Word: ockrent
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...similar to what happened when you and your late husband, the director Mike Ockrent, were starting work on The Producers...
...fact, Crazy for You is what first brought me to Stro. In 1998 my collaborator Tom Meehan and I were racking our brains trying to come up with the right director for The Producers. Tom suggested Mike Ockrent, Stro's husband, who had directed Crazy for You. I told Tom that was the best show I had seen in years. Stro choreographed it. Tom and I were talking to Mike in earnest about directing our show when, tragically, he was found to have leukemia and died. Susan, naturally, was devastated, but we thought it might actually be good...
Brooks' search for a director landed him at the doorstep of Mike Ockrent (Crazy for You) and his wife, choreographer Stroman. "I opened the front door," Stroman recalls, "and he launched into That Face, one of his songs from the show. He danced down the hallway and wound up on top of the sofa. Then he said, 'I'm Mel Brooks.'" The performance won them over, but not long afterward Ockrent became ill with leukemia (he died in December 1999). After a few months' hiatus, Stroman resumed working on her own with Brooks. "I needed someone to make me smile...