One performer of many who always interested me is/was the late Dick Shawn. Shawn was in two of my favorite movies — It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Producers — and almost starred in the original Broadway production of one of my favorite musicals, Li'l Abner. He was actually cast in the role of Abner, not because the show's creators thought he was ideal for the part but because they were set to start rehearsals and they couldn't find anyone who was. Then they found Peter Palmer. A not-dissimilar attitude seems to have accompanied his hiring for Mad World. Because of its size, the role of Sylvester Marcus should have been played by a major, established comedian…which Shawn was not at the time. He was nowhere near big enough to share a screen and billing with Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Phil Silvers. Fortunately for Shawn, neither was anyone else who was the right age, a bit muscular and convincing when playing a maniac. So he got the job and in this case, they didn't find anyone preferable.
Even his participation in The Producers is a bit odd. He played a hippie named L.S.D. who was essential to the plot of the film but easily and effectively jettisoned later for the musical version. "The character never quite fit in," writer-director Mel Brooks said when asked about the deletion…and I get the feeling that Dick Shawn, in shaping that character, contributed mightily to that disconnect. Mel was right: L.S.D. doesn't really blend seamlessly with the rest of his wonderful movie. It almost feels like he was filmed for some other picture and then edited into this one. That may in part be because there isn't one shot where you see Shawn in the same frame with the stars, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. I once asked Brooks if he was even on the set at the same time as the two leads and he said "Sure" and seemed surprised when I mentioned that you never see them together. You don't. I don't think I've ever even seen a still of Shawn with either of them.
Since Shawn died spontaneously in 1987, he's probably been best-remembered for how he died. It happened on stage during a performance of a one-man show he wrote for himself called The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World. As I'll explain in a moment, the vehicle was just the kind of thing that might have ended with the star faking his death on-stage and indeed, many audience members that night left wondering if they actually had seen Dick Shawn drop dead or if it was all an elaborate, unfunny joke. Andy Kaufman was probably very jealous.
All of that upstages something that is too often unsaid about that show. At least when I saw it (twice) and its star didn't croak, it was truly one of the most brilliant, memorable evenings you could ever spend in a theater. It was the kind of show you cheered and gave a couple of rousing standing ovations, then went outside and gasped for air, aware you'd witnessed something you'd never forget.
My first was in 1978, I believe, at what was then called the Solari Theater. A well-respected acting teacher named Rudy Solari had taken over a theater in Beverly Hills and renamed it, he said, in memory of his father. I recall he took a fair amount of criticism for that…people feeling he'd named it to honor himself and was using the old man as a shield. He didn't deserve any such grief because he ran a fine operation which took in a lot of wonderful, often-experimental shows and gave them a place to live — and not in some converted welding shop in a bad neighborhood but in a wonderful, comfortable room in a classy area.
When we arrived that night, the house was closed and the audience was all crammed into the lobby, waiting awkwardly to be let into the theater. We finally were, just minutes before showtime and we would soon learn the reason for the delay, which I guess occurred at every performance.
There was no curtain. The stage was a replica of a seedy apartment — a flophouse wherein a derelict with a few bucks might dwell — and the floor was covered with hundreds of pieces of crumpled newspaper. We did not know that Dick Shawn was under all that newspaper and the delay in seating us was to minimize the amount of time he would have to be there.
The show began with a recording of a female chorus singing a little song called "Hail to the Audience." They then played it again. And again. And I think again. At some point, Shawn emerged from under the debris. He'd been on stage all that time and would not leave it until the conclusion of the show.
He then began a stream of consciousness monologue/rant about his life. He was playing a drunk, has-been/never-was entertainer whose life was in ruins because his genius had never been recognized. Everything he did was either over the heads of the audience or under their crotches — too high or too low, never just right. Had that ever been said about Dick Shawn? I'll bet it had. The topics covered ran the field…some about show business; others about life and relationships and how so little in the world made sense to him. It was, probably deliberately, hard to tell if it was Dick Shawn or the character talking…or if either one of them utterly craved or totally rejected our sympathy.
I don't know if this show was ever properly videotaped or otherwise recorded. I hope it was, not only because I'd love to see it again but because there's no way anyone could adequately explain it to anyone who didn't see it. I'm not even sure you could explain it to someone who did see it and I'm not the only one who felt that way. Charles Champlin, the roving critic of the L.A. Times wrote…
What Shawn did was not easy to describe. It was a seemingly free-associative skein of bits, thoughts and actions. It was a comedy about comedy, a performance about performance and the performer's peculiar relationship with his audiences. And it was, finally, a kind of acted-out speculation on the reality of the absurd and the absurdity of much of what we think of as reality.
See? He couldn't tell you, either.
Act One ended with Shawn (or maybe his alter-ego) collapsing on the floor…and during intermission, that's where he remained. He was just lying there while the crew cleared the stage around him of all that crumpled newspaper. I think the premise was that the character was stricken with a heart attack or something of the sort, and that Act Two was all a fantasy that raced through his mind in its final minutes. What I know for sure is that in the second half, we saw the character's fully-realized nightclub-type act and I also know that the transition to it was one of the most stunning, I-can't-believe-he-just-did-that moments I ever witnessed in a theater.
Okay now, picture this. The stage still looked like a crappy apartment. Dick Shawn was lying on the floor in shabby clothes. The whole visual screamed failure, failure, failure. Then suddenly there was recorded music (all the music in the show, and there was a lot of it, was on tape) and there was a timpani drum roll as the Big Star was introduced…
…and then the stage went black…
…and then, after what seemed like only three or so seconds, the lights came back in full-force and everything was different. Dick Shawn was on his feet wearing a glittery tux, singing into a microphone and looking for all the world like a stellar Vegas headliner. The filthy apartment was gone and all around were curtains and sequins and sparkles, and behind him was a full orchestra — of mannequins, similarly attired.
All of us in the audience had a brief moment of whiplash. It even surprised me the second time I saw it when I knew what was coming. A friend of mine described it as the best example he'd ever seen of live theater achieving an impact you could never in a million years replicate on movies or television. In film, professorial folks sometimes speak of something called a "smash cut," in which you leap from one locale or action to another in a manner that is so jarring that you are conscious of the editing, utterly aware they just went from something shot in one place at one time to something shot somewhere else at another time. Dick Shawn did a "smash cut" live before our eyes.
He then performed the entertainer's act — Mr. Fabulously Fantastic Jr., singing and dancing and juggling oranges and expanding on topics covered in the first act. It probably lasted thirty to forty minutes and you simply could not take your eyes off that incredible person up there with so much energy and so much unpredictability. There was never a moment when you knew what he was going to do next. He must have in some way because of the intricate light and music cues but he never let you think you knew where he was heading. I gather the stage crew was aware he would hit certain marks and give certain cues but only he knew, and I'll bet it changed from night to night, how he was going to get to them and in what order.
At the end of Mr. Fantastic Jr.'s performance, there was some sort of audio explosion and he collapsed again. You blinked and he was somehow back in the bad apartment with crumpled newspaper raining down on him from above. There were also bananas on wires dangling over the audience. (Bananas were a recurring theme throughout the show as some sort of link between apes and comedians.) I do not recall how he closed after that but I remember endless standing ovations, and Shawn coming fully out of character to give a long post-show speech, mainly introducing friends of his in the audience. The second time I went, my friend Bridget and I were seated next to Merv Griffin and Eva Gabor. Introducing Merv turned into a hilarious ten-minute conversation between the two men, utterly unplanned and as funny, at least on Shawn's end, as the play that had preceded it.
That second time was in 1985 in the same building, which was now the Canon Theater — named not after anyone's father but after the street on which it was located. Shawn's first stay had been a short-run tryout. A full seven years later, he brought it back for what turned out to be a long, smash run. I'll bet a lot of those who rushed to buy tickets were, like me, folks who'd seen it the first time and were eager to see it again and to treat a friend to the same experience. Bridget raved about it for years after and thanked me not only for taking her but for not telling her anything in advance about what we were going to see.
It was two years later that Shawn passed away during a performance of Second Greatest Entertainer in San Diego. I have read or heard several different accounts but they all say that he collapsed on stage, apparently at the end of Act One where the script called for him to collapse…and then he just plain never got up.
After the intermission, he continued to lie there and the audience, which had returned to its seats, eventually began to giggle. After a longer while, the stage crew began to realize the pause was running much, much longer than it ever had. Defying Shawn's instructions to never interfere no matter what occurred on stage, someone went out to check on the star (some reports say it was his son) and the audience thought it was part of the script. When he asked for a doctor, they thought that was part of the show, too. And when an ambulance was called and the audience was asked to leave, some of the playgoers still thought that was all part of the show, as well. Forty-five minutes later in a nearby hospital, Dick Shawn was pronounced dead from a heart attack at the age of 63. Maybe then they all believed it was true.
Boy, I wish you could have seen this show…and never mind you. I wish I could see it again. More than a quarter-century later, I still think about it.