Sometimes the intrigues percolating off stage are more compelling than what’s on stage. And often, these backstage sagas are never, or barely, reported in the press. Case in point. In 1969, I was cast as a performer in a new Broadway musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, creators of The Fantasticks.

That show, Celebration, which ran for only five short months on Broadway, was produced by the esteemed Cheryl Crawford. Miss Crawford, as she was formidably addressed, was one of the founders of the famed Group Theatre and The Actor’s Studio. Among her many credits were Brigadoon, the first revival of Porgy and Bess, and four Tennessee Williams plays, including Sweet Bird of Youth and The Rose Tattoo.

During the run of Celebration, I became romantically involved with Todd Lehman, a young assistant to Miss Crawford and her associate producer, Richard Chandler. In our relationship, which has lasted for more than fifty years, Todd and I often still talk with wide-eyed wonder about the bizarre machinations that occurred in the Crawford office during that period. Though she suffered enormous financial loss and a major blow to her self-esteem, Cheryl Crawford recounts the events only briefly and very dispassionately in her autobiography, One Naked Individual. Because of my relationship with Todd, I had direct access to all the intriguing rumors emanating from the Cheryl Crawford office. Here then is the story told from that perspective, with the inclusion of Crawford’s insights from One Naked Individual.

Twelve years before Celebration, Richard Chandler, a young theatre zealot from Peoria, wrote to Cheryl Crawford saying that he wanted to work for her. She ignored the letter, but weeks later he showed up at her office and offered his services for no pay. He was attractive, educated, theatre savvy, and seemingly well-off. An excellent typist, he handled all of her correspondence, answered inquiries, and began assuming bookkeeping responsibilities.

He was so dedicated and became so invaluable to her that she placed him on her payroll and eventually listed him as an associate on her letterhead. Her only concerns were that he was negligent about paying bills that came into the office, and he was overly intrusive about opening her mail.

He further impressed her with stories about an extremely wealthy elderly aunt whose fortune he was destined to inherit. He even promised Cheryl a large lifetime annuity, once he came into his inheritance. She was so grateful to him because she had recently endured a series of flops and was not in great financial condition. Richard, who was also an aspiring playwright, wrote a play called The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake.

Cheryl admired the work and decided to produce it in 1967, with former movie star Jean Arthur in the leading role. During the first Broadway preview, Arthur, fell to her knees before the audience, pleading that she was too ill to go on. From the audience Cheryl screamed, “You will go on. You will play the play.” Arthur was so startled that she was shamed into doing the performance. The next day Arthur’s doctor informed Cheryl that she was unable to continue, thus ending the run, which resulted in substantial financial losses.

Though I was never invited to Chandler’s apartment, Todd regaled me with stories about the sumptuous Greenwich Village duplex that Richard shared with his young Dutch male lover, whom he kept in equally glorious fashion. It was obvious that Chandler had to be independently wealthy because his extravagant lifestyle far exceeded what his salary from Crawford could possibly sustain.

Very strange things began to occur at the Crawford offices soon after the opening of Celebration. One day Richard, went into Cheryl’s office and closed the door. Todd suspected that something was afoot because Chandler never closed the door when he entered her office. Cheryl was sitting at her desk, and she was taken aback because Richard brazenly walked behind her, something he never did. Seconds later, a sharp object struck her on the back of the head. Richard claimed that the large poster of One Touch of Venus, which had hung on her wall for years, suddenly fell and struck her on the head, causing severe bleeding. She was taken to the emergency room where she required ten stitches. Crawford was skeptical that the poster could have hit her with such force, but she put the matter out of her mind.

Then Richard’s aunt from Peoria died. He asked Cheryl to join him for lunch at a restaurant where his aunt’s lawyer was to meet with them to discuss the details of the annuity. A major blizzard had hit the city that day. They waited interminably for the lawyer. Cheryl asked him to phone the lawyer. Richard claimed that he had been delayed at a bank in lower Manhattan. Three o’clock came and still no lawyer.

Cheryl began to feel sick after drinking some cocktails. She asked Richard to take her home and call her doctor. The doctor never showed up. Richard more than likely never called him. Her maid, however, managed to obtain medications for her. Cheryl quipped at the time that she felt as though she had been slipped a Mickey Finn, a mob term for a drugged drink.

One night a few weeks later, Cheryl got a call that her beloved house in Connecticut was burning. The next morning when Todd came into the office, Richard told him to book a rental car because he and Cheryl were driving to the house to assess the damage. Virtually nothing remained. Even the piano on which Gershwin wrote some of Porgy and Bess had been destroyed. Rumors of these mysterious events began to circulate among the Celebration cast. No one knew what to make of them.

By now, Cheryl’s suspicions were aroused, and she asked Todd to have the building’s super bring up the file cabinets containing all her records from the basement. Each time she did, Richard firmly instructed Todd that it wasn’t necessary. He would bring them up when they were required. Richard jealously guarded his relationship with Crawford and sought to thwart any sign of closeness between Todd and her. When Todd informed Miss Crawford that Richard wanted to delay examining the files, she inexplicably did not insist.

Throughout his tenure at the the Crawford office, Todd, was instructed by Richard to deposit the royalty checks from all of Cheryl’s past productions into two different bank accounts, one at Chase Manhattan, the other at Bank Leumi. Todd naturally assumed that Crawford had endorsed this procedure so he thought nothing of it.

When Celebration closed, Todd lost his job because Miss Crawford was not able to justify keeping an extra person on staff. As a result, he was absent for the climax of this mysterious saga. Only later, did we learn the facts. Cheryl came into the office one day and found no Richard, only a note saying, “I’ve left town forever. Please forgive me.”

Crawford phoned the lawyer in Peoria who had failed to show up for several scheduled meetings, only to learn that he had never intended to come to New York. The “wealthy” aunt, it seemed, was actually a poor, lower-class woman with no fortune. Crawford opened the mail on her own that day and discovered a bank statement with checks made out to Chandler on which he had forged her signature. She demanded that the file cabinets be brought up from the basement. Chandler apparently used one of the banks to establish a shell account. Todd was horrified to learn that he had unwittingly contributed to this scam every time he deposited checks.

The fraud had gone on for years and Crawford lost a significant amount of the money. When Chandler was eventually brought to trial, he admitted his guilt and was spared prison, but was sentenced to report to a probation officer weekly and to pay nearly all of his future earnings to Crawford. What future earnings he could have amassed and from what profession we were never able to determine from our research.

Todd and I have often discussed how many star-struck young people come to New York hoping and dreaming of the kind of opportunity that Chandler abused and squandered. Cheryl Crawford claimed that trust had always been a strength to her not a weakness. Todd and I both knew Crawford as a tough, strong, and shrewd business woman. How unfathomable that she could have been so naively trusting and careless about her finances to allow herself to be so easily scammed.

This article was excerpted in part from my autobiography, The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater, available here.