For the last decade of Bob Holiday's life,
webmaster Toni Collins phoned Bob on a weekly basis.
Here's a peek into one of their conversations, from May 2016.
TC: Hi Bob, it’s Toni. How are you today?
(I'd hear that big, booming voice)
BH: Heh, heh, heh, I’m still here!
(He answered me that way for ten years. Oh, how I'd love to hear that one more time!)
TC: I have news! Someone named Peter Filichia just wrote an article about you as Superman.
BH: He did?
TC: He sure did. He wrote a nice piece about you, the cast album, and the show.
BH: All these years later?
TC: I think there’s a lot of new interest because of the Fiftieth Anniversary of “It’s a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman"!
BH: Well, whaddya know. All these years …
TC: People haven’t forgotten you, Bob. And it looks like he got a lot of it from your book, Superman on Broadway.
BH: Really?
TC: Oh, look at this title:
“It’s Superman — Meaning Bob Holiday.”
BH: Aw, that’s great!
TC: Hey, he talks about your two-minute kiss with Mamie Van Doren! (Quoting the article) “Those two-minute kisses on stage in Wildcat between Mamie van Doren and her six-foot-four leading man Bob Holiday must be for real. Mamie is not that good an actress.”
BH: (Guffawed out loud.) “I remember that…”
(Did he mean the review, or the kiss? I was left to figure that out on my own.)
TC: (Quoting) "Joan Hotchkis was replaced by Patricia Marand, late of Wish You Were Here. Holiday confesses in the book that 'I have no memory why this was done.'”
BH: I really don’t. But Patty and I really got to be such good friends. I didn’t see her again for forty years. She said to me, “Where have you been? I looked for you!” Her husband and I really gave each other support when she died. He made sure I was kept in the loop.
TC: I know, I know.
BH: So what else does this guy say?
He talks a bit about why the show closed. It’s kind of cute.
BH: Cute?
TC: (Quoting) “Holiday was told he’d get the cover of Life, but lost it to Adam West, then playing Batman on TV. (In other words, fifty years before we had a movie called Batman v Superman, we had a previous tussle between them.)”
BH: Don’t know if I’m going to go see that one!
TC: He makes another really good point: “In those days, most adults went to the theater without their children. In order to spur kiddie attendance, Prince dropped the Monday evening performance in favor of a Thursday matinee.
BH: Yup, I remember that. But the kids, that’s why I did the show. I did it for the kids.
And with that, I invite you all to read Peter Filichia's article. Sony Records published the article because, yes, the cast album is still for sale, FIFTY years later!
Hope you enjoyed this little piece of history.
