A chorus of affection for the razzle-dazzle man

If there hadn’t been Bob Fosse, there wouldn’t be the acclaimed new movie musical “Chicago.” The dazzling innovator choreographed and directed the original 1975 Broadway production of “Chicago,” which starred his wife, Gwen Verdon, as well as Chita Rivera and Jerry Orbach.

Fosse’s choreography was sexy and bold, his direction of musicals and movies surreal and daring. Although his first feature film, 1969’s “Sweet Charity,” was not a hit, his next film, 1972’s “Cabaret,” transformed the world of movie musicals. The dark and daring film won eight Oscars, with Fosse winning best director over Francis Ford Coppola for “The Godfather.” That same year, Fosse also won the Tony for directing “Pippin” and the Emmy for directing the NBC special “Liza With a Z.” Fosse is the only director to receive all three honors in the same year.

Fosse received Oscar nominations for best director and screenplay for his 1979 semiautobiographical film, “All That Jazz,” about a womanizing, chain-smoking choreographer-director who dies of a heart attack. His last feature film was 1983’s “Star 80,” a stark, disturbing drama about slain Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. A smoker who refused to give up cigarettes even after bypass surgery, Fosse died at 60 of a heart attack in 1987 while walking on the street in Washington, D.C.

Several people who worked with Fosse talked recently about his creativity, personality and legacy.

Shirley MacLaine, whom Fosse plucked out of the chorus of “Pajama Game” to understudy the role of Carol Haney in the Broadway musical; MacLaine also starred in “Sweet Charity”:

He would always lurk around in the back of the theater. We would see this little guy hunched over. He was hunched when he was probably 9, and he would always have that cigarette dangling from his lips. He would have us in the basement of the St. James Theatre rehearsing “Steam Heat” at 3 or 4 in the morning, cigarette smoke coming out of his mouth. He would always say, “I apologize -- but can we do it again?” and again and again and again.

With “Sweet Charity,” this is what happened: Lew Wasserman [then head of MCA] called me and said, “What do you want to do next?” I said, “Sweet Charity.” He said, “Who do you want to direct it?” and I said, “Fosse.” “He said, “Fosse! He’s a choreographer.” I said, “Yeah, but he is going to be one of the great directors. Trust me on this.”

So he brought out this little guy, and we started working. As we started to work, I realized that he was truly a Fellini aficionado, that’s why he had so many big close-ups. I found him working on the picture to be absolutely calm, not at all temperamental, and exquisitely specific.

Do you know what? He died on the street in front of my old ballet school in Washington, D.C. If it wasn’t for Fosse putting me in that part in “Pajama Game,” how would any of this have happened to me? And then I brought him to Hollywood, and he died in front of my ballet school. So tell me there is no such thing as synchronicity or karma.

John Rubinstein, who starred in the title role of the 1972 musical “Pippin”:

He always had the audience in mind. He didn’t use euphemisms and mysterious director language when he wanted you to do a take or do a piece of business. Of course, he was very much like that in his choreography. Every move was based on an emotion and thought, a puzzle piece of a total story. That’s what made his choreography so electric.

The elbow had to be bent in a certain way because it gave a dancer an attitude, and it was the attitude he was after. Even in death, he did one of the greatest gestures that anybody had ever done. He left in his will a list of people where he left you something like $332.75 to go to dinner on him. Then Gwen called and said we will send you a check, of course, but if you want to pool all of this money we will throw a huge party and that is what, I guess, most of us did ... this big party at Tavern on the Green on the night of his memorial service. There was a huge band and a great dinner. We drank and danced, and Bob was sort of all-pervading. He sort of orchestrated it for us.

Jerry Orbach, who starred as Billy Flynn in Fosse’s original 1975 version of “Chicago”:

Fosse had a dark, kind of jaded view of the world, and he loved satire and black humor. And like other choreographer-directors, his vision was mainly visual rather than verbal. But he loved writers. He wanted to shock people, make them laugh and entertain them. It’s that kind of the hat-over-one-eye, winking-at-the-world philosophy. He was easy for me to work with. We made up a lot of stuff. We improvised things and put them into the script. We invented whole speeches that we worked on and that whole circus atmosphere of “Razzle Dazzle.” One of the things Bob did was that he made filmic transitions from scene to scene without going to a blackout or a curtain coming down. At the end of the number “All I Care About Is Love,” which I did as a striptease down to underwear, from that I walked right into my office where a guy is fitting me for a new suit, so you go right from one thing into another -- in a sense like a film dissolve.

Michael York, who starred as Brian Roberts in the film “Cabaret”:

I worked with him before the Fosse legend sort of settled in. He had this Broadway reputation, but as a film director he had to prove himself because “Sweet Charity” hadn’t exactly been a big success. I remember during the making of “Cabaret” there were executive gentlemen in suits wanting him to get on to it. But you quite clearly could tell he had a vision and a way he wanted it done.

I knew this was a great property, but I remember going to Munich and really starting to concentrate on the script. I realized there wasn’t a role to play -- [I played] an observer that all of these extroverted characters revolved around, so I didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t know Bob Fosse, but I remember getting up the courage to speak to him. He agreed with me, and we had this extraordinary week where they were also doing the dances and laying down the soundtrack, and he used it to just beef up the whole narrative and relationships so this opaque character had flesh and blood.

Mariel Hemingway, who starred as Dorothy Stratten in “Star 80”:

He was the total choreographer. He choreographed all of the photo shoot scenes we did together as if they were a dance. We rehearsed six weeks prior to shooting. He taped out the sets on the floor of the stage, and by the end of the third week he would get a stopwatch and time out the movie. We would go from one scene to the next in sequence, and it was extraordinary because by the time you went to shoot it, it was in you as if it were a play. Nobody was really surprised [about his early death]. He would sit on the set and go into these coughing fits that would frighten us, and then he would put another cigarette in his mouth. He came from the idea that the artist has to be on the edge of turmoil and pain.

Joel Grey, who won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as the emcee in “Cabaret”:

“I knew in the first place when I read the script that it was going to be something very different, that the form would be new, and even if it hadn’t been a musical, it would have been very compelling. I knew he was onto something he had never mastered before. Though he had made good work, this was a big step forward for him.

When we started working, I started to see what his vision was, and I started to see the physical production. The first day I saw dailies, I wept. His films were so awesome. I think in many ways his films were greater than his Broadway stuff, which was pretty damn good. I think he made gems in the movies.

Debbie Allen, who won a Tony for the Fosse revival of “Sweet Charity”:

I never worked with a director before or since who was so specific. He worked in small moments. He was brilliant with lights on stage. He used to make a joke: “I have two steps. I just do it all with lighting.”

There were so many women and girls around him, but he couldn’t function without Gwen. I remember there was a period of time when we were doing “Sweet Charity” in New York; he was also doing “Big Deal,” and he was going through a real frustrating time. And there was something that happened between him and Gwen. There was an argument, and she left the theater. He was not himself for about two days until she came back.

Chita Rivera, who appeared in the movie version of “Sweet Charity” and the original production of “Chicago” and has a cameo in the movie:

He was crazy about women. He was crazy about sex, obviously. He made women look phenomenal and broke all kinds of rules. It was magical to work with him because you didn’t know where he was going or what he was up to until he was finished with it and you would go, oh my God, that is what it is.

Ann Reinking, a singer-dancer-actress who was Fosse’s leading lady offstage and on in “Dancin’ ” and in the movie “All That Jazz.” She also won a Tony for choreographing the long-running revival of “Chicago”:

One of the best things about Bob or a director who is really gifted is they have something in them that permeates the room, and they make you want to be the very best you could be. Also, a really great director is really a great teacher. They inspire, they coach, they nurture.

Bob’s real gift was that he had a tremendous ability to tell a story exceptionally well, no matter what the story was. If he committed to the story and wanted to tell it, he would use everything in his power and education, whether it is by dancing or acting.

He was a real sweet man and very shy. He loved to make things. He loved to cook. We used to take long walks, and he used to pick things up off the street that interested him, and he would save things. He read like you couldn’t believe. He just loved sports. He had lifelong friends for 30, 40 or 50 years, and he was close to his sister, and he was a great father. When he wasn’t working there was an amazingly shy and dear, very sweet person who did things you wouldn’t expect.

Rob Marshall, director of the film “Chicago” who also danced in Ann Reinking’s one-woman show:

I worked with Fosse so briefly. I did Ann Reinking’s act down at the Joyce Theater, and she was doing a number from “Dancin’,” and he came down and worked with her. That was my one sort of brush with him.

I saw the original production of “Chicago” with Gwen and Chita. It was so brilliant and so beautiful. I thought it was so dark and cynical and funny and sexy and glamorous. I was sort of overwhelmed by it.

I have such respect for this man as a genius of the theater and film that I swore to myself that I would not do a watered-down Bob Fosse version. In other words, I wouldn’t bastardize his work and sort of interpret it myself and do my version of Bob Fosse. To me that’s sacrilegious. You just kind of hope he would be pleased.

One thing that actually gave me such gratification is [agent] Sam Cohn, who was one of his best friends, saw the movie and turned to me and hugged me and said, “Bob would have been so proud.” That’s all I needed to hear.