Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Such a little word, but oh, the difference it makes!
As people who pay attention to these sorts of things know, for quite some time the Broadway season, and by that I mean in terms of Tony Award eligibility, usually ends toward the end of April with the awards given in June. However, that hasn't always been the case. For example, though A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened May 8, 1962, when it received its Tony nominations they belonged to the crop of 1963 Tony nominations with winners handed out nearly a year later on April 28, 1963. Furthermore, Forum's May 8 opening came a mere nine days after the previous Tony Awards held April 29, 1962 for 1961's Broadway season. On the musical side,
Frank Loesser's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which had just opened Oct. 14, 1961, hauled away the most awards. It won best musical, best actor (Robert Morse), best featured actor (Charles Nelson Reilly), best director of a musical (Abe Burrows), best authors of a musical (Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert), best producers of a musical (Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin) and best conductor and musical director (Elliot Lawrence). In fact, the only nomination that How to Succeed lost was Loesser's as best composer. Richard Rodgers won for No Strings, his first solo effort since Oscar Hammerstein's death. Loesser did receive the consolation of a Pulitzer Prize for his work — one of several parallels between his career and Stephen Sondheim's, one of which we'll be coming upon shortly. As far as when the Tonys switched their eligibility dates and started holding the awards in June, as near as I can determine (cross your fingers, I'm forced to use Wikipedia as a source), the first time that happened was 1977, the year before CBS began carrying the broadcast which it has ever since, heaven help theater fans (at least as far as the past decade or so has gone). I must note, as I return to the subject at hand, that the photo at the top as well as the one inset in this lead both came from the camera of Tony Walton, the scenic and costume designer of the 1962 production. The inset photo shows his model of what the set should look like when complete. Both come courtesy of Walton via an interview he did with examiner.com. When those 1963 Tony nominations did come out, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, despite having opened so long ago, did very well. It received a nomination for best musical, competing against Little Me, Oliver!, and Stop the World — I Want to Get Off. Sondheim might have felt guilty about lying to David Merrick but he produced the latter two musicals that would be competing against Forum. Merrick also garnered a nomination as best producer of a musical with Donald Albery for their work on Oliver! where the duo faced off against Hal Prince for Forum as well as last year's winners, Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, for Little Me. Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove picked up a nomination as best authors of a musical for Forum and one of the competition happened to be another veteran from the days of writing for Sid Caesar on television like Gelbart once did — Neil Simon for Little Me. which Simon happened to
write specifically for Caesar, who would face off against Zero Mostel's Pseudolus in Forum, Anthony Newley in Stop the World — I Want to Get Off and Clive Revill in Oliver! for lead actor in a musical. Lionel Bart (Oliver!) and Leslie Bricusse and Newley (Stop the World — I Want to Get Off) rounded out the author of a musical category. The venerable George Abbott's work on Forum earned him a best director of a musical nomination and he also landed a nomination as best director of a play for Never Too Late, a comedy that actually ran longer than Forum. In the musical direction category, others receiving recognition were Peter Coe (Oliver!), John Fearnley (Brigadoon) and Feuer and Bob Fosse (Little Me). (At right, we see Abbott at the 1994 Tony Awards at the age of 106 braced by Gwen Verdon and Jean Stapleton. He died in January 1995 at 107.) David Burns as the leering, patrician Senex and Jack Gilford as the nervous slave Hysterium took half the nominations in featured actor in a musical for Forum. Filling out the category were a young David Jones as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! The recently passed Jones became better known when he changed his first name to Davy and became part of The Monkees. Sven Svenson in Little Me took the fourth slot. The final nomination that A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum garnered was for Ruth Kobart, who played Senex's suspicious wife Domina, as featured actress in a musical alongside Virginia Martin (Little Me), Anna Quayle (Stop the World — I Want to Get Off) and Louise Troy (Tovarich). Sondheim's score got snubbed and wasn't nominated in the category for best composer and lyricist. The composers of the other three nominated best musicals made the cut but the fourth slot went to Milton Schafer and Ronny Graham for Bravo Giovanni, a musical that ran only 76 performances and received only two other nominations for choreography and conductor and musical director. Sondheim, who didn't get nominations for his lyrics for West Side Story or Gypsy either, remained in the ranks of those never nominated for Broadway's top honor. Boy, would he make up for that later.
When Tony night 1963 arrived, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum won almost every award for which it was nominated. Mostel defeated Gelbart's former boss. Gilford lost — but he lost to co-star Burns. Abbott won for director of a musical, though he didn't take the prize in the play category. Gelbart and Shevelove took the prize for their book, so Gelbart beat his former co-worker as well. Prince won as producer. The American Theatre Wing crowned the show best musical meaning David Merrick went 0 for 2 in that category. Other than Gilford, the only Forum nominee that didn't score was Ruth Kobart, who lost to Anna Quayle for Stop the World — I Want to Get Off. (Shown in the photo at left are the 1963 winners in the lead acting categories. From left, Mostel, Vivien Leigh, lead actress in a musical for Tovarich; Uta Hagen, lead actress in a play and Arthur Hill, lead actor in a play, both for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) In Meryle Secrest's biography, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, the composer described watching the ceremony from home. Secrest writes, "Prince…thanked Abbott, Gelbart and Shevelove. Gelbart and Shevelove, who won book, thanked each other, Abbott and Prince. 'Nobody mentioned me on the program at all. As far as they were all concerned, my friends, my colleagues, I did not exist. That's what really hurt,' Sondheim said. 'Hal was the only one — Hal called me the next day and apologized. He said, 'I'm sorry, kid. I should have mentioned you and I didn't.'" The lack of acknowledgment did lead to some rifts such as when the hurt Sondheim confronted Shevelove and Shevelove lashed out at him, saying his songs almost killed the show before it ever got to New York. In an anecdote that appears in Secrest's book and Sondheim's Finishing the Hat, Sondheim shares the tale of a special letter he received that lifted his spirits, though it's unclear when Sondheim got the correspondence. Secrest's book says he received the letter shortly after Forum opened, but places the story right after the Tony story. Sondheim doesn't date it at all, though he adds the detail that Frank Loesser told him in the letter that he commiserated with him because he remembered the reception for his first Broadway musical, Where's Charley?, and wanted to let Sondheim know how good he thought the score of Forum was. Specifically quoted in both books, Loesser wrote, "Sometimes even a composer's working partners, to say nothing of the critics, fail to dig every level and facet of what he is doing. But I know, and I wanted you to know that I know."
Before I discuss the revivals, I've been looking for a place to work in talk of the song "Love, I Hear" somewhere and failed to accomplish my mission. Now, I adore "Comedy Tonight" and "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" but I can't believe that no one mentions "Love, I Hear" anywhere. Hell, "Bring Me My Bride" found its way into a review. While Sondheim criticizes himself for being clever instead of funny, I love his wordplay (and he can't hide his pride in Finishing the Hat about the alliterative string of double consonants that he pulled off in one line of the song, "Today I woke too weak to walk." Links: First "Love, I Hear" from 1962 original cast recording; Second "Love, I Hear" and "Bring Me My Bride" both from 1996 revival original cast recording.
Like most Sondheim shows, Forum tends to add and subtract songs in later versions. After missing out on the original production because they wouldn't let him wear his glasses, that didn't seem to be a problem anymore and Phil Silvers took the role of Pseudolus in the show's first major revival, directed by Burt Shevelove himself. It actually started in October 1971 for a 47 performance run at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. I mentioned in the last part that Reginald Owen played Erronius. The cast also included Larry Blyden as Hysterium, veteran comic actor Carl Ballantine as Marcus Lycus and, the second biggest name in the show after Silvers, Nancy Walker in the role of Domina. In fact, she felt she needed another solo so Sondheim wrote "Farewell" for her. One of the courtesans happened to be Ann Jillian. The only song dropped was Philia's "That'll Show Him" and "Echo Song" put in its place. When they made the move to Broadway and opened March 30, 1972, Walker and Jillian didn't travel with them and another song got the axe. This time, they excised "Pretty Little Picture." Whatever the Tony eligibility dates were for the 1972 awards were, Forum must have cut it close since the awards were given April 23. Shevelove received a nomination for directing but, ironically, lost to Prince and Michael Bennett for their work on Follies. Silvers won lead actor in a musical and Blyden won featured actor as Hysterium. The revival won two of its three nominations. (They hadn't added a revival category yet.) The show seemed to be doing well until Silvers got sick, reportedly because of "food poisoning." An understudy filled in as they hurried to rehearse Tom Poston as a replacement, but ticket sales fell fast. The show only ran 156 performances and it turned out that Silvers had suffered a stroke. Links: "Farewell" info beneath video; "That'll Show Him" and "Pretty Little Picture" from 1962 cast recording.
When the next Broadway revival arrived in 1996, it did so during the era when the Broadway bug had bitten me badly so I actually got to see it soon after its April 18 opening. I had pretty good orchestra seats — I swear at one point it appeared as if Nathan Lane addressed me personally and we locked eyes at one point. Quite different from the couple of times I bumped into Lane accidentally in Manhattan when he always seemed to be the most annoyed, pissed-off man in the universe. Sure, he hammed it up like crazy as Pseudolus but that's a role that doesn't require nuance and it still won him his first Tony Award. Mark Linn-Baker did fine as Hysterium and, as I mentioned earlier, I got to see the late William Duell as Erronius. Ernie Sabella took on the role of Marcus Lycus and the long-cut song of "The House of Marcus Lycus" finally made the show. Lewis J. Stadlen received a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Senex, but he was out the night I was there so I saw Macintyre Dixon in the role. Mary Testa played Domina. The songs followed the 1962 set with the exception of the addition I mention and continuing to keep "Pretty Little Picture" out of the show, though Lane recorded it for the cast album. Jerry Zaks received a nomination for directing the musical, but lost to George C. Wolfe for Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. By now, the Tonys did have revival categories but Forum lost to The King & I. The revival made a bit of history when it recast Pseudolus
as Lane exited the show by installing Whoopi Goldberg in his place. Casting a woman, let alone an African-American one with Goldberg's reputation, made people wonder what she'd do. Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, "The work's authors, Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, and its composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, have always said they made a point of constructing a show true to its ancient sources and free of distracting anachronisms. But the leading role of Pseudolus, the wily slave in pursuit of freedom and a part that demands a manic comic spirit, has inevitably gone to wild-card performers unlikely to resist opportunities for their own shtick. As Mr. Gelbart said, in a recent interview with The Sondheim Review, 'after seeing Zero Mostel recite baseball scores in front of the House of Senex, there's not too much that would surprise me.' So there is Ms. Goldberg, queen of the devilish aside, firmly reminding you of just who she is in the production's opening moments. She finds comic fodder not only in her present personal life, but in her professional life in Hollywood as well.…That this occurs early raises delighted expectations that many audience members have brought with them: Just how bad, as in naughty, is their Whoopi going to be? Of course, others — that nasty breed of theatergoers who find Schadenfreude in seeing big stars blow it — are asking the same question with a different emphasis: Can this movie star-comedian possibly carry a musical? Sorry, guys, she can." Following Goldberg, David Alan Grier took on the role. The second revival ran for 715 performances.
The wreckage in that photo in 1993 represents the remains at the time of the outdoor amphitheater of Butler University in Indianapolis
that for decades hosted Starlight Musicals every summer. Other cities around the Midwest also received visits from the touring program that would bring concerts, plays and musicals featuring celebrities. From
the time I was a young child, each summer when we visited my grandma we would take in some shows. Many of the early things we saw tended to be concerts by people such as Mitzi Gaynor, Liberace and the tag team of Jim Nabors and Florence Henderson. In 1979 when I was 10, I got to see my first actual musical. I wish I could locate the program so I'd remember what songs were in that production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. As a youngster, I tended to be an autograph hound so if we got there early, I'd either stake out the entrance to the backstage or I'd assault the performers after the show. For me, Forum boasted an all-star cast. Playing Pseudolus was none other than Arte Johnson from Rowan and Martin's
Laugh-In. I'd see him again when I grew up and he appeared in the Broadway revival of Candide. Avery Schreiber portrayed Hysterium, but to me — unfamiliar with his comedy work with Jack Burns — he was the Doritos guy. When I got his autograph after the show, I even brought Doritos with me so when he
stepped out I had one ready to take a big crunchy bite out of for him. Schreiber raised his hands and said to me, "You got me" then signed my autograph. John Carradine played the role he originated on Broadway, Marcus Lycus. I didn't know that at the time nor did I realize the breadth of his career, but at 73, he looked frail to me, though he'd live another eight years. The final big name belonged to Hans Conried who was cast as Senex. I didn't know at the time that he supplied the voice of Captain Hook in Disney's Peter Pan and I hadn't heard of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. I knew Conried as Wrongway Feldman from an episode of Gilligan's Island. He died less than three years later. Johnson alone remains alive. Schreiber passed away in 2002. That same summer, I saw Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel starring a drunk-as-a-skunk Robert Goulet, who exited his limi when he arrived bellowing, "Nobody owns me!" However, that's another story. Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight.Tweet
Labels: Awards, Books, Disney, Fosse, Frank Loesser, Gelbart, Hammerstein, J. Carradine, Music, Musicals, Neil Simon, Phil Silvers, Rodgers, Sid Caesar, Sondheim, Television, Theater Tribute, V. Leigh
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Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone
By Edward Copeland
If I'd located one, a photo of the number "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" from the first Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1972 that starred Phil Silvers as Pseudolus would be resting between the still from the original 1962 production starring (from left to right) John Carradine as Marcus Lycus, Jack Gilford as Hysterium, David Burns as Senex and the magnificent Zero Mostel as Pseudolus, which opened 50 years ago tonight, and the photo below it showing the cast of the second Broadway revival in 1996 that starred (from left to right) Nathan Lane as Pseudolus, Mark Linn-Baker as Hysterium, Ernie Sabella as Marcus Lycus and Lewis J. Stadlen as Senex. (Sadly, not only could I only find two black-and-white photos from the 1972 revival, they
never made a cast recording either, so we can't hear what Silvers sounded like singing the part. The song link takes you to the 1962 original Broadway cast recording) This musical comedy registers as a theatrical landmark on many levels, the most significant being that it marked the first time Stephen Sondheim wrote both the lyrics and the music for a Broadway musical. Stellar support surrounded Sondheim on all levels: I just named some of the cast, the future director of his landmark 1970s musicals, Harold Prince, produced Forum and the legendary George Abbott (then 75) directed. Jack Cole, currently undergoing a bit of a resurrection in terms of his reputation, choreographed the show and the book, based on three works by Plautus, famed playwright of ancient Rome (c. 254-184 B.C.). came from the pens of Burt Shevelove, a writer-director from early TV, and Larry Gelbart, whose best known credit at the time was as part of the many talented writers working for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows but who would go on to turn Robert Altman's MASH into the hit TV series M^A*S*H, be one of the Oscar-nominated (and credited) co-writers of Tootsie, writer of one of the first great HBO movies, Barbarians at the Gate, and author of the book for the Cy Coleman/David Zippel musical City of Angels. On a personal level, Forum holds a special place in my heart because it happens to be the first musical that I ever saw performed live — and Carradine played Marcus Lycus in the production. No, I'm not much older than you thought. I was only 10 at that time and it happened to be a touring summer stock production 17 years after he created the role in the original Broadway show. Somehow, it seems only appropriate that both the first Broadway musical and the last Broadway show I saw featured scores by Sondheim (Passion and Assassins, if you're curious) and so did my irst live musical, even if at 10 I hadn't the slightest notion who Sondheim was. Anyone who knows me personally or has read this blog for any length of time realizes what a devoted Sondheim acolyte I am and, without question, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum certainly must be considered the most entertaining and crowd-pleasing of all musicals for which he composed the score. As much as I love his music, it's also sadly true in far too many cases that Sondheim's scores often end up being vastly superior to the books of his musicals. With Forum, that cannot be said. When you read what Sondheim wrote in his book Finishing the Hat or heard what others said in reviews, Forum may stand as the rare instance of a Sondheim musical where the book actually supersedes the score in quality. Hey, it was Sondheim's first produced show as composer as well as lyricist after all. Before that, he'd only served both functions on his unproduced musical Saturday Night. His Broadway experiences had been limited to being the lyricist (to Leonard Bernstein's music) on West Side Story and (to Jule Styne's music) on Gypsy. As we begin, I should tell you that if you see a link, by all means click on it. For example, at the top the first link on a song title takes you to the original Broadway cast recording of that song from the 1962 production. Sometimes the links direct you to videos, other times just to the songs, but I wanted to get as much comparison in as I could.
Now, a lot of funny things did occur on the way to the Forum (though, technically speaking, no character in the show ever discusses a trip to that famous location in ancient Rome), but getting the musical to Broadway proved to be an entirely different matter. That trip encountered many bumps that threatened to scuttle the production before Forum ever crossed the New York state line, let alone landed on a Broadway stage. Those associated with the show who still walk among us might be able to look back with some relief now (though in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim does deal himself some heavy self-criticism about his work on the show even now, despite the fact that Forum remains the biggest hit of his career). Sondheim writes that he, Gelbart and Shevelove wrote Forum over a four-year period and that the show went through two major producers, two major directors and a major star before getting to the rehearsal stage. Meryle Secrest's biography, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, spells out the specifics of his statement.
Secrest quotes Sondheim about the dogged pursuit of Jerome Robbins, who would never settle on a decision about whether to direct the show or not. "The problem was we went to numbers of producers and directors. Jerry Robbins kept saying yes, then no, and then yes, and then no. We went to Joshua Logan and he wanted more naked boys and things like that. I went to Hal (Prince) and he said, 'Listen, kid, you know me. I hate farce.'…David Merrick agreed to produce. Then we were trying to get Jerry Robbins again. And Jerry said, 'OK, I'll tell you what. I'll do it, but I won't do it with David Merrick. You have to get it away from him." In Secrest's book, Sondheim expresses guilt for making up a lie to Merrick about the show not happening and returning an advance to Merrick but it did convince Prince to sign on though Robbins bailed again. Evemtually, they got George Abbott on board as director, but Robbins would return to play a pivotal role. The search for a lead also proved difficult. Their first choice, Phil Silvers, who eventually would portray Marcus Lycus in Richard Lester's 1966 film version and Pseudolus in the 1972 revival, rejected it out of hand because he couldn't perform while wearing his glasses and he'd be unable to navigate without them. Milton Berle agreed to star but when Gelbart and Shevelove turned in a draft of the book that would have run about four hours and received orders to make cuts (which they did), Berle claimed they removed his best stuff and quit. That's how Mostel got the part. In Secrest's book, Sondheim said that years later Mostel would claim that he didn't want to do Forum, but the truth was he needed the work badly and leaped at the part. Mostel's career, as had many others, had suffered during the McCarthy era, the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and the Hollywood blacklist. One hitch: When Robbins returned to help the troubled show later, he'd face the glare of Mostel because Robbins had served as a friendly witness at the HUAC hearings. To make things worse, one of the names he named was Madeline Gilford, wife of Jack Gilford, who was playing Hysterium. Sondheim though sensed other problems.
Sondheim sought the advice of his friend James Goldman, who at this point in his career had written an original play that made it to Broadway and later would pen both the play and movie of The Lion in Winter as well as the book for Sondheim's Follies. Goldman also did some songwriting, so Sondheim let him look at the book for Forum and listen to the songs he had at that point, when the opening number was a song called "Love Is in the Air." According to what Sondheim wrote in Finishing the Hat, Goldman labeled Gelbart and Shevelove's book as "brilliant" and expressed enthusiasm about Sondheim's score. "The problem," Goldman said, "is they don't go together." Sondheim knew what Goldman meant, but he didn't start doing anything about it right then. Sondheim wrote that he'd been "trained by (Oscar) Hammerstein to think of a song as a one-act play which either intensifies a moment or moves the story the forward.…Prodded by my academic musical training as well as by Oscar, I had become accustomed to thinking of songs as being structured in sonata form: statement, development and recapitulation. For Oscar, it was first act, second act, third act. He tried to avoid writing lyrics that confined themselves to one idea, the traditional approach of every lyricist in the theater and the standard function of songs before he came along and revolutionized the way writers thought about musicals. Show Boat hadn't convinced them but once Oklahoma!, Carousel and South Pacific had become enormous hits, most songwriters converted. The success of those were not entirely beneficial however." In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim noted something Gelbart wrote in his introduction to the published libretto of Forum. "Broadway in its development of musical comedy had improved the quality of the former at the expense of a great deal of the latter," Gelbart wrote.
At one point — frustrated as he tried to unlearn all he knew about composing and fearing he did the show more harm than good — Sondheim even suggested Forum should just be a straight play, but Shevelove said it would be too frenetic and the audience would have no space to breathe (without songs). He informed the composer that the few surviving plays by Plautus sll had songs. Sondheim did end up composing an opening song more in keeping with the spirit of the show that would follow called "Invocation." That also would be dropped but would return in a 1974 farce that Shevelove "freely adapted" from Aristophanes called The Frogs and to which Sondheim added "Instructions to the Audience," which is the only way you can listen to that number now, as in this cut from its 2004 Broadway debut sung by Nathan Lane, Roger Bart and the ensemble. Sondheim writes honestly in his book that he didn't think much of George Abbott's talent or sense of humor — saying they had to explain a joke to the old man once, but Abbott's reputation for saving shows had achieved legendary status and as the show suffered in Washington to scathing reviews and small audiences in big houses (50 people filling 1,000 seats) not laughing a bit, Sondheim described to Secrest the only time Abbott made him laugh "when he said, 'I dunno. You had better call in George Abbott.'" Obviously, that wasn't an option, but given Robbins' worship of Abbott, that made it easier to call him in, though they worried about Mostel's reaction. Part of this can be seen in a clip from a one-man show called Zero Hour written and performed by Jim Brochu and presented at the West Coast Jewish Theatre.
At the time Robbins named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he didn't really have a career beyond New York, so his motives always have proved puzzling and he never settled the question before his death, The most pervasive theory, as seen on an American Masters profile on PBS a couple of years ago and detailed in biographies such as this one on The Official Masterworks Broadway Site that he got blackmailed into testifying out of fear that the rather open secret of his homosexuality would be revealed. (He felt secure
enough to declare himself gay to get out of service in World War II.) The site says, "Robbins was booked for an appearance on Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show (The Toast of the Town), but three weeks before the event, Sullivan, convinced that Robbins was a Communist (he had attended the notorious Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1949), canceled the contract. It was Sullivan — threatening at one point to expose him as a homosexual if he did not deliver (directly to Sullivan himself!) a list of names of leftists in show business — who set the machinery in motion that brought Robbins under investigation by the FBI and landed him, two years later, before the House Un-American Activities Committee." Whatever the truth might be, Robbins' uncredited contributions to Forum not only saved the musical, they also changed the way new musicals got their starts forever.
Earlier in the flirtation process, before tryouts had started and Robbins continued to flirt with the idea of directing the show, he demanded that the principals cast the show, get them all in a room to read the script for him while Sondheim performed the songs. In essence, Robbins invented the theater workshop. Prince and Sondheim actually found it helpful at pointing out flaws in the show and repeated the process with their classic collaborations in the 1970s, though Sondheim doesn't like what the practice ended up evolving into later. "What had begun as a learning experience for the authors became transmogrified into thinly disguised backers' auditions," he wrote in Finishing the Hat. As for his contributions to Forum, as soon as he saw "Invocation," Robbins recognized the problem. Secrest wrote in her biography of Sondheim, According to Sondheim, (Robbins) said, "The opening
number is killing the show. You open with a charming number and the audience does not know what it's in for, that it's a real farce. You've got to write an opening number that says baggy pants." Sondheim went back to the drawing board and the show's most famous song, "Comedy Tonight," was born and Robbins did the staging, specifically telling Sondheim to leave the jokes to him. Sondheim wrote in Finishing the Hat that Robbins also staged the massive Act II chase, meaning that though he received no official credit, Robbins essentially choreographed the two most important pieces of movement in the show. Still, it isn't as if no one realizes he did it. When Robbins directed his own tribute show, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, re-creating his most famous stage creations the show included "Comedy Tonight" with Jason Alexander taking on the Pseudolus role for that number. In fact, three men have been nominated for Tonys for playing Pseudolus in the three Broadway productions of Forum and a fourth inhabited the role for one scene in another show and all four — Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jason Alexander and Nathan Lane — took home Tony Awards. No other part in theater history can make that claim. The song has attained a level of such popularity you'd be amazed by the permutations you can find on the Internet. In fact, I did a separate post on those alone. Unfortunately, no visual record of the 1962 version exists. Instead, we'll start with a poorly shot bootleg of the 1996 revival starring Nathan Lane as Pseudolus (and Prologus, the character the lead actor plays when introducing the show.) If unfamiliar with the show or what I'm talking about, the song spells it out pretty clearly. I actually got to see the 1996 revival.After the disastrous runs in Washington and New Haven, Conn., once Robbins had put the bug in Sondheim's ear about the opening number, he writes in Finishing the Hat that "Comedy Tonight" was composed over the course of a weekend. What is it about pressure
and/or inspiration that some of the greatest works seem to be created when it gets to be crunch time? Most people know the story of Arthur Miller writing the first act of Death of a Salesman in less than a day. Forum opened 50 years ago tonight at The Alvin Theatre where it played through March 7, 1864 when it transferred to The Mark Hellinger Theatre for two months before completing its run through Aug. 29, 1965 at The Majestic Theatre for a total of eight previews and 964 performances. In 1966, a film version with Mostel and Gilford repeating their stage roles and featuring future Phantom of the Opera Michael Crawford opened. Richard Lester, hot off directing The Beatles' films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, helmed the Forum movie. The film eliminated some songs but it also gave Sondheim his first opportunity to design a song specifically for a movie. In Finishing the Hat, he writes about penning a different version of "Free," heard here from the 1962 cast album. He confesses to being a lifelong movie buff and having made some home movies where he especially enjoyed the editing process. (Who doesn't want to see some of these as long as they're suitable for general audiences?) Lester told Sondheim, the composer wrote, that he approved and that his idea would work but Lester never filmed the sequence. "(A)lthough in the finished print, there's a curiously clumsy cut at the place where I'd cued the song, which makes me think it was at least planned. Rereading it now, I wish he had. I didn't get the chance to design another for 26 years, when I wrote two sequences for the movie of A Little Night Music, one of which was filmed the way I wrote it, one of which was not." This clip shows Mostel doing the song during the movie's opening credits.While Sondheim accepted Shevelove's notion that the musical numbers allowed the audience a chance to take a breath from the chaos consuming the stage, he still disagrees to this day about the suitability of stopping a farce for a song. In Finishing the Hat, he wrote, "Although I do think that the book of Forum is the tightest, most satisfyingly plotted and gratifyingly written farce I've ever encountered, I don't think that farces can be transformed into musicals without damage — at least, not good musicals. The tighter the plotting, the better the farce, but the better the farce the more the songs interrupt the flow and pace. Farces are express trains; musicals are locals." We can't see what Mostel looked like onstage singing "Comedy Tonight" in 1962, but we do have a clip of him performing a condensed version of the song at the 1971 Tony Awards.
"I had to write one-joke songs so I picked spots for them where the situations would supply substance: Songs like 'Impossible' and the drag version of 'Lovely,' which were dramatically static but theatrically funny. My mistake was that in trying to unlearn everything Oscar (Hammerstein) had taught me and write static songs which were nothing more than playful, I felt I had to justify them with cleverness, by juggling with words, leaning on rhymes, puns, alliteration and all the other boilerplate devices of light verse," Sondheim wrote. (Links: "Impossible" and "Lovely (Reprise)" both from 1962 original cast album.) Both in his own book and Secrest's, Sondheim praises producer Hal Prince's faith in the show, saying that most producers who endured the tryouts that Forum did in New
Haven and Washington would have closed the show down and never brought it to New York. Prince didn't — and it paid off. The show would turn out to be a blockbuster, admittedly one with a few more hurdles to clear before it reached that point. When Robbins came in to help, everyone worried about the volatile Mostel's reaction. However, he'd behaved as a complete professional with nary an explosion up to this point in the chaotic production, according to Secrest's book. As they hurriedly rehearsed "Comedy Tonight" in New York, the stress weighed on the actors as Sondheim recounted in Secrest's book. "'We got to the afternoon of the first preview with our opening number, the one we hoped would change the show. And we were rehearsing and Zero kept screwing up his lines.' So once when Robbins stopped to consult with Tony Walton, the set designer, Sondheim went down to the footlights — 'I never, never give an actor a critical note in front of other people' — to correct one of Mostel's lines. 'Right, right, right,' Mostel said impatiently. They began again, and again Robbins stopped. Mostel was still making mistakes. 'And I said, "Please, I know you've got a lot on your mind, but it's the plural, not the singular." "Yeah. Yeah." The third time, Jerry stops again — 'Zero, it's the plural!' — and Mostel says in a booming voice that fills the entire theater and makes everyone start and turn around, he says, "Well, maybe if you'd write me a funny line, you cocksucker!" In front of everybody.' There was a silence that lasted for about four seconds. 'And in the back of the house, Mr. Abbott went, "All right, from the top please" and clapped his hands." Sondheim goes on to describe how Abbott defuse the tension that quickly and he realized that was part of the man's greatness. He also believes that Mostel made him the scapegoat for the anger he wanted to hurl in Robbins' direction.
In wrapping up this tribute's first half, I must praise the invention of Twitter, which introduced me to a man who not only witnessed the original production of Forum (as well as other original Broadway shows such as South Pacific with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, Fiddler on the Roof, also starring Mostel and featuring Bea Arthur, Bert Convy, Leonard Frey and Austin Pendleton and, the one that makes me green with envy, Ethel Merman in Gypsy — with Jack Klugman along as Herbie), but whose father became Mostel's doctor and, because of similar backgrounds, eventually the actor's good friend. Pietr Hitzig, also a doctor, wrote me briefly about his memories of those days. "I am 70 years old and as a NYC child had no idea what fantastic theater I was seeing.…Zero died at only 62 years old and had his most productive years destroyed by the witch hunters at the HUAC but is immortal for Fiddler, Forum and The Producers.…Nobody can play any of those roles today without remembering the bushy eyebrows and satanic leer," Hitzig wrote. On Twitter, Hitzig tweeted that his father saw Fiddler on the Roof at least 100 times. Imagine how inexpensive Broadway tickets cost to allow that back in the 1960s. I only paid to see one Broadway show twice (Rent) and saw another a second time because one ticket came to me as a freebie (Ragtime). (Piotr corrected me after I posted this that his father didn't pay all those times. He got free tickets.) "My father was a renowned Park Avenue doctor but lonely as hell as was Zero. They, children of the shtetl loved each other like brothers. Both were funny but had an angry side that alienated their families. After a busy day, rather than come home, my dad would head for Broadway and stand backstage as his idealized childhood in Fiddler was played out once again," Hitzig wrote. In The New York Times archives, I found a funny story that did illustrate Mostel's tendency to get riled. The British comedian Frankie Howerd, who would play Pseudolus in the London premiere of Forum in fall 1963, came to see the U.S. version earlier in 1963. Seated in the front row, Howerd tended to cover his mouth when amused so Mostel misinterpreted that he wasn't laughing at the show at all. "He is not laughing." the article says Mostel complained between numbers. The next day, Howerd, in an apologetic tone, insisted that he enjoyed the show. "I'm not a laugher. I don't lean back and flash my teeth. Actually, if anyone was frightened that night it was me, seeing how good Mostel was," Howerd told Louis Calta at The Times.
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Labels: Altman, Arthur Miller, Awards, Beatles, blacklist, Books, Gelbart, H. Prince, Hammerstein, HBO, J. Carradine, J. Robbins, Merman, Music, Musicals, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Sondheim, Theater Tribute
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Puttering all around the house
It occurs to me that I haven't bothered to even attempt to summarize the plot of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Partly, that's because Stephen Sondheim's song "Comedy Tonight" spells out most of the characters pretty well, but mainly it's because the shenanigans that Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove cooked up out of surviving Plautus works contain so many complications that it would
prove damn difficult to synopsize. However, I do feel that one character in particular — Erronius — deserves separate mention since he didn't get a song of his own. In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim provides the lyrics for a cut song that had been intended for the character called "A Gaggle of Geese," which referred to his family's crest that appears on rings worn by his long-lost children, kidnapped decades earlier by pirates. He, however, persists in searching for his son and daughter. In the original Broadway production, Raymond Walburn, who made his Broadway debut in 1914 and his film debut in 1916, played the role. He played the butler Walter in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. In the 1972 revival, the part went to Reginald Owen, who first appeared on Broadway in 1925, though he started making movies in 1911 where his most famous role probably remains Scrooge in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. In the 1966 film version, the Erronius role found a masterful custodian in the great Buster Keaton, making his final film appearance. The reason I chose the photo above from the 1996 revival wasn't based solely on availability but because it shows its Erronius, William Duell, who just passed away in December. A very recognizable character actor of stage and screen, Duell appeared in both the original production, revival and film of 1776 as well as one of the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. For many though, he'll always remain Johnny the shoeshine boy from TV's Police Squad! After all the excised songs and subplots, the restoration of said subplots, tensions causing everyone to blame each other for the problems (such as when Shevelove yelled at Sondheim, pointing to his songs as the main reason for the show's failings) and strained relations leftover from the blacklist, the audiences loved it and most reviews praised it. Looking back at those 1962 New York reviews, thanks to a friend with access to them since The New York Times alone provides easy
online access to its archives, not only do the critics provide interesting insight into the show's reception but it's amazing to see how many newspapers that city supported in 1962. Few of the critics, while acknowledging A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum entertained them immensely, wrote much — if anything — about Sondheim's score. The morning after it premiered, Howard Taubman, chief drama critic for The Times since Brooks Atkinson's retirement in 1960, wrote, "Know what they found on the way to the forum? Burlesque, vaudeville and a cornucopia of mad, comic hokum. The phrase for the title of the new musical comedy that arrived at the Alvin last night might be, caveat emptor. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum indeed! No one gets to the forum; no one even starts for it. And nothing really happens that isn't older than the forum, more ancient than the agora in Athens. But somehow, you keep laughing as if the old sight and sound gags were as good as new. As for the score, Taubman said, "Mr. Sondheim's songs are accessories to the pre-meditated offense. With the Messrs. Mostel, Gilford, Burns and Carradine as a coy foursome, 'Everybody Ought to Have a Maid' recalls the days when delirious farceurs like the Marx Brothers could devastate a number. When Mr. Mostel, the slave with a nimble mind and a desire to be free, persuades Mr. Gilford, the nervous straw boss of the slaves, to don virgin's white, the two convert the show's romantic and pretty 'Lovely' into irresistible nonsense." Taubman penned one of the kinder notices to Sondheim's songs though he appears to have missed the point that even the first version of "Lovely" sung by the story's virginal courtesan Philia comes steeped in satire as the beauty sings an ode to superficiality and her own bubbleheadedness. (The first link takes you to Preshy Marker's version from 1962, the second to Jessica Boevers' from the 1996 revival; since I used the 1962 recording of "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" at the beginning of the first half, this link goes to the BBC Proms rendition by Daniel Evans, Julian Ovendon, Simon Russell Beale and Bryn Terfel.) The score's assessment changes over the years and as of today, Sondheim may remain the toughest critic. In his book, he again wrote, "I made the subtle, though thankfully not fatal, error of being witty instead of funny." Below, watch a quite different take on "Lovely" from Putting It Together as performed by Carol Burnett and Ruthie Henshall.Let's skip quickly through some excerpts from the other opening night reviews. Remember: Each of these came from New York newspapers and many no longer exist. Still, today, when some major cities fail to support one daily newspaper to think that this many could thrive in a single city, albeit one as large as New York, makes an old ex-journalist such as myself fill with both wonder and sadness. Walter Kerr for The New York Herald Tribune: "The funny thing about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is that it's
funny. I'm not going to tell you it's anything more than that, but maybe I don't have to. For all I know, you like funny musicals. You may even like classical funny musicals, and this one is very classic.…Composer Stephen Sondheim begins by giving his lightfooted fools some rather odd recitative as substitute for melody and same vaguely Oriental wood-block effects as substitute for lively accompaniment. You wonder. Then, with a foursome in which Mr. Mostel, Mr. Burns, Mr. Gilford and a borrowed scarecrow named John Carradine, take off to a tune called 'Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,' the odd figurations Mr. Sondheim is attracted to begin to pay off. There's a faint edge of musical sarcasm to be dealt with here, and it crops up again — most effectively — in 'I'm Calm,' 'Impossible,' 'That Dirty Old Man,' and in Mr, Mostel's swooning reprise of a number that was mocking in the first place, "Lovely." The score is in and out, but wins out. The lyrics are fine. Is it me or does it seem as if Kerr keeps changing his mind as he's writing? Though a Broadway theater remains named after the critic today, I've always been leery of Kerr since he actively participated in the industry as a writer, director and lyricist at the same time he worked regularly as a critic. At least he recognized the humor in the first version of "Lovely" though, I'll give him that. (Isn't it fascinating to imagine that Broadway theater owners sometimes honor critics this way? A theater bears Brooks Atkinson's name as well and they even awarded him a special Tony after he retired. When will we see The Frank Rich Theater? Can you imagine and honorary Oscar to a film critic?) The links: "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" from 1966 film; "Impossible" from the 1996 revival recording; "I'm Calm" and "That Dirty Old Man" both from the 1962 original cast recording. Below we have the clip from the poorly shot bootleg of the "Lovely" (reprise) from the 1996 revival performed by Nathan Lane and Mark Linn-Baker.Others who opined about opening night. Unless they took contrarian views on the show itself, I'm limiting the comments to the score.: Except for calling Forum a musical comedy in his lead, the only other reference to the score Richard Watts Jr. made in The New York Post comes as part of the review's penultimate sentence. "…and Stephen Sondheim’s score is modest but pleasant." John McClain wrote in The Journal American, "Zero Mostel, a very animated blimp, will personally defy you not to like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum…The clients laughed and seemed to enjoy themselves, but there was always the suggestion that had they not, Mr. Mostel would have passed among them and belabored them with a baseball bat. He is quite largely the whole show… The book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (claiming some debt to Plautus) is a wispy affair, and Stephen Sondheim's score is less than inspired,
but under George Abbott's slick direction the show moves and the audience roars. I should think it would succeed." At The New York Daily News, John Chapman chimed in, "(The performers) are grand muggers, leerers and slapstickers, and any old vaudeville fan will be happy to see them in operation.…The songwriter, Stephen Sondheim, comes up with an occasional bright and funny number, such as the four burlesquers song 'Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,' and Miss Kobart’s venomous hymn to Burns, 'That Dirty Old Man of Mine.'" Did he not look at his Playbill? How did he get the song title wrong? Links: "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" performed by Carol Burnett and Bronson Pinchot in Putting It Together; "That Dirty Old Man" from 1996 revival cast recording. Another critic who didn't find it important to check song titles was Norman Nadel in The New York World Telegram, who delivered the harshest review I read. "But too high a price must be paid for entertaining moments in A Funny Thing… Much of the comedy repeats itself. Some of the players work so hard to exploit their thin materials that they generate more sympathy than laughter. The show is slow starting and sometimes heavy-footed. Stephen Sondheim’s music would have been a second-rate score even in 1940, but he has come up with some catchy lyrics. One is “All I Know is Lovely,” sung by Ms. Marker and Mr. Davies. Another is 'Bring Me My Bride,' in which Miles proclaims his own glory; this is done resonantly by baritone Holgate.…There are indications at the Alvin that A Funny Thing might have been an earthy, boisterous delight. From time to time, it is. For the most part, however, it strains too hard to achieve too little." Link: "Bring Me My Bride" from original 1962 cast recording; I've run out of versions of "Lovely." Finally, we get to Robert Colman reviewing at The New York Mirror with the nicest words for Sondheim's score. "Stephen Sondheim has supplied a score that falls pleasantly on the ears. Jack Cole has choreographed dances that would have delighted Billy Minsky’s. We suspect that A Funny Thing will prove the most controversial song-and-dancer of the season. You’ll either love it or loathe it. In our book, it looms as a hot ticket. A riotous and rowdy hit." The retired Brooks Atkinson filed a "critic at large" piece for The New York Times in July where he barely mentions that Forum contains music and Sondheim's name never appears, though the "low comedy" delights him to no end. Since "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" comes up so often, I've reserved two video clips for you to watch. The first comes from the 1996 revival.Before I get to the final clip of "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid," I thought it would be interesting to point out how quickly critics began to re-evaluate Sondheim's score for Forum. Granted, in these reviews I was limited to The New York Times and most come after the one-two punch of Company and Follies supersized his reputation, but the reconsideration started as early as the 1966 film version. Vincent Canby wrote in his review of the film, "Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics hold up well, especially 'Comedy Tonight,' by which Mr. Mostel introduces the characters at the start, and the slightly bawdy 'Everybody Should Have A Maid' ('sweeping out, sleeping in')." When Clive Barnes assessed the 1972 revival for The Times, he said, "Mr. Sondheim's music is original and charming, with considerable musical subtlety but a regard for down-to-earth show-biz vigor that is precisely what is needed. And, as always, his lyrics are a joy to listen for. The American theater has not had a lyricist like this since Hart or Porter." By the time the 1996 revival arrived, Canby's beat had switched from film to theater. "This brazenly retro Broadway musical, inspired by Plautus, is almost as timeless as comedy itself. Here's a glorious, old-fashioned farce that, with its vintage Stephen Sondheim score and its breathless book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, celebrates everything that man holds least dear but can't deny himself: lust, greed, vanity, ambition; in short, all of those little failings that make man human. Yet for all of its disguises, mistaken identities, pratfalls and leering jokes, A Funny Thing is as sophisticated as anything now on Broadway. In its own lunatic way, it's both wise and rigorously disciplined. Easy sentimentality is nowhere to be found here; in its place: the kind of organized chaos that leads to sheer, extremely contagious high spirits," Canby wrote. Now, that other clip of "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" features original 1962 cast member Jack Gilford performing with two (well, at least one) other surprising performers in a television appearance.
I'd hoped to avoid this situation, but I got so caught up with the behind-the-scenes history that what I intended as a short tribute grew to be massive. I still need to write about the original production's performance at the Tony Awards and some tidbits concerning the two revivals, the second of which I saw, not to mention that version I saw in 1979 when I was 10. That won't be coming today I'm afraid. So, I'll leave you with the sequence for "Bring Me My Bride" from Richard Lester's film version.
Labels: blacklist, Books, Capra, Criticism, Gelbart, J. Carradine, J. Robbins, Keaton, Marx Brothers, Music, Musicals, Sondheim, Television, Theater Tribute, Welles
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Monday, June 13, 2011
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
The film opens on British hunter Captain Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon), as he finds himself in Germany — in an area presumed to be Berchtesgarten, the Bavarian retreat of Adolf Hitler — with an opportunity to rid the world of a monster and prevent the Second World War. Thorndike has the Fuehrer lined up in the sights of his precision rifle and, pulling the trigger, there is an audible click…no bullet in the chamber. Giving his would-be target a friendly wave, we’re left to ponder as to whether it was his intention to assassinate Hitler. He firmly believes it was a “sporting stalk,” but the audience notices that he’s had second thoughts when he takes a bullet from his jacket and loads the rifle for a second go. Of course, our friend does not succeed at this encore; he’s tackled by a German soldier and captured by the Gestapo.
In 1941, debate raged on in America as to whether or not the U.S. should get involved in World War II…but perhaps the most anti-interventionist faction was based in the country’s motion picture industry. Hollywood took special pains to sit on the fence because they were anxious to not jeopardize the lucrative take from the rentals generated from U.S. films worldwide. Occasionally there would be a picture released that dared to take an anti-isolationist stance — Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) is considered by many to have started the ball rolling, followed by such features as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940) and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Seventy years ago on this date, a film was released to theaters that was directed by a man who had a little first-hand knowledge about the politics of Germany (having fled the country in 1934) and who no doubt identified with the protagonist of a film based on Rogue Male, a novel written by author Geoffrey Household shortly before war broke out in 1939. The director to whom I’m coyly referring is Fritz Lang…and the movie is his classic 1941 suspense thriller Man Hunt.
Captured by the Gestapo, Captain Thorndike is questioned by Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders)…who finds Thorndike’s “sporting stalk” defense to be a pile of manure, and tries to convince his prisoner to sign a
confession that he attempted to assassinate the Fuehrer on behalf of the British government. Thorndike refuses and is worked over by goons in the Gestapo’s employ — but because the good captain is made of sterner stuff, Quive-Smith decides to silence him by arranging his death in a “hunting accident.” Thorndike escapes his captors and gradually makes his way aboard a British sailing vessel, where he is kept out of sight by a young cabin boy named Vaner (Roddy McDowall). Thorndike, you see, is not out of the jungle yet because also onboard is a sinister hired gun (John Carradine) who answers to “Mr. Jones” and is masquerading as Thorndike with the help of Thorndike’s passport.Arriving on his home turf of London, Thorndike is convinced he’s safe and sound but, like many a protagonist in Lang’s films, he’s in a nightmare from which he can’t awaken. He’s being stalked by Jones and several other Nazi swine, and his request to his brother, Lord Gerald Risborough (Frederick Worlock), for assistance goes unheeded because Risborough doesn’t want to risk an international incident that could plunge Britain into war with Germany. (The fact that Thorndike no longer has a valid passport on him certainly doesn’t help matters either.) Thorndike’s only salvation is a young Cockney girl named Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett), who helps him get to his brother’s home the night he arrives in London and later hides him out in her flat when he’s hunted by the police — the gendarmes find the mangled body of Jones in the London Underground and, locating Thorndike’s credentials on the corpse, assume that it’s Thorndike who has been murdered.
Thorndike contacts his solicitor (Holmes Herbert) and arranges to get enough money to enable him to hide out from his pursuers and to make certain that Jerry is repaid for her kindness and assistance as well. He provides Jerry with the address at a post office in Lyme Regis to allow her to get in touch with him and let him know when the heat has died down. Thorndike’s trip to the Lyme Regis post office, however, allows Quive-Smith to learn of his hiding place…and institutes a final showdown between the two men from which Thorndike emerges as the victor. There follows a passage of time and having enlisted in the RAF once World War II is underway, Thorndike bails out of a bomber over Germany with hunting rifle in his hand…the implication being that he’ll be damned if he misses his intended target (Hitler) this time.
Serialized in Atlantic Monthly before being published in novel form in 1939, Gregory Household’s Rogue Male would soon become a best seller and later one of the classic thriller novels of all time. The book, having been written before World War II, never specifically states that the unnamed European dictator was the man mockingly nicknamed “Schickelgruber,” but the book-buying public wasn’t fooled for a second. Rogue Male was a perfect candidate for a movie adaptation despite its controversial (for the U.S.) pro-intervention stance and screenwriter Dudley Nichols (a longtime collaborator of director John Ford — in fact, Ford was originally assigned to direct Man Hunt) was assigned the task. The movie also would find its perfect director to handle the subject material in German émigré Fritz Lang.
Because Lang approached Man Hunt with not entirely clean hands — namely, his fervent anti-Nazism — the movie attracted the attention of the Hays Office, and was one of the first war films to do so. Hays head Joseph Breen objected to the fact that the film depicted all Germans as evil, and was no doubt instrumental in making sure that there were enough “nice” Germans in the movie to counteract this (the character of the jeweler, for instance). The censors also insisted that the director soft-pedal the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by Sanders’ Gestapo to get Pidgeon’s hero to confess — which actually worked in the movie’s favor, since the sequences were more effective with the torture implied as opposed to visually spelled out. As if Lang didn’t have enough trouble, the head of the studio producing Man Hunt, Darryl F. Zanuck, also was not too crazy about Fritz’s anti-Nazi enthusiasm and forbid the director to go anywhere near the editing room during the movie’s final stages. (Lang and assistant Gene Fowler, Jr. did an end run around Zanuck, however, and worked on the movie in secret.)
What makes Man Hunt both a classic Hollywood thriller and one of Lang’s best works is its pitch-perfect casting. Walter Pidgeon would establish himself onscreen as the epitome of British stiff-upper-lipness (though Pidgeon himself was Canadian) in films such as Mrs. Miniver (1942) and The Miniver Story (1950), and the part of Captain Thorndike in this film is one of his best movie roles. He’s a very engaging hero and the audience is with him every step of the way — especially in the rousing final sequence where Thorndike parachutes out of the plane with rifle in hand and loaded for bear. Pidgeon is fine with the he-man heroics but what really makes this movie strong is the tender relationship his Thorndike enjoys with leading lady Joan Bennett, who plays the part of the plucky Jerry.
It’s not too hard for audiences to decipher that Jerry practices the world’s oldest profession (and I’m not referring to farming) despite the Hays Office’s insistence that a sewing machine take prominent space in her flat in an effort to convince moviegoers that she was doing freelance seamstress work. Jerry is more or less accosted by Thorndike when the two characters meet in the film (he puts his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and cluing the thugs on his trail as to his whereabouts) and though she’s frightened and intimidated by him at first, she gradually develops an affection that quickly blossoms into infatuation and then love. Thorndike is a right guy because he doesn’t judge Jerry on her social station or background (unlike his sister-in-law when the two try to get help in the House of Risborough); he treats her with an commendable degree of kindness and respect. There’s a wonderful and subtle sequence set inside Jerry’s apartment the morning after their visit to Thorndike’s relatives where Jerry has ventured out and secured breakfast (fish and chips!) and Thorndike pulls a chair up to the table, insisting that Jerry sit down. The expression on her face is that of an indescribable reverence at his thoughtfulness; she then tells him: “You act like a gent but you ain’t…I mean…you really acts like a gent.”
Bennett is so luminescent and lovely in the part of Jerry that I often marvel at how she is so much different from the femme fatales she plays in later Lang films such as The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). (Joan is so appealing in the part that I’m even willing to overlook the fact that she has one of the most unconvincing Cockney accents in the history of the cinema.) Her Jerry has become so taken with Thorndike that she’s prepared to travel to the four ends of the earth with him — something Thorndike vetoes only because he fears for her safety, and not due to any social stigma. In fact, when he tells her that he’ll arrange for her to be financially compensated by his solicitor for helping him in his hour of need she gets upset because she’s concerned that Thorndike is going to treat her in the same manner as her other “gentlemen.” Instead, all she wants from him is what he promised her earlier in the film — she’s lost a pin that adorned her hat and he’s agreed to furnish her with a new one. He’s as good as his word in doing so, because as he informs her: “Every good soldier needs a crest for his cap.”
The brooch that Thorndike purchases for Jerry is a little chromium arrow — a trinket that will take on significance later in the film because in the climactic mano-a-mano between Thorndike and Quive-Smith, the major presents Jerry’s hat with the arrow attached to make his adversary aware Jerry has been disposed of, but the quick-thinking Thorndike, just when it appears that he’s up against it and at the mercy of the contemptible Quive-Smith, is able to fashion his lady love’s souvenir into something that brings about the Nazi’s downfall. Sanders, an actor whose picture you would find in the dictionary if you searching for a definition of “cad,” gives a performance as one of the silver screen’s most delectably villainous rat bastards, deftly mixing his patented brand of suavity with appropriate sinister menace.
The supporting performances in Man Hunt are equally worthy of praise, including Carradine as a ruthless killer (whose demise in the London subway is particularly memorable) and McDowall (in his American film debut) as the resourceful cabin boy who’s got Pidgeon’s back. McDowall would also re-team that same year for Fox’s How Green Was My Valley, exhibiting a similar surrogate-father-and-son relationship. Other familiar faces in Man Hunt include Ludwig Stossel, Heather Thatcher (as Lady Risborough — her interactions with Bennett’s Cockney gal are priceless), Egon Brecher, Roger Imhof and Frederick Vogeding. The music score is one of my favorites from any film — composed by Lionel Newman, it’s an enchanting melody that uses “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” as a continuing motif.
Fritz Lang’s dedicated moviemaking mission against the Nazi menace would resurface in three additional films in the wake of Man Hunt: Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Ministry of Fear (1944) and Cloak and Dagger (1946) — the last released after the end of World War II, of course, but using the final days of the war as background for its subject matter. But Man Hunt was the first and best, thanks to first-rate casting, direction and scripting…and not to mention the source material; author Household’s Rogue Male would see additional adaptations (including a critically acclaimed TV movie in 1976 starring Peter O’Toole) and a sequel, Rogue Justice, that sadly has not been adapted for either film or television to my knowledge. When the U.S. entered World War II on Dec. 7, 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, they were not only prepared to fight in the theater of war but the ones at audiences’ local movie houses as well…and 70 years later, Man Hunt remains a textbook example of how Hollywood was committed to the fight.
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Labels: 40s, Chaplin, D. Zanuck, Fiction, Hitchcock, J. Carradine, Joan Bennett, John Ford, Lang, Movie Tributes, O'Toole, Sanders
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Howlingly Scary, Howlingly Hilarious
By Phil
What can you say about a movie in which the villain digs into his own forehead to retrieve a bullet, but not before quipping to a woman unlucky enough to be witness, “I want to give you a piece of my mind”? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question. Suffice it to say that The Howling, released 30 years ago today, understood the irresistibility of dishing up horror with a dash of humor. A werewolf picture jam-packed with B-movie references and a giddy love of the genre, it quickly earned a cult following that has remained loyal since the film first hit screens in 1981.
It had to share the love from fanboys. While The Howling helped steer the career of director Joe Dante into (regrettably) safer, more mainstream fare, the movie was initially overshadowed by another man-becomes-wolf horror-comedy from 1981, John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. Comparisons between the two flicks were inevitable. Released within four months of each other, both embraced the spirit of drive-in exploitation while boasting more polished filmmaking, and both featured onscreen werewolf transformations that would have made Lon Chaney Jr.’s head spin with envy.
Still, I prefer The Howling for its generous humor, genuine creepiness and willingness to sleaze it up. It’s a nicely calibrated blend of smart camp and lowbrow shocks, anchored by Dee Wallace’s surprisingly effective performance as a woman trapped between lycanthropy and self-help jibber-jabber. A year before she would be Elliott’s mom in E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Wallace plays Karen White, a TV news reporter in Los Angeles with the misfortune of having drawn the affection of a serial killer. As the film opens, Karen has agreed to meet with the psychopath, Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo), in a peepshow stall at a seedy porn store. Eddie appears behind Karen in silhouette, hissing about what he’s going to do to her. Karen stares ahead, in mute horror, at a grainy bondage reel being projected.
Then Eddie commands Karen to face him. She turns and sees…Well, we don’t know what she sees exactly. Karen lets out a scream, the first of many in The Howling. Two police officers who have been trailing Karen open fire, killing Eddie Quist.
The incident naturally rattles our heroine. When she returns to work, Karen freezes up under the unmerciful gaze of the camera. At home, she rejects the loving arms of husband Bill Neill (Christopher Stone). Knowing she needs help, Karen is intrigued when a courtly therapist, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), suggests she join his self-help group in Big Sur called The Colony.
The ensuing detour into quasi-psychobabble gives Dante and screenwriter John Sayles, at the time just coming off Alligator and Piranha (also helmed by Dante), a ripe avenue for satire. Karen and Bill are bemused by the goings-on of The Colony, whose inhabitants soak in Dr. Waggner’s cautionary line that “repression is the father of neurosis.” The good doctor might be on to something, but his EST-styled knockoff includes some curious aspects. The Colony appears to host more barbecue cookouts than your average pop-psych cult.
There are other red flags, too, including John Carradine as a crazy old coot and Elisabeth Brooks as a resident nymphomaniac outfitted in what looks to be an early prototype for Xena: Warrior Princess. There is more to The Colony than meets the eye. Chris and Terry (Dennis Dugan and Belinda Balaski), an intrepid pair of reporters who work with Karen, discover mysterious links between Dr. Waggner’s sanctuary and Eddie Quist. And speaking of the slain killer, his corpse has suddenly disappeared from the morgue.
It all makes for an irrepressible horror flick that delivers its jolts with a grin. Unlike a raft of slasher flicks of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Dante and Sayles mined the inherent absurdity of their yarn but, honestly, there’s really no other way to approach a story of werewolves who are urged on by a pop psychiatrist to embrace their inner animal.
The Howling exposes its funny bone in the opening minutes, with a sly bit involving a news anchor whose authoritative delivery masks an aw-shucks Southern twang. Dante, an avid movie buff, peppers the proceedings with knowing winks to the genre. Several characters’ names are lifted from movie directors of werewolf flicks, such as George Waggner (1941’s The Wolf Man) and Lew Landers (1944’s Cry of the Werewolf). Dante also isn’t shy about shoehorning in wolf references in everything from cartoons to literature.
Similarly, The Howling makes room for an array of B-movie icons. Kevin McCarthy of Don Siegel’s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers portrays Karen’s boss at the TV station, while The Thing from Another
World’s Kenneth Tobey turns up briefly as a cop. Forrest J. Ackerman, the man behind Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, makes an appearance. Dante’s mentor, the notoriously penurious Roger Corman, has a fitting cameo as a guy checking a pay phone for forgotten change. Corman even gets a second, however peripheral, nod in The Howling. His 1959 comic-horror picture, A Bucket of Blood, is referenced when its star, Dick Miller, turns up to play a slick occult bookshop owner named Walter Paisley. The name is the character Miller played in — wait for it — A Bucket of Blood. Miller’s performance in The Howling launched what would become tradition for Dante, who went on to cast the actor in a slew of his movies. 
Despite the cornucopia of inside jokes, The Howling is, above all, a monster picture and it offers a humdinger of one thanks to the inventiveness of special-effects maestro Rob Bottin. By inflating various-size bladders pasted on to the face and body of actor Picardo, Bottin fashioned an impressive, before-your-eyes transmogrification from man to beast. In today’s world of CG wizardry, where even the lamest schlockfest can be visually interesting, it is tempting to forget just how eye-popping Bottin’s feat really was. Moreover, The Howling’s fully realized werewolves are a far cry from the mega-hirsute guys who roamed the Hollywood countryside of yesteryear. Bottin’s creations, shot at oblique angles and occasionally backlit in cartoon-friendly colors, look as if they just padded in from Little Red Riding Hood’s neck of the woods. These are giant wolves, not wolf men.
The non-monster moments also are memorable. Dante assembled a strong cast; it’s a kick to see veteran character actors such as Carradine and Slim Pickens (as a yokel sheriff, of course) chewing on the scenery, especially when the aforementioned chewing involves fake fangs.
At the center of it all is Dee Wallace. With her feathery blonde hair and all-American good looks, she is an appealing damsel in distress. But she does one better, imbuing her character with melancholic vulnerability and investing The Howling with a welcome depth of emotion. It makes the film’s ending, in which Karen transforms into a werewolf for the local TV news, as heartbreaking as it is howlingly hilarious.
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Labels: 80s, Corman, Don Siegel, J. Carradine, Joe Dante, Landis, Lon Chaney Jr., Movie Tributes, Sayles
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