Don Stitt's Website

This essay is for the fans of the Broadway musical, and specifically, for the fans of Stephen Sondheim.

I have just viewed Lonny Price’s Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, abeautiful documentary of the Broadway premiere of Merrily We Roll Along, and it cut very close to the bone for me. Not just because I was at the first preview of it, six months prior to making my own Broadway debut in the same theatre. (My show was a flop, too.) And not just because I have a n...

DON STITT

A DAY I'D LIKE TO FORGET

(On the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I'd like to repost some words I wrote about That Day some years back)

 I remember the cloudless sky, the low humidity and the comfortable temperature. 

I had already read the paper and taken my morning bath. 

 I had voted when the polls opened at 6. 

 I had just made a second pot of coffee, and I was sitting down to play the piano. I don’t...

1/25/16 is my 60th birthday, and I recently marked 50 years in show business. 

DON STITT 

DON STITT

A BUMPY RIDE

I have had a great many happy experiences in my 50 years in show business, but I want to tell you about one of the other kind. Forgive me for not identifying the show or the players involved. But I think this can give you a glimpse into the kind of entertainment circumstance you do NOT want to experience. This all happened on a National Tour of a Broadway show.

At the first rehearsal, a girl who had never done ...

DON STITT

NEW RULES

After a night of tortured dreams, I have a few ideas I'd like to share:

1.) Clinton said it first, but Obama has said it, also. WE MUST HAVE THE UNCOMFORTABLE DISCUSSION ABOUT RACE. By avoiding it, we perpetuate the vulnerability of people like those churchgoers, and we enable the violence of people like that twisted young boy.

2.) Since the Second Amendment guarantees gun access to a "well-regulated militia," let us allow guns ONLY TO THOSE WHO ARE...

DON STITT

SMALL TRIUMPH

The Internet Movie Data Base, or IMDB.com, is the internet source for veritas regarding what films a person has or has not worked on.

Because most of my acting work has been in the theatre, I haven't cultivated a lot of film credits.

But there was one film that I worked on in which I was so recognizable as to cause me to receive phone calls in the middle of the night from old friends who had just seen me on th...

DON STITT

THE EMPEROR’S PROCLAMATION

An Englishman named Joshua Abraham Norton received a $40,000 bequest from his father’s estate and moved to San Francisco in 1849. He became an entrepreneur who lived by investment. By the 1850s, he was worth a quarter of a million dollars.



But not all investments pan out, and such was the case with a shipload of Peruvian rice. He had heard that The Glyde, a merchan...

DON STITT

9/11 PLUS 12

I remember the cloudless sky, the low humidity and the comfortable temperature. A perfect summer’s day. I was discouraged that morning about not having landed the role of Clarence in Westchester Broadway Dinner Theatre’s presentation of A Wonderful Life the day before. I had already read the paper and taken my morning bath. I had voted when the polls opened at 6. Ihad just made a second pot of coffee, and I was sitting down to play t...

DON STITT

SYRIA’S SERIOUS

Unless you have been sequestered in a bomb shelter deep in the bowels of the ancient world, you are probably aware that Syria’s dictator Assad has a full-fledged revolution on his hands. His nation is divided between the Sunni majority, revolutionary activists, and militant Islamist factions that are all trying to assume control. And it is claimed that he has been using Sarin gas on his citiz...