You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (12 page)

Throughout rehearsals Ball reshaped the material, particularly the book. Intimations that Wildcat had been running scams were eliminated. Bits of comic business that had been centered on other characters were altered so that the laughs would belong to Ball.

Coleman and Leigh’s score, however, remained largely intact. Ball’s numbers included not only the brash march “Hey, Look Me Over,” but also the wistful ballad “That’s What I Want for Janie,” the raucously comedic “What Takes My Fancy,” and an antiromance duet for Wildy and Joe, “You’re a Liar.” In addition, Ball was featured prominently in four production numbers.

For someone who was admittedly neither a singer nor a dancer, it was a heavy load. And yet her much-lauded workaholic personality and dedication to perfection took over. She might have joked with reporters about her singing, “If you can take it, or if I can, I’ll be singing 10 songs. . . . However I sing they’ll hear me, darling, they’ll hear me.”
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But she also had turned to Carlo Menotti, whose pupils included Judy Garland and Tony Bennett, for voice lessons.

Her work with the instructor did seem to pay off, at least when she was presenting herself to the press. A few weeks later she was sounding more sure of herself: “I’m not going to do any of that talking-off-a-song stuff the way some non-singers do.” She did admit, however, to being relieved that “I’ll have mostly funny or action type songs. That means I’ll be doing a lot of cavorting around while I’m singing, and maybe that will keep people from paying too much attention to the quality of the voice.”
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Coleman, however, was frustrated with the star’s vocal abilities. This was, after all, the woman who would be delivering his first Broadway score. So for his own sake, her sake, and that of the production, he worked with Ball closely all through the rehearsal period. During this time she would sometimes ask him about what key a particular tune was in. “Knowing she wouldn’t know the difference, I would say anything.”
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Yet despite uncertainty about her ability to deliver the songs and the fact that she was still feeling the effects of her summertime leg injury, she persevered and must have been feeling relatively confident in her progress with the show. Before
Wildcat
had even begun its tryout at Philadelphia’s Erlanger Theatre, she agreed to do a semibiographical television special,
Lucy Goes to Broadway
, which would also feature many of the regulars from her famous series.

When
Wildcat
had its out-of-town opening, Arnaz—Ball’s soon-to-be ex-husband but still her business partner, close friend, and
Wildcat
“angel”—was in attendance, and regardless of what they thought of the production, theatergoers were thrilled to see him toss an orchid across the footlights as she took her first curtain call in the show.

The reviews, however, were nothing to cheer about. Ball herself called them “mild” but noted that the show played to “packed houses for the duration.”
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But the songs elicited praise, notably in the city’s most prominent paper, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, where Henry T. Murdock wrote in his review on October 31: “[The] melodies are far from stately; they have an occasional barrel-house growl. . . . ‘Far Away from Home’ and ‘Tall Hope’ should keep the balladeers busy.” The November 2
Variety
review also pointed to these two numbers as among the show’s best and stated unequivocally, “The Cy Coleman tunes and Carolyn Leigh lyrics are an important asset [to the production].”

What the critics had trouble with was the book. Many noted that the show was running too long, but more problematic than that was its overall quality. Ball was “frantically trying to contend with a conventional, cliché ridden musical,” as Ernie Schier wrote in the
Philadelphia Daily News
.

The process of rewriting began, and for Coleman and Leigh it meant losing two numbers and writing a new song to replace one of the excised tunes. In addition, they had to cope with the stumbling block of whether or not the show would have a title song before the production journeyed back to Manhattan.

The new song would replace a duet shared by Andes and David, the praised “Far Away from Home,” in which Coleman’s bittersweet melody is beautifully matched by Leigh’s melancholy lyric about what a person must have in order to feel that he or she belongs somewhere. The song exemplifies the qualities that catapulted the team to fame, being simultaneously smart, slightly sophisticated, and a model of simplicity. In contrast, its replacement, “You’ve Come Home,” is pleasant and certainly in keeping with the necessary sentiment, but it possesses a directness and bluntness that approach the saccharine.

It was in Philadelphia, too, that Coleman and Leigh wrote the musical’s title song. In an early draft of the script, there seemed to be an ideal place for an exuberant number for Wildcat, just after she had realizes that she has done enough to get Joe Dynamite to consider working for her (and maybe even like her a little). For this moment the team had drafted “I Got My Man,” and it was this number that morphed into “Wildcat,” in which Wildy, still excited about potentially getting Joe’s interest, sings about how terrific she is, with a full chorus of oohs and aahs behind her.

Along with changes to the music came alterations to the book, and as David remembered: “She was smart enough as a businesswoman to understand why people were coming. . . . They ripped that show apart to make it what people wanted, which was
I Love Lucy
discovers oil.”
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David’s admiration for this process could be considered surprising, given that it meant that he’d lost a number; but Ball’s dedication to the show and her compassion for her co-workers won not only his respect but also that of the entire company. In her memoir,
I, Rhoda
, Harper recalled: “Lucy looked after all of us. The first time she visited us in our chorus dressing room, she was shocked by how grim it was. She came from Hollywood, the land of clean, well-lit dressing rooms, so she was unaccustomed to the lack of glamour backstage in the old Broadway theaters. When she saw the rough, dirty cinder-block walls, she exclaimed[,] ‘I don’t want you living like this. We’ve got to paint the room.’” Ball’s “we” meant herself as well, but once the management learned that she was behind the movement, they stepped in to make the alterations. Harper wrote: “It was clear that she used her stardom to help us.”
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As the show was gearing up for its run in Philadelphia—and before the repainting of the Alvin’s dressing rooms—Coleman and Leigh’s publisher was doing his utmost to make sure the public knew what they had written. There were no restrictions placed on the songs in the
Wildcat
score, meaning that any artist could record or perform them.

Thus, a single from the Scandinavian jazz trio the Swe-danes featuring “Hey, Look Me Over” was in stores just as the show started its run in Philadelphia. In addition, Rosemary Clooney released a single with that tune and “What Takes My Fancy” in late November, and a host of others were on the way, including several of the cut “Far Away from Home.”

Morris’s general professional manager, Sidney Kornheiser, summed up the effort of attracting artists to the material, saying, “If the show’s a big hit, you haven’t lost anything, and if it’s not, you may have a hit record going for you at the very time the show can use a lot of action.”
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In the case of
Wildcat
, Ball’s presence was probably the only push the show needed once it finally opened on December 16—one day later than announced because of a snowstorm that had blanketed the Northeast, stranding three of the eight trucks carrying scenery, costumes, and props on the roads between Philadelphia and New York.

It was a night of nervousness for Coleman, who showed up at the Alvin Theatre in his tuxedo and mismatched shoes—one black, one brown. For Arnaz, it was a night to celebrate, and after the curtain had fallen he hosted a fete for Ball and the company at 21. Ball recalled the evening: “We sat waiting for the reviews to appear. . . . Finally I went over to Cleo [her cousin] and whispered[,] ‘Let’s leave. . . . I know they’re keeping the reviews from me.’ On the way back to the apartment, we stopped to pick up four or five papers. They were full of ‘Welcome, Lucy’ stuff but were tepid about the show.”
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Indeed, the notices on December 17 were grim, particularly for Nash’s book and the production overall. Walter Kerr, writing for the
New York Herald Tribune
, condemned Nash for having taken “the characters and the atmosphere and even the whimsy of his attractive play, ‘The Rainmaker,’ and transformed them lock, stock, and ranch-hands to musical comedy territory. . . . These aren’t very comfortable in the broader, bolder humors of the song-and-dance stage.” Robert Cole, in the
New York Mirror
, called the book “pedestrian,” but like many of his colleagues he cheered Ball’s arrival on Broadway: “‘Wildcat’ has its faults, but it also has the one-and-only Lucille Ball to cover them with her terrific showmanship.”

The most cutting assessment of the show came not from a daily critic but from columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who slammed it in her syndicated “Voice of Broadway” column the week after it opened: “[Ball] has absolutely nothing to work with; the book by N. Richard Nash is inexcusable.” She went on to say that Kidd’s staging was “appallingly old-fashioned” and condemned what she believed to be the caricature of an Irishman that Andes was being asked to portray: “If Mr. Andes played a Negro, with the same lines and direction, the NAACP would be down on ‘Wildcat’ like a ton of bricks.”

Coleman and Leigh, at least, could take some satisfaction in the notices their work received. The reviewers’ opinions might have varied, but at least there was a general level of praise.

The most lukewarm was in the
New York Times
, from Howard Taubman, who wrote that “only several of the songs by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh rose above routine,” and in the
Journal-American
John McClain delivered the assessment that “the music by Cy Coleman, with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, has a certain brash and rowdy quality in keeping with the locale but again it falls short of eminence.”

Frank Aston, writing for the
New York Herald-Telegram
, was more enthusiastic about the team’s work: “Tunes and words are just plain healthy and happy, free of that theater pestilence marked by neuroses, syndromes and other signals of gloom.” Richard Watts Jr., writing in the
New York Post
, came down on both sides of the score: “It is fortunate that there are Mr. Coleman’s songs to fall back on,” he wrote, but added that he thought Leigh had provided “less-than-brilliant” lyrics.

Ball’s work with (or in spite of) the material was admired, and there was one other aspect of the show that received universal acclaim: designer Peter Larkin’s colorful, cartoonlike set, which included an oil rig that was constructed onstage each night and, at the climactic moment, gushed petroleum on cue.

In the wake of these notices, and to give the
Lucy
fans what they wanted when they arrived at the Alvin, new changes were made to the show. One of the first was the excision of “That’s What I Want for Janie,” the delicate, warm number in which Wildy lets her guard down about her dreams for her sister. It disappeared from the production within weeks of the opening. Perhaps the song made the brash Wildy too sentimental. Perhaps it simply was too much for Ball, who was almost constantly onstage and beginning to suffer from a variety of new injuries as she acted, sang, and danced her way through the show.

Swen Swenson, a dancer who played one of Joe Dynamite’s workers, recalled: “She was forever hurting her legs, spraining her ankles. . . . Then, I noticed her feet were not strong. They were almost rounded on the bottom. So I started giving her exercises. Before she’d go on, I’d warm her up—bring her out on stage and give her very simple ballet to strengthen her feet and the legs to get the blood flowing.”
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But Ball’s injuries had nothing to do with the fact that she was not getting the gales of laughter that she had gotten used to while shooting
I Love Lucy
. She had discovered that by improvising and referencing the TV show, she could get the reaction she wanted. One night, when a character appeared in nightshirt and tasseled nightcap, like the outfit William Frawley sometimes wore on the series as a sight gag, Ball famously quipped, “Hey, do you know Fred Mertz?”

Given the success Ball had with such ad libs, Arnaz asked for Nash’s permission to bring in Bob Carroll and Madelyn Pugh, the writers for the series, to see if they could remedy the situation. They wrote a host of jokes for Ball’s first scene, all of which were greeted with silence. Nash remembered going to her afterward and saying, “It’s a different medium, Lucy. It’s early in the show, they can hardly hear you, they haven’t accustomed themselves to the acoustics of the theater, to your voice coming over the orchestra.” The writer continued, “She took out the lines instantly. That was a bad shock for her. In television, those lines had worked.”
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What Nash didn’t mention is that the person audiences were meeting at the top of
Wildcat
was unlike anyone they had previously encountered. Of course, most people had seen zany housewife Lucy Ricardo in some unusual getups, but only after they had been with her for a while in her generally immaculate dresses and suits. At the start of
Wildcat
, Ball, dressed in shirt and dungarees, emerged from underneath a dilapidated jalopy smothered in grime. And instead of her perfect hair, a mane of red locks cascaded down the actress’s back.

Once Ball knew that scripted gagging wouldn’t pay off, she relied on improvised clowning. During a panel discussion for the Drama Desk in January, she even “disclosed that she felt there were not enough laughs or funny lines.”
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