“A Fur Chubby and a Mini-Skirt”
All the headlines about teenagers punking Trump has me remembering a moment in mine and Scott Wittman's life...let me preface this by saying I now have empathy for the lady at the center of this story. Show biz is a harsh mistress and we are all just trying to hang on...that said...
...cue the flashback music...
In 1982, we were licking our wounds from our Barbie & Ken musical "Livin' Dolls" not taking off. We were pretty much flat broke.
But Scott & I were always working (pretty much pro bono) on someone's cabaret act, and I don't remember how, but a B-movie and theatre actress who shall remain nameless - let's call her "Briana Moonstruck" - got our number and asked if she could hire us to put together her niteclub act. We knew it was going to be a cheesy affair, but "Miss Moonstruck" was talented and we needed the gig. So we said yes.
For weeks and weeks and WEEKS, Miss Moonstruck would come over our loft with her scary, mobster-ish boyfriend "Tommy" (his name was "Tommy", but I still like putting quotes around it) and we would work. We not only had to please Miss Moonstruck, we had to please Tommy, whose talents clearly lied more in the socko breaking of limbs than in the writing and arranging a socko niteclub act.
One weekend, when it was finally time for Scott & I to deliver a "Born In A Trunk" style number to describe her career, we actually dropped acid to get through the writing of it. Don't judge! It was the 80's! We were young! "Tommy" was looming! How else could we come up with lyrics like...
"Six years old and everything's terrific Six years old and I'm in South Pacific!"
Not to mention this classic quatrain:
"I played the part of Anita once (BUMP!) It was created by Chita once (BUMP!) Then recreated by Rita once (BUMP!) I got so tired of all those bumps!"
And yes, we knew that "bumps" did not rhyme with "once", but tell that to the acid! And our employers loved it!
One memory that will always stay with us was how they kept talking about how getting this big agent from William Morris to book the act would be important (I can't recall the agent's name, let's call him "Sol Schmegeggy"). Somehow, they got him to come down to the (at that time) deserted section of Soho we lived in, to our Dickensian loft for a special performance. After buzzing "Sol" in, he somehow didn't understand we would come get him in the hand-driven elevator, and this tiny, ANCIENT man walked up the 3 flights to our loft. Once he got to our door, he collapsed (very much like Mildred Natwick in "Barefoot In The Park").
Luckily he collapsed into the first chair he spied, which was this strange child's wicker wingback chair next to our front door that was truly only big enough for a doll (don't even ask me why we had such a thing...money we did not have, but kitsch comes cheap).
Once "Mr. Schmegeggy" caught his breath, we extracted him from that miniature chair and sat him down in the middle of the loft in a canvas butterfly chair that he practically disappeared into.
Miss Moonstruck then climbed up on the wooden coffee table and picking up a little Venus de Milo statue to hold like a mic (I'm not making ANY of this up) proceeded to do the entire act on that coffee table for this somnambulant relic of show-biz past. Forty minutes later, as she hit the final note, he woke with a start and proclaimed "She's a fireball!"
With "Sol Schmegeggy" of William Morris allegedly now onboard, the next step was to hire an arranger to create band charts and we booked musicians for a read-down of the charts, which went as well as we could have ever hoped for. So, then it was time for them to pay everyone: Scott & I, the arranger and the musicians.
Yep, you guessed it, our calls stopped being returned.
Suddenly, one day, as Scott & I were painting the loft, they showed up, demanding the band charts. "Not until you pay us, or at the very least, the arranger and the musicians!".
Believe it or not, a struggle ensued amidst the paint tray and brushes, between two broken down gay writers, Miss Moonstruck (who, Scott wants to make sure you know, was wearing, I kid you not, a fur chubby and a mini skirt) and Tommy, who was scary on a good day so you can imagine how terrifying he was now. But Scott & I were so demoralized, we held on to that box of music charts as long as we could, until finally Tommy had them in hand and down the stairs they ran! With Scott & I in hot pursuit!
There was a bar across the street inhabited with off duty garbage men, who must have been a little shocked when these two gaylings ran in (me in tears, of course) yelling "Help, we're being robbed!". God bless those garbage men, they ran back into the street with us, brandishing pool cues (once again, I am not making ANY of this up), and I got my hand on Tommy's car door. But I couldn't hold on, and Tommy and Miss Moonstruck sped off. I was left crying in the street, very much like Sophia Loren in "Two Women".
We brought them up before the Musician's Union, but since we had not been doing any of this with a signed contract, we were shit outa luck. I think I actually had a mini nervous breakdown.
What, you may be asking at this point, does ANY of this have to do with the Trump rally?
Well, half a year later, Miss Moonstruck had the chutzpah to do this act in NYC, at Freddy's Supper Club. And so, Scott & I solicited all our wonderful friends, and just like Lucy, Fred & Ethel did when Ricky got fired from The Tropicana...
...everyone called in bookings for opening night. We sold out the joint! One friend even said "Bob Fosse is coming with a table for twelve, we might be a little late, please hold the curtain for him".
Success! No one showed! They even wrote an article about it in The NY Post (which I wish I could find online), saying "some cranks" spoiled Miss Moonstruck's opening.
Let me be clear, as I write this down, I am ashamed we acted so childishly, but we had really been laid low by the entire experience, and well, karma's a bitch.
Epilogue: more than a decade later, Scott & I were living in LA, and one night, driving past a cabaret on Santa Monica called The Gardenia, there on the marquee it said "Wednesday - Miss Moonstruck"! Is it possible, we wondered, that she is still doing that act?? We showed up the night of the show, snuck into a darkened corner and waited, and sure enough, she did the entire act, right down to "Six years old and everything's terrific/Six years old and I'm in South Pacific!"
We tried to slip out unnoticed when it was over, but she spied us and ran out to greet us, as if none of the above had ever happened.
God bless Miss Moonstruck, as I mentioned at the start, show biz is cruel, and we all do what we must to just hang on.
Some of us just do it in a fur chubby and a mini-skirt.
x Marc & Scott