You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (3 page)

2.
“Tall Hope”

Following grade school, Seymour moved on to New York’s High School of Music and Art (the institution that eventually became the city’s High School of Performing Arts, immortalized in the movie
Fame
). There he was surrounded by fellow artists, some of whom would become his colleagues in adulthood. Lyricist Marilyn Bergman, whom Coleman would work with on the board of ASCAP and who would become one of his collaborators over fifty years later, graduated in the class just ahead of Seymour. Also at the school was Mitch Leigh, who would go on to write
Man of La Mancha
, a musical that would, nearly two decades after their graduation, overshadow Coleman’s own musical,
Sweet Charity
.

Seymour proved to be a solid student throughout his time at the school, earning primarily As and Bs in both his academic classes (English, social studies, science, etc.) and his music coursework. Early on, some instructors felt that the boy needed to be more cooperative in class (particularly music theory), but by the time he graduated in 1947, he was considered outstanding in all areas, including “School Citizenship.”

As for Seymour’s musical education, he was drilled both at school and by his private teachers in all the components of a classical music education, and his work papers demonstrate how meticulous his training was. On some sheets he wrote out, in delicate cursive, the rules he was learning, such as “A perfect interval when chromatically altered becomes either augmented or diminished. Never major or minor” and “An imperfect interval when chromatically altered becomes either augmented, major, minor, or diminished. Never perfect.”

In a 1990
Piano Jazz
interview Coleman recalled his early education and its strictures with fondness, appreciation, and even a modicum of humor: “I studied strict counterpoint for so long; [you]
had
to study counterpoint. . . . But it helped me with composition later so much. . . . And you study that for years and years and years and then after you finish they say, ‘Now do what you want.’ But I think it’s a very good principle learning the rules and then breaking them. But you’ve got to know them before you can break them.”

It was during high school that Seymour’s education also began to include composition. Unfortunately, unlike his school papers, which are plentiful, little has survived of his work as a budding writer in the classical vein; luckily, one fragment of a four-part fugue still exists: twenty bars that display Seymour’s grasp of the form. He starts with a simple set of notes in the treble clef that he slowly builds upon and varies. At the fourteenth bar he adds in his bass line, and by the twentieth the piece has attained a discernible, even compelling momentum. Sadly, whatever he wrote after that has not survived.

Nevertheless, the fugue fragment provides a glimpse of a young artist who was already beginning to chafe at classical forms. Written in G major, it is not “pretty”; it’s a dissonant composition, filled with chromatic tones (sharps and flats not associated with the key), and often the notes collide aggressively.

It’s almost as if Seymour was writing this and thinking about one of his new activities: his work as the pianist in the school dance band, led by an older classmate, pianist and drummer Mickey Sheen. Sheen, like Seymour, had begun playing as a child, although his realm had been popular music. When Sheen looked back on his time at the school, what he remembered most was that it was the moment he was introduced to classical music—an irony, since it was through his work with Sheen that Seymour was getting to play something other than the classics.

Marilyn Bergman didn’t remember Seymour’s work with the dance band, but, she said, “I just know that in a school like that—or any school I guess—star pupils, no matter what the discipline, stand out, and other, lesser people know of them. I remember in the art department [that abstract painter] Wolf Kahn, for example, was well-known, and everybody knew he was going to be a successful painter. And Cy was one of those people that other students knew about.”
1

Concurrent with Seymour’s high school years, Ida diligently worked to improve her investments, which included buying a parcel of farmland in Monticello, New York, in the Catskills, a popular destination for Jewish families every summer as an escape from the heat of the city. It was on this spot that the family built the Kaufman Bungalow Colony, just next door to the more opulent Kutscher’s Hotel resort. The Kaufman colony consisted of a main house for the Kaufman family along with about fifteen to twenty units that could be rented out. This upstate business was indeed a family affair. Seymour’s father built the guest units, and he recruited his sons, including Seymour, to dig the swimming pool. The colony also had a handball court and a recreation room that could be used as a children’s playroom or for shows, in which Seymour would sometimes participate.

The serenity of this upstate spot suited Seymour’s father, as evidenced by one particularly telling story Coleman recounted: “I remember seeing him once sitting alone under a tree in Monticello [seemingly talking to someone]. I said to Max—I called him Max—‘Who are you talking to?’ He said, ‘To some very intelligent people.’”
2

Being in the Catskills was something on which both Max and Ida could agree, and her interest and fondness for being on site at the upstate business proved to have a profound consequence for Seymour. While he was still in high school, Ida decided that she and Max would take up full-time residence in Monticello; this meant that if Seymour was to continue his studies, he would have to find some way to live in New York City. Obviously, as a teenager he couldn’t live on his own, so eventually it was decided that he would move in—piano and all—with his now-married sister, Sylvia, and her family.

It was a shift that added another level of bitterness to Coleman’s memories of his mother; and yet, ultimately, her presence in Monticello and his time there during the summer, as well as his continued residence in the city, would prove to be a boon for his career.

In Manhattan, not only was he finishing up at the School of Music and Art; he was also continuing his studies at New York College of Music, where he was now performing under the guidance of the school’s director, Arved Kurtz, and its assistant director, Warner Hawkins. Both of these men had old-guard classical backgrounds similar to those of Seymour’s other mentors. Kurtz, who came from a family with an impressive musical pedigree, was not only the head of the school but also an acclaimed performer in his own right. As for Hawkins, a pianist and organist, he too had attracted attention with his work as an arranger and soloist, interpreting not only composers from the past but also those who were deemed the moderns of the period, including Grieg and Debussy.

At the New York College of Music Seymour frequently took part in recitals led by Kurtz and Hawkins, performing such pieces as Ravel’s
Jeux d’eau
and the first movement from Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in C Minor, op. 37. This latter piece was the final offering in one recital, and for it Seymour was joined by “Dr. Pollak at the second piano.” Seymour’s placement on the bill and the choice of his partner give a clear indication of the esteem in which his teachers held him.

The broad exposure he was getting not only helped Seymour improve his technique and demonstrate his prowess at the keyboard; it also instilled in him a love of certain composers. Throughout his adult life Coleman would take refuge from the rough-and-tumble world of Broadway and the pop-music scene by listening to Beethoven. He also would use classical music to humorous effect. On rainy days, for instance, he would play gloomy pieces by Rachmaninoff, often to the chagrin of friends and loved ones.

Coleman described his training as “very staid, very Germanic. [The college] took its serious music very seriously.”
3
And though Seymour knew he was being groomed for a career as a concert pianist, he yearned for something else. It had been awakened in his work with Sheen’s dance ensemble, and Seymour quickly found other outlets in which to express himself in a less stolid manner.

In Manhattan he got gigs playing at weddings and other private parties. In addition, Seymour began entertaining the troops during World War II: “When he found that he was too young to be inducted [into the army], he asked permission to play the piano in servicemen’s canteens, in their camp shows and similar places, and he got it.”
4
For these engagements he began with his classical repertoire, but he soon discovered that the enlisted men and the Army brass were much more receptive if he played songs by the likes of the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart.

Seymour also found ways to play popular hits in Monticello, sitting in with the dance bands at the larger resorts near his family’s bungalow community. At one of these he was playing with a group that also included jazz trombonist Sammy Sherman, whose daughter, jazz singer Daryl Sherman, would count Coleman as one of her musical mentors. Eventually Seymour formed his own band for upstate engagements.

Flipping through his scrapbooks from the period reveals that not only was Seymour beginning to establish himself as a performer of popular music of the day; he was also beginning to cultivate the persona of a roué, which would be integral to his image throughout his adulthood. One picture of a pretty young woman in a bathing suit lounging poolside carries the handwritten caption “Hang up time,” while just below it a group shot with the caption “The Band” features Coleman in bathing trunks—cigarette in hand—with six other young men, all of them looking like they are about to have the time of their life.

The scrapbooks also reveal what a sense of humor he had about his varied activities. Under one stately picture of him with his band in formal attire, he wrote, “Weddings, bar mitzvahs, meat market openings and classy affairs that require tux.”

In interviews in adulthood about his shift away from the world of classical music and into the world of pop, Coleman would describe his motivations in many ways. There were times when he would say that it was part of a teenager’s rebellion. At others he’d wax more philosophical. For instance, in a 2004 interview, Coleman said, “I would say it was probably because I had the need to do something myself. I had the need to express myself in other ways.”
5

Seymour got an exceptional opportunity to experience (and express himself in) a nonclassical vernacular while he was still a high school senior. He got a job as rehearsal pianist for the Broadway musical
If the Shoe Fits
, a modern reworking of
Cinderella
. The show gave him his first taste of bringing a show to the stage and allowed him to do some writing, as he was on board to provide some vocal arrangements for the musical as well.

If the Shoe Fits
came to Broadway under the auspices of producer Leonard Sillman, a man who by the mid-1940s had a remarkable track record in recognizing and fostering young talent through his
New Faces
revues. The first of these, for which Sillman served as book writer and performer, had hit Broadway in 1934 and featured Imogene Coca, a future star of television’s
Your Show of Shows
, and future screen legend Henry Fonda.

When a new edition of the revue arrived in 1936, Sillman served as director and producer, and the cast once again included Coca, along with another future screen star, Van Johnson, as well as Ralph Blane, who would go on to distinction not as a performer but as a composer and lyricist for such shows as
Best Foot Forward
and, perhaps most notably, the movie
Meet Me in St. Louis
.

If the Shoe Fits
marked Sillman’s debut as a producer of something other than a revue. For the show’s music, he had turned to David Raksin, the composer of the score for the hit movie
Laura
, which had been released just two years earlier. Raksin had previously orchestrated for Broadway shows, including
New Faces of 1936
, but
If the Shoe Fits
marked his debut as a composer for the stage.

His collaborator on the venture was June Carroll, Sillman’s sister, who had established herself as a lyricist with numbers in the
New Faces
revues and other shows. Carroll also wrote the book for
If the Shoe Fits
with performer Robert Duke, in his sole outing as a writer for Broadway.

Not much is known about what Seymour contributed to
Shoe
; the Playbill for the show does not even credit him. It does, however, inform its readers that “the theatre is perfumed with Spring Rain by Charles of the Ritz.” The importance of this aspect of the production is emblematic of the lavish attention that was given to its physical look and feel (and scent).
If the Shoe Fits
featured an elaborate, complex set by Edward Gilbert that replicated a pop-up picture book, and the design was the only aspect of the show to receive praise from critics.

Otherwise reviewers savaged the show’s book, lyrics, and music. The December 11, 1946
Variety
review summed up the experience bluntly with the opening line “‘If the Shoe Fits’ doesn’t,” while Brooks Atkinson, in his December 6 review for the
New York Times
, described the musical as a “precocious vulgarization of the Cinderella legend.” As for the music, Atkinson wrote, “The score consists of one of the most continuous unpleasant sounds of our times.”

Atkinson’s assessment makes sense, even by standards set by musicals that followed. Listening to portions of Raksin’s score as recreated for a mid-1980s radio broadcast reveals an often jagged set of melodic lines. For audiences of the period, accustomed to the lush melodies of Richard Rodgers or the jaunty tunefulness of Irving Berlin, the sounds emanating from the pit at
If the Shoe Fits
certainly would have been disconcerting.

The show folded after twenty-one performances at the New Century Theatre, and in adulthood Coleman never brought it up in interviews. Among the concrete references that survive about his involvement with the production include a mention of it in liner notes from the 1957 album
Cy Coleman
, and Broadway musical director Mary-Mitchell Campbell remembered Coleman casually referencing his work on the musical when they were collaborating on his musical
Grace
in 2000–2001.