Book Review: Fosse by Sam Wasson

Asking ‘What is filth?’ Biographer tells who is Bob Fosse

Who was Bob Fosse? Author Sam Wasson delves into the details in an exhaustive biography. He comes up with a dark and fascinating portrait. Pointing to one of the 20th century’s most influential artist’s fast, sharp and sensuous movement as “part of [the] dance vocabulary” that expresses Fosse’s philosophy, the biographer unfurls an enveloping, intellectual mystery. Centering upon Fosse’s untold and unknown abuse at the hands—and arms and legs—of skanky women and parental neglect, Wasson plunges into darkness to locate and mine Fosse’s goodness and lightness within. “What is filth?” the writer asks. Fosse provides an unforgettable answer.

The facts of Fosse’s life foretell his astonishing achievements. Wasson rightly regards his subject with what’s clearly an obsession born of thoughtful fascination. Fosse is not flawless, however, the seriousness with which he addresses the topic yields penetrating insights and disclosures. The range covers Fosse from his naval service and personal and professional partnership with Gwen Verdon (Sweet Charity), mother of his only child, to prospects of working with Robert Benton (Kramer Vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart), filming Stork Club stories and adapting Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat.

Chicago-bred Bob Fosse’s striking dance philosophy developed early as a boy. Dancing in sleazy Vaudeville and burlesque-tinged stage routines, Fosse graduated to movies, television and, especially, Broadway. Fosse lived and died in New York City. Along the way, he admired Fred Astaire, whom he met on a Hollywood studio lot—“Hiya, Foss!” his hero called out—competed with Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) and was asked to make a ballet for Robert Joffrey. As the dancer (Pal Joey) became a choreographer, channeling the self-destructive habits bred by his damage, such as chronic sex with female dancers, booze, drugs and cigarettes, into his shows, Bob Fosse created some of the era’s most powerful works of art: Dancin’, displaying the relentless practice and art of dance; The Pajama Game, demonstrating a labor strike; Pippin, underscoring the pressure to self-immolate; Lenny, showing the self-destructive comic fighting censorship; Star 80, dramatizing the Hollywood-felled centerfold; All That Jazz, showcasing Fosse’s own self-discovery from his death during surgery; Chicago, skewering America’s glamorization of crime, depravity and cynicism; and his biting, chilling depiction of National Socialism mixed with hedonism—Cabaret. These and more Fosse made to music, sensuality and dance.

The results are breathtaking. Michael Jackson owned and studied Fosse’s complete works and wanted to hire Fosse to direct his “Thriller” music video, which Fosse declined, though he almost directed what eventually became Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” film. Fosse danced for Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain). He was best friends with Paddy Chayefsky (Network, Marty), whose work mirrored Fosse’s (and vice versa). He loved minstrel shows. He studied Abe Lincoln and Clarence Darrow as well as George Balanchine. He watched sports on TV—Fosse “loved the Mets, the losers...[h]e admired the difficulty of being an athlete—the training, the discipline, the talent”—and he won an Emmy, Tony and Oscar for work in a single year (Fosse staged and choreographed How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which won 1962’s Pulitzer Prize for drama). Working with audio designer Phil Ramone, Fosse filmed every breath by 23-year-old Liza Minnelli, who was putting on a show in the Waldorf-Astoria’s Empire Room, in a live performance before “an invitation-only, black-tie audience at the Lyceum Theater”—putting cameras in the wings, aisles, balcony, upper boxes and backstage—on 16-millimeter film. His orgiastic “Red Light Ballet” from New Girl in Town with Verdon was banned in New England (police showed up with padlocks). Thanks especially to one of his true loves, the late dancer Ann Reinking (Pippin, All That Jazz, Annie), it becomes apparent that sexualization during childhood—which amounts to abuse by women; “[s]cared and alone, he did as he was told”; “Come on, Bobby...”—Fosse’s whole, amazing life is an astounding triumph of the good. Fosse took control. Masterfully, he raised himself up from depravity. 

Fosse shows this in spades. At one of many revolving pivot points, Fosse’s back was against a deadline. Like his dancing, Bob Fosse turned the challenge inward:

I finally [get] to the point where I’d say to myself: ‘I’m the only person here. I’m alone. And I’m just going to stand here until something comes to me.’” He worked through the nights and napped in the days, burning through cigarettes—as many as six or seven packs a day—and something always did come to him. Fosse worked out every part of every dance all on his own.” 

Sam Wasson sometimes infers or implies more than is merited in a given case. For example, his speculation about Fosse’s thoughts can border on psychologizing. Wasson gets bogged down in minutiae. An entire chapter probably could’ve been cut from this large volume, published in 2013. Nevertheless, he examines deep and crucial aspects of Bob Fosse’s work. In one instance, he writes about an artist who hauled

in a trunk of percussion instruments to keep Fosse in the mood. Next to the piano, he kept a vertical stand of bells, a ratchet, and woodblocks in a half a dozen pitches. “Most choreographers would not be able to hear the difference between a piccolo woodblock and a bass woodblock, but Bob would know every time.” When Fosse connected to the rhythm, he could achieve a musical clarity uncommon to many professionals. Harrell was floored. “He’d say, ‘Put a wrist flick on the sixth count of the seven-eight of section C. I want a little ting right there.’” Micromanaging bodies and frames of film had been his prerogative for years, but excising the composer from the process, he could sweat the caesuras and sixteenth notes without objection.”

Besides letting his curiosity dovetail into a meaningful, fruitful investigation of Fosse’s filmmaking, choreography and dance, Wasson writes with humor, relevance and intelligence. Breaking down Agnes De Mille’s dream ballet in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s brilliantly innovative Oklahoma! he notes that the sequence established that “the choreographer had a point of view: her own. And it was about something. As the ballet’s title implies, Laurey makes up her mind in the dance, so the number is, like any good dramatic scene, an essential and revelatory part of the musical.” 

Wasson knows when to let Fosse speak for himself. About critics’ backlash against his scathing followup to 1972’s Oscar-winning Cabaret, Chicago (later adapted into a movie, which won 2002’s Best Picture Academy Award), Fosse said: 

I’m afraid this show is my image of America right now. It’s about the lack of justice in our legal procedure: how justice and law hardly function at all. It makes some interesting comments on the press, about the way they make celebrities out of killers, exploiting and glamorizing criminals. When you think of people like [Charles] Manson, or see Mafia killers publishing their autobiographies, you can see that Chicago isn’t just about the 20s. It says some things that are pertinent for today, for now.” The poor reviews he regarded as vendettas against him. “I’m a target now,” he said, “because of the success I’ve had in the past few years. People tend to want to knock a target down.”

What some sought to take down had been skillfully raised and built up—often aided by the women in Bob Fosse’s life. “[M]ore than knowing how to move,” Wasson observes, “[Gwen] Verdon knew how Bob Fosse thought, which elevated her above assistant, above collaborator, into a sort of creative cohabitant...Looking at Fosse, she could see it wasn’t her dancing he was frowning at but himself, at what he wasn’t doing, what he couldn’t do, or what he’d done so many times before.”

“To Bob, the steps were dialogue,” Ann Reinking explained. “He liked dancers who knew how to speak them, or even add something of themselves. Dance per se is only one part of a great dancer.” Really, Reinking, who obviously, deeply loved and ultimately chose to become emancipated from Fosse, offers the most cogent thoughts and insights—especially about Fosse’s dance legacy. “Bob is more sensual than sexual,” Reinking said. “It’s one of the biggest mistakes I see when people do Bob’s work.”

As a former professional dancer and choreographer, I know this is true. One of Fosse’s insights comes from a collaborator who notes that “everything that Fosse did was deliberate. If you look at his choreography you’ll see there isn’t a movement that wasn’t deliberate. Every pinkie move, every pointed toe is deliberate. I don’t think he behaved in a manner outside of how he choreographed.” The gentleman, whom Fosse may have betrayed or undermined, adds: “I don’t believe he knew how to be a human being.”

There’s wisdom in this thought and not merely about Fosse, the artist or the successful artist—isn’t there? Fosse as biography is, as I wrote, a literary portrait. Whether it’s definitive is debatable. Read Fosse and judge for yourself—particularly if you care about fine arts, theater, plays, movies, television, music, life—even TV commercials, which Fosse also pioneered—and dance. If you care, you, too, may revel in the anguished secrets, lessons and psychological-philosophical underpinnings of what Fosse’s admiring biographer describes as a “new, jazzy vernacular, American based, with a sly sense of humor.” This also sums up Sam Wasson’s crackling, entertaining Fosse. And it captures Fosse, who reimagined damage as a diamond mine of pictures, shows and stories that stimulate the senses and challenge one to think about what is frankness—and what is filth.