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Douglas Messerli
the
brotherhood
There is
a Brotherhood of Man,
A Benevolent Brotherhood of Man,
A noble tie that binds
All human hearts and minds
Into one Brotherhood of Man.
—Frank Loesser, How to Succeed in
Business Without Really Trying
|
It may seem strange, particularly to young
theater-goers, that one would want to write a short essay on the death of a
Broadway producer. If younger people have any concept of a producer, it may
resemble the notion presented in Mel Brook’s film and musical comedy; many of
today’s producers, moreover, represent larger groupings of commercial entities
(Walt Disney Studies, SONY, etc), and they rarely have a public persona. Not so
for the producers of the great period of American theater existing from the mid
1940s through 1965—often called what the New
York Times recently described as “the heyday of the American musical.” In
those years, producers were often as visible as the creators of the works they
presented, and like the American film studio executives, held great power over
all events that occurred upon their stages. Names like David Merrick, Kermit
Bloomgarden, Robert Griffith and Harold Prince, Saint Subber, Roger L. Stevens,
and Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin struck terror and imparted hope into the hearts
of young actors and chorus members as well as playwrights, composers,
directors, designers, and choreographers. The
death on Wednesday of Cy Feuer, accordingly, almost marks the end of an era: a
time when plays and musicals weren’t just discovered (a process to which our
numerous revivals attest), money found, and the right “team” brought in, but an
age when producers often “imagined” what would make a good play or musical and
sought out the artists—in every category—to make it happen. On a
trip to Los Angeles, Feuer—who apparently already had the persuasive powers
necessary for producing—talked his way into becoming the West Coast
representative of Republic Pictures’ record label, Brunswick; and before long,
he had convinced Republic Pictures to appoint him as their music director.
Feuer was what he later described as a “second-rate trumpet player,” and his
scoring capabilities were on the same par, but Republic, a B-movie studio,
seemed oblivious to his lack of talent as he composed for numerous films from
1939 to 1948. World War II briefly interrupted, and upon returning to Republic
he met a young would-be producer, Ernest Martin, joining forces with him and
returning to New York. The
rest of his life is Broadway history. Just as the great Broadway musicals began
to be produced—works like Oklahoma! (1943),
Carousel (1945), Finian’s Rainbow and Brigadoon
(both 1947)—Feuer and Martin bought up the rights to a turn-of-the-century
cross-dressing farce, Charley’s Aunt.
The team negotiated with Ray Bolger (well known for his 1936 appearance in The Wizard of Oz) to play the lead,
“closing the deal,” one might note, by signing Bolger’s wife, Gwen Rickard, as
co-producer. Veteran playwright, director and all-around-theater doctor George
Abbott was hired to direct and write the adaptation. But the most brilliant of
Feuer and Martin’s brainstorms was to choose then unknown composer, Frank
Loesser (known primarily for his World Wary II ditty “Praise the Lord and Pass
the Ammunition” and as a lyricist for several film tunes) to compose his first
Broadway score, which included a hit “My Darling, My Darling” and Bolger’s
campy rendition of “Once in Love with Amy.” Despite reviewer reservations, the
1948 musical was a long-running hit with 792 performances. It was
Feuer and Martin’s 1950 musical Guys and
Dolls, however, that truly defined their achievements. Their original idea,
to present the Damon Runyon story as a serious love tale, was fortunately
scraped with their rejection of Jo Swerling’s book. To liven up the work they
hired writer Abe Burrows (known primarily for his writing of “The Milton Berle
Show”) and composer-friend Frank Loesser. Throwing out Swerling’s book, Burrows
wrote a new work around Loesser’s songs—and what marvelous songs they were!
From the opening trumpeting (performed, in the original, by black trumpeter Joe
Wilder) of “Fugue for Tinhorns” to the religious conversionary testament of
“Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat,” Loesser’s score, in my estimation, is the very
best of Broadway musicals before and since. “Adelaide’s Lament” and “Luck Be a
Lady” would be among my choices for the best songs ever composed for the
Broadway stage. I’ll save any further discussion of this great musical for a
piece I’m planning on the influence of Damon Runyan on theater and film. Let us
just note the great success of this masterwork: in its original production it
ran for 1,200 performances; the 1992 revival, which I saw, ran for another
record 1,143 performances. Had
Feuer stopped here his name would still have be a force to be reckoned with in
Broadway history. Soon after this hit, however, Feuer and Martin asked Burrows
to write and direct another show—a work they had little notion of except for
its period and locale, Paris in the late 1890s. A researcher presented the
producing team information on the noted “can-can,” the notorious dance of the
period which, even in this notoriously “libertine” city, drew the ire of groups
of the day such as the League Against Licentiousness of the Streets. Traveling
to England, Feuer and Martin sought out Cole Porter to do the score. Porter
warned them, the critics will judge the show “not up to my usual standards,”
but agreed to the task. The result was another hit (892 performances), despite the
critical reaction Porter had predicted. In truth, it was not his best score,
but with songs such as “I Love Paris,” “It’s All Right with Me,” and “C’est
Magnifique,” and the discovery through this musical of a brilliant, young,
red-headed dancer, Gwen Verdon, who can complain? The
team’s next production was The Boy Friend,
British composer and writer Sandy Wilson’s 1920s satire (The Drowsy Chaperone of its day) which opened in 1954 with a then
unknown Liverpool-based performer (no, not one of the Beatles) Julie Andrews.
It was not a long-running show, but survived a reasonable run of 485
performances. It later became a favorite of amateur theater companies. Feuer
himself directed the team’s next Broadway effort, Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings, which premiered in 1955.
The book was a “collaborative” affair by George S. Kaufman, Kaufman’s wife of
the time, Leueen MacGrath and Abe Burrows. Fired from the production, Kaufman
quipped that when he died and was cremated “someone should throw my ashes on Feuer
and Martin’s faces.” Although not one of their hits, this musical also had a
reasonable run (478 performances). While
at work on these last two productions, Feuer and Martin were encouraged by
Loesser to option his friend Meredith Willson’s autobiographical book on his
experiences playing in John Philip Sousa’s band, and to turn it into a musical.
The team agreed, but with their current commitments postponed the project. When
Kermit Bloomgarden offered to take up the project, Feuer and Martin readily
agreed to give it up. The Music Man
opened to phenomenal success two years later, in 1957. It must have reminded
Martin of his partner’s previous failure to take up his suggestion of producing
George Gershwin’s An American in Paris.
Feuer’s reply is legendary: “It’s a tone poem. It’s not a show.” In some
respects, I agree with his judgment. I do
not agree with some of his later choices of works such as The Act, starring the over-acclaimed Liza Minnelli, or his decision
to produce the motion pictures Cabaret and
A Chorus Line. The former was, at
least, successful—if sales and trophies are all that matter. A Chorus Line was a failure. Feuer
summarized: “We took a second-rate play and made a first-rate movie in Cabaret and in A Chorus Line we took a first-rate play and made a second-rate
movie.” To my way of thinking Cabaret was
a far better stage musical than the overblown and politically confused motion
picture. But what does my point of view matter; the imperious Feuer believed in
what he produced. And
why shouldn’t he? As if their string of successful stage musicals were not
enough, the producing team entered the 1960s with another of their very best
productions. Buying up the rights to a book few might have imagined as
theatrical fodder, Feuer and Martin were determined to see the “how-to” satire How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, transformed by
writers Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert into a musical, relying again on
collaborators Abe Burrows and Frank Loesser to bring it into shape. The
producing team, writer and composer succeeded, with a great deal of “trying” I
am sure, in bringing what was to be their one of their last Broadway
productions into theater history.
Without a true “hero,” How To
Succeed depends entirely upon the likeability of the Machiavellian window
washer, J. Pierpont Finch, and the comparative incompetence, greed and neuroses
of the other business characters. In this sense, there is no moral center in
this spoof of office life. Secretaries, the executives are warned, are not be
treated as “toys,” but they are all definitely out to catch boys, and Finch—the
cutest kid in the office pool—is also the most aloof as he centers his entire
behavior on himself, swooping into conversations merely to drop his name and to
flatter those who might reward it. The major musical numbers are centered
around an office memorandum about the role of secretaries, an impending
coffee-break, obedience to company policy, what to do at the end of a long day,
a college pep song, and the hero’s belief in own capabilities sung to the
bathroom mirror! Only when he is revealed as a fraud does Finch come to
perceive any moral connection with the world, expressed in the boardroom in a
revivalist-like paen to “The Brotherhood of Man.” How could it succeed? Loesser and Burrows, blessed by Feuer and
Martin’s brilliant casting of the puckish charmer Robert Morse as the young
Machivellian and agéd movie-star Rudy Vallee as the pompous and befuddled
company president—to say nothing of his neurotically infantile nephew, played
by Charles Nelson Reilly—brought it all off with the greatest of ease. Bob
Fosse replaced the young choreographer Hugh Lambert in out-of-town tryouts,
creating a stylized conga-line for the “Coffee Break” number that was so
original filmmakers could not successfully reproduce it on celluloid. That
is what producers used to do! They
were not merely sources of money or data banks of potential funders. In
2003, I determined to edit a book on responses by major world figures on the
impending war in Iraq. But the question I posed to the hundreds of individuals
to whom I sent the correspondence was not about Bush, America and Iraq, but
about war in general. I wrote:
My interest in the subject has no specific political agenda behind it; I
simply feel that it might be important for our age to compile such
responses
(Reasons Not To Go to War) and
pass them on to our own and other gen-
erations. We all know that war is sometimes necessary and that it occurs
with regular frequency throughout the world; Machiavelli even argued
that a prince “must have no other object and no other thought than war,
its methods and conduct.” But I do also believe that most men of reason
detest war. Perhaps by sharing those reasons, we can give generations
new
hope that they may live in peaceful times. Out of some 600 such letters to people in science,
religion, art, literature, music, dance, film, politics, theater, and numerous
other areas, I received about 40 responses—most from people in the arts. Among
the serious responders was Cy Feuer:
Dear Douglas,
In the case of Iraq, it seems all too obvious that what’s behind this
bellicose
administration’s agenda is a combination of greed (oil), imperialism and
a quasi-
psychotic need to control and bully. I’m still in a state of shock that
the Supreme
Court placed Bush/Cheney in the White House to begin with. At 92, I can
honestly say I’ve never been this embarrassed by my government. Having
served
in WW II, I have strong feelings about the need to overcome the harshest
of adversaries, but this imminent, arbitrary destruction is
unacceptable.
Apologies for not quite adhering to your request, but due to the
exigency of
today’s threat, I can’t address war as a concept without being specific.
If you’ve
any thoughts or comments regarding what I’ve said, I’d be most interested.
Somewhat coincidentally, my autobiography, I Got the Show Right Here (Simon
& Schuster), is being published March 6th. It includes
many chapters on my
experiences during the war. I was a captain in the Army Air Corps.
Best of luck with your project. It sounds excellent.
Sincerely,
[signed] Cy It
is not his politics I applaud—although I most certainly agree with them—but his
commitment, his concern. I never knew Cy Feuer personally and I suspect, as
Fosse, Kaufman and others have testified, he was an fairly difficult person.
Later he described himself, quite unlike the major character of How to Succeed in Business, as being “on
fire with ambition,” as someone who “didn’t follow the expected rules or play
the predictable game for the sake of ease or expectations.” Feuer was also a
man who clearly loved what he did and cared for the society in which he
functioned. Perhaps that is why musicals—when they were not frivolous
entertainments—spoke to the culture at large in those days and still do—when
they are created with imagination and empathy—to those of us who love this now
almost dead genre. Los Angeles, May 20, 2006 |
