still recall what a lovely lady she is…charming, genuine, chatty (even to newcomers), and a perfect hostess. I was only a cast member’s “date” but she went out of her way to make me feel comfortable and introduced me to her family members and other actors and crew present. Angela wore a pink chiffon “scarve” dress (remember those?) and the menu was Prime Rib, new potatoes, brussel sprouts and for dessert, piles of English trifle. It was served by a catering staff dressed like English maids and butlers and she assisted them clearing plates and refilling drinks, etc. She filled the Sweeney Todd prop oven with Xmas/party favors for everyone and had a DJ onstage spinning records (I still recall Sondheim and Len Cariou dancing to “I Will Survive.”)
It’s been fun to see her age over the years and grow into “old lady” roles with grace. The rest of the cast in this is also quite wonderful. Ebersole plays the deceased first wife Elvira who comes back in spirit form…the “blithe” spirit of the title. My only personal contact with Christine Ebersole was at a couple of American Theatre Wing events and she’s not a nice person but charming and talented in everything she tackles. She’s one of those self-promoting actresses (rhymes with rich) who must know exactly who you are and what you can do for her before she wastes a minute with you. And speaking of bitches, anybody in the gay world can tell you stories about Rupert Everett, who's been known to been to snarl at tourists in his West Village neighborhood while walking his dog.
Lansbury (as the eccentric medium Madame Arcati), Jayne Atkinson (as the second wife) and especially Susan Louise O’Connor as the maid are truly solid and hold the play together with their wonderful timing and professionalism. O'Connor makes the most of the role of the slow-witted maid. One of the people in my party (retired Broadway producer Michael Frasier (Lena Horne: the Lady and her Music)is not known for compliments unless he really means it, leaned over and said quietly: “this a really good production: the casting, the set, the lighting, the direction…everything” High praise from an old pro in the theatre.
FOOTNOTE: STOP THE PRESSES!!
Nathan Lane sat near me and actually seemed pleasant to strangers who spoke to him! So unexpected… the last time I saw him was at a bar in Chelsea all alone drinking until he couldn’t stand. When the bartender tried to help him get a cab home, he jerked away, said some nasty comments and staggered out of the bar and down W. 22nd Street. So much for the “great star” Nathan Lane (Joe Lane from Jersey City), I thought. Right after that the NY Times printed an interview with Lane lamenting why he is alone and can’t find a boyfriend. I laughed out loud, threw down the Times and said “it’s because you’re a nasty drunk and a jerk.” He seems to have changed..so docile...Perhaps he’s made a trip to Betty Ford or SilverHill?

New York City Guide Jim Dykes says: "Bernie Madoff's penthouse a HUGE hit on the Rich & Famous Tours of New York City!"

2009-03-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

Bernie Madoff’s posh Eastside building where the Ponzie-schemer has been under house arrest for several months has become one of the most requested sites on Jim Dykes’ New York City tours as well as his Rich and Famous New York City tours. Madoff gave himself up 3 months ago after his $50Billion scheme was revealed due to the plummeting economy. The building is located on East 64th Street, which is notable for having an extremely high number of billionaire residents. Television host Matt Lauer, of NBC’s TODAY SHOW (not a billionaire) is a resident of the building and is said to “despise” the attention Madoff has brought to the building. “On many days, there are huge crowds of TV crews, TV satellite trucks, security guards, reporters and photographers, policemen, bystanders and MY tourists outside the building,” says Jim Dykes. The rich ladies and gentlemen in that neighborhood are furious…they can’t wait for Madoff to be hauled off to jail. Other celebs in that area include: Caroline Kennedy, Joan Rivers, Kim Cattrall, columnist Cindy Adams and many others.”
“Everybody wants to know about Bernie Madoff, his fancy penthouse, his office building and information on his various victims, many of whom are neighbors on the Upper Eastside,” says Dykes, one of the guides and co-founders of Rich and Famous Tours, the “Celebrity-themed” tour of New York City. Madoff’s office building is 11 blocks south and one avenue over…it’s the famed Lipstick Building, designed by famed architect Phillip Johnson with John Burgee, and which is shaped, aptly enough, like a tube of lipstick. It is said that Madoff would walk home very often, since the two buildings are fairly close together…perhaps a 15 minute walk from his penthouse on E. 64th St.
“People always want to know about the grim, sordid things mentioned in the newspapers on my tour” says Dykes. “ A year ago on Halloween celebrity realtor Linda Stein was bludgeoned to death in her Fifth Avenue penthouse and EVERYone wanted to know about it. And when Heath Ledger overdosed in his SoHo loft, it became the #1 location people wanted to see on the tours. People have accused me of being morbid, but I’m only giving the customers what they want, just like the TV reporters, with their fake sadness when reporting a story. A friend of mine who used to work at ABC-TV Channel 7 Eyewitness News in Manhattan told me: “If it bleeds, it leads” meaning of course, that bloody murder scenes and other grim locations ALWAYS begin the news telecasts.”

St. John the Divine Organizes Special 2-Day Tour for Jim and NYC Tour Guides

2009-03-07T23:03:00.001-08:00

Recently a group of New York City tour guides were invited to increase our knowledge of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—the “unfinished” Cathedral-- by attending a specially organized two-day seminar on two of the coldest, snowiest days of the winter. Day One, in the morning we had a general highlights tour of the cathedral. The guide Kevin Blum, was a very nice young fellow from Iowa, who had followed his studies (and his girlfriend) to New York City. His tour was fine and efficient, but not for a group of well-read New York guides who had been leading groups to the Cathedral for many years. In our group alone, we calculated about 100 years of NYC guide experience, including myself, Mike Brennan, Tour Goddess Jane Marx and Juliette Frydman. Kevin soon began letting us all contribute and embellish his memorized accounts of Cathedral history, including the struggle between two architectural firms in the 1890s which ended up with part of the Cathedral being Romanesque Revival and part being French Gothic Revival—two styles that usually clash but are unusually harmonious in St. John the Divine.
After lunch, we had a chance, casual meeting with the Dean of the Cathedral (an Arian from Darien, Connecticut) and were able to ask any question we liked. Following this, we had a special Numerology tour of the cathedral with an expert. Various numbers are repeated quite a bit for various religious reasons (4 signs of the cross, 7 deadly sins, 12 apostles, etc.). It doesn’t sound interesting but the numerologist, a young volunteer named Howell, was excellent and spoke compellingly for 2 hours.
The next morning began with an in-depth tour of the fabulous stained glass windows, and their stories, such as the Media window with its images of Jack Benny on the radio and the Gutenberg printing press. Also, the American History window donated by the Astor family in memory of John Jacob Astor, who died on the Titanic. It’s sinking is depicted in the lower right corner of the window.
After lunch on the second day, they saved the best for last: the one thing I’d been wanting to do for 20 years: The Vertical Tour, in which we would be permitted to venture thru locked doors and to climb up more than a dozen flights to view the Cathedral from above. The guide distributed flashlights and told us the rules: We climbed up and up, …first stop, 4 flights up to view the nave from a balcony landing. Second stop, a few more flights to look down on the altar from 8 floors up, then another few flights up to the top of the ceiling, 12 flights up. Along the way, the guide spent a few minutes at each landing discussing the art and the windows from this wonderful vantage point, rarely seen by most visitors close up.
Just as I thought we’d be heading downstairs, the guide led us up thru more passages and more flights to the huge attic area (who knew it existed?) above the cathedral ceiling, where we viewed the giant iron supports and the Guastavino tile ceiling from above. Then she took us up even FURTHER…this time to the very roof of the Cathedral…to the stone balconies that ring the building and we viewed the Morningside Heights campus (and neighborhood) for blocks…truly breathtaking. Of course my camera’s battery died after only a few pictures (isn’t that always the case?) but a few pictures survived of the gorgeous limestone carvings and the view into the Nave from above.

Liz Smith signed her book Natural Blonde to Jim Dykes: For Jim: One of My Stars!

2009-03-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

Jim Dykes, NYC Guide, saw FIRST PREVIEW of new Jane Fonda Broadway show 33 VARIATIONS and says "It's a Hit!!"

2009-02-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

New York City Tour UPDATE from Jim Dykes, guide:

“It’s a HIT! Buy Your tickets NOW!" Last night I went to the FIRST performance of the new Moises Kaufman play 33 VARIATIONS starring Jane Fonda on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. I knew by the middle of Act One that we were watching a HIT…even though it was the only first public preview, which is like a dress rehearsal with an audience. The story is compelling, the staging is complicated but interesting, and the performances are FIRST-rate. Kaufman is a genius…he’s taken a subject revolving around a specific point of history involving a classical music composition two centuries old, and woven a quite interesting story together with a modern story.

The play is about a musicologist, Dr. Katherine Brandt (Fonda) who has spent her life specializing in Beethoven to a point where he dominates her conscious and sub-conscious life. As the play opens, we find Brandt has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and is slowly beginning to lose control of her bodily functions…but her lifelong study of Beethoven has her determined to solve an old mystery which has baffled colleagues for centuries: Namely, what was it about an ordinary little waltz that inspired one of Beethoven’s greatest works: The famous 33 Variations. She dedicates her last few coherent months on this research, which will possibly be her last music thesis, and is determined to complete the research which includes a months-long research trip to Bonn, Germany to the Beethoven archives (where the play is set, surrounded by boxes of music files, diaries and sketch books).

The interesting twist: the play is set simultaneously in the present as well as the past (1819-1822); this is the era when Beethoven is slowly going deaf while composing some of his greatest triumphs including the 33 Variations. What is wonderful is: you don’t have to be a classical music enthusiast to appreciate this very human story…Kaufman has presented it in very

The staging very complex, with scenes from the present overlapping into scenes from two centuries earlier, back and forth and sometimes happening onstage simultaneously. In another director’s hands, this may have been confusing and difficult to comprehend but Kaufman is a (young) master.

The story is complicated a bit by Dr. Brandt’s daughter Clara (the fine Samantha Mathis) and their lifelong mother-daughter struggles as well as her new romance with her mother’s male nurse played by Colin Hanks (yes, his father is Tom Hanks) in a small, unimportant role. However, if I were a betting man, I would say this show is being produced by Hanks’ Hollywood money. His son is fine, but any 30 year old male member of Equity could have done as well, if not better.

Standouts to watch for include Susan Kellermann in a wonderful turn as a humorless German PhD music researcher who eventually becomes friends with Brandt. Also watch for Zach Grenier as Ludwig Von Beethoven reincarnated.

As I said, no need to wait for the New York Times to declare it when it opens : “33 VARIATIONS IS A HIT! Get your tickets immediately!"

Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are FABULOUS in the new film DOUBT

2008-11-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

Last night I (Jim Dykes) was invited to attend a Screen Actors Guild screening of the new movie DOUBT, starring acting heavyweights Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. OH MY GOD…what a great film! It still hasn’t been released until later this month..this screening was for Screen Actors Guild members and included a Q&A following the film with screenwriter/director John Patrick Shanley (MOONSTRUCK) and his friend, fellow director Norman Jewison. I saw the Shanley play on Broadway several years ago starring Cherry Jones in the Streep role and the story has been largely re-written, “opened up” and re-adapted for the screen. If you don’t know it, the play is set in a Catholic parish church and school in the Bronx circa 1964.
Hoffman plays the priest Father Flynn and Meryl Streep is the feisty, elderly head nun, Sister Aloysius, who strongly accuses the priest of improper conduct (pedophilia?) when he be-friends a 12 year old black boy, who stands out in the all-white school. But she still has some “doubts”, hence the title. Amy Adams (so wonderful last year as a Disney princess in ENCHANTED), plays the young nun, Sister James, who sees the good in everybody and really doesn’t want to believe such things are possible in the priest.
The movie is fast-paced and it’s absolutely thrilling to watch the two pros Hoffman and Streep joust verbally back-and-forth. Oscars will be nominated all around, including a supporting Oscar for Viola Davis, as the boy’s mother. Tears running down her face, her performance is superb as a woman who only wants the best for her little boy, whom she already suspects is growing up to be a gay man.
In the Q&A afterword, Shanley mentioned that when he was in high school, a well-known gay teacher had mentored him, recognizing his writing abilities early on. Shanley said there were no sexual overtures, and he wasn’t even aware until years later what was happening, but he has come to realize that many people have told him since then that they have made this sort of “bargain” with an older, more experienced person.
Don’t miss this film…it’s only 95 minutes long and every minute is riveting. One of the best films of this year, 2008.
Every time I see a Streep movie, not only do I marvel at her performances and her ability to completely assume different identities, I also recall meeting her years ago when I was a high school kid in New York visiting friends. Meryl Streep was fresh out of Yale and was doing lots of theatre including musicals, because she was a talented coloratura soprano from the age of 13 who studied with the great coloratura opera coach Estelle Liebling.
Grayson Hall was an actress who I knew thru friends and she was the leading lady in a Broadway show called Happy End, a three-act musical comedy by Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht which first opened in Berlin. It was playing in New York on W. 45th Street at the Martin Beck Theatre (now The Al Hirschfield) and on a hot summer night, I sat in Grayson’s dressing room drinking coca cola and trying to cool off, while meeting all her co-stars as they arrived and signed in on the backstage call board, including the young, unknown soprano ingénue: Meryl Streep!! I was completely blown away by her performance that night and then several years later when she began making movies, I remembered our evening in Grayson’s dressing room that hot summer night.
Then years later, I got a small (tiny) role in the film SHEDEVIL starring Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep! It was nice being on the set with her, watching her professionalism up close and mentioning our long-ago meeting in Grayson’s dressing room, which she immediately recalled.

Rich and Famous Tour in New York spots numerous celebs

2008-11-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

WOW…this weekend the Rich & Famous Tour was hot and Jim Dykes guide to the stars! We kept running into celebrities all over New York…East Side, West Side…all around the town! Friday on the Upper Westside my group from San Francisco when we ran into Barbara Walters in front of the ABC Studio complex. We turned around and suddenly there was Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner with baby Violet, and awhile later we bumped into old film star Connie Stevens, completely overdressed in fur (it was 54 degrees!) while gabbing on her cellphone. Connie has an apt. over there by ABC Studios even though her main home is in L.A. She lives in the same luxury building as Howard Stern, Regis Philbin, Celine Dion, Julie Andrews and others. We saw Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon hopping a taxi with her grocery bags in front of the Columbus Circle Whole Foods store.
On Saturday morning we were touring thru the Upper Eastside (E. 71st Street to be exact) and bumped into world-famous syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith, walking her dog, obviously having just rolled out of bed. She was NOT amused when I acknowledged her (politely) to my group of assorted tourists. As we reached Park Avenue and East 69th Street, we ran into ABC News reporter/anchor Cynthia McFadden, anxiously flagging a taxi down.
A few blocks later we passed David Koch, multi-billionaire, the richest man in New York, originally from Wichita, Kansas, who now lives at the formidable fortress 740 Park Avenue (“The Best Address”) where Jackie Kennedy grew up. On Columbus Circle we ran into someone I could actually introduce them to, my friend Dick Scanlan, co-author of the Broadway hit Thoroughly Modern Millie.
My group was thoroughly convinced that New York City is truly Never Never Land!

Christmas in New York is here already

2008-11-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

The Christmas season is almost here in New York. I've been noticing this week that the trees around town are suddenly appearing (more and more) to be set with the white, twinkling fairy lights, the ice rinks are up and running...Rockefeller Center, Central Park and now Bryant Park as well. More and more Christmas displays are popping up in store windows and the big thing: The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes, Santa Claus and The Living Nativity, is back onstage for another year! Ho, Ho and HO.

It may be only Nov. 9, but in New York it's already Christmas in Manhattan.

We're gearing up for another Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and that brings me back to the four times I participated in the parade:
1. On the Diana Ross float
2. On the Cinderella float (I was the coachman)
3. On the New York Daily News float.
4. And my final year, as the toy soldier saluting on The Santa Claus float at the end of the parade.

Good memories!

The Seagull on Broadway with Kristin Scott Thomas

2008-11-04T21:46:00.000-08:00

Chekhov's The Seagull on Broadway with Kristin Scott Thomas (remember when she won the Oscar for The English Patient?) is a FABULOUS night in the theatre...wonderful. Don't miss it! It's at the Walter Kerr Theatre on West 48th Street near Broadway, just off Times Square. Also in the cast: Peter Sarsgaard.
Carey Mulligan as the haunting beauty "Nina" is a name to remember. We figured that Election Night was a good night to try for discount seats to this HOT Broadway ticket and we were right! $100 seats for $34 and there were lots of empty seats all around us, while the world outside had their Obama Orgasm.

Good theatre on Broadway now....

2008-11-04T10:17:00.002-08:00

Good theatre on Broadway now!

August Osage County, Speed The Plow, Dividing the Estate, more:

In the last month I've been trying to ignore the dire predictions from the media that we're going to all be living in cardboard boxes due to the economic crisis by running off to see as much theatre as possible. The good news about the economic peril is: everything on Broadway is HALF PRICE right now!

AUGUST-OSAGE COUNTY- Wonderful family black comedy-drama. Do not miss this...fabulous. Came to Broadway from its original run in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre. Tracy Letts' play is warm, funny, sad, shocking, and much more...the story of a very dysfunctional family in Oklahoma. Currently stars a large cast including Estelle Parsons, Robert Foxworth, Brian Kerwin and a few of the fabulous originals from Steppenwolf.

SPEED THE PLOW- the David Mamet play has been revived with a stellar cast. When I saw it originally back in the 1980s the power of the play was "overshadowed" by the casting of rock star Madonna...it was known as "the Madonna play"...this is no longer true...the story of fast-talking Hollywood producers is fast-paced with thrilling verbal acrobatics. Do not miss. Stars Jeremy Piven (from ENTOURAGE), Broadway star Raoul Esparza (who I met years ago thru friends when he first landed in NYC from Chicago), and Elizabeth Moss (Peggy from AMC's hit show MAD MEN).

DIVIDING THE ESTATE- Another wonderful black comedy about a dysfunctional family and their attempts to get along---with or without an inheritance. By Horton Foote, author of The Trip To Bountiful. Stars Elizabeth Ashley, Penny Fuller (a personal acquaintance), Gerald McRaney, Hallie Foote and others.

AMERICAN BUFFALO- Another Mamet play...revival of a play originally done by Al Pacino. Unfortunately, although the cast is first rate, the production is not thrilling...it's a little show that should have stayed in a little theatre Off Broadway somewhere. It's about small time con men/criminals planning a robbery. And that's all...nothing else happens. I've saved you $50. The actors are good...Cedric the Entertainer & John Leguizamo completely over-shadow young Haley Joel Osment (I see dead people), who is now grown up and attending NYU downtown. It's at the lovely old haunted Belasco Theatre on W. 44th St. The best part of the evening was before the show started when the announcer began saying: Mr. Mamet would like you all to turn your FUCKING cellphones off and KEEP them off. Thank You. I lost it, as did most of the audience. If only the show had that much punch and surprise.

Two weeks ago I went to ON BROADWAY, a one night celebration and fundraising show at CITY CENTER dedicated to "Career Transition for Dancers 23rd Anniversary Jubilee" starring Angela Lansbury, Tommy Tune, Brooke Shields, Jane Krakowski, Cheyenne Jackson, Baryshnikov and a host of Broadway names and talent. Lots of fun, great Broadway production numbers such as the thrilling opening tap number of 42nd Street, the Steam Heat number from Pajama Game and the Two Lost Souls number from Damn Yankees.

Last night I saw the latest Broadway tribute to songwriters David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr., held at Merkin Recital Hall, across from Juilliard. Recently I attended the Tribute to Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt. This is a great format...on one side of the stage is a "living room set" ala the Tonight Show and on the other side of the stage is a piano and combo and a series of Broadway performers come out and entertain us with selections composed by this evening's guests, as they reminisce and tell funny stories of their careers.

Good theatre in town now!

2008-11-04T10:17:00.001-08:00

Lehman Brothers Bailed Out by Barclays Bank-

2008-09-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-06T10:33:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

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!"

HAIR in Central Park's Delacorte Theatre Friday Night

2008-08-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

Friday night-Aug. 20, a bunch of us went to a “be-in” or a “love-in” I suppose…my friend Peter was able to score some tickets for us to one of the hottest tickets in New York currently: The New York Shakespeare Festival’s summer production of HAIR, performed in Central Park at the Delacorte Theatre outside under the stars (or rainclouds as it was). My friend Diane, who accompanied us, exclaimed “oh my Gosh…everybody at work wants to know how you got tickets! It’s really a hot ticket!” Why she knows people from Rich and Famous Tours (www.richandfamoustours.com !)

If you've never seen a show in Central Park...it's definitely "an event." A wonderful setting under the stars (or clouds as it was Friday). I've seen Meryl Streep and many others for FREE in Central Park...one of the last, good, free things in New York City!

At first it appeared as if the evening would be rained out…we were armed with umbrellas and towels…just in case…but after a 20 minute “rain delay” the show proceeded with only occasional light drizzle that popped up during several segments, but not enough to cancel the show. It was such a literal love-in…I kept running into old friends in the audience like Nina Fineman from years ago when she and I were both pages in Rockefeller Center…Nina at NBC Studios and me at Radio City Music Hall next door.

Nina and I begin kibbitzing…she tells me her little sis Carol (once an assistant in P.R. for the Public Theatre, is now working as a film and event producer with our old pal and co-worker, the successful producer Scott Sanders…my gosh, what a small world. Also my old friend Jack was sitting in our exact same row…Jack and I have been trying to get together for lunch for YEARS and there he is..just a few seats away. Jack works for Superman (well, D.C. Comics actually) and he is harder to get in touch with than a super hero. Diane (a HAIR veteran and former flower child from the 1960’s)was thrilled to see old friends of hers sitting just in front of us. My friend Zora was there and, as it turns out, was a veteran of the original Broadway production of HAIR! Who knew!

How is the production? The performances were “fabulous” and that is an understatement—such a wonderful time-capsule peek into the world of hippies, flower-children and 1960’s anti-Vietnam War protests, today relevant because of anti-war political preaching (doesn't every generation have a war they hated?). Everything old is new again it appears. Much of the audience of liberal New Yorkers (obvious when any anti-establishment comments in the show were met by so much foot-stomping and applause it was hard to hear the show). The cast was huge…28 I think…which is big for Broadway or even Off-Broadway.

The lead role of Berger was played by a spot-on Will Swenson, who I saw earlier this year in 110 IN THE SHADE on Broadway with Audra McDonald in a completely different type of role. The lead role of Claude (the hippie who has been drafted and ultimately ends up dying in Vietnam) was played with a sweet innocence and naïve quality by Christopher J. Hanke (a veteran of Broadway’s RENT)... filling in for Jonathan Groff who opened the show but rumors were flying he left to make a movie. There were 20 or 30 songs…mostly forgettable, but the hit songs are still there…Good Morning Starshine, Age of Aquarius, Let the Sun Shine In as well as the title song.

The kids in the cast had great voices and performed with ultimate exuberance which is essential because HAIR is not really a good show. It’s a landmark musical for many reasons…its songs, its themes of anti-establishment values, Vietnam War, sexuality, nudity and flower children were ground-breaking in the 1960s, especially for mainstream Broadway audiences used to MY FAIR LADY, OKLAHOMA and HELLO DOLLY (These audiences were probably shocked at performers in a Broadway show hurling abuse at their suburban way of life, but they still celebrated the show’s dated virtues of flower-power).

But today we can see HAIR for what it is…and for what it is NOT. It's not really a good, cohesive show: It’s a series of disjointed skits aimed at attacking and shocking its mainstream 1968 establishment audience. That’s why it’s essential that HAIR is done with really good Broadway talent so it can rise above its flimsy book and dated flower-power political message. HAIR is a total period piece designed to push buttons but quite adorable in its naive tone: Make Love, Not War. Nice idea if the world were a different kinda place. I kept thinking of Winston Churchill's famous paraphrased comment of Voltaire: If you're not liberal when you're young, you have no heart. But if you're not conservative by 40--you have no brain!
For private tours of New York, contact: www.RichAndFamousTours.com

The Re-Birth of Chelsea's Ladies Mile Historic Department Store District in New York City

2008-08-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Peter Allen said “everything old is new again,” and boy was he right. New York is one of those places that constantly re-invents itself and a good example of that is Chelsea’s LADIES MILE shopping district along Sixth Ave. Many years ago when I began leading personalized tours around the Apple (www.jimdykes.com and public tours: www.RichAndFamousTours.com )- I referred to the stretch of Sixth Avenue from 14th Street to 23rd Street as “The Graveyard of Old Department Stores” because of the huge behemoth buildings once built as a shopping “mecca” and long since deserted since many of the big stores followed “society” uptown or went out of business altogether. Many people don’t realize that years ago this was the “heart and soul” of New York City’s most glamourous shopping district, officially known as “The Ladies Mile” since in those days the bulk of shoppers were ladies, corseted into hoop skirts and bustles, and rushing about under the “El” or elevated train that bustled high above Sixth Avenue since 1869.
Today many of these stores are once again inhabited with modern chains but what were they originally? Here’s a rundown for you:
OLD NAVY (Sixth Ave. & 18th St.)--Originally The Price Brothers store (merged with McCreery’s next door) both of these were very popular stores for Upper Middle Class Shoppers. In LIFE WITH FATHER, there’s a famous chapter where “Mother” opens the family’s first charge account at McCreery’s on Sixth Ave.
THE CONTAINER STORE (Sixth Ave. & 18th)-Classic castiron front remains from the original B. ALTMAN’S, long before it moved up to 34th St. and Fifth Ave. Benjamin Altman was a lifelong bachelor retailer known for his exquisite since of good taste. Hmm. Altman’s team of delivery carriages were known for being lacquered maroon with high-stepping gray horses, with a flower in a holder on every carriage. Mr. Altman was known for being the first retailer in New York to shorten the work week from 70 hours to 50 hours and for being the first retailer to build an employee restroom AND subsidized cafeteria. Altman’s former carriage house down the block is now Metropolitan Pavilion, an event space.
BED, BATH & BEYOND, TJ MAX & FILENE’S BASEMENT (Sixth Ave/ 19th St.)- Originally built as SIEGEL COOPER & Assoc., the largest department store in the world at the time. Known for being the FIRST to offer THE FREE SAMPLE. Waiters would circulate thru the store offering FREE samples of chocolates, various edibles, etc. When one entered thru the Sixth Ave. entrance, you came down a marble staircase (now Filene’s escalators) into a wonderland of a store, with a Statue of Liberty in the center of the store surrounded by an ice cream parlor, decorated in colored lights. On the top of the store was a (now long gone) rooftop café with a view over Ladies Mile. The entire building went up in 8 months and was modeled after the architecture from the 1893 Chicago Exposition. The expression “WHITE ELEPHANT” was coined here. They promised patrons they could obtain ANYthing for them so a Fifth Avenue wag tested them by placing an order for a white elephant. Many months later the store telephoned the gentleman to tell him his white elephant had arrived from Africa…”what should we do with it?”

APEX TECHNICAL SCHOOL BUILDING & BALLYS—Originally known as SIMPSON, CRAWFORD, SIMPSON, the most elegant department store in New York. So elegant, in fact, that they never placed prices on items for fear of insulting their shoppers. It’s a quite elegant Italianate structure that is desperate for a makeover.
THE O’NEIL BUILDING CONDOS- originally Hugh O’Neill Department Store, a bargain store for the masses. O’Neill was another blustery Irishman like R.H. Macy and one was always trying to outdo the other one. O’Neill was a devoted Catholic but he was very open-minded with regard to one’s religion and insisted that his employees take off whatever religious holidays that their religions dictated (with pay).
FED EX, etc. (large buildings at 20th St. on Sixth Ave….east side of street) Originally Cooperman’s, the largest shoe emporium in New York.
Former BARNES & NOBLE SUPERSTORE (now vacant) (21st St.)- Originally ADAMS DRY GOODS- elegant dry goods emporium that featured an elegant garden courtyard interior for dining (still there). Also featured large display windows on the second and third floors for riders to window-shop from the elevated trains that passed up and down Sixth Ave.
STAPLES AND BURLINGTON COAT FACTORY (Sixth Ave. & 22nd St.)- Originally Ehrlich Brothers Dept. Store. Joshua Ehrlich’s daughter Julia married John Phillip Sousa, the “march king”….Ehrlich Brothers became famous for being the first dept. store to have special room where mothers could drop small children while they shopped in peace. It featured a clown and nanny to look after the children. They were also the first store to use “omnibus” type advertising.
Around the corner on 23rd Street, the buildings that once housed F.A.O. Schwarz, Macy’s, Arnold Constable, Lord & Taylor, Stewart’s and more are still standing, but used for different things such as HOME DEPOT.
It appears Peter Allen was RIGHT…everything old IS new again.
--Jim Dykes is a private guide/historian and the founder of Rich and Famous Tours (www.richandfamoustours.com ) a unique “niche” tour that shows off New York from both a historic and “celebrity” angle.

Spotting "Harry Potter" on West 22nd Street in New York City

2008-08-30T07:26:00.001-07:00

As readers of this blog on www.RichAndFamousTours.com know, I’m a creature of the grimy streets of New York City, leading Rich and Famous Tours all day and sometimes at night. Well, dear blog readers who are fans of “Harry Potter” or Daniel Radcliffe, you should know that there have been several “street sitings” of Harry/Daniel--all on West 22nd Street near Sixth Avenue. I spotted him once, nonchalantly strolling west, and a couple of friends of mine have reported seeing him—also on West 22nd Street—at various times of day and night. Everyone knows he’s in town for his Broadway debut in September in “Equus” at the Broadhurst Theatre on West 44th Street. These spotting go back to mid-summer, so he’s obviously leased (or bought?) an apartment in the fashionable Chelsea neighborhood around the corner from the Flatiron Building and Ladies Mile, the historic re-born 19th century Department Store District (check my later blog). Someone should tell Mr. Radcliffe that this area is heavily populated by gay boys and an excessive number of gay clubs…but perhaps he knows that?
There also are quite a number of heterosexual celebs in the area …when it comes to socializing with other celebs, someone should tell Daniel (Harry) that West 22nd Street boasts Titanic's Kate Winslet with her kids and husband, director Sam Mendes (more Brits in the ‘hood), as well as Roseanne Cash, daughter of the late Johnny Cash and June Carter of country music fame. My old pal, Broadway diva Donna Murphy has been on 22nd Street for years as well as a playwright friend of mine, and movie star Julianne Moore is not too far away neither is Julia Roberts. Chelsea Clinton is on West 23rd Street in the same building where Desperate Housewife Terri Hatcher keeps her New York boudoir when she’s not in L.A.
For celebrity walks, contact: www.richandfamoustours.com

IGLTA New York City Cocktail Party Tonight at Novotel Hotel

2008-08-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

Tonight Rich & Famous Tours – www.richandfamoustours.com --attended the IGLTA (International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association) cocktail party held at the Novotel in midtown Manhattan. Every gay person in the Greater New York or Northeast tour/travel industry or everybody that hopes to cash in on the lucrative gay & lesbian tourism market were there tonight. The weather was fabulous…warm and summery with a light breeze and low humidity—a good hair day in other words. The party was held on the Novotel’s fabulous outdoor terrace overlooking Times Square—a choice spot for viewing such events as The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ceremonies!
I told many of the people who would listen about the interesting, quirky history of the structure of the Novotel New York City hotel-- originally one of many rather ordinary buildings built during the pre-1929 building boom and planned to be a skyscraper. When the market crashed, the builders slapped the roof on top of the building at the seventh floor, and it became just a typical midtown Manhattan office structure for 60 years, until Novotel purchased the building nearly 20 years ago and at long last added a tower to the original seven floors, creating the hotel as we know it. Ahh New York City: always being reinvented by new generations!
We were there representing Rich & Famous Tours of New York City - www.richandfamoustours.com –just swapping business cards and attempting to tell everyone in the New York City tourism industry that there is a FABULOUS new “celebrity tour” in NYC. Who was there? An assortment of hotel managers and concierges, many travel agents, consultants, event planners, p.r. people, gay media reps and a hodge-podge of both domestic and international travel folk.
Attendees included: IGLTA Executive Director John Tanzella (whose office apparently is in Fort Lauderdale, FL), Richard Yaeger, Dir. Of Sales at CTN (Consortium Tours of North America), Richard Krieger, Managing Director of Prideworld Travel, based here in The Big Apple, Keith Hickman, Director of Ziptogaytravel.com, Keith Hickman, Director of Marketing at Travel Impressions, Robert Aaron, Sales & Marketing Director of Empire Hotel Group in New York City (owners of The Lucerne Hotel, The Belvedere (one of my favorites in NYC), the Travel Inn (a favorite with tour groups and travelers with cars because of its FREE PARKING), and others scattered around New York City.
There were reps. from hotels like Emilio Morales, Reservation Manager of the Hotel Newton on the Upper Westside of Manhattan, and Monica Spencer Ramos, Director of Sales at The Lucerne. There were also many reporters from various gay magazines like Genre and various gay and mainstream newspapers. Ketel vodka was a sponsor so it was an open bar, specializing in cosmos and other drinks mixed with Ketel…delicious!

Memories of Night of 100 Stars

2008-08-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

My former teacher Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life) believes: “whatever energy we put out, we get back…the universe listens.” I’ve always had celebrity experiences because this is the energy I put out…and consequently these have become part of my tours. Years ago I obtained a job at Radio City Music Hall which led me to work on mega-charity event NIGHT OF 100 STARS and its sequels.
I was assigned to the Green Room which was rather like putting the mouse in charge of the cheese. My job was to keep the celebs happy with flattery and small talk and escort them to/from the stage, trying not to gush or drool on them. Celebs were running around backstage like giggling chorus kids getting pictures and autographs of OTHER celebrities. Radio City only has about 20 dressing rooms, so we were forced to pack them with major names. Most didn’t argue because it was for charity. I recently came across my dressing room assignment sheets and it’s a HOOT to see who we threw in together. Please enjoy reading this sample:
201- Olivia DeHavilland, Bernadette Peters, Linda Lavin, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Grace Kelly.
211: Dustin Hoffman, John Forsythe, Jeremy Irons, Donny Osmond, Danny Kaye, Sidney Poitier, Robert Preston, Sir Laurence Olivier, Christopher Reeve (before), Vincent Gardenia, Ed Asner and James Earl Jones.
302 was the “glamour room”: Diahann Carroll, Linda Evans, Joan Collins(until the Dynasty gals demanded separate rooms!), Raquel Welch, Ann-Margret, Jacqueline Bisset, Brooke Shields, Jaclyn Smith, Claudia Cardinale, Ellen Burstyn, Priscilla Presley, Susan Lucci, Dyan Cannon, Lynda Carter, Angie Dickinson, Ali MacGraw and Jane Seymour all sitting at tiny makeup tables designed for Rockettes. Next door were sports legends: Don Budge, Howard Cosell, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron.
303: Debbie Allen, Marge Champion, Sandy Duncan, Georgia Engel, Nanette Fabray, Bonnie Franklin, Ginger Rogers, Gwen Verdon, Juliet Prowse, Jane Powell, Chita Rivera and Elaine Joyce.
401: Lucie Arnaz, Marisa Berensen, Carol Channing, Petula Clark, Whoopi Goldberg, Patti LaBelle, Michelle Lee, Dinah Shore, Maureen Stapleton.
207: Dr. Christian Barnard, Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, Buzz Aldrin, John Updike, Rosa Parks, Martha Graham, Dr. Linus Pauling, and Dr. Seuss.
702: Anne Baxter, Meredith Baxter Birney, Nell Carter, Tyne Daly, Julie Harris, Kate Jackson, Jennifer O’Neill, Charlotte Rae, Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett.
604: Lloyd Bridges, Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, Michael Caine, Cab Calloway, Bert Convy, Billy Crystal, Matt Dillon, Richard Dreyfuss, Charles Durning, Bob Fosse, David Frost, Ben Gazzara, Jim Henson, Rock Hudson, Ed Koch, Vincent Price, Jimmy Stewart, Tony Randall.
After this, I worked for many other celebrity-packed events…but none was as much fun as my first: Night of 100 Stars. In future blog items I’ll have more memories from these fabulous events.

Jim Dykes is co-founder of Rich & Famous Tours. www.jimdykes.com & www.richandfamoustours.com

Celebrities are everywhere in the Big Apple this summer!

2008-07-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

The Rich and Famous Tour is humming along during this summer season, which is why it's been a couple of months since our last posting. We've spotted Bette Midler shopping (spending some of that enormous salary from her Las Vegas show no doubt) and poor, fragile Paul Newman (looking frail these days from his now-public cancer battle) and Broadway dynamo Mario Lopez leaving the ABC studios one morning near Lincoln Center.
We've spotted Kelly Ripa waiting with the other Moms on the steps of the private school her kids attend, waiting for the final bell to ring so she can collect her children.
One lady on the tour spotted Anderson Cooper during our tour stop at CNN Studios in Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle. He smiled and waved...very nice.
Broadway/TV/film darling Kristin Chenoweth crossed our path one morning and stopped to chat...what a lovely lady she is...and so friendly too.
If you haven't taken the Rich and Famous Tour yet, you don't know what you're missing. Celebrities are EVERYwhere in the Big Apple...you just have to know where to look for them! More later.....

It's Spring! Celebrities are ALL OVER New York!!

2008-04-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

Celebrities were ALL OVER New York Monday, April 21—they just kept popping up everywhere.This morning at 11:30am I came out of the subway station at Columbus Circle and as I stopped at the red light on Eighth Ave. & 58th Street, I noticed a petite little blond standing to my left wearing a cute little red leather jacket and cap. It just happened to be Broadway dynamo Kristin Chenoweth. As we both stood there waiting for the light to change, I said “Are you Kristin?” She gave me that big smile and said in a chirpy little voice, “Yes I am…who are you?” I introduced myself and informed her that we had a friend in common from her home state of Oklahoma…Rosemary Martinez (now Baker), a drama teacher who I became friends with because she’s brought groups of high school students to New York for over a decade and I’m always her favorite guide. Rosemary has spoken for years about her former close friendship with Kristin (she calls her Kristi—her real name is Kristi Dawn Chenoweth. “Kristin” was dreamed up by her agent to sound classier). Kristin’s eyes got huge and said…”Oh my gosh, what a small world…I was just thinking about her and her recent marriage and how I’ve got to send her a gift!” I said yes she finally married Randy Baker, a fellow teacher and they are building a new house in Oklahoma City and are very happy.” Kristin and I continued to walk and talk down Eighth Avenue for several blocks, chatting like old friends, about people we knew in common. I reminded her that I had met her ever-so-briefly years ago before she was famous and followed her career and seen most of her shows since she’d been in New York, at Rosemary’s insistence. She always said Kristi was going to be famous and she was right. When Kristin first moved to New York, she helped out my friend Cheryl (along with Rosemary) at School Tours of America, running around picking up tickets, kids, running errands, etc. and going on auditions. I remembered when Kristin was in the Broadway shows STEEL PIER, YOU’RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN, and of course WICKED, the show that launched her into stardom. I asked Kristin if she was still a Republican and isn’t that hard in showbiz when SO many people are Democrats. She said “Yes, I am and it’s so hard…you just can’t talk about politics with most actors because they are all Democrats and can only see one side of any issue.” After another block, we each turned our own way and said goodbye…another great New York moment. As columnist Cindy Adams would say: “Only in New York!”
Later in the day I was in Greenwich Village near the building used on the TV show FRIENDS and spotted a movie shooting in the streets. Julia Roberts was starring in a new film with the working title “DUPLICITY” and there she was on Bedford Street shooting a scene. They are currently filming at least six major Hollywood movies around New York right now including Isla Fisher in CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC. Meryl Streep just finished filming DOUBT, playing a nun that suspects a priest is seducing children (based on the 2004 hit Broadway play).
Later I met my friend David for dinner in Chelsea and I could barely make it into David’s apartment building without getting shouted at by a crew member from a movie shooting IN FRONT of the building called “JULIE AND JULIA” about Julia Child. There were the stars: Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, all made up and filming a simple scene at the wine store at Seventh Ave. and West 20th Street. What a crowd it takes to film a simple scene…no wonder movies cost so much to make. And it was during Monday evening Rush Hour! I once filmed a small scene with Meryl Streep in the movie SHE-DEVIL and she’s a lovely, warm person…a total professional. I had met Meryl years before when I was a teenager and Meryl was appearing in the Broadway musical THE HAPPY END…I was backstage visiting an older actress friend and met Meryl and SHE REMEMBERED…(or said she did).
Ahhh….Spring in New York….when everything blooms and the warm weather brings Hollywood back to the Big Apple!

Celebrities in New York...another reason to take the Rich & Famous Tour

2008-04-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

One of the main things that puts the sparkle in the Big Apple are the large number of celebrities scattered around town, and the sooner a guide discovers this and
capitalizes on the readily available celebrity information, the better your tours will be. As a licensed guide for over 20 years, I discovered early on quite by accident that celebrity information can spice up any tour and add that "special something."

Call it the magic of creatively name-dropping but it works. One day on my step-on bus tour many years ago, I remember being stuck in a horrendous downtown traffic mess and after exhausting my New York knowledge of history and architecture of that particular SoHo block, I began listing celebrities I knew positively lived in the neighborhood.

I probably have many more celebrity stories than the average NYC guide because of my various jobs and friends over the years. As a young person I sold souvenirs
and programs at the Broadway show ANNIE and became acquainted with a LOT of Broadway people, including 13-year-old Sarah Jessica Parker and her family, Laurie Beechman, Andrea McArdle, Alice Ghostley and others.
I'm sure Sarah doesn't remember but I helped her and family (along with her friends
Brooke and Terri Shields) clean out her dressing room suite at the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon) and load the car on her LAST day as ANNIE.

A few years later I worked backstage at Radio City Music Hall at Night of 100 Stars as "Green Room Talent Coordinator" —a fancy word for Go-Fer. Basically, I fetched celebrities to and from the stage and had access to all backstage areas! Still, I met everybody including Sir Laurence Olivier, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy (she kissed my cheek), Whoopi Goldberg (wonderful), Grace Kelly, Carol Burnett (she helped us clean up the Green Room), Jimmy Stewart, Ann-Margret, Lucille Ball, Lana Turner, Olivia DeHavilland and all the rest, giving me enough afterdinner celebrity stories for a lifetime. As a matter of fact, I saved my dressing room assignment sheets from the clipboard because they are a hoot…all those major stars crammed together in dressing rooms designed for the Rockettes.

I became chummy that evening with singer Vic Damone who was married to Diahann Carroll at the time. Such a nice man...very down-to-earth. As we were all leaving thru the 51st St. Music Hall stage door around 4am after a long, grueling day of rehearsals and taping, Vic spotted me and offered me a ride in his limo. I declined, saying "it's OK, I only live a few blocks away…I'll walk." He responded "It's 4am…we'll drop you…I insist. Move over, Diahann." The great diva Ms. Carroll shot him a look that said "you're giving THE HELP a lift?" but still she scooted her sequined butt over. I'll never forget that look she gave him. They broke up a short time later. I wasn't surprised…she's a diva and he's a down-to-earth guy. I later read that her mother was a maid and her Dad was a subway conductor but I guess she forgot where she came from...

It's funny...at Night of 100 Stars I noticed that some of the most legendary stars (Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Ginger Rogers, Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart, etc.) were just as nice and down-to-earth as you please. Myrna Loy kissed me when I told her she was one of my favorite actresses, Lucille Ball heard my first name once and called me Jimmy all evening, Olivia DeHavilland and Esther Williams treated me like an equal, Petula Clark pushed me thru a crowded room to make sure I personally met Laurence Olivier! But the TV stars...oh brother! Talk about self-important ego-maniacs! Sitcom stars are especially the WORST, from my experience, also prime-time soap stars! The Dallas and Dynasty casts were just huge pains in the ass to deal with!
I now routinely tell many of these stories on my Rich & Famous Tour to spice things up and add a "personal" touch. Just another reason to come to New York and take the Rich and Famous Tour. http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnJpY2hhbmRmYW1vdXN0b3Vycy5jb20=

SHHHH---All About the NEW Sex & The City MOVIE!!

2008-04-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

SEX and the CITY Movie Spoiler alert! (Courtesy of the NY Post and other combined sources from around town)….Continuing to read this will tell you far more about the new movie than has been told anywhere else. "Everything is bigger," says an insider. "There's more extras, more locations and the locations are more fabulous. No one shoots inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral or New York Public Library but Sex and the City shot in both places…as well as a LOT of places off limits to other productions. Last year, the production requested shooting permits for no fewer than 45 separate locations between August and December.
According to the Mayor’s Office of Film, Sex & the City filming locations ranged from hidden, out of the way spots to Lenox Hill Hospital, the offices of Vogue, Junior's in Brooklyn, Bemelman’s Bar in The Carlyle Hotel, Bryant Park, the Duke-Semans Mansion on Fifth Ave. across from the Met, trendy restaurants like Lumi and Buddakhan in the Meatpacking District, various glamorous locations in midtown and the Upper Eastside, Flatiron District, Times Square, Rock Center, the Village, SoHo and TriBeca. Also a clifftop villa in Mexico is used in one important scene where Carrie tosses her bejeweled cellphone off the cliff into the ocean.
Fashion used includes: Oscar de la Renta, Chanel, Versace, YSL, Ferragamo, Zac Posen, Dior, Cynthia Rowley, Marc Jacobs, etc.) LOTS of bling (every day the girls wore real jewels estimated at $2.5 million, from deals made with Tiffany, H. Stern and other top jewelers).
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other famous New York faces have cameos—Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, plays Louise, Carrie's assistant, who is a “label queen” and looking for love.
The plot: Carrie and Big (Chris Noth), get engaged, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has moved to a Malibu beach house(which makes for lots of fun sex in the sand shots), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Harry (Evan Handler) get pregnant, and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Steve (David Eigenberg) grapple with infidelity. The movie starts with Fashion Week (with a re-built tent in Bryant Park), and gets “bigger” from there. Mr. Big’s full name, we discover, is John James Preston.
One of the new characters is Dante, a sexy young LA stud in his 30s who lives next door to Samantha, distracting her from her movie-star boyfriend Smith (Jason Lewis), whose career is now hot. Dante, apparently is the male version of Samantha…watch out!
Carrie’s wedding goes up in smoke and sources say that Carrie makes bitterly funny comments about her wedding gown to her friends….she calls it the perfect thing to be "jilted" in. Perhaps, she says, people have seen her in Vogue, where they may be able to touch up "pores" but not "pain."
Carrie’s failed wedding, Samantha’s sex with the neighbor, Charlotte's pregnancy and Miranda's marital woes provide key dramatic plot points.
Also, Carrie tells Samantha at one point she's completely revamping her life, right down to her cellphone area code. She's now "347," she complains (referring to the new, additional cellphone area code). Samantha tries to comfort her with a reminder that 347 is "the new New York."
In one scene, the four friends sit drinking Cosmopolitans. Charlotte remarks on how delicious they are. Miranda then wonders why they ever stopped drinking them in the first place. Carrie responds sharply, they had to after the rest of the world started.
Miranda catches Steve in marital infidelity, prompting her to move back to Manhattan from their Brooklyn home in Park Slope. One particularly moving scene is when Miranda breaks the news of her marital issues with Steve to his dementia-stricken mother. When she tries to explain the situation, his mother (Anne Meara) asks, "Who's Steve?" Carrie then does a classic, irony-drenched "SATC" voice-over, quipping that her friend is starting to see the positive side of Alzheimer's.
As Samantha and the girls leave a Fashion Week tent, a PETA activist jumps out of nowhere, spraying her with red paint. "God," Samantha wryly says after a beat, "I miss New York!"

Bloomberg's Billionaire Boys Club Dominates NYC Construction

2008-03-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

Lately I've noticed all the construction going on all over Manhattan Island. My gosh...you can't MISS it! EVERYwhere you look there are huge new condominiums and hotels and offices going up. Of course New York City has always been a "hub" of activity and skyscraper construction but they didn't build ALL the skyscrapers AT ONCE! It took 100 years to build NYC's definitive skyline, but lately it seems as if the powers that be are trying to build a whole new skyline THIS YEAR! There are more new buildings going up than ever. Today I was walking down 57th Street past another new Hilton Hotel going up next door to the Director's Guild of America. YET ANOTHER HILTON HOTEL! Manhattan has at least 4 (and probably more). Across the street are two more development sites that have been cleared and are preparing to build, giving yet more insanity to the already clogged cross-town artery 57th Street! The block my post office is on has been choked off for YEARS because of the non-stop construction of several new condo towers (mostly empty). Massive new towers are going up all over town including a new Trump Tower (in SoHo yet!) and so many more new buildings it's mind-boggling.

On 57th Street, on 42nd Street, on Broadway, on Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Seventh Avenue, Eighth Ave. (oh boy), Ninth Avenue, Tenth Avenue, Eleventh and Twelfth Avenue and every street in between...hotels, office buildings and my my my: condos GALORE! There must be 100 new skyscrapers (or more) going up now ALL AT ONCE! And I'm not exaggerating at all. In fact, I've probably UNDER-calculated.

Hey, I'm all for capitalism and making bushels of $$$....mazel tov! I think it's wonderful that Zeckenforf, Le Frak, Macklowe, Trump, Silverstein and all the other usual suspects (NYC developers) are making another few billion. But why are they all racing to build all of these new buildings all at once? And who are all of these rich people who are going to be moving in? But when 3 out of 4 streets I try to walk down are closed because of muddy, roped-off construction sites, gigantic booms swinging at all angles and arrogrant construction workers telling me to "move along" or blocking the streets so I can't use my regular tour routes, it's simply TOO MUCH.

I'm sure this is all because of Mayor Bloomberg, our billionaire mayor, the Democrat turned Republican turned Independent turncoat. I've met the Mayor and he's very cold and formal... Mayor Bloomberg has been a very good mayor and supposedly he's very honest. BUT birds of a feather flock together and that means fellow billionaires in the Billionaires Boys Club. Suddenly every construction project scheduled on the drawing board for the next 20 years has been green-lighted for NOW---for THIS YEAR or NEXT, because our business-friendly (read: development friendly) Mayor Bloomberg will be out by 2009. So his administration has OK'd anything and everything that his buddies want to put up. There are empty condos and empty offices all over town yet they keep building more because they, apparently, CAN. So much for a
"slumping" economy.

It's quite obvious what's happening...and there's nothing we can do about it except wait for it all to be over and for our billionaire Mayor to get OUT of City Hall and go back to the country club!

2008-03-06T21:17:00.000-08:00

Had an audition for a new show for the History Channel called "Skywalkers"....my friend Mike called me and told me there was a posting on the internet for this show that just sounded like ME, so I looked up the posting, which had a woman's name: Emma, her email and her phone number attached. I contacted her and after attempting to meet for several days, it finally worked out.
Here's the description which I answered from the online posting:

An exciting new History show called, Skywalkers (WT) is looking for a host who has a passion and genuine interest in iconic buildings. The show will look at the science and engineering of iconic buildings. The host will take us to places that other programs wouldn’t go, i.e. scaling the side of a skyscraper in a window cleaning basket, inside elevator shafts, on the roof, in ventilation shafts etc, in order to get the viewer to really understand how the building was made. They will also look into what crucial technological advances were necessary at the time to enable to building to be made, e.g. development of a particularly strong type of steel, or glass, or a new approach to architecture. The host will have an enquiring mind, and ask the right questions to keep the viewer educated and interested. Here's the kind of person we are thinking of. We are looking for a guy in his 30s, poss 40s, who is either used to working at heights (construction worker, window washer, roof top landscape gardener, for example) or would be comfortable doing so. The idea being to have a host who's not necessarily an expert on the buildings but who has a genuine interest and asks the right questions so that the audience can learn at the same time as he does. So not just the way they look, but the science, engineering and technology that went into creating the structures. Someone who is down to earth, can laugh at himself, enthusiastic, and fearless. It's not necessary to have done TV work before although comfort with the camera obviously helps.
Location : New York; Contact Emma, etc.

Well, I thought I gave a fabulous audition...she wanted to be up high preferably so I took Emma and the camera up to the top of a building overlooking Rockefeller Center and she shot me with St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rock Center's Roof Gardens, etc. over my shoulder. I just burbled on for about 10 minutes yakking about St. Pat's, basic NYC history stuff, posed a couple of questions about Rock Center's construction, blah blah blah. Now it's in the hands of the Gods...we shall see if I'm what the history channel is looking for. Emma told me she's seen quite a few people and put them all on film...including a (retired) New York City firefighter who took her up to the roof of a building and talked about the construction, etc. She says they don't want "experts" ...they just want "real people" who have a little on-camera experience to explore, pose questions to experts and open and close the show, etc.
This is something I'd really, really like, so of course I won't get it! Always the way!

Million dollar Password with Regis Philbin

2008-03-06T20:59:00.000-08:00

Story of the Week:
Well, they're bringing back my all-time favorite game show yet one more time...PASSWORD! This time it's being hosted by Regis Philbin, filmed in New York City (Queens) and called MILLION DOLLAR PASSWORD.
I heard about it and found the information to be a contestant on the CBS website and made an appointment to audition to be a contestant. The audition was held in a nondescript office off Fifth Ave. near 37th St. and is actually the offices for The People's Court TV show.
Now, let me preface this by saying I KNOW HOW TO PLAY PASSWORD. I'm a total word-game GEEK. I love crossword puzzles, Scrabble, and I've watched all the versions of Password since elementary school. Even now I record the old re-runs from the Game Show Network and watch them in the evenings. Hell, words are words. True, many of the celebrities are dead, infirm or just plain forgotten about, but what the hell....words are still WORDS, and I enjoy word games! So when we played the game, I did really, really well. They paired me up with a fluffy blond housewife from Florida who giggled a lot and was a mediocre player. But she told cute stories and THAT'S what they seemed interested in. It became very clear that they wanted contestants who not only displayed ENERGY (they kept reminding us to have ENERGY) but they wanted "reality show" type contestants. They kept asking me ON CAMERA...things like:
"Jim, tell us what's the most ridiculous thing you ever did in your life."
"Jim, what is the most embarrassing thing you've ever done."
"Jim, if we spoke to your friends, what would they tell us about you?"
"Jim, what's the one thing in your life you regret the most?"
"Jim, what would you do with the money, should you win the $1million?"
and on and on and on like this. Forget about the fact that I guessed ALL the passwords in one or two clues each.
Forget about the fact that when it was my turn to give the password clues to the Florida housewife, I gave her such excellent clues that she guessed every one...and we did it in 42 seconds! The guy giving us the test said it has NEVER been done that fast since they've been holding auditions!
But I couldn't come up with a stupid story to make them LIKE me while the camera was running. So, if anybody should EVER go out for Million Dollar Password (or any other game show)....remember: They don't care so much HOW you play the game...they just want you to have really stupid, moronic stories that will give Regis Philbin something to poke fun at when he introduces you as a contestant!!

More About Harvey....AND MY TAX ATTORNEY ED!

2008-02-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

(Scroll down to see pic of Harvey)
More about Harvey: Even though Harvey Fierstein was quite charming, he seemed a bit guarded all evening...from cocktail chatter to the actual Q&A onstage. In fact, they could have re-titled the evening "Harvey Fierstein promotes A Catered Affair" because that's ALL he talked about. I mentioned to Harvey that my tax attorney, Ed, told me last week he had once been an actor--information which shocked me. He then proceeded to tell me he was in one of the pre-Broadway La Mama performances of Harvey's definitive career-making play Torch Song Trilogy! In fact, his name is "Ed" and the character he played was named for him: "Ed". As I mentioned this to Harvey Fierstein he suddenly got much less "distant" and opened up to me. "Oh my Gosh, how is Ed? Where is he? I'd love to see him again! Please tell him I said hello and give him my best." Moments like this always make me realize that New York City, the great metropolis of 8 million people, is SUCH a small town!
(Scroll down to see pic of HARVEY)

Harvey Fierstein "Conversation" at Zipper Theatre

2008-02-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

Attended "A Conversation with Harvey Fierstein" last night at the Zipper Theatre on W. 37th St. sponsored by The American Theatre Wing (the Tony Award folks) of whom I've been a member for years but never get a lot out of my membership except for the occasional celebrity-laden cocktail party. Last night the numbers must have been down for this event...probably less than 100 people showed up, including a few theatre celebrities and bold-face names from the columns. You could tell how many people were no-shows by the enormous number of name tags left on the check-in table.

As soon as I entered I ran into Pia Lindstrom, and across the empty room I saw Harvey Fierstein hanging up his coat. Pia, who always looks fabulous, is on the membership services committee at the Wing, along with Barbara Toy and others. She said the Wing is perceived by many young theatre people as being full of an older, moneyed crowd but that they want to do more outreach to the members, the Off Broadway community, and younger theatre-goers. Informal events with major theatre personalities like Fierstein is part of that outreach. No matter how often I meet celebrities such as Pia, I always remain calm and collected on the outside, but on the inside I'm screaming "OH MY GOD, YOU'RE INGRID BERGMAN'S DAUGHTER!!!!!!"

During the 5:30-6:30pm cocktail hour I chatted with legend Marian Seldes who grabbed me and hugged me after I told her I had seen her for years in everything since DEATHTRAP as well as theatre events and parties, but had been too intimidated to say anything because I didn't want to come off as a "silly fan." She looked at me with a piercing stare, smiled, hugged me and said: "Nonsense...now we are friends...and colleagues!" Such a lovely woman...and still the total pro as she turns 80 this coming August!

I was button-holed momentarily by an elderly queen I knew years ago (and he was boring then) who immediately tried to monopolize me and tell me about the last 20 years. Not meaning to be rude, I simply said "Arthur, darling, I have people to meet! We'll catch up later!" I chatted with a couple of actors and producers and one of them, a major name, said she lived at 88 Central Park West..."Oh," I said..." that's where Lorne Michaels, Sting and Celeste Holm live and didn't Robert DeNiro just move in there?"
"Oh my," she said, "You really know your stuff! Actually we're not supposed to talk about DeNiro being there...the co-op board has informed all tenants to ignore his presence. He abandoned Tri-Beca apparently for Central Park West! But interestingly, DeNiro gets his mail under an assumed name...just like Garbo used to! If a visitor asks the doorman for DeNiro, or if a delivery comes for DeNiro, the doorman is instructed to say he doesn't live there! Totally crazy! The building is full of celebrities and we don't pull that nonsense! Didn't Garbo pull that too?"

After cocktails, we went into the Q&A with Harvey Fierstein and even though the evening was officially called: "A conversation with Harvey Fierstein" they could have re-named it: Harvey Fierstein does non-stop promotion for his new show A Catered Affair. All he did was talk about the show and its journey from film to San Diego's Old Globe Theatre to Broadway. He mentioned Debbie Reynolds (the girl in the film) was present opening night in San Diego and gave the show her blessing.

It was obvious they were trying to control the questions, but it was SUCH a low turn-out they had to take all questions, good or bad. The first question was obviously a plant, from Harvey's good pal, actress-writer Julie Halston, who sat front and center. She basically said "Tell us ALL about A Catered Affair," which gave Harvey license to launch into a lengthy monologue. Actually, I was interested in hearing about the show's progress and it is based on one of my all-time favorite films.

My question was very simple: "Is the music any good? Is anything memorable?" and the question was of course, dodged. When I finally pressed for an answer, young producer Jordan Roth, wunderkind son of producer Daryl Roth, said something about this being John Bucchino's first effort for the stage, and "the songs being a vehicle for the emotions of the characters to come thru" blah blah, blah. In my experience, this is Broadway double-speak for "unmemorable score." But we shall see when previews begin in late March. I hope I'm wrong. I see EVERYTHING on Broadway and have for the past 20 years...it's one of the biggest problems with big Broadway musicals today...totally unmemorable musical score. You leave the theatre humming the scenery and costumes. It's a shame...it's so obvious....a MUSICal should first and foremost, have good MUSIC! That's why revivals are so popular...because older shows have better songs....standards in many cases.

Just remember the old Richard Rodgers comment: "I don't care what the critics say: if I leave the theatre and hear the audiences whistling my songs, I know I have a hit!"

EXACTLY!

Sarah Jessica Parker & Jennifer Hudson on the set of Sex & the City movie

2008-02-17T15:18:00.001-08:00

Saw Sarah Jessica Parker the other day in Greenwich Village, while doing a Rich & Famous walking tour near her townhouse. Of course I don't show people where she lives....I show them the approximate area of the Village and then talk about various stars who reside nearby. Every time I see her I want to go up and say "hey!" but of course I don't. You see, I knew Sarah Jessica Parker when she was a kid and starring in ANNIE on Broadway...I wasn't much older and was working in the lobby selling ANNIE dolls, records and souvenirs. I became familiar with her Mom, some of the other kids in the show and their Moms, and some of Sarah's brothers and sisters. Her last day as Annie (when she had grown much too tall and develped to believably play an 11 year old), I was invited into her dressing room by her Mom and brother to hang out and to help fill boxes and load the car with tons of memorabilia from her nearly 2 years in the show, first as an "orphan" in the chorus and then as the star when Shelley Bruce, the second Annie after Andrea McArdle, was diagnosed with leukemia and left the show for treatment.
While setting up my souvenir stand in the lobby before and after the show I met all the stage mothers and siblings as well as the people in the show. Since Annie was a show with so many kids, birthdays and other events were celebrated with a regular routine of parties in the downstairs lounge of the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon) on W. 52nd St.
Anyway, I was leading a Rich & Famous Tour a couple of months ago for a group of English ladies and when we reached Madison Ave. near E. 76th St. by the Carlyle Hotel we were stopped in our tracks by the entire film crew of the Sex and the City movie and the attendant horde of paparazzi. My English ladies did not want to budge so we stayed and watched all the hubbub for awhile until Sarah Jessica Parker and then Jennifer Hudson both emerged from their trailers to film scenes in the Carlyle Hotel. Everyone went crazy! The only autograph Sarah Jessica Parker stopped to sign was for a little girl who was walking by with her Mom and had her pen and paper ready!
Again, I almost said "Hi Sarah! Remember me?" but of course I knew she wouldn't and would probably call for her bodyguards to punch me out. So I stood behind the barricades with all the other people watching the situation.
These pictures were snapped by one of my English ladies, Shauna Harper, and emailed to me only recently.

Broadway, Encores!, Fantasticks and the Reagans

2008-02-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

"Broadway...! Broadway...! How Great Thou Are....I'll Leave the Farm...With All It's Charm...To Be A Broadway Star......!"
-- Baby June in GYPSY.
Loved seeing GYPSY last summer at ENCORES with Patti Lupone...sat in the front row and applauded madly. Lupone is the right age and completely the right person to play Mama Rose...very tough...very street smart. I was thrilled to see GYPSY coming back to Broadway (they've already put up the marquee at the St. James Theatre on W. 44th St.). My friend Hilary Knight (Eloise books) knows the real Baby June (actress June Havoc).
This has been a real week for theatre...on Saturday Feb. 9 I attended the ENCORES Production of APPLAUSE at City Center. It's the 1972 musicalization of All About Eve...this one starred Christine Ebersole as Margo Channing and although she always puts in a good, professional performance, everything else was wrong. The gossip at the theatre was that she had the flu during rehearsals and was still weak. The consenus of my friends was that Ebersole comes off too "nice" to play the Broadway diva bitch originated by Bette Davis and played in 1972 by Bacall. I've met Christine Ebersole at American Theatre Wing events and she was always snooty and aloof to me, but onstage she comes off "too nice." If the show moves to Broadway, we all agreed the perfect choice would be Glenn Close, who is a lovely, charming woman in real life but comes off as a perfect "bitch" onstage.

Yesterday, Wednesday, they had free tickets at Actor's Equity to see The Fantasticks Off Broadway at the Snapple/Jerry Ohrbach Theate for the 2pm matinee, so we grabbed a couple. This is a fairly new Off Broadway theatre located on the third floor of a former office building at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway. Even though I saw The Fantasticks 100 times probably (with my tourists) Off Broadway downtown at the Sullivan Street Playhouse (gone) in the West Village, I figured what the hell...its free....its a rainy, snowy, terrible day...might as well see it again. Plus my next door neighbor, Nick Spangler--a former NYU grad who is 22 ( http://www.myspace.com/spangleyman ), is in the show playing Matt (the boy). Nick and I live in twin apt. buildings next door to each other. The funny thing is we both live in Apt. 37 in our respective buildings and we sometimes get mail for each other. The other day I got a huge box for him delivered to my apt. instead so I called him and when he came to pick it up, we chatted a bit and he said he was doing The Fantasticks but it was closing soon. Wouldn't you know that yesterday Nick was NOT in the show! The show, closing in 10 days, is FULL of understudies! The production was just so-so, mostly because the piano was too loud to hear the un-miked performers. The black box theatre has poor acoustics because it was a converted office. In such a space, the piano needs to play SOFT instead of pounding away during the softly sung, unmiked vocals.

Today is Valentine's Day and I'm going to see COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA at Manhattan Theatre Club's Biltmore Theatre with my elderly friends Marilyn & Bob Reagan. They have been friends since just after I moved to New York "from the farm"...lovely people in every way, except now Bob, who is past 80, is showing the beginning of Alzheimer's and Marilyn, who loves theatre and New York as much as I do, is trying to keep him alert, active and interested in things. Marilyn is originally from Utah, loves theatre and joins many groups and is always hearing about special ticket offers, etc. She invites me many times because: 1. we always have fun, 2. it helps her with Bob to have another person there (in case there are issues where a men's room is needed or another pair of eyes to watch or a strong pair of arms to assist). Bob is very ambulatory but its a progressive illness and he has good days and bad days. I met Marilyn over 20 years ago in an Upper Westside tap dancing class taught by the great Bob Audy. In our class we had a mix of aspiring Broadway chorus kids, housewives (Marilyn), the occasional star or celeb like Judy Blume the children's book author (I'll blog about her tomorrow), Mary Tyler Moore (bitch), Tom Hulce, Mandy Patinkin, and others. After I became acquainted with Marilyn & Bob, they invited to their weekend home in Connecticut a few times and we all became friends. Then one day Marilyn told me about this murder that happened in Utah which affected her. It seems a multi-millionaire businessman had been shot in cold blood in a long-unsolved murder. Then it finally came to light that Mark (the man's grandson) had shot his grandpa...the strange twist: young 16 year old Mark had been directed by his mother to do the murder. And the revelation: The woman was a New York Eastside socialite named Frances and this was Marilyn's sister (her evil sister)! I had followed the whole thing in the news but didn't realize this was Marilyn's FAMILY!! Anyway, Marilyn & Bob were telling everybody because the whole thing was back in the news, books and mini-series were being written and they wanted their personal friends to hear it from them FIRST. I even accompanied Marilyn to the Phil Donahue Show one day when Bob was at work so she had somebody to "lean" on in the Green Room.
Two books and two mini-series based on these books were the result: At Mother's Request by CBS News reporter Jonathan Coleman and NUTCRACKER by Shana Alexander. I'll mention more about these friends later.
I may see another show tomorrow...still deciding. There are SO many mid-winter shows that I want to see and for once I have the time and the money and almost everything good is on the half=price discount booth in February.
Happy Valentine's Day!!

Announcing Rich & Famous Tours and Jim Dykes' Blog

2008-02-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

I'm one of the co-founding tourguides for Rich & Famous Tours....NYC's newest "niche" experience tour...Although I've been guiding groups and individuals around New York for YEARS and YEARS, it was time to start a real tour with a connected website that people (individuals, families, groups of 2, 3, 4, etc.) could sign up for a tour. My tours around the Big Apple have always been full of celebrity info ---in fact most of my established guide friends bow to me as the "expert." On her local New York show Joan Rivers introduced me as "the celebrity tourguide" because of my "inside info". I've been an actor for years and my business partner Mike and I have both worked on many tv and film sets so consequently, showbiz is our LIFE and the tours are a secondary love and a way to live while we persue other dreams. For me, my love of showbiz and the "wicked stage" and my love of showing the REAL New York to starstruck visitors and locals co-exist.

Today I'm on my way out the door to do a special Rich & Famous Tour for a group of lawyers and their spouses...more on this later. I'll let you know how it goes and what famous people we spotted. This is what makes our Rich & Famous Tour so special...over the years we've spotted Bette Midler (3 times), Mary Tyler Moore (2 times---she snarled at us), Sarah Jessica Parker (5 times!), Vanessa Redgrave, Denzel Washington, Jennifer Hudson, Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, John Lithgow (walking his dog and later riding the subway), Dustin H0ffman (walking his dog), Jerry Springer, and MANY more celebs. In this blog I'll mention frequently who we are seeing on the Rich & Famous Tour and where we are spotting them.

Also check You-Tube....some of my TV commercial clips are now on there. Check Jim Dykes Commercials. Also www.jimdykes.com
More Later, blogging pals....