You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (19 page)

Birnbryer’s work on the show certainly has verve, but it’s nothing compared to the sort of wordcraft that Coleman had become accustomed to working with Leigh and Joseph A. McCarthy Jr.. Similarly, Coleman had enjoyed some pop successes with others, but not the kind that he enjoyed with the two writers who had been his principal collaborators.

That would change in short order, however, thanks to a relationship with yet another lyricist that he began cultivating in early 1963. At that point there hadn’t been a fitting project for them to work on together, and so they bided their time until the moment was right. It came just a little over a year later, and it would serve as the basis for a collaboration that would last ten years.

14.
Sweet Charity
Onstage

Well before Coleman’s sojourn in Hollywood, he had laid plans for what would become his next long-term collaboration. It started at a cocktail party on the Upper West Side for a group of composers and lyricists hosted by Dorothy Fields. Daughter of the vaudevillian Lew M. Fields, she had begun her own theatrical career in the mid-1920s, working with Jimmy McHugh. Among their first songs together was the classic “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” heard in
Blackbirds of 1928
.

Over the next three decades Fields wrote words for songs with melodies by some of the greatest writers of the early and mid-twentieth century, including Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, and Arthur Schwartz, and her work with these men resulted in American Songbook standards such as “Close as Pages in a Book,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” and “Pick Yourself Up,” as well as “The Way You Look Tonight,” which won the Academy Award for best original song in 1936. In addition, she penned the books for musicals; among her biggest hits in this capacity were
Annie Get Your Gun
(cowritten with her brother Herbert Fields) and the Tony Award–winning best musical of 1959,
Redhead
, for which she served as both lyricist (to Albert Hague) and co–book writer.

It was a body of work that placed her squarely among the elite in songwriting circles, and neither this nor the fact that she was twenty-three years older than Coleman daunted him when he approached her in 1963.

As Coleman recounted for one interviewer, “I was at a party . . . and I met Dorothy Fields. And she was a legendary woman; she’d done all those wonderful things with Jerome Kern and Jimmy McHugh and Burton Lane. She was a glorious writer. So I walked over, and I said, ‘I’m Cy Coleman.’ And she said, ‘I know who you are.’ And I said, ‘If I’m not being too forward, how’d you like to write some songs with me?’ She said, ‘I’d love it! Thank God you asked.’ And I said, ‘Don’t a lot of people ask you?’ She said, ‘No, they’re either intimidated or whatever.’”
1

Earl Wilson got wind of the conversation and reported in a late-August column that “Cy Coleman’s now collaborating on songs with Dorothy Fields.” After this, Coleman busied himself with recording and movies. About a year later he received a call from Bob Fosse, who had been attempting to develop a musical that would star his wife and terpsichorean muse, Gwen Verdon.

Working with producers Robert Fryer, Lawrence Carr, and Sylvia and Joseph Harris, Fosse, had come up with the idea for a pair of one-act musicals, tentatively called
Hearts and Flowers
. The first half of the evening would be a tuner based on the Federico Fellini film
Nights of Cabiria
, as adapted by Fosse himself; the second would have an original story and feature a book by Elaine May. Fosse hoped Coleman would provide the music for both.

In Fosse’s adaptation of the Fellini movie, the action was shifted to New York, and instead of centering on a prostitute, Fosse’s version would focus on a dance-hall hostess, a woman who toiled at night dancing with strangers for the modest fee of, as the saying goes, “ten cents a dance,” or, as had become the case in the mid-1960s, about $6.25 per half hour. Always hopeful and always on the lookout for true romance, the character in both is an indomitable heroine and a rather pathetic victim.

For the second half of the bill, May developed a scenario about an ex–circus highflier (to be played by Verdon) and her husband, who had once performed a human fly act. Other characters in the musical, which would be about a botched robbery attempt, included former circus performers as well as members of the couple’s family, including their teenage son.

Coleman said he would be interested in writing the music for the two pieces and suggested that Fields serve as his lyric-writing partner. Fields had previously worked with both Fosse and Verdon—as well as Fryer and Carr—on
Redhead
, so her presence on the team seemed like a perfect fit.

Casting notices in March 1965 announced that rehearsals would begin for the two-show bill in early August, but plans changed two months later, following a backers’ audition at Delmonico’s. At this point Fosse realized the
Cabiria
adaptation would need more stage time, so May’s portion of the evening—still unfinished—was eliminated, and the musical became a full-length adaptation of Fellini’s film.

With this decision Fosse returned to an idea he had early on in his conception of the show: working with a playwright on the book. He had started the process with Martin Charnin (who wrote the lyrics to Mary Rodgers’s music for the Judy Holliday vehicle
Hot Spot
and who would later collaborate with Richard Rodgers on
Two by Two
and Charles Strouse on
Annie
). After completing a first draft, though, Fosse withdrew from the collaborative process and continued writing alone.

Among the authors he considered during the middle part of 1965 were Abe Burrows (responsible for
Guys and Dolls
and
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
, two musicals that had examined the grittier aspects of life in New York), Paddy Chayefsky (a friend of Fosse’s and the screenwriter of such working-class dramas as
Marty
and
A Catered Affair
), and Hugh Wheeler (then at the start of his career but later the book writer of such musicals as
A Little Night Music
and
Sweeney Todd
). Wheeler drafted his own version of the first seven scenes of the musical but ultimately decided that he was not a good match for the material and withdrew from the project.

Even as Fosse searched for a collaborator, he continued to expand and rewrite the show on his own. Casting notices over the summer help to track the changes he was making. In July available roles ranged from a Jewish newspaper dealer to a Broadway columnist “with a poor memory for facts.”
2
A few weeks later a new role was added: a “male film star, not too young, vain, spoiled.”
3

During the spring and summer Coleman and Fields tackled the score, writing much of it in the Hamptons. Among the first songs they wrote was a group number for the women working alongside Charity at the dance hall. It would eventually become known as “Big Spender.” Coleman recalled the impetus behind this number in later years: “One of the things Fosse and I fought about on
Little Me
had been the way he would add accents to the music that I didn’t intend and . . . open up the songs for dance breaks in places that I didn’t like. . . . When we started work on
Sweet Charity
, I decided that I would write a song that was full of accents—but accents where I wanted them to be. I decided they’d be written into the music in such a way that they were locked in and couldn’t be changed.”
4
The result of this desire to beat Fosse was a vamp that was all accents, and the now-iconic introduction to the number.

With “Big Spender” in hand—as well as a few others, including the Latin-tempoed “There’s Got to Be Something Better Than This” and “I’ll Take Any Man” (a number written early on but never used)—Coleman and Fields went to Fosse, who responded, “Sometimes you people make me cry,” as Coleman recalled for BBC Radio 2 in 2002. It was praise that both gratified and galled Fields. Coleman, in the same interview, remembered, “Dorothy used to hate to hear him say ‘You people,’ and she’d get up on her high horse and say, ‘We are not “you people.” I am Dorothy and this is Cy.’”

The story serves as a terrific example of Fields’s sometimes prickly nature, which also informed her work with Coleman. An early riser by nature, Fields would accomplish most of her lyric writing just as the sun was coming up, and when she had written something she wanted to share with night owl Coleman she would phone him, waking him up. Coleman remembered, “She’d get this kind of funny tone in her voice, you know, imperious, it was the only time she was like that, and she’d say: ‘You’re still in bed?’ And I would be furious.”
5
Eventually the two settled on a schedule that was for the most part agreeable, but Coleman would often sense her disgruntlement at the arrangement, particularly when he discovered that hiding the phone under pillows could forestall his hearing an early morning call.

Still, Fields’s sense of humor matched Coleman’s remarkably well, particularly when they hit a snag. “We’d be staring at each other so that my only recourse was to go to the bathroom,” Coleman recounted while recording an interview for the ASCAP Foundation Living Archive Series. “And I’d say, ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ just to break it. And I’d wait there, and I always came back with an idea. And so it got to the point where it became a joke. Dorothy would say when we were stuck, ‘Cy. Go to the bathroom.’”

Coleman chose not to share this anecdote in August 1965 when he was invited to write a story about
Sweet Charity
for Dorothy Kilgallen’s national readership while she was on vacation. Instead, he used the opportunity to discuss the general vision he and Fields had for the show, in particular how his work on
Father Goose
and
The Art of Love
had affected his own approach to writing.

He had come to
Charity
knowing, for instance, that he wanted to develop a musical motif for the heroine, and as he told readers, “In this show, Gwen Verdon has her very own theme which is inherent in the character she plays and is heard every time she moves so beautifully on stage.” Furthermore, his appreciation for the ways in which underscoring could cue audiences’ reactions and perceptions had deepened during his time on the West Coast.

But his most important consideration was creating “as tuneful a show as possible,” and he guaranteed readers that they would be “hearing top recording artists sing the songs on records even before the show comes out.”

Nothing Coleman wrote was misleading or hyperbolic flacking. He had written a delicate lilting melody that followed Charity during her misadventures, and there was a generous supply of music that ran underneath the action. As for advance recordings, Coleman—now head of his own publishing company—would certainly do his utmost to make sure that the songs that he and Fields wrote were in circulation before the show’s scheduled opening. Sheet music for all of the songs was printed, and they were packaged and distributed along with an LP featuring Coleman and other vocalists performing a dozen of them.

Fosse didn’t have the luxury of a partner off whom he could bounce ideas while writing (but Verdon was on hand at all times to work with him on the dances), and though he managed to expand the book to a full two acts, he still sensed he needed assistance, particularly because he felt that the show was not funny enough. It was at this moment that he sent the script to Neil Simon, whose rise among the ranks of writers for the stage and screen had been meteoric since he last worked with Fosse and Coleman, on
Little Me
. In the years that followed that show, his comedies
Barefoot in the Park
and
The Odd Couple
had debuted on Broadway, and his first play,
Come Blow Your Horn
, had been made into a film.

Simon, at the time Fosse reached out to him, was in Rome, on the set for the movie
After the Fox
. Simon started reading as soon as the script arrived, and as he read he realized that “it
desperately
needed humor,” so “I sat down and spent one long night removing the lines that didn’t work and inserting new and what I hoped were funnier ones.”
6

He sent his changes to Fosse and soon received another call. Fosse liked Simon’s work so much that he needed the writer to continue working on the script. Simon protested, citing his commitments to both the film in Italy and the forthcoming film version of
Barefoot
.

Fosse, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer and flew to Italy to play Coleman and Fields’s demo tapes for him. When he got to the house Simon was sharing with his wife, Joan, the choreographer started by describing his vision for “Big Spender.” Then he played the couple the tape of the number. “It was Cy Coleman’s music at its best, and with it were Dorothy Fields’ great lyrics—tough, funny, and Brechtian.” After this Fosse played “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” at which point, Simon remembered, “Joan and I burst into applause. Then she turned to me and said, ‘If you don’t do this show, you and I are through.’”
7
Simon acquiesced (willingly and eagerly) and began working on the script while on the set in Rome.

Concurrently the show got its title,
Sweet Charity
, and its Broadway home. The musical would open at the refurbished Palace Theatre, the premiere home for vaudeville from 1913 to 1932, as part of the Keith-Albee circuit; performers like Fanny Brice, the Marx Brothers, and Ethel Waters, along with Weber and Fields (the comedy duo that featured Dorothy Fields’s father), had all played there. But the showplace had fallen into disrepair after years of serving as a movie house.

The Nederlander Organization, which at that point controlled numerous theaters in Detroit as well as two in Chicago, had bought the Palace in an initial effort to establish a presence in New York and was financing the renovation and improvements. So
Sweet Charity
snagged a prestigious theatrical venue, but the theater was mammoth. To help ensure that the musical had “an intimate atmosphere,”
8
the producers decided they would not sell tickets to the Palace’s second balcony.

In one regard, however, playing the Palace did prove beneficial to the production overall. After it was discovered that renovations on the theater would take longer than anticipated, it was announced that
Sweet Charity
would play two tryout engagements instead of one, beginning in Philadelphia and then traveling to the Nederlander-owned Fisher Theater in Detroit. Ultimately, everyone involved with the show would use the additional time out of town to incorporate important changes that would not have been possible with only the Philadelphia engagement.