I don't know how it is now but the assistant stage manager had to understudy several parts. You had to be ready to go on at any time if the actor couldn't make it to the play. I didn't think anything of it.
“The band couldn't have happened anywhere else in the world but New York. That was the catalyst.”
“I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.”