Right beneath the title A Chorus Line comes the line “Conceived, Choreographed and Directed by Michael Bennett.” Underneath this come the credits for four co-creators who also received a Pulitzer Prize for what would become Broadway’s longest-running American musical: “Book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante,” “Music by Marvin Hamlisch,” and “Lyrics by Edward Kleban.”
Four of the five died prematurely. Heterosexual Marvin Hamlisch, best known for his movie scores, survives. More than most Broadway productions, A Chorus Line, or the men behind it, was/were affected by AIDS. (The so-called Curse of The Boys in the Band particularly affected cast members, and is a story and chapter in itself.)
“It’s difficult to relate to the overall impact of AIDS on show business,” record producer Ben Bagley once said. “That’s so general, overwhelming. You get a better feel for it if you just look at one musical, A Chorus Line … most of its creative artists and their future contributions lost to AIDS… [and bear] in mind that as with Jimmy Kirkwood, AIDS as cause of death is sometimes the unofficial but real one.”
Despite his sweeping billing, Michael Bennett (born Michael DiFiglia, with a Jewish mother) did not conceive A Chorus Line—which he co-choreographed—the show that made him a multimillionaire and a celebrity in his own right. He married Chorus Line performer Donna McKechnie in 1976, but they divorced soon thereafter. She later bemoaned not the end of the marriage, but of their friendship.
The record-breaking success of A Chorus Line, which put dancers on the map, as it were, might never have happened but for a little-noted 1973 flop titled Rachel Lily Rosenbloom (And Don’t You Ever Forget It!). It starred Paul Jabara, who also did the musical’s book, music, and lyrics. A would-be actor who appeared in the non-hit film of The Day of the Locust, Jabara’s most popular efforts were two Streisand disco tunes he composed. Rachel Lily Rosenbloom was produced by publicity-shy stage, music, and film impresario Robert Stigwood, who made John Travolta a movie star. According to actor and Broadway historian Denny Martin Flinn, “Stigwood was thought to have produced the show as something of a favor to Jabara” (who later died of AIDS).
Ron Link was hired to direct the dance- and music-intensive project, but had never directed a Broadway musical before. Denny Flinn observed, “Some of the cast came to believe he had never before seen a Broadway musical.” Link was eventually fired by the Australian Stigwood, not known as a hands-on producer and as usual holed up in his Caribbean mansion. Director-playwright Tom Eyen, another Broadway musical virgin, was hired to replace the unmissed Link.
Eyen’s solution for the looming disaster was to cut several of the dances, which mightily frustrated choreographer Tony Stevens and his assistant, Michon Peacock, as well as about a dozen dancers who’d sweated over the routines for weeks. Then Stevens was fired, in keeping with the Broadway tradition that in problem-plagued musicals choreographers are the first to get the boot—because they’re the least to blame. Stevens’s replacement was Grover Dale. He added a first-act finale that included a couple of singing “Dykettes” and chorus boys in vine-leaf G-strings who aimed their bare buns at audience members who were dazed or delighted, depending.
Before the show could be savaged by predictable critics, producer Stigwood shut it down. Unusually, he made up the entire loss to Rachel’s investors from his own pocket. The investors were placated, but not the dancers and choreographers who felt, not for the first time, victimized by inept and/or uncaring directors, producers, and writers. Tony Stevens affirmed, “Most of us—the dancers in the show, the chorus people—knew more about how to put a show together than many of the producers we had worked for.”
GROWING UP IN THE MIDWEST, Stevens had aimed to “go to New York, dance on Broadway, and be the Gene Kelly of my generation.” In three years he danced in eight shows, then turned to choreography. Michon Peacock came to Manhattan from St. Paul, Minnesota, with similar dreams, and also danced in several non-hits. After Rachel, she revealed, “Tom Eyen was very degrading to dancers, and Ron Link was not much better.”
A Buddhist, Peacock belonged to the “chanting sect” of Nichiren Shoshu, founded in the thirteenth century C.E. (Other members include Tina Turner and Patrick Duffy of Dallas.) In her bedroom Michon chanted before a small shrine, practicing the sect’s philosophy that change occurs from within. She believed it was up to dancers to change their own lot, rather than hoping for better directors and producers. She and Tony got together and talked, then spoke with other dancers, eventually conceiving of a company of dancers who would write, direct, produce, design, and, of course, choreograph their own shows. (From Rachel’s chorus, Carole (Kelly) Bishop, Wayne Cilento, and Thomas Walsh would become part of the cast of A Chorus Line.)
Peacock and Stevens realized that an influential choreographer, or director-choreographer, would help their first project along. Michael Bennett had begun as a hoofer, then excelled as a d-c. “I chanted for a couple of hours and then called him,” Michon explained. “Sure enough, he wanted to see us the next day.” They met and decided to “hold a talk session to find out where dancers have come from and gone to, and to create something.…” Little did they know.
Michon contacted Bill Thompson, a Buddhist ex-dancer and co-founder of the Nickolaus Exercise Centers. He donated the use of a dance studio. Then the trio started bringing in dancers. At midnight on Saturday, January 18, 1974, the group congregated to dance, talk, and share their experiences. First came exercise and routines. Michon, Tony, and Michael had written down 100 questions for each performer, about everything from real names and astrological signs to childhood backgrounds, life as a dancer, and experiences in New York.
People sat on the floor in a circle, not a line, and everyone spoke in turn. Various dancers had declined to participate, afraid of not being articulate enough or overexposing themselves psychologically. Some had been suspicious of Michael Bennett’s involvement and motives. Michon Peacock already had cause to be wary, for she’d been professionally involved with Bennett in Seesaw, a 1973 musical he was brought in to revamp. Grover Dale was the original choreographer, but was demoted to working for Bennett, who brought in his close assistant Bob Avian, later the official co-choreographer of A Chorus Line.
Michon had been with Seesaw from the start, and though lucky to remain with the show, was dismayed by Bennett’s firing so many dancers and by the way it was done. He delegated Dale to tap dancers on the shoulder immediately after they returned to the wings from a performance, coolly informing them, “Don’t bother coming back tomorrow, you’re fired.” She and Michael respected but didn’t necessarily like each other.
When Seesaw ran into financial problems despite the overhaul, Bennett told her, “There’s only one thing we haven’t tried yet.” What, she wondered? “Chanting,” he said, for he’d chanted for success, years before. So thirteen people, including Seesaw dancer Tommy Tune, gathered in Michon’s apartment and for one hour chanted for a financial upturn in their musical. The next day, Mayor John V. Lindsay agreed to a cameo appearance on stage, in place of his “almost lookalike” Ken Howard. He consented to be mugged to music, then picked up by a dancing hooker in the opening scene. Local publicity for the casting stunt was tremendous, including frontpage photos of Peacock and other female dancers playing “hooker” with the mayor in the New York Daily News and the Post. Ticket sales soared, and Seesaw was saved.
When he became involved with what would become A Chorus Line, Michael Bennett seemed open and acted friendly. Said Nicholas Dante, “He stressed that he was a hoofer, just one of the gang.” But though he complimented Peacock on her leadership ability, Bennett gradually took over her and Tony Stevens’s dance-themed project. He did not let on how intrigued he was by the material. After a second session with the chorus dancers, the three principals and fledgling writer Nicholas Dante met in Bennett’s office. Michael announced his opinion that the material would make an interesting … book. Michon and Tony were astounded. They’d had their hearts set on a stage project. Bennett pointed out that he’d signed to direct a Broadway comedy starring Valerie “Rhoda” Harper—Thieves, by noted playwright Herb Gardner (A Thousand Clowns), from which he and she eventually withdrew, Harper replaced by Marlo “That Girl” Thomas.
GIVEN THE POPULARITY of the playwright and intended star, Bennett didn’t want to miss out on a likely hit—Thieves. But he also didn’t want to relinquish the embryonic project that would become A Chorus Line. And so the latter was shelved until the timing was right. Some insiders think he was slow to recognize the material’s potential. “It was more about control, really,” offered A Chorus Line dance captain Alex MacKay, “about getting his hands on a future endeavor which, if it took off, he’d be in total charge of.
“As a former dancer, Michael could hardly fail to find it somewhat interesting, but the passion for telling the stories about individual dancers, getting their reality out to audiences, that came entirely from Tony and Michon.… At one point, Michael even voiced his doubts about ‘a bunch of gypsies rambling on’ about themselves.”
After Bennett had left the nascent dance project for Thieves, subsequent sessions were poorly attended. Without his presence, most dancers viewed the sessions as closer to psychotherapy than a future work opportunity. “We all tried so hard and we couldn’t get past that point,” lamented Michon. Thus, after Bennett departed Thieves—an ironic title, in view of future events—Michon and Tony met with him and virtually gave away the raw material for A Chorus Line. “If you give me the tapes I’ll do something,” Bennett offered. “I think I can get [producer] Joe Papp interested in doing a workshop. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll do something with it.”
Tony Stevens explained, “It was ours to decide what to do with.… We all decided it was better that it had a life. He had the power and the resources, and we did not.” The trio making the decision comprised Peacock, Stevens, and Nicholas Dante, the writer who’d been required to type and shape the material; he became the official number two writer after the better-known James Kirkwood was brought aboard. After the three got back to Bennett, he had each sign a brief contract giving him control of all the material. In return, they got one dollar apiece, which was all Michon Peacock and Tony Stevens ever derived from their brainchild.
Tony later said of the highly personal stories, “There was a fear that [the material] would be misused. More than losing a million dollars or whatever, which never really entered our minds at that time, we were afraid somebody was going to get used or hurt. More than anything else, we didn’t want that to happen.” Michon noted in retrospect, “I think now that Michael knew all along that it was going to be a musical.”
The sessions and interviews, with Bennett in full charge and Dante in attendance, continued. The latter typed and did menial work. Formerly a dancer, he’d told about his dramatic and demeaning drag-show years at the first meeting. (As Dante didn’t appear in A Chorus Line, his story was reassigned to the character Paul San Marco.) “The major reason Michael asked me to write the show was he needed my story and knew he wouldn’t get it otherwise.” The story, which shocked the other dancers, would be an emotional highpoint of the future musical.
Dante was hired with the proviso that other, more professional writers could be brought in. “For a while,” he confessed, “I felt like the little fag dancer that tagged along.” Because he was more open about his sexuality, Dante was occasionally the butt of “fag” jokes from Bennett, who was more guarded and coy about his own orientation.
SHREWDLY, MICHAEL took the Chorus Line material to Joseph Papp rather than to a commercial Broadway producer. The latter would have demanded high-concept, fiscally promising material that Bennett wasn’t all that sure he had. In commercial theater there’s success or failure. “Michael was not clairvoyant,” said James Kirkwood. “This was very iffy, untried, experimentative material. It could easily have flopped on Broadway, and an uptown flop would have lowered Michael’s standing. Like it or not, your artistic standing is tied to your commercial standing.”
Via Papp and the Shakespeare Festival, Bennett would be working with a net, could exercise greater control, brook less interference and, if A Chorus Line did fail with audiences, chalk it up as a noble, avant-garde experiment. If it did well, it would move on and upward.
To further cover himself, Bennett hired Marvin Hamlisch, recent winner of three Oscars for The Way We Were and The Sting, to compose the score. An ex-rehearsal pianist for Broadway musicals, Marvin had worked with Michael on Henry, Sweet Henry, a 1967 musical derived from the nonmusical 1964 movie The World of Henry Orient. A Chorus Line would be Hamlisch’s first Broadway score.
As for the cast, Bennett didn’t feel obligated to retain the original dancers. He asked the group to sign legal releases allowing him to use their recorded material and to quote whatever (and however) he wished. Each dancer signed, each received one dollar. When it came time to cast, all the original dancers had to audition—some for the chance to play themselves. Nor were the originals more likely to receive an individual song than a newcomer. The first song written was “Sing!” for Renee Baughman, a Nichiren Buddhist who’d chanted to get her own song.
Original cocreator Tony Stevens was going to appear in A Chorus Line as a dancer-actor, but was unexpectedly asked by Bob Fosse to assist him on Chicago, which seemed a much more surefire hit. So Tony chose to be the celebrated Fosse’s real-life assistant rather than play an assistant to the character Zach. Far from being upset over the defection, Michael Bennett encouraged Tony to strike out. Was it to encourage him to pursue his dream or to be rid of a possibly proprietary (though not legally) originating influence? Denny Martin Flinn, who played Zach and Greg in the international touring company of A Chorus Line between 1980 and ‘82, revealed that Bennett had initially been “gracious” to Tony and Michon, as they had brought the idea and material to him—in return for which each had been paid a token dollar. But once Tony departed, Flinn said, “If Michael felt any twinge of guilt … there were no longer any reminders.” Michon Peacock had already joined the Chicago company.
Michael and his team got on with the business of fashioning A Chorus Line, which debuted before a paying audience at the New York Shakespeare Festival on April 14, 1975. In May came the official Off-Broadway opening. Rave reviews ensued, with The Village Voice calling it “possibly the most effective Broadway musical since Gypsy.… A Chorus Line is the best commercial musical in years.” The paper ironically noted “Bennett’s devotion to the myth of Broadway.…” In July, A Chorus Line opened on Broadway. The rest is theater history, as it went on to become Broadway’s longest-running musical until Cats superceded it.
Michon Peacock, who with Tony Stevens conceived and launched the idea and material that became A Chorus Line, was not only neither devastated nor embittered, but buoyantly philosophical: “To have been able to have been in the right place at the right time to be the instrument for the cause for the whole thing to get moving” was, she believed, “wonderful.” For it was a show not just about dancing, but about dancers. Tony was similarly proud to have been involved from the start. “I’m glad for them they’re not enraged,” reflected Ben Bagley. “I’d have to struggle, really struggle, to have and maintain such a Zen-like calmness and balance.”
MANY OF THOSE WHO REMAINED with A Chorus Line, although delighted by its reception, grew disenchanted as it became known as Michael Bennett’s show. And as it became his golden egg. Once the touring companies opened, he was earning $75,000 a week, not including subsidiary rights. Initially he’d made sounds about sharing the wealth with the company—there seemed to be more than enough for everybody. But when dancers’ salaries didn’t keep pace with the success of the musical, Bennett backed off the subject or avoided them. The book What They Did for Love, by Denny Martin Flinn, told of another performer who “went through [a legal/emotional] ordeal, but the promise of more money was never kept … Michael’s position was, ‘You should have got it in writing.’ ” Donna McKechnie “did not complain about the experience and has no bitter feelings, [but] from then on she decided to do business only through her agents.”
Further resentment occurred when some of the roles grew larger than others as Bennett continued refashioning the material. His sense of showmanship told him some characters had to be “stars,” others support. The show’s success, of course, gave him greater control over its individual components, and the cast was increasingly dealt with in a heavy-handed, nakedly greedy manner. For instance, out of the blue, a producers’ representative called the seventeen cast members together so that each could sign a release for the logo. On signing, each was presented with a balloon with the logo across it: the seventeen dancers in a line. One week later—news to the seventeen—Bloomingdale’s debuted towels and other objects displaying the increasingly famous logo featuring the seventeen performers.
The dancers were stunned by the deception and the fact that despite the use of their likenesses, they had no financial participation. Of course because there were seventeen of them, most any one of them was expendable. When several of them said, “We’re getting a lawyer,” the response of Bennett and management was, “Go ahead, get a lawyer.”
The show turned out to be the thing: in spite of its mega-success, A Chorus Line did not produce a single bona fide star. (The biggest celebrity it yielded was Michael Bennett.) Today, only a theater buff could name any of the original cast members, most of whom went on to far-lower-profile assignments post-A Chorus Line. Only two performers, McKechnie and Priscilla Lopez, achieved a considerable if brief measure of stardom. Though unusual for such a huge hit, the relative anonymity of the cast (on Broadway and in all the show’s touring and foreign versions) ties in with the fact that chorus lines are almost invariably just a backdrop for a star—for instance Lauren Bacall in Applause or Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! They are the many, she—it’s usually a female star—is the “One” celebrated in A Chorus Line’s climactic song of the same name.
A Chorus Line’s most famous and popular song was “What I Did for Love.” Fittingly, for most dancers, few of whom get a chance at fame (exceptions include Shirley MacLaine and George Chakiris, with males more seldom crossing over), do what they do for love. For love of dance, not for love of money.
Former dancer Michael Bennett’s relative camaraderie with fellow hoofers faded with A Chorus Line’s success. As it kept burgeoning, he became increasingly territorial. And dictatorial. “The show made him a big-time Broadway player,” said Ben Bagley, “and the next step was to become the new Jerome Robbins.” He grew impatient with opposition. Example: A photo session with Richard Avedon shooting the cast was planned, but the dancers were given less than the twenty-four-hour notice the union required. Equity deputy Priscilla Lopez informed her colleagues that they did not have to participate if they didn’t wish to. Bennett arrived, yanked Priscilla out of the room, and when they returned, he, according to What They Did for Love, “lectured the company severely, threatening each of them with the consequences if they didn’t appear in the photo shoot.”
A year into the show’s success, one dancer anonymously revealed, “We all feel like we made the show a success. Or that we helped, individually or collectively. But once it was such a big success, now everyone wants a part of it … wants in. And those of us who are in gotta watch our step, or we’ll be out.”
The dancers in A Chorus Line earned good money at the time, some $650 a week each, more than they’d earned as chorus members in the past. But Bennett was earning dozens of thousands a week, his wages and take continually escalating. The same anonymous dancer disclosed, “He’s grown less accessible, no question about it. Conversations? Over. He might lecture or admonish. Socializing or being playful, friendly? It’s Mr. Bennett now, not Michael. Sometimes he looks pained if you call him Michael.”
A CHORUS LINE was affording new opportunities to Bennett, among them that fiscalValhalla, Hollywood. Yet he had little patience with the show’s performers trying to better their own circumstances. When permission was sought to use a photo that would adorn the cover of an André Kostelanetz album—one side of it music from A Chorus Line, the other from Chicago—each cast member was offered $50. As it had the potential to become a hit album, the $50 was rejected; the performers got together and decided to ask $500 apiece. The offer was withdrawn. According to two cast members, Bennett was contemptuous of both the group’s request and their failure to get it fulfilled.
A Chorus Line enriched Hamlisch, Kirkwood, Dante, Kleban, and Bob Avian, but especially Michael Bennett. Hollywood smelled loot and became interested. Who could have guessed it would take ten years to make a flop movie of the smash-hit musical that producer Stuart Ostrow deemed “the first landmark musical since Hair in 1968, and possibly the last of the twentieth century”?
Even though Hollywood’s attention flattered him, Bennett felt uncomfortable there, in part because it was more homophobic than the stage. Some insiders said after he legally wed he came to realize his sexuality was immutable and that he’d compromised himself in his bid for social and professional acceptance. “Drugs got ahold of Michael, same as with many, maybe most of the Chorus Line cast,” added James Kirkwood. “That may have played a part in his feeling very disoriented in LA.” In any case, Bennett got out of his film deal and returned to the theater.
Tony Stevens eventually danced in Chita Rivera’s nightclub act, as did three other Chorus Line cast members. Dancing is a profession with a limited shelf life, and many of the show’s performers later went into choreography or left the business. Michon Peacock went to work for the New York chapter of Nichiren Shoshu of America. (Another female dancer became a district leader in the organization’s Los Angeles headquarters.) Donna McKechnie moved to California but experienced a crippling bout of arthritis, for a while unable to walk. Since recovering, she works consistently onstage, regionally, doing cabaret, etc. Post—Chorus Line, Michael Bennett had a relative Broadway failure with Ballroom, featuring dancing and an older crowd; it played for 116 performances and received multiple Tony nominations.
He reclaimed success with Dreamgirls, based on a Supremes-like black girl group. His next big hope, Scandal, was canceled after several workshops due to assorted problems, including sexual subject matter viewed as salacious by some during the Reagan ’80s. Ill health caused him to drop out of plans to direct the world premiere of Chess in London. Michael moved to Tucson, Arizona, to live out the final year of his life. On July 2, 1987, at age forty-four, he died of AIDS, leaving behind millions of dollars to fight the disease.
Looking back, Michael had informed an interviewer, “I thought I was ready for success. No one is.” Insiders said he felt he’d given up too much to become a success, including friendships and some measure of personal and professional integrity. Performer Alex MacKay believed, “In the end, he regretted, I think, the loss of casual intimacy with the extended family of gypsies. With the theatre gang, his success brought him pressure and loneliness.”
Performer Denny Martin Flinn reflected two years after Bennett’s death, “Only on his own terms could he be generous and supportive. He had desperate, unsatisfied needs to be loved and liked, yet he was incapable of asking for help, or love, and mistrusted those who offered it freely.”
James Kirkwood, who died in 1989, felt, “Illness and perspective had their impact on Michael. I think if he could have come back from Arizona, come back to New York, he would have been a better person. I don’t think, initially, he quite believed that you can be creative and happy at the same time.” Nick Dante concluded, “Michael Bennett bought into the showbiz myth that being an ogre is part of being respected or a successful boss type. He learned too late that it’s simply a personality trait, more accurately a deficiency, that does nobody much good in the long run.”
“He showed us deep truths about ourselves. He made us more aware of being alive, to use the words of one of his great collaborators [Sondheim]. The Greeks, I think, call this a catharsis. Michael called it a Broadway musical.”—FRANK DIFIGLIA on his late brother, choreographer-director Michael Bennett
“I never got paid for [additional dialogue for] A Chorus Line … The only thing that Michael sent me, which was a very weird gift, was a pair of satin pillow cases.… But then I remember asking Michael Bennett to help me on a play that I was doing. And he charged me!”—NEIL SIMON
“Michael wanted red costumes for the finale [of A Chorus Line]. He had just opened Follies, which had a huge red number. Well, I thought red would be a big fiasco.”—costume designer THEONI V. ALDREDGE (who went golden)
“Michael was dangerously attracted to flash and big hands, which is not always a good idea.… He always wanted to do shows that had some kind of show business reference, and that, I think, was why we never did another one [after Follies] together. I would occasionally discuss an idea with him, and he would immediately think of it in a showbiz framework. He was a little too much into showbiz.”—STEPHEN SONDHEIM
“I asked for a meeting with Michael. I said, ‘I’m not somebody you can just discard like this. I have to find out what the problem is.’ But he would not see me.… Then the management sued me, because they didn’t want to pay me a run-of-the-play salary.… There was eventually a settlement … I couldn’t get a job because of the reputation the firing had given me. It took me years to build my courage, my confidence, and my reputation.
“Years later … I ran into Michael when he was drunk and stoned at a disco in New York. He said, ‘Lainie, I’m so happy to see you’re doing so well’ … That was the last time I ever saw him … I have great respect for his talent. But I didn’t respect the way he handled people.… He hurt me very much.”—LAINIE KAZAN, who was replaced by Michele Lee in Seesaw (1973)
“The most incredible moment was on the first day of rehearsal for the [A Chorus Line] Gala when Michael did the Cassie dance. It was magic. Seeing him dance the number, you realized that although it was designed for Donna McKechnie’s body, there was a lot of Michael Bennett in it. He did it the best.”—RICHARD BERG, A Chorus Line’s assistant general manager
“What will the critics say about a show about sex whose director is dying of AIDS? Why would anyone want to see a show about sex when its director is dying of AIDS?… [But] Michael said to … me mid-workshop, ‘When my obituary is written, instead of saying ‘Michael A Chorus Line Bennett,’ it will say ‘Michael Scandal Bennett.’ He was so proud of his work on it.”—TREVA SILVERMAN, writer of the never-produced Scandal
“After Michael Bennett died, it turned out that he left the biggest bequest so far to AIDS … some $7 million. Well, first, he’d never have donated anything like that while he was alive, and second, he could well afford it. He totaled up with 25 percent of the show’s profits via his Plum Productions; that came to roughly $12.5 million, on top of which his estate was estimated at $25 million. Still and all, I commend him for doing the right thing, which is more than most of the Tinseltown set who die from AIDS ever do.”—writer and AIDS activist VITO RUSSO
“Michael Bennett’s name is so linked with A Chorus Line and, to a far lesser degree, with other musicals. You remember him as a director, and a man who was very ambitious and at times went too far. Especially after A Chorus Line happened and changed him, even warped him. But I think it’s key to remember that first and foremost he was a dancer, and his first and his last love was the dance.”—GREG SIMS, of the Australian cast of A Chorus Line
“No matter how much we hated him, we’ll always love him.”—PAMELA BLAIR, original cast member of A Chorus Line
“Michael Bennett may have been the last Broadway genius for musicals. Who knows? Tommy Tune remains—but does he have genius? Is Andrew Lloyd Webber a genius? Is it dying out in America?… Will there be a woman genius? Are the gay ones all going to die before 50? What’s happening? What does the future hold? Should we be hopeful? But what else can we be?”—MICHAEL JETER (in 1997), who co-starred in Tune’s Grand Hotel and died of AIDS in 2003 at 52