Good morning. Today is Wednesday. Scroll down to see the moment a plane crashed into the Empire State Building – present day 77 years ago. But first, a Broadway mystery.
The makers of the revival of “Go to the forest,” Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical, have a wish. It is to define something you might call a prop from original production. It is missing.
It is a giant inflatable boot with a vinyl leg attached.
The boot was a fixture when “Into the Woods” premiered in 1987. It was later anchored to the Martin Beck theater (Now it’s Al Hirschfeld). Jordan Roth, the main producer of the current revival in St. “The boot is like a lighthouse,” says Jordan Roth, the lead producer of the current revival in St. James, is extending the time to October 16. “It really was the beacon that called us all to the theater. I think the reason why it captured our imaginations is the way it really represents the show’s unlikely balance between whimsical and witty. “
Michael David, executive producer on the original run, said there was a more practical concern. The theater, a “periphery” west of Eighth Avenue, hadn’t had a long screening in a while when “Into the Woods” arrived, he said. The boot gave the theater an identity “to help people find us, not where they thought ‘what’s the address’ but ‘the one with the boot on it.'”
When “Into the Woods” closed in 1989, the boot was in storage. It debuted for renaissance in 2002, this time at the Broadhurst Theatre.
The mystery is what happened to the startup when that production closed after 18 previews and 279 performances.
“It’s in storage — I just don’t know where it is,” David said, adding that there are two properties in New Jersey that still need to be inspected.
The boot, a reference to the mayhem-inducing giant in the story, is the work of Ann Slavitwho made a 30 foot high red shoe hanging at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a tribute to the famous ballet movie “Red shoes.”
“I don’t think Michael David said to me, ‘Oh, can you warm up?’, she said. “We were probably talking about the giant and I thought, ‘You never see him on the show so we can have this ominous presence. ”” There was a second shoe that looked as if it were slamming over the railing of the theater.
She said she suspected it was thrown away after it took off from the Broadhurst stage on a day with particularly bad winter weather.
But Chic Silber, a special effects designer who installed and removed it at Broadhurst in 2002, said it was “neither destroyed nor thrown out” when it fell. But it was cut into at least a few pieces. “What happened to the second half, I don’t know,” he said.
Roth, the revival’s lead producer, put out a roundup for the launch almost immediately after the arrangement to move “Into the Woods” into St. James is completed in late spring. He recalls seeing the boot for the first time he watched “Into the Woods”, when he was 12 years old in 1988, with Phylcia Rashad in the cast. If it is found and mounted on the St. James, he said, “the knee would bend right over my office window.”
But Silber has advice for Roth: Stop looking.
“Even if it could be found,” he said, “there’s no way it would inflate again and work on the roof of any building.” And it costs a lot less to build a new boot, he said.
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LOOK BACK
The day a plane crashed into the Empire State Building
For a city defined by skyscrapers – and even for a skyscraper defined by a monster movie – what happened on a dense foggy morning this 77 years is unimaginable. A plane crashed into the Empire State Building.
Fourteen people were killed: The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel William Smith Jr., and two others aboard his army’s B-25, and 11 in the building then the tallest in the world. Burning fuel poured down an elevator shaft after the fuel tanks exploded. An engine and part of the landing gear fell to a floor below.
Smith was scheduled to fly to La Guardia Airport, but as it approached, he said he wanted to land in Newark. The change sent Smith’s unarmed trainer flying over Manhattan and onto the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building. A government investigation later concluded that he was “erroneous in judgment” and should not have been justified to proceed.
Above the Empire State Building, where clouds occasionally drifted into unair-conditioned offices, the roar of the twin propeller-driven engines grew louder as the B-25 flew along. And then it worked.
Soon, office workers rushed downstairs to safety, and firefighters rushed in. Photographers also carry around bulky 4 x 5 Speed Graphics cameras.
One of them is Ernie Sisto of The New York Times, who spoke past police officers on the street and made his way to the 67th floor in a still-working elevator. Then he took the stairs, finding a vantage point above the 79th floor.
There he swings on the railing after asking two competing photographers to hold him. He returned the favor by taking pictures of them, along with the one above.
Therese Fortier Willig, a secretary of the Catholic War Relief office on the 79th floor, was gathering with colleagues. She recalls that in 1995, she was so upset that she snatched the ring she was wearing and threw them out the window. One is her high school graduation ring, the other is a friendship ring from her boyfriend, whom she never expected to see again.
She eventually escaped, and the firefighters not only discovered the rings in the street debris, they tracked her down and returned them. She married the man who gave her the friendship ring and has a son – George Willig, who climbed the World Trade Center in the 1970s.
“She hardly ever talks about it, just as I hardly ever talk about climbing the World Trade Center,” he said this week. “After a while, your life goes on, it’s part of your history.”
But sometimes he thinks about his mother’s relationship with a tall New York building and his association with another. “I had a hard time putting all of that together and understanding what it was like,” he said.
Dear Diary:
As an original registrant for the City Center Encores! , I was delighted to attend the eagerly anticipated reopening event after a two-year hiatus.
Subscribers usually know all the audience members sitting near them, so there’s a bit of a buzz when someone new shows up. And at the “The Tap Dance Kid” show in February, everyone in my row noticed a new face in the row in front of us.
When the standard announcement was made about the no photo, video and phone use rules, the woman took out her phone and started texting.
The orchestra began to play, and the audience applauded. The light from the phone is still visible. I was about to tap her shoulder and ask her to turn off the phone when the person next to me turned to her.
“Turn that phone off,” he said.
“And by the way,” he added. “You are going in the wrong direction. Wordle is ‘pleat.’
– Dennis Buonagura
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
So glad we can get together here. See you tomorrow. – JB
PS This is for today Small crosswords and Spell Bee. You can find all our quizzes here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
