By Harry Haun
05 Oct 2009

Bearing witness to the opening-night testimony were Jane Fonda, Harvey Keitel, Patti LuPone, playwright Terrence McNally (revved up, coming from a runthrough of next month's Broadway revival of Ragtime, which is being co-produced by his life-partner, Tom Kirdahy), Tovah Feldshuh, TCM host Robert Osborne (who has shot 30 movie intros with Fisher for "The Essentials" series and flew in from a Seattle Film Festival especially for her opening), Debra Monk, three-week-old honeymooners (and radiating it!) Kathleen Marshall and Scott Landis, actor/songwriter/fledgling cook Jeff Blumenkrantz ("Cooking is my most fun project right now. I'm cooking my way through a Martha Stewart cookbook, like 'Julie & Julia,' and blogging about it. Her show found my blog, and I may be on her show cooking with her at some point this month or next month."), Boyd Gaines, director-designer Tony Walton (looking forward to directing Melissa Ericco as Shaw's Candida at the Irish Rep after the first of the year), Justin Bond, playwright John Weidman, directors Walter (Chicago) Bobbie and Jason (Shrek) Moore, New Group honcho Scott Elliott (drumbeating for his upcoming Kenneth Lonergan play with Matthew Broderick, The Starry Messenger), Craig Bierko, Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez) and his new lyricist, wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez (currently collaborating on an original Roundabout musical called Up Here, "a romantic comedy with a twist" that will get a reading at the end of this month), Speech & Debate's Stephen Karam, Jim Dale (plotting a new one-man show, called Still Carrying On), Martha Plimpton, former (and longest-running) Phantom Howard McGillin, lyricist-director David Zippel, Byron Jennings and Carolyn McCormick, Stephen Lang (with two big movies on the horizon, "Avatar" and "The Men Who Stare at Goats"), Jefferson Mays, director Mark Brokaw, legendary composer John Kander, Salman Rushdie (who described himself as "an old, old friend of Carrie's"), Griffin Dunne, conductor Paul Gemignani, Mario Cantone and a whole Bye Bye Birdie contingent (Gina Gershon, director Bobby Longbottom, Bill Irwin, composer Charles Strouse, Dee Hoty and Jayne Houdyshell).

Since I wasn't invited to the big post-party bash at Amalia a block away, this seems as good a time as any to go into how long Carrie and I go back. If this is news to her, that's because she was an embryo at the time.

One Sunday morning in early 1956 — even then, I was in journalism — I had opened my bundles of The Dallas Morning News and was methodically doubling them up and folding them for my paper route when, about 4:30 AM, I heard on the car radio that Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds would be leaving Love Field for California in a couple of hours. They had been flying back from his singing engagement in Miami the night before when she became ill en route, and they opted for a layover in Big D.

I flew through the paper route that morning, got to the airport while their plane was still on the runway and, somehow, with a lot of teen-angst urgency, brazenly talked my way on board to get their autographs. A stewardess acted as a go-between and got their permission. The Golden Couple, unfazed by this pesky intrusion, received me graciously, dashed off their best wishes and John Hancocks and smiled an awful lot.

The Polaroid is forever in my head, holding up beautifully — better than all of us. Later I learned it was during that Dallas stopover that Debbie discovered she was pregnant with Carrie. There has been, to understate, a lot of sturm und drang over the dam since, but Carrie has come out on the other side a sunny survivor who has learned to laugh at her life and share that laughter with others.

In 16 days, she turns 53 and has much to celebrate. Long may she rage . . .