Actors recall living in fear of Jerome Robbins — yet dying to work with him

It’s a legend that even now, 20 years after Jerome Robbins’ dying, threatens to outline him: Whereas berating his actors, he stepped farther and farther again on stage till he toppled into the orchestra pit. And nobody stated a phrase to cease him. Some say the present was “Name Me Madam,” “Excessive Button Sneakers” or “Billion Greenback Child.” (An eyewitness tells The Put up it was, in reality, “West Facet Story.”) However the underlying message is similar: The choreographer and director was a terror to work with. Final month, after a “Chicago” actor killed himself following what was reportedly a brutish rehearsal, many recalled Robbins and his penchant for pushing dancers and actors to the breaking level. Nonetheless, it’s exhausting to think about Broadway or the ballet with out him. Which is why Robbins — who was born 100 years in the past and died at 79 on July 29, 1998 — is as revered as he’s reviled. His centennial 12 months is being celebrated throughout the nation and in Germany, France and the Netherlands. On Aug. 9, there might be a tribute aboard the Intrepid in Manhattan, with performances and panels moderated by Robbins biographer Amanda Vaill. In ballets and such musicals as “West Facet Story,” “Peter Pan,” “The King and I” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” Robbins introduced a naturalism to dance and motion that was revolutionary — motive sufficient why those that survived each him and his wrath have a tendency to recall the grasp, not the monster. Jerome Robbins throughout a 1974 rehearsal Getty Photographs Getty Photographs Getty Photographs Getty Photographs 4 View Slideshow “Stephen Sondheim stated that Robbins was the one genius he’s ever recognized,” stated Vaill, who had entry to the director’s diaries and papers whereas writing 2006’s “Someplace: The Life of Jerome Robbins.” And he was, she factors out, self-taught: Unable to afford greater than a 12 months at NYU, younger Jerome Rabinowitz dropped out and ferried between Weehawken, NJ — the place his father urged him to be part of the household corset enterprise — and New York, the place he kick-started his dance profession. Alongside the way in which, he developed what Vaill calls “a form of tunnel imaginative and prescient — as soon as he’d seen what he needed, nothing else was necessary.” Within the identify of artwork, he’d make actors and dancers undergo their paces repeatedly, typically screaming at them and hurling insults. “Jerry not solely attacked you, he attacked your loved ones, your background, the place you lived, the way you lived, who you studied with,” Tony Mordente, a “West Facet Story” forged member, advised biographer Greg Lawrence. Yet Mordente and plenty of different stars say they owe their careers to him. “The acute battle between his admirers and disparagers made my e book an emotional ordeal to write,” Lawrence advised The Put up of his 2001 biography, “Dance with Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins.” A perfectionist, Robbins was even exhausting on his collaborators, together with “West Facet Story” composer Leonard Bernstein. “My father had to battle with so many points of Jerry’s difficult character,” Bernstein’s daughter, Jamie, advised The Put up. “He was impolite and imperious and harsh and terrible to artists . . . and yet my father managed to set it apart and go on working with Jerry.” Jerome Robbins circa 1950Getty Photographs However others by no means forgave him — if not for his cruelty, than for naming names earlier than the Home Un-American Actions Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s. As his biographers found, Robbins dropped the dime on his colleagues much less from fear of being blacklisted than that of being outed. A bisexual whose best love, many consider, was for a ballerina — Tanaquil LeClerc, the spouse of his idol, George Balanchine — Robbins additionally had affairs with males, Montgomery Clift amongst them. Not solely did he fear his household’s wrath, however homosexuality was then punishable by jail. Like many artists, he’d flirted with communism and the post-World Struggle II concept of Soviet-American friendship. All of the whereas, the FBI was watching him. So was Ed Sullivan. A decade earlier than he launched the Beatles, Sullivan was placing fear into the hearts of leftists by vetting them for his TV present, typically writing damning objects about them in his newspaper column. In 1950, Sullivan pressed Robbins to reveal his actions and that of his fellow Soviet sympathizers, one of them Robbins’ sister. When Robbins refused, Sullivan canceled his look. However three years later, subpoenaed as a “pleasant witness,” Robbins caved. He gave HUAC the names of eight celebration members, seven of whom, Vaill stated, had been already recognized. Robbins later advised “West Facet Story” author Arthur Laurents that he wouldn’t know “for years” whether or not he’d finished the best factor. “Oh, I can let you know now,” Laurents replied. “You had been a s–t.” Zero Mostel overtly disdained Robbins. Blacklisted himself, although not by means of Robbins’ doing, the burly actor noticed his movie profession wither and die. Nonetheless, he knew a genius when he noticed one, and went on to star in 1964’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” which Robbins choreographed and directed. Sheldon Harnick, the present’s lyricist, remembers that first fraught day of rehearsal, and the way he and the forged awaited Robbins’ arrival. When he lastly got here in, Harnick stated, “He and Mostel checked out one another. Then Zero stated, ‘Hello, there, blabbermouth!’ and everybody broke up.” Even so, there was all the time stress between the forged and their director, who by no means left a single second of a present to probability — and did no matter he had to do to make his imaginative and prescient actual. “Perhaps I’ve tried to blot it out from my reminiscence,” Harnick, now 94, advised The Put up, “however Jerry could possibly be merciless, particularly to some of the ladies. If he had a criticism, he would specific it in a very chilly and merciless manner.” Austin Pendleton, who performed the present’s timid Motel the tailor, remembers one lacerating encounter so private, he advised Robbins’ assistant not to let the director discuss to him once more for every week. And Robbins obeyed: “He’d say, ‘Inform Austin to cross left,’ after which, every week to the day, he was supportive once more, and my efficiency had actually pulled collectively.” Jerome Robbins circa 1965Getty Photographs Now a director himself, Pendleton stated, “He was more durable on himself than anybody else.” Had Robbins not been a director, he might need been a puppeteer. Or so he advised Carol Lawrence, who performed Maria in 1957’s “West Facet Story,” when he confirmed her his puppet assortment. It was metaphor for a way he noticed the world. “He needed full management,” she advised The Put up. “You had been below his fingertips.” A agency believer in the strategy faculty of appearing, Robbins inspired off-stage enmity between his actors, typically with violent outcomes. Underneath Robbins’ course, Larry Kert — the Tony to Lawrence’s Maria — received a nightly pummeling. “Hit him more durable!” Robbins urged her as they rehearsed the scene in which Maria assaults the person who killed her brother. Someday, she recalled, Kert walked into her dressing room, his chest bandaged, and so in ache he may barely communicate. “The physician stated you’re loosening my lungs from my rib cage,” he whispered. “However I can’t inform Jerry.” As a substitute, Lawrence advised him. “And with no second’s pause, Jerry stated, ‘So hit him in the top, you received’t damage something there.’” Jerome Robbins throughout a rehearsal in 1965Getty Photographs Even Bernstein, who wrote the music for that present, got here in for a pounding, at the least psychologically, when Robbins crossed out some of his orchestrations. Years later, at Bernstein’s memorial service, Laurents stated his “West Facet Story” collaborator was afraid of solely two issues: “God and Jerry Robbins.” Many years earlier than Martin Charnin wrote and directed “Annie,” he performed a Jet in “West Facet Story.” He was, he advised The Put up proudly, the primary individual to sing “Gee, Officer Krupke, Krup you!” on a Broadway stage. Now 83, he remembers watching Robbins fall into the pit. He stated it occurred throughout a rehearsal in Philadelphia. “We needed to see how far he would go and he ended up going one step too far,” Charnin stated of himself and fellow Jets. Had the bass drum not damaged his fall, Robbins would have been badly damage. Why didn’t anybody cease him? “I actually don’t know,” Charnin stated. “Perhaps there was a collective second of tit for tat . . . I’d like to consider that it was only a mistake, and we had been terrified — we didn’t need him to get damage. “For all of how robust Jerry was, he additionally had one thing inside of him that was actually good,” he continued, “and that goodness manifested itself in the work. He knew what he needed, and what I realized and used in my profession actually got here from a fountain known as Jerome Robbins.” Jerome Robbins in 1988Getty Photographs Chita Rivera, whose multi-Tony-winning profession took off after her function in “West Facet Story,” goes additional. “All I do know is that I used to be in love with Jerry,” she advised The Put up. “I bear in mind feeling euphoric once I noticed him work — it was simply so stunning, and so proper and on the nostril . “He taught us how to be. Once I was operating by means of the door to the window after [the song] ‘A Boy Like That,’ he stated, ‘Don’t dance to the window. May you simply return and stroll to the window?’ “He taught us how to dance as individuals, not as dancers.” It was dancers with whom Robbins selected to spend his final twenty years. After “Fiddler,” he and his “West Facet Story” group tried and failed to get one other exhibit the bottom. Disenchanted with Broadway, Robbins returned to the place he began, making the ballets which might be nonetheless being danced in the present day. “I believe with the ballet dancers, he had a barely gentler edge, although he may nonetheless rip and destroy somebody,” stated Christine Redpath, who teaches the Robbins repertoire at New York Metropolis Ballet. “He had just a few individuals right here and there he’d beat into. I bear in mind one man being utterly devastated, in tears . . . however he survived.” It helped that Robbins beloved canine, his personal and everybody else’s. One of Redpath’s golden retrievers got here in useful throughout the making of at the least one ballet. “When he was choreographing ‘Brandenburg’ in the early ’90s, the rehearsal pianist stated, ‘I’ll offer you cash if you happen to carry Emma into the room!’ ” Redpath advised The Put up. “So I did and he or she’d lie below Jerry’s seat. When he received tense, he’d look down at her and he or she’d have a look at him and he’d smile and the temper would change.” Others observed it, too. As “West Facet Story” dancer Grover Dale advised biographer Greg Lawrence a 12 months after Robbins’ dying, “I typically puzzled what the work would have been like had he been as candy to his dancers as he had been to his canine. “Maybe ‘contentment’ and ‘being a genius’ don’t combine very effectively,” Dale stated. 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