Broadway Ballyhoo
Hollywood Reporter 1973 [View
Scan Version]
By Radie Harris
Part Mentioning Ralph:
All this plus the supper club debut of Walter Willison at the Casino Russe, now renamed the Blue Angel of the Casino Russe; the Drama Desk luncheon awards at Sardi’s; the return to the nightlife of New York of pianist Hugh Shannon in the St. Regis Room; Whittemore and Lowe at the twin baby grands in "An Evening of Broadway Musicals" in the most beautiful room in New York, the Rainbow Room, and what might have been a very sad note if Maureen Stapleton had allowed it. But she didn’t because she knew that Norma Crane would never have wanted any "sad songs for me" at the services in her memory. So Maureen just gathered together, in her garden, some of Norma’s close friends, who loved her as she did – Judy and Hal Prince, Anne and Eli Wallach, Robert Whitehead, Harold Clurman, Lucy Saroyan, Max Allentuck, Ruth Goetz, Milton Goldman, Ted Mann, Gaby Rodgers, Paul Lipson, Peg Murray, Joseph Wiseman, Billy Redfield, Douglas Taylor, Ralph Roberts, Maureen’s theatre maid of 20 years, Eloise, and Rosalind Harris and Neva Small, who played Norma’s two daughters in "Fiddler on the Rood." [sic] And after Billy Redfield had recalled memories of Norma’s wit and gallant philosophy, "You have to take the bad with the bad," and Eli Wallach read a poem of Emily Dickinson’s and Neva Small repeated Norma’s advice to her, "Always be a good mother and father to yourself," we all drank a champagane [sic] toast to her blithe spirit. Norma would have loved it.