Authors: Stewart F. Lane
Tags: #Jews in Popular Culture - United States, #Theater - New York (State) - New York - History - 20th Century, #Performing Arts, #Jewish Entertainers, #Jews in Popular Culture, #Jewish, #20th Century, #General, #Jewish Entertainers - New York (State) - New York - History - 20th Century, #Drama, #Musicals - New York (State) - New York - History - 20th Century, #New York, #Musicals, #Theater, #Broadway (New York; N.Y.), #New York (State), #United States, #Jews in the Performing Arts, #Jews in the Performing Arts - New York (State) - New York - History - 20th Century, #History
Yes, it was in 1964, when Merrick brought
Hello, Dolly!
to Broadway, with music by Jerry Herman. Prior to
Dolly
, Jerry Herman had written both the music and lyrics for
Milk and Honey
in 1961. Like most of Broadway’s Jewish musical legends, Herman grew up in a house with a piano.
As Stella Adler’s daughter, Ellen, noted earlier, “Jewish families had pianos. Music was part of Jewish family life.”1
Jerry Herman’s mom sang and played piano in Catskills hotels, and his parents owned and ran a summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts. It was at the camp that they regularly staged theatrical pro ductions. Clearly, music was a major part of Jerry Herman’s early years.
After graduating from the University of Miami, Herman settled in New York City where he produced an Off Broadway revue called
I Feel
Wonderful.
Despite a limited run, it was the starting point of Herman’s theatrical career, which would bring him to Broadway in 1960 with a revue called
From A to Z.
However, it was his work on
Milk and Honey
that generated attention, and from there it was on to
Hello, Dolly!
,
w
hich featured Herman’s immensely popular title track, written in just one after noon. Much to the surprise and delight of Herman and Merrick, Louis Armstrong’s recording of
Hello Dolly!
became a huge chart-topping single. Petula Clark’s cover version in French resulted in a hit overseas.
132
6. Jewish Themes, Legends and Life in the 1960s and 1970s
Adapted from Thornton Wilder’s story
The Matchmaker
(which was adapted from Johann Nestroy’s comedy
The Merchant of Yonkers
),
Hello,
Dolly!
featured Dolly Gallagher Levi as the Yonkers-based matchmaker.
Like many major musicals,
Dolly
was the result of many transformations in the long, arduous process of bringing a musical to Broadway. Ethel Mer man, whom Merrick had worked with in
Gypsy
, was asked to play Dolly, but turned the role down. Her lost opportunity gave Carol Channing the biggest break in her long career. It didn’t come easily, however, as director Gower Champion, and Merrick, asked Channing to audition for the role. She agreed to do an audition since she very much wanted the part. Channing had not been in a Broadway hit since
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, more than a decade earlier. A year after her audition, she would walk away clutching a Tony Award for her performance as Dolly.
Hello, Dolly!
would play for what was then a record 2,844 performances, broken less than a year later by
Fiddler
. The musical would win ten Tony Awards in 1964, a record that would stand for 37 years until
The Producers
topped it with 12. During the long run of the show, there were even more Dollys than Merrick had wives. Following Channing, the list included Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Bibi Osterwald, Phyllis Dillar and finally Ethel Merman. It seemed that no matter who donned the magical Dolly headdress, she would enjoy the notoriety that came with being part of a show that epitomized the Broadway musical on a grand scale.
Following
Hello, Dolly!
, Jerry Herman would help bring to Broadway another matchmaking widow with an infectious theme song when he introduced the musical
Mame
in 1966, based on the novel
Auntie
Mame
, which had been a play in 1954.
Meanwhile, Merrick’s next significant hit was a very small two-person musical spanning the life of a married couple called
I Do! I Do!
, starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston. The show ran for over 550
per formances and proved, as Neil Simon had done with
They’re Play ing
Our Song
, that musicals need not have large ensembles to be success ful.
After bringing Robert Goulet to Broadway in the 1968 musical
The
Happy Time
, based on a novel by Robert Fontaine, Merrick and Simon had their one Broadway moment together with
Promises, Promises
, which after a long Broadway run spent 14 months on tour.
By the 1970s, Broadway was indeed changing, with
Two by Two,
133
Jews on Broadway
Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar
and
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat
bringing the Bible and Christianity to the stage, albeit with the help of some Jewish writers, performers and producers. Merrick however, turned his attention to the 1959 film classic,
Some Like It Hot
for his latest venture, and by 1972, despite tremendous friction between almost everyone associated with the stage production, the musical
Sugar
was born. With Jule Styne writing the music and Merrick’s usual director/choreographer Gower Champion on board, plus a cast that included Robert Morse and Tony Roberts, one would have expected
Sugar
to be a runaway hit. It was not. While it ran for over 500 performances,
Sugar
was not as sweet as expected at the box office.
There would be one more mega hit in the long, impressive career of David Merrick. It was a musical that would pay tribute to the street from which the theater district grew to the north. The show,
42nd Street
, with Gower Champion once again as director/choreographer, was based on the 1933 film about life behind the scenes in show business. A simple story about a chorus girl who gets her big break, literally, when the star breaks an ankle, and then goes on to stardom, was enough to carry the show with plenty of songs and excellent dance numbers. Sadly, director/choreographer Champion never saw the success of his significant efforts in making this show a hit as he died on opening night. Merrick announced the news to a stunned cast and audience after the opening performance. The musical went on to run for 3,486 performances.
In his long career, Merrick was able to take dramas, small musicals and major extravaganzas and make them work with star power, dynamic staging and even promotional gimmicks when necessary. He was indeed one of the most significant producers of the century.
And the Music Played On: Strouse, Schwartz
and Marvin
Berlin, the Gershwins, Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein ... the lineage of Jewish composers and lyricists continued. Along with Jerry Herman, Stephen Sondheim and the team of Bock and Harnish, Charles Strouse would come into prominence in the 1960s, and Stephen Schwartz would follow in the ’70s, along with Marvin Hamlisch.
134
6. Jewish Themes, Legends and Life in the 1960s and 1970s
Strouse was born to Jewish parents, Ira and Ethel Strouse, in New York City in 1928. His mom played a straddling piano in their home and had a feel for swing and jazz. His dad was in the tobacco industry. Strouse recalls some of the anti–Semitism while growing up during the 1930s.
“We were living on a street with a Parochial School and they bullied us, threw things at us and stomped us,” says Strouse. “We were never really hurt but it was very real,” he adds. “I also remember anti–Semitism when working on a farm in Massachusetts. The locals were not happy about hav ing Jews in their town, so they beat up my brother and tied me to a tree and lit a fire under me. Fortunately I was rescued,” recalls Strouse of the horrifying experience that resulted from the fact that he was Jewish.2
Strouse went on to attend the Eastman Conservatory in Rochester.
He would become an accomplished piano player by his early teens and study with Aaron Copland. Later he would write music for newsreels and early television programs before heading to Paris to study music abroad. Strouse recalls, while abroad, seeing the grand opera houses existing within a world of royalty, which was not open to Jews. The Jews as he saw it, in parts of Europe, had to make their own theater, which they did.
Upon returning to the United States, he began writing music for Movietone News, which played before films at the movie theaters. “It was canned music that they could use in films, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to make beautiful music,” he adds.3
In 1949, Strouse met lyricist Lee Adams at a party. Adams, a Jewish lyricist from Mansfield, Ohio, who had earned a master’s degree from Columbia University, would team with Strouse on some major musicals, starting with
Bye Bye Birdie
in 1960.
Birdie
was the breakthrough hit Strouse and Adams were seeking.
The musical, which was similar to the story of Elvis Presley, focused atten tion on a young fictional pop icon, Conrad Birdie who, much like Elvis, was being drafted into the military. In this case, the news wreaked havoc on a small town in Ohio where teenage girls were overwhelmed at the thought of their hero going off to the army. It might be noted that Conrad Birdie was supposed to be called Conrad Twitty until the real Conrad Twitty (who later went on to become a popular counrty singer known as Conway Twitty), stepped out of the woodwork and threatened to sue the producers.
The uplifting score by Strouse and Adams, coupled with the book 135
Jews on Broadway
by Michael Bennett and direction and choreography from Gower Champion, created a pop-culture classic that would open the door for other teen-based musicals such as
Grease
and
Hairspray
years later.
Birdie
ran for 607 performances and became a major hit film in 1963. The show won a Tony Award for Best Musical, while charming audiences young and old. Dick Van Dyke, Michael Bennett and Gower Champion also won Tony Awards (Champion actually won two for both directing and choreography).
Following the success of
Birdie
, Strouse and Adams worked with Broad way newcomer Mel Brooks on the unsuccessful football-themed show
All American
, which came and went in a couple of months. From foot ball, Strouse and Adams turned their attention to boxing and created a musical version of Clifford Odets’ 1937 drama,
Golden Boy
. Changing the theme from the struggles of an Italian American to those of an African American boxer, played by a Jewish actor, Sammy Davis, Jr.,
Golden Boy
was well-timed, at the onset of the growing civil rights movement. As a result it ran for more than 500 performances. Then, in a complete turn-about, Strouse and Adams brought the comic strip hero
Superman
to life with
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman
. Unfortunately, theatergoers were not taken in by the man of steel on stage, and the play had a short run. It is, however, being revived. “We’ve written four new songs for it,”
says Strouse, who at the age of 81 hopes the new version of the show will
fly
.4
It was the 1970 show
Applaus
e, at the Palace Theater, that brought Strouse and Adams back to prominence. With a book by Comden and Green,
Applause
brought a musical version of the 1950 film classic
All
About Eve
to the Broadway stage and ran for nearly 900 performances, making it the biggest hit for Strouse and Adams to date. It was also the breakthrough for actress Lauren Bacall (discussed later) who starred as fictional theater star Margo Channing. In the story, Channing falls prey to a ruthless newcomer named Eve who plots to steal her career and her man.
Applause
brought Strouse his second Tony Award.
While the popular theme song for the classic sitcom
All in the Family
was also attributed to Strouse and Adams, the next major Broadway musical for Strouse was based on the comic strip
Little Orphan Annie
.
This time, Strouse teamed with director/lyricist Martin Charnin. Another New Yorker, Charnin was one of the gang members in the original
West
136
6. Jewish Themes, Legends and Life in the 1960s and 1970s
Side Story
. Besides working with Strouse, Charnin also collaborated on musicals with Richard Rodgers.
Annie
was set in a New York City orphanage in the depression era, and it promoted courage and optimism in the face of hard times. Unlike Superman
, Annie
was successful at bringing a comic strip character to Broadway as the young orphan girl won the hearts of theatergoers and the song “Tomorrow” became a modern standard.
Following Annie, which ran for a whopping 2,377 performances, Strouse wrote music for a number of major motion pictures plus several other Broadway shows. One particular show,
Rags
, was about an immigrant Jewish mother who escapes Europe with her children, settles on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and falls in love with a Jewish labor union leader. Despite being a box office bust,
Rags
drew high critical acclaim and was nominated for a Tony Award for best musical in 1987.
Rags was probably the most “Jewish” show Strouse ever wrote. Yet, Strouse feels that his religion was reflected in much of his work, as was the case with most of the Jewish composers, especially “Lenny” (Bernstein), as Strouse calls him. “I feel the Jewish heritage in me, but I am an Atheist,” explains Strouse. “There’s a cynicism among Jews that enables them to appreciate the vulgarity of the world. It seems to me that there’s a kind of worldliness and acceptance of the ‘crap’ that’s in the world and that’s where musical theater grew, not out of the royalty of the opera but out of being oppressed,” says Strouse, claiming that musicals are the bastard of the arts.5
Rags
was later revised and revived in 1991 by the Jewish American Theater, and then again in Florida in 1999.
Rags
also brought Strouse together with lyricist Stephen Lawrence Schwartz, whose career, like that of Strouse, also took off in the ’60s, although for Schwartz it was the late
’60s. The son of Sheila and Stanley Schwartz, a teacher and businessman, respectively, Stephen was born in 1948 and grew up in the Jewish community of Minneola on Long Island. His musical prowess, which began at an early age, landed him in the prestigious The Juilliard School of Music while he was still in high school. After college, Schwartz had a short career as a record producer before trying his hand at writing lyrics for musicals. His first success came at the age of 21, with the 1969 hit musical
Butterflies Are Free
, which opened at the Booth Theater and ran for over 1,100 performances before becoming a film in 1972.