Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (Applause Books) (21 page)

Thursday was the company’s final day on the set at Feller’s. The last few rehearsal days in New York would be back in Manhattan, at the American Theater Lab. Before driving up, I was sent to buy a slew of Styrofoam boaters for the chorus in both “Live, Laugh, Love” and the nearly finished number for Alexis, which we now knew was called “Uptown, Downtown.” Michael spread the chorus out across the stage and tried out a lot of different old hat-and-cane steps. He was playing around with every clichéd step he could think of. Michael knew that both numbers would have top hats and canes, and therefore would be somewhat related choreographically. He knew the shape of “Uptown, Downtown.” Alexis had been given most of the lyrics. Fritz was anxious for me to get them typed out so he could insert them in his stage managers’ script, and since Alexis seemed to have the only copy, I had to peer over her shoulder to get them. She gave me a quizzical glance. Fritz also wanted me to make sure all the new script pages generated over the past few weeks were organized and in one place so they could travel with the stage managers’ desk to Boston. I had kept one clean copy of every page that was changed during the rehearsal period, each one dated. I was prepared for the request.

The final New York run-through on the set took place Thursday at seven P.M. Judy Prince and John Guare were on hand, as well as Steve’s respected agent, Flora Roberts. Martha Swope came with a small crew and many cameras. The creative staff was in place. I asked Jim Goldman how he was doing. “I’m going to be fine, no matter what.” Guare, who had not been to any previous run-throughs, sat with a permanent half-smile on his face, and when it was over he could only shake his head and repeat “Fantastic . . .” over and over. Ethel Shutta was out; her return on Tuesday had proven to be too hasty. (She missed Wednesday’s run-through as well.) Buddy’s car had been painted blue. One truckload of scenery was already gone, so the studio was beginning to thin out. And as soon as the rehearsal finished, the crew would begin to take the side units and the stage itself apart. Because very lit-tle could fold up, it would take a total of seven trucks to get the entire physical production to Boston.

B
y Friday morning, Steve had finished “Uptown, Downtown.” Mathilde sent her sister to Steve’s to fetch the manuscript at nine A.M. At 11:30 I was sent to pick up the hastily copied piano/vocal copy, which I was to take immediately down to Nineteenth Street. Hal Hastings grabbed it and went into the small room by himself to play it through. Mary Jane Houdina and Bob Avian were taking the dancers through some movements, including experimenting with hand clapping for the dance section. Michael and Bob had done some quick research on 1940s dance steps and were teaching them to the fourteen members of the dancing ensemble; and once Michael heard the song played through a couple of times, he grabbed a Styrofoam boater from one of the dancers and jumped right in. Alexis went into the music room with Hal Hastings to learn the song. When she felt confident enough to join in with the dancers, they went into the large room. With John Berkman at the piano and Paul Gemignani at the trap set, Michael worked through some ideas. It was a group effort as ideas were tossed back and forth among Bob Avian, Mary Jane, and Graciela. After a little while, Michael announced loudly to the room that he was ready to begin on the staging, which he acknowledged he was making up as he went along. He had the chorus keep their backs to the audience all the way through, allowing Alexis to be framed in the center, facing front. He was also experimenting with having them each remain in one place for the entire number. Soon he asked the stage managers to postpone John McMartin’s call, as he’d decided to spend the whole day working with Alexis and the dancers. The more they all worked on the number, the more the steps involved removing and tipping the stiff-brimmed hats, and the more little pieces of Styrofoam brim began breaking off and flying around the room. By the end of the day, the shape of the number was blocked out completely, and the hats were all but destroyed.

Hal Hastings had a rare moment of respite and we had a chance to talk. At this point in the process, the “musicality” of his job seemed to include a lot more hand-holding and cajoling than actual music-making. He felt slightly overwhelmed by the enormity of the show, which was long on songs, long on dance music, and included an onstage band that was playing almost all the time the pit orchestra wasn’t. Every cast has its own personality, he said, and this group was certainly growing into its own. He admired Gene Nelson, who was still having trouble remembering his lyrics and staging but who worked continuously and tirelessly, even on his days off. “He has a good voice, but it’s not inside a great actor.” Yvonne was having some of the same problems, although she wasn’t inclined to work outside of rehearsal; she preferred to take her chances and just do as well as she could. Victoria Mallory had had her wisdom teeth removed, and he was concerned that that might have an adverse effect on her singing. Of Dorothy Collins he said that underneath that bouncy, cheerful exterior lurks a rather sad and somewhat neurotic woman. He explained that her first husband, Raymond Scott, hadn’t treated her well, but that she was now happily married to Ron Holgate.

On Friday evening at seven P.M. there was a session to record the background for the new Prologue. All the fragments of specific characters’ songs had been orchestrated; some were to be only flashes of memory, others were to be longer and more prominent. All the announcements were to be recorded as well, so they were “in memory” —a change from the last version of the Prologue, in which the Major-Domo at the party announced each guest. To be used were “Bring On the Girls,” the original opening song, in a Rudy Vallee-like crooning voice provided by Kurt Peterson; “Broadway Baby,” sung by Mary Jane Houdina; and fragments of several others, sometimes with speaking over them. I got all the orchestral parts from Mathilde, picked up Jonathan Tunick, and went down to a small recording studio in the West Fifties.

This was the first time any of the
Follies
songs would be heard with an orchestra of any size. For this purpose, the orchestra was only fifteen strong, with Paul Gemignani front and center at the drums and dance arranger John Berkman at the keyboard. Hal Hastings conducted, with Steve, Michael, and Bob Avian in the booth. The first song “played down” was “Bring On the Girls.” The orchestration was pure 1930s dance band—saxophones, clarinets, and one syrupy violin, giving a kind of Tommy Dorsey sound. The orchestra, made up of first-rate New York musicians, many of whom would be in the pit when the show got to the Winter Garden, got the style on the first take. “Who needs rock-and-roll?” quipped Jonathan, after winning praise from everyone in the booth. Steve complained that one note was wrong, but quickly conceded that he was more concerned for the copy of the tape that would go into his personal archives. (Interestingly, the orchestration to “Bring On the Girls” was very similar to the one Jonathan did several years later for the film
Stavisky,
in which this tune was used in a dance-hall scene.) Once the orchestral portions were done, the musicians were sent home and the voices were laid down. Michael, perhaps seeking revenge for the amount of time Yvonne was taking in rehearsal, stepped up to the mike first to play the choreographer: “and... a
one
two
three
four—Carlotta, you’re on the wrong foot, get on the other foot. Now you’re
behind
the beat. Come on, Carlotta, catch up! Carlotta!” Dick Latessa did several of the announcements, including “the whistling Whitmans,” complete with two tracks of whistling. Everyone thought it would be fun to get into the act, so Hal Hastings announced “the girl of your dreams, Miss Stella Deems,” and Jonathan Tunick and Bob Avian each did one. Michael and Steve discussed the importance of determining what each recording was: an actual performance from before (“Bring On the Girls”); an old shellac 78 recording (“Broadway Baby”). They also wanted to make certain the audience didn’t think the recorded orchestra actually was the orchestra in the theater. The engineer played around with some echo, differentiating between the various segments, paralleling the mood and state of mind of the characters whose memories they were. Hal Hastings, John Berkman, Bob Avian, and Michael stayed until five A.M., editing the finished tape.

There were only three days left before the company moved to Boston. Alexis arrived early at the studio on Saturday morning, in her red knickers, ready to work through “Uptown, Downtown.” In one week she would be performing it before the first preview audience. She worked on Friday, so by rights she had Saturday off, but she wasn’t about to rest; she needed to master her number. This was her chance to shine. Michael spent most of the day working with her.

Hal began Sunday’s rehearsal with notes from Thursday night’s run-through. He was going to make a few changes before leaving for Boston, he said, including new monologues for Ben and Phyllis in the opening scene that Jim had just completed (in response to Michael’s particular beef), a new version of the final scene, and a restaging of Ben’s “The Road You Didn’t Take.” In addition, Hal knew that he needed to see how “Live, Laugh, Love” was going to look before staging the hallucinatory scene that followed.

 

 

M
ichael and Bob had started the day doing more research on dance styles for “Uptown, Downtown.” Michael liked the song, but wasn’t sure how much he could get Alexis to dance. She was tall and had great legs, which he wanted to utilize as much as possible; but figuring out how to point up the difference between the two sides of the character in a decidedly low-down dance was a challenge. The chorus would go on doing the whole dance with their backs to the audience, but he was making certain that their steps remained active and interesting, and, whenever possible, that they commented on the lyrics. He also wanted a showstopper and knew that one way to get one was to build up to a section where one step could be repeated over and over. (Donna McKechnie told me years later that Michael would design dance numbers in such a way that he could determine the exact bar of music at which the audience would start to clap, and that repetition was one of the keys.)

Jonathan Tunick had completed several full scores, and for a change he brought them to the studio himself. He watched “Uptown, Downtown,” took notes, and wondered whether this job would ever come to an end. He was having fun with the onstage band, however, and was proud of a moment he had finished in “Beautiful Girls” when the onstage band is overtaken by the entire orchestra, in the style of an old MGM musical. It came at the end of Roscoe’s verse, just before the first woman appears at the top of the stairs. He had orchestrated it to feel like a movie opening up to Cinemascope, with the full orchestra booming out for the first time all evening, and he couldn’t wait to hear it played by the full orchestra in Boston.

Ethel Shutta was back and feeling fine. Some of the other older members of the company still had trouble remembering their words and staging, but she had retained hers. She now tended to be a bit mischievous, which the rest of the company adored. After singing “At my tiny flat, there’s just my cat,” for example, she ad-libbed, “Here, pussy, pussy.” She also illustrated the phrase “a spark to pierce the dark” with an imagined bow and arrow shot offstage left while raising her leg to help aim the bow. The line “From Battery Park to Washington Heights” often became “. . . way up to Washington Heights,” whispered in Jimmy Durante-style while she swung her arm way up. Today’s addition was a yelled “I can play the part!” after “making rounds all afternoon.” On days when she was annoyed, she would arch her finger right at Hal while she sang “Say, Mr. Producer, I’m talking to you, sir.” She didn’t enjoy participating in the group numbers; once while crossing the stage in “Beautiful Girls” she caught my eye and mouthed: “I hate this shit!” But her spirit was indomitable.

Hal wanted John McMartin to perform “The Road You Didn’t Take” as if it were a Henry Higgins monologue, in speech-song style. He realized this song was Ben’s credo, in which he tries to convince himself that he has made the right choices, and he felt that Ben should be unsuccessful at doing so. “The Ben I’ll never be, who remembers him?”—this was the line Hal recognized as the most important character insight in the song. There isn’t going to be another Ben, the Ben who would be willing to go off with Sally. Hal wanted Dorothy to realize during the song that she isn’t going to get Ben for her own, that she is part of “The Road You Didn’t Take.”

When the new dialogue for Ben and Phyllis in the Prologue was read through, Alexis got a laugh on “Who’s in love with you, Ben, your editor at Random House?” “My God,” she quipped, “a laugh!” Hal couldn’t resist, either: “What’s that funny noise? Laughter? Whatever it is, we don’t want it!” The general feeling was that the new dialogue was an improvement over the monologues.