Lehman Brothers Bailed Out by Barclays Bank-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Alison Arngrim Came to Visit

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

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

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

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

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

HAIR in Central Park's Delacorte Theatre Friday Night

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

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

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