Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (Applause Books) (38 page)

This was the official day off for the company, but a few things had to be dealt with. Flossie finally prevailed and got Alexis to come in and try on her new dress. Hal and Michael were both in the theater when she came walking out on the stage with it on. It was still red and pink, but this one was a complete, floor-length, form-fitting Marlene Dietrich evening dress with a high collar, long sleeves, and a skirt of overlapping long fringe going to the floor—and slit all the way up the right side. And it was clearly very heavy. Alexis looked quite unhappy. Flossie and Barbara Matera stood nearby. Michael said, “Okay, execute some of the steps.” She began, and it was immediately evident that the choreography for her number in no way agreed with a heavy long skirt slit up one side. At one moment when she executed one of her moves, a large red bead flew off the dress and rolled off the stage. I picked it up; I still have it.

“Well, I would have to rechoreograph the whole number,” Michael said. Alexis remained quiet, but clearly hoped the dress would simply disappear; she hated it. Luckily for her, it was never seen again. A new one would be made, but that was still a week away.

Michael went over “The Right Girl” with Gene on the stage. It seems that Gene had become very upset with the number, and with the show. Gene’s frustration with the number had spilled over into a general malaise with everything. He had exploded in front of Hal and Michael. Hal had experienced this before with Dean Jones in
Company
and had a premonition that something would go wrong with Gene shortly after the New York opening, at which time he would ask to leave the show. Hal’s premonition was only slightly off the mark: it was a family crisis that nearly prevented Gene from opening the show in New York, yet he remained with it throughout its New York run.

Jim Goldman met with Hal in the lounge to go over some more changes.

Steve Sondheim, who hadn’t been seen in several days, showed up, manuscript in hand. It was Yvonne’s new song, finished. There had been very little gossip around the company about the song, so I didn’t know what to expect, but at least it was finished, and Hal was pleased about that. Steve handed me his manuscript, warning that it was the only copy. Knowing that the stage managers would be anxious for the lyrics typed out, I climbed to the fifth-floor dressing room/office, where the red IBM typewriter awaited. By this time I had a pretty good idea of how Steve liked his lyrics transferred to script format, so I was confident I could extract them from his musical manuscript with few mistakes. I rolled the nine carbon sheets into the typewriter, and began:

The lyrics were precise and well crafted, so it was easy to figure out where the line breaks were. And they were evocative, with wonderful images from American history—breadlines, Beebe’s Bathysphere, the WPA, Greer Garson, Amos and Andy. Herbert Hoover and J. Edgar Hoover were lyrically linked, probably for the first time ever. There was even a line cribbed from dialogue, in the fine tradition of the musical theater. Carlotta once had a line: “Used to be I played the vamp. Now I play somebody’s hot-pantsed mother, stinko by my swimming pool and all my kids are acid heads.” That had become:

I was astounded. The song just kept delivering brilliant images, of events and people from the 1930s and forties, all woven into a passionate and dramatic statement of survival. Wow, I thought, and this from a fairly simple-minded character who had previously sung a clever song with one big double-entendre joke and some tossed-off quips about being a has-been. Now we’re learning who she was, and it was really good. There were a couple of references I didn’t get—Brenda Frazier, Wally and George (later changed to Windsor and Wally)—but I did know about mahjongg, since my grandmother had taught me and my brothers the game that went with those beautiful ivory cubes. Certainly, though, I had never seen it used in a lyric before. Line after line continued to amaze me:

After these lines came a key change. Just typing these words, without hearing the music, it seemed as if the song had reached a different plateau and that a key change would probably be effective. Lyric after lyric was clever, perceptive, harsh, sad, piercing, funny, and honest. And perfectly crafted. In some ways the song seemed to be as much about Yvonne De Carlo herself as it was about Carlotta Campion, and I wondered whether Steve figured that Yvonne would probably not make the connection, which would add a layer of pathos to the performance that couldn’t have been planned. He had been observing her, I thought, and he must have taken in a lot of who Yvonne was to create a piece of material that would give such depth to her character in so emotional a way. (Steve later claimed that Joan Crawford, not Yvonne, was his inspiration.) When I was told that Yvonne’s audition song had been “Ten Cents a Dance,” I wondered if there wasn’t a reference to that in the lines:

The song would exist very much in the present—a personal statement by a character who had exhausted her repartee for the evening and was now revealing the truth about herself. Steve was replacing a comic turn with a from-the-heart statement. “Fox Trot” was a throwaway expanded beyond its resources. Now it was gone, and it was just possible that in the process
Follies
was going to gain a powerful moment that would strengthen its emotional center. I couldn’t wait to hear the music that went with these words, especially as I got to the last page:

Keeping a clean copy for my files, I brought the copies and the manuscript down to Steve. The next step was for Mathilde to create a piano/vocal copy. Then the song could be circulated. This one was definitely a keeper. Little did I or any of us know then that it would become one of Sondheim’s most performed songs, and one whose sentiments, first typed that day by a twenty-year-old gofer, would continue to have resonance for years to come.

H
al Hastings called Yvonne in early to teach her “I’m Here.” They disappeared down into the men’s lounge, where the piano was, and spent the better part of the afternoon going over the song. Hal had to explain some of the references, since Yvonne had a tendency to sing “Amos and Randy” instead of “Amos and Andy.” She was excited about the song, but anxious about just how soon the powers that be wanted it in the show. She had a big job in front of her, and she knew it.

Gene’s blowup had somehow energized Michael, who attacked “The Right Girl” with a new sense of excitement. He came up with new ideas, including additional swings around poles and an astonishing leap from one high platform on stage right to another. He was also determined to devise an ending that would both act as choreographic punctuation and get a huge hand. Gene seemed to have gotten over his frustration and was excited as well. The number was starting to cook.

Some new material from Jim had the company somewhat taken aback. Alexis was given new opening lines that she did not like. Dorothy was given some new lines for her “mad” scene following “The Right Girl,” and she wasn’t happy with hers, either. That scene was being tinkered with to get the tone right—it was when Sally thinks that Ben will marry her and is as crazy as she ever is—but one new line in which she speaks about cold corpses had the company actually gasping at the first read-through.

The evening performance elicited the best audience reaction so far. For some reason, this Monday-night Boston crowd was out for a good time, and they loved it all. Strange that two weeks ago the Monday audience was a total bust, and yet here was a riotous group. They laughed at lines that had never gotten laughs before; they applauded every number; so it was hard to figure out whether the performance itself was any good. Gene, with the new changes for “The Right Girl” on his mind, flubbed the second chorus of lyrics to “Buddy’s Blues.” “Rain on the Roof” was a disaster, while “Ah, Paris!” was in a holding pattern and generally doing fine, and “Broadway Baby” continued to knock ’em dead. The Young Four performed their Follies numbers very peculiarly; apparently they were spooked by a rumor that both songs were about to be cut.

Notes began with Michael’s announcement that the new version of “The Right Girl” would be put into the show on Friday. Then Hal took over, yellow pad in hand. “Not a bad show last night. Pretty good . . .” Ethel, feeling frisky, replied, “Yeah? That what you thought?” “Well,” he replied, “I’ll tell you where I didn’t like you. Were there any places where you didn’t like yourself?” Michael took over: “Hattie, I think it looked like you knew how funny you were last night.” Ethel said: “Well, yes, I did.” “Please don’t
tell
us—
just be
funny.” He was similarly concerned about the women in “Beautiful Girls”: “All you girls who come down those stairs are coming down for
yourselves.
Do not make eye contact with the audience. You are coming down those stairs for a last time. You are not at a performance of the Ziegfeld Follies, so do not play to the audience.” Hal and Michael huddled over a few notes they weren’t sure who should give. Michael said “Who’s That Woman?” was getting sloppy. “When I have fixed everything else in the show—next week, maybe, although I know that’s optimistic—then we’ll clean up the mirror number.” Hal inserted two new lines before “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs”—“because I would hate for a day to go by without doing something to that number”—and had a few new line readings. To Michael Bartlett, regarding one of Roscoe’s lines, Hal said, “Just relax, will ya? The key is to throw the whole goddamn thing away.” Alexis questioned one of her recently added lines, and Hal told her she could simply cut it. At that, Jim Goldman, who had been lurking out in the house, piped up: “The line should stay as written. It’s needed to make another reference in the speech make sense.” Hal, stealing a glance in Jim’s direction, turned back to the actors. “We’ll take five and talk, and then I’ll have a note for you, Alexis. Cool it.” A compromise was reached; the line remained, but with one minor edit.

Gene remarked later that he didn’t like the way Hal talked to the actors.

Steve showed up to watch Michael rehearse “Buddy’s Blues” with the two dancers. They were still unhappy with the number. “Act like two of the dumbest showgirls ever,” Steve coached. “Play it absolutely straight. You’ve both been to acting school and have had exactly one lesson . . . any emotion you show is simply what you’ve been taught. But be careful—nothing in the song must ever sound like contempt. The fact is, both Sally and Margie
do
love Buddy, and he is torn between the two.”

It was a matinee day. Celebrity sightings: Phil Silvers, who was about to open in a new comedy titled
How the Other Half Loves
at the Wilbur, was at the performance. Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence attended the evening performance, along with Gene Kelly, who was there to cheer on his brother, Fred. Tharon Musser, her assistant Spencer Mosse, and Boris and Lisa Aronson were there, having been gone for several days. The matinee was pretty sluggish, the evening performance more spirited.

In between shows, Hal wanted to hear Yvonne sing “I’m Here.” After everyone had cleared the stage, Hal Hastings climbed up to the onstage piano and played, while Yvonne, clinging to her lyric sheet, sang it twice. It was the first time I had heard the music all the way through. It was, as I had been told, in the style of a smoky Harold Arlen blues number, and the key change three-quarters of the way through was great. It felt like a big change but was actually only a half-step up. Yvonne didn’t have it mastered, but it sounded as if she would be able to deliver it well. Dorothy sneaked into the wings from her dressing room in her bathrobe to listen and gave Yvonne a comradely hug when she was done. Hal was apparently so pleased that he cried—at least that’s what Yvonne told members of the company, who were beginning to hear good things about the new song. She was concerned about when it would go into the show. Staging hadn’t even been contemplated. It was Wednesday, and although she didn’t know it, Hal and Michael wanted it in by the weekend.

Steve was now deep into the new Follies number for Alexis that Michael had requested. This came out of nowhere, at least to us on the periphery. “Uptown, Downtown” was the second-to-last song finished, and it was going over well. But people were still worried about the audience making the connection between the main characters and all the Follies numbers, and Alexis’s song did seem to be the hardest for the audience to grasp. According to Hal Hastings, Steve had come up with some very funny ideas for the new song.

“This is going to be a big day. There are lots of changes, seemingly small but they mean a lot of rearrangements, which will mean a lot of coordination,” Hal began, and then proceeded to do what he had been doing for days: make small changes to scenes, mostly to the same ones that had been worked over before. Big fixes were clearly not going to be made. Yvonne’s new number was being rehearsed, and everyone now knew Alexis was going to have a new Follies song. Michael was redoing the Prologue and was still intent on making “The Right Girl” a showstopper. The libretto was pretty much what it was going to be, and Jim continued to be the slightly aloof figure he had been from the beginning. He watched every performance, and made only slight changes. People treated him with kid gloves, but there was a growing feeling that he wasn’t holding up his end, that the changes being made were strictly cosmetic and, in some instances, less good than what they were replacing. Had he lost all perspective? Audiences were watched and paid attention to, but since there wasn’t a consistent response it was hard to take coherent direction from them. Work was taking place, but where was it all heading? Members of the company were confused—were they in a big, splashy musical comedy, or were they in an innovative, conceptual work the likes of which had never been seen before? When audiences were silent, were they listening or bored? Reaction varied from performance to performance, and reaction varied from friend to friend. No one seemed to have a clear notion as to whether the show would be a big hit or a big flop. Some audiences seemed to leave
Follies
enchanted; others seemed to leave disappointed. The emotions of everyone involved with the show swung similarly between two poles. We were right smack in the middle of the Boston run: there was a week and a half left, followed by a week and a half of previews in New York. Then opening.

Even though the news of a new number for Alexis had made its way around the company only the day before, Steve brought it in today, finished. It paid homage to a song from
Lady in the Dark,
“The Saga of Jenny,” with its title “The Story of Lucy and Jessie.” It covered much the same territory as “Uptown, Downtown,” but in a more Cole Porter way—sassy, and at a bit of a clip. If audiences were unable to make the connection between Phyllis herself and the hypothetical “hyphenated Harriet” of “Uptown, Downtown,” perhaps they would make the connection with this new verse:

When Michael got around to staging it, he even had Phyllis point to herself at the end of those four lines. As a big fan of “Uptown, Downtown,” I wasn’t wild about the new song, and my ear kind of balked at the idea of someone wanting to be “juicy,” even as I was fascinated by some of Steve’s wonderful rhymes:

It was hard to fault the creative flow of this creative mind. Michael intended to stage it very much along the lines of “Uptown, Downtown,” although it was an entirely new song and needed an entirely new dance arrangement.

Having now finished all the songs, Steve sat and watched the show for the first time in nine days. He was genuinely excited and came backstage and said to everybody, “I haven’t seen the show in over a week and I am absolutely thrilled.” That was meaningful praise, and it gave everyone a boost. As he went off to the dressing rooms to speak to the actors individually, Hal, relieved somewhat by Steve’s enthusiasm, sat on the stage with Jim Goldman. “Jim,” he said simply, “this is a wonderful show.” Company manager John Caruso wandered out on the stage to give Hal some good news: the remainder of the run in Boston was virtually sold out, with only a few balcony seats left for the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Hal was thrilled to hear that audiences were embracing the show.

Michael and Bob Avian began taking Yvonne through some basic staging; they would resume working with her at the start of rehearsals on Friday.

Everyone felt that it was important to concentrate on “I’m Here,” get it staged, make whatever changes were necessary to the dialogue before and after it, and get it in the show. The goal was for it to go in at the Saturday matinee. Because it was a book song, the introduction had to be changed; “Can That Boy Fox Trot!” had some silly lines introducing it that were now completely inappropriate. Steve sat in the auditorium, watching the stage intently. When at one point Yvonne went up on a lyric, everyone turned to Steve, who was, himself, momentarily flummoxed. “I was so involved in the song that I forgot what the next line was,” he confessed.

Hal took the rest of the company to the ladies’ lounge for notes. He characterized the day as “kind of a funny one” since it consisted primarily of making whatever adjustments needed to be made to accommodate “I’m Here.” But the new version of “The Right Girl” was going in tonight, and it needed stage time as well. Michael would have to turn his attention to “The Story of Lucy and Jessie,” since it was hoped that it, too, could go in the show soon.

When time came to work through “I’m Here” onstage, Yvonne performed it for the rest of the company sitting out in the house. She messed up a few lyrics, but when she finished, they cheered. She was relieved. Fitting the song into the context of the show went quicker than anyone expected, and it was run without incident a couple of times.

Michael began “Lucy and Jessie.” John Berkman and Paul Gemignani sat at the onstage piano and drum set. Michael climbed up to the platform as John played the song over and over. He was listening and marking his way through, thinking about how much of the choreography for “Uptown, Downtown” could be retained or adapted. When Alexis came out of her dressing room and heard what was going on, she said, “Well,
his
Lucy and Jessie are certainly faster than
my
Lucy and Jessie!” She liked the song, though, and mentioned somewhat sardonically that she was hoping she would be given enough rehearsal time before it went in. Michael came down on the stage, Bob Avian and George Martin on either side of him and the dancers behind, and began to work his way through the song. Steve watched, at one point reminding Michael of a step he had liked that had been discarded; Michael was grateful for the suggestion and promptly put it back in. John Berkman gave Michael the counts and the “feel” that he was asking for. The song seemed to please everyone; it seemed closer to the character of Phyllis, who, in Jim Goldman’s words, “was open and alive at twenty and is now closed and dead at fifty.” This new song established the two sides of her personality better.

Hal had a new concern about “Too Many Mornings”: he wasn’t sure that Sally’s line “And my fears were wrong” was clear enough. He wasn’t sure whether the problem was in the performance or in the writing itself. Since Steve was nearby, he went over to Dorothy and talked her through the moment that was the musical climax of the song. The lyric was an expression of joy. He could zero in on any problem with precision and without hesitation.

Hal had a new task for me. Word got to him that since they knew they wouldn’t be eligible in the “Best Musical” category,
No, No, Nanette
had requested a Special Tony at the awards ceremony, which was only a few weeks away, and that the people who ran the Tonys were seriously considering the request (this was before the Tonys had categories for revivals). He was livid, and dictated a letter that he wanted to send “to whom it may concern”: “Special awards should not be given to people simply because they ask for them. In the event that you should feel the desire to acquiesce, I will withdraw
Company
from the competition in all categories and, in order to be consistent, I shall withdraw all future shows of mine from the Tonys.” (Interestingly, the first draft of his letter also included a disparaging comment about their plan to honor Elliot Norton: he said it was “lunatic” to grant a special award to a critic—but they did.) As it happened, there was no special award for
No, No, Nanette;
still, it won four Tonys.
Company
had an unprecedented thirteen nominations and won seven awards.

“The Right Girl” changes went into the performance—luckily, without a hitch. It was decidedly better, the audience responded in kind, and Gene felt a boost of pride. Now the challenge was to keep it up, since, as Michael had hoped, it pushed Gene’s skills right to the edge.

After the performance I went out with two of my faculty supporters from Connecticut College. They were pleased for me that I had been able to pull off the independent study, and were determined to come see what it was I was so passionate about. They smiled the whole time, thrilled that I had hooked up with something obviously so exciting. As theatergoers, their take on the show was fascinating. They liked it, but when pressed, found it a little bleak, and didn’t like “Fox Trot” at all. I was able to explain that they had seen a bit of history, because they had just witnessed that number’s final performance. I told them the new number was looking very good, but that tomorrow would tell. I walked them back to their car, and again they said what a thrilling experience this was for me. And after the show opened and made it to the cover of
Time,
the whole administration took notice.