How Can Love Survive?
So there’s Basha Regis — playing a laundress in the original Broadway company of Can-Can, trying to make ends meet, and hearing her roommate say that she’s breaking up with her horrible boyfriend. Considering that the beau’s name is James Hammerstein, Basha thinks that maybe she’ll take the guy on the rebound. Perhaps she’ll have better results with Oscar Hammerstein II’s 23-year-old heir.
Be careful what you wish for! Basha did indeed wind up marrying the son of the man who created a Prince Charming for his 1957 TV musical Cinderella; but, if she’s to be believed in her memoir, James Hammerstein was hardly charming. Basha chose the image for her book’s title, Cinderella After the Ball. As we all know, the story of every marriage has three sides: his, hers, and the truth. But in this book, the former Barbara Redzisz, who chose Basha Regis as her stage name (and later preferred to spell it Basia), tells her version of the years she spent as Mrs. James Hammerstein.
She literally and figuratively paid a great price for this, because the book was published by Vantage — “subsidy publishers” who make authors pay for their own books. One assumes that Basha tried to place her work with an agent or publisher long before she decided to just write the check. Now that I’ve read the book, I can assume that she’s wasn’t turned down because she did a bad job; on the contrary, she’s an excellent writer who tells her story in a mesmerizing way. It’s a rare theater fan who won’t find this book a page-turner. I’m sure she was turned down because books about theater stars sell poorly, so imagine what frighteningly low numbers a book about the son of a bookwriter-librettist would yield.
Before Basha met Hammerstein, she had already landed jobs in the musicals Two’s Company and Top Banana. Of the former show, she reports that director-choreographer Jerome Robbins was once engaged to Nora Kaye, so he concentrated more on her stage time than on star Bette Davis’s. Of the latter show, she mentions that Phil Silvers sexually harassed her — but that wasn’t as bad as her experience with Jack Entratter, who owned the Copacabana. Basha says he rubbed against her so vigorously that she could smell his semen.
Then James Hammerstein came into her life. A whirlwind courtship was soon followed by his proposal. Gwen Verdon took up a collection from the Can-Can cast and bought a silver bell so that Basha could summon the maid. Not quite! Oscar believed that his kids should make it on their own and was tight with a buck as far as they were concerned. He wasn’t offering many opportunities, either. When Oscar asked James to recommend someone who could be the third stage manager for the 1951 Music in the Air revival, James recommended himself — “but,” writes Basha, “George Abbott told me that he had to write a letter of recommendation for Jimmy, who had worked for him as an assistant stage manager, before Oscar, Jimmy’s own father, would hire him.”
Imagine Basha’s surprise when James finally brought her home to meet the folks and she found that neither Oscar nor Dorothy even knew they were engaged. As for the Hammerstein family, she sure doesn’t make it sound as if everyone sat around singing “Do, a deer,” but instead describes them all as “stiff and uncomfortable.” Of course, many women don’t get along with their mothers-in-law, but Basha and Dorothy Hammerstein seemed to have more trouble than most. Basha describes the expression on Mrs. H.’s face “as if she were constantly retreating from a bad odor.” When Dorothy asked Basha if she played tennis, the young miss jokingly replied that she only knew how to play “kick the can” — to which Dorothy immediately LadyBracknelled, “A can?!?!?” Later, when Basha wrote her wedding gift thank-you notes on generic stationery, Dorothy bought her engraved sheets, saying that one of her friends reported to her that what Basha had sent was “a bit tacky.” And if that wasn’t enough, Dorothy would bring furniture polish when visiting Basha to spruce up the place, implying that she wasn’t a good housekeeper. Finally, Basha reports that Dorothy never remembered her son’s wedding anniversary — even though it fell on her own birthday, which you’d really think would have triggered her memory.
And what about Oscar? “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” she writes, before conceding, “though not as extreme.” Basha reports that Oscar discouraged James from marrying her because he’d soon want “younger flesh.” Basha’s response: “And this from the man who wrote ‘All the Things You Are’ and ‘My Romance.’ ” In fact, he didn’t write the latter; Lorenz Hart did. But Oscar did write “A fella needs a girl to sit by his side,” and that’s what he apparently expected of Dorothy. According to Basha, “He left little notes — in rhyme — under her pillow to let her know when she had failed him.” True to form, Oscar wanted Basha to be a dutiful wife to James. She claims that he even have mocked her college studies by sneering, “What’s a pretty girl like you doing studying philosophy?”
Basha relates that Oscar was even worse to James, whom he always compared to Sammy Goldstein. But here’s the thing — there was no such person. He was, Basha says, “a smarter version of a son that Oscar concocted” to hold up as a shining example of someone who would always make the right decision in any crisis. “Sammy Goldstein wouldn’t have done that,” Oscar would say in admonishment, and James would fume. On the other hand, maybe the fault was not all Oscar’s. According to Basha, when James turned 16, Oscar asked him what he planned to do with his life — to which the lad replied, “None of your business.” (By the way, Oscar reportedly wasn’t any better to son Billy. Basha says that she heard Oscar say more than once, “Both my sons together would make one good man.”)
Actually, Basha says she should have known right away that the marriage was doomed, for their honeymoon was a disaster. True, Oscar gave them a new car as a gift — though his business manager reportedly had to talk him into buying it — but the auto broke down en route to their destination. After it was repaired and they were on the road again, it ran out of gas. So, apparently, did James, for Basha reports greeting a “flaccid penis” on their wedding night. Things did improve, though she reports that the two never had a simultaneous orgasm. (Now we know.)
This all happened around the time of Pipe Dream, the unsuccessful 1955 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The irony is that Basha predated R&H on the project: Feuer and Martin, her Can-Can producers, originally had the option on the property and, she claims, wanted her to play the role of the waif-like Suzy. When they dropped the project, Rodgers and Hammerstein took it on. So she was put through the ordeal of auditioning for Rodgers and her father-in-law for the role that she believes would have been hers had Feuer and Martin stayed with the show. She tells of going home and waiting for the call, which wasn’t a pleasant one when it came. She was later told that she didn’t get the part because Rodgers wanted women in the cast that he could romance, and certainly he couldn’t do that with his partner’s daughter-in-law. Ironically, Basha did wind up in Pipe Dream, in a manner of speaking: Hammerstein named a character “Basha,” but since she was a whore, Basha Hammerstein didn’t take it as a compliment. Maybe that’s why she now likes to spell her nickname “Basia.”
Things deteriorated. While Basha was pregnant (and in The Music Man), James beat her. She miscarried some time later. While she was in the hospital, he told her that he wanted out — but she did, too. The biggest problem, she claims, was James’s need to “hit it big by 30.” Basha details many of his attempts to be successful, all of which ended in failure. His Greatest Moments in Sports LP sold well, but because James didn’t get releases from everyone, he was sued and wound up making no money. Basha says she had warned him, and once she was proved right, he called her what Michael in The Boys in the Band euphemistically referred to as a “sunt.” (That’s you-know-what word with a cedilla.)
Basha says that she was tremendously influenced by Top Banana director Jack Donohue, who said, “Kindness is what defines greatness in a human being.” Tell that to the heirs of Abe Burrows, who’ll read Basha’s assessment that “his fat body waddled around him.” And, given that she takes her story to the present day, Basha really should have mentioned that, before James Hammerstein died in 1999, he had a tremendous success three years earlier when he co-produced I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (which is still with us).
Ever since the divorce, when Basha has been asked “Are you related to Oscar Hammerstein?” — for she still retains that last name — she has answered, “Only through tears and my son.” He, by the way, went to work for the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization.
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
