Early Evita.

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 Patti

Lu
Lupo_9780307460738_6p_all_r1.indd ii 7/15/10 3:32 PM
 A M e m oi r by
Pa t t i Lu Pon e

W I T H D I G BY D I E H L

Pone
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 Copyright © 2010 by Patti LuPone
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LuPone, Patti.
Patti LuPone: a memoir / Patti LuPone.—1st ed.
1. LuPone, Patti. 2. Singers—United States—Biography.
3. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
ML420.L9355A3 2010
782.1'4092—dc22
[ B] 2010008965

ISBN 978-0-307-46073-8
Printed in the United States of America
design by barbara sturman
“A Hundred Years from Today”: Words and music by Victor Young, Joseph Young,
and Ned Washington. Copyright © 1933 (renewed) EMI Robbins Catalog Inc.,
Patti Washington Music, Catherine Hinen and Warock Corp. Exclusive worldwide
print rights for EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. controlled and administered by Alfred
Music Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Broadway Melody”: Music by Nacio Herb Brown; lyrics by Arthur Freed.
Copyright © 1929 (renewed) EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. All rights controlled by
EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. (publishing) and Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc.
(print). All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs are from the collection of Patti LuPone.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

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 For

M AT T A N D J O S H ,

my family

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 contents
Prologue
Opening Night, Gypsy / 1
B R OA DWAY, 2 0 0 8

1
Northport, Long Island / 11
19 4 9 – 19 6 8

2
The Audition / 25
N E W YO R K C I T Y, 1 9 6 8

3
The Making of an Actor / 31
J U I L L I A R D, 1 9 6 8 – 1 9 7 2

4
The Acting Company / 51
1972 – 1976

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 5
The Baker’s Wife, or
Hitler’s Road Show / 71
1976

6
David Mamet and Me / 91

7
Evita, Part 1 / 103
AU D I T I O N A N D O U T O F TOW N , 1 9 7 9

8
Evita, Part 2 / 127
N E W YO R K A N D SY D N E Y, 1 9 7 9 – 1 9 8 1

9
A Working Actor, Part 1 / 145
19 8 2 – 19 8 5

10
The Cradle Will Rock, Les Misérables,
LB J, A Sicilian in Sicily / 161
19 8 5 – 19 87

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 11
Anything Goes, Driving Miss Daisy,
Life Goes On, A New Life / 185
19 87 – 19 9 2

12
Sunset Boulevard, Part 1 / 203
S E PT E M B E R 1 9 9 2 – J U LY 1 9 9 3

13
Sunset Boulevard, Part 2 / 223
J U LY 1 9 9 3 – M A R C H 1 9 9 4

14
A Working Actor, Part 2 / 247
19 9 4 – 2 0 0 0

15
Several Sweeney Todd s, and
Sondheim / 263
2 0 0 0, 2 0 0 1 , 2 0 0 5

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 16
Gypsy / 281
R AV I N I A , AU G U ST 2 0 0 6 –
E N C O R E S ! , J U LY 2 0 0 7

17
Gypsy / 293
B R OA DWAY, F E B R UA RY 2 0 0 8 –
JA N UA RY 2 0 0 9

Epilogue
Closing Night, Gypsy / 307
B R OA DWAY, JA N UA RY 2 0 0 9

Coda / 313

Acknowledgments / 317
Index / 319

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 I t’s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of

artists as impatient, but I don’t know of any first-rate

artist who hasn’t manifested in his career an appalling

patience, a willingness to wait, and to do his best now

in the expectation that next year he will do better.

—MARK VAN DOREN

(from The Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren )

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Lupo_9780307460738_6p_all_r1.indd xii 7/15/10 3:32 PM
 Prologue
Opening Night, Gypsy
B R O A D WAY, 2 0 0 8

’ve opened Gypsy four times. The

I first time, I played Louise ( aka

Gypsy) in the Patio Players’ produc-
tion of the musical. I was fifteen years
old. The Patio Players were a group of
kids from Northport, Long Island, who
got together in the summer and per-
formed big Broadway musicals on Cathy
Sheldon’s patio. Cathy was a founding
member of the Patio Players as well as
our star. In just a few short years these
productions, attended by many in the
Northport community, began to take
their toll on the Sheldons’ patio and
lawn, so David Babcock, our artistic di-
rector, approached the superintendent

© joan marcus

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 2 Patti LuPone
of Northport Schools. We were miraculously given permission to
run amok in the junior high school parking lot, where we built
the sets, in the home economics classroom, where we created the
costumes (when they weren’t being
sewn on volunteer mothers’ sewing
machines), and in the auditorium,
where we would now present our
musicals. We were a big operation.
All I remember about opening
night, at Middleville Junior High
School, was that the live lamb freaked
out in the spotlight while I was sing-
ing Louise’s song “Little Lamb.”
He broke free from me and started
clomping and bah-ing all over the
darkened stage. I learned how to sing
through laughter that night. He was
fine in the dress rehearsal. Opening
night nerves, I guess. You know what
they say: “Good dress, bad opening”
and vice versa. Most likely he had in-
digestion from eating my mother’s
laundry. I was in charge of the sheep
for some reason . . . bonding, per-
haps? I recall my mother screaming
at me on opening day, “Patti Ann! Tie up that damn sheep!”
Lambs are born in the spring. We performed in the summer.
The lamb was, unfortunately, a sheep. This sheep was going crazy.
I was afraid the sheep would fall into the orchestra pit in his des-
perate attempt to escape. Somehow as I continued singing the ten-
der ballad on a pitch-black stage with only a blue tinted spotlight

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 Opening Night, Gypsy 3

on me, the frantic sheep was caught before he crapped on every-

thing. They put him in the boys’ bathroom offstage right, unaware
that the tiled bathroom would increase the volume and reverber-
ate his bah-ing throughout the theatre. At poignant moments in
the play, we would hear the plaintive wail of a very unhappy sheep.
That’s all I remember—except for stripping in front of my biology
teacher.
Forty-four years later in August 2006, I opened Gypsy for the
second time. Only this time I was playing the character of Rose at
the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois.
The Ravinia Festival, on the grounds of Ravinia Park, is the
oldest outdoor music festival in the country. From June till Sep-
tember, the festival presents concerts and performances for thou-
sands of people who sit in the Pavilion Theatre, or in Martin Hall,
or picnic on the lawn. Whenever I walk the grounds, I think what
a great way for a kid to grow up—climbing the kid-friendly sculp-
tures while Beethoven, played by the Chicago Symphony Orches-
tra, is wafting into their tiny subconscious minds. Ravinia has a
very large, multigenerational, and loyal audience plus some of the
hippest camping equipment I’ve ever seen. The people with lawn
tickets are serious about their concert-going experience. On any
given night you can see linen, crystal, and Crock-Pots on Eddie
Bauer tables inside L.L. Bean tents.
A musical theatre production presented on the Pavilion stage
requires intense preparation and a certain amount of abandon
because you have at the most two weeks to put on a Broadway
musical. This Gypsy was highly anticipated because for half of
those forty-four years I had been told by fans, friends, and col-
leagues that I should play Rose Hovick, Gypsy and June’s mother.
When I read the script I did not see the “monster stage mother”
that had become the standard description of Rose. I hooked into

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 4 Patti LuPone
her love for her children and her desire to do only her best for
them, however misguided those intentions were. That’s the way I
wanted to play her. It was a departure.
My director, Lonny Price, cast a company of extraordinary per-
formers. I was told that some of the “farm boys” flew in from New
York City just to audition for it. Lonny somehow convinced the
CEO of the festival, Welz Kauffman, that he needed three weeks of
rehearsal for this production, which would include our technical
week. The technical week is when all the physical elements of the
production come together for the first time onstage: sets, lights,
props, costumes, staging, and choreography. Everybody involved
works ten hours a night trying to coordinate all these elements
while also attempting to get the show to under two hours of play-
ing time. It’s an exhausting week . . . then we open! Who came up
with that schedule, I’d love to know.
The lawn of the Ravinia Festival can accommodate up to
14,000 people. The Pavilion Theatre seats 3,200 people. Most
Broadway houses seat half as many as the Pavilion. If a produc-
tion is successful at Ravinia, we play to over ten thousand people
a night. As I understand it, the Pavilion and the lawn were heavily
sold for the three nights we performed Gypsy. I don’t remember
much about this opening night. I was too nervous. I don’t think
I gave anybody an opening night card, which is simply a note of
good luck and gratitude: one of the theatre’s sweet traditions. I
just buried my head, focused, and went out there.
Word of mouth about this Gypsy was so good that various
producers began vying for the rights to remount this production
in London or New York. I waited for word from Lonny Price that
Arthur Laurents, who is the show’s librettist and controls the rights,
would give the consent for the production to proceed. It was a frus-
trating wait.

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 Opening Night, Gypsy 5

Finally I called my longtime friend and press agent, Philip

Rinaldi, for his advice. He asked me what my relationship with
producer Scott Rudin was. Scott was Arthur Laurents’s best friend.
Philip suggested that I call Scott. I did but I couldn’t get past the
receptionist. Philip then called Scott’s partner, press agent John
Barlow. John paved the way for Scott and me to connect. Scott
simply told me to call Arthur Laurents myself. Now, there is a long
story here concerning Arthur and me and my banishment from
Arthur’s work, which included Gypsy.
It all started when Arthur offered me his play Jolson Sings
Again. I didn’t do it, but let’s save that story for another chapter.
For the moment let’s just say Arthur Laurents was really mad
at me—really, really mad at me. I now had to call Arthur and plead
with him to bring Gypsy back to New York only five years after the
last revival. I dialed the number. Arthur answered. “Hello, Arthur,
it’s Patti.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. I cringed, waiting for the onslaught of
five years of Arthur’s pent-up anger that was sure to follow. In-
stead, what I got was a compliment on my performance as Nellie
Lovett in Sweeney Todd. WHAT?
Then we began to talk about Gypsy. He said he wanted to
do it, that he would also direct it, and that this production of
Gypsy would be different. He wanted less bravura and more act-
ing. We talked about casting. We talked about Rose, and I said up
front that I couldn’t play her as she had been played in the past.
There would be no point in bringing Gypsy back to Broadway if
I couldn’t do my interpretation of Rose—under his direction, of
course. He agreed.
Arthur mulled over offers from the various producers and
settled on Jack Viertel’s Encores! Summer Stars series at City
Center. The City Center Encores! series brings musicals back to

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 6 Patti LuPone
life that would most likely never see another revival. The shows
are performed only three times. However, the Encores! Summer
Stars series gives these productions a longer run. We had a home
in New York. We were off and running. There was never another
word about Jolson Sings Again.
We went into rehearsal in June 2007. The cast was the best I
have ever worked with in my career. Arthur directed me wisely,
lovingly, and supportively. We put the past behind us and forged a
friendship. I got to work with one of Broadway’s best actors, Boyd
Gaines, and I discovered that beautiful jewel Laura Benanti.
City Center would not pay for the entire company to rehearse
for three weeks, so Arthur wisely asked Jack Viertel if he could
have the eleven principals for the first week. Jack agreed. We sat
around a table listening to Arthur talk about this musical and what
it meant to him while he interjected great, gossipy stories about
the original players and a couple of other celebrities he knew.
We were spellbound. The room was filled with love and laughter.
Boyd, Laura, and I questioned Arthur relentlessly about the mean-
ing of certain scenes. Arthur started to rethink his script as perhaps
he had never done before. That one very special week around the
table allowed us to explore what I consider to be the best book of
a musical ever written.
We opened in July of 2007. I barely remember this opening
night, because the pressure was on me. This was not Highland
Park, Illinois. This was New York City, New York. I don’t think I
gave opening night cards to the company on this occasion, either.
Maybe I did. All I know is that I loved being in the City Center
building again. I consider it one of my theatrical homes in Manhat-
tan. It’s where I performed with The Acting Company in the sev-
enties, and where I’d done two very successful performances for
Encores! (one of which was my first time back on a New York stage

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 Opening Night, Gypsy 7

after an unfortunate excursion to London—more about that later).

The theatre was not new to me: one important obstacle eliminated.
The audience was rapturous on opening night. Before the
show, the producers of City Center and all of the potential Broad-
way producers came to my dressing room and were over the moon
with happiness. We opened gloriously. We just knew we were mov-
ing to Broadway. Then Ben Brantley’s review came out, followed
by Charles Isherwood’s review, both in the New York Times. They
were duly unimpressed with my performance. Regardless, we were
sold out for our entire run with near-hysterical audiences. At the
end, it appeared I would only play Gypsy in three productions and
never make it to Broadway. But fate had something else in store.
It’s absolutely true: If it’s meant to be, it will be. Despite tepid
reviews from the Times, on March 27, 2008, we opened our City
Center production at the St. James Theatre on Broadway.
We went through another three-week rehearsal period with
Arthur, most of it spent around our beloved table, reading and
investigating the play once again. When I revisited Rose, she had
sunk further down into my gut and my psyche. I came back to her
more centered and calm. The greatest joy I could have gotten was
that our entire City Center Company minus one person—Nancy
Opel—reprised their roles. It was a reunion of old friends and rec-
ognizable characters.
Broadway opening nights are a relief, but that’s not what
they used to be. They used to be the most hair-raising and nerve-
racking performance of the run because it was the night that all
of the critics showed up. Today the critics see the play in the last
week of previews, so opening night is about family, friends, and
the friends of the 25,000 producers. This time I had the presence
of mind to be the leading lady and distribute the gifts and good
wishes to everybody in the St. James Theatre.

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 8 Patti LuPone
Whenever I return to Broadway, I try to have the same people
in my dressing room. It’s my insurance that there will be laughter
in that room. I had the inimitable Pat White, my very own Thelma
Ritter, as my dresser; Vanessa Anderson as my hairdresser; Laura
Skolnik of the Ravinia Festival as my personal assistant; and Pam
Combs Lyster, one of my oldest friends, to pick up the slack. Ange-
lina Avallone, Broadway’s premier makeup artist, was there as well,
in and out of the room. I was surrounded by five of the most fan-
tastic women I will ever hope to associate with in the theatre.
I was calm on opening night, knowing that the ladies of the
dressing room had distributed my cards and gifts in the morning
before I got to the theatre. I arrived in plenty of time to read the
cards attached to the flowers my friends had sent me, and to ne-
gotiate all of the people coming in and out of my dressing room
wishing me luck. Champagne was uncorked. My husband, Matt,
and son, Joshua, stayed with me till curtain, the producers came
in and out with love and hugs, my longtime friends stopped by for
a kiss, cast members threw me luck. Steve Sondheim sat on the
couch and chatted with Matt and me about anything and every-
thing. Everybody had a drink in their hand and a huge smile on
their face. I was ready, I was in costume, it was fifteen minutes to
the places call. Steve wished me luck and left to take his seat. At
ten minutes to places, Arthur walked into my dressing room.
The room emptied as if on cue, except for Matt. There was a
look in Arthur’s eye that totally scared me. I knew he was going to
tell me something that I didn’t want to hear. He said it, anyway:
“I know the review from the New York Times.” Tears started to
well up in his eyes and I said in my mind, No, no, please, Arthur, no.
Don’t tell me now! I have to go out and do this show.
“You got what you deserve. It’s a rave,” he said. We started cry-
ing and hugged each other. It was a rave for all of us. But it was

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 Opening Night, Gypsy 9

more than that for me; it was vindication. Matt grabbed Arthur
and said, “Have you actually seen it?” Matt would not believe it
until he saw it with his own eyes.
Places for the company was called. Matt and Arthur left my
dressing room. Pat White and I walked to the back of the house,
Pat making me laugh as always, and both of us relieved we were
finally opening the show. Besides everything else it implied, it
meant no more twelve-hour days in technical rehearsals.
The overture began and the audience went nuts. On my cue, I
walked down the house right aisle and up onto the stage to an ova-
tion I couldn’t see but could certainly hear. I kept my back to the
audience and waited to start. I was exhausted from everything—
the rehearsals, the previews, the sickness I always get when I walk
into a new theatre, the long and fated road to Broadway, finally
playing Rose in Gypsy. When the ovation died down, I played the
show as we had rehearsed it. I went to the opening night party for
about an hour, went home with Matt and Joshua, and the next day
settled in for the Broadway run of Arthur Laurents’s, Jule Styne’s,
and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy, my fourth production. The fol-
lowing story is about what happened to me from the time I fell in
love with the audience at age four, to that crazy sheep in the boys’
room at Middleville Junior High School, to my closing night at the
St. James Theatre. . . .

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 Northport, Long Island
1949–1968
1

Early cheesecake.

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 I remember the day I fell in love with the stage as if it were
yesterday.
When I was four, my father was principal of the Ocean Avenue
Elementary School, the only elementary school in my hometown
of Northport, Long Island. He started an after-school program,
and one item on the curriculum was dance with Miss Marguerite
in the school auditorium. I was enrolled. At the end of the school
year, we performed a recital called “There’s Nothing Like Danc-
ing.” It was June 1953. I wore a black Capezio jazz skirt, leotard,
and tap shoes. I was downstage right, dancing furiously. I looked
out at the audience, and even though it was mostly the parents of
the other kids in the recital, I thought that they were all looking at
me. Hey, they’re all smiling at me. I can’t get in trouble up here. I can
do whatever I want, and they’ll still smile at me. I knew from then
on that I would spend my life on the stage, because in fact what I
really fell in love with was the audience.
The way the family tells it, my brother Bobby saw me in a hula

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 Northport, Long Island 13

skirt, fell in love with the costume,

and followed me into dance. He was
seven and I was four. I never looked
back. In fact, neither of us did.
My mother and father were
first-generation Americans. My
grandparents, the maternal Pattis
and the paternal LuPones, came
over from Sicily and Abruzzo to
start a new life in America. They
settled in Jamestown and Dunkirk,
New York. Neither set of grandpar-
ents spoke English, so a lot of Ital-
ian was spoken in the houses, but
none was spoken to the grandkids.
The night I fell in love
Both families were boisterous and
with the audience at Miss
full of laughter, but the Pattis took Marguerite’s recital.
the prize for the amount of noise
they could make at a single gathering. There were hints of theat-
rical blood from a few of the adults, but it was when my mother
pulled out the Encyclopaedia Britannica and reverently showed
me a picture of my great-grandaunt, Adelina Patti, the famous
nineteenth-century coloratura, that my voice and my oversized
emotional personality started to make sense. I’m small, but the voice
and personality are BIG, I thought. Must be in the genes.
There’s a family rumor that Grandma Patti was a bootlegger.
They say she hid the liquor under the floorboards of a sewing
room and could smell the cops coming a mile away. Grandpa Patti
was murdered before I was born, and the other rumor was that
Grandma was somehow involved. According to the Jamestown Eve-
ning Journal of October 10, 1927:

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 14 Patti LuPone
Awakened by two men early Sunday morning, James Patti,
42, was lured from his home on Lakewood Road and shot
to death by gunmen who are being sought by the Sheriff ’s
Department. Mystery surrounds the motive for the crime,
which baffles authorities. The slaying took place on How-
ard Avenue, near Patti’s home shortly after 5:30 o’clock in
a dense fog, which covered the gruesome scene. Patti’s son
George with Carmelo Calabrese, who was a material witness,
found Patti lying in a pool of blood caused by three wounds
in his head. . . . [In the past] both Patti and his wife have
been arrested on charges of bootlegging. . . . Those who were
subjected to the most questioning were Patti’s wife, the son
George, the daughter Angelina [ MY MOTHER!], and Car-
melo Calabrese, their neighbor. . . . The widow of the slain
man and his daughter [ MY MOTHER!] were not locked up,
but Calabrese and the Patti youth, George, were kept in jail
yesterday but last night all were released except Calabrese.

For two people who couldn’t speak a word of English, there

was a lot of money in that household. I often wondered just
where the money came from. The theory that my grandparents
were bootleggers made sense, and personally I loved it. I didn’t
find any of this out until after my mother’s death, when I was
researching my family history. I asked one of my cousins about
the murder. He turned ashen and said he was sworn to secrecy,
but confirmed that yes, somehow Grandma was involved.
It didn’t surprise me. My grandmother wasn’t a very warm
woman. In fact, she was kind of scary. She rarely smiled and had
a tough countenance. Not that she didn’t love us. She did . . . her
way. I remember Sunday-morning phone calls between my mother
and Grandma—my mother always ending up in tears. I would ask

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 Northport, Long Island 15

her why she was crying. She said she missed her mother. I wonder
if they were discussing Grandpa’s murder. I’ll never know because
they were talking in Italian!
They never did solve Grandpa’s murder. When I was fourteen
years old, there was an incident where my mother almost let the
cat out of the bag. I was standing at the kitchen sink daydreaming.
My mother sidled up to me with a small sepia picture of a shirt-
less man in swimming trunks with his back to the camera. I looked
over and asked, “Who’s that?”
My mother replied, “Your real grandfather, my father.”
“Well, who’s the guy I think is my real grandfather?”
Silence.
I waited, then I asked, “Well, what happened to this guy in the
picture?”
“I don’t know,” she responded, then turned and walked away.
I was dumbfounded. The Patti household—money and secrets.
My mother and her sisters were fashion plates, beautifully
coiffed and dressed, but it was Aunt Tina who wanted to go on the
stage. She was the middle sister, dark-haired and beautiful. She
took bellydancing lessons and sang whenever she could. With no

From left
to right:
Tina, Mom,
Ann, and
Grandma.
What a
bunch of
babes.

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 16 Patti LuPone
solicitation from us she would gyrate and start screeching, most
times in an apron with flour on her face. My mother couldn’t hold
a tune or dance to save her life. She was so devoid of theatrical
blood that, later, when Bobby and I were established, she famously
said, “I wish you two would stop flitting from job to job!”
“But Ma, the jobs don’t last.”
My mother was not a stage mother in any respect. She was an
American housewife until she and my dad got divorced when I
was twelve. My dad had had a dalliance with a substitute teacher.
My parents had been married for thirty years, and back then no-
body got divorced. The rug was pulled out from under my mother,
so she threw her energy into her kids. My twin brothers Billy and
Bobby and I were all she had left. She felt ostracized from the
community, from the school my dad was principal of, and from
the Catholic Church, which frowned on divorce. The humiliation
was too much for her to take. Her children became the focus and
purpose of her life. The divorce freed me to pursue my dream.
Dad wanted all of us to be teachers. Mom’s life force was driving
us from one lesson to the next. If she was a stage mother, it mani-
fested itself in her pride in her three kids.
I went from dance with Miss Marguerite at the Ocean Ave-
nue Elementary School to the Donald and Rosalie Grant Dance
Studio, ending up at the André & Bonnie Dance Studio on Jeri-
cho Turnpike in Huntington. André was French, very exotic for
Jericho Turnpike, Long Island. He and his wife, Bonnie, created
routines for brother-and-sister acts. June and Timmy Gage had a
great act. She was a contortionist, so in their routine she was the
puppet and Timmy was the puppeteer. Of all the acts that André
created, it was my favorite because of June’s ability. The positions
she could get her body into were amazing. She was a star as far
as I was concerned—if she’d just get those buckteeth fixed. There

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 Northport, Long Island 17

Miss
Marguerite’s
dance class,
in costume.

was also Louella and Vincent Milillo. Their name used to make
me laugh. They, however, had no sense of humor. Their act was a
tango, as I recall.
My twin brothers and I did an adagio waltz to “Belle of the
Ball.” We were the LuPone Trio. All of us kids were a motley group
that performed all over Long Island and Manhattan—Kiwanis
clubs, Rotary clubs, the Jones Beach boardwalk, the old Piccadilly
Hotel in New York City—and there was Mom, driving Billy, Bobby,
and me to our dance recitals. Elaborate costumes were hand sewn,
beaded, and sequined if they didn’t come out of the trunk from
some French revue that André had brought with him from Paris to
Jericho Turnpike, Huntington, Long Island. It was the fifties, but it
felt like vaudeville. We were troupers on a circuit, albeit the Long
Island circuit.
Bobby and Billy had matching outfits with cummerbunds. I
was in a white ball gown. I still hadn’t grown into my lips. We ap-
peared on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. The television show
had a live audience, and although it was a family show and many of

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 18 Patti LuPone
the performers were kids, the audience
warm-up guy was a very lowbrow co-
median. His jokes were filthy and hys-
terical. It was my first real introduction
to professional show business.
It was also a rude introduction to
the world of television. The studio was
dirty and the atmosphere was gritty
with a no-nonsense “let’s get this done”
The LuPone Trio. attitude backstage. I was wearing a little
tiara, and during the afternoon rehearsal one of the stagehands
walked up to me and sprayed something on it—it was a dulling
spray because the tiara was too shiny for the TV lights. He then
said, “Open your mouth,” sprayed the same stuff on my braces and
walked away. No introduction, no explanation, no apology. I was
thirteen.
But that was nothing compared to what happened next.
Bobby and I were hanging underneath a stairwell between the
camera rehearsal and the live show when we heard somebody
from the program tell one of the contestants with a southern
accent and his manager that he would win the contest that night.
This was before airtime—before we had performed, before any-
one had performed and the audience had voted. The two of us
looked at each other—we couldn’t believe what we were hearing.
We tried not to believe that Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour
was fixed. But what other explanation could there be, especially
after the kid from Mississippi, who sang “I Left My Heart in San
Francisco,” won? Bobby and I ran and told our mother and our
dance teachers, but they didn’t believe us, or they didn’t want to
believe us. It was quite an experience. I gave up my junior high
school prom for The Amateur Hour only to find out that it was

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 Northport, Long Island 19

fixed. Nothing much changed in my young life, but I added the

word “jaded” to my vocabulary . . . that and “dulling spray.”
I went back to being a student in Northport. For the most part,
school was fun but boring. What inspired me was the Northport
school system’s incredibly strong music department. I’d started
private piano lessons with Miss JoAnn Oberg at seven years old.
My mom made me sit up straight and practice one hour every day.
I hated practicing, but I loved Miss Oberg. When I turned eight,
my third-grade class was led into the Ocean Avenue Elementary
School auditorium and told to choose an instrument from the two
large posters up on the stage. We were to pick either a band in-
strument or an orchestra instrument. I said “harp.” There was no
harp at our elementary school, but my classmate Kathy McCusker
whispered the word “cello” to me, so I started playing the cello.
I continued to play it until my senior year in high school.
As a junior, I started playing the sousaphone in the Northport
High School marching band. Our bandleader, Robert Krueger,
was a graduate of Northwestern University and
was able to get the most current Northwestern
musical arrangements and marching routines.
People came to the football games as much to
see the band as to see the football team. We
had an all-girl sousaphone line. I wanted in
because the marching band went to a sum-
mer camp with another high school from Nas-
sau County. It was very sexy. (The camp, not
the marching band.) We learned routines dur-
ing the day, and at night there was a whole
new crop of boys. One summer, I was quaran-
tined for a week because of extremely bad behavior. When one of
my favorite teachers, Esther Scott, came to my room to keep me

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 20 Patti LuPone
company, she laughed her head off because it was full of boys bent
on doing the same thing.
In school, what I loved most of all, besides recess, was chorus.
I met Esther Scott in junior high. She was the chorus master. When
I entered high school, Esther coincidentally made the transition
with me. I was incredibly blessed to have her for six years.
When she met my brother Bobby and me, she recognized our
talent, supported it, and elevated it. We remain very close friends
to this day. While Billy gravitated toward the science department,
Bobby and I became her protégés. In addition to nurturing our
talent, she also protected us,
especially me, because I got
into so much trouble in high
school. Esther once found
me hiding in her office to
avoid the assistant principal,
who was pacing the hallways
of the music department
shouting, “Where are you,
LuPone? I know you’re here
somewhere. When I get my
hands on you . . . !” Esther
laughed when she discov-
ered me under her desk—
Esther and me on the football field how unusual for a teacher.
at Northport High School. There was an irreverence
about her that was deeply
appreciated by all of her students. Oh, and the trouble I would get
into as a child and a teenager is the same trouble I get into now
as an adult approaching senior status. I rarely turn down a dare.
I want to laugh and have fun, however dangerous or rude. “The

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 Northport, Long Island 21

My brother, Bobby, in Jardin

aux Lilas, Juilliard Dance
Division.
© elizabeth sawyer

edge” has always been ex-

tremely seductive. All of this
equals trouble in my world,
but what fun I’ve had.
I only wanted to listen
to Esther. I had no interest
in math, science, history, or
English. My heart belonged
to the music department. It
was the only place that I truly studied anything, and it was there
that I learned to continue pursuing what I knew was my calling.
Esther helped me expand my horizons far beyond Northport.
I attended All-County, All-State, and All-Eastern in chorus. Each
of these events made up a single band, orchestra, and chorus. All-
County was selected musicians and singers from the high schools
in Suffolk County; All-State was again a select few from the high
schools in New York State. All - Eastern was the culmination of all
of these efforts. We were the best music students from the high
schools on the eastern seaboard. You had to audition to partici-
pate, and luckily I made it into all three choruses. When I was in
the All-Eastern chorus, I was struck by how much talent was out
there. During one rehearsal, as I sat in the soprano section, I was

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 22 Patti LuPone
humbled and stunned. I stopped singing and started listening. I
started asking myself questions: What is this desire I have? What
do I need to do to be as good as these people behind me, in front
of me, all around me? I went back to Mrs. Scott and talked about
my experience.
“You’ve been bit,” she told me. “The rest of your life will be
about this investigation.”
I remember that my junior high school guidance counselor
asked me what I wanted my high school major to be. I told him
music. He told me that was not possible, that I had to major in
something academic.
“Then why did you ask me?” I said. “I want to major in music.”
“You can’t do that,” he insisted.
I solved the problem my own way. I don’t know how I grad-
uated from high school. The only classes I remember showing
up for were music. To my mind, the department was filled with
the most interesting kids—the misfits, the musical geniuses, the
math whizzes, and just a few greasers because music was fun. Our
teachers loved what they were teaching, and I loved those teachers
because of that. How could you not learn? The music department
was alive, inspired, and passionate. I was never out of the vicinity
of the department. I attended my other classes, but ultimately the
only lessons that stuck were coming out of the music department
or out of Mrs. Scott’s heart and soul.
Under her guidance, our chorus was selected to sing for
NYSSMA, the New York State School Music Association, which was
a very prestigious honor. Mrs. Scott was thrilled that our chorus
had been selected. She chose an original piece, Arthur Fracken-
pohl’s Te Deum, and she chose me to sing the soprano solo. The
convention was held at the Concord Hotel in the Catskill Moun-
tains. It was December. We drove up from Northport the day before

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 Northport, Long Island 23

and stayed overnight. The morning of the performance I woke up

with a fever. I couldn’t swallow—it hurt so badly every time I did.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me and I was too scared to tell
anybody except my closest friends. I had several hours before the
concert and I continued to get sicker. I was terrified that I wouldn’t
be able to sing, let alone stand through the performance. It was my
first test. Would I be able to overcome this illness and sing the solo?
Was this just a case of stage fright? Did I have the inner strength
to endure whatever lay ahead for me in this business? There was
somebody else who could have sung the part if I was too sick, but
this was my first big solo. My name was in the program. I couldn’t
let myself down. I couldn’t let Mrs. Scott down. I had to tell her that
I was sick. To this day I can see Esther standing in front of me. She
asked me whether I could do it, and I said, “I think I can.”
“Then do it,” she said.
Before we took the stage, she told us about her son, Gary, who
was severely handicapped.
“Would you sing this for Gary?” she asked us. “Music is his joy
and the only thing he responds to.” Esther didn’t cry as she spoke
about him, but we did because of her simple request and her mov-
ing words. That night she instilled something in us greater than
our teenage self-absorption. Whenever Esther spoke, everyone sat
up straight and listened. Her compassion and wisdom were uplift-
ing and helped us all transcend the petty disputes and mundane
occurrences that were part of our daily school lives. She changed
us with the music she chose for us, with the experiences she
shared with us, and with the experiences she created for us. After
everybody stopped crying, the chorus walked out on that stage
with a different physicality, a different posture. We simply carried
ourselves taller. There was pride, seriousness, focus—something
that removed our egos from the equation and let the music soar.

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 24 Patti LuPone
Swallowing was so painful that I didn’t sing a note until I got
to my solo. Then I did what I’ve done all my life. I opened up my
mouth and sang . . . “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day” . . .
the opening words. My voice cracked coming off the F above
middle C, but I didn’t let it sink me. I did it. We all did it—for
Esther and for Gary. At the end of the concert, Esther did some-
thing I’ve never forgotten. She acknowledged the applause but for
only a brief second. She turned back and gave us the ovation. The
pride and the accomplishment we felt was so heady and like noth-
ing I’d ever felt before. It wasn’t the applause as much as it was the
feeling of achievement and success. It was an incredible experi-
ence and a huge life lesson for all of us.
From that point on, I’ve never backed down from any test or
any challenge. But it took everything I had to get through the per-
formance. As soon as I came offstage, a doctor was on hand, and
I was diagnosed with a 105-degree fever and the worst case of
tonsillitis the doctor had ever seen. They put me in a car with the
assistant principal (the one always chasing me down corridors) for
the ride back to Northport. I was lying down in the backseat with
a paper bag nearby in case I got sick to my stomach, but the irony
did not escape me. The biggest success of my life was being shared
with the man who didn’t give a shit about our music department
and who would’ve expelled me if he could’ve. No Esther Scott, no
Philip Caggiano or Suzi Walzer, close classmates, no Bo Whitney,
my best friend, who held my hand and supported me all through
the concert. Just the assistant principal!
And though I was on the verge of wretching in the backseat
and isolated from the celebration on the bus, I realized this achieve-
ment marked the beginning of the ownership of my talent, the re-
sponsibility to it and to the path that chose me at four years old.

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 The Audition
N E W Y O R K C I T Y, 1 9 6 8
2

The Juilliard School of Music.

samuel h. gottscho

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 May 6, 1968

Dear Miss LuPone:

The scholarship committee of the Drama Division has

considered your application for financial aid and will
award you a scholarship of $1,200 for the year 1968– 69,
to be applied against tuition costs. I hope this award will
make your attending Juilliard practicable. . . .

H uh? What? No way . . . really? Okay, I guess.

In truth I didn’t want to go to Juilliard. I didn’t want to go to
college at all. I’d known since I was four years old what I was going
to do with my life, but my mother wanted me to finish my educa-
tion, which meant college. Bobby, who had attended the Dance Di-
vision at Juilliard, told me the school was starting a drama division,
so I auditioned to please my mother and brother. The audition

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 The Audition 27

took place a year after my graduation from high school. I honestly

didn’t care if I got in or not.
During my senior year of high school, singing had become
my main focus. My private voice teacher suggested that I audition
for Juilliard’s Preparatory Division, which was designed to train
students ages six through eighteen in the various disciplines of
music. I auditioned and was accepted. I studied classical singing,
technique, and music theory.
Every Saturday morning I took the Long Island Rail Road
from Northport to New York City and then by subway on to Juil-
liard, which at the time was on West 122nd Street in Harlem. I
spent my Saturdays smoking cigarettes on the train. (Remember
when you could smoke on trains? Remember when you could
smoke?) I then took a voice lesson with a bejangled, bejeweled
Marian Mandarin. I didn’t learn anything, but that wasn’t entirely
her fault. She was a good teacher, but I didn’t understand her
teaching methods. She was one of many singing teachers I didn’t
understand. All I did was imitate her vocal quality and technique,
never knowing whether the imitation was correct or whether it
suited my voice. Her appearance distracted me as well. She was
quite a sight for a seventeen-year-old. Her arms were covered in
bangles. Her ten fingers had rings on eight of them. Her hair was
clipped and pinned on top of her head in a state of confusion,
the clips perilously on the verge of flying into my face when she
gesticulated. She would look at me confused. I looked back at her
even more confused. Clearly, nothing I did captured her imagina-
tion, so in my lesson I just imitated her and snuck peeks at the
clock, waiting for the hour to end. Juilliard Preparatory got me
nowhere except out of Northport on a Saturday. I take that back.
I loved music theory and my teacher. However, I wasn’t planning
on becoming an opera singer.

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 28 Patti LuPone
At the end of the year I had to sing in a recital, knowing that
my voice wasn’t in the best shape. I truly didn’t realize how poorly
I sang until I looked at my mother’s and my brother’s faces after-
ward. They were embarrassed for me. Then I was embarrassed
for me. Still, I didn’t care because I didn’t want to be an opera
singer. The Broadway lights were beckoning. However uninspired
the preparatory experience was, I let Marian Mandarin convince
me to audition for Juilliard’s Opera Department. As far as audi-
tions go, this one was classic. One judge was reading a book, the
second judge was filing her nails, the last judge held his head in
his hands as he stared at the table. I sang the aria as I watched
the totally disinterested panel. I knew my fate, but I didn’t care.
I lie. I cared a little because I realized I failed in the audition. No
one wants to fail in an audition regardless of whether you want
the part or not.
A year later, auditions for the newly formed Drama Division
were being held at the school on 122nd Street—Juilliard was ex-
panding, and a new building at Lincoln Center was under con-
struction. I arrived pretty much hoping for the same fate, which
was no admittance to the prestigious school, but I was eager to
impress them, anyway. My classical speech was Kate’s epilogue
from The Taming of the Shrew. My contemporary monologue was
Dolly Levi’s money speech from The Matchmaker. When I finished
the classical speech, an older man with a red face and white hair
and beard came to the foot of the stage. “I don’t think that’s what
Shakespeare had in mind,” he said. It was John Houseman, one
half of the artistic directorship of the Drama Division at the Juil-
liard School. The other half was Michel Saint-Denis, an actor,
director, and drama theorist. Among his long list of credits, he
co-directed the Royal Shakespeare Company. John Houseman was
a prominent producer known most notably for his collaboration

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 The Audition 29

with Orson Welles and would become even better known for his
Oscar-winning portrayal of Professor Kingsfield in both the movie
and television series of The Paper Chase. These men created the
Drama Division of the Juilliard School—pretty impressive lineage.
However, on that particular day, John Houseman wasn’t quite the
intimidating figure he would later come to epitomize. I wasn’t in-
timidated because I was sure I didn’t care whether I got in or not.
After I finished my contemporary speech, the Drama Division
panel asked me to do an improvisation. From the darkened theatre
where they sat, there was a pause . . . a longish pause. Then some-
one said, “You’ve just received a rejection letter from the Drama
Division of the Juilliard School.” Without thought or preparation
I played the scene thus—I walked stage right from where I was
standing to an imaginary mailbox. I opened the mailbox with a
key, pulled out my mail, flipped through it until I came to “the
letter.” I saw the address on the envelope, ripped it open in excite-
ment, and read it . . . pause . . . then tossed it over my shoulder and
walked away. Big laugh. I got them, I thought. They asked me if I
could sing. I ran through a mental list of the songs I knew. Inspira-
tion struck with Comden and Green’s “You Mustn’t Be Discour-
aged” from Fade Out, Fade In, a humorous salute to the idea that
however bad things are, they could always get worse. I opened my
mouth and out it came. That was the key that unlocked my admis-
sion to the school. They called me off the stage into the house,
where they surrounded me. They asked me a lot of questions. The
one I remember was, Did I play an instrument? I told them the
tuba, which was true, but also funny. I left the audition happy be-
cause I didn’t fail . . . and realized, yes, in fact, I do care whether I
got in or not.
One of the reasons I didn’t want to go to Juilliard was that
I was enjoying my newly independent life in New York City.

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 30 Patti LuPone
Right after graduation from Northport High School, I moved into
Manhattan, where I shared a hundred-dollar-a-month sixth-floor
walk-up railroad flat with my friend Pam Combs. I found a job
right away working at Civic & Co. selling button-down shirts. The
owner, Norman Civic, let me take time off for auditions. I was
making money. I had a roof over my head. I was auditioning. I’d
known pretty much all my life where I would end up—the Broad-
way Musical Stage—and I was determined to pursue it.

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 To purchase a copy of
Patti LuPone
visit one of these online retailers:

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