Great Moments in New York Theater: Sugar Babies

A teenager, I found myself in New York for a week, every summer – part of the family vacation. We were living in Europe and spent two months in the States during those months, while we visited relatives in Texas and California. Before that could happen, though, my father had to do a week of business at the home office of Dun and Bradstreet, in New York. That is when I developed my great love of this city – and of Broadway. In a previous blog entry, I mentioned that it was during our first trip to the states that my dad chose They’re Playing Our Song to be my first Broadway show. The following summer, he took the family to see a show at Radio City Music Hall ( so gorgeous ). Then, that third summer, he took my mother and I to see the very popular Ann Miller – Mickey Rooney burlesque, Sugar Babies. To be at the theater with my oh so sophisticated mother and father, to be in the Mark Hellinger (it remains the most extraordinary and glamourous theater I have ever entered), to be at a show starring two MGM stars I had loved my entire life… well, it was destined to be an astounding and exciting night in the theater!

Moments before the show was to start, there was an announcement that Ann Miller would not be appearing that evening. The ENTIRE theater groaned. The announcer went on to explain that her mother had died, at which time the audience sighed on her behalf. Then the announcer told us that Miss Miller’s understudy would be going on in her place and that, were we to stay, she would give us the best show we had ever seen.

And do you know what?

Jane Summerhays did.

That was such a wonderful and exciting night for us because (first of all) Sugar Babies is just an enormously entertaining show and Mickey Rooney (though there are times I find him to be TOO much) was totally in his element. Then there were all those gorgeous women and the sequins and the feathers and the glamour. My parents and I both agreed that Jane Summerhays was tremendous. It became a night in the theater that we would talk about again and again during the next year that we spent in Switzerland. Then, it was the following summer and time to head back to New York. And I read in the paper that Sugar Babies is still showing. So I told my father I wanted to go back so I could see Ann Miller; and he bought me a ticket.

The day we arrived in New York I went over to the Mark Hellinger around ten pm with the souvenir program I had bought the summer before and I waited at the stage door. When the crowd came out, many others joined me there and, after awhile, the doorman came out and announced that Ann Miller would not be coming out to do autographs, that, instead, he would be taking programs and Playbills in to her and bring them back. I surrendered the large colour folio in my hand and waited, terrified I would not get it back. A few minutes later, though, out he came with all the booklets and handed them out. I had a souvenir program with Ann Miller’s autograph on it! I was delirious. I walked back to the Hotel Dorset on 54th, up on a cloud.

The next night, I headed back to that glorious theatrical palace to see the show again, hoping and praying that Ann Miller would not be out again.

She wasn’t out.

If I had enjoyed Sugar Babies last summer, I loved it this one. I would never take anything away from Jane Summerhays – but she knows how special Ann Miller was. She knows what it was all about. Anyone who has seen Ann Miller work knows what it was all about. Sheer thrill factor. And the director of the show orchestrated the thrill perfectly. It felt like about 15 minutes before her first entrance. There was a lot of fast music, a lot of chorus kids singing and dancing, a huge crescendo and then they wheeled her in, perched atop a handcart filled with a pile of suitcases and trunks, her skirt split up and those famous legs displayed to perfection. A little belting and a little flourish of the arms and then came the tap solo. I was in little gay boy heaven, at 16.

It was two plus hours of this. The supporting cast was the same, Mickey was the same, the sight gags were the same, even the bit where Jane Summerhays knocked Mickey’s wig off and broke up laughing was the same in Ann Miller’s hands (it was a great learning experience for this budding actor). Miss Miller sang the torch song Don’t Blame Me from (again!) atop a piano and I melted into my seat like a Salvador Dali painting. Then came the famous McHugh Medley which ranks as one of the great moments in musical theater. I still listen to the cast album several times a year and it always makes me happy. I have never been able to fully explain to my parents how much this night at the theater meant to me – mostly because it would just sound absurd from a man in his forties, gushing over a thirty year old memory that nobody other than a gay male who has been a gay teenage boy would understand; and that is neither of my parents. You know?

There came a moment when the finale was starting and I thought to myself, I should leave. I should go get in line at the stage door and get Mickey Rooney to sign the souvenir program that I was still carrying from the night before. So I did; and it was a good thing, too, because apparently he wore his street clothing under his costume. The audience wasn’t even out the door of the Mark Hellinger when the stage door flew open and he came running out. I could hear the audience applauding through that open stage door. He stopped and looked at me and smiled. I asked for his autograph and he grabbed my pen and scribbled on the page. You’re so wonderful I told him and he paused and looked at me.

“I’m just having a good time”

And he was gone. He had dashed into his car and flown away. A minute later, the first of the audience members walked up beside me, getting in line to get their autographs. I smiled a secret smile and strolled, again on a cloud, back to the Hotel Dorset.