could hear performers like singer Mabel Mercer and comedian Joan Rivers. In the Upstairs room, Madeline and other young unknowns romped through a series of topical sketches and humorous songs, periodically updated and retitled. In the course of three revues—
Just for Openers, Mixed Doubles
, and
Below the Belt
—she worked with such soon-to-be-stars as Fannie Flagg (
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
), Betty Aberlin (
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
), Judy Graubart (
The Electric Company, Simon
), and Jenna Carter, who went on to achieve fame under her first name, Dixie, on TV’s
Designing Women
. For
Below the Belt
, Madeline recommended a young comic she’d recently seen, and thus Lily Tomlin was hired for her first gig in New York. Among the men in these shows, none became a household name, but it’s a measure of the talent pool at the time that the Upstairs managed to field superior performers despite low pay and a demanding schedule of two shows per night, six nights per week.
They performed in eveningwear, tuxedoes for the men and long black gowns for the women. The dress code relaxed somewhat in summer, when the women wore shorter skirts and traded in their black pumps for white ones, “to make our legs look longer,” Tomlin says, recalling going shoe-shopping with Madeline. Formal dress was meant to reinforce visually the sophistication of the material, and it’s one reason patrons, including Madeline’s family members, recall the Upstairs as elegant. But cast members say the room was narrow, the performing space cramped, the dressing rooms mostly a state of mind rather than a physical reality.
Under producer Julius Monk, the Upstairs revues won acclaim (and thriving business), but by the time Madeline got there, Monk had decamped to start his own club at the Plaza Hotel. Many critics, and Madeline herself, considered the material in the Upstairs revues produced by Monk’s successor, Rod Warren, to be inconsistent at best, and business fell off—a fact owner Irving Haber reminded Warren about continuously. As Haber saw it, only revenue from the Downstairs kept the Upstairs running.
“When I entered that job, I did not know what a revue was,” Madeline told Gavin. But she soon developed reservations about the material, which she found “arch,” “sarcastic,” and often “effete,” aimed at the club’s largely gay clientele. “I had to be very smart in picking from the material Rod presented at the beginning of the season. You had to make these things work, and it was hard. At first I did whatever he asked me to. But then I got more savvy and realized, be sure you have a very good solo, be sure the other material is stuff you really feel you can make work. Rod gave his opinions, but it was basically up to you.”
Though Flagg and Tomlin wrote some of their own sketches, Warren wrote much of the material himself and took contributions from freelancers, as well. He got away with paying writers even less than performers, as the market for comedy writing was limited (the few alternatives included supplying jokes to television comedians and sketches to other revues). Political humor and social commentary aimed gentle barbs at figures such as President Lyndon Johnson and California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan. In
Just for Openers
, Madeline impersonated Lady Bird Johnson, mocking her “beautification” of American highways: “I go seeking buttercups, dear little buttercups, though I find practically none.” But the same show included a less-gentle tirade by Flagg as a bigoted Southern waitress, and a prescient sketch in which Madeline and Aberlin played bored operators at “Dial-a-Deviate.” As Aberlin observes, phone-sex lines hadn’t been invented yet.
Listening now to the recordings of Madeline’s three revues, it’s easy to pick out the material aimed at gay audiences. In
Just for Openers
, the three women sing a proto-
Forbidden Broadway
number called “The
Just for Openers, Mixed Doubles
, and
Below the Belt
—she worked with such soon-to-be-stars as Fannie Flagg (
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
), Betty Aberlin (
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
), Judy Graubart (
The Electric Company, Simon
), and Jenna Carter, who went on to achieve fame under her first name, Dixie, on TV’s
Designing Women
. For
Below the Belt
, Madeline recommended a young comic she’d recently seen, and thus Lily Tomlin was hired for her first gig in New York. Among the men in these shows, none became a household name, but it’s a measure of the talent pool at the time that the Upstairs managed to field superior performers despite low pay and a demanding schedule of two shows per night, six nights per week.
They performed in eveningwear, tuxedoes for the men and long black gowns for the women. The dress code relaxed somewhat in summer, when the women wore shorter skirts and traded in their black pumps for white ones, “to make our legs look longer,” Tomlin says, recalling going shoe-shopping with Madeline. Formal dress was meant to reinforce visually the sophistication of the material, and it’s one reason patrons, including Madeline’s family members, recall the Upstairs as elegant. But cast members say the room was narrow, the performing space cramped, the dressing rooms mostly a state of mind rather than a physical reality.
Under producer Julius Monk, the Upstairs revues won acclaim (and thriving business), but by the time Madeline got there, Monk had decamped to start his own club at the Plaza Hotel. Many critics, and Madeline herself, considered the material in the Upstairs revues produced by Monk’s successor, Rod Warren, to be inconsistent at best, and business fell off—a fact owner Irving Haber reminded Warren about continuously. As Haber saw it, only revenue from the Downstairs kept the Upstairs running.
“When I entered that job, I did not know what a revue was,” Madeline told Gavin. But she soon developed reservations about the material, which she found “arch,” “sarcastic,” and often “effete,” aimed at the club’s largely gay clientele. “I had to be very smart in picking from the material Rod presented at the beginning of the season. You had to make these things work, and it was hard. At first I did whatever he asked me to. But then I got more savvy and realized, be sure you have a very good solo, be sure the other material is stuff you really feel you can make work. Rod gave his opinions, but it was basically up to you.”
Though Flagg and Tomlin wrote some of their own sketches, Warren wrote much of the material himself and took contributions from freelancers, as well. He got away with paying writers even less than performers, as the market for comedy writing was limited (the few alternatives included supplying jokes to television comedians and sketches to other revues). Political humor and social commentary aimed gentle barbs at figures such as President Lyndon Johnson and California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan. In
Just for Openers
, Madeline impersonated Lady Bird Johnson, mocking her “beautification” of American highways: “I go seeking buttercups, dear little buttercups, though I find practically none.” But the same show included a less-gentle tirade by Flagg as a bigoted Southern waitress, and a prescient sketch in which Madeline and Aberlin played bored operators at “Dial-a-Deviate.” As Aberlin observes, phone-sex lines hadn’t been invented yet.
Listening now to the recordings of Madeline’s three revues, it’s easy to pick out the material aimed at gay audiences. In
Just for Openers
, the three women sing a proto-
Forbidden Broadway
number called “The
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