Of Broadway’s heyday

Attending a play can be a life-changing experience.

It was for Oscar-winning actress Eva Marie Saint, who recalls how a whiff of perfume set her on the path to Broadway.

Though she doesn’t remember the name of the play, Saint vividly remembers being 10 years old, sitting with her mother in the first row of a theater and having her imagination captured by the intoxicating scent worn by an actress that drifted across the footlights.

To this day, whenever she appears onstage, Saint makes sure she is wearing perfume. “I hope I catch the imagination of some little girl,” she said recently. “I am always saying to the other actors onstage, ‘Do I have too much on?’ ”

Saint also recounts that story in the fascinating new documentary “Broadway: The Golden Age,” which opened locally Friday. “Broadway” has been a labor of love for Rick McKay, who directed, wrote, edited and produced the film exploring the magical time in New York theater from the 1930s through the 1960s -- decades that saw the rise of such composers as Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim; playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and William Inge; and actors Marlon Brando, Kim Stanley, Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon, John Raitt, Alfred Drake and Angela Lansbury.

Armed with no budget and a single digital camera, the former singer and actor spent five years interviewing about 100 Broadway veterans, including Raitt, Elaine Stritch, Barbara Cook, Robert Goulet, Lansbury, Tammy Grimes, Saint, Ben Gazzara, Sondheim, Carol Burnett, Jerry Herman, Fred Ebb and Rivera.

The documentary also includes a plethora of photographs from such shows as “West Side Story,” “Mame,” “Damn Yankees” and “The Pajama Game,” as well as rare footage of performances by the original casts of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Bus Stop.”

For McKay, doggedly tracking down his roster of troupers was a dream come true. “Most people will never work with a cast like this,” he says.

Gretchen Wyler, 72, who appeared on Broadway in “Silk Stockings,” “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Damn Yankees” and is featured in the film, says that Broadway was a different animal during those decades. “It’s like the old wonderful line: ‘If I had known I was living in the golden age of Broadway, I would have enjoyed it more.’ We didn’t know it was the golden age. We just went from show to show. Sardi’s was the dream, and you always got your table. We did tryouts out of town -- you would never preview in New York.”

While still a teenager, Wyler ran away from her Oklahoma hometown and joined a small dance company.

“Believe it or not, when I was 18 I was on Broadway with Ray Bolger in ‘Where’s Charley?’ I watched him every night for a year and half do ‘Once in Love With Amy.’ My discipline I learned from Mr. Bolger. He never in a year and half missed a show. He would never let down for a minute. That was what the stage was.”

Gish’s kindness

Saint, 80, had understudied in “Mister Roberts” before making her Broadway debut in 1953 in Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful.” She has never forgotten the generosity that the play’s star, Lillian Gish, showed to her.

“My character leaves the bus station and continues [offstage],” Saint relates. “One night when I left, I received this huge hand, and I couldn’t figure out what happened. I hadn’t done anything different. I asked the stage manager what happened, and he said, ‘Tonight as you left, Lillian put her back to the audience and she gave you a very sweet little wave. She gave you the exit.’ And from that night, she did it every night.”

McKay says that in interview after interview he did, Laurette Taylor’s name kept popping up as that of one of the greatest, most influential Broadway actors. Taylor, who died in 1946, originated the role of Amanda Wingfield in 1945 in Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” The filmmaker managed to track down a 1938 screen test she did in Hollywood -- the only known sound footage of her.

“Fred Ebb told me when he was struggling in New York ... do you know what his day job was? Bronzing baby shoes in Times Square,” McKay says of the lyricist whose credits include “Chicago” and “Cabaret.” “To get to his rooming house, he had to walk by the theater where Laurette Taylor was in ‘The Glass Menagerie,’ and he said he couldn’t physically walk by that theater with 55 cents in his pocket and not buy a ticket and sit in the second balcony and watch that show. There is no correlation to that story today. If an actor did that on his way home from his day job, it would mean not paying his rent for a month. The cheapest seats today are $65.”

Saint was among the budding thespians who saw Taylor in Williams’ play. “She was just phenomenal,” Saint says. “Laurette Taylor was very, very special.” So special that Saint named her only daughter after the actress.

McKay hopes that his documentary will speak to a younger generation of theatergoers. That’s one reason he included so many reminiscences of “second act-ing” -- when struggling young performers would hang around a theater during intermission and then sneak in and watch the second act of a play.

“I want to train a whole generation how to sneak into theater,” McKay says. “It may be their only shot!”