Longest-Running Show on Broadway Is Usher at ‘Phantom’ Theater
After almost 22 years and more than 9,000 performances, “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Majestic Theater is the longest-running show on Broadway.
Sylvia Bailey commutes by bus from the Jersey Shore to Manhattan for her job as an usher for “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Majestic Theater.
Ms. Bailey in the 1940s when she worked as a dancer at the Roxy Theater in New York.
But that streak is not even close to the record set by Sylvia Bailey, one of the show’s ushers since it opened in 1988. Ms. Bailey, 84, has been taking the bus to and from her home in the Jersey Shore town of Union Beach to the Port Authority Bus Terminal for 50 years, and who knows how many thousand round-trips.
She commutes on the Academy Bus line, but she was making the hourlong bus trip up Route 36 to the Garden State Parkway to the New Jersey Turnpike and through the Lincoln Tunnel long before Academy was even in business.
On a recent gray afternoon, an Academy bus stopped at a corner on Seagate Avenue in Union Beach. The door swung open and Ms. Bailey — red hair perfectly coifed above beige-framed glasses and a flowing black and white scarf, with a string of white pearls adorning a smart black pantsuit — made a grand entrance. Stage right.
“How are you today, Jose?” she said, smiling at the driver, Jose Martinez, as she maneuvered herself and her bags into her seat: front row, passenger-side window. The only reserved seat in the house.
She grew up, far from the shore and show business, in Bessemer, Pa., a coal mining town. Her mother, who loved theater, signed her up for tap dancing lessons when she was 3.
“I took to it easy,” Ms. Bailey said. “I always had the feeling I was born to be a performer.”
In 1937, her family moved to the Bronx. Ms. Bailey began taking singing lessons and soon was performing on Saturday morning radio shows.
When her father became ill she had to help support the family. She went to Central Commercial High School in Manhattan during the day and then danced and sang at nightclubs like the International Casino. She said she met Lana Turner, Martha Raye and the singer Dan Bart while doing her homework between shows.
“I had a great time, but I never missed a day of school and always got good grades,” Ms. Bailey said. In the 1940s, she was hired to dance on giant rotating balls at the old Roxy Theater on West 50th Street.
There were more shows, mixed in with jobs as a waitress and stenographer in Manhattan. She married and moved to Brooklyn, then, in 1959, to Union Beach, where she raised her five children and her commuting saga began.
A friend at the Shubert Organization helped her get the job at “Phantom.” And she rides on — six days a week, matinees and special performances, too.
Ms. Bailey has lived alone since the death of her second husband, but she seems to have friends — or an audience — at every bus stop.
“She makes the ride go fast,” said Beatrice Carney of Keansburg, N.J., an usher for “Chicago.”
“We have fun trading theater gossip.”
Vincent Cangelosi, another Academy driver, said: “I look forward to red lights because she has a lot to say. She knows about the Yankees and baseball, who’s hot on Broadway.”
Kenny Relay, who repairs elevators, said Ms. Bailey has made him look forward to his commute for 16 years. “She’s an inspiration,” he said. “And what nice outfits she wears. She always looks great.”
Mr. Martinez said that Ms. Bailey “could be talking about the theater or sports and still try and help me drive — ‘Jose, that car seems to be pretty close to us.’ ”
Ms. Bailey listens to the Yankees on an old transistor radio the size of maybe 30 iPods and frequently broadcasts news flashes about the games — “Home run to Teixeira!” — to other passengers, who might otherwise be napping. She tells of the time she escorted Joe Torre to his theater seat. “I got a hug and an autograph,” she gushed. “What a thrill.”
But no Yankee Stadium glory could surpass the rooftop scene in “Phantom,” when Christine tells Raoul that she has spent time with the Phantom.
“That roof scene is so emotional,” Ms. Bailey said. “That’s my favorite part of the play. I never get tired of it.”
Ms. Bailey’s only complaint is arthritis in her knees, but fellow passengers chipped in to give her a folding chair with her name on it to use at the Port Authority while she waits for the bus.
She has no plans to retire her act. “ ‘The Phantom’ isn’t going anywhere and neither am I,” she said, fluffing up her scarf and exiting the bus. Stage right.
On BWW.TV
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