BROADWAY'S BADASS HIT WOMEN
BROADWAY has always been a boys’ club.
Sure, there are some powerful female producers — Daryl Roth (“Kinky Boots”), Lynne Meadow (the head of the Manhattan Theatre Club) and Fran Weissler (“Chicago”) spring to mind. And there are some powerful directors, writers and actors, among them Susan Stroman, who directed “The Producers”; Lisa Kron, who co-wrote “Fun Home”; and Helen Mirren, one of Broadway’s top box-office draws.
But men head up the three companies — Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn — that run the big theaters. Men dominate talent agencies such as Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor. And men control mighty production companies such as Disney and the Ambassador Theatre Group.
As for artists, is anyone more influential right now than Lin-Manuel Miranda?
And yet there is a group of women who wield quiet, abiding, unchecked power on the Great White Way. They are the widows, sisters and daughters of deceased theater legends, and they own some of the most popular — and lucrative — plays, musicals and songs of all time.
Want to stage a revival of “Annie Get Your Gun?” Better get permission from Irving Berlin’s daughters, Mary Ellin Barrett and Linda Louise Emmet.
Got Hugh Jackman lined up to play Sky Masterson in “Guys and Dolls”? Pray Frank Loesser’s widow, Jo Sullivan Loesser, thinks he’s right for the part, because she’s got casting approval.
A top Broadway producer who has worked with many of these women said, “You can’t do anything without their permission. You can’t change a note, a word or a comma. They are, in effect, your partners. And you’d better make sure they’re happy because they can pull the plug at anytime.”
FRANCINE Pascal, whose brother, Michael Stewart, wrote the books for “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “42nd Street,” said her job is “to guard the properties and make certain they are not ruined by rewriting. You know that mythical creature [Cerberus] who guards the gates of hell? Well, I’m worse.”
Defy her wishes, and watch out. Pascal will sic the lawyers on you, as she did to the producers of a revival of her brother’s musical “Carnival!” They had the bright idea of turning the lead character, a sensitive girl, into a prostitute.
“I fought them, I took them to court, and I won,” she said. “You have to be tough.”
Pascal, who wrote the “Sweet Valley High” series of tween books, routinely turns down requests for male actors to You know that mythical creature who guards the gates of hell? Well, I’m worse. — Francine Pascal, sister of playwright Michael Stewart, on protecting her late brother’s shows
play Dolly Levi in “Hello, Dolly!” She made an exception for her friend Lee Roy Reams, who has a long association with the show as a performer and director, and who played Dolly in a production in Florida a few years ago. “But that’s it,” she said. “I don’t want it done that way.”
She’s delighted with the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” starring Bette Midler. The producer Scott Rudin “understands and appreciates the show so much,” she said. The revival, which started previews last week and opens April 20, has already sold more than $35 million worth of tickets and set a Broadway firstday box-office sales record of $9,082,497. “That makes me happy, too,” added Pascal. One of Broadway’s toughest widows is Bobby Goldman, whose husband, James Goldman, wrote “The Lion in Winter” and the book for “Follies.” She once prevented an acclaimed revival of “Follies” at the Paper Mill Playhouse from coming to Broadway because she favored another director and another production.
The furious Paper Mill cast dubbed her the “Cobra Lady.” And Hollywood legend Ann Miller, who was in the show, asked a reporter, “Do you have the number for a good hit man? I need one!”
“I’m adorable,” said Goldman with a laugh. “My adorableness is beyond belief. But I’m not out to make friends. That’s not the point. I’m the custodian of Jim’s work. And I play a long-term game. I’m only interested in what’s going to help the property at least 10 years down the line. If somebody comes to me with quick money but I think it’s going to hurt the work, I’m not going to sell my soul.”
Recently, a top nonprofit Broadway theater approached Goldman about doing a revival of “The Lion in Winter” with a major TV star in the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Katharine Hepburn in the 1968 movie). Goldman won’t name the theater or the actress, but after meeting with them for 45 minutes concluded, “They never bothered to read the play and they wanted to put this famous actress, who has never done theater, into one of the hardest roles in the theater. Don’t darken my door ever again!”
FOR many years, the doyenne of the estate ladies was Mary Rodgers, who oversaw the shows of her father, Richard Rodgers, for 30 years. She took what had been a backwater of Broadway — the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization — and turned it into a powerhouse.
On her watch, new generations of theatergoers fell in love with “Oklahoma!” (starring Hugh Jackman at the National Theatre in London in 1998), a Tony Award-winning revival of “The King and I” with Donna Murphy and Lou Diamond Phillips in 1996, and Lincoln Center Theater’s acclaimed production of “South Pacific” in 2008.
Before she died in 2014, Mary Rodgers sold R&H for tens of millions of dollars. But her influence at the company is still palpable.
“The important thing to remember is that she lived through her father’s success, so she knew how to carry out his artistic wishes,” said R&H president Ted Chapin. “And she was fierce.”
Once during a rehearsal of “Pal Joey,” Rodgers, herself a composer with “Once Upon a Mattress” to her credit, walked over to the piano player and asked, “Who changed the chords in ‘Bewitched’?” “I did,” the piano player said. “Don’t,” she snapped. “If she liked something, she got goose bumps,” said Chapin. “If she didn’t, she’d turn to steel and say, ‘Where’s the bar?’ ”
Another vast musical empire belongs to Shelby Coleman, whose husband Cy wrote the music for “Sweet Charity,” “Barnum,” “City of Angels” and “The Will Rogers Follies.” Coleman died suddenly of a heart attack after attending a Broadway opening in 2004, leaving Shelby, almost 30 years his junior, in charge of his catalog.
“Cy was the guy who made all the decisions,” she said. “And suddenly they were mine to make. It was a real mind-bender. Most shows get one shot at Broadway every 10 years, so it’s a big decision. If you make a mistake, you kick yourself from here to next week.”
Coleman keeps in mind what her husband always said about revivals: “If you want the shows to get done, directors are always going to want to put their own stamp on them. Never say, ‘Never.’ Listen to their ideas because you never know what an audience might like.”
Coleman approved significant changes to the recent revival of “Sweet Charity,” starring Sutton Foster, at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Director Leigh Silverman gave the musical, which features such standards as “Big Spender” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” a darker tone.
“I’m pretty happy with what Leigh did,” said Coleman. “I think she is speaking to a modern audience. But one thing I did learn from Cy is to fight for the orchestra, fight for every instrument you can get in there.”
And so when “Sweet Charity” moves to Broadway next season, “we’re going to have a lot more brass,” she said.
As for Phyllis Newman — who was married to Adolph Green — she laughed as she said, “I’m not used to having all this power, but you know what? I love having it.”
Green died in 2002. His shows, co-written with Betty Comden (who died in 2006), include “On the Town” and “On the Twentieth Century.” Add to that portfolio “Peter Pan” and “Wonderful Town,” and you can see why Newman fields offers for Green’s work every week.
“The main thing is to see that the stuff gets done,” said Newman. “You want to preserve it, but not like a museum piece. Some shows need tweaking, and if the tweaking’s done well, I approve it. But it has to be done in Adolph’s style. I hear his voice every second of the day — he had such a cuckoo way of doing things.
“If a new joke gets a laugh but it doesn’t sound like Adolph, it doesn’t go in.”