Back to Home > Entertainment > Tuesday, Mar 21, 2006 Celebrities email this print this '); '); ... the best free show' in N

Morbid? Perhaps, but the celebrity death watch is an honored rite here, where part of being a New Yorker is basking in the radiant light of the city's galaxy of stars.

When a luminary dies, New Yorkers pack churches, synagogues or theaters to say goodbye and to catch what Greene calls "the best free show in town."

Metropolitan Opera star Robert Merrill's "was like a Broadway show. ... Rudolph Giuliani spoke. Leontyne Price sang," Greene said. "At Alan King's service, Billy Crystal did the eulogy. Need I say more?"

Some celebrities have so many devotees - actor and civil-rights activist Ossie Davis, for one - that the New York Police Department sends officers to control crowds and traffic.

"There have been so many remarkable moments at these things," Marvin Hunter, said, hoisting his backpack, as he stood in line to get into a Lincoln Center service for Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

There was Liza Minelli singing "New York, New York" at the November 2004 memorial service for composer Fred Ebb, who wrote the anthem for this city and for strivers everywhere.

And who could forget playwright Terrence McNally ("Kiss of the Spider Woman") asking at Ebb's service: "What do you say about a homophobic, anti-Semitic gay Jew?"

At bandleader Skitch Henderson's February service at Carnegie Hall, Kitty Carlisle Hart sang a pitch-perfect, plaintive version of Irving Berlin's "Always." In her bold red dress and matching lipstick, she proved that you can be 95 years old, have legs like Chita Rivera's and deserve your own cabaret show at Feinstein's, a popular nightclub.

At last Monday's service for Wasserstein, Cathy Hunter said the palpable weight of collective grief in the theater stayed with her. Beloved for her warmth and sense of humor, Wasserstein died at age 55, leaving behind a 6-year-old daughter.

Stanley Tannen, founder of a program called Toward International Peace Through the Arts, organized a service on the one-year anniversary of Arthur Miller's death. Tannen believes the playwright's ideals represent those of his organization.

"It's not Willy Loman alone to whom attention must be paid," Tannen said, quoting the best-known line from Miller's play "Death of a Salesman."

"It's all the Willy Lomans in the world. Attention must be paid to people who are dying of AIDS and of famines all over the world, so Arthur Miller is to me a great quintessential international artist."

In order to pack the Feb. 10 service, which featured performances by actors Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson and Tony LoBianco, Tannen publicized the program at senior citizens' centers.

"60 Minutes" reporter Mike Wallace, who went to the University of Michigan with Miller, attended. Only four days earlier, he had attended Skitch Henderson's service.

Stars know their roles. So does the audience. New Yorkers have perfected the art of spying on celebrities while acting blase. As a group, they probably have the world's most well-developed peripheral vision.

Anywhere else, Seldes might go unnoticed, but here, generations of theatergoers can spot a Tony-Award winner (Seldes won in 1967 for Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance") as easily as if she were Paris Hilton.

The gravity of a memorial services does not stop Greene from playing critic. At one tribute, when an actor forgot her lines and abruptly sat down off stage, Greene elbowed a companion and said, "Get the hook!"

She started attending memorial services to keep herself busy after her husband died. Her friends found it strange at first but now often go with her.

"It's interesting because these people become human beings, not just icons," she said. "When we know someone died, my friends laugh. We say, `Oh, we have something to go to.'"

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