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A Local Link to Broadway History
By David R. Zukerman, NYC and Winsted
 | | Shana stood with Bob Kamlot outside his Goshen home during our recent visit. |
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The May 9 opening of the Broadway Show League was rained out, and the concluding game of the season, for the Commissioner’s Cup, was also rained out on August 29. (That game would have pitted the team from The Producers, the Show Division champs, against Local #1, champs of the Broadway Division of this 30-team softball league.) On Thursdays between those dates, however, Manhattan’s Central Park was the scene of good-natured, spirited, hard-fought competition featuring players from all aspects of Broadway theater, including actors (Oklahoma! had the highest percentage of cast members, with 70% participating), technicians, stagehands and musicians.
Between the opening and closing drench-outs we had four months of hot, waterless Thursdays in the city, and the diamonds were concrete-hard and dusty. The fields are close by Columbus Circle and the rising AOL Time Warner skyscraper, at a corner leading to the brick and steel palisades along Central Park South and Central Park West.
I took a great many photographic impressions on those Thursdays, with a Canon Rebel that I purchased early in the season at the Photo Shop on Main St. in the north end of Torrington (which has been cited as among "The Best of Northwest Connecticut" by readers of The Voice, as proclaimed by a certificate that’s on display in the store).
My new camera led me into some interesting encounters with theater people. For example, when I went to the St. James Theatre a few weeks ago to drop off some photos I had taken of The Producers team in their win over Oklahoma! for the Show Division championship, I found myself backstage, surrounded by five or six actresses who were looking up and singing. So I looked up too, and I saw above me a monitor with the image of the orchestra leader directing his musicians—and, apparently, the chorus I was in the midst of—while action continued onstage, not very far from me, I guess. (I’m just thankful that Shana, my faithful canine companion, was waiting out in the car and didn’t hear this going on, or she might have decided to join in!)
 | | Cady Huffman of The Producers posed for this photo after singing the National Anthem for the Show Division championship game on August 15. Her team beat Oklahoma! by a score of 15-8. |
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And back in July, during the league’s All Star game, I met a Broadway veteran whose appearance belies his half-century in the theater. I later learned that this VIP member of the Broadway community, Robert Kamlot, played on the Rent team as recently as three years ago. I had been advised to direct my questions about the league's history to Bob, and when I met him at the All Star game he immediately began mentioning names of theater personalities who had played in the league. But what impressed me most, that July 11, was the friendliness of Bob Kamlot, plus the fact that he and his equally gracious wife Jayne spend half their time in Goshen—"not New York, Connecticut," as he quickly told me— at the home they built in 1979-80.
Robert Kamlot loves going to the theater, which he told me when I visited with him and his wife Jayne at their home for an interview on July 30. (I should add that the Kamlots said they also love the northwest corner of Connecticut.) Bob mentioned that he is one of 30 members of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee. He had been a Tony nominator previously and is now in the second year of a three-year term.
During a brief earlier visit, Bob had given me a list he had drawn up for me of past Broadway Show League participants. (The 57 names on the list include Gregory Hines, who hosted the Tony Awards this year with Bernadette Peters.) Other Broadway Show Leaguers on the list include Peter Gallagher, Phil Donahue, Neil Simon, Emanuel Azenberg, Robert Redford, Elliot Gould, George C. Scott, Philip Bosco, Michael J. Fox, John Ritter, Henry Winkler, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, James Caan, Peter Falk and Kate Burton. Judd Hirsch, who recently returned to Broadway in I'm Not Rappaport, reprising his Tony-winning role, pitched a no-hitter in the league during the play's original run in the 1980s, which Bob told me was "fantastic" for lob softball.
On July 30, Bob showed me a montage of league teams he managed that was hanging on the wall in the office part of his redesigned basement (another section contains a home gym with equipment that he uses regularly). The players on his Long Day's Journey Into Night team included Jack Lemmon. The Biloxi Blues team included Matthew Broderick. Another of his photos shows Eli Wallach, who starred in Luv, playing for that show’s team.
 | | Jujamcyn president Rocco Landesman was the winning pitcher for The Producers on August 15 |
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Bob's connection with these shows? He was general manager. Starting with Luv in 1964, Robert Kamlot has been general manager of some 45 Broadway shows, including A Chorus Line, from 1975-83. In addition, he had been general manager of some 100 off-Broadway shows. When I asked Bob about the responsibilities of a Broadway general manager, he answered: "That’s easy: money, personnel, time, space, equipment." He emphasized that, unlike a general manager in baseball, a Broadway general manager does not pick the players, although the producer might ask what the general manager thinks of a director or possible cast member.
Although of my July 30 visit had been to get information about the Broadway Show League, my conversation with Bob Kamlot yielded broader information about the theater world and himself. Bob told me that he played softball on Sundays while he was a student at George Washington High School, in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. I was surprised to learn that he was born in Vienna and did not know a word of English when he arrived here with his parents on October 12, 1938—and was puzzled, that very day, on seeing his first American football.
He saw his first major league baseball game in Yankee Stadium in 1939, between the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers, featuring the great Jewish ballplayer Hank Greenberg. This experience of seeing Greenberg playing in the major leagues, at such a bleak time for Jews in Europe, turned Bob into a Detroit Tigers fan.
After the war, he attended Hunter College for a time on the G.I. Bill, before choosing theater as a career. Although he did not complete his geology studies at Hunter, he won the heart of Jayne, who was a mathematics major there, and they have been married for 53 years.
The Kamlots are avid tennis players and have participated in tournaments throughout New England and in Nova Scotia. From 1973-79, Bob brought a tennis tournament to Broadway. The actor John Cullum is a terrific tennis player, Bob told me.
I was impressed with the wealth of knowledge and experience that Bob had accumulated over the years—for example, he showed me a vast collection of playbills that he had gathered from 50 years of theater-going. But at my suggestion that he might want to write an autobiography, Bob indicated that he is not interested in writing a book about his life—he seems to think people wouldn’t buy it.
Less than a week after Shana and I had so delightful a visit with the Kamlots, an article appeared in The New York Times on declining interest in theater. Factors negatively affecting attendance at Broadway shows, Bob had told me, include television and a general decentralization of theater, with regional theaters emerging and developing around the country.
Over the delicious tuna niçoise salad the Kamlots had prepared for lunch, Bob pointed out that only three organizations now own Broadway theaters: Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn—giving them a lot of power. He noted that theaters had been owned by individuals in the old days, acknowledging: "I'm not a corporate person." He said that there has been a change in the theater, which "used to be a candy store—now it's a supermarket." In 1964, Bob recalled, it cost $90,000 to produce an entire show; today a Broadway show cannot be produced for less than $1.5 million. He also explained that "because plays run forever, it gets tougher to get a theater."
Over lunch, Bob offered anecdotes about two young people he worked with before they became stars. He recalled that Barbra Streisand had approached him for an usher's job when he managed the off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theater in the late 1950s; he gave her the job and she remained there for three months. And Kevin Spacey was hired at the Public Theater, which Bob served as general manager for the New York Shakespeare Festival for ten years. As Bob told me, one day Spacey went up to Joe Papp, director of the Public Theater, and said that he wanted to act. "Then go act," Papp replied. Spacey took this advice to heart, it seems, and the rest is history.
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