But now that he’s . . . down there listening, let me report what I couldn’t while he was alive: Laurents fell in love with Cavenaugh during the out-of-town tryout. He protected him from the producers, who wanted to fire him. When Cavenaugh told him he was getting married, Laurents tried to dissuade him. He refused to attend the wedding and peppered him with vicious e-mails while he was on his honeymoon.
A friend of Cavenaugh’s says: “Arthur played so many psychological games with Matt. It was sick.”
I don't know if necessarily believe Arthur was in love with him, but the part of trying to sway him from getting married and such I do believe given how Matt's attendance through out his run in the show wasn't always top notch.
Who really knows for certain - it would explain a lot of how Matt made it through so much despite the popular opinion he wasn't good in the role. From what I gather - that cast felt a lot of heat from Mr. Laurents, so who knows what exactly happened or didn't happen at the Palace.
EDIT: It's sort of ironic because didn't many people on this board speculate that Arthur may or may not have had a thing for Matt?
These words of Jesse Green from that article are the truest things anyone's ever said about Arthur:
"What's sad is that he never connected the dots between his meanness and people's dislike of him. He didn't think he was mean. He called it truth telling--but only when it came from him. From anyone else, it was betrayal."
Is this news to anybody? Reidel's acting like he can finally "reveal" this when he all but said it in his columns about the problems plaguing the show at the time.
Exactly, Somethingwicked. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever but I feel like Riedel had already said this throughout the run of WEST SIDE STORY, or at least *highly* implied it. He probably just wanted to repeat it. The psychological games Riedel refers to sound crazy though, not sure how Cavenaugh was implicated in this or if there was anything coming from his part but I feel bad for him and his wife.
There was a profile of Laurents (not from Riedel, from another major periodical) around the time of the revival which all but flat-out said Matt and Laurents were having a thing by implication. My guess is Matt played the game for as long as he could until he'd cashed enough checks to pay for the wedding. After that, the old twat could go to hell.
I agree with somethingwicked. I can't imagine this really being news to anyone. And Laurents has been dead for some time. Why is Riedel just "reporting" this now? Slow news day?
PalJoey that was the one quote that made an impression in Riedel's piece to me. Obviously I never knew the man, but that's what really does bug me about Laurents' bitching in his various books and quotes. It's one thing to know you're being a bitch, and to own that persona (something Riedel doesn't do himself--with all the times he'll say something and then backtrack about how much he still admires the person), but Laurents genuinely seemed to believe that he was merely there as the wise truth teller, and that people who disliked him simply weren't authentic enough to themselves to handle that truth. Blah.
Laurents was not a nice man, ever. It was largely because of the way he treated her father when they wrote Do I Hear a Waltz? that Mary Rodgers loathed him. But loathsome or not, Gypsy is still the best book for a musical, ever.
It seemed like 'common knowledge' here (If I remember correctly someone once said that Arthur Laurents turned his back on Matt Cavenaugh because Matt Cavenough wouldn't turn his back on Arthur Laurents).
But to have it actually reported in an article is quite interesting.
Riedel and the gossips are using the phrase "fell in love" melodramatically.
The very idea of Arthur "falling in love" with an actor in one of his shows is just plain silly to anyone who's ever known the man. Arthur had his favorites and his enemies (who were often yesterday's favorites), but he didn't "fall in love" with his favorites.
The rest of the stuff is true however: the mind games, the power games, the freezing out. But "fell in love"? It's a stupid thing to say about Arthur Laurents.
As Shakespeare has Claudius say of Hamlet: "Love? His affections do not that way tend."
Arthur's affections did not "tend" toward falling in love with actors.
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joined:8/4/04
Posted: 10/10/12 at 01:33am