You gotta love that Arthur Laurents. Broadway’s King Cobra is still spewing venom — from the grave!
His posthumous memoir, “The Rest of the Story,” has just been published by Applause Books, and in it Laurents strikes out at two prominent journalists and one “gossip maven.”
The journalists are Jesse Green of New York magazine and Alex Witchel of the New York Times.
No prizes for figuring out who the “gossip maven” is.
Green had a nice relationship with Laurents, who died last year, until he published, on the eve of the 2009 revival of “West Side Story,” a stinging profile of the Tony-winning writer and director.
The story was chock-a-block with examples of Laurents’ legendary bitchiness, and contained his ex-friend Mary Rodgers’ now famous quote: “Call me when he’s dead.”
Green ended his profile by pointing out that Laurents, who prided himself on his ferocious honesty, had changed his name from Levine at the start of his career.
Here’s what Levine-Laurents has to say about Green:
“Pleasant, gay . . . Jesse had a receding hairline, a partner and a little adopted boy, a combination certain to inspire trust . . . There was no sign of the dog beneath his skin when I opened my door and welcomed him into my house.
“One visit wasn’t enough. He needed just a little more information . . . could he please come back? Jesse asked if I had changed my name. I said I had. Jesse said he was just checking; wasn’t going to waste any space on that. The moment registered only after he’d set on me like a souped-up Rottweiler.
“Jesse hacked me to bloody pieces with glee and then s – – t on me for good measure with out-of-context quotes and flat-out lies.”
Green’s taking the attack in stride: “I could do worse than be in the company of some of the people he’s lambasted over the years — including you!
“What’s sad is that he never connected the dots between his meanness and people’s dislike of him. He didn’t think he was mean. He called it truth telling — but only when it came from him. From anyone else, it was betrayal.”
As for Witchel, her sin was a series of delightfully bitchy columns she wrote about Laurents and his 1991 flop musical, “Nick & Nora.”
“Well, my dears,” she once wrote, “the unofficial statute of limitations has run out on holding back the dish. Pull up a chair.” She then proceeded, deftly, to blame Laurents for the fiasco.
Laurents doesn’t use Witchel’s name in his memoir. He calls her “Louella Parsons Jr.” because naming her “might offend a third person with whom I have a relationship I want to keep.”
That person is Witchel’s husband, former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich.
After Rich left the theater beat, he and Laurents became friends. I used to see them dining together at the Harvard Club. Laurents once told me he liked and admired Rich but that he never could forgive “that wife of his for savaging me.”
He claims, in his memoir, that “Louella Jr.” made “allegations that were damaging distortions of the truth.”
Having covered “Nick & Nora” myself, Witchel’s columns were considered right on the money by people who worked on the show.
As for the “gossip maven,” Laurents says that yours truly, in my “mudslinging column,” never passed up a chance to “damn me with praise so faint even dogs couldn’t hear it.”
Frankly, I always liked Arthur. He made for good copy, especially when he screamed at the “West Side Story” cast for missing performances. Or when he fired leading man Matt Cavenaugh after he married his girlfriend.
Laurents says my columns about Cavenaugh were “all lies,” adding that my epitaph should be “Here Lies.”
Arthur was always good with the zingers!
But now that he’s . . . down there listening, let me report what I couldn’t while he was alive: Laurents fell in love with Cavenaugh during the out-of-town tryout. He protected him from the producers, who wanted to fire him. When Cavenaugh told him he was getting married, Laurents tried to dissuade him. He refused to attend the wedding and peppered him with vicious e-mails while he was on his honeymoon.
A friend of Cavenaugh’s says: “Arthur played so many psychological games with Matt. It was sick.”
Arthur was an engaging guest on “Theater Talk,” which I co-host. And of course I admire his work — “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “The Way We Were” and his memoirs, including this one.
But if my epitaph should read, “Here Lies,” his should read, “Here Corrodes.”