again. His competition didn’t get it. “I had always wondered whyhe was always able to get all these girls,” said producer Robert Greenhut. “So I asked this one stripper I knew he slept with, ‘What is it about Fosse that he’s always able to . . . you know. Why is he like flypaper to you guys?’ She says, ‘He is the greatest lay I have ever had in my life. There is absolutely no one more sexually competent than this man.’ And she said his shyness was the thing that gets you to begin with. And I said, ‘Well, okay. At least now I know.’”
And more girls were always around the corner. This was New York, after all, a city of corners. This was Broadway, land of the chorus girl. The streets were ablaze with talent, and there were more than enough to go around. But the girls didn’t go around; they all went back to Fosse. “I think everyone was attracted to him,”said sound mixer Christopher Newman. “Man, woman, piano. It didn’t matter. He was insanely attractive.” The preponderance of gay men in the dance world elevated Fosse to the role of high satyr almost instantly; he was more than just cute, fun, and a whiz on two feet; he was, to the fervent girls of Broadway, at the top of a very short list. The way he looked at you, you knew you were on the top of his list too. “It was like you were in a tunnel,”recalled Trudy Ship, assistant editor on
Lenny
and
Liza with a Z.
“He made incredible eye contact and asked you questions. Who were your parents? Where were you born? He oozed sexuality and he was so sweet about it too.”
Fosse’s bed at the YMCAon Thirty-Fourth and Ninth wasn’t easy to get girls to, but it was a convenient walk to Broadway and, at thirty-five cents a day, ideal for a jobless ex-sailor with only a few hundred bucks in his wallet. Full of servicemen, the Thirty-Fourth Street Y, an imposing brick tower with a red neon sign buzzing
Sloane House,
was the largest YMCA in the city. The building had over a thousand rooms, not all of them equipped with private bathrooms, so Sloane’s communal showers turned social, and Sloane House, also known as the French Embassy, became one of Manhattan’s most popular gay spots. Were it not for some uncomfortable bathroom attention, Fosse might have actually gotten a kick out of the place, where guests were known by their room numbers, and their keys passed through a complicit concierge. Citing the
C
in
YMCA,
scandalized members of the management hired security guards to patrol the showers, but the joke was on them: most of the guards joined in the fun.
Fosse didn’t have to hang around Sloane House for long. One of his navy buddies had introduced him to MCA agent Maurice Lapue, formerly of the adagio dance team Maurice and Cordoba, and Lapue signed Fosse right away. Days later, sporting his freshly pressed sailor suit and a discharge button on his lapel, he appeared before composer Lehman Engel to audition for a part in
Call Me Mister.
“Sing first,”Engel said.
“I better dance first.”
It was only his second audition, but Fosse got the job—and a pretty good one too. As the dance lead in the national production of
Call Me Mister,
he’d tap and sing (in his thinner-than-Chet-Baker’s voice), touring the country’s biggest second-tier theaters, finally a full-time show-business professional. A homecoming revue with songs by Harold Rome and sketches by Arnold Auerbach,
Mister
was basically for laughs: half sketches, half song and dance, and featuring an eclectic company of unknowns, from bass-baritone William Warfield to tap dancer Marian Niles to comics Buddy Hackett and Carl Reiner. The singers sang, the dancers danced, and the comics told jokes. In those days, no single person had everything.
Buddy Hackett was a trenchant wiseguy, Damon Runyon with a Catskills twang. One of his favorite bits, “The Farting Contest,”pitted two guys against each other in a kind of boxing match with farts for punches. It was a sketch he
And more girls were always around the corner. This was New York, after all, a city of corners. This was Broadway, land of the chorus girl. The streets were ablaze with talent, and there were more than enough to go around. But the girls didn’t go around; they all went back to Fosse. “I think everyone was attracted to him,”said sound mixer Christopher Newman. “Man, woman, piano. It didn’t matter. He was insanely attractive.” The preponderance of gay men in the dance world elevated Fosse to the role of high satyr almost instantly; he was more than just cute, fun, and a whiz on two feet; he was, to the fervent girls of Broadway, at the top of a very short list. The way he looked at you, you knew you were on the top of his list too. “It was like you were in a tunnel,”recalled Trudy Ship, assistant editor on
Lenny
and
Liza with a Z.
“He made incredible eye contact and asked you questions. Who were your parents? Where were you born? He oozed sexuality and he was so sweet about it too.”
Fosse’s bed at the YMCAon Thirty-Fourth and Ninth wasn’t easy to get girls to, but it was a convenient walk to Broadway and, at thirty-five cents a day, ideal for a jobless ex-sailor with only a few hundred bucks in his wallet. Full of servicemen, the Thirty-Fourth Street Y, an imposing brick tower with a red neon sign buzzing
Sloane House,
was the largest YMCA in the city. The building had over a thousand rooms, not all of them equipped with private bathrooms, so Sloane’s communal showers turned social, and Sloane House, also known as the French Embassy, became one of Manhattan’s most popular gay spots. Were it not for some uncomfortable bathroom attention, Fosse might have actually gotten a kick out of the place, where guests were known by their room numbers, and their keys passed through a complicit concierge. Citing the
C
in
YMCA,
scandalized members of the management hired security guards to patrol the showers, but the joke was on them: most of the guards joined in the fun.
Fosse didn’t have to hang around Sloane House for long. One of his navy buddies had introduced him to MCA agent Maurice Lapue, formerly of the adagio dance team Maurice and Cordoba, and Lapue signed Fosse right away. Days later, sporting his freshly pressed sailor suit and a discharge button on his lapel, he appeared before composer Lehman Engel to audition for a part in
Call Me Mister.
“Sing first,”Engel said.
“I better dance first.”
It was only his second audition, but Fosse got the job—and a pretty good one too. As the dance lead in the national production of
Call Me Mister,
he’d tap and sing (in his thinner-than-Chet-Baker’s voice), touring the country’s biggest second-tier theaters, finally a full-time show-business professional. A homecoming revue with songs by Harold Rome and sketches by Arnold Auerbach,
Mister
was basically for laughs: half sketches, half song and dance, and featuring an eclectic company of unknowns, from bass-baritone William Warfield to tap dancer Marian Niles to comics Buddy Hackett and Carl Reiner. The singers sang, the dancers danced, and the comics told jokes. In those days, no single person had everything.
Buddy Hackett was a trenchant wiseguy, Damon Runyon with a Catskills twang. One of his favorite bits, “The Farting Contest,”pitted two guys against each other in a kind of boxing match with farts for punches. It was a sketch he
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