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“He was terribly into magic. Steve would put on these little magic shows for us. Traditional magic tricks: the wand with the handkerchiefs coming out.” – Walter E. Sondheim
“He found a lot of lost souls, lost people searching, and gave them a meaning and a way forward. It gave them an opportunity to find and make friends with themselves as fallible, fractured people.” – Maria Friedman
Made by Steve's friends, with Steve friends.
People make mistakes. Fathers, mothers, people make mistakes.
Stephen Sondheim:The show is about parents and children.
Diane Sawyer:Did you want them? Children?
Stephen Sondheim:Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't have any. Yep. It's it's it's it's you know, I am. But art is the other way of having children.
Martin Milnes:Stephen Sondheim longed to be a father. Sadly, this dream was denied him. Yet, although Steve never had children of his own, he was a father figure to countless loved ones and their children. Steve delighted in the family happiness of others, especially his dear friend, Julie Andrews. In 1962, while Julie starred in the Broadway musical Camelot, her husband, Tony Walton, was designing sets and costumes for Steve's latest show, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Dame Julie Andrews:What love I hear, I feel like I fear, I'm in
Dame Julie Andrews:That was when I discovered I was pregnant and the first two people that I told was A. Carol Burnett, my dear chum and she said, 'Oh my god, Julie, if you are, you've got to call me first!' So I did and then I rushed into the theater to tell Tony who was working there that day and bumped straight into Sondheim before I even got to Tony and I just said, 'Oh Steve, I'm pregnant!' and I was so happy about it. He looked slightly stunned and said, 'Great, great!' And it was a sweet moment. So he and Carol were the first two people I ever told that I was with child, so to speak.
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:PJ, after your romantic relationship with Steve ended, you met your now husband, Randy, and Steve met his new partner, Jeff. Steve and Jeff were married on New Year's Eve 2017, and a few months afterwards, I went around to see Steve. He told me that the wedding had been for just immediate family in the front room, and he said, 'Coming from a broken home, marriage means nothing to me. It's just a piece of paper.' But then he said that during the ceremony, he'd looked over at Jeff, 'And to my surprise, we both had tears in our eyes. It actually meant something.' But that was too sentimental for Steve, so he went, 'Huh! Now I'm looking forward to the divorce.' But then he stopped and said, 'My regret is that we won't be able to have kids. I'd have liked that.' And that really hit me. But I said, trying to be light hearted, 'Well, there's no reason why you can't.' After all, you're a married man now. It's never too late!' And Steve looked me straight in the eyes and said, 'It is. What's the point in having a kid if you're not there to watch it grow up?'
Peter E. Jones:Yeah. Steve's parents were divorced when he was 10. And Steve's father, Herbert, remarried and had two sons, Walter and Herbie. Steve wanted a loving family. And because of the relationship with his mother, it was that much more important, I think, that he had Walter and Herbie and his dad and Alicia. And Walter can confirm this as he did when we spoke.
Walter E. Sondheim:He was terribly into magic and we would have some of the neighborhood kids come over. This is in a house that my parents had up in Connecticut. And we had a playroom in the basement of that house, and Steve would come down and put on these little magic shows for us, just like, 'Whaaaat?'
Martin Milnes:What sort of magic was he doing?
Walter E. Sondheim:He was doing traditional magic tricks, professional magic tricks. The wand with the cloths coming out of the handkerchiefs coming out of it. So specifically, I remember those precisely because much later I said, 'Hey, know, I found a box of your magic tricks in the basement. Do you want it?' And he said, 'Sure.' You know, he always had this fascination with magic.
Martin Milnes:How old was Steve when you were born?
Walter E. Sondheim:He would have been 16. Not that I even thought about that. I just realized it was my older brother, quote unquote, and that's that's the way I believe that relationship was for many years until probably when I was teenager. That was when I started digging back into some family archives that I found in a basement storage locker and I realized that one, I didn't know that both of my parents had been previously married and I went, oh, this is interesting. And then the fact that, oh, Steve's really my half brother, not my full brother, because they never talked about that. It was always like, 'Oh, Steve's your older brother, blah blah blah', which is what I always believed as well. So it was quite a revelation for me. I never queried my parents about it. I indirectly heard more about their independent previous relationships as I got older, and especially about my father's ex wife, Foxy, and the stories about his relationship with her, not to mention her relationship with Steve, which sounded like, you know, Dracula Meets --- you know, you're like, horrifying.
Peter E. Jones:And I think he really loved being your big brother when you were little. I think that was very
Walter E. Sondheim:I think he did too. That was the that was the one thing I I truly appreciated because he was the one who was the more interactive. Well, you know, my parents had this place in the country, etcetera, and we could do whatever we wanted to do, but there wasn't that interaction
Peter E. Jones:Yeah.
Walter E. Sondheim:Playing games. Yeah. Was there to do that. And so that filled a very impressive gap in the sense of my growing up.
Peter E. Jones:Oh, he loved your mother. He spoke of her and Oscar's wife, Dorothy Hammerstein, in the same way, always with a lot of affection.
Walter E. Sondheim:Well, as opposed to the Wicked Witch of the West.
Martin Milnes:Did you ever meet Foxy?
Walter E. Sondheim:No, I never. But Steve's humanity was the fact that he supported her financially when she was in a retirement home. I was very impressed with his generosity in that sense. And I think I carried over to other people who knew him. So I didn't know much about how his relationship was with my parents, except for the fact that he seemed always seemed to be very cordial and everybody got along with each other, got amazingly well along with both myself and my other full brother, who was three years older than me.
Martin Milnes:So it sounds like he was quite an interactive big brother.
Walter E. Sondheim:Yes, yeah. When he came down to Connecticut, he would work with us specifically things like teaching us how to swim. 'Stand by the edge of the pool, then bend over and then just roll.' I went, 'Uh-huh. Okay.' This is how I first really struck home as how important Steve was because he was being given a brand new Lincoln Continental. I said, 'Wow! How did you how did you rate this?' 'Well, Ford Motor Company was gonna use one of the songs from Gypsy as one of their advertisements. It's a trade in payment. They offered me a Lincoln Continental free of charge for a year. And then if I was interested they would sell it to me at a discounted price.' Said, 'Oh yeah!' Four door black Lincoln Continental convertible with a red interior. Red interior. I mean this thing was the hottest thing on the road I thought. He drove it up to Connecticut and we all just sort of gawked at it. You know it's just like wow. It was huge.
Peter E. Jones:Was huge. Those cars were huge
Walter E. Sondheim:Huge. In those --- Yes, it's true.
Peter E. Jones:Just a boat!
Walter E. Sondheim:You know. Right, I would have been just turning into a teenager and there's new car shows up and it's like woah and Steve behind the wheel. Wow, you get a free car if you write music?
Peter E. Jones:That's what it meant to you. That's when you think you're in the wrong job. Well and I'm sure to Steve it was like, I'd rather have a check. That's why. Probably. I'd rather have a check.
Martin Milnes:What are your earliest memories of him?
Walter E. Sondheim:Boy, I think, I guess holiday times he would always show up at both Thanksgiving and Christmas and that was always a treat having him there. I always looked up to him as big brother so I truly appreciated his taking the time to come and join us for those events. You know, his arm wasn't twisted to say, oh, well, Steve, aren't you gonna play something on the piano for us?
Peter E. Jones:No. Your dad would do it.
Walter E. Sondheim:My dad would. Right. Who was a closet piano player except he couldn't read music.
Peter E. Jones:But he could play by ear.
Walter E. Sondheim:But he played by ear. Right. That was one of his passions in fact was to play by ear in no time. He had pretty much most of the score of West Side Story down there.
Martin Milnes:Did Steve play children's games with you and Herbie when you were there?
Walter E. Sondheim:Ah, not only magic but games, those two go hand in hand. Yes, he loved board games, Clue was one of his specialties, but anyway he actually worked with myself and Herbie to actually build our own game. This is where the engineer side of me came in because in fact we constructed a series of boards where there was a big wheel in the middle of it and it was a series of cut out windows in the top plate. And so it was one of those things where you roll the dice and you rotated the board, the middle wheel and things would change. Everything changed. Who killed who or this, you know, that. It's pretty elaborate for us little kids. But of course, with Steve's mind on at the same time, it's like, oh no, we have to make it a little more integral. But yeah, I remember that. We worked on that for quite a while. Lord knows what happened to it.
Martin Milnes:When you and Herbie were children, did he sort of help you with your studies and so forth? Was he that kind of big brother?
Walter E. Sondheim:A little bit. It's very funny. For for a man who was fascinated by words and diction and language, that was the last thing he wanted to talk to me about. But if I had math problems? Mhmm. Yes. He was always interested in assisting my early algebra questions. It was easier to work with him than to work with my parents. There was enough of an age gap between them and say, both myself and my brother Herb, that in fact there was a generational gap between us. So the communication between us as boys and they as parents was more formal than informal, whereas with Steve it was more interaction. That was very important and I always appreciated that.
Martin Milnes:When did you first hear Steve's work?
Walter E. Sondheim:Going to attend the opening of West Side Story, I was 11 years old, dressed to the nines in a borrowed tuxedo, which I thought was like being put in a straight jacket, except it did have a cummerbund on it, which I never understood what that was for, except you could put ticket stubs in it. Going to attend that opening of West Side Story was like, wow. This is really amazing. So two things about the opening of West Side Story. One was gunshot. Just like, woah. It's just like everybody jumps. And then the second thing was coming out of the theater and looking over my shoulder and seeing Edward G Robinson come out of the theater, being a childhood kid movie buff, seeing all those great Edward G Robinson films then seeing him in person was like wow, incredible. So then go to the Sardi's and then sitting there actually bored to death and then all of a sudden Steve walks in everybody stands up and applauds and just wow this is really very impressive then we immediately got thrown into a limousine and taken back to our apartment in New York City because then they were going to another party. But at that party, Steve's mother, Foxy, was gonna be there. And so basically, they were trying to separate
Peter E. Jones:I was about to ask how that was working. Yeah. Was she not in the audience? I'm sure she was.
Walter E. Sondheim:I didn't even know who she was or what role she played in Steve's life. That didn't really evolve until much later in my life. And then I heard all the horror stories, of course.
Peter E. Jones:I know one of the things Steve felt through those years from Westside was becoming legitimate in your father's eyes in terms of not my son the bum, which is what he felt like in the beginning. Don't You know that's a if you got that.
Walter E. Sondheim:That's that's fascinating because I never thought of that, how that relationship matured over time besides the unbelievable split of his parents and the fact that he felt like so much like he was just, I don't wanna say thrown to the walls, but he was left in limbo.
Peter E. Jones:In the dragon's lair.
Walter E. Sondheim:Yeah right yeah yeah yeah pretty much. All that story came about much later in my life as I heard more from him but also from finding out information from other folks as well. So I had the utmost sympathy for him but on the other hand, this might be cruel but it fed so well into his psyche as what he evolved in writing for his shows. It's like he's taking psychoanalysis and throwing it into productions that I don't think people ever heard of or thought of, but based on that incredible background.
Martin Milnes:For Jamie Bernstein, the eldest child of Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia, Steve was a constant presence throughout her childhood and beyond. On reflection, Jamie realizes how much this mattered to her and her siblings.
Jamie Bernstein:West Side Story, which was the project which introduced Steve to our dad and our family, it premiered in fifty seventh, and I was born in '52. So Steve probably doesn't go all the way to back to my birth, but he showed up soon thereafter when I was probably two or three.
Martin Milnes:What was he like with children?
Jamie Bernstein:Well, you wouldn't think Steve was a very child friendly guy, but I can't explain it. There was something about him that my brother and sister and I always felt very comfortable around. He didn't lavish attention on us that I can recall, but he was so droll that we always felt he was good company. And one of the things I loved about Steve was that he made our parents laugh. And so we could tell that he was a good person to have around because our parents were so cheerful when he was there. So I just remember him breaking them up.
Leonard Bernstein:Can I sit down like this because I don't look as old as Robert Frost anyway.
Jamie Bernstein:Up, my brother and sister and I got to meet a lot of cool people.
Phyllis Newman:You naughty boy, Mike Nichols. Where have you been hiding all night?
Mike Nichols:Phyllis! I got ambushed by Lillian Hellman. Where's Betty and Adolph?
Jamie Bernstein:In essence, all our parents' friends were really amazing. There they were living in the nexus of mid twentieth century culture in New York City, so you can imagine the parade of luminaries that came through our living room.
Mike Nichols:Quiet, everybody. Lenny's gonna play, and Bacall is gonna sing.
Jamie Bernstein:And among all of those people, Steve really stood out. Not just because he was such an extraordinary human being, which he was, but because he cared so much about our family. He really paid attention to us. He was warm and welcoming, and he was not always such a warm and welcoming guy. But we were never on the receiving end of his prickliness. So it was that combination of his being such an extraordinary artist and person, but also being such a devoted family friend. And we never felt that diminish to his very final days. He would remember hilarious incidents that happened to us. Steve described one morning on Martha's Vineyard in one of those summers when he came up to visit, where he came upon me sitting on my brother and beating him up. And Steve said,
Young Steve:Jamie, what are you doing?
Jamie Bernstein:And I looked up, and I saw Steve, and I lifted my arms up in the air and said ---
Young Jamie:Pretty arms! Pretty arms!
Jamie Bernstein:I have no memory of this incident, but it was just unbelievable that Steve remembered this. And I was both mortified and tickled pink that he remembered this ridiculous incident. And it's very funny and and not very complimentary of me. But who cares? It was so funny that Steve remembered this and shared it with us all those decades later.
Jamie Bernstein:I had observed Steve and my father working on West Side Story and sitting in my father's studio with the other authors in a gray cloud of cigarette smoke, and they were all the same way, really focused and concentrating and smoking and occasionally laughing their heads off. And that's just how they were when they worked. Steve was younger than my father, considerably younger. And so when he was brought in to write the lyrics on West Side Story, I think the sense was among the other three authors, Jerry and Arthur and my dad, that Steve was the kid. 'Let's bring in the kid to help with the lyrics'. So I think that my father started out thinking that he was the better of the two or the more accomplished, let's say. But I think that he figured out very quickly that certainly when it came to words, Steve was his equal. But I'm thinking that in his heart of hearts, my father always felt that perhaps he was the more accomplished of the two when it came to music. I think that my father had a a slightly elevated sense about his musicianship when it came to comparing his own with Steve's. And among these wonderful little pieces that my father wrote to people in his life, one of them is written to Steve. And it is a beautiful melody that eventually found its way into my father's opera, A Quiet Place. So anyway, it always struck me as maybe by my father giving this to Steve, he was sort of secretly saying, you see, this is how you write a tune. But maybe that's just me.
Martin Milnes:How did this competitiveness come out when Steve would have new musicals premiere?
Jamie Bernstein:That is a good question. I can't speak for how my father reacted to every premiere, but I did accompany my father to a preview of Sweeney Todd. And my father was in a bad mood that night. And he had probably taken an amphetamine and was just acting really hyper and inappropriate that night. And after the show was over, we went out to dinner with Steve. And I confided in Steve that my father was being a big pain in the butt that night. And Steve said, well, you know, he's probably feeling a little vulnerable because he's coming to see my show and maybe that's making him feel competitive. And I'm guessing that Steve was right about that.
Martin Milnes:How did he react to losing your parents, first your mother and then your father?
Jamie Bernstein:Steve adored my mother. So it hurt him profoundly when she died very young in 1978. She was only 56 years old. But then twelve years later in 1990, my father died at age 72. That death was, I'm sure, more complicated for Steve because his relationship to my father was more complicated. They were friends, but they were also colleagues and they were also competitors. And so that was a more complicated loss for Steve, but it was a loss all the same. And I have to add that one of the most precious things about the presence of Steve in my brother and sisters' lives is that even after we lost our parents, Steve went out of his way to stay friends with Alexander, Nina, and me. And nothing could have been more meaningful and precious to us that he actively sought our company. He would invite us over to his house to have a drink or even to play anagrams. And that was the most precious imaginable gift that he just kept being friends with us because we would have sooner expected him to lose touch with us once he didn't have that direct contact with our parents. But we didn't lose Steve, and he was really happy to continue this sort of semi avuncular relationship with us. And as prickly as Steve was in his younger years, in his last chapter of his life, he became really sunny and relaxed. And it was a complete joy to get to spend time with him. And all of this was a total surprise.
Martin Milnes:Mia Farrow was Steve's close friend for fifty years. The lives of her many children, biological and adopted, were all touched by Steve's love.
Peter E. Jones:He used to call you the old woman in the shoe. You know that?
Mia Farrow:No. That's great.
Martin Milnes:Why was that?
Mia Farrow:Because I had so many children.
Peter E. Jones:So many children.
Mia Farrow:Yeah. Yeah. You know? There were 14 children.
Peter E. Jones:And he loved that.
Mia Farrow:And he was wonderful with my kids. He was Quincy, my youngest daughter's godfather. She was very little then, and she'd wrapped, in toilet paper, she'd wrapped, a penny. And he wrote her as he always wrote a thank you note, which you'll hear from anyone who ever had any contact with Stevie. Always wrote a beautiful beautiful handwritten thank you note, thanking her for her gift and promising her that he would not spend it all at once. 'How thoughtful,' he said 'To send me the money. I promise you, I won't spend it all at once'.
Martin Milnes:How involved did he get in in your children's lives? It sounds like he was there for them a lot.
Mia Farrow:He was there for them a lot. He gave Quincy when she was three. He gave her a thesaurus. None of that baby book stuff. I mean, was there when Tam died. He was there when we had our little funeral service. He was there for everything. He came over when Tam was comatose. He was never not there for me. I think he forged a particularly close friendship with Ronan because they were so alike in so many ways. Ronan has many passions and among them it's movie scores. So they would talk like so fast. They would both talk very, very fast about this movie score and that movie score. Ronan also is a big movie buff. He didn't love as much as Steve the nineteen thirties that kind of stuff as much as Steve might have.
Peter E. Jones:This one does.
Mia Farrow:Okay. Let's and not not the
Martin Milnes:We talked about them all the time.
Mia Farrow:I'm I'm glad we had you to talk to you on that because I'd like to now. But if it gets to, you know, the five hour version of 'Fanny and Alexander' or if it's 'I, Claudius' or something, Ronan will be all over that. From the time Ronan was little, if Ronan was sick, Ronan at one time had his leg was broken. And Steve would come over and would go through the menu of what is that program that shows all the old movies?
Peter E. Jones:Yeah. TCM
Mia Farrow:or Yeah. Turner Classic Movies. And he would go through the whole week, flag the movies so that they'd be taped for Ronan, and he would tell him why that was a really important movie to see. In Ronan, he found a companion and somebody else who was as astute as he was about movie music and movies themselves and a lot of other things too. You should talk to Ronan.
Martin Milnes:Ronan, it's great to chat to a fellow movie buff who loves Steve. Thanks for joining our tribute.
Ronan Farrow:I'm really glad you're doing it. It's therapeutic for me in a way to think through all the the ways that he meant so much to me and the reason why I frequently feel a pang of missing him in my day to day life. He could be tough, but he also was the kindest, most generous friend that you could ever have. And I think for people he cared about, he had boundless time and generosity. So I learned a lot from him about how to be a thinker about the world, how to be a creative person, how to be joyous enthusiast, how to be fun and kind and caring and a good friend. I really owe a lot of the best parts of me to Steve, I think.
Martin Milnes:And you've always known him?
Ronan Farrow:He was there all of my life. It was the greatest source of joy to just have him come over all the time. It was a real gift during the years of my life, especially childhood, where both my mother and he were in Connecticut close to each other, that he would come over, you know, sometimes a couple of times a week and just we'd sit around in our living room or or in his and just chat. Steve was one of the first people to give me a crash pad in New York. And I stayed with him on and off for a couple of years actually through my first couple of jobs at UNICEF. I then also was back in New York and staying with Steve again on the Upper East Side in his beautiful townhouse. He kind of stashed me in the attic. And then I think the end of that period of living with him was right around the start of his relationship with Jeff, where clearly they wanted the run of the house. So then I got kicked out. But those experiences of working long hours, this was prior to so much discourse about the good treatment of interns. So I was with a very hard charging boss and living at the office a lot of the time, but then being that overstressed and overworked and coming home to Steve's place and his kindness was so magical. He, as you're aware, had a home full of games and puzzles and wit and whimsy. And that was a beautiful, imaginative respite from the rat race I was involved in outside. And he would often have his chef leave food for me in the fridge. And I would often wake up for breakfast in the mornings, and he'd be downstairs, you know, at that little table in his breakfast nook eating, and we'd catch up.
Martin Milnes:Steve's conversation, we both know when you shared a passion, was always stimulating. What kind of impression did that make on you knowing him from so young?
Ronan Farrow:I think I've gone through life craving people as intellectually lively, but also intellectually generous and articulate and frankly just talkative as Steve. I think I tend to be an over talker a little bit, not in the sense of plowing over other people, but just in the sense of talking too much. Like the sheer volume of my thoughts, I have a very frantic and not still mind. And I wouldn't impute the negative parts of that to Steve who had a lot more wisdom by the time I I had that relationship with him. But he did have that fast moving quality. And I never had to worry about hanging back because he filled a lot of space in a conversation. And I think he was also in a category of passionate person that I crave all the time. You know, society comes to bear as we get older upon all of us to tell us to chill out and care a little less and be a little more cool about things. And Steve was in every way that I could ever see a naked enthusiast.
Martin Milnes:Ronan, throughout your various careers in government, as a journalist, and author, did Steve always follow your progress?
Ronan Farrow:Just looking back through the emails, I'm struck by how much he was just there for me. Like, my first day of my first TV show I hosted, at which point I was not good on TV. You know, he out unsolicited, and I'm just looking at it now, you know, saying all these very highly specific things about my performance. He said my only suggestion is get someone who knows how to spell the word protesters. So there was some graphic that had protesters with an o. And then we had this whole debate about different spellings of protesters. And that I was inclined to agree with him, but also there was this school of thought that thought it should be spelled that way. And then he followed up later, like, insanely, I think quite a bit later, remembering that exchange and saying he had just seen this documentary he loved about the Egyptian revolution and that he realized the subtitles kept spelling the word protester with an o. 'So I guess I'm full of shit', he said, 'Not for the first time. That means your show was perfect.'
Ronan Farrow:He was so dialed in for someone who had so much going on. And, know, really, when you think about it, so many people who were, doubtless way more significant in his life and would have made more sense to be staying connected with in this way, he was always there for me. I would have trusted him implicitly on every life decision, every career decision. He was always, like, someone I trusted when I would bring a romantic partner home. You know, his his relationship with my exes was always, like, very central to to what I ended up thinking of those relationships.
Martin Milnes:What are the most typical things remember about Steve?
Ronan Farrow:He was very conscientious in a somewhat old fashioned way, in a beautifully old fashioned way. He believed in correspondence, and I think that led to him keeping up with people in the way that we've just been talking about. I remember once getting an email from an actress. It was Jennifer Ehle who had just been in 'Oslo', the play. And she said, 'Oh, I I hear Sondheim came to see us the other night, and I'm aching to know if he liked it. Do you know?' And I forwarded it to him and said, like, 'Anything you wanna say?' And he had both good and bad things to say about the play, but it moved him very deeply in the end. He admired the play. And he had this very sort of formal evoking correspondence from some bygone era way of saying, 'You may tell Miss Ehle due to the dedicated intensity of her and Jefferson May's performance, and emphatically to Bartlett Sher's direction, which I think may be the best staging of a play I've ever seen or at least since the revival of 'Awake and Sing!' I have only hyperbole to offer. It's it's almost courtly way of communicating that he had.
Martin Milnes:And what about Steve means most to you?
Ronan Farrow:He was this extraordinary polymath and a person whose compute power, to put it in mechanical terms, redounded to not just the obvious intellectual traits that we're talking about, but also his kindness and compassion and fascination with human beings. I think that's always the kind of intellect to the extent that I have a fraction of that power in my brain that I would want to aspire to be. Someone who's using it not just for the puzzle solving, though also that, but for the kindness. And it's what the world needs more of now. And I wish you were here to talk about what's going on in the world today.
Martin Milnes:Like mother, like son, Mia too sought advice from Steve both in life and in art. Mia first met Steve in London in 1972 where she lived with her then husband, Andre Previn.
Mia Farrow:Andre was doing a TV show of interviewing famous musicians, and he interviewed Steve, and they got along well. So next thing I know, Steve's coming over to the house. We were also growing our own weed, Andre and I, on the Queen's own land, actually. And so we shared with Steve some
Peter E. Jones:Naturally.
Mia Farrow:Of course. And thus began a friendship, which Andre didn't really continue, or maybe it was deeper with me or something, but we continued it through all of that and all my life.
Peter E. Jones:Yeah. Andre was just peripheral really. Yes. You you were the one.
Mia Farrow:I was the one. I was the one. And then when I came to New York after my marriage with Andre was over, I was in a play. So I saw Steve a lot because he was, as you probably know, also friends with Tony Perkins, who was in the play with me. So we just hung out a lot. During my decades as Steve's friend, I didn't make a professional decision without talking it over with him or a personal decision. Like, what do you think about this boyfriend? I would bring the boyfriend around. He would sit through love letters that I would read from this or that boyfriend. Even I did this thing with Brian Dennehy, 'Love Letters' on Broadway. And I asked Steve because I was gonna turn it down. And he goes, 'How much are they giving you?' And I told him, he said, 'Do it. You know, just do it'. I'm like, okay. And he came. It got great reviews. He said, 'I've been accepting congratulations for two days. I thought I better show up and see it.' He said, 'I'm taking credit for the fact that you're in this'. But yeah, everything I did, ran it past him because he had that invaluable sense of don't bother with that. Like bringing the boyfriends around and 'A nice first date, he'd say, you know, not up for the long haul'. I never found the right boyfriend, but that's a different matter. But I mean, there was no one else that I would have consulted about both career and romantic life. I'd have to talk to Steve about it. I don't have Steve anymore to call to say, what will I do about this or that? Should I do this Broadway play with Patti LuPone? What do you think? What do you think? He would have read it. I hope he would have said do it because I did it. But I miss his affirmation. There was nobody better if you needed an opinion, whether it was on the human scale, like whether this guy was right, would meet the guy and all that. He could sum up people in a way that I didn't have quite that ability, but also what I should do professionally. I wouldn't even bother people about that, but Steve assumed that role and we fell into that. And I'll never have anybody like remotely like that.
Martin Milnes:Maria Friedman worked extensively with Steve as both an actor and director. But it's Steve's impact on her family life, which to Maria means most.
Maria Friedman:I wasn't somebody who went to the theatre as a kid. We went to music. My family were classical musicians. They were very high achieving classical musicians who fell crazily in love with Steve. And one of the reasons I love Steve is my dad, who I never saw, took me to Little Night Music, one of the few things I saw, and said, 'Now sit and listen. This is proper stuff.' And it's like my dad gave him the seal of approval, was like, he must be something. So I sat up and listened. But I don't know if I ever would have done it. So in a way, my journey towards Steve was to prove that I was okay to my dad because I couldn't really do classical, but I could do that. So it was all cross pollination of stuff that led me to him. I didn't have a dad and Steve gathered children and young people and mentored them and offered them extraordinary wisdom and I feel fortunate I was one of those. Without doubt, somewhere in my mind, even though I always found him the most attractive man on the planet, he filled that role for me. He made me feel safe and he also made me feel special because the fact that we had the relationship, which would be that I could pretty well say anything to him, made it I can't really explain it. Made me feel really special. He made me feel special in a unique way. Just the fact he laughed at my jokes and valued my opinion and was so kind to me. I mean he wanted to be a dad more than anything didn't he? That's what he wanted more than anything, I think, in the world. I think his greatest loss. But he found thousands of us.
Peter E. Jones:Well, yes. And one of the reasons, romantically, younger men were because he wanted a blank slate. He wanted a son. And that was exactly what most of us needed too, you know. So That's right. It just said the father figure came in. Mhmm. He was a big father figure. All of that
Maria Friedman:All of that. Yep. Yep. I'll tell you the other thing is you see it all through his writing, the forgiveness of fallibility and fragility and the human condition all the way through was also how he was a mentor and teacher. He found a lot of lost souls, lost bodies, lost people searching and gave them meaning and a way forward. It gave them an opportunity to find themselves and make friends with themselves as fallible, fractured people. I don't think he even liked perfect. Maybe he loved a perfect lyric. But there was always more. There was always more to be found.
Martin Milnes:When did you first meet Steve?
Maria Friedman:So meeting very briefly across a party on a gala I'd been asked to be a replacement on. It was at Drury Lane Theatre, and there was party, obviously, at the end of the show held for Steve. And I'll never forget the image of seeing one of the people who'd been on that show in that show, famous, and I'm not gonna say who it was. But she was at the front of the queue, and they were saying, 'Have you got your ticket?' And she said, 'My face is my ticket'. And then I looked down the line. At the end of the line was Stephen Sondheim queuing up for his own party. And that sort of, for me, summed the man up. He didn't wanna assume that he was a part and somebody had to go and get him to bring him into the room because he was gonna be one of the last in. So I just remember thinking that was incredible.
Martin Milnes:And later, after becoming friends with Steve doing Sunday in the Park, when did you first meet PJ?
Maria Friedman:I always saw Peter as sort of with Steve. Do you remember the first time we met? Tell me.
Peter E. Jones:It was after your concert.
Maria Friedman:Yes. That's right. So I do remember this. Now I really remember it. I did a one woman show called By Special Arrangement, and Steve I didn't even know Steve was in, but I remember hearing this. Do you remember his laugh? Do you remember his laugh? I'm thinking, oh my god. Steve's in. Because that's how do you know, it's one of the things I miss the most, Peter, literally, that when he came to see you in anything or if you were with him, he had such visceral reactions to what he was watching. I mean, if you didn't like it, you'd have to pull him up because he'd be crumpling down his chair and sort of the behavior was he forgot that everyone would be watching him to see what he thought. You'd have to pull him up off his chair and say, 'Sit up! They're all looking!' Do you remember that, Pete?
Peter E. Jones:And Yes. And he also liked to keep his hand near by your knee or you would grab my knee a lot.
Maria Friedman:Squeeze it!
Peter E. Jones:Yeah. Exactly.
Maria Friedman:And I I went to see Saturday Night with him here in England and and literally literally had to just say, 'Sit up!' And I'm just like, oh my god. That's one of the things I miss most That about when he came to see anything you did, you could audibly hear him crying or laughing or groaning or somethinging. But he he was his presence was there. Right, Peter? Really, really there.
Peter E. Jones:That's also because it became increasingly more difficult for him to go out in public, I think.
Maria Friedman:Yeah. There was a time before he became the kind of deity that he was able to sort of go around and people would give him the space, but he was bombarded wherever he went in the end with people who did not understand that it was his time.
Martin Milnes:Did Steve have a good relationship with your children?
Maria Friedman:Brilliant. Brilliant. So my son Toby went to his house. Toby has cerebral palsy, so his one hand doesn't work as well as the other. And when he was little, he had many, many operations on his legs. And so holding Coca Cola in a glass and walking across Stephen Sondheim's house was not what I dreamt of. And he poured out the Coca Cola, gave it to Toby, and I went, 'I'll carry that'. And Stephen just literally stopped me in my tracks. He said, 'Toby's got it'. And yet he had to cross quite a long way. And he he put me in my place because it was absolutely right. Toby had it, and he did have it. And I was taking it away from Toby in order to save Steve's furniture. He was more interested in Toby keeping his dignity and fighting to cross the room. That was not a good cross of the room for me. I was like, God, but he got there completely fine. By the way Toby's doing brilliantly now, a lot thanks to Stephen. He's now mentors other adults with difficulties, trained to be a teacher, is a wonderful phenomenal young man. But we were going to Steve's for tea and we were at the elevator when my phone rang and it was Steve saying 'Don't come to me now, I've got you four tickets to go to Gypsy to see Bernadette Peters, and I've arranged for you to see the lamb afterwards'. So I said to Toby, 'We're not gonna go to Steve's. We're gonna go to Gypsy. He went, 'I don't wanna go to Gypsy. I wanna go to Stephen Song-Guy, The Sandwich Man' because he always gave him sandwiches. Stephen Song-Guy, The Sandwich Man. So of course, I told Steve this. And for a long, long while, that was his little handle when he called. For years, it was Stephen Song-Guy The Sandwich Man. And I thought he'd forgotten. And then when he got the key to the city of London in front of all these posh people, he said, 'Do you remember Maria? I'm not Stephen Sondheim. I'm Stephen Song-Guy The Sandwich Man.
Martin Milnes:So really he was a mentor to Toby as much as to ---
Maria Friedman:And to my son Alfie, who's a writer. Mhmm. So Alfie sat at his feet in that room where he was on that chair and Steve said to him, 'Why don't you go and get educated?' And he said, because I I feel that I'm getting education with everything like that. And he said, 'Just go to university. Go and just have three years where you're not having to be anything or do anything.' But he would talk to Steve about writing. But anybody who wrote to Steve got an answer. So he was part of a group of young people who were being guided. He gave him a a breakdown to write a musical on one of his favorite films, and he started writing music. So he sort of, like, would send him lyrics and send him bits and pieces, and he would always get an amazing email back like you did, no doubt. And so everybody always felt they were very, very special because he would write back. But the thing is, I think the key to Steve and I, we laughed a lot, a lot. He was irreverent, but I think also he was without doubt somebody when he was loyal, when he dug in with that loyalty, when I became ill with cancer, he was one of the first people, I was in New York and he said I'm taking you to your first appointment, what can I do for you? When I had a child who had difficulties, he stepped in and helped pay for speech therapy and school terms when I couldn't work because I was he just like, just did it, never publicized it, didn't talk to anybody. You probably knew about it, Peter, but I don't know whether you do or don't. I don't know what ---
Peter E. Jones:I do now.
Maria Friedman:Yeah. But you see, there'll be lots of us that come out the woodwork. And you know what? I never in his lifetime ever talked about anything like this because it was private. But I feel kind of complicated about it because I want everyone to know what a good man he was, as well as funny, as well as brilliant. That as a friend, he was unique and remarkable and there if you needed him. There.
Martin Milnes:Steve was a father figure to countless friends and proteges. And although he never became a father himself, Steve did in later life, thanks to his half brother, Walter, experience the joy of family.
Walter E. Sondheim:My girlfriend in Santa Fe who I was seeing at the time, whose name was Margaret, I found out that she was going to have a child. So I said, Steve, 'I have to tell you something, You're gonna be an uncle'. He actually teared up and said 'That's something I never knew I could do. Just I couldn't do it.' And I said, 'Well, you are gonna be one now'.
Peter E. Jones:And I think what he was saying to you was about him having children.
Walter E. Sondheim:Exactly. That's very true.
Peter E. Jones:Something he always wanted but couldn't do.
Walter E. Sondheim:Yeah. So when Elliot was born PJ and Steve came out to Thanksgiving to my house in Santa Fe and I introduced him to Margaret and other members of Margaret's family were there and it was this wonderful picture of Steve holding Elliot in his lap. It was very sweet and I was so happy that in fact the two of you did come out.
Peter E. Jones:And we had a wonderful time. That was a wonderful time for us.
Walter E. Sondheim:Yeah, no, he always had a curiosity about especially how Elliot's education was going and what direction it might be heading in. The first time he met Elliot, I said, 'We're gonna go back east. We're gonna go into New York City, and we're gonna go see your Uncle Steve'. He was probably 12, 13 maybe, something like that. Anyway, he insisted on going to a department store and buying a suit. I said, 'Why do you wanna buy a suit?' 'Because we're going to go see uncle Steve'. I said, 'Oh, really? Okay!'
Peter E. Jones:Something like, Uncle Steve doesn't wear suits!
Walter E. Sondheim:Right. No kidding. Right. No kidding. If you thought your dad was in leisure wear, just wait till you see what your uncle looks like! But anyway, so he bought a little suit and we put it on, we were staying up at my friend's place on the West Side and we went down there and 'Steve this is Elliot'. He chuckled a little bit and Elliot was very formal and just said, so what does Steve do? He hands him a magic trick. Here. He does he does little brass puzzles that used to have all it. And he said, 'Hey, why don't you try and work on this for a bit?'
Peter E. Jones:Throw a dog a bone.
Walter E. Sondheim:Yeah. Right. Throw a dog. He was very impressed. He loved his attitude. Elliot, even at that age, was very forthcoming in his thoughts and his ideas. And so he recognized that.
Peter E. Jones:And he probably would have liked that the touch of showing up formal meant that he thought about Yeah, yeah. He would have liked that.
Mehran James McCullough:In this episode young Steve was portrayed by Daniel Cane, Young Alexander Bernstein was played by Arthur Magee, and Young Jamie Bernstein by Tess Hollins. At the party, Mike Nichols was played by James Gower-Smith, and Phyllis Newman by Rebecca Ridout. 'Lucky To Be Me' by Bernstein, Comden and Green was sung by the real Lauren Bacall and accompanied by the real Leonard Bernstein. At the piano, Herbert Sondheim was portrayed by Steve Ross, playing one of Herbert's favorites, 'How Are Things in Glocca Mora?' by Burton Lane and E. Y. Harburg. Dramatic reenactments were written by Martin Milnes and produced by Peter E. Jones. The music of Sondheim and Bernstein was played by Colm Molloy with instrumental tracks provided by Broadway Studio Orchestra. 'No One Is Alone' by Stephen Sondheim was sung by Chip Zein and Kim Crosby. Stephen Sondheim was interviewed on '60 Minutes' by Diane Sawyer, 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.