I was close to Florence Henderson for over thirty years, both as a friend and musical collaborator. I arranged and/or conductor for her countless times, and we spent the last ten years touring the country together with her one-woman show, All The Lives of Me. I was honored when her long time manager Kayla Pressman and her agent, Rich Aronstein asked me to co-produce a celebratory tribute to her extraordinary life and career, a career spanning over sixty years! We organized a tribute to Florence on February 20, 2017 at the Music Box Theater on Broadway; an incredible line-up of friends and colleagues came to perform and pay tribute: Whoopie Goldberg, Alan Cumming, Michael Feinstein, Chita Rivera, Bruce Vilanch, Pretty Yende, Judy Gold and the list went on. It was a wonderful show and I think Florence would have loved it.
When Florence and I did All the Lives of Me, instead of having a stage manager introduce her over the loud speaker, she preferred me, the musical director, to come out and tell the story about how we met. She always laughed at this particular story, I suppose, because it was so true.
I opened the tribute at the Music Box and told that same story. I hope it’s what she would have wanted.
I grew up in the bowels of Brooklyn, long before Brooklyn was hip or cool. I had a very sad, unhappy childhood. But I did have one bright spot in my life: I had this fantastic collection of Original Broadway Cast Albums; those cast albums were my friends. While the other kids were playing stoopball and stickball, I was in my bedroom alphabetizing my cast albums. Sometimes I would alphabetize them by show; if I were feeling very avant guard, it would be by producer or star. If I had a particularly awful fight with my parents, I would alphabetize them by costume designer. That would show them.
At the same time I was doing this, there was an amazing show on television that everyone in the country was watching—certainly everyone my age or a few years older or younger—about this extended family. I would be glued to the TV every Friday night—transfixed— like everyone else.
Suddenly, about three weeks into the series I realized something remarkable, or at least something I thought was remarkable: the woman, the mother on that wonderful show, was also singing on a half dozen of my favorite cast albums. Now that was a great epiphany for a sensitive ten-year old boy in Brooklyn. A performer could do Broadway and then TV. I don’t know why I was so startled. I guess it was because I could never imagine a different side of a TV character, especially such a believable character.
After this realization I would pretend that she’d come over to my bedroom after the show on Friday and do a private concert. Just for me. Instead of watching The Partridge Family, I had a concert of Richard Rodgers, Noel Coward, Harold Rome. And I was happy. That was my childhood.
Now fast forward about ten or twelve years; I was working professionally, doing a lot of television myself, and I heard that this particular woman was going to be a guest star on the show I was conducting. Of course, I was very excited to meet her. So at rehearsal, I saw her across the room and I couldn’t contain myself; I ran over to attack her.
She saw this baby-boomer coming to her; she girded her loins because she knew, or thought she knew, what I was going to talk about; the inevitable Greg, and Peter, and Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.
But no. I wanted to talk about her Broadway career, and all the shows she was in, and the composers she worked with, and the directors, the producers, and yes, even the costume designers.
We bonded then and there, in a very profound way, over my love for Broadway and of course, her love for Broadway. And we have been friends ever since.
I realized this just yesterday: She has been in our collective consciousness, the whole world’s consciousness, for over sixty years. That’s an incredible achievement and tribute to this amazing woman.
So without any further ado, I’d like to introduce a “very lovely lady,” both inside and out, Miss Florence Henderson.
Florence would enter to rapturous applause looking exactly as she did on The Brady Brunch. I would take my place at the piano, and we’d do our show. I wish we were still doing it. I miss her.