Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters (43 page)

    
38
See, for instance, “Sinatra Is Sought for ‘Prince,’”
Pittsburgh Press
, March 29, 1972, 51.

    
39
Stanley Donen (1924–) is the acclaimed director or co-director of numerous classic films, including
On the Town
(1949), Lerner’s
Royal Wedding
(1951),
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
(1954),
Indiscreet
(1958), and
Charade
(1963).

    
40
Vernon Scott, “Sinatra’s Out for Director,”
Reading Eagle
, December 9, 1974, 21
.

    
41
Nicol Williamson (1936–2011) was a celebrated classical actor, who also appeared in numerous films and the Broadway musical
Rex
(1976).

    
42
Gene Hackman (1930–) won Academy Awards for
The French Connection
(1971) and
Unforgiven
(1992), among several dozen films in a 53-year career in Hollywood.

    
43
Richard Kiley (1922–99) was a beloved stage and film actor, well known for appearing in the Broadway productions of
Kismet
(1953),
No Strings
(1962), and
Man of La Mancha
(1965).

    
44
Earl Wilson, “It Happened Last Night,”
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
, April 24, 1972, 7B
.
Joyce Haber, “Kiley Is the Man of ‘Little Prince,’”
Los Angeles Times
, July 31, 1972, F12
.

    
45
Gloria Swanson Papers, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, box 183, folder 7.

    
46
Jack Gaver, “Lerner, Loewe Create Stage Version of ‘Gigi,’”
The Hour
, December 6, 1972, 42
.

    
47
Arnold Saint-Subber (known as Saint Subber) (1918–94) was an important theatrical producer, well known for his association with the plays of Neil Simon.

    
48
Joseph Hardy (1929–) is the Tony Award–winning director of
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
(1967) and the 1974 film version of
Great Expectations
.

    
49
Onna White (1922–2005) was the choreographer of the Broadway productions of
The Music Man
(1957),
Half a Sixpence
(1965), and
Mame
(1966), among others.

    
50
Jack Gaver, “
Gigi
Goes to Broadway,”
Times-Union
, Warsaw, Indiana, May 1, 1973, 5.

    
51
Leroy F. Aarons, “Gigi Having Revival Pains Adapting to Stage Version,”
The Washington Post
, July 31, 1973, 17
.

    
52
Joseph N. Bell, “Profile: Lerner & Loewe & ‘Gigi,’”
Christian Science Monitor
, August 30, 1973, 7
.

    
53
Producer Robert Evans (1930–) is responsible for hit films such as
True Grit
and
The Italian Job
(both 1969), and was head of production at Paramount.

    
54
Karin Wolfe (1944–) is an American actress whose credits include the soap opera
Days of Our Lives
(1972–75).

    
55
Via Galactica
(1972) is a rock musical with music by Galt MacDermot, who had success with
Hair
(1967) and
Two Gentlemen of Verona
(1971). It ran only seven performances and is a notorious flop.

    
56
Peter Hall (1930–) is a distinguished English director who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 and was director of the Royal National Theatre in this period. He was married to actress Leslie Caron when she was filming Lerner’s
Gigi
.

    
57
Lehman Engel (1910–82) conducted numerous shows on Broadway, including
Li’l Abner
(1956) and
Take Me Along
(1959).

    
58
Frank Yablans (1935–) is a producer and screenwriter. He was president of Paramount from 1971 to 1975.

    
59
A. Joseph Tandet (–2009) was an attorney and the associate producer of
The Little Prince
. He later produced another musical version of the story,
The Little Prince and the Aviator
, on Broadway, though it closed in previews. In 2008, he published a brief memoir of his exploits, called
The Lawyer and the Little Prince
.

    
60
Peter Bogdanovich (1939–) is the acclaimed director of
The Last Picture Show
(1971). In 1975, he directed a cult flop musical film,
At Long Last Love
, which featured over a dozen Cole Porter songs.

    
61
Clive Barnes, “Play: ‘Music! Music!’ from ’95 to Now,”
New York Times
, April 12, 1974, 22
.

    
62
Steven R. Weisman, “‘River Niger’ and ‘Raisin’ Win Tonys,”
New York Times
, April 22, 1974, 46
.

    
63
As choreographer, director, and/or producer, Jerome Robbins (1918–98) worked on the hit musicals
On the Town
(1944),
The King and I
(1951),
West Side Story
(1957),
Gypsy
(1959), and
Fiddler on the Roof
(1964). He anthologized his own work in
Jerome Robbins’ Broadway
(1989).

    
64
Don Oberdorfer, “Bernstein, Lerner Planning Musical,”
Windsor Star
, September 6, 1974, 44
.

    
65
Abe Burrows (1910–85) was a leading figure on Broadway, working (as director and/or writer) on
Guys and Dolls
(1950),
Make a Wish
(1951),
Two on the Aisle
(1951),
Silk Stockings
(1955), and
How to Succeed
(1961).

    
66
George S. Kaufman (1889–1961) was a playwright, director, and producer, with an incredible range of credits from writing material for the Marx Brothers to directing
Guys and Dolls
(1950). Of note is his book for Gershwin’s
Of Thee I Sing
(1931) and his collaborations with Moss Hart and Edna Ferber.

    
67
Absurd Person Singular
is a play by Alan Ayckbourn that opened on Broadway on October 8, 1974.

    
68
Alan Jay Lerner,
The Street Where I Live
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), 248
.

OLD FRIENDS
, 1975–1980

Lerner spent much of 1975 working on
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
, a project on which he and Bernstein placed great hopes. In August, he wrote to his fellow lyricist, Ira Gershwin, with whom he had worked on
An American in Paris
back in the early 1950s, to apologize for failing to appear in a tribute evening to him. He also described progress on the new show and confessed that it had kept him so busy that his correspondence had lapsed:

    
To Ira Gershwin

    
August 6, 1975

    
Dearest Ira,

    
I have been locked up for so many months with Lenny Bernstein on the show we’re doing that I have hardly known what was going on in the world. When I came up for air a few days ago I found out about your evening, and I am heartsick that I didn’t know about it and did not communicate with you on the appropriate night. Be that as it may—and unfortunately it is—all I can say is, instead of an evening it should be a national holiday, and I’m as sad I missed it as I am not knowing about it.

        
I think of you so often, so much more often than you know. I can’t tell you how many times your name pops into the conversation. In spite of all the scrabble games I lost to you, you and Lee
¹
and Roxbury Drive and the fun we had when the “group” was still all together will always be one of my most precious memories.

        
The new show is almost finished and, as usual, it’s been a sweat. But it’s been exciting working with Lenny. (Incidentally, even though we were at college together the first time we ever talked about writing together was in your house in 1951.) I haven’t even wondered how it will do but I suppose underneath I feel the way I usually do; astonished if it’s a success and outraged if it isn’t.

        
Please give my love to Lee. I don’t think I will be out your way before rehearsals, but I hope to be sometime after the first of the year. I’ll come by to give you a belated hug and either cry on your shoulder or get a hug in return.

Devotedly,

Alan

Lerner’s letter suggests that although he wasn’t sure of the quality of the piece, he had particularly enjoyed working with Bernstein. Significantly, given the musical’s rapid demise on Broadway, many months had gone into the writing; this was not a show that had been thrown together quickly. Nevertheless, the composer and lyricist struggled to find backing for the production, partly because it was such an ambitious piece and partly because Lerner’s recent projects (especially
Lolita
and
The Little Prince
) had all flopped. In August, the show even lost its producer, Saint-Subber,
²
who gave up when he realized the money was impossible to obtain and the script still problematic.
³
Lerner and Bernstein then turned to Roger L. Stevens,
⁴
a dear friend of Bernstein’s and the chairman of the Kennedy Center in Washington, where the show was booked in for one leg of its out-of-town tryout. He agreed to produce the show with Robert Whitehead,
⁵
a Canadian who had helmed some hit plays and a couple of less-successful musicals.
⁶
In September Lerner managed to secure the backing of the Coca-Cola
Company, which underwrote the entire production to the tune of $900,000.
⁷
Mel Gussow in the
New York Times
reported that “The Coca-Cola participation came about because of Lerner’s boyhood friendship with John Paul Austin, board chairman of the Coca-Cola Company.” Gussow also reported that Frank Corsaro
⁸
(best known for his operatic work) had been hired as the director and quoted Lerner as saying, “The show is primarily concerned with those moments when people tried to take the White House away from us.…I started thinking about it after the last election. The White House seemed to be getting rather remote from the country.” Lerner also briefly described his collaboration with Bernstein: “Naturally any time you’re writing with a new composer, or lyricist, you do influence each other, and you should, in order to produce a new voice of your own. With Lennie, I usually write the lyrics first. With Fritz [Loewe] I used to write the lyrics second.”

    
But it was not to be the success that Lerner and Bernstein intended. From the very beginning, it was apparent that the musical was not quite ready to go into production. On the first day of rehearsals, January 21, 1976, the press were invited to interview the cast and crew, as was traditional, but Tom Shales’s report of the event in the
Washington Post
hinted at the troubles to come: “It was a chance for composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist-playwright Alan Jay Lerner to explain what ‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,’ their new $900,000 White House musical, is really about. They didn’t, but they tried.”
⁹
He went on to say that “Much of [the press conference] was given over to arguments over what the play is trying to say.” It also emerged that Ken Howard,
¹⁰
the actor who was to play nine of the American presidents over the course of the show, had been hired only a week earlier.

    
By all accounts, rehearsals were difficult, and the musical opened for its Philadelphia previews on February 26 to a mixed critical reception. William B. Collins complained in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
that it was “a big, long musical that makes the rest of us feel as bad as they do.” Even worse, he referred to Lerner’s “leaden lines” and Bernstein’s “music to feel lousy by,” and said the show’s prospects were “bleak.”
¹¹
However, Jonathan Takiff’s assessment in the
Philadelphia Daily News
was more balanced. “While I take issue with the
pomposity and implications of Alan Jay Lerner’s book, I find his lyrics chock full of wit, cunning and sharp insight,” he wrote, adding that Bernstein “has wrought a musical mix that is highly eclectic and demanding, often endowed with brilliance.”
¹²
Evidently, much work needed to be done: the first performance lasted a reported three hours and 45 minutes, and in Philadelphia both the director and choreographer
¹³
left the show (though their contribution had been praised in the Philadelphia reviews). They were replaced by Gilbert Moses
¹⁴
and George Faison,
¹⁵
both of whom had, in recent seasons, produced critically acclaimed work that dealt sensitively with racial issues. This was significant because the portrayal of the African American characters in the musical was one of its weakest elements. An hour was cut from the show before it reached Washington in March, but the number of presidents depicted was increased to thirteen from eight, thereby complicating the plot further.