Broadway Babylon (45 page)

Bad Move
: Broadway producer Cheryl Crawford was given the chance to present Arthur Miller’s 1948 drama
Death of a Salesman
but declined, saying, “Who would want to see a play about an unhappy traveling salesman? Too depressing.”

Bad Move
: Producer-director Hal Prince said no to
Hello, Dolly!
for a logical but untheatrical reason. “Put it this way. I was asked to direct
Hello, Dolly!
They played me this title song, and I said, ‘This for a scene where a woman who doesn’t go out visits a restaurant?’ ” Of course the title number wow-wow-wowed Broadway audiences and was the highlight of a show that became the longest-running musical of its time.

Bad Move
: The chief of the ad agency handling
Grease
advised after its Off-Broadway opening in 1972, “I don’t think we can do anything with these reviews. It’s a disaster. Close it.” The show’s producer ignored him, and the public ignored the reviews. The popular musical moved uptown, and when
Grease
closed in 1980 it was the longest-running show in Broadway history.

Bad Move
: In 1961, Nanette Fabray got a telephone call from Irving Berlin inviting her to play the First Lady in his new musical
Mr. President
. A major disappointment, it was Berlin’s swansong. To do the role, Fabray declined a movie role as well as a chance at pop-culture immortality as the voice of Wilma Flintstone in
The Flintstones
. “When I heard that title, I
thought, no contest. An Irving Berlin musical … or some little cartoon thing with a crazy name that not even a child will remember in two years?”

Bad Moves, Good Move
: George Bernard Shaw’s acclaimed play
Pygmalion
was eventually made into a classic 1938 English movie. On the other side of the Pond, there were various attempts at a musical version. Rodgers and Hammerstein gave it a go, then announced it couldn’t be done. Next, the team of Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green was called in. Comden explained, “We saw the film, and at the end we said, ‘Gee, it’s such a great movie, why turn it into anything? It’s too good. Leave it alone.’ That wasn’t such a smart move.” Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner gave it a whirl and came up with
My Fair Lady
, such an enduring success on stage and screen that to most people today
Pygmalion
—the film or the play—is simply
My Fair Lady
without music.

Good Move
: After her fanciful autobiography was published, Gypsy Rose Lee received four offers for the dramatic rights. Far from rich, she was tempted by MGM and Warner Bros., which each offered about $200,000 to turn
Gypsy
into a motion picture. (The eventual Warners movie of the stage musical, starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood, was a flop.) Gypsy’s son, Erik, was incredulous when his mother instead sold the rights to producer David Merrick, who wanted to turn the book into a Broadway musical via the team of Lerner and Loewe. Merrick offered her $4,000 against a percentage of the box-office gross.

“It’s a risk,” explained the former stripper. “But if the show is successful, I’ll get royalties from it for the rest of my life, as well as at least that much ($200,000) when it’s sold for a film.”

Of course
Gypsy
became an ongoing hit as well as an instant classic. There would also be royalties from touring companies, the original cast recording, stock and amateur rights, the movie sale, and eventual revivals.

P.S. Post–Lerner and Loewe, the musical was to have been composed by young Stephen Sondheim, but Ethel Merman didn’t want a newcomer crafting her songs. She accepted Sondheim as a lyricist but asked for and got veteran Jule Styne to create the music.

Bad Judgment
: Following
A Chorus Line
’s first night Off-Broadway at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, Bette Midler—who’d done a Broadway stint in
Fiddler on the Roof
—went up to
Line
co-author James Kirkwood. “She said to me, ‘It’s such a pity. You almost had a hit. But that awful song—what was it? Something about what they did for love?—that threw it right down the toilet. Oh, well.’ She was trying to be sympathetic.”

Bad Judgment
: Depending on the source, producer Mike Todd (Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband) or an assistant to columnist Walter Winchell famously dismissed the new musical
Oklahoma!
with “No legs, no jokes, no chance.” The show lacked chorus girls and guffaws but wowed audiences with its Rodgers and Hammerstein score (their first together) and Agnes de Mille’s innovative choreography. A near-instant classic, it went on to break all Broadway attendance records and become possibly the most-often-produced musical in American high schools.

Good Move, inadvertently
: Alan Sues ironically played a homophobic bully in
Tea and Sympathy
on Broadway in 1953. He later gravitated toward comedy onstage and in nightclubs. In 1966 he appeared Off-Broadway in
The Mad Show
, which led to his being signed for
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In
. But the TV series took a long time to jell, and meantime Sues did a play written by costar Elaine May,
A Matter of Position
. Directed by the renowned Arthur Penn, it opened pre-Broadway to middling reviews. Sues, however, was singled out for praise. To his chagrin, he had to leave the production, being legally committed to
Laugh-In
, which bowed in 1968. The play folded, never reaching Broadway, while
Laugh-In
went on to become a smash hit and cultural phenomenon.

Alan’s most notable character on the show was Big Al, the nellie sports reviewer modeled on film critic Rex Reed. Sues stayed with
Laugh-In
the first four years, then left in favor of a Broadway-bound revival of the musical
Good News
. A bad move: it folded on the road. To Sues’s dismay, after
Laugh-In
he was seldom hired for anything but comedy—certainly not for bully roles.

Good Move
: “In 1966 I signed to host a new TV game show for 13 weeks. I saw it as a paid distraction, a gig in between Broadway musical shows, which were my first love,” explained Peter Marshall, born Ralph Pierre LaCock. “So I was anxious to get back to New York.… I didn’t for a moment believe that
Hollywood Squares
would last beyond the 13 weeks. But it and I lasted, together, 16 years.”

Good Move
: Charles Strouse, who co-wrote the score of
Bye Bye Birdie
(1960), recalled its star Dick Van Dyke’s coming to him with a dilemma. “Buddy, I got an offer to do a television series.” Strouse reminded the former Atlanta TV talk show host that
Birdie
was a hit; Dick had just won a Tony and now had his choice of future Broadway roles. He asked how long the TV offer was for? “Twelve or thirteen weeks.”

Strouse advised, “Right now you’re on top. Stay with Broadway. A television series would be a big mistake.” But DVD opted for the little screen
and a bigger public. Thanks to his eponymous series, he also became a 1960s movie star (
Mary Poppins
, etcetera).

Good Move
: Though it’s hard to believe now, in the late 1950s Andy Griffith looked poised to become a Broadway and/or movie star. Television? Who knew? In 1955, Griffith landed on the Great White Way in the comedy hit
No Time for Sergeants
, directed by Morton Da Costa of
Auntie Mame
fame. Coincidentally, Don Knotts, later of
The Andy Griffith Show
, had a small role.

Griffith’s second and final Broadway outing, in 1959, was a much-ballyhooed musical:
Destry Rides Again
, (The classic film had starred Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart.) David Merrick produced and Dolores Gray played Frenchy. At 473 performances, it wasn’t a flop, but nowhere near the success—nor personal showcase—that
Sergeants
had been. First wife Barbara Griffith allowed, “Andy is usually easygoing, so long as he is the center of attention.… Life with a comedian is no joke.” Griffith felt the dancers dominated
Destry
.

The year before the 1958 hit film of
Sergeants
, Andy made his screen debut in the riveting
A Face in the Crowd
, directed by Elia Kazan. He portrayed an appealing, two-faced rube who moves from country musician to would-be political powerhouse via the influence of television. Critical reaction was very supportive, and many observers were dismayed that the actor wasn’t Oscar nominated. However, his third movie,
Onionhead
, was neither a commercial nor critical hit, and in 1960, Andy began the eponymous TV series which he co-owned thanks to the leverage film and Broadway had given him. It ran until 1968 and made Andy Griffith a household name, though the small screen’s gain was the loss of the two other media in which he’d proven his charm and talent.

Bad Move
:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
(1962) was intended to star comic Phil Silvers. He passed on the risky project—an ancient-Roman-style farce. (Fellow TV star Milton Berle also refused.) When
Forum
became a smash hit starring Zero Mostel, Silvers keenly rued his decision. He did retain hopes of starring in the 1966 film version, but by then his name meant nothing on a movie marquee, and Mostel got to reprise his Broadway triumph. Silvers did manage to land a supporting screen role as flesh peddler Marcus Lycus, and nearly stole his scenes with fellow ham Mostel. Alas, the film was a flop. In 1972, Phil Silvers got to star in a
Forum
revival, but, sadly, its run was cut short by his poor health.

Good Judgment, Bad Judgment
: Mary Martin was an early choice to play Fanny Brice in
Funny Girl
. Wrong for the wry, comedic, and ethnic
part, she was artistically smart to turn it down, less smart to forego the lead in a future hit musical that made a star of Barbra Streisand. Martin would also have been all wrong for Eliza Dolittle in
My Fair Lady
, which made a star of Englishwoman Julie Andrews. But Martin wasn’t offered the role, since after listening to Lerner and Loewe’s sublime score, the Texan told her manager-husband—who told the composer and lyricist—“How could it have happened? Those dear boys have lost their talent.”

Bad Move
: Columbia Records’ Goddard Leiberson was famous for recording original cast albums of quality. Writer Arthur Laurents was directing the musical
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
, featuring newcomer Barbra Streisand, and sent her to sing for Leiberson, who sent a note to Laurents: “Barbra Streisand is indeed very talented, but I’m afraid she’s too special for records.” Later he recorded the cast album of
Wholesale
and eventually signed her to a Columbia contract, but at a much higher price than if he’d signed her earlier.

Bad Move
: Harold Clurman, asked to direct Carson McCullers’s 1949 play
The Member of the Wedding
, begged off with the comment, “It won’t make a dime.” The admittedly quirky work won the Drama Critics Circle Award for best play, toured for a year, and sold to the movies for a then-huge six-figure advance.
Member
of course made a star of the radiant and unique Julie Harris.

Good Move
: Humorist, celebrity wit, and father of Peter “Jaws” Benchley, Robert Benchley was asked by millionaire John Hay Whitney whether he ought to invest in a forthcoming play titled
Life with Father
. Benchley answered, “I could smell it [the play manuscript] as the postman came whistling down the lane. Don’t put a dime in it.”Whitney, far richer than Benchley, did invest. The 1939 play ran seven and a half years on Broadway (3,224 performances), the longest-running play ever up to that time.

Bad Move
: Dean Jones was for a time a movie leading man, especially in Disney pictures. Then he got fundamentalist religion. He also got the lead in Stephen Sondheim’s innovative, stunning musical
Company
(1970). Jones played Bobby, the single guy surrounded by married friends urging him to wed. Over the years, the rumor persists that Bobby is a closeted character—played post-Jones by gay actor Larry Kert of
West Side Story
, and in the yearlong tour by gay ex-dancer George Chakiris (from the screen
West Side Story
). Jones left the
succès d’estime
within a month of its Broadway opening, purportedly for health reasons or possibly due to a sticky divorce or over his reported discomfort in the role, which whether it was closeted or not, could have opened up a major post-Hollywood theater
career for the actor. Jones later returned in a partially right-wing-funded religious musical (
Into the Light
) that flopped big.

Bad Move
: “We’re going to run for two years,” said Yul Brynner of his musical
Home Sweet Homer
, based on Homer’s
Odyssey
, which bowed on Broadway with a Sunday matinee on January 4, 1976. The book and lyrics were by then-hot
Love Story
author Erich Segal, a classics professor at Harvard. Brynner had toured the show for almost a year and believed his standing ovations augured another hit of
The King and I
proportions. Of course the movie star received ovations because he was a star, and many who went to see him as Odysseus were disappointed that he wasn’t the King. In one scene he wore long hair and a beard and didn’t look at all “Siamese.”

As the musical traveled from city to city, major chunks were cut. The show, generally deemed poor to begin with, got worse and worse. When finally it reached New York, it had to face the critics, who were merciless. And New Yorkers were less impressed by a star.
Home Sweet Homer
closed the same day it opened on Broadway, not even playing a nighttime performance. Brynner, no longer box office on the silver screen, thereafter returned to touring in
The King and I
until his death.