Disneyland In New York — Howard Ashman

By Sarah Ashman Gillespie

In the musical Smile, Doria sings a heartbreaking song called Disneyland. Disneyland is Doria’s fantasy home. It is, she believes, her true home.

Ariel has a Disneyland – it is the place where they stay all day in the sun. So does Audrey, who dreams of a suburban tract home far, far from urban skid row. Belle’s is more amorphous – it’s that great, wide somewhere.

Howard, too, had a Disneyland. It was not in Anaheim, California nor was it a tract house in suburbia. Indeed, it was quite the opposite.

Howard’s Disneyland was New York City. Growing up in Baltimore, it was always a favorite destination.. As kids, our father would drive the station wagon through Delaware, stopping at our favorite rest stop and straight up the Jersey Turnpike to that shining city. We knew the four-hour ride was almost over when we began seeing billboards for Broadway shows.

When he got older, Howard would take the train up to the city himself. And later, after I learned to drive, we’d drive up together, taking turns at the wheel of Dad’s Plymouth, singing songs from one of the Broadway Cast albums we’d had bought at Korvette’s back home.

New York City was about theater but it was also about excitement. Everything was different there. I couldn’t figure out where people did such mundane things as buying groceries. It didn’t matter. Hipsters, then hippies, filled the Village. The subway felt dangerous and sophisticated. The people looked like they knew who they were and who they were was very interesting. The buzz was constant, as was the grime and the noise. It was magical.

I realize now that the city offered something more to Howard, it offered one of the few places in the country where a gay man could be himself – at least sometimes – and not be so constantly on guard. For our own reasons, to fill our own needs, we both knew New York would be home someday. It would become Howard’s Disneyland.

Howard’s route to New York was circuitous – a jaunt to Boston for freshman year in college, a few years amid the snow, mud and greenery of Vermont – a pit stop in Bloomington, Indiana for a graduate degree and finally, New York. He loved everything about it, immediately and whole-heartedly.

“I am so thrilled to be out of school, I can’t tell you. I hum, “Well, it’s you boy and you should know it. With each breath and every little movement, you show it,” on my way to the office. Yes, I have become the male Mary Tyler Moore. And wait til I have the time and space to tell you about my female boss, Ms. Louise Grant…”

I love that letter especially because even Howard was impressed to have a female boss. It was 1the early 70’s, things were changing, as they always do – as we always do.

Howard was young, not sure if he would have a theater career in New York but still, sure whatever career he had, it would be a New York one, “If I do well, something tells me that in ten years, I’ll have a very, very good career in publishing. That is, if I like it and they like me and all the other ifs. Like if there’s no depression. Anyway, after three (almost four) weeks of blood, misery and rejection, I finally got a job in a field I was genuinely excited about trying.”

But theater was always the goal.

“I’ve sent some scripts around and several people are reading Maggie right now. I’m not expecting much at the moment. I didn’t get into Lehman Engle’s lyricist’s workshop. BUT he seemed to like my stuff. They were short on composers and had to turn away many lyricists this year. Alas.”

And shortly after, he wrote with his big news, “I suppose Mom told you about the Direct Theater. It’s a small off-off Broadway theater that is running a new playwright’s festival this month, giving tiny productions to new scripts…Maggie and Mud Season are being done for one-night only on October 24. It’s an evening of Ashman…exciting, huh? I’m in heaven.”

Howard’s rent stub with daydream doodles of his billing for his first steps into New York theater

Howard’s trajectory wasn’t direct, nor was it easy. The Confirmation, his only fully produced two-act play enjoyed early success, a star-studded production at the McCarter and a one-city tour before it stumbled and jfell on its way to Broadway. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater hit a snag between off-off Broadway and Off Broadway. Then, at 29, Howard caught fire with Little Shop of Horrors, a show that burns bright to this day.

Howard’s love for New York burned, too. It took his most painful theatrical failure and his AIDS diagnosis in 1988, to make him leave. Life takes its turns, our Disneylands change, but Howard loved New York. It’s where he found himself, where he found true love, where he enjoyed his first great and most gratifying success. And New York, the shining city that is struggling now but will rise again someday, is where Howard said good bye.
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