Famous broadway scandals!

[Annas_Priest]

Everyone loves a good scandal! Who knows some great one's that have rocked the Broaway community! This can include rivalries and fights too!

[LizzieCurry]

Oh boy.

[Pgenre]

Arthur, is that you?

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[RevolutionaryCostume]

LOL. . this actually sounds like a fun thread :)

I love reading about that stuff. .

-Jacob.

[WOSQ]

In about 1988 the producer of the revival of Oh Calcutta, Norman Kean, stabbed his wife, actress Gwyda Donhowe, to death and later in the day jumped off the roof of their west side apartment building.

This was a couple that was well-known within the industry.

I'd call that a scandal.

[Pgenre]

My personal favorite: Chris Kattan (whom I saw in early previews) being fired from THE FROGS and the headline that followed the next day in the Post.

"Kattan axed, too busy snorting lines to learn them"

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[Annas_Priest]

BAHHAHA!
Thats hilarious Pgenre

[BwayTday]

would Patti sueing Webber be one?

Thats pretty scandalious

[SporkGoddess]

Maybe what happened with Mandy Patinkin and Toni Collette?

And the drama involving LBB, Sutton Foster, and Christian Borle?

[Annas_Priest]

I don't know these stories, sprok!
Please explain?

[inick122492]

Did anything really happen between Kristin and Idina? Since they were both nominated fro the same Tony, I heard that brought drama at the show which then lead Kristin to leave before her contract ended.

[SporkGoddess]

Annas: I guess Mandy Patinkin, who is a pretty big method actor, started actually being pretty mean to Toni Collette (who played his long-suffering wife) during The Wild Party's run. IIRC he once even spat at her onstage.

Someone else will know that one better, I'm sure.

As for the other one, LBB and Christian Borle were supposedly having an affair during Legally Blonde, when he was still married to Sutton Foster.

[alightinthedark23]

James Barbour.

[Mattbrain]

https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=955542&boardid=1

https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=941439&dt=10

That oughta help you out with the Mandy Patinkin - Toni Collette incident. As for the Laura Bell Bundy-Sutton Foster-Christian Borle love triangle, they deleted that thread (surprise surprise).

[BrodyFosse123]

Scott Wise leaving his wife for Elizabeth Parkinson, who he met in FOSSE.

Ute Lemper leaving mid-performances during her run in CHICAGO. Poor standby Nancy Hess had to literally drop everything and run over to the Shubert at any moment's notice.

Glenn Close fibbing to the press that box office grosses dropped enormously when she went on a 2 week vacation during her run in SUNSET BLVD.

Producers refusing to close the revival of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS simply because they refused to pay Sarah Jessica Parker since she was on a 'pay-or-play' contract. They preferred to keep her performing to an empty theatre than pay her full salary for doing nothing.

Tonya Pinkins demanding more money for playing Caroline in CAROLINE, OR CHANGE when the show transferred from the Public Theatre to Broadway. She justified this by stating that a Broadway transfer would demand her to commit for a longer period of time, which she refused to do unless she could afford to bring her entire family to NY during her run.

Barbra Streisand & Lainie Kazan with FUNNY GIRL.
Lainie Kazan & Michele Lee with SEESAW

... and there are so many more.

[SporkGoddess]

Oh, duh, James Barbour! How could I forget the most obvious one?

[mybigsplash]

Jeremy Piven will never work in NY again.

[eatlasagna]

maybe this is real or fake.. i dont' know.... but i remember reading somewhere that in the original broadway cast of MISS SAIGON when Gigi is named the winner of the contest that one of the girls didn't like the actress playing gigi... so she decided to fight with her onstage... well apparently they decided to keep that as part of the staging of the show...

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Who was that male co-star who Ethel Merman notoriously fought with...?

[Pgenre]

You could write a book (and Kevin Kelley has!) on Michael Bennett's coked-out shenanigans alone!

His "advice" to Liza and Kander & Ebb to do THE ACT's nonmusical scenes as an old lady with a cane and a grey wig...

Jennifer Holliday falling in love with him during DREAMGIRLS.

Donna McKechnie falling in love with him during A CHORUS LINE.

Seymour Cassel's wife falling in love with him during SCANDAL.

Elaine Paige refusing to speak to him during rehearsals of CHESS.

And the best are his various run-ins with his one-time protege Tommy Tune. Everyone knowsa about the '82 TONYS NINE/DREAMGIRLS rumors/scandal. But who could forget the infamous story of Bennett strong-arming his way into rehearsals and convincing Tune to allow him to stage a new opening number... which, when completed nearly a week later at a very high cost, was an absurdly over-the-top 80s music video style number (with leggings and headbands) intentionally designed to sabotage Tune's 30s-set musical MY ONE AND ONLY.

Bennett was as much a genius as he was an a*shole, like Robbins and Fosse before him, and if the work is good enough to justify it... it's all somehow OK, in the end, I guess.

And these are just the famous stories... the darker ones that reveal the essence of the addiction and paranoia that ruled his life truly give one pause and make one ponder the line between genius and madness and how Bennett seemed to inhabit both worlds.

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[wickedfan]

Fernando Lamas, I believe. Best retort I've heard was from him to Merman. He complained in rehearsal that she always said her lines out to the audience. She said "Mr. Lamas, I've been delivering my lines like this for 30 years." To which he replied, "That doesn't make you right, Ms. Merman, that just makes you old." Brilliant.

[morosco]

Glenn Close fibbing to the press that box office grosses dropped enormously when she went on a 2 week vacation during her run in SUNSET BLVD.

I don't remember it being Glenn Close doing the fibbing. I believe it was Webber fibbing that the show was doing great business while Close was on vacation. I think Close challenged him on his fib.

Bennett was as much a genius as he was an a*shole, like Robbins and Fosse before him

Was Fosse considered an asshole too?

[ghostlight2]

"Ute Lemper leaving mid-performances during her run in CHICAGO. Poor standby Nancy Hess had to literally drop everything and run over to the Shubert at any moment's notice".

I'm proud of you, BrodyFosse, not a single "alleged" in there. But see, this is how rumors get started. That only happened once, when understudy Mamie Duncan-Gibbs was on vacation. Why gild the lily?

[Pgenre]

morosco: ask Ann Reinking, particularly that 2-year-period where he would ONLY participate in menage-a-trois (female, only) and demand it daily. Or the five hundred times he brought her to tears over nothing.

Remember, when ALL THAT JAZZ came out people who knew him referred to it as a very Hollywood-ized account of the man. If THAT is a GLAMORIZED look at him and how he treats his loves/actors/collaborators/friends than you can draw your own conclusions about how he was in real life.

Short answer: Yes.

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[sing_dance_love]

PGenre-

I actually don;t know that much about the '82 TONYS NINE/DREAMGIRLS rumors/scandal.

What was that about?