Notes on a Cowardly Lion

by John Lahr

  Blyden was a careful, critical observer. Lahr was perplexed about Blyden’s aloofness. In his own mind, Blyden’s criticism could be explained by his youth. He was a stripling to comic acting. “If a fella is just a dramatic actor and goes into a musical play, he is astounded, perhaps, by the deportment of some of the actors,” Lahr philosophizes. “You go down front; you talk to an audience. Where in a dramatic play you cannot do that. You’ve got to look at one another and play perfectly legitimate.” In a play about Machiavellian manipulation like Foxy, the need for dramatic moments, for scheming, and even for confrontation (“looking at one another”) was perhaps more important. The differences were glaring; and Lahr, who played a master conniver, suspected a plot. He summoned Blyden to his dressing room.

  “I think you’re trying to hurt me out there. I think you’re trying to kill laughs and I don’t trust you.”

  “I won’t continue a conversation on a false premise.”

  “Look, Larry, I’m not a suspicious guy.”

  “Bert, you are suspicious.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Look, Bert, you came up in this school, and you assume that since everybody in that school did that, everybody is still doing it. But you’ve got to realize that you’re the only guy alive from that school of comedy. Nobody around here can do it; nobody here would do it, and nobody here knows how to do it!”

  “Give me an example.”

  Blyden mentioned a few incidents. Lahr nodded. From that moment, Blyden recalls, “we never had any trouble.” But Lahr’s differences with the director were not resolved. Every suggestion, every elaboration was met with the same response: “I’ll have to ask the boys.” The writers stood their ground; and Lahr felt straightjacketed through the entire eight-week stint. After two months he was glad to conclude the engagement. He planned to end the summer fishing on Lake Louise. When he arrived there, exhausted and disappointed from the grueling summer tryout, he fell ill for ten days. He never saw the lake or opened his tackle box. The fever could not be diagnosed; it was the first of the serious attacks. Back in New York, he seemed resigned to the fact that Foxy was not untapped gold. The Beauty Part was available; and Foxy still needed a great deal of work.

  During 1963, Lahr heard that Billy Rose was interested in acquiring Foxy. Despite his unhappy dealings with Rose in the past, Lahr was willing to rationalize anything. “I know Rose is a pretty tough guy; he’ll keep these writers in line. He’s for the comedian; he’s for the show.” When Rose dropped out of the picture, Lahr decided to abandon the idea of Foxy too. “I saw it was going to be very uncomfortable.”

  After The Beauty Part closed, Robert Whitehead, the original producer of Foxy and the man who had sent it to the Yukon, came to see Lahr at his apartment. He was taking over the directorship of Lincoln Center and could not, by contract, do other commercial shows. Lahr told Whitehead: “I think I’m going to have a lot of trouble with these guys, they think they’ve written Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. I’ll help your show, Bob. If I say the wrong thing, I have good enough taste to admit I’m wrong. If we need help, Bob, will you give it to us?” Whitehead not only agreed to help but also informed him that David Merrick was willing to produce the show. Lahr, facing a new season with a daughter in college and a son at Oxford and no other offers, signed the contract.

  The only letter my father ever wrote me had reference to Foxy. “I begin rehearsals for Foxy tomorrow. Let’s pray it’s a hit.” After so much anxiety he was going out on the road again, his hopes having won out over his experience. He trusted Merrick’s success, although he’d never seen one of the many shows the producer had mounted. Johnny Mercer, the lyricist, was, in his estimation a pro, and could be counted on continually for good songs. The situation in Volpone could be made to work; and despite the oppressive conditions, he was willing to wager his talent against recalcitrant management. Was he still funny? Were his instincts still true? Was Bert Lahr an idea from the past, a name whose talent was a fiction? He strolled in his room after one of his seizures of fever, taking his temperature every quarter of an hour, feeling his pulse, wondering about his legs, his heart, the mysterious ague that rose (he was certain) from his kidneys or his gall bladder or his liver.

  He needed confirmation of his talent. Foxy represented that challenge; and what he was praying for was not only the cash on hand, but the renewal of that energy and skill that had made people laugh for half a century.

  His responses were not difficult to understand for anyone who had watched him as carefully as Blyden. “Bert needs three things. One: he needs to be loved. Two: a thing he needs a little more than that is to be served. Three: he needs to be acclaimed. He doesn’t need to love; but he needs to receive it. Laughter is that. Bert comes from a hungry time. When they laughed you were going to eat; when they didn’t, you starved. But now, I don’t think he knows that. If they’re not laughing, he panics. There’s nothing vicious in it or greedy or selfish; they are conditions of his life. He had terrible things happen in his life; and yet, he has succeeded and become Bert Lahr by making people laugh.”

  The first day of rehearsals shattered the hopes of the previous day’s letter. Foxy, impersonating an English Lord, was to make his entrance into the Yukon saloon, and, observing the bar and nude painting behind it, say, “How far out.” Lahr changed the entrance to “Mmm—how very Wedgewood,” and topped it with an observation about the picture, “Mm—Whistler’s sister.” The lines—which would bring howls from the audience and be mentioned in nearly every review—were contested by the authors.

  “Why don’t you use ‘far out?”

  “Because it isn’t funny.” When they protested again, Lahr stalked off the stage and called Merrick. Nothing had changed.

  Merrick pacified him; but Lahr still had to contend with an unfunny script and adamant authors. At one point, Foxy had to reply to a woman “If you don’t mind my saying so, madame, ha-ha-ha.” “It was gorgeous the way he hated that line,” recalls Blyden. This sent the authors scurrying backstage to admonish him, “You put in an extra ‘ha.’”Lahr ordered them from his dressing room. “It got me so goddamn mad I couldn’t control myself.” Later in the evening, he relented and apologized. But they could not find funny lines when Lahr asked for them, and he was forced to rely on his own resources. “Finally, I just said the hell with them—and that accounted for all the big laughs in the show.” When Foxy wheeled his sled on stage and handed the Eskimos a bag of gold, Lahr had to say, “Here, buy yourself a couple of fishhooks.” To Lahr the language had no verve, the comic idea was too small for laughter. He reworked it to read, “Here, buy yourself some chocolate-covered blubber.” “Don’t you think that in rehearsal they came to my dressing room and wanted me to change it back.”

  For three weeks on the road, no new scenes were written. “The nucleus was there,” Lahr claims. “Lardner and Hunter did write some funny situations, but they were obvious sight things.” When Lahr asked for a laugh line it was not forthcoming; when he saw a flaw in the construction, it was not mended. Storming across the stage, he kept repeating, “Where’s the captain? I’m used to having a captain like Ziegfeld or White or Hopkins.”

  There was another side of the coin. Lahr knew where to find the laughter; but it always had to relate to him. At one point, Foxy is chasing a girl who, on discovering he’s rich, turns track and pursues him, saying, “Play me like a harp.” Blyden recalls the problem with such a funny line. “Bert would tell the writers do this, do that. It was guaranteed funny. Jesus, you could smell it. On the other hand, a girl was getting a big laugh in the scene saying ‘play me like a harp.’ It topped him. He did everything in his power to kill her laugh. In fact, he said to her, ‘Honey, I’m sorry I’m going to have to kill that laugh.’ Then, he put in another line for himself: ‘Yeah, but I got a sore pinky.’ Finally, he figured if he waited, and let it hit, then said his line—he would top it. But had he not topped it, he would have killed it.”

  Lahr was at odds wi
th the play. For the comedy to be successful, he had to get laughs; but his way of getting them hurt the development of the play. The writers had not produced good material, but they were given the added onus of serving Lahr’s special demands. “Bert has to enter with the entire stage still and looking at him,” says Blyden. “He has to have the biggest laugh in the scene; and he has to have the last line of the scene, and the biggest line that ends it. He has to have that; and he knows how to create an atmosphere in which the audience looks at him because he gives them the big ones. He conditions the audience to look at him because that’s where the humor is. If you get a big laugh, it’s okay; but he must have one to top that. He must. Otherwise, he’s going to be hungry; and he’s going to be fifteen and nobody’s going to love him; and he’s going to be looking for a job … I don’t think he knows it, but he gets like that.

  “He made them throw out the ending because he said he couldn’t finish it. A curious thing happened to the play then, because the relationships got all jumbled. There was one section of the show that I had to be in charge of because I was the schemer. Now in order to do that, I had to take the stage to give some directions to scheme. And yet, he didn’t want me to do that because he was on. And when he’s on, he wants charge of that stage. He wasn’t sneaky. He said to me, ‘Look, kid, I’m making them throw out the end of the show, because I’m not strong at the finish, and I gotta be strong at the finish. If they end the show the way it is, it’s going to be your show. It’s not going to be your show, it’s going to be mine.’ Direct quote. Verbatim. Never forgot it. It was a thought I’d never heard expressed in the theater. It takes your breath away. By becoming completely his show, Foxy was damaged.”

  Lahr questioned himself during the tryout. His little jokes reflected his worry. Could he still carry a part? Could he learn lines any more? Was he getting senile? The difficulty of getting anything done on the production made him wonder. Was this going to be his last show? His anxiety was genuine and shared by the cast, who realized that Foxy’s success rested on his shoulders. Even in his tantrums, there was a sense of theatrical tradition. Turning to Blyden, who shared Lahr’s disgust with the director and writers, he said, “I may go down, kid, but if I go down, it’s going to be with champions. I’m not going down like a bum.” He wanted to quit the show; but fears much deeper than those of success kept him at it. “He survived it,” Blyden says. “He took the bit in his teeth and ran. Because he’s Bert Lahr, he got away with it. No one else could have.”

  On February second, two letters arrived at Lahr’s dressing room. The first, from Johnny Mercer, acknowledged Lahr’s effort in a show uncertain of its future:

  Dear Bert—

  … This is the first time I’ve ever seen a performer do my material better than I meant it. Usually we’re happy with 75% or 80% of what we would like—but you find laughs where the laughs aren’t even there! You’re just marvelous and I love you.

  The second letter was from David Merrick’s office. Merrick, with nine other shows on Broadway and two on the road in 1964, was rarely present to oversee his last $430,000 production. Jerome Robbins had been dispatched to Detroit to help; but the writers effectively prevented any outside tinkering. The accountants indicated the show was in trouble; and no one needed to remind Merrick of the production problems. Foxy needed new sets, new songs, a tighter script. With too many other products on the market, Foxy was an unnecessary burden. Merrick’s green envelope informed Lahr that Foxy would close in Detroit on Saturday evening, February 8.

  Two days later, Merrick changed his mind when investors threatened to sue to keep the show open. He dealt away part of his producing responsibilities to Billy Rose. The next week Foxy came to New York. On opening night, Lahr received a note from Merrick: “So proud to be presenting you at last.” This was not rhetoric; Merrick had become postwar Broadway’s producing legend; and Lahr was perhaps the only theatrical commodity that linked two eras. Merrick disliked the show, but Lahr’s talent was something he could appreciate.

  The show was a personal triumph for Lahr. The critics were never more lavish in their praise. But in their ebullience over Lahr was a curious hint of the paradox: he was a monument in the face of disaster. The New York Times began its review:

  If you admire Bert Lahr and it’s un-American not to, you know—“Foxy” is for you … It [Foxy] does not fret over refinements of plot and characterization, but it wears its crudities with a grin and has delightful professional gusto. And can more be asked for in this vale of crises than to have Bert Lahr back on stage, mugging shamelessly or being as delicate as a viscount at an unexpectedly rowdy lawn party?

  The review, like every other statement about the play, attested to Lahr’s position in the theater; it also pointed out the curiously old-fashioned form of Foxy. The enjoyment was primarily Lahr’s doing; and the structure bore his fingerprints too.

  But Foxy raised an important question about book musicals. The inability to support their talent forced performers back to a careerist attitude. As a result, the biggest Broadway musicals—Hello, Dolly!, Fiddler on the Roof—became star showcases.

  Without new material, Lahr, like so many other stars, had to settle for tours de force. With Lahr, the pointed pinky, the mock effeminacy were hilarious traits that audiences had been viewing for nearly fifty years, but now they demanded more.

  Blyden’s dissent had predicted Lahr’s reception and also the stalemate that lay behind it. “Bert honestly believed that if he came off well in the show, it would work. That’s not true. An audience wouldn’t come to see just that. They had to know they were coming to see a whopping big show. They’ve seen Bert be great. Now, they’re more interested in seeing Barbra Streisand, they’re interested in the new ones. The reviews were bad for the show, great for Lahr. For Foxy to be good, everyone else had to score. That meant they had to score when he was on. When he wasn’t on, it was pretty deadly. There was a time when theater could have worked that way; but, unfortunately, that time is gone.”

  However, Blyden learned by competing with an old pro. “Bert found a huge laugh for me in the show. I would never have thought of it. He said it to me on stage. The audience is out there—sixteen hundred of them. He whispered “After the next line, say ‘umlaut.’ So I said ‘umlaut,’ and the audience screamed. Then he bumped the laugh further by reacting to it. I never would have thought of it. Who thinks of saying ‘umlaut’ in conversation for God’s sake? He does. He thinks funny. One day he came up to me. ‘You’re saying “Oh” in front of a line. Don’t say “Oh”—you’ll get a bigger laugh.’ So I took it out; and I got a bigger laugh.”

  Blyden began to understand when Lahr was going to improvise and how to stay with him. “I could feel him when he was going someplace. I didn’t know where he was going. He’d go a step at a time; and I would try and go with him. Every now and then, I’d blow it; and he’d be livid with me. And then he’d get over it. He gets mad on stage. And when he misses a big one, he’ll get the most disgusted look on his face and say, ‘Well, I blew that one.’ He broke himself up on stage. Sometimes, when he gets mad, he’ll quit. He’s finished until the next scene.”

  Blyden, forced to play fast and loose, developed routines for Lahr to follow. “One day on stage I said, ‘I’m going to try and follow you, you try and get away.’ Lahr replied, ‘Do anything you want.’ The game of tag began and the audience howled. Lahr chuckled under his breath, ‘That’s good, kid, thanks.’”

  Foxy’s reviews were strong enough to sustain a run. To a constant theatergoer like Walter Kerr, Lahr’s gestures had a poignancy beyond the outcome of the show.

  In any case, the spectacle of Mr. Lahr calling “halloo” to the Grim Reaper is a frightfully moving one … and as I watched him reveling … I sometimes yearned for that kind of free association musical in which you could really black out a scene as Lahr does when a hard-drinking miner passes out at his funeral. Mr. Lahr leaps from his repose and struggles to get the sodden fellow up, priml
y explaining, “I’m taking this drunk off the whisky, and putting him on the bier!” There is nobility, and a delicate sense of just how outrageously a bad high pun ought to be, in that.

  Blyden’s memories notwithstanding, Lahr was not the only focus of critical praise. Magazines lauded the show as well as its star. (Time: “The whole show is as cheerful as any show ought to be which rejoices in the presence of the funniest man left alive.”) Many shows since Foxy have lasted on reviews much skimpier, and without the prospect of a summer World’s Fair.

  But Foxy, which had struggled so long to get to Broadway, found itself strangled by a management problem. Hello, Dolly! had opened a few weeks before, and the Merrick office, stung with delight over its popular success, had little interest in promoting the last of its flock. The poster for Foxy remained unframed or mounted on Merrick’s wall for a long time after the opening. As one member of the office recalled, “Even if Foxy had been a great show, nobody would have cared.” The management maintains that there were no theater parties for Foxy and no “hit feeling” about the show. Lahr felt differently. “It’s a wonder we played as long as we did with the treatment Merrick gave us.”

  Foxy closed after eighty-five performances. When the final curtain fell at the Ziegfeld Theater, the house was full. The audience gave Lahr a standing ovation. In the dressing room, Mildred raged, ready to storm Merrick’s office in hand-to-hand combat with the dragon of Broadway. Lahr, like a bartered bride, seemed more resigned. “We could have made it, if the producer cared. He had money for advertising he never used.” The Merrick office would offer as many reasons for failure as there could have been for success. The theater was in the wrong district, they claimed. Set apart from Broadway, it could not do any street business. All-time greats, they added, do not sell tickets.