Well, not really. But last night, the marquees on Broadway’s theaters dimmed in honor of actress Bea Arthur . It seemed as if I’d been getting a lot of emails from The Broadway League , saying that various men and women of the theater would receive this theatrically idiosyncratic tribute.
A few e-mails later, I had a list of the folks in honor of whom Broadway marquees have been dimmed this season:
10-3-08 – Paul Newman
11-20-08 – Clive Barnes
11-25-08 – Gerald Schoenfeld
12-23-08 – Irving Cheskin
12-30-08 – Harold Pinter
3-5-09 – Horton Foote
3-18-09 – Ron Silver
3-19-09 – Natasha Richardson
4-21-09 – Tharon Musser
4-28-09 – Bea Arthur
Lots of those names will be familiar, even to those of us who live far from the Great White Way. But who in the heck was Irving Cheskin (who didn’t even merit a new obituary in the New York Times? Turns out he was the executive director of the Broadway League (then known as The League of New York Theatres) from 1961 to 1982.
Tharon Musser? She was a lighting designer who was considered a pioneer in the field. Among her accomplishments — according to Wikipedia — was her plot for the 1975 production of “A Chorus Line,” which was the first Broadway production to utilize a completely computerized lighting console.
League spokeswoman Elisa Shevitz tells me that the theater owners decide who will receive the honor. That explains the presence of Gerald Schoenfeld on the list. He was the longtime chairman of the Shubert Organization, which owns or operates 17 theaters on Broadway, making it the most powerful landlord on The Street. He was also instrumental in spearheading the renaissance of the Broadway theater district.
Not to take anything away from these folks and their worthy contributions to the theater, but there does seem to be a bit of grade inflation going on here. In the previous season, only two people received the honor — actor Robert Goulet and producer Ed Mirvish (both Canadians, but that’s a conspiracy theory for another day).
Take Natasha Richardson, for instance. Here’s a snippet of video from the evening Broadway’s lights were dimmed in her honor:
Though her death was untimely and tragic, her Broadway resume is pretty thin: Just four roles spread out over a dozen years, and only in one of them did she create an original role (In “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cabaret”, she was merely adding her take to iconic roles in iconic plays).
Here in the Twin Cities, I can only recall one time theater marquees were dimmed. It was on Halloween night 2007, when the Hennepin Avenue marquees were dimmed in honor of Robert Goulet(?). Either we’re more selective here, we have fewer celebrities, or our light switches are just harder to find. …
