Good morning. It is Wednesday. Scroll down to see when a plane hit the Empire State Building – 77 years ago today. But first a Broadway mystery.
The producers of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine revival of the musical Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine have a wish. It’s to find something you could call a prop from the original production. It’s missing.
It’s a giant inflatable boot with a long vinyl leg attached to it.
The shoe was a staple when “Into the Woods” opened in 1987. He was anchored in what was then the Martin Beck Theater (now the Al Hirschfeld). “The boot was like a beacon,” said Jordan Roth, the lead producer of the current revival at the St. James, which is extending its run to Oct. 16. “It was literally the beacon that called us all to the theater. I think the reason it captured our imaginations was the way it really made this show’s impossible balance between whimsy and humor really physical.
Michael David, the executive producer of the original run, said there were more practical issues. The theater, an “outlier” west of Eighth Avenue, hadn’t had a long-running show 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 would think ‘what’s the address’ but ‘the one with the boot above’.”
When “Into the Woods” closed in 1989, the suitcase went into storage. It came out for a revival in 2002, this time at the Broadhurst Theatre.
The mystery is what happened to the trunk when that production shut down after 18 previews and 279 performances.
“It’s in storage — I just don’t know where in storage,” David said, adding that there were two more facilities in New Jersey to check.
The boot, evoking the giant causing chaos in the story, was the work of Ann Slavit, who created a 30-foot pair of red shoes that hung from the Brooklyn Academy of Music in tribute to the celebrated ballet film “The Red”. Shoes.”
“I don’t think Michael David said to me, ‘Oh, can you do a boot?'” she said. “Maybe we were talking about the giant and I was like, ‘You never see him on the show, so we could have this ominous presence.'” There was a second shoe that looked like it was coming over the parapet of the theater.
She said she suspected it had been thrown away after being taken off the Broadhurst on a day of particularly bad winter weather.
But Chic Silber, a special effects designer who was involved in installing and removing it in the Broadhurst in 2002, said it was “neither destroyed nor discarded” when it came out. But it was cut into at least a few pieces. “What happened to both halves after that, I don’t know,” he said.
Roth, the lead producer of the revival, released an all-item bulletin for the boat almost as soon as the arrangements to move “Into the Woods” to the St. James were completed in late spring. He recalled seeing the shoe the first time he saw “Into the Woods,” as a 12-year-old in 1988, with Phylicia Rashad in the cast. If it were found and mounted on the St. James, he said, “the knee would bend right over my office window.”
But Silber had advice for Roth: stop looking.
“Even if it could be found,” he said, “it wouldn’t blow up again and work on the roof of a building in any way.” And making a new boot would cost a lot less, he said.
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LOOKING BACK
The Day a Plane Hit the Empire State Building
For the city defined by skyscrapers — and even a skyscraper defined by a monster movie — what happened 77 years ago today on a densely foggy morning was unimaginable. A plane crashed into the Empire State Building.
Fourteen people were killed: the pilot, Lt. Col. William Smith Jr., and the two others aboard his army B-25, and 11 in what was then the world’s tallest building. Burning fuel rained down an elevator shaft after the fuel tanks exploded. An engine and part of the landing gear fell into a basement.
Smith was scheduled to fly to La Guardia Airport, but as he got closer, he said he wanted to land at Newark. The change sent Smith’s unarmed training plane over Manhattan and to the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building. A government investigation later concluded that he had “made a mistake in his judgment” and should not have been allowed to continue.
At the top of the Empire State Building, where clouds sometimes invaded the unair-conditioned offices, the roar of the twin propeller engines grew louder as the B-25 roared past. And then it hit.
Soon, office workers rushed down the stairs to get to safety, and firefighters rushed in. As well as photographers lugging bulky 4-by-5 Speed Graphics cameras.
One was Ernie Sisto of DailyExpertNews, who talked his way past the police officers in the street and rode to the 67th floor in an elevator that was still in operation. He then took the stairs and found a vantage point above the 79th floor.
There he dangled over the parapet after asking two competing photographers to hold his legs. He returned the favor by snapping photos for them along with the photo above.
Therese Fortier Willig, a secretary in the Catholic War Relief Office on the 79th floor, huddled with colleagues. She recalled in 1995 that she was so upset that she ripped off the rings she was wearing and threw them out the window. One was her high school graduation ring, the other a friendship ring from her boyfriend, whom she never expected again.
She eventually escaped and firefighters not only discovered the rings in the rubble on the street, they tracked her down and returned them. She married the man who gave her the friendship ring and had a son – George Willig, who climbed the World Trade Center in the 1970s.
“She hardly ever talked about it, kind of like I hardly ever talk about climbing the World Trade Center,” he said this week. “After a while, your life moves on, it’s part of your history.”
But sometimes he thinks of his mother’s association with one high-rise building in New York and his association with another. “I find it hard to put all that together and understand,” he said.
Dear Diary:
As an original subscriber to City Center’s Encores! series, I was excited to attend the highly anticipated reopening after a two-year hiatus.
Subscribers generally know all the audience members that are near them, so there’s a bit of a buzz when someone new shows up. And during a February performance of “The Tap Dance Kid,” everyone in my queue saw a new face in line in front of us.
When the standard announcement was made about the rules against taking pictures and videos and using phones, this woman grabbed her phone and appeared to start texting.
The orchestra began to play and the audience applauded. The light from the phone was still visible. I was about to tap her shoulder and ask her to turn off the phone when the person next to her turned to her.
“Please turn off that phone,” he said.
“And by the way,” he added. ‘You are going far off. The Wordle is ‘fold’.”
— Dennis Buonagura
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send entries here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — JB
PS Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Game match. Here you will find all our puzzles.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday..
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