#joel rifkin

[realtsunekawaa]

When they use that blue ahh shirt 👅👅👅

[outofeverythingthisnamewasleft]

[droughtofapathy]

Cabaret's Shifting Lead Placement

Welcome to another rambling theatre history lesson with DroughtofApathy. Today we're going to examining the fascinating history of Cabaret's ever-changing lead roles.

Ground rule: Tony eligibility for Lead Actor/Actress is first determined by "above-the-title" billing in the show's opening night Playbill. It was a far stricter guideline in the past, as you'll see. These days, many lead roles aren't put above the title (ex. Hadestown, Kimberly Akimbo, etc.) but will be placed in lead categories either because it's obviously a lead, or because producers lobby for it. Conversely, actors can have "above-the-title" billing and be in featured roles, usually because they're major names like Angela Lansbury and Elaine Stritch, who were both Madame Armfeldt in the 2009/2011 revival of A Little Night Music. In which case, producers will usually submit them as featured.

When Cabaret opened on Broadway in 1966, Jill Haworth (Sally), Jack Gilford (Herr Schultz), and Bert Convey (Cliff) got top billing with Lotte Lenya (Fraulein Schneider) in the coveted "and" slot just below. Note who's missing. That's right. When the show premiered, Joel Grey (Emcee) was just a regular old featured role.

Left: opening night playbill billing. Right: post-Tony rebilling with Joel Grey's ascension.

At the 1967 Tonys, Jack Gilford (Herr Schultz) and Lotte Lenya (Fraulein Schneider) were nominated as Leading Actor/Actress, respectively, while Joel Grey and Edward Winter (Ernst Ludwig) were both in Featured. Jill Haworth (Sally) was not nominated, but would have been eligible for Lead as she had "above-the-title" billing. At the time, Joel Grey was just another working actor. Not so after Cabaret. His performance elevated both the role and his billing, thus transforming the Emcee into a Leading Role from then on.

Subsequent productions would focus more on Sally and the Emcee, while Schultz and Schneider (and the non-singing Cliff) would become featured roles. However, the "above the title" Tony ruling was far stricter back in the day, leading Sally (this time Alyson Reed) to once more be featured in the 1987 revival.

Left: opening night Playbill billing. Right: poster billing

In 1987, Joel Grey was given the sole "above-the-title" billing with Alyson Reed in the next featured spot. Though Sally was, like 1966, technically a lead role, she was nominated in featured at the Tonys that season. (Grey was not eligible as he was reprising his role.) In this production, Regina Resnik (Schneider) and Werner Klemperer (Schultz) both got fancy featured billing and nominations in their respective categories. As Cliff, Gregg Edelman got the "and" billing, but in this case it was less elevated than either Resnik or Klemperer (note the boxes). Edelman was still early-career at this point, and not yet a "name" but Cliff was still considered an elevated role in the company.

By 1998, however, the roles as we currently think of them had finally slotted into place. Alan Cumming (Emcee) won for Best Actor, Natasha Richardson (Sally) for Best Actress and Ron Rifkin (Schultz) for Featured Actor. Mary Louise Wilson (Schneider) was nominated in Featured Actress. Richardson also received left-side billing, as she was a larger name (arguably) than Cumming at the time.

Left: opening night Playbill billing. Right: lobby poster billing

But though nominations seemed to make sense, it still didn't jive with billing placement. In the 1998 production, Richardson, Cumming, and Rifkin all had "above-the-title" with Wilson in the featured "and" slot. Despite this placement, Rifkin went in for Featured. Producers can lobby the Tony committee for actor placement if they think it fitting, and these days we're a lot more fast-and-loose with the definitions. Note however, how Wilson has "above-the-title" billing in the lobby board. This was presumably a contractual renegotiation that happened post-Tonys. Note how Denis O'Hare (Ernst) and Michele Pawk (Kost) have their own line below John Benjamin Hickey (Cliff). All three were/are modest, but known, names in the theatre world, about equal to one another, at least at the time.

By 2014, the old couple (Schultz and Schneider) no longer would get top billing. Alan Cumming only built upon Joel Grey's foundation to fully elevate the Emcee role into the undisputed leading man, with Sally the star-vehicle leading lady. Between the 1998 and up until the recent revival, the older couple's story--and Cliff's importance--had taken a backseat.

Left: opening night Playbill billing. Right: poster billing.

In 2014, the revival won no Tonys, but was nominated for both Featured Actor and Actress (Danny Burstein and Linda Emond, respectively). Cumming was not eligible as, like Joel Grey before him, he was reprising his role. This time, with a Tony in his pocket, and a much bigger name than 16 years prior, he got left-side billing. Emond and Burstein received equal line billing below the title, with Emond getting the left. Though they were roughly equal in the theatre world, and Burstein had a slight edge in terms of Tony noms, I'd guess Emond got the left owing to her larger screen presence/notoriety. In the poster, Bill Heck (Cliff) is left out of featured billing entirely, as are Aaron Krohn (Ernst) and Gayle Rankin (Kost).

Now we come to our latest revival, number four. Though it's still too early for nominations, we can assume Eddie Redmayne (Emcee) and Gayle Rankin (Sally) will be leads with all others featured. Historically, Schultz and Schneider are roles that receive nominations, and the Emcee a role that wins. Will that hold in a wildly over-crowded season?

Left: first preview Playbill insert. Right: billing poster outside the theater.

Once more deviating from past productions, the roles of Cliff (Ato Blankson-Wood), Ernst (Henry Gottfried), and Kost (Natascia Diaz) are plucked back out of the company to be given featured billing. This time, Steven Skybell (Schultz) is on even footing with Cliff, even slightly under with his right-side billing. This would be the least "elevated" billing any Schultz has ever gotten. Skybell is a respected theatre veteran but not quite a household name, even in theatre circles. Blankson-Wood, meanwhile, is a recent Tony nominee. It's all politics when it comes to billing.

Here, Bebe Neuwirth (Schneider) is given the coveted "and" poster billing, no surprise. Of the featured roles, she's inarguably the biggest name. A few decades ago, that might have been enough to get her above the title, but these days it's less common that a solidly featured role would get that (unless you're Patti LuPone in Company, and Bebe doesn't have quite the same sway or ego).

This, to me, seems like the most obvious case of industry politics and agent negotiation at play, and usually actors (and egos) aren't even involved in the conversation. Skybell and Neuwirth aren't on the same level, though their characters are. My guess here is that producers want to bill their sole two-time Tony winner separately, and Skybell's agents know he isn't big enough to dispute that.

Now, let's take a look at this marketing design. Redmayne's name is left-billed despite being above Rankin's head. While annoying for those of us audience members who might just see this as a design flaw, this is all contractual, negotiated to death. Redmayne also gets front-and-center positioning, while Rankin is in the background, off-center, but she gets left-side position, which isn't as minimizing as right-side would. Left-billing is given to the bigger name because English reads left to right. These are the kinds of things I think about when I see marketing ads and playbills.

[tccconfessionsfagg]

Gary Ridgway and Joel Rifkin were lowk cuties when they were younger.

Confession 3614

[cidnangarlond]

this is the seinfeld episode where elaine is dating a guy with the name joel rifkin. you know like the serial killer. she isn't dating the serial killer (that would happen in a seinfeld episode though wouldn't it) he just has the same name. forgot this episode aired roughly a year before oj simpson's murder trial and elaine was trying to convince joel to change his name to oj

[suitmann]

kinda happen with elaine when she goes and dates a dude named joel rifkin (a serial killer) and tries to get him to change his name to OJ rifkin. this was before OJ was a murderer. also this is very in character for jerry to do, wish this occurs in a dream

[transpondster]

Gary Indiana, writing for New York Magazine in 2004:

A differently eclectic crowd of theater people converged most nights on Phebe’s at Bowery and 4th, wired from performing at La MaMa or Theater for the New City. I met Cookie Mueller in Phebe’s, and fell in love with her on the spot. Cookie had featured in John Waters’s early films. She acted, designed clothes, and also wrote stories and a medical-advice column, “Ask Dr. Mueller.” In a strictly hedonistic way, Eileen’s Reno Bar was integral to the East Village community. A narrow pocket of surrealism on Second Avenue between 11th and 12th, its ceiling surfaced in plastic jade plant—brown plastic jade plant—Eileen’s had its flaccid nights of dead-room tone. But most evenings brought a steady influx of pre-op transsexuals, clueless walk-ins, bisexual drug dealers, garrulous drunks with a schizophrenic flair, Ricardo Montalban types from Europe lusting after chicks with dicks, and a few black-humored fags like myself, who much preferred the Reno Bar’s nightly Halloween party to clocking the aging process in some drippy gay bar. Eileen’s had the carnal whoop-de-do of a fetish convention. It was also full of crack whores working the track on 11th Street. I once took a bar stool beside an enormous black woman I mistook for a drugstore cashier who’d rung up my toothpaste purchase that afternoon, which led to a dyslexic exchange of misunderstandings; I realized my mistake when she leaned close and declared in a tragic whisper: “You know something? My clitoris is as big as a penis. You know what I’m saying? My clitoris is the same size as a penis. I’m talking about a big penis. Can you understand what that makes me feel like?” One Eileen’s habitué named Joel wore a walrusy mustache and the woebegone, sagging face of the chronically defeated. His spot was the last bar stool in back, where a hideous painting, widely assumed to portray the Reno Bar’s ancient founder, hovered behind Joel’s thinning hair. (There was, and still is, an actual Eileen: I saw her a few weeks ago on the Third Avenue uptown bus. Older, but ever a star.) My friend Louie Laurita and I felt sad for Joel. Laconic and melancholy as he bolted down five or six G&Ts, Joel would haul himself out to his pickup truck and we’d see it hopelessly circling around at five miles an hour, until Joel returned, slumped and abashed-looking, to drown his abjection in more gin. “Poor Joel,” Louie habitually said. “Can’t even get laid by a whore.” Around the time when the Barnes & Noble megastore opened on Astor Place, we learned Joel’s last name was Rifkin. Over the years, he had strangled seventeen prostitutes in that truck. Here we’d been trying to cheer the guy up, and he’d actually been having the time of his life.

[marta-bee]

In "Well, That Aged Well"....

In the Seinfeld episode "The Masseuse," Elaine is dating a very nice man who happens to share names with Joel Rifkin the serial killer. She encourages him to change his name, picking several possibilities from the sports pages. The scene ends with O.J. Simpson.

And then....

Life: what a kidder.

[parodipress]

Joel Rifkin

Joel Rifkin is a serial killer who went on a string of murders in New York in the 1990s. In 1989, he killed his first woman. He discarded the bodies of his victims so they could not be identified. His reign of terror came to an end in June 1993, when Rifkin was pulled over by the police who discovered a corpse in his car. He was convicted of murder the following year and later pleaded guilty to additional counts of murders.

[realtsunekawaa]

I don't wanna be edgy underage teen who worships for serial killers

[brilliber]

HISTORIAS de TERROR del la INTERNET

¿Qué se esconde tras la apariencia de un simple jardinero? ¿Qué secretos oculta su camioneta Mazda? ¿Qué horrores cometió en su casa de Long Island? En este video te contamos la escalofriante historia de Joel Rifkin, el destripador de Nueva York, que fue capturado con un cadáver en su vehículo gracias a una infracción de tráfico. Prepárate para conocer los detalles más macabros de sus crímenes, sus víctimas y su juicio. No te pierdas este episodio de Asesinos Seriales con Bing.

[abriefingwithmichael]

❝A woman that hates me this much comes along once in a lifetime.❞

Lisa Edelstein is back for her second episode as Karen. Jennifer Coolidge also guest stars. This is her first IMDb credit.

All the storylines are good, but none really take off.

8/10

[lareinemarie]

The Madonna/Magdalene Ideology in how society view victims of serial murder in America

The iconography of Mary and Magdalene, stereotypically depicted as the "madonna/magdalene by Italian Renaissance artists, Fra Filippo Lippi and Carlo Crivelli.  Most men and women have dualistic view toward women, then and now.  Today, we use the terms good women and bad women. Or, to be precise,  good mother/girl next door and loose woman/party girl

In the 1990s media depiction of serial murder victims, the media used photos of serial murder victims.  The media used such photos either to elicit sympathy and compassion or that of sensation, shock, and scornful judgment.  The Madonna/whore complex is used in such depictions of women, victim or not.

Miss Betty Jean Baucom, beautiful young lady victim of serial killer Henry Louis Wallace.  Her graduation photo is used to evoke sympathy and compassion.  She's depicted in blue, the traditional color of the Madonna.

Miss Jenny Soto, very beautiful Black Latina victim of serial killer Joel Rifkin.  Mainstream media relentlessly used her picture to disparage her reputation.  Margarita Gonzalez, Jenny Soto’s mother, was angry with the media’s depiction of her daughter and complained about the sensational headline in the media after Joel's confession in June 1993.

American society have a Madonna/whore ideology when it comes to women. From historic times, societies in general always label women as either good, chaste women, wives, mothers, nuns or they're loose women, prostitutes, and mistresses/courtesans.  Renaissance artists reflected societal views of women through the Madonna paintings by famous artists Lippi, Botticelli, Raphael, etc., or nude paintings such as the Venus of Urbino by Titian.   In American society, the Madonna/whore ideology is strong, tinged with class and race components.  White and other non black women, especially East Asian women are considered the "sacred Madonna" while Black, Native American, and Latinas, especially Caribbean Latinas are labeled as "bad women" deserving of their fate.  This view is far more widespread as the lack of coverage, the disparaging remarks in and out of cyberspace, and general indifference on the part of law enforcement to solve murders of Black women in America and Indigenous women in Canada. The Madonna/whore mythology were used in how the public reacted to murders of Black women, the Heidnik, the Larry Bright, Gary Ridgeway, the Sowell case and the Henry Louis Wallace cases in particular. For example, the Cleveland convenience store owner showed sympathy to Anthony Sowell, whom he said in the Unseen interview that "he took out the garbage".  That's a blatantly hateful remark.  He saw the victims, living and dead, of Anthony Sowell as being "worthless" and "undeserving" to him. He labelled the victims as worthless drug addicted and prostitutes. Sowell himself justified the murders by labelling the women as being less than perfect. Again using the Madonna/whore ideology was at work in connection to the inaction on the part of Charlotte police in connection with the Henry Louis Wallace serial murder case, a concerned young woman named Angala Grooms in East Charlotte stated that the police did not care because they viewed the pretty young Black female murder victims of Henry Louis Wallace:  "I feel like they wrote us all off as some fast little black girls who didn't really matter." During the 1996 Wallace capital murder trial, the defense lawyers tried to taint the young womens' reputation but the witnesses, friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, and the prosecutor vigorously countered the defense by bolstering the virtues and even saintliness of the young victims of Wallace.  The jury didn't buy the defense and voted for the death penalty for the nine first-degree murders and rapes of young Black women.  

[allureofcrimemurdermystery]

Serial Killers who were active in the same place.

Los Angeles, U.S.A

The 1980s were a dangerous time in Los Angeles. There were three serial killers on the loose, all preying on women. Michael Hughes, Lonnie Franklin Jr. (also known as The Grim Sleeper), and Chester Turner all committed their murders primarily in the 1980s, although the Grim Sleeper took a break and went back to killing in the 2000s.

Hughes sexually assaulted his seven victims before strangling them to death and dumping them in various areas around the city. He was caught in 1993 and is currently on death row. Franklin was apprehended in 2010, and was sentenced to death for the murders of 11 victims, all women who were raped, shot, and then dumped in back alleys. Turner also killed 11 women by strangling them to death. He was caught in 2003, and is on death row alongside Hughes and Franklin. 

LONG ISLAND

In the early 1990s, people living on Long Island had the right be scared. There were three serial killers active during the period - Joel Rifkin, who murdered at least 16 women between 1989 and 1993; Robert Schulman, a former postal worker who killed five sex workers in a five-year span starting in 1991; and Colin Ferguson, who killed six people on a commuter train in 1993.

Rifkin picked his victims up on Long Island and in the city - similar to Schulman - and is suspected to also be the Gilgo Beach Killer. Schulman was caught after a person saw him dumping a body from his brother's Cadillac. Ferguson shot and killed six people on a commuter train, injuring 19 others. 

Rifkin was sentenced to 203 years in prison back in 1994, Schulman received a death sentence in 1999, and Ferguson was sentenced to 315 years in prison. Schulman died in 2006 of undisclosed causes, and Rifkin will be up for parole in 2197. Interestingly, Rifkin and Ferguson were housed at the same prison—Attica Correctional Facility. The two got in an argument over the telephone and they allegedly bragged to each other about how many people they had killed.

New York City, USA 🌃

New York City is known for its cultural institutions, interesting history, and, of course, its serial killers. Richard Cottingham and David Berkowitz, both were active in the city back in the 1970s. Cottingham, also known as the Torso Killer, has six confirmed victims - all women - but he claims to have killed between 85 and 100. He mutilated the bodies of his victims, often leaving just a torso behind.

Berkowitz, aka the Son of Sam, shot 14 women with a .44 caliber gun during his murderous spree, killing six and wounding eight. Cottingham is currently serving the first of several life sentences, while Berkowitz is up for parole every two years, but each time, he tells the parole board he shouldn't be released. Berkowitz became devoutly religious in prison and has taken responsibility for his crimes, saying “In all honesty I believe that I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life.”

SANTA CRUZ, CA, U.S.A

In the early 1970s, Santa Cruz, CA, had not one, not two, but three serial killers lurking about. One was Edmund Kemper, a Department of Transportation employee who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia as a youth. He killed at least six women, all of whom were hitchhikers that he picked up at the side of the road, as well as his mother and one of his female friends. He was caught in 1973, and has been incarcerated in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, CA, ever since.

While Kemper was killing young women, Herbert Mullin was on a killing spree of his own, believing that each death helped him prevent earthquakes. In all, he committed 13 murders. His victims ranged in age from four to 72, and were mostly men. Mullin was caught in 1973. He pled guilty, and received a sentence of life in prison. He is currently at Mule Creek State Prison, where he will be up for parole in 2021.

And to round out the Santa Cruz killers was John Linley Frazier who, in 1970, killed five people. Frazier attacked and killed ophthalmologist Victor Ohta, his wife, their two sons, and his secretary after spiraling into a rampage. Frazier said he was an agent of God. He was arrested and sentenced to death in 1970. In 2009, he hung himself in his prison cell.

Wisconsin, USA.

When most people think of serial killers in Milwaukee, Jeffrey Dahmer is the first person to come to mind. Dahmer is best known for his cannibalisation of his victims, all of whom were male. He killed at least 17 between the years of 1978 and 1991. While that was going on, Walter E. Ellis, another Milwaukee resident - murdered seven women over a 21 year span - 1986 to 2007.

Ellis raped and strangled his victims, and was caught in 2009 thanks to a series of DNA matches. He died in South Dakota in 2013 while serving out the life sentences that were handed to him. Dahmer died in prison in 1994 at the hands of a fellow inmate.

[reverietruecrime]

Episode 30 is available now wherever you stream podcasts.

This is part one of Joel Rifkin aka Joel the Ripper.

[takuma-corelli-blog]

“Goofy nobody who wanted to be a somebody, admits killing 17 women.”