Michelle Williams & Sam Rockwell as Gwen and Bob in the FX series Fosse/Verdon
away, and he would go away. She would
change the steps, fix the steps, make it so
that I could do it - and look good doing
it - to achieve the look that he wanted.
And then he would come back in and say,
“I don’t know what you just did. But yeah,
that’s right.”
Sherman: She understood how to translate
and communicate. Did your mom ever
talk about Marilyn Monroe or any of her
MGM days?
Fosse: She was on the movie sets from the
time she was a very little girl, because her
father was an electrician at MGM Studios.
In fact, that was a phrase that Michelle
Williams used to imitate my mother’s voice
before she would do a scene for FX. She
took it from some interview of my mother.
And you’d hear Michelle Williams chant-
ing back behind the scenes, “My father was
an electrician. We came from Culver City,
California. My father was an electrician…”
That’s how she would slide into her “Gwen
voice”... so, my mother was really used to
being on Hollywood musical sets and grew
up around all the stars, doing everything.
She had fun working, and she loved being
around creative people. I don’t know that
she ever wanted to be a Cyd Charisse or a
Marilyn Monroe. Sherman: And that’s a story he told later in
life in the musical, Pippin. Did your father
ever discuss that with you?
Sherman: But your dad dreamed of being
Fred Astaire, correct? Sherman: So how did that piece of
information come to be in the FX series?
Why is it your belief that that moment in
time was an important one in shaping him
as a human being?
Fosse: He did dream of being Fred Astaire.
After being part of “The Riff Brothers”, he
joined the Navy. He was very patriotic, and
he enlisted in World War II. Apparently
he was home after basic training, and his
dance teacher Fred Weaver contacted his
Sergeant and said, “You can’t send him
out. You can’t put him on active duty. He’s
really talented, and you can’t let anything
happen to him!” He was 17 years old!
He was put on entertainment duty and
kitchen duty. So he peeled potatoes and tap
danced. Joe Papp was also on entertain-
ment duty in the Navy with my father …
As a tap dancer in the Navy, my dad went
into a lot of hospitals - and that is shown in
the FX series. What a profound experience
that must have been.
Fosse: No.
Fosse: We [can] look at his work that came
after that. War and politics play a role in
Pippin. In Dancin’, there’s a whole patriotic
section and there’s a solo called, “When
Johnny Comes Marching Home” that Ann
Reinking originated, as well as a lost ballet
from “Hail The Conquering Hero” that
I’ve been told about by people who were in
it (who are now deceased). So, there was
that... And then he had this very soft place
in his heart for any kind of beggar on the
street. And you have to understand that
in the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of homeless
were Vietnam veterans. When my father
died, I remember taking all the pennies
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