This is Part 2.  If you haven’t yet read Part 1, I highly suggest you do so first.

Zero Mostel was a large man – not particularly tall, but large.  He had a voluptuous appetite for both food and all the rest of life as well.  Many people don’t know this, but besides being a huge Broadway star culminating in his unforgettable performance originating the role of Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, he was also a wondrous painter.  He once invited me over to his studio which covered an entire floor of a rebuilt factory and was filled with the paintings of a lifetime.

I had the chance to get to know him and work with him in the Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses In Nighttown directed by Burgess Meredith for which I wrote songs and underscore.  Zero was probably well into his 70s by then and at about 5’ 10” and 280 lbs, carried a lot of girth.  Because of this largess, he sometimes had trouble walking and even standing for long periods of time.  When he would go to get up out of a chair everyone would want to rush over and help him up and, of course, he would have none of it.

Any yet he was one of those – one of those stories we so often hear about actors who have some infliction off-stage, yet seem to lose it on-stage when they become someone else.

From the first day of rehearsal, everyone in the company absolutely loved Zero.  You couldn’t help it.  Oh, he was loud and large in every way and full of himself, but he was an absolute star – totally magnetic, hilariously funny, lightening fast with a quip and probably the most loveable large teddy bear I’ve ever known.  By lunch after the first morning of the rehearsal, he knew everyone’s name by heart in a company of 45 actors.

That tells you a lot about how much he cared for his fellow actor.

Here was a man who drew me to my quiet spot in the wings night after night as I studied and marveled at just how the man did it – how he radiated life, how he found the energy for this huge, complex role of magnificent words and images and how he sustained this for eight grueling shows a week.  If there was ever a man who carried us all on his back, Zero was the man.

In one particularly memorable scene he had a dance.  I had scored the dance with an original Irish jig that I had written especially for Zero that he loved, complete with a hilarious elephant walk section which actually satirizes Zero himself.  I had even snuck in a short musical quote from Fiddler On The Roof referencing his iconic performance of If I Were A Rich Man, that nobody really recognized but Zero.  It was our secret and at the first musical rehearsal with the orchestra when he first heard it, he screamed “HAH” and wheeled on his heel and winked at me as he danced along.

He was, in this dance, unbelievably light on his feet and danced on his toes parodying the ballerina elephants in Disney’s Fantasia.  Oh how he loved to do this number!

One second show on a Saturday night well into the run you could see from the sweat flying off his body and his drenched costume that he was especially tired.  I had long ago placed a chair in an unused wing far downstage where I would often sit and watch him work.  On this particular night, and even some performances afterwards, he was just about a quarter of the way into this long celebrative dance which was, by now, on of our real showstoppers.

I could see that he was in some trouble out there.  He looked into the wing where I sat and in the middle of the dance mouthed the word, “Chair” to me.  I knew instantly exactly what he wanted and stood up and lifted the chair to my chest with the back away from me.  Zero did a quick re-choreographing of his steps which brought him over to me standing off-stage with the chair.  There, he grabbed the chair with a wink and, not missing a beat or a step, danced the chair to center stage, sat down and finished the entire number sitting.

The audience loved it.  It got the biggest applause yet and I swear that he did all of the choreography of the dance sitting, sweating, acting, panting, elephanting, and wowing his audience.

He was a star.  He let nothing get in the way of entertaining his audience.  If he couldn’t dance standing up, well then, he’d just do it sitting down.  And, by golly, he did.

Years later when I heard that Zero had passed on, I cried like a baby.  The world lost, not a man, but a huge force of nature that day and I got to watch him up close and personal.

Again, many years ago, I got a call one Saturday afternoon from a friend who said, “Hey Pete, I got two free tickets to see Elton John tonight at the Garden.  Wanna go?”

Does the sun shine?

I soon learned why the tickets were free.  They were the worst seats in the house.  The present Madison Square Garden is not square.  Rather it is round and actually rather oblong within.  The stage was placed at one end of the arena and the basketball court/hockey ring was filled with seats as well as 7/8ths of the rest of the house to fit the audience of 25,000 screamin’ rockin’ fans.

The only seats they didn’t sell was the section directly behind the stage at one end of the oblong.  Our seats were the last two seats before the roped off section, so we were effectually behind the stage and behind the band.  Had I bought the tickets, I would have been furious.  Before the concert, as we were ushered to our seats, my friend wanted to leave, but I somehow felt right at home once again having the opportunity to watch a star do his thing from the wings.

We faced the back of all the band members and if you’ve ever seen Elton, you know that he plays sitting, standing, jumping and dancing – and sings looking over his right shoulder into the mic so that he can turn his face to the audience.  We only occasionally saw his face in profile that night.  We were totally out of it.  We never saw the faces of the band our seats were so bad.  It was actually worse than standing in the wings.

So Elton put us on the piano.  Actually, Elton put everyone in the audience on the piano – all 25,000 people.  As a performer, he didn’t go out to us, he brought us to him.  That was his charisma.  We were all equal, no matter where our seats, we all had great seats – there on the piano.

I, of course, never moved from my chair, and yet I felt like he was singing and playing especially for me all night.  That’s what it means to be a star.  To me, that’s star quality.  I’ve had the occasion to witness it – we all have – and I really can’t tell you how he did it, but I know he did it.  I was there.

I think it is just one of those God-given gifts that some of the lucky ones get — a largess, or humanity, so powerful as to take over an arena of people and hold them transfixed for hours.  Call it talent; call it magnanimity, but I don’t think charisma like that can be taught.  It can be released by a great teacher if you have it to begin with, but, as a teacher, I’ve never really figured out how to teach it if ya’ don’t got it to begin with.

That’s really why I’ve been drawn to the wings all these years to study it and try to get an insight into where it comes from, how it’s done.

Stay tuned for more such explorations and sightings in my next couple of posts.