Martin Milnes: Puzzles, parties, parlor games, anagrams, treasure hunts, cryptics. Stephen Sondheim loved them all. Steve's private passion for puzzles has now become a public phenomenon, But how many people know that Steve was also a gamer? In fact, his regular buddy was none other than Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Ronan Farrow. Steve and Ronan often geeked out together, playing their favorite video games.
Ronan Farrow: He was always emailing me recommending the latest video game. He was passionate when he talked about video games, big area of our rapport.
Martin Milnes: Did Steve love any one video game in particular?
Ronan Farrow: We bonded a lot over Myst. I think we both had a kind of puzzle oriented cerebral set of tastes in games. I had grown up less on the kind of kinetic running and jumping and fighting games that console players tend to have as staples and more on PC and Mac games, which were a little more narrative and peaceful and built around intellectual obstacles instead of physical ones. And that obviously suited Steve's tasting games and puzzles really well. So we talked constantly about Myst. I remember both of us being very excited when they announced a remake of Myst. It was the first time they had put it in real time three d, so we would sort of look around in all angles. Real Myst is how they branded it. I remember him saying, the real Myst. It's the real Mist is coming. And, like, the water's gonna move. We both delighted in technical wizardry. So the technical aspects of game construction were were things we talked about a lot. And a lot of these conversations with him were lasting formative influences in all these different areas and really finding an outlet for that with Steve, which I didn't have anyone else that I was gonna talk about missed in great nerdy detail with other than him. He was no slouch at video games and really anything requiring puzzling. The way that man could put together any of the myriad puzzles that he had around his living rooms was extraordinary.
Martin Milnes: And Steve emailed you reminiscing about video games just before he died.
Ronan Farrow: One of the last ones during the pandemic, he said, what I remember is how good you were at video games, which made me feel slow and stupid. Not a bad sensation, actually. Love in a time of cholera, Steve.
Martin Milnes: Welcome to Loving You, The Untold Sondheim, a podcast made by Steve's friends with Steve's friends. Hosted by me, Martin Milnes.
Peter E. Jones: And me, Peter E. Jones.
Martin Milnes: Now, PJ, tell me, did Steve ever fuck Norma Desmond? Oh,
Peter E. Jones: undoubtedly, Martin. All Steve ever wanted to do was foxtrot Norma Desmond.
Martin Milnes: But Steve had pretty stiff competition.
Peter E. Jones: Well, sure. Everyone in the room wanted to foxtrot Norma Desmond.
Martin Milnes: Even Steve's mom got involved Mhmm. To help Steve and his friends do it. I just wish I'd been there. I could have joined in.
Peter E. Jones: Oh, they'd have loved you to join in, Martin. But you know, all of Steve's friends would have wanted to beat you.
Martin Milnes: Of course. Because Stardom is the best and most competitive board game ever invented.
Peter E. Jones: Stardom was a handmade board game from 1953, which Steve invented and played with his movie loving friends like Chuck Hollerith. Set in Hollywood, the aim of each player in this game was to fuck different Hollywood stars throughout their journey to get to the top. The top being to fuck Norma Desmond. So you start out as a little bit player, then you can become a contract player, and then after that you become a featured player, and then you become a starlet, and then you become a star if you fuck your way up the right ladders.
Martin Milnes: And Steve designed Stardom very intricately. You kept score with star sheets, which had photos of different movie stars.
Peter E. Jones: And you checked off which ones you managed to bed as you went along. He had everything drawn up and the game board was hand painted by his mother. The most unlikely person you would ever think to enter into a collaboration with Steve is mother Foxy. She did it with ink and watercolor and metallic star stickers, gold letter stickers. And the board spread out into one panel that you played on.
And it had a black tape border and the board's reverse was covered in red faux alligator skin. The wonderful pieces that were built for it like a mini fur and a tiara, you won as you fucked your way to the top and it was just wonderfully elaborate and camp and I think it saw many happy nights of playing.
Martin Milnes: I'd have loved to have played Stardom with Steve, but he told me that the board game had been destroyed in the big fire at his house in 1995. But then after Steve died, when his belongings were cataloged, to everyone's surprise, stardom was found. But alas, too late for me.
Peter E. Jones: Yeah. We really didn't know Stardom was still in existence, but you had to have seen the basement to understand why. We had so much in that basement, and there were things I never knew about till after Steve died. These games and puzzles were driving force in Steve's life. He was always solving some kind of puzzle at any time.
If it wasn't the actual lyrics he was forming and writing, which are puzzles of course. He was working on anagrams or crossword puzzles or number equations. When he had his constitutional in the loo in the morning, there was always something he was working on in there. So all the time, always he was occupied by puzzle solving. When Steve was about 14, his dear mentor, Oscar Hammerstein, introduced him to the puns and Anagrams puzzles in the New York Times. And Steve then submitted one of his own, of course. The Times sent it back, but said they were impressed and admired his perspicacity, which was a word Steve then had to look up.
Martin Milnes: And as an adult, Steve collected games as artwork. His Manhattan townhouse was covered in them, including the first game in Steve's collection, The New and the Fashionable Game of the Jew.
Peter E. Jones: A hateful game, but he thought the irony that he was Jewish and had this game, and it had great artwork on it. He sort of proudly hung it on the wall and pointed it out to anybody who came in. It was hanging right by the door, and you would see it as you came in on your left.
Martin Milnes: Steve told me about The Game of the Jew the first time I went to the house. I'd arrived while Steve was still on his way back from a Zitz probe. So when he got home, Steve went straight upstairs to change, and I started browsing the puzzles hanging on the walls and displayed in his cabinets. At that point, Steve came back down, so I said, oh, I hope you don't mind. I've just been admiring your puzzle collection.
And he lit up, and he said, ah, well, let me tell you about puzzles. And he began describing his collection saying that The Game of the Jew was a nineteenth century British board game which taught children not only to deal with numbers, but also to be antisemitic. As when the children roll the dice, they lose all their money to the stereotypical looking Jewish money lender. And Steve spent a good twenty minutes or so talking about his collection and cried, I don't wanna talk about musicals. Let's talk about puzzles.
So at your first meeting, you were off to a great start even before movies came up. Yes. So when Steve eventually told me about Stardom, I was to coin his own phrase, slobbering all over the couch. But there was another movie game Steve played with his friends, wasn't there? A parlor game from the late nineteen fifties, the movie poster game.
Peter E. Jones: Oh, the movie poster game. Again, played with his movie loving friends like Chuck Hollerith and others who, saw every movie made and had very specialist interest in films and could name every star and obscure actor in Hollywood. The posters in this game were also a send up of the overly elaborate and flamboyant way in which movies back then were advertised with far more extravagant wording than they are today. One of Steve's all time favorites and he certainly quoted it many times over the years was for a Susan Hayward movie called Smash Up: The Story of a Woman. Now, the title itself would do it, know.
But Smash Up: The Story of a woman had a tagline or a sub line which said, "Filmed on location inside a woman's soul."
Martin Milnes: That's very typical of the movie posters of that time.
Peter E. Jones: Very typical. And it was this kind of thing that the movie poster game sought to send up.
Martin Milnes: And it wasn't just the posters the game sent up. It was also the melodramatic voice over dialogue heard in movie trailers.
Hollywood Movie Trailer: Here is all you've ever wanted in entertainment in one superb show. Here is matchless story, suspenseful, terrifying, never so thrillingly presented. Here in breathtaking technicolor is superb spectacle and splendor and romance.
Martin Milnes: If you've ever played the pen and paper game consequences, as in he said to her, she said to him, and the consequences were, the movie poster game is exactly the same concept. The purpose of this game was to create a poster for a fictional film and to make this movie sound completely ridiculous. The first player creates an outrageous tagline for the movie. Steve conjured up a steamy British melodrama.
Young Steve: Gainsborough girls, racy romance, The Fever of the Chase, eighteenth century England in all its debauched splendor.
Martin Milnes: The second person names one of the film's leading stars, and then someone else chooses another unlikely actor to co star in this bonkers film. How about this romantic duo?
Hollywood Voiceover #1: Laurence Olivier and Marjorie Main in Mayhem in Malibu.
Martin Milnes: Then the supporting cast, sometimes with a made up exciting new star being introduced.
Hollywood Voiceover #2: Filmed in its entirety during the height of the rainy season in Tanganyika, run east on Maple Street. Introducing the lovely middle aged comedian, Gracie Mansion, who makes the jump from twelve years in politics straight into your heart.
Martin Milnes: Finally, at the bottom of the poster, the last player writes a preposterous synopsis. Steve imagined a sci fi rom com.
Young Steve: What happens when two Danes from planet s come from outer space and hit Earth? Your sides will explode with merry Martian marital mix ups. However,
Martin Milnes: the key point is that each player writes their contribution in secret, folding over the paper so that nobody else can see what they've written. Then someone in the group unfolds the paper and reads out everything on the poster. And all being well, it comes out as the most bizarre movie ever made.
Hollywood Voiceover #3: Ten years in preparation, five years in production, the long awaited cinema version of the century's greatest novel, daringly brought to the screen in brilliant Ansco color. Janice Paige and Alice Faye in Creatures of Christ! With Una Merkel. The story of a French nun who succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh. Spends a wild weekend in Monte Carlo. And finally renounces Christ from the summit of Mont Blanc before plunging to her death in the blue blue Mediterranean.
Peter E. Jones: Steve was probably playing this movie poster game while he wrote West Side Story. Simultaneously, Steve and Lenny Bernstein did crossword puzzles together from the Listener magazine. They came out on Thursdays, so Steve said on Thursdays, no work ever got done on West Side Story.
Martin Milnes: The Listener was British magazine released by the BBC to go with the Radio Times. And Steve said they had the hardest crossword puzzles you could find anywhere. Steve told me, "Lenny and I spent weeks over this one puzzle. When we finally finished it, we felt like kings of the world".
Peter E. Jones: Oh, and Steve started doing all those Listener puzzles again later in life.
Martin Milnes: Yes. Because the BBC digitized them, and Steve said, it scares me to death because I daren't look at them, because he'd never have been able to tear himself away. He always said that the Listener crosswords were the puzzle maker's puzzle and described them as "elegant, complicated, devious".
Peter E. Jones: And you know, Martin, it was the Listener puzzles which got Steve into doing cryptic crosswords, which at the time no one in America knew anything about.
Martin Milnes: Oh, cryptics were perfect for Steve's puzzle mind because he loved wordplay and cryptic clues are unlocked by teasing apart the wordplay within them.
Peter E. Jones: Well, it was Steve who introduced cryptic crosswords to America, you know, in the first edition of New York Magazine. Steve told his readers
Young Steve: A good clue can give you all the pleasures of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.
Martin Milnes: So rather like Steve's famous saying that art is an attempt to make order out of chaos.
Peter E. Jones: Exactly. New York Magazine was run by an editor called Clay Felker, who published all these cryptic puzzles Steve created. But after a few years, Steve's great friend, the lyricist Richard Maltby Junior took over. Richard's passion for cryptics was sparked by Steve's puzzles, and nearly seventy years later, Richard is still creating new cryptic puzzles.
Richard Maltby Jr.: Clay Felker was starting New York Magazine and needed a game somewhere. Steve was doing one a week for a while, and then that changed and went to one every three weeks. The first issue included a big long description of how to solve cryptic clues, and of course, I'm a sucker for that. So I started doing them, and I did them, and I did them. Along the way, I think I did a puzzle and made one up and Steve published them and suddenly Company was looming up and he realized that he really couldn't even keep up one every three weeks, so he was gonna drop them.
I was, by then, really unhappy, so I said, could I take over? It's exactly the same verbal trickery of lyric writing. That is to say, you have an idea, but you also have all sorts of strictures on it. The sentence has to have that rhythm in it, so it's language manipulation. The English language is incredibly misleading.
Since the language is so rich and varied, the fact that we understand each other at all is a miracle because we use the same word in five or six different meanings, and because of the context, we implicitly understand what we're saying, but we could easily not. The extent to which our ability to communicate in English is based upon an assumption that we understand each other, that the context will satisfy the meaning. Of course, the puzzles use that against you with trying to trick you into thinking that we mean that, but we actually mean that. And that's the fun of it to me.
Martin Milnes: PJ, what about treasure hunts? Because Steve's treasure hunts weren't just confined to the house. They took his guests all over New York City.
Peter E. Jones: These elaborate treasure hunts that he would create, most of the fun for him was in the creating of it, know, not not necessarily how it played out. But people would have to go all over New York City to find clues. They would they would be put into limos and taken all over town. And I I seem to remember one of the things was you'd you'd be told to ring a a doorbell at a certain address, and somebody would say eat at Joe's or some clue like that, and then that's supposed to take you on to the next thing.
Martin Milnes: Mary Rodgers told a story about one of Steve's clues being hidden in the icing of a cake. But the treasure hunt took so long that by the time Mary's team found this cake, they were all starving. And not realizing this cake was a clue, Phyllis Newman was so hungry, she ate it. So Steve's treasure hunts could take bizarre turns.
Peter E. Jones: They were communal with his friends. A big group of friends would be playing in a friendly way, competing with each other to win. He would enlist strangers to help him carry out his treasure hunts in all kinds of ways.
Martin Milnes: Yes. And this anecdote about Steve enlisting a stranger is my favorite treasure hunt story. During the nineteen eighties, Steve planned a treasure hunt clue involving the use of a fax machine. Now at that time, hardly anyone except Steve owned a fax. But Steve discovered that in London, a fax machine was possessed by Stephen Fry.
Now Steve had never met Stephen Fry, but he rang him up and recruited Fry to be part of his weekend treasure hunt in Connecticut. And to do this, Fry had to sit by his fax machine in London all night. Steve's guests eventually discovered their clue, a long number. Firstly, they had to work out that this was a fax number, and then that they had to message this mystery fax to ask for their next clue, which Fry would then fax back to them. Not knowing how long all this would take, Stephen Fry dutifully did as he was told, staying by his fax machine into the small hours.
Secretly, he hoped this might lead to an author to write the book for Sondheim's next musical. But alas, all Steve wanted from Stephen Fry was indeed his fax machine.
Peter E. Jones: Well, you know the fax ID for Steve's place in Connecticut was The Turkey Farm. And the fax ID for the New York townhouse was House of Hits. So there was humor playing out again. By the nineteen eighties when that Stephen Fry facts party happened, Steve had been planning treasure hunts for what? Thirty years, I guess.
And he loved them. As did Lenny Bernstein and his wife Felicia. And they all did anagrams together too. Did Steve ever tell you about cutthroat anagrams?
Martin Milnes: Yes. They'd flip a letter tile face up to form a word, but anyone could yell out a new word of five letters or more as soon as they'd spotted its components from the current words or tiles.
Hollywood Voiceover #1: Suitable, inscrutable.
Anagrams Voiceover #1: Calipers, phylacteries.
Anagrams Voiceover #3: Caparison, rascalion.
Saturate, Masturbate.
Martin Milnes: And of course, PJ, Lenny and Felicia's daughter, Jamie Bernstein, witnessed her parents' and Steve's obsession for both anagrams and treasure hunts.
Jamie Bernstein: It was my father's fortieth birthday. And in that year, there was a gigantic, very elaborate treasure hunt that Steve devised for my dad's birthday. I clearly remember all the grown ups running around and screaming with laughter. This was my general impression of grown ups in those days. They just ran around screaming with laughter and smoking and drinking and thinking everything was hilarious.
I thought that was all grown ups did. I couldn't wait to be a grown up. It was going to be so much fun to laugh and scream and carry on and run around and play anagrams and charades like the grown ups did. I couldn't wait.
Martin Milnes: Do you remember any of Steve's anagrams?
Jamie Bernstein: Trichinosis from histrionics and then harmonicas into Maraschino. Steve and my father were so unbelievably competitive at the anagrams table as they were with their crossword puzzles. And they were both avid crossword puzzle solvers. And they did all the really hard British ones. The Listener and The Manchester Guardian.
And they arrived on this funny airmail paper, very, very thin, almost onion skin paper because it was cheaper to mail. Steve told me that it wasn't true, that they would race to see who could finish it first. But that was always my impression that they were getting on the phone saying, did you finish The Guardian? And that there was somehow glory in having been the one who finished it first.
Martin Milnes: Decades later, Steve competed against his friend, West End director, Jeremy Sams.
Jeremy Sams: Crosswords, anagrams, you name it. And I would think up games like a variety headline in three words of which each word is an anagram of the previous word. Mine was "Cats cast acts!" exclamation mark. He beat that. I think it was to do with Cats, is "This hits shit". And this is one of my books got very popular. Replace a one word anagram in a Sondheim lyric.
Lyrics Voiceover #1: Alright, everybody. Remember, you're taking one word in a Sondheim lyric and making an anagram out of it.
Lyrics Voiceover #2: I feel charming. Oh, so charming. It's marginal how charming I feel.
Lyrics Voiceover #3: Save a lot of graves. Do a lot of versatile favors.
Lyrics Voiceover #4: Louis isn't the mattress.
Lyrics Voiceover #5: Armfeldt, is that a Tirolean?
Lyrics Voiceover #1: Everybody's got the girth to be happy.
Lyrics Voiceover #6: Well, then if you're British and loyal, you might enjoy royal airmen.
Martin Milnes: And, of course, PJ, as we know, it wasn't just anagrams. Steve relished intellectual party games. Adam Gettle, the Tony winning composer lyricist, was the son of Steve's close friend, Mary Rodgers. She too loved puzzles and games, and as a child, Adam saw Mary and Steve in their element.
Adam Guettel: He really relished games. He loved to use his mind in that way. He would get great satisfaction and lots of cackles. And out of arriving at something that was ingenious intellectually, these games were not easy games. This is high level anagram based things, dictionary based things, quotations, and hidden in plain sight was a big one. Hidden in plain sight was wonderful because everybody's house provided different opportunities to hide things in plain sight. For instance, in in our house, there were squares of mahogany.
Infant Adam: Mommy, what are you doing with those shoelaces?
Mary Rodgers Guettel: They're for our party game tonight, honey. I've got something that's gonna kill Steve. Watch this.
Adam Guettel: And they were in squares about 10 inches or maybe 11 inches square. And on the list of clues or things you had to find that had been hidden in plain sight would, let's say, be a word like smoke.
Mary Rodgers Guettel: Look hard, Adam. Can you find the word smoke written down there on the floor?
Infant Adam: Wow. It's between all the mahogany squares.
Mary Rodgers Guettel: Right. Smoke spelled out in brown shoelaces, same color as the floor. That'll get Steve. When we tell him to look for smoke, he'll never think to look for the word smoke in the floor.
Peter E. Jones: And you know, Martin, years after Steve played Hidden and Played Sight with Mary, he also played it in Connecticut at the home of his friends Tom Fitzsimmons and Tim Donaghue. Steve's neighbor, Peter Wooster, masterminded the game with cigarettes. Tom remembers ---
Tom Fitzsimmons: Peter Wooster would come over in the afternoon and hide cigarettes in full view. I think he would take off the filter maybe. So it's just this round white tube, and he would hide them around the house, and we have a lot of stuff in our house. So there were a lot of places where Peter could put his little cigarettes. Patti LuPone and Matt were there, and you couldn't tell anyone when you found one. You just have to say, okay, I found all six or I found all eight. And Patti would say, what? I don't have any.
Patti LuPone: I was so intimidated because I'm not a game player, but thank God for my husband who is just clever that way. And Tim and Tom with Peter Wooster and Steve were like brilliant at that. The intimidation factor with Steve was high with me. Sometimes they weren't as difficult as I was making them out in my head. I'd never seen games like that before. They were clever, they weren't as difficult as I was making in my head and Matt would take me around and we would play the game.
Tom Fitzsimmons: And then Patti suddenly says "Oh my god!". She found one. It was a lot of fun that game.
Tim Donaghue: We never played any anagrams with them though.
Tom Fitzsimmons: Too dumb. Because if had
Tim Donaghue: too dumb, he would have killed us.
Martin Milnes: And Steve's chef, Mary Pat Walsh, joined in with Escape the Room, a game Steve played prior to it becoming mainstream.
Adam Guettel: He would do these very elaborate games. He sort of invented a version of Escape the Room before Escape the Room was a thing. They were scavenger hunts, essentially, but they were also puzzles. And you could work in teams. One clue was hanging off the side of the bridge over the FDR. There was one clue that got you to an address of a townhouse, you had to figure out that the buzzer was the 5th Floor that would be the grandmother of such and so and the clue was underneath the teacup that you were offered tea. They escaped the room when he saw that it existed as a as a business. He said, you know, we have to go. So he put together groups of people. Bernadette was in one. I think we've got out all but one. And it worked best when you had people of different expertise. It doesn't work when you have all smart people.
Peter E. Jones: You know, Martin, all this about puzzles and games, it's less than the tip of the iceberg. There were so many different types of games Steve played at parties with friends. So what we're offering here is just a snapshot. We could go on forever talking about Steve's passion for puzzles and games.
Martin Milnes: But something I've often wondered about this passion is why? Why the passion for puzzles and games?
Peter E. Jones: Well, I know someone who has a theory about that. Steve's very close friend, Maria Friedman.
Maria Friedman: He loved games because there were solutions. There are solutions that aren't in real life. There's a way to get the answer. There's no bloody answer in real life. I love games too. I love puzzles, I love directing. I love the grid, how I'm gonna get it all to work, but it has a beginning and an end and everyone is totally safe investigating in that space because finishes. Whereas life is just forever throwing the smoke bomb in your way. I'm sure that's what his love of games was, that there's a solution.
Martin Milnes: But of course, PJ, when Steve attended parties given by his friends, it could be a very different affair to Steve's own. For instance, director Hal Prince hosted very sophisticated soirees for Broadway's elite.
Peter E. Jones: Yes. And at those parties, Steve would often sing and play the new songs he'd just written for his next show with Hal. It was the first time anyone had ever heard those songs.
Martin Milnes: Teenage Ted Chapin, whose parents were friends of Steve's, went to a party given by Hal in 1969, where Steve premiered the score of Company.
Ted Chapin: Hal would fill those rooms with friends so they would just cheer and clap and so Hal could legitimately say to Steve, it's brilliant. Our show is great. And Steve was skeptical enough to say, great. Let's wait until it gets in front of just plain people, not friends.
Ted Chapin: But I remember we were sort of the kids on the floor under the table when he played the score of Company. And I was sort of blown away because I thought, I don't think I've ever heard anything like this.
Peter E. Jones: And twelve months after that, Donna McKechnie from the original cast of Company was first to hear the next Sondheim score.
Donna McKechnie: The one night I will never forget is when we were at Hal Prince's house. It was the first time that any group of people heard the score of Follies. Steve was at the piano, Hal was standing, we were all sitting on the floor on the couch on chairs. Hal said this is the new show and I want you to be the first audience. Hal told us what the show is about and then Steve before every number would describe the character and he performed one song after the other. The whole show without stopping and we were there you know gobsmacked but I knew then at that moment that it was most extraordinary thing we were experiencing.
Young Steve: And unless you really look, you would think we were alive.
Martin Milnes: And Adam Guettel heard Steve sing through Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along.
Adam Guettel: He was not prosaic. I think he pretty much hated that and hated people who were. He didn't wanna waste energy. He understood how to definitely put us in the situation in which the song took place. We sort of understood the basic story so we could slot things in. But he would explain very definitely, very efficiently what was happening in each individual song and usually sang it all and played it all himself.
Peter E. Jones: And here, Martin is some gold dust from the archives. This is an early example of Steve explaining the context for one of his new songs, and it's preserved on a nineteen sixties reel to reel tape. Remember I told you about Steve's friend, John Barry Ryan, who candidly recorded all of his soirees?
Martin Milnes: Yes. You played me the chat Steve had with Lena Horne.
Peter E. Jones: Right. And no one's ever heard what I'm about to play for you now. It's Steve explaining to John's guests
Jamie Bernstein: Oh my goodness.
Peter E. Jones: Including Lena, the original idea for the opening of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Young Steve: This is the opening of the show. Guy named the prologue comes down to the footlights and explains to the audience about the street they're looking at and addresses the audience as if it's a Roman audience and explains the setup of the play, and apologizes for the bad acting, and tells the audience to shut up, and in general makes them feel at home, and then a bell sounds off stage, and he says the play begins. And he explains that this is a very special day in Rome, and something very peculiar is going on. And you have to imagine this the show is to be cast with low comics, and imagine this as being somebody like maybe Bert Lahr. But he opens the play by So
Peter E. Jones: After Steve sang Love Is In The Air, Lena Horne said she wanted to perform the song for her nightclub act.
Young Steve: And there's a second chorus where everybody moves very sexily behind him. It's obviously he's talking about sex, but he still sings it very, you know, Ray Bolger style.
Martin Milnes: PJ, these parties given by Hal and John Barry Ryan were clearly fabulous, but it sounds like Steve was often called upon to perform. So did any friends give parties where all Steve had to do was enjoy himself, completely off duty?
Peter E. Jones: Oh, oh, yeah. One of Steve's close friends was Mia Farrow, and she lived not far from him in Connecticut, and she gave great parties.
Martin Milnes: I grew up watching Mia Farrow in classic movies like Rosemary's Baby and Death on the Nile and The Great Gatsby.
Peter E. Jones: Well, in addition to being an actress, she was a great party giver, and she gave these parties for her neighbors in Connecticut, one of them being her dear friend, Patti LuPone. She called these parties her Full Moon parties, and they were really quite something.
Mia Farrow: It was absolutely magical, those Full Moon parties. People came, people we loved, a diverse group of people that were up here. It was only on the full moon because I had noticed that there was a pond, a seven acre, it could be called a lake, guess, a seven acre, and on the other side was woods. And when people would eat and we would put like cheeky lights and I just have a table full of food and wine and people would just either sit at picnic tables or people could throw quilts down and sit on on the grass and do whatever they wanted, go swimming, go boating. Steve would go swimming sometimes. He would go like a hippo or something. He would just walk into the lake and submerge himself. It's not like he was swimming out to the island. It was just that he would immerse himself in the water. He and Patty actually went canoeing.
Patti LuPone: There was a paddle boat. She said it was a canoe, and it was not a canoe because that would have been treacherous. I think it was a paddle you know, where you kick with your feet. And I said, who wants to go out with me on this lake? And Steve said, I do. And I went, oh my god. I'm scared because what if we dip over? And Steve and I went out on the paddle boat. I just paddled around yakking.
Mia Farrow: It was just you do whatever you want. Unlike his New York parties with games and stuff, mine were not regimented at all. It was like eat what you want when you want. But when the moon rose over the trees on the other side of the lake, it hit the lake and the lake burst into silver. And it was at that point we blew out the cheeky lights and the candles and everything and it was magic. And that's when people took to the lake because it was shimmering.
Patti LuPone: We were all staring up at the moon. The sun would go down and the moon would rise over her tree line and bathe the lake and all of us in a silver shimmer. It was pretty stunning. It's magical. But one night I was looking up and the moon literally was talking to us. It was doing you know heat rays but the moon chattering. And I went, Oh, she's talking to us. And Steve said, Yes. And I went, Oh my God, he sees what I see. And it gave me some sort of affirmation. I went, Oh my God, I shouldn't be so intimidated because we really could be really good friends. There were similarities in our perceptions, I guess is the word. I was always seeking his approval. You hold somebody in such high esteem. I don't imagine that you could ever be proper friends with somebody like that. You're just not on the same level. And that one moment, I went, oh my god, maybe there is something that could connect us if I could find a way in. And the moon chattering to us, I mean, he saw what I saw. Those full moon parties were so magical. It put everybody in a different frame of mind because there was magic in the air. Literal magic. Earth magic. It was stunning. Wait. Did you ever go to one of her parties?
Peter E. Jones: I did.
Patti LuPone: Yeah. Well, you know what I'm talking about.
Peter E. Jones: The setting was perfect.
Patti LuPone: Yes. Exactly. We all became vulnerable to Earth, vulnerable to the cosmos, vulnerable to the universe.
Mia Farrow: Was it just a hodgepodge of people who would also get magic by being there at such a spot, at such a moment. The moon rising over the treetops of the forest and hitting a magnificent lake. It really was magical.
Martin Milnes: PJ, I love the image of Steve submerging himself like a hippo and having fun in a paddle boat with Patti. This is a totally off duty version of Steve which hardly anyone saw.
Peter E. Jones: Well, sure Martin, but you know Steve had other ways to relax too, like smoking pot. Steve loved his pot.
Martin Milnes: Well well, so did everyone at the time. But I'm guessing Steve especially enjoyed his pot with close friends.
Peter E. Jones: Oh, well, two of Steve's closest friends were also his collaborators, John Weidman and James Lapine. They each wrote three musicals with Steve. So they knew him pretty well, better than most people, and they enjoyed some pretty fun times.
James Lapine: Oh, yeah. We were stoned.
John Weidman: What? That's the first time hearing of this. Drugs?
James Lapine: What? We were stoned from the minute we met.
Peter E. Jones: Oh, John.
James Lapine: Yeah. It was, it was the era. I the minute I met him, I walked into the house. He lit a joint. Didn't ask if I wanted anything. He just, you know, just assumed that I smoked dope, which I did. And, yeah. That was really fun.
John Weidman: In In those days, I can remember my wife, Lila, and I would go out to dinner with Steve. And Steve would light a joint in a restaurant, which which was, you know, I I thought was the most audacious thing I've ever seen. No. It happened a lot. Really? Yeah. Well, a lot. I don't know. Give the wrong impression here. But it was something he was totally comfortable doing. And despite having grown up in the sixties, as they say, I was not smoking pot at a table in a middle class restaurant.
James Lapine: Were you smoking pot at all?
John Weidman: As much as possible.
James Lapine: I see. Okay.
John Weidman: Now let me correct that. So my wife hears this. She won't get sore at me. But, no, pot was a regular part of Everybody's life in those days. You know? You know, when I would turn out to work with Steve, yeah, frequently. I was less inclined to get stoned when I was working because it gave me a false sense of the quality of the work that I was producing. Then you're stuck with what you've written afterwards. It's like, oh my god. It's like what you write down in the middle of the night that seems like genius, and then you wake up and it's like,
Martin Milnes: Jeremy Sams told me this about Steve and Pott.
Jeremy Sams: I remember him talking about smoking weed. He said I often composed like that. I said, okay, Steve. Let me guess which which he said don't bother Jeremy, every note, every fucking note I ever wrote, I wrote and zoned. Stuff would go onto a page in some sort of delirium, but he was always clinically and surgically correct and throw out and rewrite and all those things. And he'd sort say, write drunk, correct sober. And that's what he did. Mhmm. And I remember asking why. He said, because the voices that tell me I'm shit, I don't hear them when I'm drunk.
Peter E. Jones: And Adam Guettel had a memorable pot fueled encounter with Steve.
Adam Guettel: You know, he loved his pot. He loved his drinking, which I confessed to loving myself. I went to his house in Roxbury one time to talk to him about Princess Bride, which I was working on then. Throughout, he was plying me with white wine. He was drinking probably more than I was, but his tolerance was extraordinary. And also, we were smoking some of his really, really incredible pot, which he grew across the road from his house where there was an enormous garden and his huge female pot plants, you know, 10 feet high, were inside of huge legal plants or hidden in there just in case, like, a helicopter came by, I suppose. And we were smoking that and drinking a lot, and he said
Stephen Sondheim: Well, I guess I'm gonna take a nap. You should probably go.
Adam Guettel: Steve, I can't see straight. I mean, I'm seeing double. I really can't drive. Do you have a bedroom I can sleep this often?
Stephen Sondheim: Oh, Adam. Okay. Let's see if we can put you somewhere.
Adam Guettel: He didn't really know exactly where the other rooms were, And he put me in a room where there was nothing. There was a mattress and, like, a raw pillow. Nothing was made up and whatever. It was sort of adorable. But I do remember we sort of stumble upstairs, and he's looking around for a room, you know, for me to go in. And we found one, put me in there without much fanfare and disappeared. And then I took a couple hours to get myself together and then quietly padded out of his house.
Peter E. Jones: You know, Martin, and this is an important point to make. Although Steve loved his pot and his drinking, no doubt, his tolerance was extraordinary. As you remember Jonathan Tunick telling us in episode two. And I think it gave people the impression that he would drink and smoke pot every day until he was blotto, and it just was not the case. He was a heavy drinker. He did smoke a lot of pot, but he had no problem making his dates, doing his work, showing up for interviews. No. He was not subject to his drinking or pot smoking. So I guess it's neither here nor there, but I think people, reading or hearing about things that say he had an addiction, they should take that with a pinch of salt. Because I did live with the man for a number of years and that was not my experience with Steve.
Martin Milnes: I think the only real addiction Steve had were to puzzles, games, and movies. And the board game Stardom, as well as the movie poster game discussed earlier, beautifully combine all three things. But another reason I love the movie poster game is because these game sheets from the late nineteen fifties shed such fascinating insight into Steve's private love, at least at that time, for camp gay humor. Because for decades, Steve was very guarded about his sexuality, and as a young man in his twenties, he was not openly gay, which, of course, was not unusual at that time. But with these movie posters, in the trusted company of very close friends, Steve makes a lot of affectionate jokes regarding homosexuality. For instance, here are some other fictional movies which Steve made up with his chums.
Hollywood Voiceover #4: A tear packed tale of tomorrow's terror. Ethel Barrymore and Myrna Dell in Dancing Dykes.
Hollywood Voiceover #5: Mister Elizabeth Scott in Jezebel's Jeopardy.
Hollywood Voiceover #6: Ann Harding and Louis Calhern in the lady is a lesbian.
Hollywood Voiceover #7: Phenomenal. Fantastic. Full of fairies. Faggot filled but fun. The late James Dean and Marius Goring in Madness!
Martin Milnes: That tagline about fairies and faggot filled is in Steve's handwriting. So he was definitely the one who came up with that.
Peter E. Jones: And you know what else is in Steve's handwriting? Mhmm. In the archive, we have a page torn out of a nineteen fifties fan magazine. And it's an article about who else? Joan Crawford.
Only Steve has crossed out the word Joan and replaced it with "shoulders".
Martin Milnes: Shoulders Crawford because she was famous for
Peter E. Jones: Her massive shoulder And then the first sentence of the article is, "She holds the title of Hollywood's Grand Dame". Only Steve has crossed out that word dame and replaced it with "dyke".
Martin Milnes: Joan Crawford, Hollywood's Grand Dyke! Well, in episode three, we explored Steve's Margaret Sullavan tribute in his unpublished song, The Party of the Stars, which tells the story of a decadent Hollywood soiree. But The Party of the Stars might also be the only song written in 1951 featuring a lesbian wedding. At this party, Steve has movie stars Ida Lupino and Claudette Colbert tie the knot, and their best man is the actress Mildred Dunnock, whom Steve tells us "smoked cigars at that wild tempestuous slightly incestuous party of the stars."
Peter E. Jones: And there are other gay references too, aren't there? Like about Shelley Winters?
Martin Milnes: Yes. Shelley Winters. But Steve refers to her by her real name, Shirley Schrift. Schrift. Steve wrote, "Marlene Dietrich got miffed. She discovered that Shirley Schrift didn't prefer her to Monty Clift. And when they tiffed, no one was paler than Elizabeth Taylor".
Peter E. Jones: Dietrich and Montgomery Clift were both bisexual. Clearly Steve knew his Hollywood gossip.
Martin Milnes: And there's all the other bisexual stuff too.
Peter E. Jones: Yeah. There's a reference to Vincent Price and Farley Granger fooling around together. That's just too good.
Martin Milnes: And he refers to Tyrone Power who was definitely bisexual. Now, Steve himself was never bi, although he did tell me there was one woman he would definitely have turned for, and there was another who might well have convinced him too. I was around at the house and we were talking movies when Steve mentioned mentioned the the 1947 boxing drama, Body and Soul, which stars John Garfield and Lilli Palmer. And then he sighed longingly, "Oh, Lilli Palmer. She was my spatula."
And I looked at Steve blankly, and he explained, "I had a girlfriend when I was younger, and then he pronounced the words again separately and carefully. A girl friend. And she used this phrase, spatula, which described a person of either sex who could turn a homosexual." So, Lilli Palmer, Steve said, was his spatula. And he referenced the scene in body and soul when she leans her head against the doorway and looks up at Garfield with those big eyes, and Steve said, "Oh, you just wanna cuddle her and take care of her".
Lily Palmer, he claimed, was "part Marilyn Monroe, part Jane Russell, and part Diana Dors." And Steve reiterated, "She's the only woman I'd have turned for". So having told me about his spatula, I then decided to tease her and said, "Do you want to guess who my spatula was?"
Peter E. Jones: The only woman you would turned for, Martin? I don't think you ever told me this. So who was your spatula?
Dolores Gray: Me. May I come in?
Peter E. Jones: Oh, Dolores Gray. Oh, right.
Martin Milnes: Yes. I told Steve that when I was eight, my spatula was Broadway's darling, Dolores Grey.
Dolores Gray: Thanks for losing your mind, and thanks for Fort Knox sealed and signed. But I've got a guy who's Clifton Webb and Marlon Brando combined.
Martin Milnes: And Steve said to me, "Dolores Gray? Martin, she'd have eaten you alive."
Dolores Gray: Thanks a lot, but no thanks.
Peter E. Jones: But you just said Steve had another woman apart from Lilli Palmer who might have made him turn. Now who was that?
Martin Milnes: Oh, we were talking about the original production of Side by Side by Sondheim in London at the Mermaid Theatre. And Steve asked me, do you know who Penelope Keith is? And of course, I did because I've always loved Dame Penelope Keith, who starred in TV sitcom, The Good Life, as snobbish Margo Leadbetter.
Penelope Keith: Well, that's the last time I play the tart for you, Jerry.
Martin Milnes: And Steve told me, "I saw her across the lobby of the mermaid, and she saw me and went, I love you". And then Steve had a meltdown in front of me on the sofa, helplessly crying out, "Spatula, spatula!" So Dame Penelope, if you're listening, you could have been Mrs Sondheim.
Peter E. Jones: Steve clearly felt very comfortable with you to share this.
Martin Milnes: Well, he seemed very relaxed and asked me if I was seeing anyone at the time and how my parents had been when I told them I was gay. And I was very happy to tell Steve that both my parents had always been terrific and they'd never been any problems. And Steve said, "You were lucky. Of course, I never had that problem. I was 60."
Peter E. Jones: Yeah. Well, that's when I came along. His dad was dead and he'd severed all contact with his mom.
Martin Milnes: Yeah. Well, so by the time I knew Steve in his mid to late eighties, to me, he seemed very comfortable with openly discussing his relationships as well as asking me about mine. But PJ, how accepting was Steve of his own sexuality throughout his earlier life?
Peter E. Jones: He was an analysis for years to help him accept it. He was ambivalent about his homosexuality. I even pushed him on it one day. "Do you feel that you're less than in a way than if you had been heterosexual and had children?" He said, "Yes. I do." And at the time, I couldn't accept that. I accept it now and understand that it doesn't mean he can't live happily as a gay man, but he did have his ambivalence about it. There was a part of the relationship with us was it helped him. He felt better about the whole sexuality thing in a in a different way because of falling in love. But it's very possible if he hadn't fallen in love up to that time, that's part of what he felt about the ambivalence of being gay, but it really had to do with children and family, I think.
Martin Milnes: In addition, as a famous gay man during the nineteen sixties and seventies and even the eighties, Steve must have felt very vulnerable to being exposed to the time when being gay wasn't always accepted. And there were times when journalists would try to pry and sensationalize. One of these instances was handled very tactfully by my friend Joshua Ellis, who for many years was a top Broadway press agent. Josh did the press for the original Into the Woods, and in 1979 worked for a time on Sweeney Todd. At that point, a delicate press inquiry was received and Josh was tasked with breaking it to Steve.
Joshua Ellis: A very prickly subject came up. The New York Times assigned Cliff Jahr to write a story about Stephen Sondheim for the magazine section. Cliff Jarre at the time was very famous for having done a cover story on Elton John for Rolling Stone in which Elton John came out as bisexual. We have to look at it in the context of the times. Cliff Jahr says to me, "I want to do the interview, but I want to make sure that Stephen understands that I want to talk about It." That is all it is called, It. It is not defined, but we both know what It is. So I do what I would do with any client that would have a situation like this. I had a meeting in Stephen Sondheim's house and we discussed what was being asked. I ended by this time really used to strategizing with producers, directors. How do we do this? How do we make, you know, so I'm not ill equipped, but I am ill equipped to deal with it with Stephen Sondheim who stays cool the entire time, but I say he wants to talk about It.
Martin Milnes: And what did Steve say?
Joshua Ellis: "And what does that mean?" Oh. And I go, "It. It." And you can see that the two of us are like not communicating because he's not like catching on the way I thought he would catch on. And I am unable to figure out how do I deal with someone who is making believe they don't understand what we're talking about.
Martin Milnes: So what happened next?
Joshua Ellis: All I can say is that I didn't say to do it. I didn't say not to do it. I said if you decided you want to do it, you do it with your eyes open. And they're not going to give you approval of the text because you're Stephen Sondheim. If this is not something that you're comfortable doing, don't do it.
There's no reason to do it.
Martin Milnes: Josh that's a class act. For some people it's just about getting every story.
Joshua Ellis: No. It's not about getting every story. That's a child's version of publicity. An adult mature person working in the business goes, is this good in the long run? You know, this is I'm not exposing myself to this author. If you want to be in that place do it. But don't do it for the show. Don't do it for any other reason other than the fact that you want to do it. And you want to do it at this particular time. Well it's never discussed again. Okay? It's like it's been put to bed.
Martin Milnes: And for many years, it was. Steve's private life remained just that. But PJ, we now know that many years before you became Steve's first partner, he actively considered a relationship with a woman, his close friend, the composer Mary Rodgers.
Peter E. Jones: Yeah. And like Josh said, you have to remember the context of the times. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, and even for decades after that, a lot of gay men married women for all kinds of reasons.
Martin Milnes: Mary Rodgers died in 2014, but the story of her trial marriage with Steve wasn't made public until after Steve's death when Mary's memoir, Shy, was finally published. She claimed that when sharing a bed, she and Steve were each too "frozen with fear" to do anything, so the experiment came to nothing. And afterwards, they remained the closest of lifelong friends. However, during interviews for this podcast PJ, we discovered something that was news even to you. Mary Rodgers was not the only woman with whom Steve considered a relationship. Years later, Steve contemplated a romantic partnership with his very close friend, Mia Farrow.
Mia Farrow: There was a time when we discussed getting together. I guess it was either before you or after you PJ. Can't remember which but it wouldn't have been a good idea. Maybe the Horowitz's thought it would or something. Doctor. Horowitz was Steve's psychiatrist and we'd go to dinner at their house often and they'd come to dinner at his house. They thought we should be together. Coming out of Patti's that night, that was the night he said, "Can we see more of each other?" I'm like, "We already see each other practically all the time. What are you talking about?" He said, "I just think we should spend more time together". Like, oh, I don't know. Okay. We'll see what that means and what that holds. And he was so sweet. He was so funny. He said, "When the Horowitzes come, you promise you won't leave when people leave. You have to wait until the Horowitz leave". And I'm like, okay. Why? What are you telling the Horowitz anyway? And I think he wanted to appear that we would be together. That's the only thing I can think of that we would wave them goodbye. I had to wait till everybody left and then after the Horowitz's left, I could leave. Wow. I know.
Martin Milnes: Did you ever give serious consideration to getting together with Steve?
Mia Farrow: For a little while, but he was in love with PJ. And I wasn't good at games. He was very into video games at the time. And I wasn't really very, not only was I not very good at them, wasn't very interested in them and I crossed my mind as we were, as I was struggling to play some video game within one night that this wasn't gonna work out in the long run because I really don't like video games and there's something that isn't right. But I did give serious consideration. But then I thought, well, we're always gonna be best friends. So
Peter E. Jones: Yeah. What's the Yeah. The difference? Is it proximity
Joshua Ellis: or Yeah.
Mia Farrow: Well, I
Peter E. Jones: would have Mary, like it would have been with Mary?
Mia Farrow: No. Not like with Mary. But we did we did cozy up. We were very cuddly.
Martin Milnes: Yeah. Which
Mia Farrow: I don't think he'd be comfortable cuddling up with many many women like
Peter E. Jones: Or many anybody, frankly.
Mia Farrow: Many anybody, he would know.
Peter E. Jones: But You
Mia Farrow: were an exception.
Peter E. Jones: I was.
Mia Farrow: Anyway, bottom line, I loved him very, very, very much. I couldn't have loved him more, I think.
Martin Milnes: Now, PJ, there's one last thing to discuss. I think it's time to clear up a long standing rumor once and for all. For decades, there's been a story going round that Steve kept a sex dungeon in his house. I visited that house and never saw any sign nor did anyone else whom you and I both know. But you are far better place than me to comment on this gossip. So for the record, did Steve keep a sex dungeon?
Peter E. Jones: Obviously not. This rumor is of gargantuan proportion. I heard this rumor in Denver before I ever came to New York. And you heard it over in London. Right? So I did. Yes. Yeah. It's amazing how this rumor has wings practically. And I heard it more than once in different guises. If it wasn't the dungeon in the Basement of 246 where people were tied up and tortured or whatever ridiculousness, there's another story that is always attached to it.
Martin Milnes: Oh, the alleged dinner party story.
Peter E. Jones: Phyllis Newman apparently needed to dismiss herself from the table so she could go to the restroom. And Steve yelled out to her, "Don't use the bathroom on the 2nd Floor. Use the one on the 3rd Floor. The second one's not working." And so for whatever reason, she doesn't go to the 3rd Floor bathroom, goes to the 2nd Floor bathroom, comes back downstairs and says, "Steve, there's a young man chained to your sink in the 2nd Floor bathroom." And Steve says, "I told you not to use that bathroom." She said, "That is not the point. The point is, are you going to unchain him and invite him down to dinner?" That's the story I heard.
Martin Milnes: Well, you see, you heard that it was Phyllis Newman. I heard it was Angela Lansbury, which which just goes to show how these stories Exactly. Why do you think these stories spread?
Peter E. Jones: This goes back to our earlier conversation about icons and about Steve's image as an icon, about being this brooding, dark, intellectual. That's that's why I think these particular rumors spread. It it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with his true sexual proclivities. It has everything to do with the image people have of this brooding man. And how else would he have any kind of sexual interaction with somebody except by doing something outlandishly camp like that. It just fits the image people like to perpetuate of him.
Martin Milnes: And of course, with an icon, a distorted rumor spreads. Then it's elaborated upon and then believed as truth. But to round this off, let's just clarify something else. If Steve had kept a sex dungeon, there would have been no shame in that whatsoever. None at all. It just so happens, to the best of our knowledge and the knowledge of those closest to Steve that he didn't keep a dungeon. This is one of the many great privileges about making this podcast with you, PJ, the authority with which you can speak. It's an authority with which almost no one else in the world can. Steve only ever loved twice in his life, and you were his first love. Through your insights, we've already discovered so much about Steve, and there's a great deal more to come. So, PJ, I'd like to propose a toast. Here's our continued quest to discover the untold Sondheim, including along the way, discovering your brave, bold, and beautiful story of life and love with Steve.
Mehran James McCullough: In this episode, Stephen Sondheim was portrayed by Alistair McGowan, featuring Daniel Cane as Young Steve and Charlotte Page Mary Rogers Guettel. Infant Adam Guttel was played by Arthur Magee and Adult Adam by Yeukayi Ushe. The movie poster game was brought to life by Tom Hopcroft, James Gower-Smith, Samuel Black, Rebecca Ridout, Jude Peters, Melissa Redman, and Mehran James McCullough. Cutthroat anagrams were shared by Becky Hopcroft, Tom Hopcroft, James Gower-Smith and Rebecca Riddout. Anagrams in Sondheim lyrics were shared by Maya Post, Melissa Redman, Rosanna Roscoe, Colm Molloy, Jonathan Christopher, and Simon Butteriss. Dramatic reenactments were written by Martin Milnes and produced by Peter E. Jones. The music of Stephen Sondheim was played by Colm Molloy. Sondheim and Bernstein instrumental tracks were provided by Broadway Studio Orchestra. 'Come Play Wiz Me' from Anyone Can Whistle was played by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Owen Edwards. 'Thanks A Lot, But No Thanks' by Previn, Comden and Green was sung by Dolores Gray. The theme music from The Good Life was composed by Burt Rhodes. And I am Mehran James McCullough. Loving You, The Untold Sondheim is produced by Martin Milnes and Peter E. Jones. The executive producer is Jason Caffrey of Creative Kin Limited. Mix and mastering is by Chris Traves. Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics are featured courtesy of The Stephen Sondheim Trust. The podcast's original score is composed by Peter E. Jones. The series is written, devised, and directed by Martin Milnes.