When I first met him, he auditioned to be a dancer in the movies. And he had no idea he was going to be a choreographer. And in my opinion, he was going to be as good a song and dance man as Kelly and Astaire.
I thought, Fosse, this guy is going to be it. Fosse's distinctive style was evident from the first musical he choreographed, The Pajama Game. Who's got the pain when they do the mumbo? Who's got the pain when they go? Who's got the pain when they do the mumbo?
I don't know who do you? Over the next two decades, Fosse refined his signature style. I suppose if you repeat something enough times, it's called a style, you know. I started with hats because I began losing my hair very early. And I've always been slightly round-shouldered, and so I started to exaggerate that.
And I don't have what the ballet dancers call a turnout. So I started... turning my feet in and I guess that's the style they're talking about.
When you see his work, you know immediately that it's Fosse. Like if you see a Picasso, you know that it is Picasso. The lowering of the shoulders, the curved shoulder, the small pair of his work.
In 1975, Fosse created a musical out of a prohibition era story of corruption and murder. He turned to the composing team of Kanda and Ebb, and together they beefed up its show business elements. Fosse's most enduring work for Broadway would be called Chicago. They asked me if I knew how to adapt to a very straight play, if I had any ideas of how to musicalize it. And so I came up with the wonderful concept.
While Chicago was set in the past, the show sharply satirized an America obsessed with murder, sex, and celebrity. He's a phony and he comes out and sings a phony song about a phony emotion and he doesn't mean it for a minute and you can tell. It's an indictment of our pop culture really.
Chicago had a style of black humor. It's almost like cabaret. There's a lot harking back to vaudeville and to burlesque, but always with that cynicism.
We see his legacy living today. We see it in the film Chicago. We see it in the show Fosse. We see it everywhere.
You see it in fashion, you see it on television, you see it in commercials, you see people every now and then with a black head or so they're doing his style. That's the mark of a true artist. Bob Fosse was a showman with an artist's drive to dig deep into human nature and his own turbulent soul. Yeah. I got...
I got steam heat, but I need your love to keep away the cold. I got steam heat, but I need your love to keep away the cold. From nightclub hooper to Broadway choreographer to film director, Bob Fosse, Steam Heat is next on Dance in America. Steam heat, but I can't get warm without your hand to hold. Great Performances is made possible by Martin Marietta.
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Great Performances is also made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and by the financial support of viewers like you. Five, six, seven, eight No! You know me? I directed the shows Pippin in Chicago and the films Cabaret and Lenny. But still, people don't know my face.
I'm Pippin. It's been said that the art of choreography is only about 50% conception and that the real test of your talent is getting five or six or however number of people in a room who are just a little crazier than you are and... You can try to live out that thing in your head. And sometimes, if you're very lucky, you can find someone who dances it better than you ever dreamed it. For me, that someone was Miss Verdon.
I want to be a dancing man, girl, while I can. Girl, gonna leave my footsteps on the land of time. If I never leave a dime. Or be a millionaire I don't care I'll be rich as old King Midas Might have been At least until the tide comes in Director and choreographer Bob Fosse died last night of a heart attack as he walked to the opening night revival of one of his musicals. He was 60. Bob Fosse's...
Art, even more than is usually the case with creative people, reflected his life. To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting.
It's showtime, folks! It's impossible to portray a man's life without getting to know him pretty well. Without getting to know his faults and his virtues and getting to love him for both. I came from a very large family. I had a lot of brothers.
They were all very tall, six foot, and they all were into sports. And I was this little runt, and it was pretty tough around that house to get attention. So since I couldn't play basketball or football or anything very well, I started...
dancing around and that's how I got my attention. When I started studying dancing, I really went because I had a crush on a girl. And she went to dancing school, so I followed her to dancing school.
And she quit the next week and I stayed there and kept studying. But in my neighborhood, it was not wise to walk down the street with tights, I can tell you. Every Fred Astaire film that came out, I would sit and watch five, six times. In Chicago, I would watch it. I used to go to all the vaudeville houses.
I see a lot of wonderful black acts, you know, the Nicholas brothers All of those wonderful acts then I'd go home and I try to do what I saw Until finally I started doing an act and I really couldn't afford a choreographer to teach me anything so I started doing my own things and he found this boy to tap dance with and Instead of using their own names. They called them the riff brothers because riff is a tap dance expression i was making sixty dollars a week because that was the minimum ten dollars a night and i could go back and tell my friends what a terrific time i had and about all these racy women around and how wonderful it was in retrospect as i grew older i realized that i was very very lonely thank you What kind of language is that? Oh, it's not a language.
It's just some jokes I'm working on. Some crazy jokes. Bob did study many kinds of dance. But he also played drums.
Because he wanted everything that was rhythmic. He was convinced all his life that whatever he did, there was always something. someone who did it better.
He once told me that when he developed the dance act with Marianne Niles, his first wife, he used to open the act by telling the audience, you've heard of the champions? We're the runners-up. A lucky strike extra, Raymond Scott sets the pace for Posse and Niles.
They were both extremely young and unfortunately the marriage didn't last. Bob met Joan McCracken, an extraordinary performer, and they were married. She was about 12 years older than I was. She never quite told me.
My ambition was just to be a... nightclub performer and she said Bobby you got more than that and and problems you don't have enough schooling and a formal education in the theater so I I just took a year off got myself a bicycle and went from class to class. I never dreamt I'd be good enough to be like Fred Astaire in a movie.
I wanted to be, but I thought, I'll never make that. He was my idol, and I don't know if anyone has ever seen Astaire dance that doesn't fall in love with him. And I went to MGM at 23 years old, made a screen test, and had all those hopes and dreams in my head. And they took one look at me, and they said, well, he needs a toupee. Well, of course, my heart broke.
And it was at MGM. and it was one of those long streets. It was lunch hour, so it was deserted.
And I saw him, you know, his walk is... You have to recognize that walk. There was just the two of us and it must have gone on for two blocks I kept getting closer to him and closer to him and closer And when he got to me he just sort of flipped his hand and said Hiya Foss I thought my heart would jump out of my chest Fred Astaire at least knew part of my name I would imagine he's the strongest influence I've had in my dance career But there were times when I just out and out tried to imitate him Bob often talked about What? his limitations as a dancer. But if you look at film of Bob Dan saying, I mean, you keep thinking, what are the limitations?
piano plays softly The first movie that Bob choreographed was Kiss Me, Kate. Not the entire movie. Hermes Pant was the choreographer.
And Hermes always said, you just have a way of dancing. So why don't you choreograph your own piece? Bob was very competitive, mostly with himself.
He didn't need siblings. He had his own sibling rivalry built right in. The alley dance. Bob loved it because he could compete with a ballet dancer. And Tommy Rall was truly fantastic.
The alley dance. And then I got Pajama Game. Jerry Robbins had seen some things that I had done and said, you should do a show, and he sort of sponsored me. I think Steam Heat was the first dance number on a Broadway stage that was... It was pure Fosse, the way Fosse would do it.
He could have been any of the three, because they look like Bob, dance like Bob, and it's exactly the way Bob would have jumped up at a party and danced. I got... Sting. Steam heat I got, steam heat I got, steam heat But I need your love to keep away the cold Truly my style came from physical problems. I always had a slight punch in my shoulders.
So as a dancer I began hunching and I was losing my hair very early so I started wearing a lot of hats and I never had the ballet turn up so I'm gonna do the opposite and turn them in. So the whole style has come out of my defects. I thank God that I wasn't born perfect.
I'm a good dancer. They call me the Shove-em-all-cold-in-the-boiler Don't do no good They told me to pour some more oil in the burner They told me to pour some more oil in the burner They told me to pour some more oil in the burner That don't do no good Coal in the boiler, no burner Yes, yes, yes, yes, come on Union, get hot! I think the big influences were first Balanchine because of all the weaving and patterns. And Bob really felt that Jerome Robbins was an absolute genius. But Agnes de Mille...
and Jack Cole are the ones who changed musical theater from what we had known. Agnes brought ballet into it and the people were not animated wallpaper. They were kids.
characters in the show and for jack cole he introduced jazz into theater bob studied at the theater wing on the gi bill of rights then he switched to neighborhood playhouse and that was where he first met sandy meisner i think basically what i was after was to learn What actors are about so that I could deal with them as a director myself Sandy affected almost everything that I did I think he had a some sort of motto on the wall as I remember saying Don't just say something stand there. And I found out in choreography frequently that less movement, more economical movement or no movement at all makes a stronger statement than a fierce activity. Bob was able to combine words. with another great love, baseball, in Damn Yankees.
First on the stage. Then on screen. He knew that dance on film had to be different from on stage. He learned about cutting, camera angles, lenses.
He knew all that stuff. The film version also means a lot to me. It was the only time we danced together in a movie.
It was... very difficult to keep up with Bob when you were trying to dance with him. He's a terrific jumper. Well, he can fly.
I can't. And we'd be right in the middle of the take and he'd say, Jump! But it was wonderful.
I guess they talk about jet streams where you just coast and you don't feel the energy. You wouldn't even know you were tired till you stopped. Is there a doctor in the house? If there's a doctor in the house, point him out.
For there is an element of doubt. As to who's got the pain when they do the mumbo, who's got the pain when they go er, who needs a pill? When they peel the mumbo Who needs a pill when they go up?
He'd cry at Lassie on television. No, he was... No, not a romantic.
Yes, he was a romantic. He didn't like to admit to it. Um, he hated sentimentality.
that sloppy goopy kind. You know, stand there and sing about I love you, you love me, we'll love one another forever. Because he knew forever is not forever. He was 11 days older than me and was a constant source of kidding.
And he'd say to me, in the first 11 days of my life, before you were born, I had more girls than you'll have in the rest of your life. My name is Dolby Gillis. That's Charlie Trask. Give me the happy five.
How are you? You staying at the dorm? Yeah.
Got a roommate yet? No. I'm with you.
Swell. Uh, what do you say we go look for some dames, huh? You wait right here.
I'm gonna tell Ted about you. But you don't know anything about me. Well, maybe we could take that up later. You want to quit the show? Quit the show.
You don't have to do anything for me. But just don't kid yourself that you're doing this show for every... any other reason except guilt about me. Guilt?
What guilt? For never going one day when you were faithful to me. Oh, that guilt. I'm in love with a man, plaza 04433. It's a perfect relationship, I can't see him, he can't see me.
The late 50s and early 60s were a very productive time for Bob. He became a director as well as a choreographer and performer. I feel merely marvelous, wilder than the sea. I think the most special show, and still one of my favorites, is Redhead. It was a murder mystery musical, and that's where we got married.
What a smack can do. I could fly, I could soar, I could cry. I could roar Oh, I believe in you I believe in you The opening night of Little Me in New York. A very hostile and inebriated man got out of his seat and kind of walked up the aisle on his way to the men's room.
And he turned to us and he said angrily, This is the worst goddamn show I've seen since My Fair Lady. After about a hundred dancers had leapt across the stage, one very attractive but very nervous young lady came out prepared and then did her run, leap, twist and jump and landed with a great smile on her face. Bob said again graciously, thank you very much. And the girl stood stunned.
She walked over quietly, picked up her dance bag and said to Bob, no one says thank you to me. And proceeded to pummel Bob with her heavy dance bag. And she hit him so hard she knocked him completely off the stool and Phil Friedman and another stagehand pulled her away screaming and kicking into the wings and Bob got back on the stool and smoothed back his hair and he said ladies no more dance bags on stage, please Our only child, Nicole, was born in 1963. I took a break from performing and went back when she was three. This was to be my present to her on her return to Broadway. So I tried to get in the show everything that Gwen could do so well.
Let's have a wonderful salute here for a great star. You believe in the man that's made charity It was quite a successful Broadway show, and then they asked me to make the movie of it. I've been fairly comfortable with stage techniques, and now I was thrust into an entirely different way of looking at things.
However, the more... involved I became with film the more fascinated I became good or bad stage direction has certain conventions certain restrictions and film however the only limitations that I've discovered are the limitations in the directors head the wonderful thing about cameras is that you can come in on a hand you can come into a face or some movement that you don't get in that proscenium I'm gonna get up! I'm gonna get up, get up! And live! I would guess the big spender number was probably the most difficult number to translate to screen time.
It played well on stage, I think, because I lined the girls up along the rail, staged a lot of movement and business for them, and then allowed the audience... to decide for themselves where they wanted to look, at which particular girl, at which particular moment. Now, the camera had to choose for them. Is everybody ready just for me to sing one? The minute you walk in.
the joint. I could see you were a man of distinction, a real big spender, good looking, so refined. Say, wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind?
So let me get right to the point. I don't pop my cork for every guy I see. David Spender Spend a little time with me Do you wanna have fun?
How's about a few laughs? I can show you a good time! Do you wanna have fun? Fun, how's about a few fun laughs, fun laughs, fun laughs, fun laughs, good time, What do you say to a... How's about a...
Laugh? I could give you some... Are you ready for some... Fun?
How would you like a... Let me show you a... Good time!
A Big Spender! A Big Spender! And before they saw the movie, when the word was just around California, I had hundreds of offers to make movies. Hundreds.
Four. But after it opened, I mean, it was pretty cold. I mean, no one really wanted me for a long time.
Like anyone else, I'm afraid of failure. Although I don't... think that's the major thing and afraid that the ideas that I have I cannot I don't have the talent to execute if people interviewers would say you know what is your motive what drives you he would say fear and everyone would laugh but Bob was telling the truth I threw up twice a day when I was before now I throw up three times a day so it's it's about equal three weeks now we've been on triple time the brass is eating my ass you shot 82 days on a 65 day schedule and a four month editing schedule you gone seven months we're already two million two over the original budget so we God made the entire world in six days even going overtime once a truly talented artist is almost by definition excessive only when you have enough to throw away do you have enough everything about him was excessive neither his passions nor pleasures nor pain were packaged to suit the shrinking times and since all of him was equally excessive all of the time he was by some paradox of emotion or geometry in a constant state of excessive equilibrium. Money makes us go round the flat.
We both are sure on being poor. money money money money money money money money money and then Cabaret came along and they offered it to like 5, 6, 7, 8 other directors who turned it down for one reason or another I know Billy Wilder turned it down I know Gene Kelly turned it down and when they said you know would you like to do it I said oh yeah absolutely Cabaret was set in 1930s Berlin. Bob cut back and forth between the political turmoil in the streets and the escapist fantasy of the cabaret to reveal the connection between them.
Like much of Bob's work, cabaret used show business to comment on society. Bye, my Lieberherr. Farewell, my Lieberherr.
It was a fine affair, but now it's over. And though I used to care, I need the open air. You're better off without me, my Herr.
Tomorrow is our... I'm going like Elsie Liza is so quick. If you say cry, boom, she can cry. And Bob said, if you feel like crying, I want you to cry. to fight like an animal, not to cry.
He wanted her absolute gut emotion, and he got it. It's only a cabaret, old chum, and I love a cabaret! Cabaret was the most acclaimed work Bob ever did.
And the winner is... Bob Fosse for camera! The Oscar launched upon unique achievement, his triple crown year. Being, uh, characteristically, uh, pessimist and cynic, this and some of the other nice things that have happened to me in the last couple days... may turn me into some sort of hopeful optimist and ruin my whole life.
Here's a free minute from Pippin, Broadway's musical comedy sensation directed by Bob Fosse. Pippin was not doing very well and Stuart Oster who produced the show had decided to put the first television commercial out. I did shoot that commercial and edited it and business started booming in the show around six and a half years.
You can see the other 119 minutes of Pippin live. The winner is Bob Foster. Thank you. The winner is Bob Fosse! Bob Fosse, stunning again.
That's what Bob could do to you. He could put you through the ringer and make you test yourself to the limit. Because that's what he was always doing to himself.
He was one of those people that you had to gear yourself up to be with because he always wanted to be at your best. If you were going to have lunch with him... you had to go out and have lunch someplace else first just to break in your conversation.
I think everybody, every actor, every dancer that I've ever worked with wants to be asked to work to their maximum. actors ever done this with me before he started to cry he started crying he said Bob I don't think there's any more in me I don't think I have anything left I think I've given everything I've got and I said well I don't think so so he dug down and he came up and he was absolutely brilliant the next time your honor I so want your respect I know you're a good person and I know that this legal system is the best in the world, but you can't seem to hear me. Mr. Bruce, sit down. When I'm talking about tits and ass, I'm not up there just to shock the audience by repeating those words. Tits and ass, ass of tits and tits and ass.
The point I'm trying to make is that we all live in a very hypocritical society. Mr. Bruce, you leave me no alternative but to find you in contempt of this court. Lenny Bruce would push people's buttons.
About that, that was very important. At least they had to think and react. Then sentence me. I have no money left. Might I be sentenced now?
I can't afford to be on trial. The police took away my cabaret card. I can't work anymore.
Please, sentence me. No, I will not sentence you today. I order you, when you appear before me again, to appear with suitable counsel.
And I'm further ordering psychiatric evaluation. by the psychiatric clinic. December 16th. Bail continued.
You're trying to stop the information. Bailiff, will you please remove this man from the courtroom? You see, that's what I said. You can't stop the information because the information keeps the country strong.
You need to deviate. Don't shut him up You need that madman to stand up Tell you when you're blowing it And the harder you come to hand on the deviant The more you need him Please, don't take away my words Bob came home one time And he said to Nicole I've been offered a movie Little Prince And Nicole was crazy about that book So she said Oh, you've got to do it And Bob always said The next thing I knew I was going to die I was in Africa. What are you? I'm a snake. I'm enchanted.
If you would like to leave that inhuman race and take a residence out yonder in space, when you are ready to go traveling on, sit right down upon... on a snake in the grass. One sting is quite enough to make you happy and free. One sting And you'll discover how relaxed you can be posthumously And while you're wandering through the heavenly blue If you should see the Lord come strolling in view Go up and say you bring him best wishes from his fallen old chum A snake in the grass most painless I remember he told me he'd rather I swallowed flaming swords in a circus than be a dancer.
And I said, no, you don't understand. I love it. I really want to dance. And he said, okay, then go to class.
And I said, yeah, I'm going tomorrow. And he said, no, go now. Get out your white suit, your tough shoes and tail.
Let go back when forward feels. I'm the one. You start when the sun goes on in.
Now I'm free inside your bed. Don't throw the ice away I needed some random days, dreams can come true again Glenn gave me a lot. I mean, we have a wonderful child together. We had many theatrical successes and a lot of fun.
I think working with her is probably one of the most exciting experiences I've ever had in a theater. it was only when the work stopped that the trouble began we separated in 71 but separate is not the right word we just didn't live in the right in the same house but you know i worked with glenn after after we were split up. And it was a very successful relationship.
Come on, babe, why don't we paint the town? And all that jazz on those high-pitched Chicago was theater and politics. Bob's response to Watergate, with the corruption of his hometown in the 1920s, reflected in a series of vaudeville acts. Is it cold for the piano?
Brought sensuality on stage. Not just being sexy, but real eroticism. Yeah!
I had surgery about five years ago I was world-class smoker I was into five six packs of eight I got hooked on second off for a while which is very dangerous I was taking second off and dexed rene at the same time and I was hallucinating I don't recommend it at all I mean I don't think I helped my my work. I don't think it helped anything. Most of Bob's best friends were writers. The closest were Patty Chayefsky and Herb Gardner. Somewhere in the early 70s, the three of us, can you believe this, were asked to join together to do Dino De Laurentiis'remake of King Kong.
Although we'd worked on each other's stuff for years, some animal instinct had always kept us from working with each other. Anyway, we decided to take the offer seriously, and years later we admitted to each other that each one thought the other two needed the money. It also, after all those years, lent a certain dignity to our hanging out. Bob immediately assumed the role of director and assigned us our jobs. Patty, he says, you will handle the dignified philosophical thematic part of the script, that is, the board.
boredom. Herb, you will do your usual semi-comic lyrical bullshit. You'll do the whimsy.
And then I'll shine it up so maybe somebody will come and see it. I'll do the flash. It was decided then, this is many years ago, that the corporation we formed to do the movie would be named boredom, whimsy, and flash.
Herb was doing a film called Thieves and he could not find somebody to play a bum, a real derelict. Hey you! Let me introduce ourselves to you. I'm Mr. Dave.
Mr. Knight, we're a team. I do. What you got here is junkie folk. No alcohol, no...
So, Bob said, I'll do it. We're straight ahead junkie folk. We come to Bob's 35th album.
So many people expect a person after open heart. surgery that it changes their perspective I don't think it changed Bob if anything he became more driven wanted to be better Bob Fosse's dancing dancing Bob Fosse's pulsating electrifying musical sensation Bob did have this idea of doing a series of dance numbers all the ideas that he'd had over the years which would not fit in a show My own life is probably a little too dull, so that that's been greatly fictionalized and characters combined and incidences added and the chronology of it's off, but a lot of it's based on my life. And this tremendous... need that we all seem to have to accomplish something and not getting the really most out of our lives and I don't know I mean show business is very important in my life I mean and I'm eternally grateful for all it's given me but there is an underlying hate that I have I'm saying it's really hurt my life and I think I could have gotten more.
Bob's last movie was an outcry against exploitation, especially of women. It was a true story. When the editor of Playboy told me I'd won Playmate of the Year... I have this feeling about Dorothy.
She's going to be a big star. Together, we could be somebody. I thought it was the best picture I'd made. Certainly, technically, it was the best. Playboy is a...
very special magazine Dorothy they're gonna give me ten thousand dollars for having my picture taken photography and everything I thought was just absolutely exceptional I thought what the picture was saying was very important they're all nice to you everybody is wonderful mr. Hickman is wonderful so when you put your best work forward and then it seems to be rejected by the public go out and get yourself a job get something going and try to make her proud of you he's got the personality of a pimp do you think hefner like me i never got such split reviews in my life as uh people loving it and really hating it really being angry about it you've grown and he stayed the same we have some things we should talk about about a divorce is that what you mean please come back to me i want it to be over and i'm my friends you know who try to console me say well that must be something if they get that angry you got to them somehow i started when i was 13 i've been a professional since i was 13. um and that's all i know and i i'm happiest when i'm rehearsing i'm happiest in places like this Bob's last Broadway musical, Big Deal, revisited a favorite Fosse theme. The little guy who tries to get ahead and just can't, but never stops plugging. He said it in the Chicago of his... youth and he used actual songs from that era.
I have distorted the meaning of those songs a great deal to suit my own sense of humor. It was fun not having to argue with composers all the time. And also I think a lot of composers don't want to work with me anymore.
I wanted something that I'd never done before, which is basically a very hard, driving, rhythmic number. It is just so percussive. It is really like there are a bunch of drummers up there that are required to hit very hard accents like a drummer.
The dancers all say this is the weirdest dance we've ever done in our lives. The deal was misunderstood by the critics, but also misunderstood by Fossey. What he did was compose a folk opera in operatic time using the found materials of American standards.
I think when he died he was still growing and still struggling to reformulate himself. In American culture... there's a great tradition of artists coming out of the vernacular, out of the street, like Walt Whitman or the novelist Theodore Dreiser, who was uneducated and worked as a newspaper judge almost from his early teenage, or like the juggler W.C. fields. Anyway, dancing has been my whole life and it's been good and it's bad.
Mostly good. This year has been incredible for me considering I had one of the biggest flops on Broadway. It's hard for me to understand because I was given something called the Astaire Award and something called the George Abbott Award and a Tony Award and now this. And before I die, I just want one more thing and that is for the New York Times to say one nice thing about me.
In Bob's terms, I don't think he considered himself a success because he was never quite satisfied with what he had done. I like that sense that it could very easily fail. It's a kind of... gives me an impotence that I need to work harder and I always like fighting the odds. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who once said of a project, the anxiety is unbearable.
I hope it lasts forever. I want to be a dancing man, girl, while I can. Girl, gonna leave my footsteps on the sands of time.
If I never leave a dime.