One Last Song at the Shubert

Brad Ellis looked out from the stage of the Shubert Theatre at a sea of 2,100 empty seats that soon will be removed in preparation for the theater’s demolition, scheduled for November.

“To be here tonight,” Ellis said, “is like being in the show ‘Follies.’”

It was Saturday evening, as about 220 guests were arriving for the Shubert’s “wrecking ball party,” a chance for people who worked at the Century City theater to say farewell to the 30-year-old home of many of L.A.’s longest-running shows. The Shubert, the adjacent plaza, and the building south of the plaza will be replaced by new office buildings.

Ellis wasn’t the only observer who compared the occasion to the musical “Follies,” which is set at a somewhat similar event in a partially demolished New York theater--and which was the first show to play the Shubert when it opened in 1972.

“It’s ironic that the first production here was set at a theater that’s being dismantled, and now we’re going to do it for real,” said Milt King, 86, who was the Shubert’s chief carpenter from its opening until he retired two years ago.

However, while the fictional “Follies” event involved a formal program and bittersweet memories of personal affairs, the event at the Shubert was decidedly casual and, more often than not, relatively lighthearted.

It was held nearly 11 months before the actual wrecking ball is slated to arrive. The Shubert Organization, the New York-based operator of the theater since it opened, chose to vacate the premises by the end of January, in the absence of any bookings between now and the end of the company’s lease later in the year.

Posters, programs, photos and other memorabilia of Shubert shows were up for grabs in the lobbies, although posted notices asked guests to limit themselves to three items, including no more than one large wall piece.

Inside the auditorium itself, the entertainment was provided by Ellis, a veteran theatrical musical director, who sat at an upright piano while guests gathered around him and sang show tunes. Ellis himself had worked at the Shubert as a pit band pianist in the U.S. premiere of “Ragtime,” which opened in 1997 and became the theater’s last long-running show.

Hanging out at the piano most of the evening was Ellis’ wife, Eydie Alyson, who acted in “Les Miserables” at the Shubert. She told the story of how pranksters in the cast one night managed to tie her to an onstage table with bandages, without her being aware of it, so that when she started to move in the next scene, the table moved with her. She had to furiously untie the knot in the shadows during the “Bring Him Home” number.

Nearby, actor Jason Graae peered up into the grids nearly 80 feet above the stage. When he played the famous escape artist Harry Houdini in “Ragtime,” he made an entrance upside down, lowered from the highest grid while clad in a straitjacket. Graae said he is afraid of heights and didn’t realize he would make such an entrance when he took the role.

Before he had to do the move for the first time, he consulted a therapist, who advised him to have a picture taken of his first descent--tangible proof that he could do it. It worked, and the job turned into “a great gig, truly the best I ever had,” Graae said. His nerves even survived a performance in which he was hanging upside down, awaiting his entrance, when a piece of scenery fell and injured two other actors, causing audience members to scream and delaying the show by a half hour.

Meanwhile, out in the lobby, former carpenter King recalled that two people managed to bring their pet dogs into the theater, despite the usual house rules against it: himself and Glenn Close, when she was starring in “Sunset Boulevard.” Close, he said, would sit on the floor of her dressing room and eat supper, accompanied by her dog and her children. King said his mixed terrier Foxy was in his office “night and day,” despite admonitions from security guards.

A present-day security guard at the building, Jerome Shirley, who was hired only seven months ago, said that long before he worked there, he saw “Dreamgirls” at the Shubert--and it was the best of the 30 different productions of that show that he has seen. “I hate that they’re tearing this beautiful theater down,” he said.

Barbara Isley managed the Shubert box office from the beginning until she was laid off a week ago. On the day in 1972 when the box office opened for “Follies,” a building inspector said the facilities weren’t ready yet. So she “became a ticket carhop for a day,” selling tickets to drivers who pulled up in front of the theater.

Grace Melton, who worked in group ticket sales for the theater’s first three years, said she had to wear a hardhat during her first days on the job, because construction hadn’t been completed. The Shubert wasn’t an easy sell at the beginning, she said: “People didn’t know where Century City was.”

Only two Shubert employees remain on staff through the end of the month: general manager Mark Nichols and assistant manager Jeff Loeb. They are supervising the dispersal of the company’s belongings.

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A few items are being sold. The rival Nederlander Organization is buying the Shubert curtain for transfer to Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre, where the previous, well-worn curtain was discarded when “The Lion King” opened. Nederlander is also buying some spotlights for use at the Greek Theatre.

But most of the theater’s furnishings are being donated to nonprofit theaters and service organizations. Center Theatre Group will get 500 seats for use in its planned facility in Culver City. Another 300 seats are going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Most of the rest of the seats are riser-mounted, not floor-mounted, which means their use is more restricted, Nichols said. They will probably be stored by L.A. Shares, an organization that handles donations to local nonprofits.

El Portal Center for the Arts in North Hollywood will receive five rolls of unused carpet and a mezzanine bar. The 99-seat Evidence Room will take home a variety of dressing room items, said artistic director Bart DeLorenzo, who acknowledged, “I regret to say I never saw a show at the Shubert. The tickets were very expensive.”

Standards of “expensive” have changed. Isley recalled that the first ticket prices, in 1972, were $12.50 for musicals and $8.50 for nonmusicals.

Judi Davidson, publicist for many of the Shubert productions, said that when Zero Mostel performed in “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Shubert in 1976, “I had to beg to get him on Johnny Carson.” After he sang part of “If I Were a Rich Man” on Carson’s TV show, he stopped and said if the viewers wanted to hear the rest, they should call the Shubert for tickets. “Phone lines at Shubert theaters across the country lit up,” Davidson said.

Sheri Gottlieb worked as an usher at the Shubert from 1973 to 1975, then joined the concessions staff and became manager of concessions in 1976, serving in the job until the end of 2001. She witnessed the taste in concessions change from liquor to more bottled water, juices and cappuccino, with a slight trend back toward alcohol in recent years.

“I always thought I would quit the theater,” Gottlieb said. “I didn’t think the theater would quit me.”