The “Rebecca” scandal has made me nostalgic for the Broadway of the ’70s and ’80s, when the street had a colorful selection of rascals and rogues and ticky-tacky productions that closed overnight.
Anyone remember “Into the Light,” a musical about the Shroud of Turin, that ran six performances in 1986?
The late writer Peter Stone dubbed it “Jesus Christ Tablecloth.”
What about “Senator Joe,” a musical set, according to the Playbill (which I have), “in and around the minds of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and those involved with him”?
It was gone after just three previews, but I’ll never forget a scene set in McCarthy’s liver that featured diseased — but dancing! — white blood cells.
“Senator Joe” was produced by Adela Holzer, a legendary Broadway swindler. Compared to her, Mark C. Hotton, who’s been accused of fleecing $60,000 from the producers of “Rebecca,” is a piker.
Holzer, who served nine years for stealing millions, was released from prison in 2010.
Born in Spain, she cut a glamorous figure around Broadway in the ’70s. She was married to shipping magnate Peter Holzer, and, with his money, produced a couple of hits — “The Ritz” and “Sherlock Holmes.” But then came a string of flops, including “Dude,” “Something Old, Something New,” “Me Jack, You Jill.”
Holzer divorced her in 1979 after discovering she had conned him and his family out of $3 million, New York magazine reported.
Adela slid into bankruptcy but managed to maintain her high-flying lifestyle in Manhattan and East Hampton by running all sorts of schemes.
Hotton allegedly created phantom investors and phony e-mails to dupe the producers of “Rebecca.”
Holzer told her victims that she was the secret wife of David Rockefeller, the former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. She stole $4 million from people she persuaded to invest in fake oil and land deals that, she said, had Rockefeller’s blessing.
She kept a small photograph of him in an elegant silver frame by her bedside — a nice touch that fooled many a wavering investor.
A producer who had dealings with her says she “used to wave around a bank statement to prove she had $1 million in the bank. But the statement looked as if it had been Xeroxed 1,000 times.”
Another grand old Broadway crook was Garth Drabinsky, now serving a seven-year jail sentence in Canada for defrauding investors in his $400 million production company, Livent.
Drabinsky styled himself a modern-day Florenz Ziegfeld. He built up the movie chain Cineplex-Odeon but was ousted after a hostile takeover. He then produced “The Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto, parlaying its success into Livent, a publicly traded company.
Drabinsky built or refurbished theaters all over North America and produced such lavish musicals as “Show Boat,” “Ragtime” and “Kiss of the Spider-Woman.”
He flew around the world in private jets, rode around New York in limousines and wined and dined writers, directors and actors. But underneath the showbiz bonhomie, he was a bully and a thief.
He screamed at underlings and, if not ushered to the best table at Joe Allen, would thunder, “Do you know who I am?”
Meanwhile, his multimillion-dollar productions — which he claimed were hugely profitable — were bleeding money. Reporters who questioned how he kept his empire afloat got a shellacking.
I once told him that nobody on Broadway believed “Ragtime” was making money. He pounded his desk so hard my tape recorder fell off it. “I am the most investigated man in the history of Broadway,” he bellowed. “I have to answer to the SEC and the Canadian securities regulators!”
After the tantrum passed, he said: “Don’t you understand, Michael? All I want to do is produce good shows.”
As it turned out, Drabinsky produced two sets of books — one for the public showing big profits, another for himself cataloging staggering losses.
In 1999, he was indicted in New York for cooking the books. He was also accused of stealing $4.6 million for personal use. He fled to Canada, where he was found guilty of fraud and forgery in 2009.
Drabinsky is the subject of the Barry Avrich documentary “Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky,” which debuted last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. It will be shown in New York later this year.
I’m going to take Mark C. Hotton to the premiere.