Quick Q&A: Robert Viagas

I talked with Playbill Online’s Robert Viagas, whose recently published book I’m The Greatest Star chronicles the life stories of 40 of the biggest stars of Broadway musical theatre from 1901 to the present.

When did you fall in love with theatre?

When I was a kid my parents didn’t take me to a lot of shows – they were blue collar and didn’t have the wherewithal, but we did all go to see The Fantasticks at Westbury Music Fair when I was 12. I didn’t understand 9/10th’s of it but I was fascinated. There’s a funny moment when they ask the old actor to recite a famous Shakespearean speech – the gag is that he doesn’t know it and he cobbles one together. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, screw your courage to the sticking place!” It sounded dirty to me and I later asked my parents what it meant. They wouldn’t tell me; I think they thought it might have been dirty too. That’s when I realized that shows might have a lot to teach me, and some of it might be forbidden. That was my downfall. I would have to go to the theatre for the rest of forever.

How did the idea for the book come about?

The folks at Applause approached me. They wanted to do something on Broadway musical stars for this reason: in the past few years, the pace of production has picked up to the point where people could have careers in musicals which was not the case for at least a generation. We lost our Meryl Streep’s and Barbra Streisand’s – there wasn’t enough work to support them. Now we have a situation where someone like Kristin Chenoweth or Audra McDonald can be in show after show. They do other things but then they come back. I ran into a lot of younger theatergoers who are familiar with today’s stars but are not familiar with the older stars, and older people who are not familiar with the stars of today. So, we decided to go back to the start of the 20th century to show a continuum.

Some of the century’s earliest stage stars are still known to us today. Why do you think that is?

Yes. Al Jolson, for example, which is interesting because he made relatively few movies. He’s so iconic that he is still recognizable to most people today. Part of what I wanted to do in writing the book was to get people to not forget stars like Bobby Clark and Marilyn Miller. They were so successful on the stage in their day that they didn’t need to make any films. I wanted to honor some of the greatest stars like William Gaxton – he was the leading man in Anything Goes, and Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin wrote for him. Who the hell is he? He was such a big star but today even theatre people are generally not familiar. I included Adele Astaire and combined her in a chapter with Fred: when they were a brother-sister dance team it was Adele who was the bigger star. She retired, and he went out to Hollywood and into history. Part of the research was not only what they did on the stage but how audiences reacted to them; that reaction from audiences is the mark of a star. That’s what I am most proud of.

photo of Fred and Adele Astaire in The Band Wagon; 1931: PHOTOFEST

How did you do that, since it is by now impossible to find people who saw some of these performers on stage?

It took a huge amount of digging but it was lucky that there were so many wonderful writers who reported on the theatre. The people who were writing for Variety were fascinating to read – they weren’t writing for the general public but for the people who booked acts in vaudeville. They needed to be very specific not only about what the acts did on stage but also about the effect on the audience. That’s the only way to research some of those people.

photo of Angela Lansbury in Mame; 1966: PHOTOFEST

Do you remember an article in the Times a few years ago, which said that Broadway no longer made stars?

There were a few articles like that. Somebody writing in the 90’s might have found support for that idea, but in recent years there has been a resurgence. The whole notion of stardom was born on Broadway, and stage stars are reclaiming it. As of now the public outside of the theatre might not know who Cheyenne Jackson is – he isn’t in the book, he hasn’t done enough on Broadway yet – but that doesn’t diminish his stardom and the magical effect he has on an audience. That’s what stage stardom is all about, that magic. Someone like Merman or Patti LuPone today – they made movies, were on TV, but they were diminished by that. They only come to full life as performers on the stage. Someone like Angela Lansbury can transcend mediums, she comes across on TV and in movies and on stage. Would Sutton Foster come across as well on a screen as she does in the theatre? I don’t know; perhaps she would. Kristin Chenoweth is an example of someone who has moved from medium to medium.

photo of Kristin Chenoweth in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever; 2000: Gerry Goodstein/PHOTOFEST

Do you think that the Internet is also responsible for the resurgence of stage stardom?

There’s no doubt. When I started Playbill Online in 1994 I remember wondering why Broadway opening nights were not on the front page of the newspapers; I realized that if there was going to be an outlet that treated opening nights like major news stories that I was going to have to start it myself. It wasn’t long before I realized that there are pockets of theatre fans all around the country and that things would start to change once they reached critical mass. Major media did not cover theatre well, if at all. Now it gets covered in the detail it deserves: when tickets go on sale, when a star leaves a show – those are news stories now. The Internet has helped theatre tremendously and now people are familiar with many of today’s stage stars. For years most of America knew only Tommy Tune.

Why Tommy Tune?

He could dance, as well as direct, and filled a bunch of niches. He had a unique look and sound and, to a certain extent, he fulfilled a certain stereotype that some people have about Broadway. He would go on talk shows and was very visible to the general public, and his dancing had that retro magic that you associate with Broadway. He was determined to work in the theatre – he had done some films, like Hello Dolly! and The Boy Friend, and he didn’t like it. He resolved to share his talent only with Broadway so he was its face for a lot of people for a long time. Now there’s a bunch of people.

photo of Tommy Tune in Bye Bye Birdie; 1991: PHOTOFEST

Was it a challenge to limit the book to just 40 musical theatre stars?

Originally it was going to be 50 stars instead of 40; it was a heartbreaker to decide which 10 I wasn’t going to include. I came up with a mathematical formula for stardom which is in the beginning of the book. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but when you sit down to do a book like this I could have come up with 200 stars off the top of my head. I decided that they had to star in at least 3 Broadway shows and that left out the star who sings the book’s title song, Barbra Streisand. She became a star in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, starred in Funny Girl, and there she went. I was tortured about whether or not to include Liza Minnelli. When I told the publisher that I had decided that she wouldn’t be in the book there was quite a lot of gnashing of teeth, and not a little of it from myself. I would love to do another edition with those 10 extra chapters.

Of the 40 stars in the book, is there one who you most personally admire?

The first star in the book Bert Williams, an African American star of the Follies. At a time when there was horrendous, soul-crushing racism, he managed to find stardom for himself. He was very loyal to the people he worked with, to the point that he worked himself literally to death. It was a case of “the show must go on” and he would perform even though he was obviously ill. He died with his boots on. I have to take my hat off to that kind of grit.

If you revised this book in 10 years, which stars of today do you think would be included?

Cheyenne Jackson, as I mentioned, and Michael Cerveris and Raul Esparza. They love doing theatre and they can pay the bills doing it even in a recession. They each have a quality that makes them stars for a modern audience but connects them to the preceding generations.