[STEPHEN SONDHEIM, spoken]
My first professional show, which is when I was twenty-three years old, was called Saturday Night. It was based on a play called Front Porch in Flatbush, which had been written by two well-known screenwriters, Philip and Julius Epstein. They had among other things written Casablanca. And they had written about their childhood in Brooklyn. 

The play was to be made into a musical, uh, under the auspices of Lem Ayers, who was a leading producer and set designer at the time. And we had about six backers auditions, and, um, raised about half the money, and Lem suddenly died. He was a very young man, about forty years old. And I was, I won't say devastated, but certainly disappointed.