Well, dear readers, I’ve been going through these bound volumes of Theatre Arts magazine and they are incredible. So far I’ve made it through all the issues of 1960 and 1962 and will devour 1961 next. The writing is so intelligent and the articles so interesting – and just looking at the current season’s plays and musicals and who is in them makes you want to weep. And then there’s the section that tells you what’s about to open and is out of town trying out. There is one photograph in the 1962 book that is breathtaking – a group photo of that year’s winners of the Theatre World promising newcomer award – how’s this for a promising group – “eight young people who are likely to persist in more than memory”: Brenda Vacarro (Everybody Loves Opal), James Earl Jones (The Apple and Moon On A Rainbow Shawl), Barbara Harris (From The Second City, and Oh, Dad, Poor Dad), Elizabeth Ashley (Take Her, She’s Mine), John Stride (Romeo and Juliet), Janet Margolin (Daughter of Silence), Robert Redford (Sunday In New York), and Keith Baxter (A Man For All Seasons). Every single person on this list went on to have a pretty great career – even though you may not recognize Mr. Stride’s name, just check out his credits and you’ll see. In one 1962 issue is an article on someone named Stephen Sondheim – his show, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum had just opened. He was telling the same anecdotes and stories back then that he’s telling now – it was really funny to read it. I was especially interested to read the reviews of new shows – the various critics were pretty astute, save for a really bad patch of about five months, where John Simon was reviewing for them. After he left, the reviews aren’t credited to anyone, which is a little odd. I hope Simon doesn’t make a reappearance in later issues because his reviews were disgusting – all about him and his peccadilloes and floridly written with him just vomiting up so many words to say so little. I was so relieved when it stopped suddenly and we had some normal reviews again. Oh, to have been in New York then – to have seen The Miracle Worker on stage with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, to have seen Henry Fonda and Melvin Douglas and Myrna Loy and Cyril Ritchard and Joan Plowright and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and A Funny Thing and The Music Man and Take Me Along and A Man For All Seasons and Stop The World – I Want To Get Off and Oliver and Kean and Mr. President and Fiorello and The Fantasticks and Bye Bye Birdie and Gypsy and The Sound of Music and Flower Drum Song and The Tenth Man and The Best Man and The Night Of The Iguana and Carnival and Camelot and My Fair Lady and A Thousand Clowns and How To Succeed and Sail Away and The Hostage and The Caretaker and Milk and Honey and Subways Are For Sleeping and Come Blow Your Horn and Toys In the Attic and A Thurber Carnival and Five Finger Exercise and A Taste of Honey and A Majority of One – all these shows were playing in 1960 and 1962 and are not even the tip of the shows that were playing – and the casts of these shows were a who’s who of great actors – Jackie Gleason, Walter Pidgeon, Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Jerry Orbach, Alfred Drake, Anthony Newley, Robert Ryan, Robert Preston, Paul Ford, Zero Mostel, Tom Bosley, Clive Revill, Geraldine Page, Jason Robards, Jr., Dick Van Dyke, Chita Rivera and on and on. Every page of these magazines reminds you of what Broadway used to be like. There are some really amusing articles – on the state of sound reinforcement in the theater circa 1962, on the problem of how to get young people interested in theater (I can tell you the one way they did NOT get them interested was to PANDER to the lowest common denominator), a fascinating article on how Shirley Booth’s insistence on William Inge enlarging her role and giving Mr. Inge instructions for line changes and scene changes caused her to leave the production of A Loss Of Roses – in other words, nothing changes. Well, one thing changed – real producers. We don’t have them anymore. The movie business and it’s ethos has taken over Broadway. When a musical has to cost 65 million dollars you know something has gone terribly awry. That is just sickening and stupid and spells trouble with a capital T – and ironically the biggest trouble is if the thing is actually a hit. We need to get Hollywood out of Broadway – this isn’t the movie business, it’s the theater business. We don’t need amusement park theme shows unless they take place in an amusement park or arena. I believe in one article they added up the budgets of the 1962 failures and there were a lot of them between the plays and musicals, and the loss between ALL of them was three million dollars. I’m not talking about three or four flops, I’m talking about twenty flops, maybe more. Each issue contains an entire play. These magazines are a treasure trove of memories and you can watch the progress of musical theater and straight plays from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s – it was a time of great change. Few of these shows would have made it in today’s climate – actually few of them made it back then, although much more than today. Back then, a frothy comedy like Goodbye, Charlie could eke out an okay run based on the star power of Lauren Bacall. And there was a very prescient article which asked the question, do critics have the power to kill shows anymore (this in regards to the success of The Sound Of Music – which did not get good reviews) – everything old is new again, as the Peter Allen song goes. It’s a shame that magazines like this are no longer viable – I know that Show Music and In Theater and then Theater World all tried, but none of them had the insight and great writing (save for John Simon’s brief spell) that Theatre Arts had. If you can get your hands on issues from the late 1950s and early 1960s I cannot recommend them highly enough. They will make you nostalgic, they will make you weep, and they will show you everything that’s wrong with what’s happening in theater in New York today.
Well, that was long. I guess the rest of the notes will therefore be short. Yesterday was another day of not quite enough sleep. I did some errands and whatnot, I picked up a couple of packages but not the errant and truant one I was hoping would be there, I had to deal with a paypal issue (filing a dispute), and then I supped with my friend Debby – she ended up making it an early birthday dinner. I am still stuffed to the gills and am absolutely through eating big meals for the next three weeks. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching Fantasia 2000 – it’s certainly well done and it’s a very pretty transfer, but like the original, none of the segments really do anything for me.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get my beauty sleep, and perhaps I’ll dream of a Broadway that no longer exists.
Today, I shall hopefully sleep late, and then I will spend several hours choosing material for the January Gardenia show. I have to load three or four CDs into iTunes, listen, and choose, always thinking about what’s going to work for the performers I’m going to cast. I will do a jog and I will eat very lightly.
Tomorrow, the helper and I prepare packages and ship out a few things – Bukowsical arrives tomorrow, but we’re not shipping it until Thursday when we get the fixed CDs in. The rest of the week is filled with meals, meeting, shipping, planning, casting, and some birthday celebrating.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, I must plan a show, I must eat something amusing but light, and I must watch a motion picture or three. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland.