Before the Parade Passes By

Given how the Yankees collapsed, don’t look for them to get a ticker-tape parade from the city this year. That’s all right; New York’s mayors have already awarded the Bronx Bombers seven such celebrations over the past 42 years. From Bowling Green to City Hall Park, the Yankees have appeared to public adulation in “The Canyon of Heroes,” and they’re not the only ones: The Mets received three such honors, while the Rangers and the now-departed baseball Giants got one. Says Kenneth Cobb, a New York City archivist, “The ticker-tape parade remains the ultimate mark of approval for a job well done.”

So, guess how many times NYC has celebrated Broadway since the custom began in 1886? Just how many of the city’s 201 ticker tape parades have commemorated the Great White Way? When I asked my buddy Matthew Murray this question, he guessed “50?” I shook my head no and told him that he was off by 50. New York City, which has rarely appreciated Broadway as much as it should, has given us zero parades. None! Not one to honor an institution that, year after year, outgrosses all of city’s sports teams put together. What a slap in the face! In fact, out of all those ticker-tape hoo-hahs, only one was arts-centric: the parade given for pianist Van Cliburn on May 20, 1958 after he won the Moscow International Tchaikowsky Competition. I say there should have been one celebrating Danny Kaye’s rendition of “Tchaikowsky” on January 25, 1941, the day after the reviews for Lady in the Dark came out.

So, who have been the beneficiaries of New York’s ticker-tape parades? Three kings, three queens, four regal married couples, four princes, and one combination each for a queen-and-prince and prince-and-princess. Go ahead, New York; make a big deal of so-called “royalty,” people who often haven’t done much more than be born into lives of privilege. I have less of an issue with 42 elected presidents of our country and other lands having been honored with parades but, again, couldn’t the city have spared even one for Broadway? Eight dignitaries from France had ticker-tape parades when they came to our shores, but on the three occasions when the Comédie Française made it here? Rien!

Connie Mack was given a ticker-tape parade in 1949 to mark his 50th anniversary as the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics. (For those who think that this is an inordinately long time for a baseball manager to hold his job, be apprised that Mack also owned the team.) But Richard Rodgers held his job as a Broadway composer for more than 50 years, so why wasn’t there a parade in his honor when his career reached the half-century mark? Don’t tell me it’s because he wasn’t writing as well in 1970 as he did in 1920; Connie Mack won 3,776 games in his career but lost 4,025. So why, when Rodgers reached this plateau and when he opened his 40th musical, did the streets in The Canyon of Heroes remain immaculate?

Here’s what should happen: Whenever a show sets a new long-run Broadway record, be it as artistically satisfying as Fiddler on the Roof and A Chorus Line or even as inconsequential as Grease and Cats, the mayor should order a ticker-tape parade to honor its achievement. Let’s not ingore Off-Broadway, either: The Fantasticks should have had a ticker-tape parade to celebrate its 10th anniversary, let alone its 20th, 30th, or 40th. There should have been a confetti blizzard to represent all the confetti that rained upon The Boy and The Girl for all those years.

No one expected Charles Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic, but after he accomplished that feat, he received a ticker-tape parade. Fine. No one expected anything of Robert Preston or Tyne Daly when they respectively made their Broadway musical debuts in The Music Man and Gypsy, so they should also have received parades for pleasantly surprising the town. Ditto David Merrick in 1980, when, after enduring 12 long years of not having a smash, he rebounded with 42nd Street. And what about Stephen Schwartz after his terrific Broadway comeback with Wicked, and Tommy Tune when he turned the ailing My One and Only into a smash hit? What about George Abbott when he turned 100 and was still working — or, better still, a parade when Broadway itself turned 100 in 1993?

Shouldn’t there have been a ticker-tape parade for Goddard Lieberson, considering his exemplary work in producing original cast albums? What about Neil Simon, when the Alvin was named for him? Lunt and Fontanne, when the Globe was renamed for them? Of Thee I Sing, when it became the first musical to receive the Pulitzer Prize? George Gershwin wasn’t actually included among the winners of that prize, but the ticker-tape parade could have (and should have!) put him in the very first car.

Do you know what the ultimate insult and irony is? Guess on which street NYC’s ticker-tape parades take place? That’s right: Broadway. True, it’s a section of the street that’s a few miles south of the theater district, but it’s still Broadway. How about a ticker-tape parade that would give new meaning to the term “Broadway on Broadway?” A note to the powers-that-be: The 60th anniversary of the Tony Awards will take place next year. Wouldn’t it be something to see each and every surviving Tony-winner riding down the street in “The Canyon of Heroes” and waving to us? So, who’s going to be the hero to step forward and make it happen?

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]