the night my brother Eric and Gloria took me to a Billy Joel concert when he played in Chicago in 1975. Somehow we’d gotten phenomenal seats, in the first row, and I just sucked it all in—the sound, the concert, the performance, everything.
I never imagined then that I would ever get to meet him. But after Children of a Lesser God, our paths would cross.
The first time I met him was in 1988. Someone who knew what a fan I was arranged for me and Richard Dean Anderson, who was my boyfriend at the time, to have dinner with Billy at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. I feel sorry for everyone else at our table, we just talked and talked for hours.
In 1989, I got to do a cameo in his video for “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” And I still have a funny drawing he did for me, with a piano and his profile, for my thirtieth birthday.
But one of my best Billy Joel memories was a Sesame Street segment we did together in the fall of 1988.
It opened with Billy and me pushing an old piano up to the trash can where Oscar the Grouch lived.
The piano was broken, Billy explained, and he was there to give it to Oscar. The only thing the green grouch had to do was to listen to this love song. So Billy played and sang, and I signed and sang, an Oscarized version of “Just the Way You Are.”
Signing for Billy Joel
Nearly all of my friends have their own Billy Joel moment—usually it happens in a fast car with the radio blasting. Here’s how Carla Hacken, who was my agent for years and remains a good friend, remembers it:
“Riding in a car with Marlee is hair-raising! Hair-raising! At some point she had a convertible of some sort or I did, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been with her in a car where—you know, Billy Joel is not somebody you think of in incredibly loud decibels, heavy metal maybe, but Billy Joel…at crazy decibels driving at crazy speeds. We’re talking or singing or both. It was just freaky, but great.”
Although I would love other music and other performers over the years—James Taylor and Garth Brooks top that list—Billy Joel will always be the first musician I love. I wouldn’t trade my Sesame Street moment for anything, so thanks, Oscar.
9
T URNING POINTS ARE so much easier to see when you look back on your life. For me The Wizard of Oz was one of them.
I had started going to the Center on Deafness and the Arts when I was around seven for the after-school and weekend arts programs that Dr. Scherer was developing in addition to the other clinical and diagnostic work she was doing.
Dr. Scherer had realized in working with Deaf children that they were never really asked to think. They were told what to do and what to think—it was a literal and simplistic world primarily concerned with communicating the basics.
But Dr. Pat, which we all called her, believed that nurturing creative instincts could make a difference on many fronts, from encouraging more complex thought to addressing the balance problems many Deaf children have through the use of dance. She was going against tradition, and at the beginning there was little support for her work.
What I remember is Dr. Pat telling me the center was going to put on a play of The Wizard of Oz.
“Do you think you’d like to be Dorothy?” she asked.
“I am Dorothy,” I told her emphatically. And so I was.
I’d seen the movie and knew the story, and I imagined at first it would be like the skits that I’d seen at summer camp. But Dr. Pat had something far more ambitious in mind and says, “We worked from the book and came up with a script—one with words and one with signs. We would explain the story and act out whatever we had to so the kids understood not just the story, but all the shades of meaning.
“It took us a solid year to produce the play. We asked the kidsto bring their own creative ideas that we could incorporate into the play. And we added dance. People in the community were saying we were doing things that didn’t
I never imagined then that I would ever get to meet him. But after Children of a Lesser God, our paths would cross.
The first time I met him was in 1988. Someone who knew what a fan I was arranged for me and Richard Dean Anderson, who was my boyfriend at the time, to have dinner with Billy at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. I feel sorry for everyone else at our table, we just talked and talked for hours.
In 1989, I got to do a cameo in his video for “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” And I still have a funny drawing he did for me, with a piano and his profile, for my thirtieth birthday.
But one of my best Billy Joel memories was a Sesame Street segment we did together in the fall of 1988.
It opened with Billy and me pushing an old piano up to the trash can where Oscar the Grouch lived.
The piano was broken, Billy explained, and he was there to give it to Oscar. The only thing the green grouch had to do was to listen to this love song. So Billy played and sang, and I signed and sang, an Oscarized version of “Just the Way You Are.”
Signing for Billy Joel
Nearly all of my friends have their own Billy Joel moment—usually it happens in a fast car with the radio blasting. Here’s how Carla Hacken, who was my agent for years and remains a good friend, remembers it:
“Riding in a car with Marlee is hair-raising! Hair-raising! At some point she had a convertible of some sort or I did, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been with her in a car where—you know, Billy Joel is not somebody you think of in incredibly loud decibels, heavy metal maybe, but Billy Joel…at crazy decibels driving at crazy speeds. We’re talking or singing or both. It was just freaky, but great.”
Although I would love other music and other performers over the years—James Taylor and Garth Brooks top that list—Billy Joel will always be the first musician I love. I wouldn’t trade my Sesame Street moment for anything, so thanks, Oscar.
9
T URNING POINTS ARE so much easier to see when you look back on your life. For me The Wizard of Oz was one of them.
I had started going to the Center on Deafness and the Arts when I was around seven for the after-school and weekend arts programs that Dr. Scherer was developing in addition to the other clinical and diagnostic work she was doing.
Dr. Scherer had realized in working with Deaf children that they were never really asked to think. They were told what to do and what to think—it was a literal and simplistic world primarily concerned with communicating the basics.
But Dr. Pat, which we all called her, believed that nurturing creative instincts could make a difference on many fronts, from encouraging more complex thought to addressing the balance problems many Deaf children have through the use of dance. She was going against tradition, and at the beginning there was little support for her work.
What I remember is Dr. Pat telling me the center was going to put on a play of The Wizard of Oz.
“Do you think you’d like to be Dorothy?” she asked.
“I am Dorothy,” I told her emphatically. And so I was.
I’d seen the movie and knew the story, and I imagined at first it would be like the skits that I’d seen at summer camp. But Dr. Pat had something far more ambitious in mind and says, “We worked from the book and came up with a script—one with words and one with signs. We would explain the story and act out whatever we had to so the kids understood not just the story, but all the shades of meaning.
“It took us a solid year to produce the play. We asked the kidsto bring their own creative ideas that we could incorporate into the play. And we added dance. People in the community were saying we were doing things that didn’t
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