"It's the chance to try my wings at something new," says the jovial musician, in a somewhat gravelly, high-pitched voice marked by flawless diction. "Also, it's a chance to inform. I suppose I'm a frustrated professor of sorts. This show is a way of stating that, in fact, there were blacks involved in productions on Broadway as far back as 1900 — perhaps even further back. Many were performers who wrote their own material. Others were composers and lyricists whose writing was not confined to black performers. Some of them wrote for the Ziegfeld Follies."
As co-producer with Robert Kimball, Short has been "researching material to find out what's good, what's bad, what's important, and also who's around today that was in those shows." Among the performers to be featured: famed jazz singer Mabel Mercer, a longtime friend of Short's; Adelaide Hall and Edith Wilson, two of black Broadway's original stars; Nell Carter, the Tony Award-winning star of Fats Waller's Ain't Misbehavin'; Eubie Blake, still an active pianist in his 90s, whose currently running Eubie! is the fourth Broadway show he has written; special guest artist Diahann Carroll; and the Dick Hyman Orchestra. Of course Bobby Short will be on stage too; he'll do at least five songs out of his repertoire of 1,000-plus.
Slender, debonair, and looking more like 40 than his actual 54 years, Short has been playing and singing in public ever since he made his debut at the age of 9 while growing up in Danville, Illinois. From the age of 12 to 14 he was a child star on the vaudeville and nightclub circuit. Then he returned to Danville, completed high school at 17, and began his second career. Producer/songwriter Anna Sosenko got him a job at the Blue Angel in Manhattan; after that he worked in California and France before settling permanently in New York in 1956.
A perennial name on the best-dressed list, Short says that "today I've got a tailor in New York, a tailor in London, and I buy a lot of things in between. But I've grown more sensible over the years. I no longer buy all I can get my hands on."
His secret for staying young? "Be sensible. If you use the most intimate parts of your body to make a living — like your throat — you can't abuse it. You can't drink too much, and you simply cannot smoke." Extremely knowledgeable about restaurants, he lists the Russian Tea Room and Pearl's Chinese Restaurant as his favorites.
His "Charlie" commercial for a cologne by Revlon has made Short one of the most recognized figures on the streets of New York, yet he doesn't mind being approached by strangers. "It's part of what I do for a living," he muses with a smile. "It never stops. You have to learn to live with it or get out of show business. Fortunately, I'm a very social person and I like people. I understand the need to say hello to someone on the street — so I can't knock somebody for speaking to me."
********
WESTSIDER BEVERLY SILLS
Opera superstar
9-30-78
Probably no opera singer since Caruso has made so great an impact on the American public as Beverly Sills. Even today, the mention of her name can automatically sell out a concert hall anywhere in the U.S. She has become bigger than her art, for while a few younger singers can reach the notes more easily, Sills generates a certain intense excitement into all her roles that makes every show she appears in not just an opera, but an event.