You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (14 page)

Eventually, however, the time came for both to move on. They had survived his rehearsal time with
Wildcat
and that show’s opening. They had also coped with a particularly busy period in her career, when she was commuting by motor scooter between two downtown shows every night. She would do the first act of
The Balcony
(the only part of the play in which she appeared) in the West Village, and then perform in a revival of Tennessee Williams’s
Camino Real
, which was playing in the East Village and featured her only in the second act.

Columnists did try to make the end of the affair stormy, but it wasn’t. The two remained friends for years.

The printed “bust-up” notices—according to columnist Lee Mortimer, Coleman sent Miles a dozen red roses with the note “Say it ain’t so”
14
—roughly coincided with Lucille Ball’s first illness in
Wildcat
and Bennett’s release of “The Best Is Yet to Come” and “Marry Young.”

These songs weren’t the only pop tunes that Coleman and Leigh had coming out during this period, though. In late 1960, for instance, Fran Jeffries released the LP
Fran Can Really Hang You Up the Most
, which had a gentle Coleman-Leigh ballad, “April Song,” on it; and Margaret Whiting came out with a tune they wrote in the spring of 1961, “On Second Thought,” at the end of the year.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from these varied love songs is one other tune from the period: a jingle they developed for Newport cigarettes. It was a not-so-well-hidden secret that some of Broadway’s best had been writing for Madison Avenue for quite some time. Coleman and Leigh joined the ranks of writers like Richard Adler, Frank Loesser, and Harold Rome with the tune, which, in a series of three different spots, proved remarkably versatile. It could be sort of rock ’n’ roll for a younger audience and decidedly staid for an older demographic.

With all of this writing, it could have been easy for Coleman to put his performance activities to one side, but he didn’t. His stints at London House continued in the spring of 1961, and while traveling to the Windy City might have been seen as an excuse to escape some of the
Wildcat
drama, he also did his own jazz cover album for the show’s tunes that spring. The LP,
Cy Coleman Plays His Own Compositions from “Wildcat,”
hit stores just about the time that the show should have resumed performances after Ball’s scheduled July vacation. As it was, however, the album came out just as the show was sliding into the history books, and Coleman and Leigh were moving on to other Broadway ventures.

For a while during mid-1961, it looked as if the next Coleman-Leigh score would be for a musical version of the gently satiric novel
The King from Ashtabula
, by Vern Schneider (the man who penned the hugely successful
The Teahouse of the August Moon
). Gore Vidal, who’d recently had back-to-back Broadway hits in
The Best Man
and
A Visit to a Small Planet
, was slated to write the adaptation. Morton Da Costa, who staged
The Music Man
and who was busy with the movie version of the Meredith Willson show, was announced as the director for
Ashtabula
.

But almost as quickly as the show hit the news it faded. In its wake came word of another tuner, one that would reunite Coleman and Leigh with Feuer and Martin, the producers who had planned on giving them their first Main Stem outing. It would also introduce the duo to a book writer who, like themselves, had just one Broadway credit to his name—Neil Simon—while bringing Coleman and Leigh face to face with another of America’s most beloved comedians, Sid Caesar.

12
.
Little Me

For a good part of the late 1950s one of the most famous little boys in the world was Patrick Dennis, a child who had found himself in the care of his flamboyant aunt after his father unexpectedly passed away. Patrick and his new guardian had experienced the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, and the dawning days of the Cold War together with decided and often hilarious panache, and their tale was immortalized in
Auntie Mame
, which was published in 1955. The phenomenal success of the book inspired an equally successful stage adaptation, starring Rosalind Russell in the title role. She also went on to reprise her performance in the equally popular film version of the play. Yet Patrick Dennis, both the character and author, was the invention of Edward Everett Tanner, as was the author’s “memoir.”

In early 1961 Broadway producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, smelling another hit, acquired the stage rights to Dennis’s next novel nearly a full year before its publication. Like
Auntie Mame
, this new work of fiction would be comedic, taking a shot at the “as told to” biographies of celebrities that were all the rage at the time. Dennis imagined a star of stage, screen, and television, Belle Poitrine (which, translated from French, means “beautiful breasts” or “shapely bosom”), who would reveal her life to him, and as the book flap promised, she would be “pulling no punches, sparing no trivial detail.” Belle’s odyssey, much like that of Mame Dennis, involved numerous quixotic turns of fate and countless men, many of whom became her husbands.

After acquiring the rights to the book at the start of the year, preproduction began while the publication was moving forward, and on March 29 the
New York Times
reported that Feuer and Martin were considering Dennis himself as the possible book writer for the show. According to the paper, he would be writing an outline for the musical, and “should this prove satisfactory to Messers. Feuer and Martin . . . Mr. Dennis will tackle the stage transition.” The paper also announced that the show would “probably” have a score by Coleman and Leigh.

Feuer and Martin actually had offered the show to the team, but they were not that interested in working with the producers, because, as Coleman recalled: “We were furious with producers Feuer and Martin. They tried to screw us up on
Wildcat
. So we turned
Little Me
down.”
1

For a brief while it even looked as if they had made the right decision, because not long afterward Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr (who, ironically, had brought
Auntie Mame
to the stage) offered them the gig on
Ashtabula
. The official word of the project and a firm creative team came at the end of April, and by mid-May potential investors were being solicited and advised that “a possible pre-production picture deal may be set with Columbia Pictures.”
2

By June Feuer and Martin were able to announce two key components of the
Little Me
team: Neil Simon would write the book, and the show would star Sid Caesar.

In hindsight it might seem that choosing Simon was a simple decision, but it was actually something of a gamble, since he was still a relative unknown in the theater world. He had written only one play,
Come Blow Your Horn
, and though it had proven to be a hit, such seminal comedies as
The Odd Couple
and
The Sunshine Boys
and the films
The Goodbye Girl
and
The Heartbreak Kid
were still in his future.

But at the time he was announced for
Little Me
, Simon had significant experience writing for television. He’d been a staff writer for
Your Show of Shows
, which featured not only Caesar as a regular but also Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner. In addition, he had experience in his television career that prepared him for writing a musical: “After
Your Show of Shows
went off the air, I’d stayed with Max Liebman, the producer, who was doing a series of specials—two a month. The first would be a revue, with people like Maurice Chevalier and Marcel Marceau, international stars. The other part of the month we would adapt a Broadway book show:
Best Foot Forward
,
A Connecticut Yankee
,
Dearest Enemy
—all Rodgers and Hart shows. Some Gershwin shows. The books were dated, so we got permission from the estates of those properties to update them. It was another learning experience for theater: I learned to write books for musicals.”
3

The casting of Sid Caesar, on the other hand, was a major coup that on its face would be certain to draw audiences.
Little Me
was a triumphant return to Broadway for Caesar. He had been one of the performers in the 1948 revue
Make Mine Manhattan
but soon afterward took his comedic talents, honed in New York clubs and in the Catskills’ Borscht Belt, to television. There he scored tremendous success, not just on
Your Show of Shows
but also with his own series.

Caesar initially didn’t want to do
Little Me
; only Simon’s insistence and vision for the musical convinced him. Even though Dennis’s book focused on Belle, Simon was in the process of turning the men in her life into the show’s centerpiece by having them played by one actor. It meant that Caesar would have the potential for creating a comedic tour de force.

In his autobiography
Where Have I Been?
, Caesar recounted how Simon convinced him: “You’re the only one I know who has the physical strength to do it. . . . Besides, it’s not much tougher than what you did on ‘Your Show of Shows.’ I used to watch you play four or five characters a night, with those quick costume changes just offstage between skits. Amazing. That’s basically the same as what you’ll be doing in this play for me.”

Caesar agreed, and Feuer and Martin were able to announce the deal in mid-June 1961. They couldn’t, however, commit to naming the songwriting team for the production. But before the month ended they were able to announce that Coleman and Leigh would indeed write the songs for the show.

It was an unexpected turnaround, and Coleman later recalled how
The King from Ashtabula
had fallen apart and the way in which he and Leigh came back to
Little Me
: “Vidal decided afterward he didn’t like the musical theatre and the people who write in it, so he dismissed the project. We had to go hat in hand to Feuer and Martin and say we wanted to do
Little Me
. We did it and lost a part of the percentage for that little maneuver.”
4

Despite the to-do that accompanied their arrival on the project, Coleman and Leigh quickly started on the writing process. Feuer and Martin had announced that the production would tentatively open in the spring of 1962, meaning that rehearsals would begin sometime in late 1961. Thus, they had about five months to write the songs for
Little Me
, as compared with the three or four they had had for
Wildcat
.

As they had a year earlier, Coleman and Leigh retreated from Manhattan for their writing; but instead of heading to the mountains, they went to the beach. During an interview on Skitch Henderson’s
Music Makers
radio show on WDBF Radio in the early 1980s, Coleman recalled, “We both had houses in East Hampton; it was on the Three Mile Harbor and her house was about twenty yards from mine. That was my daily swim. And I’d swim over to her house, and she’d come down to the dock and meet me with a towel, and we’d write, and then I’d swim home.”

The assignment was on many levels a heftier one than they had ever had before. Belle’s tale spanned some fifty years and involved a panoply of characters beyond the men who became her husbands. In addition, the show had the potential to make use of her work as a performer, meaning that Coleman and Leigh might have to write material for shows within the show. Beyond that, they had a leading man who had been painfully explicit about what he would and wouldn’t do in the show. Feuer remembered, “‘I am not a dancer,’ Caesar declared, and ‘I do not intend to become one.’ He also was not a singer, which was apparent, and he declared that he would not sing more than three songs. ‘I have an aversion to lyrics.’”
5

Rather than daunting the team, however, these challenges seem to have inspired them. They ultimately would develop nearly three dozen songs for
Little Me
. Melodically, Coleman tinkered in a host of styles. A pair of tunes, “Big Man on Campus” and “Frankie Polo,” gave him the chance to experiment with collegiate fight songs, the likes of which reached their stage apogee in
Best Foot Forward
with “Buckle Down Winsocki.” Another tune, “Bluebirds,” found Coleman humorously evoking the kind of dramatic romanticism associated with Max Steiner’s scores for movies of the 1930s. Coleman also drafted a song at the opposite end of the musical spectrum, “Sophisticated Twist,” a complex and jagged riff on the song that inspired the 1950s dance craze.

The songwriters didn’t want to simply borrow from the styles of the periods the show covered, nor did they want to appear as if their work was judging Belle: “If you do not feel compassion, pity even, for Little Me, the show has failed. . . . The songs, several of them, seem mockery, seem satirical—but the spirit of understanding and warmth and compassion is beneath.”
6

Interestingly, Coleman and Leigh realized that they had two comic, period-sounding songs on hand, each from their days waiting for a Broadway break, that suited
Little Me
: “Be a Performer” and “Dem Doggone Dimples,” from their work for
Gypsy
. After some tweaks to both, they added these numbers to the mix of songs for the show.

Both of these tunes ultimately became part of the final score, while others developed specifically for the project only found life after the show had opened. In one instance, a song that Coleman and Leigh began drafting over the summer, “When in Rome (I Do as the Romans Do),” became one of their final hits as a songwriting team, thanks to recordings by Barbra Streisand and Peggy Lee. In the other, Coleman simply cached a melody. The tune that he began as “Hollywood Hills Hotel” would later transform into a full number in
Barnum
, a show that would reach Broadway nearly twenty years later.

Over the summer, as Coleman and Leigh worked on the songs and Simon continued his adaptation of the still unpublished novel, Feuer and Martin were equally busy. Not only were they in the last stages of bringing
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
to Broadway; they were also finalizing preproduction arrangements for
Little Me
. Perhaps their most important task was choosing the director and choreographer.

For the latter position, they turned to Bob Fosse, who was in the process of creating the dances for
How to Succeed
. Fosse was rapidly becoming one of Broadway’s most sought-after choreographers, thanks to the distinctively sharp-edged yet remarkably fluid routines he created for shows like
Damn Yankees
and
Pajama Game
, in which “Whatever Lola Wants” and “Steam Heat,” respectively, were song-and-dance showstoppers. Beyond his work on these shows, he had also been a performer himself on
Your
Show of Shows
dancing with Mary-Ann Niles, meaning that he would come to
Little Me
familiar with the production’s star.

Fosse had, however, begun to crave more creative control in his work, looking to become a director-choreographer in the mold of Jerome Robbins. Unfortunately, his previous outing in this dual capacity—on the musical
The Conquering Hero
—had ended badly. He was replaced during the show’s tryout. In his memoir
I Got the Show Right Here
, Feuer recalled in very simple terms the decision to give Fosse the double credit: “He wanted to become a director, so I gave him a credit as codirector.”

In actuality, there was a bit more to getting Fosse involved. Feuer and Martin had announced that Fosse would do musical staging for
Little Me
a full two months before
How to Succeed
formally opened; but before accepting the assignment, Fosse held out for something bigger, and it wasn’t just a directing credit. Feuer and Martin had to agree to—and ultimately did—sign a letter officially recognizing the newly formed Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers as a condition of his working on the show.

By October, and just a few days before the novel
Little Me
hit stores, Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Simon had finished the book for the show. Then, within weeks of the book’s release, the musical was postponed. Rather than opening in February 1962, the show would reach Broadway during the 1962–63 season.

Earl Wilson and Leonard Lyons delivered the news of the delay in the show’s arrival almost in tandem in early December, but neither columnist offered any explanation for the reason behind it. In an article in
Back Stage
on December 8, 1961, the postponement of
Little Me
(along with two other shows that had planned spring debuts) was attributed to the health of the 1961–62 theater season. The article went on to speculate that other shows would also be rescheduled owing to a shortage of available houses. In one instance, the premiere of Richard Rodgers’s musical
No Strings
was believed to be dependent on the closing of
My Fair Lady
.

Both Caesar and Coleman took advantage of the new timeline for the production to take on other projects. Caesar agreed to appear in the film
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
and accepted an offer to do a series of television specials. For Coleman, the news meant that he could pursue several opportunities as a performer. In January 1962 he flew to Chicago to record the album
Broadway Pianorama
, and while he was there he also spent a night accompanying his friend Claire Hogan as she opened a stint at Mister Kelly’s, a club owned by the men who also ran London House, the venue where he had become a regular.