Read Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz Online

Authors: Greg Lawrence,John Kander,Fred Ebb

Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz (14 page)

EBB: But we didn’t write that or think of that. That was the material, and luckily we were able to relate to it and translate it.
KANDER: A case where that spirit is not there is the end of
Cabaret
.
EBB: “Life Is a Cabaret” is not a happy song, given the context and what the song is really saying in that show. The audience now accepts it as entertainment, and if it gives people pleasure, that’s fine. I think the song has taken on a life of its own. In the same way that you can’t control your children, you have to let your songs go where they will.
KANDER: It is a very sad and dramatic song. The fact is that it is a song about a woman who has decided to have an abortion:
 
What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret.
 
Put down the knitting, the book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret.
 
Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band.
Come blow a horn, start celebrating:
Right this way, your table’s waiting.
No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile a-way.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret!
 
I used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie.
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea.
She wasn’t what you’d call a blushing flower.
As a matter of fact, she rented by the hour.
 
The day she died the neighbors came to snicker:
“Well, that’s what comes of too much pills and liquor.”
But when I saw her laid out like a queen,
She was the happiest corpse I’d ever seen.
I think of Elsie to this very day.
I remember how she’d turn to me and say:
 
“What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret.
 
Put down the knitting, the book and the broom,
Time for a holiday.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret.”
 
And as for me, as for me,
I made my mind up, back in Chelsea,
When I go I’m going like Elsie.
Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb
Isn’t that long a stay.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Only a cabaret, old chum,
And I love a cabaret!
 
KANDER: Outside of our own collaboration, I think we always try to be open and flexible with our other collaborators. We like to work that way and we were taught to work that way by Mr. Abbott and by Hal. If there were one small point I would hope to make in this book, it is that none of the projects that we do, or that anybody worth his salt does in this business, are entered into frivolously with the idea of making a quick buck, as critics sometimes suggest. There isn’t anyone we know writing in this area who doesn’t approach the work very seriously with some sense of devotion and integrity. Sometimes you fuck it up and sometimes you don’t. But it’s never with that mercenary motive that you see implied in reviews that sound like “Oh, they were selling out” or “They were trying to cash in.” That’s just not true. Much of the work is much too arduous and demanding for that.
EBB: That sounds right to me. Musical theater is such a bastard art. Look at how many people come to bear on one number—a lyric writer, a composer, a director, a librettist. To think of how many people can defeat a number—a bad horn player, a conductor getting a tempo wrong, a director not understanding it, a librettist not properly leading the audience into it, a performer who goes flat-footed or forgets a line. It’s an amazing collaborative process, and the fact that anything comes off is quite remarkable considering how many elements have to conspire to make a number or a show work. The critics really hated
70, Girls, 70
and I’ve never quite understood why. It was one of the only times Stephen Sondheim ever complimented me. He had seen a matinee. I was in the back of the theater and as he was
leaving, he called my name. I went over and said, “Hi, Stephen,” and he said, “This is the best audience show I’ve seen in years. Everybody loves it. Congratulations.” Jesus, I was thrilled!
KANDER: It was a strong audience show up until we opened.
EBB: It never occurred to me that the audience would hate it, until Sondheim’s
Follies
opened, which was about three weeks before us. I went to the opening night with Carl and Joan Fisher, and I thought that show was just breathtakingly brilliant. At the end, I jumped up like everybody else. But then it occurred to me that show was also about getting old and dealing with it and having an affirmation. I wondered if that would hurt us. I mean, they were Tiffany’s and we were Woolworth’s. Then I became convinced in my own deeply neurotic way that, of course, it would kill us.
KANDER: And it did.
EBB: But, you know, it doesn’t matter. The fact is you write ‘em and you call ’em as you see them and hope for the best. And what else can you do?
KANDER: We’ve scarcely been mistreated, Freddy.
EBB: Oh, I never said that and certainly don’t mean that. I think we’ve been treated very well, or else, after something like
70
,
Girls
,
70,
how do you get your next one? After success, it’s obvious how you get the next show, but after the failures, you have to wonder.
KANDER: The next one was
Chicago.
 
 
While continuing their Broadway collaborations, Kander and Ebb also undertook a number of projects for television and film. Following the release of the movie
Cabaret
in February 1972, Ebb wrote Liza Minnelli’s television special,
Liza with a Z
. Ebb
and Bob Fosse produced the show while Ebb and Kander wrote songs. The production was filmed at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater on May 31, 1972, for an invited black-tie audience.
Liza with a Z
was broadcast in September of that year and won an Emmy for Outstanding Single Program. The show’s soundtrack spent more than five months on the charts.
The following year Ebb wrote and produced Frank Sinatra’s television special
Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back
, with guest star Gene Kelly welcoming Sinatra out of a brief retirement. Turning again to movies, Kander and Ebb wrote several songs for the Barbra Streisand film
Funny Lady
, directed by Herb Ross. The movie was released in March 1975, with the Kander and Ebb song “How Lucky Can You Get?” earning an Oscar nomination. The duo went on to contribute songs to three Liza Minnelli movies:
Lucky Lady
(1975),
A Matter of Time
(1976), and
New York, New York
(1977). “The Theme from
New York, New York”
became an enduring hit for Frank Sinatra in 1980 and the official anthem of New York City.
 
 
EBB: I first worked with Frank Sinatra when I wrote his TV special
Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back
. Meeting him was kind of terrifying. Frank Loesser once told me en passant, “Don’t ever meet your heroes. Chances are it will be a very disillusioning experience.” And with Sinatra in many ways it was. I almost wish I didn’t see what I saw or hear what I heard. I admired him enormously as a singer, but then I kept seeing him as a human being, and that was upsetting. I saw him snap his fingers to call one of his entourage to shine his shoes. I saw him be extremely cruel to Gene Kelly. All I can say about something like that is how disturbing it was.
Actually, Frank had wanted Redd Foxx to be the guest star on this show, the black comedian who was hilariously funny in the
sitcom
Sanford and Son.
But I said to Frank, “I have no idea how to write for him. I don’t know anything about Redd Foxx. I’m more at home with musical personalities, and I would very much like the guest to be Gene Kelly.” Frank allowed that to happen, but he was not happy about it at any time, and I honestly don’t know why. Frank used to call him “Shanty.” That was his nickname for Gene, and I thought that was a little belittling right there. But Gene didn’t seem to mind. He was the sweetest man, always humble and gracious.
I had to write the whole special and I used some numbers that Frank had done previously like “Free and Easy,” during which Gene was to tap dance. Frank was not ungracious with me, though he would snap his fingers to call me too. “Fred,” he would say, pointing to the script, “I don’t want to say this.” The script was based anecdotally on stories he told me. For instance, at one point in his movie career he was working with a leading lady, Michèle Morgan, in a movie called
Higher and Higher
. She was taller than he was, and the director made him stand on a box to play a love scene with her. I repeated that story in the script because I thought it was charming, but Frank refused to include it in the show. He called me over and said, “I don’t want this in the script.” So I had to take it out and we were left with holes in the show that he created because he actually didn’t read the script until the day of the taping.
KANDER: What did we write for that show? Do you remember?
EBB: We wrote “We Can’t Do That Anymore.”
KANDER: Oh, that’s right.
EBB: I thought it was a decent number, and Gene loved it. We were trying to be witty, saying now that we’re over a certain age, we’re still able to dance like the wind and coo like doves. Frank sang the line “I can’t sing anymore,” but he then proceeded to show you how well he did sing. Kelly sang, “I can’t dance anymore,” and then proceeded to show you how well he did dance. It was not a bad number for the two of them. Frank learned it, and Gene learned it. But comes the night of the pre-record, Frank called me over before the taping and said, “I’m not recording that song.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I’ve turned on it. I don’t like it, and I don’t want to do a number like that with Gene.”
ABOVE: Harold Prince (left).
George Abbott, Liza
Minneli, Bob Dishy Fred
Ebb, and John Kander
(at piano) working on
Flora, the Red. Menace
, 1965
(Courtesy John Kander)
Fred Ebb, John Kander
(at piano), and Jill Haworth
as Sally Bowles rehearsing
Cabaret
, 1966 Phototest :
Fred Ebb (left), John Kander, Barbra Streisand, Hal Prince, and Joe Masteroff at the
Tony Awards, 1967. Streisand presented Kander and Ebb with their first Tony for the score of
Cabaret
. (Courtesy Fred Ebb)

Other books

Hustle by Pitts, Tom
The Beatles Boxed Set by Joe Bensam
At the Edge of the Sun by Anne Stuart
Bogeyman by Steve Jackson
Puppet On A String by Lizbeth Dusseau
Why Are We at War? by Norman Mailer