One more time After more than 40 years of schlepping their music and their shtick and their cute-lovebird image around the globe, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are on their final tour.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 7/20/03
By MIKE BARRIS Special to the Press WESTBURY, N.Y. -- They have second homes all over the world: theaters from Milan, Italy, to Mashantucket, Conn., where the adulation of fans turns every concert into a homecoming.
But this time, when the grind of airports, hotel rooms and suitcase-style living is over, America's First Couple of Song will just go home.
Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are on their last tour.
After more than 40 years of schlepping their music and their shtick and their cute-lovebird image around the globe, the married couple and show- biz institution known simply as "Steve and Eydie" is coming off the road.
Late last year, Lawrence, 68, and Gorme, 71, announced they would stop touring after concluding one final, nostalgic swing around the United States.
They're ending an era by returning to places where they've attracted thousands in the past, like this suburban Long Island town. Some of the communities on their itinerary haven't heard from them for years.
Like the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.
On Thursday, Mr. and Mrs. Music will bring their blend of middle-of-the- road popular songs and bright repartee back to the Garden State venue one last time. They last played the arts center -- a regular New Jersey date for them, for years -- on Sept. 3, 1994.
This farewell concert is to "say thank you to all our friends and fans in New Jersey," Lawrence, who acts as a spokesman for the couple, says over the phone from his home in Las Vegas.The arts center, he says, has been "an important part of our past."
There was a time when Steve and Eydie played the arts center (then called the Garden State Arts Center), about every other year.
They did six concerts there during the 1984 season alone.
During the 1990s, however, Atlantic City, with its big casino-hotel showrooms, became the couple's primary New Jersey destination.
"We just started playing Atlantic City more," says Judy Tannen, Steve and Eydie's long-time manager.
"There is a kind of similarity between the venues," Tannen says. "They draw on the same audience."
Lawrence admits that he and Gorme were beginning to feel like alien beings among an increasing number of rock acts at the arts center. Their main audiences, after all, are in their 50s and 60s and older; some of their long-time fans have been following their career since the Golden Age of Television.
Their goodbye concert, as it turns out, will be sandwiched between shows by the rock festival tour Lollapalooza, July 23, and the heavy-metal band Iron Maiden, July 25.
The arts center itself has seen a lot of changes since Steve and Eydie's last visit.
A 1998 renovation expanded its capacity to 17,500 and transformed it into the largest amphitheater in the United States, at least five times larger than the venues they usually play.
The expansion program was part of the deal that saw the facility, on 400 acres at Exit 116 on the Garden State Parkway, renamed the PNC Bank Arts Center in 1996, and subsequently leased to a private operating group.
Lawrence says he was not aware of the arts-center renovations, until he learned of them from this reporter. However, he added, brightly: "We'll see if anyone shows up."
After the "One More for the Road" tour ends, late next year -- 17 cities are on the schedule, so far, through March 2004 -- Steve and Eydie will begin a life of semi-retirement.
They might occasionally perform with a symphony orchestra, or in a casino. They will continue to make recordings, although neither artist has a deal with a major U.S. record label. (Lawrence has released a new CD, "Steve Lawrence Sings Sinatra," on his own GL Music Co. label.)
They could still show up on television or in a movie. But there won't be any more one-night or two-night stands in far-flung locations, Lawrence promises.
Traveling half a year, every year, for more than four decades, has taken its toll.
The aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- lengthy waits in airports for pre-boarding security checks, and unexpected flight changes -- makes travel today 'laborious' and "difficult," Lawrence says.
"There was an expression (in show business) years ago, that getting there was half the fun," Lawrence says. "That's not so anymore."
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It's a fine May night here at the Westbury Music Fair, a cozy round theater with a revolving stage as its centerpiece.
Steve and Eydie are on stage, enjoying the last moments of a tumultuous welcome from the 2,742 people who have packed the house for their Westbury farewell show.
It's the first of what will be five straight sell-outs here. Steve, as always, is in his tux. Eydie's in a beige beaded gown. The orchestra goes into a Latin- flavored rendition of their opening song, "Together."
As they sing, "Wherever we go, whatever we do, we're gonna go through it together," it's clear that while Steve and Eydie are obviously older, they're still a very likable, real couple, who know how to put over a song.
He's still good-looking and laid-back. He speaks -- and sings -- so warmly, that you feel as if you already know him.
The cantor's son once known as Stephen Leibowitz of Brooklyn, N.Y., actually is in better voice than ever. His mellow baritone has a harder edge now than it did for many of his and Eydie's early hits.
When he's swinging hard, even on such intrinsically insipid fare as "I've Gotta Be Me," he invests the performance with so much infectious energy that he reminds you of the pugnacious swinger Frank Sinatra, his onetime touring partner, mentor and friend.
He's a dynamo, dancing around the stage and mixing off-color one-liners and Yiddishisms with the fervor of a Catskills comic. He seems to be having a great time -- and so is the audience.
Gorme, however, is fighting a bad back ("two ruptured discs," Lawrence tells the crowd) that has plagued her for some time. The former firecracker once known as Edith Gormezano of the Bronx, N.Y., is straining to hit notes she used to zoom past with ease.
She still has the brassy, brash sound that made her a pop diva years ago. But as she reaches for the climactic high note of their signature song, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," her pitch wavers. Noticeably.
Still, she battles on. Rather than playing it safe, Gorme courageously takes a solo turn. Despite the physical toll it takes, she defiantly delivers such crowd-pleasers as "What Did I Have That I Don't Have," "After You've Gone" and "If He Walked Into My Life," with effort.
Three-quarters of the way through the two-hour concert, she manages to break through the debilitating pain and grab the audience with a song from one of the several hit Spanish-language albums she has recorded.
Their individual talents notwithstanding, Lawrence and Gorme are here today because of their rare talent as a team.
They still artfully punctuate each other's lines in duets on "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and " 'S Wonderful." They still blend well on "Where Or When," the song they recorded with Sinatra on his 1994 "Duets II" CD.
They also know how to keep the audience entertained with breezy stage patter.
"You're the only thing I ever invested in that doubled, baby," Lawrence ribs Gorme about her weight gain.
"The last time you threw me down on the bed, it was because I was standing in front of the TV set," Gorme kids him back.
Their timing is fun to watch.
It's hard to tell whether they're inventing these zingers or are actually incorporating pieces of their 45-year life together into their repartee. The answer is probably a bit of both.
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Lawrence and Gorme first met as singers, sketch writers and performers on the Steve Allen-hosted "Tonight Show," in the mid-1950s.
Although they had separate singing careers, magic happened when they put their voices together. A romance began, and in 1957, they were married.
In 1960, to stay together, they began a double act. Their renown grew.
During the 1960s and '70s, it seemed you couldn't turn on the tube without seeing them on a variety show, or in a special, or in a guest-starring role in a series.
They were a regular attraction at legendary nightspots likethe Copacabana and the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Sands andSahara Hotels in Las Vegas.
They cranked out records, like "We Got Us," their first complete duet album, which won a Grammy award.
They had individual hits, too. Lawrence had a gold record (meaning at least 1 million units sold) with "Go Away Little Girl," in 1962. Gorme struck gold the following year, with "Blame It On The Bossa Nova."
They even had roles in Broadway shows, like "Golden Rainbow," amusical adaptation of the play, "Hole In the Head," which yielded the song,"I've Gotta Be Me," a hit for Sammy Davis Jr.
Today, however, the nightclubs mostly have disappeared, the TV variety show is virtually extinct, and major U.S. record labels cater to the more lucrative rock-music market. Broadway and Hollywood seem to have forgotten them.
Yet through the changes, the travel and the aging process, Lawrence and Gorme remain each other's best friends, two people who, by all accounts, genuinely enjoy each other's company.
In 1986, their devotion to each other helped them survive the numbing loss of their youngest son, a TV script writer and athlete who died at age 23 of what an autopsy found to be natural causes.
Lawrence and Gorme, who raised both of their sons on the road as youngsters, were overcome by grief. They didn't work for a year. "You don't survive this," Gorme told The New York Times in a 1992 interview, six years after the tragedy. "It doesn't get better, it gets worse."
Today, their shared troubles and triumphs seem to have enriched their craft. As the Westbury show ends, Lawrence steps over and gives his weary wife a quick peck on the lips. The gesture seems to say: Well done, my sweet trooper.
One last wave at the cheering crowd. Steve and Eydie disappear up the ramp.
Taking with them the last remnants of a show-business era. Homeward bound, together.
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STEVE LAWRENCE AND EYDIE GORME THE ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD TOUR 7:30 p.m. Thursday PNC Bank Arts Center Garden State Parkway, Exit 116, Holmdel $35-$75 (732) 335-8698 www.artscenter.com