Naked truth about Broadway bad boys
SHOW AND TELL by Ken Bloom (OUP USA £12.99)
EARLY in the run of the original 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story, composer leonard Bernstein was perplexed to learn that, night after night, the hit musical was 20 minutes shorter than it should have been.
It would begin promptly at 8.30pm, but the final curtain kept coming down at 11pm instead of 11.20pm. So Bernstein went to see the show, and realised immediately that the tempo of the songs had been speeded up. He was furious, and at the end of the performance ran down to the orchestra pit to confront Max Goberman, the conductor. But Goberman wasn’t there. Bernstein asked the orchestra where he was.
‘Probably at Grand Central,’ replied the first trumpet player.
It turned out that Goberman had recently moved to New rochelle, 20 miles from Manhattan, and the last train left Grand Central station at 11.10pm.
This collection of theatrical tales is sub-titled The New Book Of Broadway anecdotes, but while the book might be new, plenty of the stories are positively whiskery. among the familiar and the humdrum, however, there are some corkers.
I didn’t know that one about West Side Story, nor had I heard that the great soprano Eleanor Steber, cast in an early stage production of The Sound Of Music, could never quite master the lyrics.
It was her first foray into musical theatre after a lifetime in opera, and, though born in West Virginia, she wasn’t used to singing in English. She mangled My Favourite Things terribly, trilling ‘ white girls in dresses with blue satin sashes’ and habitually repeating the same words over and over when she forgot a line, so that she rhapsodised about ‘brown paper, brown paper, tied up with string’.
The Sound Of Music’s composer, richard rodgers, probably wasn’t too bothered. Together they also wrote South Pacific and The King and I, but he never, ever complimented partner Oscar Hammerstein on his wonderful lyrics.
at least they both agreed on the show’s name. If certain other musicals had stuck to their original titles, then Hello, Dolly! would have been Dolly: a Damned Exasperating Woman. and My Fair lady would have been lady liza. It was only changed when its leading man pointed out that ‘rex Harrison in lady liza’ sounded rude. The show’s composer, Frederick loewe, meanwhile, wanted it to be called Fanfaroon.
loewe, we also discover, had a libido at least as energetic as his partner alan Jay lerner’s libretto. a little disingenuously, Bloom refers to him as ‘ a great ladies’ man’, then tells us that ‘he would often be found naked, playing the piano with a comely beauty less than half his age sitting on his lap’.
ladies’ man or dirty old man? at one stage he lived in las Vegas with an 18-year- old girl easily young enough to be his granddaughter. Similarly priapic was yul Brynner, star of The King and I. after he had interviewed actress Patricia Morison, to see whether she might be suitable to play opposite him as the prim English governess, anna, he was asked what he thought of her. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘I haven’t been to bed with her yet.’ He then invited her to visit him in his dressing room, receiving her stark naked.
like so many great actors, Brynner was a strange mixture of egotistical and insecure. In 1952, his first anna, the celebrated English actress Gertrude lawrence died. When Brynner heard the news he burst into tears, prompted not by grief but the overwhelming realisation that he would now get top billing.
Of course, ego is closely related to strength of character, and that has served many stage performers well, not least Katharine Hepburn, who was appearing in a play when a woman in the audience took a flash photograph. Hepburn stopped the play and ordered the woman to leave the theatre, which she did, weeping as she went.
Our own Helen Mirren is cut from the same cloth. In 1995, while starring in Ivan Turgenev’s 19th-century play a Month In The Country, Mirren noticed a man in the front row, fast asleep. Without a falter in her speech she walked to the edge of the stage and flicked him with her shawl, waking him up.
THERE’S not much that she and other performers can do about poor notices, though. Bloom cites the powerful New york Times critic Walter Kerr, who wrote of Fiddler On The roof when it opened in 1964: ‘It takes place in anatevka in russia, and I think it might be an altogether charming musical if only the people of anatevka did not pause every now and again to give their regards to Broadway.’
One of the best anecdotes refers to another continent and only tangentially to the theatre. after appearing in a West End play one night, John Gielgud, who was coy about his homosexuality, dined at The Ivy restaurant with an extremely attractive young man.
The actress Gladys Cooper was at the next table, but Gielgud, hoping to keep his tryst quiet, tried hard not to catch her eye.
Eventually, he realised he would have to acknowledge her, so turned and said: ‘ Gladys, how lovely to see you. I’d like you to meet my nephew.’ To which Gladys Cooper smiled at the boy and replied: ‘I’m glad to meet you. I’ve known your aunt for many years.’