All people of great achievement are ambitious, but the key question is whether they are ambitious to be or to do. Winston Churchill. Joe Papp was the latter.
Gail Merrifield Papp begins this memoir in 1991 with her husband’s Memorial Service. Every talented actor, director, and playwright in New York attended. There was Mandy Patinkin, Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Swados, James Lapine, Martin Sheen, Robin Wagner, Kevin Kline, producer Bernard Gersten…Al Pacino and Robert De Niro were among pallbearers. Both had acted under Joe’s aegis. Many spoke about the man who supported them and their work when starting out. All felt they owed him a debt. We New Yorkers owe more. Joseph Papp gifted this city with the indelible legacy of The Public Theater.
Free Shakespeare had subsisted in several locations before Commissioner of The New York City Parks Department Robert Moses allowed it a temporary stage in Central Park. When Papp refused to charge admission, Moses revoked his permit. Two years of newspaper campaigning and public support found the producer back where he belonged. In 1962, The Delacorte Theater – now undergoing extensive renovations – was built for The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park.
Gail Merrifield left publishing for work in the theater at 29. She started as a temp, writing program blurbs for the burgeoning New York Shakespeare Festival. Her desk was across from Papp’s amiable assistant Ann. He’d pass frequently with a polite “good morning.” The day she took her hair down, he stopped to chat. In his 40s, Papp was, she recalls, “facetious yet purposeful, edgy yet good natured, invasive yet polite.” And married. When his assistant left, Gail began to take his director’s notes. Ann’s job organically fell to her, but not the title.
That summer, Gorge C. Scott and then wife Colleen Dewhurst played Troilus and Cressida. “Joe is a complex, complex individual. There’s a kind of inner tension, like working with a wind-up spring or a gun that’s cocked,” Scott said. The Public was looking for a bricks and mortar home. Papp found the dilapidated Astor Library. They moved in 1966. Suddenly he was tasked with finding new American playwrights – he knew none – and selling tickets.
At the train station, a bushy-haired actor handed Papp handwritten pages which became Hair. The play was an immediate success transferring to Broadway, funneling money back to The Public for years. Tickets at Astor Place were $2.50. Naked Hamlet, deconstruction of the bard’s play in an hallucinatory funhouse, was played by 27 year-old Martin Sheen. “Every actor should do Hamlet. It’s like being Bar Mitzvahed. You’re never the same again,” Papp said. Reviews were scornful. Papp challenged critic Clive Barnes to a debate – and won.
Gail was made assistant to the producer. She wasn’t earning enough to live on, however. Peter Brook, Harold Clurman, and Boris Aaronson raised enough to pay her $200 a week. Quite a trio of godfathers! By the early 70s there were five theaters running with more than one show transferred to Broadway. “He never mentioned a wife, but suddenly, in one conversation, his 11 year-old was taking piano lessons,” she recalls. (Papp had two children.)
In ’73 Joe Papp took over running Lincoln Center. Forty original musicals were produced in the 70s including Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Chorus Line and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He had incredible instincts. Jazz at The Public was inaugurated. Gail worked hard and thought of Joe as a loner. Then one day he asked her to lunch. “It was fun. We were on equal footing. Shakespeare was a major topic; growing up in a Yiddish household, he was sensitive to language.” The second lunch they found they had WC Fields and Charles Chaplin in common. Gail was living with a Yale Law School student, something Joe didn’t know until he came to the door with roses.
Failing at Lincoln Center with new plays, Joe retreated to the classical. Gail moved out paying half her salary for rent. Joe frequently visited, then arrived with a suitcase. The Papps were amicably divorced. Gail and Joe moved to a bigger apartment with Tony, the son who chose to live with his father. Officially a couple, they had a small wedding.
A cabaret space opened at The Public. David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones got cancelled by CBS in deference to POWs. John Lithgow played Laertes, then King Lear. Raul Julia played Orlando, then Prospero. Joe was faithful to actors who grew with him. The Pirates of Penzance moved to Broadway. Thanks to A Chorus Line, The Public no longer had a deficit. Clive Barnes wrote that Rabe’s Boom Boom Room was “full of chic filth.” Other reviews called it a masterpiece. Joe persisted in his taste. He campaigned against the destruction of The Helen Hayes Theater and took A Chorus Line to Russia. There were lots of foreign trips. He and Gail were able to deliver Vaclav Havel’s Obie. The playwright was under house arrest.
In the 80s, A Chorus Line was invited to perform at the White House. Joe negotiated a private meeting with Reagan who had just slashed The National Endowment for The Arts 50 percent. After 1991, Gail left The Public for private life. When Joe got sick, he proposed a troika of producers, but continued to float ideas. Then individuals took over. Gail Papp writes of his winding down, his last days, and the star-studded service. It was a good marriage. The book is a warm history of the man, his marriage and his theater.
PUBLIC/PRIVATE: My Life with Joe Papp at The Public Theater
Gail Merrifield Papp
