The Diva Dishes! Five Fabulous Tales from Patti LuPone: A Memoir
Like every other theater fan, we’ve been eagerly awaiting the September 14 release of Patti LuPone: A Memoir. Given the heights [Evita, Anything Goes, Sweeney Todd, Gypsy] and depths [The Baker’s Wife, Sunset Boulevard] of her career and Patti’s no-holds-barred honesty, we figured the book would be a juicy read. And it is—but it’s also a moving and revealing look at how a dedicated actress persevered for four decades even when her reviews weren’t great, her producers stabbed her in the back and her co-stars were “thoroughly distasteful” (hi, Bill Smitrovich of Life Goes On!). With chapters covering everything from her childhood in Northport, Long Island, to closing night of Gypsy, plus more than 100 photos of the star onstage and off, Patti LuPone: A Memoir is a not-to-be-missed treat.
Want a teaser? Of course you do. Here are five classic Patti tidbits to hold you until you get your very own copy of the book (and tickets to see La LuPone in Lincoln Center Theater's production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown):
John Houseman and the Streaking Incident: Patti was part of the now-famous Group 1 of Juilliard's Drama Division, run by the fearsome John Houseman. Once, after a performance of The Three Sisters, “He grabbed me by the throat, started shaking me furiously and said, ‘I want to beat you black and blue until you are bloody with bandages all over your face.’” (Um, he hadn’t been able to understand what she was saying during a crying scene.) But Houseman had a fun side! He encouraged members of the touring Acting Company to join a streaking party in Saratoga, after which an actress (not Patti) “dis-robed him, knelt down, and with her lily-white hands, cupped his soft penis and kissed it.” LuPone’s reaction: "AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!"
The Patti/Kevin Kline/Peter Weller Love Triangle: Fellow Juilliard student Kevin Kline was LuPone’s “first great love,” and the pair had a seven-year on-off relationship, including four years of touring the country by bus with The Acting Company. In 1977, she developed romantic feelings for a pre-Robocop Peter Weller when they co-starred in the Chicago premiere of The Woods, a David Mamet play about an intense relationship. The entire experience, including living in a freezing-cold, squalid hotel, left LuPone miserable and depressed. At the closing night party, “in a drunken stupor, I declared my love for Peter to Peter with Kevin standing right next to me.” She and Kline patched things up “until he slept with a chorus girl in Boston while he was doing On the Twentieth Century.”
Misbehaving with David Mamet: Patti and the inscrutable playwright David Mamet struck up a friendship when he spent time on the Acting Company tour bus. “He’s bold and raw and I’m definitely that, if anything,” she writes of Mamet, who cast her in five of his plays and several movies over the years. Not surprisingly, the pals got into mischief: After being ejected from the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach for unexplained reasons, “We found a golf cart…and stared making doughnuts on the golf course.” Another time, an angry Mamet threw a dollar bill on the floor of a restaurant and told the hostess to “pick it up yourself if you want it.” LuPone’s reaction to Mamet’s outburst: “I was scared and thrilled by it. It’s a rage I can translate onstage.”
The Sunset Boulevard Dressing Room Incident: LuPone devotes 40 pages to Sunset Boulevard, a potentially career-crippling experience in which Andrew Lloyd Webber let her twist in the wind as Meryl Streep considered the role of Norma Desmond, Barbra Streisand recorded the show’s two big songs and Glenn Close opened in L.A. and, ultimately, in the Broadway production. Patti’s (huge) settlement paid for a swimming pool, but her pain is still palpable as she recalls getting the news in her West End dressing room that gossip columnist Liz Smith was announcing Close as her replacement. “I took batting practice in my dressing room with a floor lamp,” LuPone writes. “I swung at everything in sight—mirrors, wig stands, makeup, wardrobe, furniture, everything. Then I heaved the lamp out the second-floor window.”
Tears with Arthur Laurents: After all that drama (in every sense of the word), LuPone’s saga ends with our heroine happily married to Matt Johnston (love him!), the proud mom of handsome son Joshua, and a Tony winner for Gypsy. On opening night, Arthur Laurents, the show’s 90-year-old director/librettist (who had previously blackballed LuPone from playing Momma Rose) appeared in her dressing room with a scary look in his eye: “‘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.’” We won’t spoil the rest of this sweet story. To find out what Laurents and LuPone said next, check out Patti LuPone: A Memoir.
