Betty and Adolph

RE “Imagine Me . . . A Team Player!” [March 9]: I have had, in my show biz life (60 years) a wonderful knack for being at the right place at the right time. Thus I met Betty Comden and Adolph Green and was eventually brought to Hollywood from New York by them. In 1958, I was helping out with scenery and lights for a series of shows called “Mondays at Nine” that Gus Schirmer Jr. was producing at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. We had been successful with the first show, “An Evening With Mabel Mercer” and Gus talked Betty and Adolph into doing an “Evening With Betty Comden and Adolph Green.”

Before I knew what was happening, I became a “gofer” for the rehearsals. Gus handed me a notepad and said “Take notes of everything we think up.” They got a show put together taking them from “The Revuers” through “Peter Pan” and “Bells Are Ringing.” A few days before opening, Gus casually said to me, “I don’t want to stage manage this show; you do it. You know the show as well as I.” So I did, although I was really an often-working dancer and had never stage managed in my life.

After a couple of months, Betty and Adolph took off for Hollywood to write the screenplay for “Bells Are Ringing.” A few weeks later my phone rang and it was Gus. “Pack your bags, you’re leaving for Hollywood in a week. Betty and Adolph are going to do the show for a one night benefit and have asked for you to reproduce and stage manage it.” It was the Friday night before the Academy Awards and it seemed like every star in the world was in the Huntington Hartford Theatre that night and at the party at Romanoff’s after.

Jack Moore

Palm Springs