From Bensonhurst to Broadway to…Milford Harvey Fierstein

He’splayed Tevye in Fiddler, Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, and more recently, Bella Abzug in Bella Bella. He has not only acted in live theater, movies, and television, he’s written numerous plays and musicals, sung in many of his award-winning roles, has done voices for several animated films and television shows, and has even written a children’s book. Whew!

So, what a treat it was to interview him about his recent project—a New York Times bestseller memoir, titled I Was Better Last Night, which he will be discussing at the 2023 Milford Readers and Writers Festival in September.

As expected, the voice on the other end of the line was unmistakable. It’s not due to smoking as many people assume, although he did do some of that long ago. It’s due to genetics—he has an “overdeveloped vestibular fold in his vocal chords,” giving him a sort of “double voice.”

I told him I felt like I knew him after reading the book. It’s so conversational and intimate. “Yes,” he says. “So many memoirs are dictated and then edited or written by someone else. It’s as if they are not talking to the reader.” Of course, he has the built-in advantage of being a stellar writer, not to mention the fact that he is enormously funny and has had an amazing life.

The book was a child of Covid-19. Things were shut down. There was no theater, there were no new productions to work on. It was a propitious time to write a book. And what a book! It’s honest. It’s readable. There’s pathos and humor. He was present through the early days of experimental theater in New York. He witnessed the scourge of the AIDS epidemic. He struggled financially and put his considerable energy into creating cutting-edge works and performances. He was who he was, and is who he is. Sui generis. (Latin for unique; one-ofa-kind.)

I ask him, “What was your process in writing this book? How did you handle writing about people who are still alive?” He tells me, “I asked everyone if I could use their names. If they wanted me to change their names, I did in a few cases. Most were willing to let me write about them and answered with ‘Great.’”

Fierstein has divided the memoir into 59 shortish chapters or sections, which begin with an early memory of a school production of Sleeping Beauty in which he lusted after the part of the evil witch but had to suffer taking the larger, more important role of the king. (His good friend Philomena Marano got to play the evil witch, which meant she got to have “green skin, red lips and long black fingernails.”) It seems he always had his predilections firmly in place.

His family was a typical middle-class Jewish family, living in Brooklyn. His father, Irving, was a manufacturer of handkerchiefs, and his mother, Jackie, was a housewife who loved education and the arts. She volunteered at the school library, eventually being “allowed” by her husband to at last finish her high school diploma and work her way up to get her master’s degree in library science. He quips, “Is there any reason to mention that she earned much better college grades than I did?”

His mother became a full-time librarian at Jackie Robinson Junior High. Harvey and his slightly older brother, Ron, attended many Broadway musicals and were exposed to the arts section in the New York Times through her.

Fierstein writes about being “artistic,” which back then was a euphemism for being gay. Attending the vocational High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, he came to realize that he was gay, which was no surprise to his good friend, Michael, nor to one of his teachers. He confides in the book, “What the hell? Why was I the last to get the memo?”

A major event in Harvey’s life around this time was his association with a small theater company called the Gallery Players. The mom of his friends Lauren and Jill was starting a community theater in Flatbush. He was asked to help make posters and, along with Michael, wound up working on lights, pulling the curtain, painting sets, and generally doing “grunt kind of stuff.” When auditions for Our Town rolled around, they both auditioned for roles as brothers and, as Fierstein relates, “Obviously, I got the bigger role, or I wouldn’t be telling this story.”

It’s heartening to see how Fierstein was able to juggle school along with his interest in the theater. He had to keep his parents somewhat placated as they were naturally concerned about his future.

In 1971, when he was seventeen, he saw an ad for an open casting call for a play by Andy Warhol. “I wanted to meet him,” he says. So he found his way down to East Fourth Street, where none other than Ellen Stewart of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club directed him to “Go bebe. Get on in.” Warhol wasn’t there, but the director and creator, Tony Ingrassia, was.

Fierstein proceeded to audition with the balcony scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, not your usual experimental theater fare. He relates, “They howled. Howled! I pushed on….And I got a role in the show.” The dialogue consisted of bits of phone calls from Factory-regular Bridget Berlin spliced together from tapes. It was titled Pork, since Warhol referred to her as Bridget Pork. “It was a very avant-garde play,” he says.

Fierstein wound up playing a character in drag—his first, but not his last time in a dress and wig. The play went to London after the New York run, but he was too young to go. He wound up taking a drama counselor position at a summer camp, which he quit almost immediately.

The association with Ellen Stewart, “who believed in me and pushed me,” and her theater eventually led to new friends, such as Ronald and Harvey Tavel, Donald L. Brooks, and others. Harvey Tavel was responsible for encouraging Fierstein to write something. “You act in all of these shows, most of which aren’t very good. I’m sure, if you tried, you could do as well. You’re smart, You’re funny….” The result was In Search of the Cobra Jewels, and Harvey Fierstein the writer was born.

Most people will know about Fierstein’s big hits, such as his Torch Song Trilogy, both as a play and also a film, but his memoir gives us the birthing story. Art doesn’t just happen. So it’s wonderful to get the who, what, where, how, and why. We get the backstories behind Hairspray, La Cage Aux Folles, and his Kinky Boots collaboration with Cyndi Lauper. We find out how he came to star in Fiddler on the Roof and write an update of The Wiz and then Funny Girl. These stories also touch on the many Tony, Emmy, Drama League Award nominations or wins he’s had, both as an actor and a writer.

The tireless energy he gave to his projects is dizzying. I had a hard time choosing from the fascinating gems he has written about. (I’ve left out so much!) He’s performed all over. He seems to know everybody.

The memoir takes us through Fierstein’s many relationships and heartaches. He talks about the AIDS crisis and the terrible losses that ensued. He talks about closeted celebrities and how they “collected the big checks, leaving the struggle for our rights to others.”

Of course, his life has not been all glitter, fun, applause, and pure acceptance for who he is. We learn that his relationship with his mother wasn’t always easy. His coming-out story to his parents is quite poignant. He had to have the courage to be who he was. Period. A photo of a sign in the book reads, “Accept No One’s Definition of Your Life; Define Yourself.—Harvey Fierstein.” And he has.

We are given a very honest accounting of how Fierstein became sober, as well as a harrowing experience of open heart surgery in 2015.

Recently, his timely play, Casa Valentina, was produced at the Provincetown Playhouse. Written thirteen years ago, it is based on an actual weekend spot in the Catskills where in the 1950s to the 1970s, men—some of them heterosexual—would dress up and “be the girls within” for a few days in a safe, supportive, environment. You couldn’t lump them all into a single category such as “gay,” “transvestite,” or “cross-dresser.” As Fierstein explains in the book, “I came to one dependable and certain conclusion: there is no such thing as normal.”

“So what are you working on now?” I query. “Well, there’s a writer’s strike on, so I’m taking a break from that. Funny Girl is on Broadway through September 4th…that’s been an adventure. And Newsies and Kinky Boots are touring….

“We might be bringing an insane production of La Cage from Berlin to New York in 2025. It’ll be sung in German!…and I recently went to the 20th anniversary party for Hairspray at 54 Below. I drove in, and, as I went down the stairs, I said to myself, ‘This is a stupid idea.’ I went down anyway, and 25 of the 37 people there got Covid, including me!”

Want more? Get the book and arrange for your ticket to the Milford Readers and Writers Festival. I have.

A Few Things You May Not Know about Harvey Fierstein

• His Wikipedia entry is 10 pages long. It will definitely make you feel lazy.

• He’s a huge animal lover and thanks every pet he’s ever “shared more than my bed” in his acknowledgments: Penny, Coco, Georges, Bubbie, Buster, Maggie, Butchie, Zach, Elvis, Little Shit, Lola, Big Boy, Samson, and Good Time Charlie Brown.

• Fierstein holds a BFA Degree in Art from Pratt Institute. They readied him to become an art teacher but… (Clearly that became a “road not taken.”)

• When he was in high school, his English teacher invited a friend to class, none other than Anais Nin. The teacher knew of Harvey’s interest in tarot cards, so she asked him to do Nin’s reading. Things became jumbled and “indecipherable” until he saw a vision of a red macaw. After telling them what had appeared to him, Nin interpreted it as a sign to return to South America and called him “a delight.”

• His signature begins with the ASL line drawing of a hand signing ILY, meaning I Love You. (No, it’s not a rabbit or anything off-color….)

• Fierstein is a dedicated quilter. His art and design abilities are reflected in his original designs. His theory is that quilts are the “best gifts ever.” Even if someone doesn’t particularly like them, they can “let the dogs sleep on them, or use them to collect leaves or throw them in the back of the car.” Check them out on his Facebook page.

• He keeps his Hirschfeld drawings on display in his… bathroom!

I Was Better Last Night is published by Alfred A. Knopf and is available in bookstores and online everywhere. See Harvey Fierstein at the 2023 Milford Readers & Writers Festival on Saturday, September 23rd, 2023, at the Milford Theater.