(Green’s article appeared in The New York Times, 5/14; via Pam Green.)
In “The Legacy,” an 11 o’clock number from the 1978 Broadway musical “On the Twentieth Century,” the egomaniacal producer Oscar Jaffee is at the end of his theatrical rope. Fearing financial ruin, he whips out a gun, announces he’s going to kill himself and offers to bequeath his collection of theater memorabilia to his henchmen:
To you I leave my Japanese kimono
To you I leave my cane and spats
To you I leave my worn out record of “Ramona”
To you I leave my gravy-stained cravats