Broadway Tails (6 page)

I also realized that Norma Terris had been right—Sandy had learned to trust me and I had learned to trust him. I had learned so much from him. After the show became successful, I tried to repay the money she had loaned me. She refused, saying her repayment was knowing this dog would be cared for—for the rest of his life. For the entire run of
Annie
—and beyond—Sandy was my closest companion. We had become a team. There were only a handful of nights when he did not sleep next to me, and even when I had to go and do other shows, he was still waiting at home each night, happy to see me.

There were so many times we were asked to do a new behavior for a show or appearance. And each time I would sit with him quietly, and we would figure out a way to make that happen. I enjoyed every second of it, and I hoped it would never end.

With the success of
Annie
and the touring company that was on the road, 1979 was a great year. The only thing that could have made it better would have been another Broadway show—and that’s exactly what happened.

One of the production stage managers for
Annie
was Jerry Adler. He was a big, fatherly type, very loving, and got along with everybody. To him I was just “the kid.” Jerry had many years of experience, but he was the type who came into a show, stayed for a while, then was always moving on to the next thing. He soon left
Annie
to take over a revival of the musical
Camelot
. What made this production special was that Richard Burton was coming back to re-create his role as King Arthur. Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote the original book and lyrics, was going to be involved in updating the production. In late 1979 Jerry gave me a call and said, “I’m doing this show, and I want you on it, kid. We need a sheepdog to walk onstage and sit there, do nothing, and then walk off.”

Now, prior to
Annie
, no one thought you could train a dog to be a character in a Broadway musical, or in any stage event for that matter. Before Sandy appeared in
Annie
, most shows that used animals used them as props or sight gags. In
Camelot
, King Arthur has a friend named King Pellinore, a confused but comical character who owns an Old English sheepdog named Horrid. Pellinore is always getting lost and relying on Horrid to help him find his way. The joke, of course, is that a sheepdog has a lot of hair over its eyes and can’t see where it’s going, so Horrid is always leading Pellinore in the wrong direction.

So, could I do it again? Could I get another dog to perform onstage and make the same magic? I started my search through the pounds of New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Now, Old English sheepdogs are herding dogs. They have thick coats to protect them from the elements, and they’re very high-energy—they need a lot of exercise and a lot of grooming. Sometimes they can be good with families, but sometimes, when their predatory instinct comes out, they’re not so good with children and other small creatures. Most of the sheepdogs that I was hearing about were the bad ones. They had bitten someone or were out of control or too wild.

By now I was very popular with the animal shelters in the New York City area because whenever I could I would bring Sandy to help out with publicity for the cause of homeless animals. So I was able to call the shelters in the area and ask them to help me find a certain type of dog. The Associated Humane Society in Newark, New Jersey, called me back and said they had a big sheepdog mix that they thought was very calm, very quiet, and that would be good for the show.

The Associated Humane Society is the central animal rescue group for Newark, so it gets a lot of strays. I was met by the assistant executive director, Roseann Trezza, who gave me a tour, then led me to the back. At the end of an outdoor run was a big, wet, grayish, hairy thing she called “Bob”—three and a half years old, owner surrendered, very sweet. As we opened the door, he slowly turned his head and lumbered over to us. He had to be one of the ugliest dogs I had ever seen in my life. He was probably about 70 or 80 pounds, with a long, pink nose and bald patches on his body. Unlike the beautiful pedigree sheepdogs you see in books or Disney movies, Bob’s hair was thin and stringy, and he had a tail—not something you see in that breed. And this was a little ratlike tail, with no hair on it at all. He was a sight, but I was immediately struck by the fact that he lumbered over, sat
down, leaned against me, and looked up at me with these big brown eyes. I couldn’t resist him.

I stood back and looked at him and asked why his coat was so bad. Their guess was probably poor diet and being exposed to the elements, but with a little love and affection and some proper treatment, we could make him look better. I put a leash on him and took him for a walk, and he didn’t pull me down the street. Although he wasn’t a true sheepdog, I thought that with the right grooming, he’d be even funnier onstage because of his skinny, hairless tail. So I decided to adopt Bob.

Finding an understudy was not as easy. Again, as I looked through the shelters, most of the dogs I saw were aggressive. Then I visited an animal control agency in another New Jersey town where a dog had been turned in because she was “too much work.” She was a beautiful specimen, with gorgeous long hair. She was smaller than Bob, only about 65 pounds, but she was like a tornado. She was one of those dogs that never stop moving, always twirling around, easily distracted. She was sweet with people, sweet with other dogs, just very high-energy. Her name was Daisy, and I decided to adopt her, too. Within a month, we had the two dogs we were going to use on the show.

I waited a month before I brought Bob and Daisy in to meet Jerry and the rest of the team because I wanted to make him look as presentable as possible. Even after a month he was still a mess. So when I walked Bob into the room, everybody’s jaw just sort of dropped, and then they laughed.
They all agreed he was perfect. Bob had passed his audition and was going to be in the show, and Daisy would be the understudy.

Having gotten the dog out of the way, I was very worried about who I would send out with the tour. I had made up this method of training, but I couldn’t really describe what I did. How could I possibly start interviewing people and explaining the job when I didn’t even know how
I
did it? As I started talking to people, people who said they loved dogs or worked in theater or whatever, nobody struck me as having the same feelings I did when it came to being responsible and really caring about the animals. I thought I needed someone with the same kind of background I had. I needed somebody who was family.

Growing up, I had a cousin named Sue Spitzel—we were like brother and sister. We were the best of friends, and we would laugh and have great times together. Sue was living in Santa Cruz, California, when I called her up and offered her the job. At first she thought I was playing a practical joke on her, because that’s what we always did. When I kept telling her I was serious, she said, “But Bill, I’ve never done a professional show or trained a dog. Why do you think I’d be good for this?” The only answer I had was that I knew in my heart she would be. I could teach her the other stuff, but I can’t teach people how to be caring and nurturing. After a couple of weeks of coaxing, she said she’d do it.

Now, neither of us had any idea what we were really getting into, but at least I had an idea of what the touring life was like from
Annie
. I had decided that I would never fly my dogs in the baggage compartment of a plane—I thought it was too stressful and too dangerous for dogs that we spent thousands of hours preparing to be in a show. Putting their life and welfare at risk in any way was just something I didn’t want to do. For the
Annie
tour, my girlfriend, Jude, was traveling the country with our latest Sandy dog, Moose, in a customized van. We decided to do that for Sue as well. That meant we’d have three vans—the one I used in New York, the one Jude was driving on tour, and now this new one. Things were getting really expensive, so we bought a basic panel van that I would modify myself. I had become pretty good at putting
in customized floors, paneling the walls, and adding a little bed in the back. Sue was looking forward to the adventure of traveling the country in this blue van. She moved to New Jersey and lived with me and the dogs. She watched while I trained them so she could see for herself what I did.

When rehearsals began in the spring of 1980, I can remember Sue coming into New York and meeting the cast and seeing everything from an outsider’s perspective. Coming from a California “hippie” town, she was amazed at the big egos and all the money that was being spent. We were both middle-class kids, the children of Italian immigrants, amazed to be on Broadway. It was nice to have someone around who looked at show business the same way I did. Plus, Sue has a really warm and loving personality, with a touch of naiveté. She was immediately well liked and quickly made friends with the cast and crew. When the cast saw Bob with his Sad Sack face, they all fell in love with him, too. People would come up and hug him, and he would give them a big sloppy kiss. He was just a wonderful dog to be around.

We rehearsed in New York for five weeks, and then the show moved to Toronto to open the tour. While all the other actors were staying in hotels, we decided to get an apartment so the dogs would have more room for the two months we were setting up and running the show. When the time came, we loaded up the two dogs in our brand-new customized blue van and drove to Canada. I stayed for two weeks, helping to get things set up and making sure Sue and Bob were okay. Once the show was running smoothly, I headed back to New York, but it was exciting to go through the whole process and see the show finally come to fruition.

Bob was a trouper. The first night, he walked out onstage, looked at the audience, and didn’t seem to care that they were there. He obeyed his commands, sat for the scene, and walked off. It was probably one of the smoothest transitions into a show that we ever had. The show played its run in Toronto and then came to New York to open at the State Theater in Lincoln Center that summer. Although Richard Burton had started to slow down a bit at this point in his career, no one has ever mastered the words of King Arthur the way he did. He could bring tears to your eyes at every performance with the speech about how he pulled the sword from the stone. He was a brilliant actor, but he was also kind and generous to everyone involved in the tour. He gave the cast opening night gifts. He always made sure there was food set up for us when we arrived at the theater. And he would smile and pat Bob on the head while they were waiting backstage.