Steppin' Out at 54 Below: "JERRY ORBACH'S BROADWAY"
I got to spend some really nice schmooze time with the actor Jerry Orbach just a few doors down from what is now 54 Below. This only became relevant last week when I attended a 54 Below show billed as Jerry Orbach’s Broadway. Much of our schmoozing transpired in the “schvitz” at the loopiest private men’s club in Manhattan, the now-long-forgotten and never especially remembered, Lone Star Boat Club at 240 West 54th Street. 54 Below is at number 254, so you see I’m talking mere steps of separation. Where 54 Below is subterranean, occupying the basement of Studio 54, the Lone Star occupied an entire four-story building, though all of those floors combined still felt like one shrunken rumpus room.
What once was the Lone Star is now a Mexican restaurant called Iguana, with a King Kong-sized promotional iguana clinging to its front wall. Floors of the Lone Star were sold off to Iguana one-by-one over the years, as our dwindling membership tried to keep the joint afloat — first the second-floor workout room (and Ladies Lounge) gone; then the third floor, with its postage stamp pool (where club bylaws required that you swim naked), plus steamroom and sauna. It was here that I’d run into Jerry, wrapped in towels, and we’d talk. Or, rather, he talked and I listened, to stories about David Merrick, who’d produced many of Jerry’s biggest stage hits, including the musicals Promises, Promises and 42nd Street; to stories about Ethel Merman, who, in a revival of Call Me Madame near the end of her career once ordered Jerry to “stop reacting to my lines!”; to stories about ballplayers he had known, politicians he had known, restaurateurs, stage hands. A panoply of New Yorkers gone by.
Some of these stories I heard again at 54 Below, retold as lead-ins to songs by a fine cast of performers, who conjured Jerry Orbach as best they could. There was just no one like him, and now he too is gone (since 2004), along with the larger-than-life wise-guys he used to play pinochle with in the Lone Star locker room (the last floor to be sold) — Runyonesques named “Big H,” “Shimmy” and “Mickey,” who, similarly draped in towels and often smoking cigars, heaved insults at each other while hustling cards. But never at “J.O.,” who ruled the room with a serene smile and serendipitous stories, occasionally flat-out breaking into song.
Jerry Orbach’s Broadway at 54 Below was created, directed and nicely narrated by Michael Portantiere, and overseen by Jerry’s two sons, Tony and Chris, who both spoke lovingly of their dad at the finale. Jerry’s wife was also invoked, Elaine, who Jerry often talked about with awe-struck love and appreciation. After her husband’s death, Elaine Orbach steadfastly continued to pay his monthly Lone Star membership dues ($342.18) and much of the club’s operating expenses, until the place finally expired despite her.
42nd Street’s “Lullaby of Broadway” kicked things off, preceded by a snippet of Jerry’s voice from the cast recording, hollering: “Allentown?! I’m offering you a chance to star in the biggest musical Broadway’s seen in 20 years and you say: ‘Allentown?’” William Michals sang gorgeously throughout, including a stellar “Razzle Dazzle," which Jerry introduced in the original production of Chicago back in 1975. Jay Aubrey Jones also sang robustly, combining with Nikita Burshteyn on a delightful “What Do You Get When You Fall in Love,” from Promises, Promises, a show that won the many-times-nominated Jerry his Tony Award. Finally, the ageless Lee Roy Reams popped up from a corner table to spin Jerry tales and shpeil songs from 42 Street.
An audience sing-along-“Try to Remember,” from The Fantastics, the surprise Off-Broadway hit that jump-started Jerry Orbach’s then-nascent career in 1960, brought the proceedings to a bittersweet close.
The Lone Star Boat Club was not, in fact, mentioned this night, which didn’t surprise me. Founded in 1890 by some Jews with boats who never could get through the front door of a yacht club, the place quixotically devolved into a place for Jews without any boats at all, and their landlubber friends. My memories of the place will always be perfumed with the scent of Barbasol and Aqua Velva, which were both available on tap, practically, in the washrooms. I kid you not.