Williamsburg resident Lora Lee Gayer shines in Roundabout’s Broadway production of ‘Holiday Inn,’ the new Irving Berlin musical
On a recent gray, chilly, autumn morning (more San Francisco in late July than New York in early October), I was seated at a cozy, postage stamp-size Williamsburg coffee shop on Metropolitan Avenue. Called The Sweatshop, and owned by a wryly affable group of Aussies, it appeared to be the perfect spot for me to interview Lora Lee Gayer, who lives in Williamsburg and is one of the stars of the Roundabout’s rapturous new production of Irving Berlin’s “Holiday Inn” at Studio 54. The only fly in the ointment was the noise: the jackhammer across the street at a construction site; the constant drone of lurching, lumbering semis going east and west on Metropolitan; and the shop’s background soundtrack of alt-rock. Would my iPhone be up to clearly recording the interview?
The night before, I had seen Gayer’s lovely performance as Linda Mason in “Holiday Inn.” This “New Irving Berlin Musical” is based on the 1942 Paramount film of the same name directed by Mark Sandrich (director of some of the most indelible Astaire and Rogers movies.) That film starred Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds. Halfway through the filming, which took place in Hollywood and Sonoma County (subbing for Connecticut), the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America entered World War II. The film premiered in February of 1942 at the Paramount Theatre in Times Square. It went on to become the highest grossing musical to that time.
“Holiday Inn” also introduced to worldwide audiences what is indisputably the most popular Christmas song ever written: “White Christmas.” Crosby’s version of the song is the bestselling single of all time, and other versions of the song have sold 150 million copies. Berlin, who was Jewish, had been worried that the song was second-rate and, in fact, initially “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” had been the hit song from the film. But by November of 1942, “White Christmas” was Number 1 on Billboard’s charts — and would stay there for 12 weeks running. Berlin needn’t have had any tsuris.