Bob Fosse - by Robert Trudell 05/06/1990

Bob Fosse

Fosseism: the practice of capitalizing on fear, sex, limited ballet turn out, and hard work.

Bob Fosse accumulated several titles during his career. Referred to as, "an extraordinarily talented actor-director-dancer-choreographer" (Canby, Exasperating 24.), Bob also wrote. Not all critics loved him. He longed for a good review from the New York Times. "In Fosse films and stage musicals, nothing wins over audiences like a loser" (Grubb, Razzle Dazzle 152). Bob often pictured himself as a loser; when successful, he felt pressure to top his success. His drive to succeed, a fear of failure, brought the best of Bob Fosse out. In choreography, Bob excelled. Several of his physical limitations showed in the Fosse dance style. Hunched shoulders, hats, and knocked knees revealed his posture, balding, and limited turn out. Limitations asset Fosse's work; his struggle brings excellence to audiences' on stage and film.

I first recognized Fosse's work in Dancin' at Chicago's

Shubert Theatre. I felt Fosse produced the show for me. Alone in Chicago, compliments of Uncle Sam, I rode the train in for my U.S. Air Force entrance physical. I registered at a hotel they put me up in. Some military morons reiterated the time and location for the physical. After filling out a stack of paperwork, they strictly instructed me to return --before-- the ten o'clock curfew. Left to explore Chicago, I stalked the empty sidewalks. The streets' glistened; washed clean from a earlier rain, the dim street lights reflected off the pavement. An occasional taxi passed by; otherwise, the area lay dead. A lone Shubert Theatre sign glowed on the distant corner of W. Monroe. Attracted like a bug, I approached the unassuming building. In a somewhat sleazy district, the theatre looked like a live strip joint. A chest high sign with a picture of a long haired lady leaning back in ecstasy, a man glaring down above here in a tux and bowler hat, and sexy legs protruding from all angles, boasted with reviews and citing it's Tony awards. I purchased a fifteen dollar ticket. I bought my way to heaven. the long climb through purgatory exhausted me. I sat high above, on a lonely cloud, peering down on the elite. Far from the stage, I stared through the tunnel like darkness onto the spot lit Mr. Bojangles. Focusing on the mood, finally relaxed in my seat, I saw my life moving to a new stage. A single tear rolled down my cheek. The

performance of Mr. Bojangles and his spirit, in "Recollections of an Old Dancer", symbolized a new stage of his life.

With my emotions heightened, the show triggered a wave of response. From tears to laughter, my heart poured out to Dancin'. The amusing, "Fourteen Feet," nailed seven dancer's wooden shoes to the stage. Each head topped with little swirled boingy, white stripes painted from their arms to their legs down black costumes, and whiter gloves, looked ridiculously funny. Bob's creative choreographic humor displays itself in the strange shapes, movement, and patterns of silly creatures from another world dancing to -- "Was Dog a Doughnut."

Pieces like, "A Manic Depressive's Lament," Kevin Grubb writes, "succeeded because most audiences knew how glibly morose Fosse could be. It was part of his signature" (Grubb, Razzle Dazzle 210).

"America," rekindled my patriotism with George M. Cohan's, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and John Philip Sousa's, "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Music ranged from Bach to Cat Stevens. Fosse offered a collage of dances which gave something to most everyone. The powerhouse performance strained the dancers. The high number of listed alternates reflects this.

Keeping a constant eye on time, I worried about returning before the curfew. I wanted to stay till curtain call. I owed

the dancers an ovation for a spectacular night. So, I stayed. The night turned to a celebration of spirit, of rejoicing with the audience -- each touched by Bob Fosse.

I strolled back to the hotel. Lost in the city and lost in euphoria, I happily danced in the streets. I returned after eleven, just before a room inspection.

The next day's physical possessed some of Fosse's satiric humor and convoluted choreography. The military exercise went off without a hitch. A Sergeant commandingly marched twenty men and I into a room with two female doctors. He lined us up in a tight 'U' formation. In a deep voice, he said, "You will follow my instructions." In a well practiced and structured form, he ordered each meticulous step of undressing. With our clothes neatly at our sides and our bodies erect in attention, the doctors fondled our testicles with plastic gloves. They inspected us closely. the Sergeant told each recruit to cough. The doctors said nothing. They executed the procedure with precision. Each doctor finished each man at the same time. The rhythm amazed me. To the order of "About face," we turned. "Bend down and grab your ankles," shouted the Sergeant. Facing the recruit across from me, we shared a disheartened look. "Now, with your head down, slowly bring your hands up to your cheeks," the Sergeant barked. Climaxing, he commanded, "Grab them firmly

--now-- spread-em!" In this position, it sunk in what came next. The Air Force, unfortunately, accepted me.

In Fosse's later work, Kevin Grubb summarizes theatre critics' consensus with Frank Rich's New York Times review of Big Deal.

"[With 'Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar'] Mr. Fosse makes an audience remember what is (and has been) missing from virtually every other musical in town.... The dizzying sense of levitation that Mr. Fosse achieves in this dance is one of those unquantifiable elements . . . that defined the Broadway musical when it was going concern. The disappointment of Big Deal is that even Mr. Fosse, one of the form's last great magicians, can conjure up that joy so rarely. . . . Given that Mr. Fosse had staged some of Broadway's funniest musicals . . . it's hard to understand how the book of Big Deal grew to be ponderous and cheerless" (Grubb, Razzle Dazzle 262).

Fosse's commercial success in Dancin' versus the failure of Big Deal, I attribute partly to the introduction of a story. According to Time, Fosse personally raked in approximately $28,000 a day at some points of Dancin's 1,774 productions. Disappointed it won only one Tony Award for choreography and with poor critical reviews, Big Deal closed after a meager 70 shows.

Before Fosse's death, he reportedly started work on Dancin's sequel. Dancin' Too died with it's master. I would suggest to Bob, if he wasn't dead, a possible sequel to "Fourteen Feet." Collaborating with the Sergeant I met, he might create a wonderful piece titled, "Twenty-One Sphincters."

Kevin Grubb captures the feelings of Fosse devotes when he writes of Big Deal's final performance.

"Big Deal's last performance, June 8, brimmed with memorable moments that came from the knowledge that tomorrow the stage of the Broadway Theatre would be wiped clean of any trace of Fosse's musical. In the audience were Gwen Verdon and Nicole Fosse, torchbearers of the Fosse legacy, a twinkling galaxy of thespians -- many former Fosse dancers -- and those hard-bitten Fosse fans who refused to believe Big Deal was on its deathbed. In fact, throughout the performance, they did their best to resuscitate it with wild bursts of applause and standing ovations. At the conclusion of the act-one showstopper, 'Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar,' they stood and applauded for nearly three minutes, temporarily halting the show as the dancers tearfully embraced one another like triumphant runners taking their victory lap. A cry rang out, 'One more time!," which was quickly picked up as a chant in the audience. When the curtain

finally came down on the show, one felt an immense sense of loss and looked for someone nearby to console. As they left, the theatergoers were strangely subdued, almost funereal. A young man with tears streaming down his face placed a single, long-stemmed rose on the stage apron" (Grubb, "Fosse and his followers" 34).

As I tearfully read this, I reminisce of the joy Fosse brings and the pain in his loss.

Bob's dance style distinguished itself. "Bob always used to say he only had ten steps, "dance captain Petiford explains, "he just kept evolving then according to the nature of the show" (Grubb, Razzle Dazzle 254). Film critic Vincent Canby mistakenly implies Fosse's style is taken from Hermes Pan.

"Bob Fosse, featured in an excerpt from 'Kiss Me Kate.' was dancing dances then -- choreographed by Hermes Pan -- that look very much like the dances that Fosse has more recently been choreographing for 'Sweet Charity,' 'The Little Prince,' and 'Chicago'" (Canby, Times 30 May 1976).

Inspired by Bob, Canby later retracts the comment.

"Note: Bob Fosse, the director, actor, dancer and choreographer, has written to say that one of the reasons the choreography in ta scene from 'Kiss Me, Kate' (included in 'That's Entertainment, Part 2'), which I identified as looking like his (Fosse's) later choreography, is that he choreographed it, not as I wrote, Hermes Pan, which makes sense" (Canby, Times 20 Jun. 1976).

The tone of Canby's retraction appears self-centered; nevertheless, it points out Fosse's 1953 choreographic style looks, to a critic, similar to later works.

Sheridan Morley writes of Fosse, "he created, from Pajama Game in 1954, across thirty years to Dancin' by way of Damn Yankees and Redhead and Chicago and above all Sweet Charity, a look that was quintessentially and uniquely his -- that angular, bent-limbed, leggy look of dancers who seemed to be all elbows and kneecaps and ankles" (Morley, "Fosse's Footsteps 39). She continues, "Even if you had never heard a note of the score or a word of the dialogue, you knew at once that it was a Fosse show by the first glimpse of the dancing. It was Fosse alone who tore the American stage musical away from the ballroom and the bandstand, only to relocate it in the gymnasium: Fosse alone who first established the on-stage supremacy of the choreographer."

Morley, a London critic, receives Fosse better than most New York critics. Generally most London critics took to Fosse's style. Morley goes on, "In that sense he more than anyone else in New York or London reinvented the musical during the middle Fifties: the second half of Pajama Game was, decades before Cats or Chorus Line, the first time that someone had the courage to throw away the plot and go for the look and the feel and the sensation of a show in which the characters really didn't matter a damn, and from there on he was to work most often and successfully in partnership with the dancer Gwen Verdon when he once married an whom came to represent his long-limbed, urgent electric style better than any of the other new girls in town" (Morley, "Fosse's Footsteps" 39)

Bob, humiliated by New York and Boston critic's rejection of Big Deal, thought of taking it to London for their opinion. He realized the European cultural difference when researching and rewriting Fellini's Nights of Cabiria to the Americanized version -- Sweet Charity. Fosse told the Times, "There is something ugly about a prostitute in this country. It's all right in Italy. I wanted to get the nearest thing to a prostitute, a promiscuous girl who sold something for money -- a dance, her understanding, conversation, something" (Grubb, Razzle Dazzle 120).

I must conclude with a note of sadness as Robert Louis Fosse

does. Named after his parents favorite writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bob made a name for himself. Big Deal's failure drove him back to drinking and smoking. Bob, weary and depressed, died of a heart attack. Struggling to please, the critics eventually killed him.