Sasha Ann-Simons: There is a surprising connection between the late great Angela Lansbury, who died yesterday at the age of 96, and the health of a subset of Chicagoans who were once overlooked, stigmatized and even vilified. Back in 1987 at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Lansbury headlined a show at the Chicago Theater alongside the likes of Oprah Winfrey, singer and actress, Chita Rivera and the Chicago Gay Men's Choir. It wasn't just a fun performance. In fact, it was one of the first significant fundraisers for AIDS Research in our city. And it raised a million dollars. Chicago writer, Rebecca Makkai, came across the story in her extensive research for her 2018 novel, The Great Believers. It chronicles the HIV/AIDS crisis in Chicago and beyond. And Rebecca joins us now. Hi Rebecca, welcome to Reset.

Rebecca Makkai: Hi Sasha. Thank you.

Sasha Ann-Simons: So I understand this was one of the first things that you learned when you began researching 1980s Chicago and AIDS.

Rebecca Makkai: It is. It's not something that ended up in my book, actually, but long before the really in depth research that I needed to do, long before I was sitting down with, you know, survivors and doctors and activists. The very first thing I did, of course, was kind of google, tentatively, AIDS Chicago. You know, I knew more as most people do –– despite the fact that I'm from Chicago –– I knew more about AIDS in New York, LA, San Francisco than here in Chicago. And one of the first things to come up was this September, 1987 benefit at the Chicago Theatre.

Sasha Ann-Simons: Tell us more about what happened that night.

Rebecca Makkai: So, it's significant in a bunch of ways. One of them is not only was it the first benefit like this in Chicago, it was the first in the Midwest. It really was... it was a litmus test in addition to everything else for whether corporations, benefactors, audiences would come out to something like this in the Midwest. They called it "Show of Concern, the Heart of America Response." And I think that idea of the heart of America, they really saw Chicago as like –– this is going to be our testing ground. Can we do this? The Broadway producer Barry Brown was the one who put it all together. He had lost his partner, The Broadway director and producer Fritz Holt just that July in 87. And Fritz Holt and Angela Lansbury were very close. Fritz Holt was the one who got her back to the US after she thought that she'd returned to Ireland forever in the 70s. He got her back for this revival of gypsy that he put on. And they were close. They became even closer. So when Barry Brown is looking to do this benefit, he goes to his usual suspects: the friends he knows are always up for something like this who are also big headliners. And he gets Angela Lansbury on pretty short notice to leave where she's filming Murder She Wrote in Mendocino, California –– not actually in Maine sadly, they filmed it in Mendocino, but she flies in and emcees and headlines this incredible show.

Sasha Ann-Simons: And you shared on Twitter that she said this on stage, quote: "Tonight isn't about what we lost or might lose. It's about that step forward when we might conquer this thing and get on with the business of living. Here, we celebrate life and together we fight." That's electrifying.

Rebecca Makkai: It is, and you have to imagine behind her, she's got five choirs from Chicago, the Windy City Gay Men's Chorus, the Chicago Children's Choir, the Artemis Singers. They're all behind her and the show ends with them all singing, "I'll Be Here Tomorrow" by Jerry Herman, who was also there. He had written that in 1979 for his show, the Grand Tour, but it was a song that took on greater and greater meaning in the AIDS crisis. He often performed it as "We'll Be Here Tomorrow." The stage was full. There were 250 people on stage. They packed the Chicago Theater. This was, you know, red carpet on State Street and I've been hearing on Twitter from people who were there in the audience, people like the Chicago journalist and historian Tracy Bayne was there in the audience. I've also been hearing from people who were singing in one of those choirs, and you know of course I sadly... I wasn't there. I was a kid. I wasn't in the Children's Choir, but it would be amazing if other people who were there in person wanted to reach out on Twitter to Reset or to me and and let us know what they saw.

Sasha Ann-Simons: And I wanna set that stage again Rebecca, this is 1987, right? 

Rebecca Makkai: Right.

Sasha Ann-Simons: Talk about the public conversation around AIDS that was happening at that time in Chicago. I imagine it was surprising to have one of the eras biggest TV stars just take this giant step like this.

Rebecca Makkai: Right, well, so first of all nationally 1987 is an interesting year. It's um... It's the year that the AIDS quilt comes out. It's the year that And the Band Played On is published by Randy Shilts. It's also the year that Ronald Reagan in April, finally publicly says the word AIDS. He questionably had mentioned the word one time before, but actually gives a press conference. This is six years after the first documented cases, about 5,000 people in America dying a year at this point. But it wasn't the, you know, kind of literal cause celeb that it would become. And so, someone like Angela Lansbury who first of all was a huge Broadway star –– she was also a gay icon, because of her work in Mame and elsewhere on Broadway –– but middle America knew her as Jessica Fletcher on Murder She Wrote. So for her to get up there, this was this interesting crux of Broadway coming to town. But Marshall Fields was their biggest sponsor. That surprised me for a minute until I realized, you know, that this was of course hitting the fashion industry so hard. Phillip Miller, the CEO of Fields at the time had been very close with the designer Perry Ellis, who died of AIDS the year before. But Marshall Fields steps in, these major Chicago, kind of society dames, these benefactors step in and they put on something that is for, you know, both for the community and for the general public in a really interesting way. And that's new in 1987. It's that... this is the year that that kind of thing starts to happen

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