You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (18 page)

Coleman’s use of Grant’s suggestion made it to the final cut of
Father Goose
, and the composer recalled the moment “when we came to the preview, and it was a big laugh. It really was.”

So, too, was the song itself—not in Wolfe’s version, but in a subsequent recording from Coleman’s dear friend and soon-to-be writing partner Peggy Lee. Their closeness is best illustrated by a night right after her version of the tune was released; as Lee recalled: “We gave a big party there, hoping, to be truthful, to break the lease. Cary Grant was the guest of honor. . . . At some point, we put on my new recording of ‘Pass Me By’ from ‘Father Goose’ and played it at full volume and marched down the hall into the elevator, continuing to march in place, outside into the lobby, around the lobby, back into the elevator and back upstairs to the penthouse. Cary Grant was the drum major, I wore some Indian footbells; Cy was, at least, a couple of trombones. Not only didn’t the landlord object, he loved the excitement.”
12

Coleman’s next film was a grander and more challenging assignment: a score for producer Russ Hunter’s big-budget comedy
The Art of Love
. Directed by Norman Jewison at the start of his career (he would eventually be the man behind films ranging from
Fiddler on the Roof
to
Moonstruck
), the movie stars Dick Van Dyke (fresh off his success in
Mary Poppins
) and James Garner (in the early days of a big-screen career after his five seasons as the title character on the television series
Maverick
) as a pair of Americans living in Paris.

Van Dyke plays Paul Sloane, who, tired of eking out an existence in the City of Light as a painter, decides to return to America and his wealthy fiancée Laurie (Angie Dickinson). Garner, as Paul’s roommate and best friend, Casey Barnett, tries to dissuade his pal from the idea, worried less about losing a pal than about losing the meal ticket that Paul’s provided, since the two men have been living off the money Laurie has been sending.

Before Paul leaves Paris, he and Casey get drunk and muse about how funny it would be if Paul were to commit suicide, blaming the establishment for his lack of success. Casey scribbles a fake suicide note for his pal, who wanders off drunk. As Paul lurches away, he sees Nikki (Elke Sommer) plunging into the Seine. He follows her into the river to save her, and the two wind up on a passing barge. When an inebriated Casey discovers Paul missing and later finds Paul’s discarded jacket on the bridge, Casey assumes that his buddy has actually killed himself.

In short order, as word of Paul’s tragic demise circulates, demand for his artwork skyrockets, and when he eventually returns to Paris Casey convinces him to hide out at a nightclub (run by a flamboyant woman played by Broadway legend Ethel Merman) so they can both capitalize on Paul’s “posthumous” fame. Complications arise when the police, unable to find Paul’s body, begin to suspect foul play and Laurie shows up unexpectedly.

Critics greeted the movie tepidly and at times dismissively. In the May 12, 1965
Variety
review it was described as “a garbled mixture of coquettish comedy,” and the review in the
New York Times
on July 1 announced that the film had come “straight from the assembly line” at Universal. These sentiments were even echoed by one of the film’s stars: Merman referred to it in her eponymous 1978 autobiography as “a featherweight comedy that sank like lead.”

Nevertheless, the antic comedy afforded Coleman the opportunity to display his virtuosity as a composer in new ways. From the opening animated titles, which lampoon the cartoon sequences from
The Pink Panther
, to Paul’s climactic sprint through the streets of Paris as he tries to set everything right, Coleman developed tunes that bring the Gallic and Continental milieu of the film aurally to life, as well as ones that gently echo the satiric tone of the movie. For instance, for the French detective investigating Paul’s death, Coleman riffs on the sounds of Henry Mancini.

Coleman also borrowed from the styles of comic capers from the silent era. He even performed the rapid piano underscoring in these sequences when the music was recorded.

There is also one song in the movie, “M’sieur,” that Merman performs in the club her character owns. The number features a lyric by a new partner for Coleman, Don Raye, who had written such songs as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Irresistible You” with Hughie Prince and Al Kasha, respectively. The Coleman tune, which Merman’s character delivers as her club’s scantily clad performers parade in the background, started off with references to their alluring physical qualities, but Raye’s lyric proved to be too risqué for Motion Picture Association of America censors, and in its final incarnation the song (delivered in a kind of pidgin French) makes almost no sense whatsoever.

The score for
The Art of Love
ended up being voluminous. There were as many pages to it as there were for Stanley Kubrick’s epic
Spartacus
(which was more than twice as long as
Love
), and when the time came to develop an album for the movie, Dave Cavanaugh (the man who produced
Piano Witchcraft
and
Comin’ Home
) and Coleman decided that rather than releasing a strict soundtrack LP, they would take the music and fashion it into an album of orchestral melodies.

The resulting record was deemed a “sparkling entry out of the Hollywood scene” by
Variety
on July 21, 1965, and, indeed, a listen to the LP (or its remastered incarnation on CD) satisfies tremendously, particularly when Coleman’s fantastically nimble fingers hit the keys.

The score also spawned a number of singles, as Coleman’s tunes were outfitted with words by a variety of lyricists. Raye added words to the title tune, which was recorded in several versions, most notably by Eartha Kitt, who gave it a sultry spin on a Decca 45 that had on its B side the theme for Sommer’s character, Nikki, with a lyric by Coleman’s old friend James Lipton.

Murray Grand added a lyric to a third tune, “Kick Off Your Shoes,” an insistent jazz waltz, which didn’t get a recording until a year after the film’s release. When it did, however, it shone brightly on Carmen McRae’s
Woman Talk, Live at the Village Gate
LP.

Grand also put words to a fourth melody from the film, “So Long, Baby,” and in mid-1965 Leonard Lyons reported that “‘Bricktop,’ the nightclub singer of N.Y., Paris and Rome, just made her first recording, with Cy Coleman—‘So Long, Baby.’”
13
The track was never officially released, and Bricktop’s session with Coleman has in subsequent years been misidentified as having occurred in 1972 because of a slip of memory in the singer’s autobiography: when talking about her return to New York in the early 1970s, she wrote, “I recorded ‘So Long, Baby’ around that time. It was the only recording I’ve ever done.”
14

Coleman was testing the waters with other wordsmiths as well. During 1963 and 1964 he worked with writers ranging from Allan Sherman (best known, of course, for “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”) to crooner Buddy Greco to singing sensation Peggy Lee. The results were songs that ran the gamut from goofy (“The Aardvark Song,” with Sherman) to forgettable (“Take a Little Walk,” with Greco) to modestly successful (“I’m in Love Again,” with Lee as well as Bill Schluger).

The two biggest and most enduring successes from this period are another that he wrote with Schluger alone, “Pussy Cat,” and “Sweet Talk,” which paired the composer with one of the lyricists he’d gotten to know during the mid-1950s and
Ziegfeld Follies
, Floyd Huddleston. This song got a recording from Lainie Kazan, a rising singer who would eventually become romantically involved with Coleman and figure prominently in one of his 1970s shows.

Coleman would ultimately write only a handful of songs with most of these men; with Lee, however, he would maintain an artistic and personal relationship that would extend for decades. Still, no writer in the mix was measuring up to Leigh, or maybe it was simply that there were too many other things on Coleman’s plate to provide him with the time to build a lasting partnership.

Another reason for Coleman’s inability to commit to anything long-term with the men might have been the fact that his work with Leigh continued to linger in his consciousness, for a variety of reasons.

First, there were details surrounding the London premiere of
Little Me
, which was in preparations during the second half of 1964. The production marked Coleman’s West End debut, and beyond the usual details of casting, it required that he and Leigh attend to and approve certain changes because the musical had been reset in England.

In some instances the revisions, made by Neil Simon and Herbert Kretzmer (the man who would eventually outfit
Les Misérables
with English lyrics), were minor. Secondary characters, like Noble’s school chums, were given the more British-sounding names of Cecil, Daphne, and Lydia. Similarly, place-names were changed to make the comedy more instantly recognizable for British audiences. Noble and Belle, for instance, had grown up at the opposite ends of Highgate Hill, rather than in Venezuela, Illinois.

Beyond the changes to the book, which Simon was on hand to oversee (giving him the chance to search for two English actresses for roles in his next play,
The Odd Couple
), there were slight revisions to Leigh’s lyrics to excise any overly American references. In “The Truth,” for example, a mention of American film star Mary Astor was dropped in favor of one to the more contemporary Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Even the show’s most familiar songs weren’t immune from changes, including “I’ve Got Your Number,” where “I know you inside out” became “I’ve got you cut and dry.”

In one particular instance, however, the changes to
Little Me
were more substantial. The producer decided that the phrase “the other side of the tracks” would hold no meaning in the United Kingdom. A new lyric was written, and Leigh initially vetoed it. She ultimately conceded to the change, but with one stipulation: the song could never be recorded. Thus, the program for
Little Me
in London lists the song as “At the Very Top of the Hill,” while the cast album for the show contains the number as originally written.

The musical debuted at the Cambridge Theatre on November 18, 1964 and starred British comedian Bruce Forsyth (in the Caesar roles), along with Eileen Gourley and Avril Angers as the Younger and Older Belles, respectively. The company also featured Swen Swenson, who reprised his showstopping performance of “I’ve Got Your Number.” Critics and audiences embraced the production, and it settled in for a run of almost a year, during which time it also picked up the Evening Standard Award for best musical.

It wasn’t only details relating to the show that caused Coleman to glance back at his work with Leigh. A song they had begun working on before the breakup was picking up momentum. “When in Rome (I Do as the Romans Do),” which they had drafted for
Little Me
, resurfaced at the end of 1964, receiving recordings by Peggy Lee and Barbra Streisand.

But while Coleman may have been hesitant about establishing any sort of lasting relationship with a writing partner in the years immediately following
Little Me
, he was demonstrating little indecision about taking charge of his career and the business of managing it. In 1964, following in the footsteps of such composers as Richard Rodgers and Frank Loesser, he formed his own publishing company, Notable Music, meaning that he could guide how his work reached the public.

In addition, Coleman was voted onto the board of directors of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). He had been a member of the group since the early 1950s, and the organization’s mission—to protect the interests, both intellectual and financial, of composers and publishers alike—was important to Coleman both professionally and as a matter of personal principle. He fiercely believed in the organization’s battles, and through the years he could frequently be found lobbying—particularly on copyright matters—in the offices of congressmen and testifying in front of the legislators.

But even with this heightened level of activity as a businessman, a trio of full-length films, and over a dozen songs, Coleman still sought out additional outlets for his music, finding one in the Ford Motor Company.

His relationship with the car giant was a substantial extension of his brushes with corporate America that began with his and Leigh’s Newport cigarette jingles and continued with his work for American Airlines. He had even appeared as a spokesperson for Lucky Strike in the 1950s. For Ford, however, his work was more extensive than it had been for these other companies. Between 1964 and 1967 he provided full scores for two industrial shows that launched new lines of cars.

In the first year, Coleman, with advertising executive Ed Birnbryer serving as lyricist, wrote
The Sky’s the Limit
, a minimusical that ran at New York’s Coliseum for seven performances. The company spared no expense on the production, converting the building’s exhibition hall into a theater seating 2,100 and boasting a stage comparable in size to Radio City Music Hall. Such expansiveness was necessary for a production that had an ensemble of nearly fifty performers. Eileen Rodgers, who had starred as Reno Sweeney in the Off-Broadway revival of
Anything Goes
, headlined, and at her side were Jack Goode, Bob Roman, and even the African American dance team the Three Tapateers. Coleman composed a specialty number for them and songs like “Station Wagon Ramble,” “Mustang Ramble,” and the title number.

Three years later Coleman and Birnbryer re-teamed for a second Ford show,
Excitement U.S.A.
, for which Coleman served up tunes that encompassed everything from New Orleans jazz (for a Mardi Gras sequence) to Latin dance (for a number that compared Ford’s products to America’s burgeoning space program).