You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (35 page)

When it came to one other song, however, it wasn’t Coleman who was resisting a cut; it was Stewart. He wouldn’t let Layton remove “That’s What the Poor Woman Is,” an extended sequence with an oom-pah-pah polka rhythm that comically brought to life the battle of the sexes in the mid-nineteenth century. Bramble described it as “the biggest number in the show. It was clowns doing a women’s rally for equality. And it just went on and on and on. And Michael Stewart loved it, because he had some wonderful lyrics in it and the music was good. . . . But it was way too late in act 1 for this thing that had nothing to do with nothing.”
37
Ultimately, Stewart acquiesced to having this song removed from the show.

As Coleman faced these usual—and unusual—complications with mounting a new musical, he also coped with the details of the show’s business health. Gordon and he had taken steps to ensure that they would be able to work together closely by renting space in the Fifty-fourth Street building where his offices were to serve as the base of operations for
Barnum
. “We had a direct phone line between our office and Cy’s office, so that worked out very well. I was more involved with the day-to-day things with Jim Walsh, our general manager, but I never decided on any kind of real decisions without talking to Cy about it.”
38

There did come a point when Coleman “was very immersed in the show, as well he should be. We had a major crisis with one of our investors, which I had to deal with and he didn’t because he was just too busy with the show. One of our investors got very crazy and threatened to put an injunction on the show, but Cy wasn’t really that involved with that because he was busy with the show and I didn’t want to bother him with that.”
39

It might have been a bit worse than Gordon remembered, because there came a point when producer Cy Feuer was invited to see the show. As Bramble explained, “It was a mad moment when we considered not opening in New York after we had started previews here and going to play the Civic Light Opera subscription in San Francisco and L.A. It was an insane idea, but the show was really struggling.” The notion was abandoned, but not before Feuer pointed out to Bramble that he recognized one of the songs back from the days when he was producing Coleman’s second show: “‘Oh, there’s that song that we threw out of
Little Me
. He won’t let it die.’”
40

Finally, there came a night when, Gordon recalled, “there was just a totally different feeling in the audience. Like the show was working, and you just felt magic when Jim came out on the stage, because all of the extraneous stuff was cut out and Jim’s performance shone.”
41

Gordon wasn’t alone as she watched that performance from the back of the St. James. At her side was producer David Merrick, who, because of his vested interest in the show—after all, he needed Stewart and Bramble for
42nd Street
—had made it a habit of watching
Barnum
in previews. Gordon remembered, “That night Merrick said to me, ‘You’re going to have a hit.’”
42

Merrick’s prediction was almost met when the reviews began to appear on the morning after the show’s official opening on April 30. The notices for Dale were certainly glowing. In the
New York Times
, Frank Rich declared, “This man can create magic—the magic of infectious charm—even on those rare occasions when he’s standing still.” In the
New York Post
, Clive Barnes began his review by announcing, “Jim Dale is a one-man, three-ring, four-star circus in
Barnum
.”

But while critics could agree that Dale was the star attraction of this event and the main reason for taking it in, other aspects of the show, including Coleman’s score, received mixed reaction. Rich said that Coleman was “in top form. Having flirted with operetta in ‘On the Twentieth Century,’ he has now returned to the snazzy showbiz idiom of ‘Little Me’ and ‘I Love My Wife.’ ‘Barnum’ simply bursts with melodies.” Barnes wrote, “Coleman is a permanent gem in Broadway’s musical crown. His music is so effortless and yet honeycombed. . . . His songs always clinch into their dramatic pace and place.” Other reviewers, however, were not so taken, particularly
Newsweek
’s Jack Kroll, who said in his May 12 review, “Cy Coleman’s score is a doleful disappointment.”

Reviewers were similarly conflicted about Layton’s direction. Douglas Watt, in the
Daily News
, said that the show had been “joyously staged,” and Associated Press critic Jay Sharbutt echoed that sentiment when he said that Layton had “brilliantly staged” the musical. Rich’s accolades went so far as to say that the director had made “a cast of 19 seem about a hundred strong.”

But even as reviewers were praising his work, they were noting that he was straining against what they viewed as the weaknesses of Bramble’s book, which was labeled “sketchy” by Watt and described by Barnes as “a library of good intentions.” Rich wrote simply that the show “doesn’t have a book.”

The mixed critical reaction did nothing, however, to diminish theatergoers’ enjoyment of or interest in the show, and it settled into what would become a two-year run. Within the first few weeks after the reviews appeared, ticket sales skyrocketed, and for the next year
Barnum
played to near-capacity and sometimes even standing-room-only houses.

As with
I Love My Wife
,
Barnum
arrived just prior to the cutoff date for 1980 Tony Award eligibility. When the nominations for the prizes were announced,
Barnum
had scored a total of ten, just one shy of the eleven received by its biggest competitor, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s
Evita
. In addition to one for best musical and one for Coleman and Stewart’s score, the show garnered a pair of nominations for Layton (as both director and choreographer) as well as ones for Dale, Close, and Bramble. In the long run,
Barnum
couldn’t overpower
Evita
in many categories, but it still won a respectable trio of prizes: for Dale as well as for designers Mitchell and Aldredge.

Any marketing boost that the awards gave
Barnum
at the beginning of June was enhanced a month later when Columbia Records released the cast album. A new slew of raves poured in, particularly for Coleman’s music. Frank Rich’s assessment of the LP ran in the
New York Times
on July 4, and after noting that the music “may be right up there with his scores for ‘Little Me’ and ‘Sweet Charity,’” he said that the album was so strong that it made it “hard to resist the urge to march down to the St. James and see the show again.” Rich even noted Coleman’s work in the studio on such recordings: “Since Mr. Coleman helps produce his own cast albums, the results are invariably first-rate. His scores for ‘Seesaw’ and ‘I Love My Wife’ sound far better on records than they did in the theater.”

Coleman also got his first multiply recorded hit from a show since
Sweet Charity
when “The Colors of My Life” started receiving cover versions from artists ranging from such legends as Perry Como and Teresa Brewer to other talents like Vera Lynn and Richard Hayman. In addition, Coleman went into the studio himself and, in a toast to the old days when full LPs of jazz covers of a show’s songs were plentiful, he recorded
Cy Coleman Presents “Barnum,”
on which he was even able to preserve the cut song “At Least I Tried.”

As
Barnum
was entering its second year on Broadway in 1982, Coleman spoke candidly on Marian McPartland’s
Piano Jazz
radio show about how the record business had changed since he began his career: “You know, when you used to do a show, you used to have a tune come out and you used to get a lot of people to record them. But now it’s not the same kind of thing. You’ve got to fight for the record, but when they do come around, they’re nice.”

Before this he had been less magnanimous about the business and much more pointed when he told Associated Press writer Jay Sharbutt, “[The record companies] don’t have the same faith (in the tunes) they once did. . . . They’re willing to lose money on 100 rock groups in the hope that one hits.”
43
It was a public forthrightness from Coleman that hadn’t been seen since his earliest days in the limelight, when he had announced, “On last week’s 10 top tunes list, there was not one song that made any sense, either melodically or lyrically. Not one that couldn’t have been composed by my nephew. He is ten.”
44

With McPartland, he described how such bluntness was problematically magnified while
Barnum
was running. When a reporter asked him what it was like producing a show, Coleman remembered, “I said, ‘Well, being a producer is like being a garbage dump. Everybody just comes and dumps all their stuff in your lap.’ I said, ‘I’m not crazy about it at all. I’m only a producer to protect my music and protect the show. But other than that, it’s really the garbage dump.’” Coleman then related, with both chagrin and amusement, that when the article was printed “the caption in the picture [read] ‘Cy Coleman says “producing is like a garbage dump.”’”

Coleman may have had his problems with being a producer, but it didn’t completely undermine his work on the managerial side of
Barnum
. Gordon described him as “a really good businessman.” She did add, however, “I think that he was first and foremost an artist and a composer, and the show was his baby, and so he wasn’t really a producer. It was a side profession, and so if it was a financial decision, and it was something he really wanted as the composer, but as a producer it wasn’t really a good idea budgetwise, he would push for the artistic rather than the financial.”
45

Similarly, Bramble believed that the strain of both writing and producing had stretched Coleman too thin, pointing to the incident with the show’s orchestrations as one example: “[Cy] should have been paying more attention, but he was so busy trying to gather money that he wasn’t paying attention to Hershy.”
46

Other incidents would arise during the 854 performances that
Barnum
played on Broadway, including a conflict between the writers about Dale’s replacement. Yet the fact remained that Coleman, like composers before him from Richard Rodgers to Jule Styne, had established himself as a producing presence with
Barnum
, a show that would go on to have two American tours (one headed by Stacy Keach) and an acclaimed run in London, with the future star of
The Phantom of the Opera
, Michael Crawford, as well as productions in France, Spain, Holland, and Australia.

As Coleman moved into his fifties, the boundless energy that had propelled him with meteoric intensity during the first three decades of his career wasn’t enough to keep his momentum of having one show a year reach full production. The theater world had just changed too dramatically, and though Coleman would never be lacking for work or projects in the 1980s, it would be nine years before he had a new show reach the Broadway stage.

24.
“Some Kind of Music”

With
Barnum
, Coleman had brought his fourth full musical to the stage in just as many years, and even before it went into rehearsal, he was touting what his next one would be, a tuner called
Atlantic City
. He had begun the project in 1975 with lyricist Christopher Gore, who penned the lyrics for the flop that preceded
Seesaw
at the Uris Theatre,
Via Galactica
, and who would also go on to have markedly greater success with his screenplay for the movie
Fame
.

Coleman put
Atlantic City
to the side after he and Gore began it because of his workload on shows that were reaching production, but by February 1980 he was ready to refocus his energy on it. His first step in moving the musical from the page to the stage was to be a two-LP concept recording that Columbia Records would release during the summer. Once the album was on the market, Coleman felt that the show—which had Bob Fosse attached as director and choreographer and which was on the Producers Circle’s docket—would wend its way to the stage.

In announcing his plans for the LP, Coleman described the musical as being one that would “combine the old elegance and the Miss America atmosphere with the gambling of the modern city,” adding, “It’s a black, dark musical.”
1

At this juncture in its history, the show’s book was being penned by Jack Heifner, who had written
Vanities
, a play that had enjoyed a three-year run Off-Broadway. As the 1980s dawned he was working with Carolyn Leigh on the musical
Smile
, and it was the lyricist who introduced the playwright to Coleman.

Heifner, however, was not the first person Coleman spoke to about the show. That distinction belonged to John Guare, who at the time was known for such plays as
The House of Blue Leaves
and the book for the musical
Two Gentlemen of Verona
and who would go on to write the Pulitzer Prize–winning play
Six Degrees of Separation
. Guare’s work had demonstrated his keen ability to capture the quirks of the seamier side of life with humor, sensitivity, and a sense of danger, and as Coleman began to formulate his concept for
Atlantic City
, the playwright’s aesthetic seemed to make him a natural candidate.

In later years there would be rumors that the conversations the two men had about the show inspired the playwright to write the screenplay for his successful film of the same name. But Guare denied the causal effect, noting that even before their talks he had had his own fascination with the place and the stories of its denizens. Furthermore, he said, “I also felt, having gone down there, that Atlantic City is impossible to capture on the stage.”
2

Coleman then approached journalist Pete Hamill about the project, but as with Guare, nothing came to fruition. In Heifner, however, Coleman finally had found someone with whom it seemed a genuine collaboration was possible. Coleman gave Heifner the songs that he and Gore had written, after which Heifner scheduled a series of meetings with Fosse to discuss the show. Heifner recalled, “I can’t say that there was a great deal of guidance there. I was sort of off on my own, trying to come up with a story. . . . I went down to Atlantic City (you know, before it changed), so it was fascinating.”
3

At this point Heifner began writing, but he found it frustrating, as “we were trying to fit something together that was already written.”
4
Wittingly or not, Coleman had placed the writer in the same position that Russell Baker had found himself in with the musical
Home Again, Home Again
.

But Heifner did not allow the confines of working with a preexisting score to impede him, and from his conversations with Fosse he developed a concept for the show that set the Coleman-Gore tunes into a time-bending theatrical collage about the famed seaside resort. The slightly surreal and dark funhouse tone of Heifner’s book beautifully matched Coleman’s uncharacteristically dour but still attractively tuneful songs.

Overall,
Atlantic City
seemed tailor-made for Fosse’s directorial and choreographic edge, but Heifner sensed that it wasn’t an ideal match: “I felt from the very beginning Bob wanted to do something, and he wanted to do something new, but that he was not interested in this.”
5
Perhaps Fosse’s disinclination had something to do with the fact that he was starting to focus on another project, a musical version of the Italian film
Big Deal on Madonna Street
, a property that he had optioned back in 1967.

After Heifner turned in his draft,
Atlantic City
went into a kind of limbo. He recalled, “I don’t remember a final meeting or us discussing ‘We’re not going to do this.’ It was just one of those things I worked on and worked on, and then it was just we’re not working on it anymore.”
6
In hindsight, the demise of
Atlantic City
might have been caused by timing. By the time Heifner’s draft was completed, the film
Atlantic City
was on the horizon and scheduled to open in early 1981.

Although the show was never produced, some of its songs did enjoy some life in the public ear. Tony Bennett included the bittersweet ballad “On the Day You Leave Me” on his 1986 album
The Art of Excellence
, and when Coleman recorded the CD
It Started with a Dream
nearly two decades later, he included not only the show’s mournful title number but also the gently sultry “I Really Love You” and the Latin-infused “Nothing to Do but Dance.”

Among the other nine songs in the
Atlantic City
score were a sly R&B tune, “Toyland,” a curious paean to the town’s sex shops; and a comic vaudeville number that puts a surprising spin on infidelity, “When Jill Is Gone.” Overall, the score reveals another, rather startling side to the composer, particularly after the ebullience of the Americana-infused music he wrote for
Barnum
.

On some levels, there’s a bravado to these songs that might be seen in a younger writer. It’s interesting that as Coleman was working to make
Atlantic City
become a reality, he was also revisiting, with Heifner, the first musical that he had written with Carolyn Leigh:
The Wonderful O
. The property came up in conversation while Heifner and Coleman were talking about ideas for an original musical they might write together.

All three writers met about the project, and Coleman and Leigh played the songs for Heifner. “I remember them saying, ‘This is one of the first things we wrote when we were like kids in Greenwich Village’ or something. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. And it had that feeling to me. The music. It was young and just wonderful.”
7
Unfortunately, they discovered that the rights for the Thurber book were still unavailable, and so the project was shelved.

For Coleman, who had music “bubbling, bubbling, bubbling out of him,” as Phyllis Newman once remarked,
8
it seemed that during the first few years of the 1980s he could not have enough projects happening at once. Alongside all of this work, he also began conceiving two new musicals with Michael Stewart. One was splashy enough to attract attention from the press for almost a full year: a musical based on Mickey Spillane’s famed private eye, Mike Hammer.

Coleman was the first to broach the idea by saying to his old producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, “I’d love to do a musical based on the jazz of the 1950s.” Feuer recalled talking with Coleman about it more. “We hit upon the idea of Mickey Spillane and thought we’d see if we could use one of his Mike Hammer stories.”
9
They decided to call it
Oh, Mike!
, and after meeting with the author, Feuer, Martin, and Coleman walked away not only with a commitment for a completely new detective yarn, but also with a book writer. Spillane had decided he would write it himself.

When the show was announced, Spillane said he found the entire idea of writing a Broadway show “kind of wild,” adding, “I like the title. Any title with punctuation is fantastic. I’m writing a typical Mike Hammer story—beautiful blondes and a great, great ending.”
10

The other collaboration that Coleman and Stewart embarked on was with Mark Bramble: a musical adaptation of James Montgomery’s 1916 comedy of manners,
Nothing but the Truth
. The plot for this featherweight piece involves a New York businessman who is bet that he cannot go for twenty-four hours without lying. The wager complicates his romantic and professional life, as well as the lives of everyone around him.

The play inspired two film versions, one in the earliest days of the talkies and one in the early 1940s with Bob Hope as its star. Harry Rigby, one of the producers of
I Love My Wife
, had a fondness for both the piece and the period (after all, he had been the producer of the acclaimed revival of the 1925 musical bonbon
No, No, Nanette
) and approached the writers about adapting it as a musical.

They agreed with him and began discussing the piece in mid-1981, but a few months later they hit a snag in their professional relationship when it came time to choose the replacement for Jim Dale in
Barnum
.

Since Dale had established himself as a bona fide star in the show, the prevailing thought was that he should be replaced with a marquee name. Nevertheless, one unlikely candidate cropped up: Mike Burstyn, who had appeared on Broadway in the late 1960s in
The Megilla of Itzik Manger
and subsequently spent much of his time performing in Israel, as well as in Holland, where he had a variety show.

It was through the Dutch television program that he met Chita Rivera, who thought he would be good for the role and recommended that he contact Coleman directly when she learned of his interest in playing it. Burstyn recalled calling the composer and saying, “I love this show, and I know that I could do this. I’m willing to fly in at my own expense, but it’s an expensive thing, coming into the United States from Israel. I’m willing to do it, but I understand you may be looking for a name.” Coleman responded, “‘If you’re what we’re looking for, we’ll make the name.”
11

With that encouragement, Burstyn booked his flight to New York. His audition was held on the stage of the St. James, and he performed for Coleman, Stewart, and Bramble, along with producers Judy Gordon and Maurice and Lois Rosenfield. At the end, Burstyn remembered, “Cy asked me, ‘There’s one thing we need to know. Will you be able to walk a wire?’ And my answer was ‘Mr. Coleman, if I could learn Dutch in three months, I can do anything.’ I had a lot of chutzpah, and I found out later, Cy told me, that answer and that chutzpah was what convinced him.”
12

Burstyn’s gutsy response, however, did not convince Coleman’s writing partners, and the actor was eventually informed that he had not gotten the part. Within a few days, however, he received a telegram telling him that he would indeed be replacing Dale. “I found out later that Michael Stewart was the holdout. That Michael wanted Bert Convy. . . . Michael had had a case similar with a show that he had done where the star was replaced with a non-star and the show closed, and he was afraid the same thing would happen here.”
13

Just after the announcement that Burstyn would be taking over in
Barnum
, Stewart, who had threatened to close the show if Burstyn was cast, informed Coleman that he would no longer be working on the projects they had in development. It wasn’t until five years later, when tempers had cooled and wounds had healed, that work began again on
Nothing but the Truth
.

Intriguingly, in the months before Coleman dove into making
Atlantic City
a reality and embarking on two new shows with Stewart, he told Associated Press writer Jay Sharbutt, “My problem is that sometimes I don’t want to write. I like to do other things, too. But it seems to me lately that I write all the time.”
14

Indeed, even as he worked on his post-
Barnum
projects, Coleman was enjoying activities beyond composing, principally performing. Not only had he cut his first album in years—the jazz album of
Barnum
songs—he also stepped up his work in political circles. He became active in former mayor John Lindsay’s campaign for the United States Senate and performed as part of
Broadway for Kennedy
, a fund-raiser for Senator Ted Kennedy’s bid for the White House, held at the Shubert Theatre during the Democratic National Convention in August. For the event, Coleman put a political comedic spin on one of his most famous songs, “Big Spender.” Sally Quinn reported on his plans in the
Washington Post
: “He has announced [it] is Billy Carter’s song to Qaddafi.” Coleman also told Quinn that while he was playing, “Betty Bacall dances playfully around the stage.”
15

Perhaps most tantalizing among the other appearances on Coleman’s docket that year is a concert he was scheduled to give with the ninety-three-year-old composer-pianist Eubie Blake to raise funds for Boys Harbor in East Hampton. The two extraordinary pianists were to play duets; unfortunately, illness sidelined Blake, resulting in a solo show from Coleman.

The need to perform, kindled in him at a young age, and the need to compose, which he came to while in his teens, created a yin-and-yang sort of pull in Coleman that was only exacerbated by his desire to take on myriad different stage projects, all of which contributed to his sometimes being less than available for his collaborators.

“[Michael Stewart] always said [
I Love My Wife
] got written in ‘Cy, I just need five minutes of your time. Just give me five minutes,’” Bramble said. Because Stewart lived near Coleman’s offices, “Cy would say, ‘Okay, okay. Just come around.’ And then, of course, it would go into a work session. But I think Mike had to plead with him to get time. Once he got into it, he was totally into it. But Cy was doing a million things, always. And
Barnum
was the same way of ‘We just need five minutes.’”
16