by John Lahr
Make Mine Manhattan (1948), 247
Mame (1966), 290
Mann, Thomas, 2
Mannix, Ed, 182-3
Marceau, Marcel, 278
Markova, Alicia, 228
Marquis, Don, 290
Marshall, E. G., 262, 274, 276, 278
Marshall, Herbert, 187
Marx, Groucho, 213, 214-117, 304-5
Marx, Harpo, 179
Marx, Joe E., 31, 34, 35
Marx Brothers, the, 30, 101, 106, 185, 304, 341
May, Elaine, 302
Mayer, Louis B., 181-3, 189, 190
Maytime (1927), 154
McCarthy, Senator Joe, 305
McCullough, Paul, 29, 150-1, 172
McGowan, Jack, 98, 99, 109, 114-18, 220
McHugh, Dorothy (Mrs.Frank), 345
McHugh, Frank, 180, 213, 214, 215, 216-18, 345, 346
McHugh, Jimmy, 91
McKenzie, Faye, 213, 243-4, 246-7
Meet the People (1944), 220
Mercer, Johnny, 317, 320
Merman, Ethel, 114, 125, 203-10
Merrick, David, 317, 318, 320, 321-4
Merry-Go-Round of 1938, 177, 184
Metropolitan Opera, 97
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare), 291-4, 356
Miller, Marilyn, 177
Mimic World, 96
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)
Mondrian, Piet, 9, 306
Moore, Victor, 99, 100, 102, 105-6, 111, 112, 206, 209
Moran, Lois, 111, 112
Morgan, Frank, 198
Morgan, Jim and Betty, 53
Morris, Keith and William, 31
Morse, Robert, 250
Morton, Frederick, 48
Morton, Tommy K., 67
Mosbacher, Emile, 17
Murphy, Frank “Rags,” 55
Murphy, Senator George, 212
Murphy, Julia (Mrs. George)
Music Hall Varieties (1933), 124
Myer, Joseph, 98
Myerberg, Michael, 253, 257, 259-60, 265-7, 269, 271-3, 280
New Faces of 1952 and 1956 247
“New Teacher, The,” 357-60
New Yorkers, The (1930), 206
Newsboy Trio, 19
Nichols, Mike, 30s
Night They Raided Minsky’s, The (1968), 347, 354, 356
“Nine Crazy Kids,” 36, 37, 357
Norton, Ned (“Clothes”), 55
Novak, Kim, 177
Nugent, Frank, 197
Oberon, Merle 217-18
O’Brian, Jack, 255
O’Brien, Pat, 180, 213, 215, 216-19
Of Thee I Sing (1931), 111, 112
Oh You Kid, 220
O’Hara, John, 183
Oklahoma! (1943), 227
Omnibus, 301
Oresteia, 296, 300
Orpheus (Cocteau), 259
Overman, Lynn, 128
Parker, Jean, 243
Pearl, Jack, 30-2, 36, 38, 41, 48, 49, 51, 62, 130, 177, 185, 292
Pennington, Ann, 123
Pepper, Jessica (Mrs. Art Arthur), 125
Pepys’ Diary, 69
Perelman, S. J., 3, 6, 9, 48, 141, 230, 301, 304-11, 340-1
Peter Pan, 236
Pickford, Mary, 188
Pinter, Harold, 284, 331
Pirandello, Luigi, 278
Pluck ‘n Luck, 16
Plume de Ma Tante, La (1958), 247
Poe, Edgar Allan, 195
Porter, Cole, 203-10, 228, 230-2, 248
Powell, Eleanor, 128
Presley, Elvis, 178
Proust (Beckett), 150, 253
Proust, Marcel, 253
“Quartet Erotica,” 142
Rae, Charlotte, 306
Ratoff, Gregory, 153-5
“Raven, The” (Poe), 195
Red, Hot and Blue (1936)
Reich, Wilhelm, 303
Remarkable Mrs. Penny-packer, The, 257
Revue (Baral), 124
Richardson, Ralph, 258
Richman, Harry, 125, 130, 147
Robbins, Jerome, 320
Robinson, Joseph, 148-58, 202
Rockwell, “Doc,” 85, 228
Rodgers, Richard, 189
Rogers, Buddy, 128, 143
Rogers, Will, 45, 106, 124, 346
Rooney, Mickey, 189
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 214-15
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 215
Rose, Billy, 90, 91, 204, 221, 228-30, 231-4, 236, 317, 321
Rose, Harry, 64
Roseland Girls, The (1920), 57-60
Rose Marie (1954), 222-3
Ross, Harold, 124
Ruben, Aaron, 384
Runyon, Damon, 48, 79
Russell, Jane, 333
Sahl, Mort, 302
Sandow the Strong Man, 12
Sardis, 8, 9
Saroyan, William, 141, 279
Say, Darling (1958), 250
Schenck, Nick, 189-90
Schindler, R. C, 152, 157
Schmidt, Eddie, 183
Schneider, Alan, 257-71, 273
School for Wives, The, (Molière), 301
Shroeder, Mrs. Helen, 202
Schuman, William, 228
Scribner, Sam, 28, 42
Scudi, Santo, 245
Seeley, Blossom, 85
Seidel, Rose, 53
Sennett, Mack, 285
“Seven Foys,” The, 56
“Seven Frolics,” The, 26-8, 30, 33, 34
Seven Lively Arts (1944), 227-34, 235, 236, 244
Seven Year Itch, The, 262
Shakespeare, William, 2, 291, 294
Shaw, George Bernard, 285, 301
Shea, Miss, 21, 22
Shearer, Norma, 181
Sheridan, Richard, 41
Shinbone Alley, 290
Ship Ahoy (1942), 220
Show Is On, The (1936), 137, 158-61, 162-9, 197
Short, Hassard, 228
Shubert, J. J., 271
Shubert, Lee, 158-9
Shubert Brothers, the, 42, 85, 125
Shurr, Lester, 160, 189, 226, 253-5, 269, 272-3, 275, 331, 340, 342, 347
Shurr, Louis, 160, 177-91, 184, 189, 198-9, 201, 209, 221, 222, 253, 350
Sing Your Worries Away (1942), 219-20
Singer, Leo, 191-2
Six, Harry, 30
Skelly, Hal, 29, 237
Skelton, Red, 211, 220
Skin of Our Teeth, The, 257, 271
Smith, Joe, 22, 37, 357; see also Dale, Charlie;
Smith and Dale 22, 37
Smith, Kate, 117, 120
Smith and Dale, 22, 37
Solomos, Alexis, 296, 297, 298
Song of Norway, The (1944), 227
“Song of the Woodsman,” 162-6
Spellman, Cardinal, 305
Stanwyck, Barbara, 237
Steinberg, Saul, 273
Stokes, W. E. B., 28
Stoll, George, 223
Stravinsky, Igor, 228, 230, 233
Streisand, Barbra, 322
Styne, Jule, 247, 381
Sullivan, Ed, 301, 342-3
Swanson, Gloria, 186
Sweet Bird of Youth (Williams), 268
Tarleton, Richard, 292
Taste of Honey, A, 290
Taubman, Howard, 9
Teahouse of the August Moon, 313
Temple, Mrs., 184
Temple, Shirley, 184, 189
Ten Girls Ago (1962), 223-6
Tetrazzini, Luisa, 97
Thalberg, Irving, 181
“Things,” 139-41
Thomas, John Charles, 141
Thorpe, Dick, 193
Timberg, Herman, 64
Tracy, Spencer, 180, 350
Treasure Girl, 100
Tunney, Gene, 97
Turner, Laura, 333
Tynan, Kenneth 281-2, 341
Tweed, Boss, 220
Two on the Aisle (1951), 46, 247-52, 253, 381
Urban, Joseph, 117
Vallée, Rudy, 124, 125, 126, 134, 170
/>
Van Dyke, Dick, 302
Van Gogh, Vincent, 334
Velez, Lupe, 128-30, 147
Vidor, King, 193
Volpone (Jonson), 311, 312
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 304
Waiting for Godot (Beckett), 7, 141, 253-82, 285, 287, 288, 292, 295, 331
Walker, Mayor Jimmy, 100, 101, 106
Walker, Johnny, 56, 57
Walker, Nancy, 46, 302-4, 384
Ward, Solly, 27, 29
Ward, Stella, 59
Warner Brothers, 110
Watters, George M., 236, 240; see also Burlesque
Watts, Richard, 280
Webb, Clifton, 100, 131-2, 177
Weber and Fields, 29, 41
Welch, Ben, 29
Wells, Billy K., 38-43, 48, 50, 57, 60, 62, 67, 69, 88, 98, 292, 361
West, Mae, 30
West, Nathanael, 193
Weston, Ephie, 80
Wetzel the Tailor, 24
“What’s the Idea?,” 71-5
Wheeler, Bert, 79, 80, 89-90, 111, 346
White, George, 85, 114-20, 123-9, 130-5, 144-5-153-4, 177, 182, 228, 229, 319, 324
Whitehead, Robert, 317
Whiteman, Paul, 125
Whiting, Jack, 100, 108
Wilde, Oscar, 348
Wilder, Thornton, 257, 259, 260, 271
Williams, Tennessee, 268-9, 278
Willman, Noel, 307, 308-9, 310
Wills, Nat, 29
Winchell, Walter, 269, 270-1, 280, 330
Winter’s Tale, The (Shakespeare), 291
Wizard of Oz, The (1939), 141, 189-99, 203, 227, 266, 270, 282, 297, 379-80
Wood, Joe, 36, 38, 49
Wouk, Herman, 173
Wynn, Ed, 29, 101, 106, 125, 185, 206, 227
Ypsilanti Greek Theater Festival, 296-301
Zanuck, Darryl, 184
Zaza (1938), 186-8
Ziegfeld, Florenz, 85, 89, 123, 125, 128-30, 146, 147, 182, 183, 210, 228, 229, 247, 319, 324
Ziegfeld’s Palm Beach
Nights (1926), 81
Ziegfeld Follies, 123, 147
Zimmerman, Heine, 18
Zukor, Adolph, 29
Personal Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK WAS written over a period of six years. In that time I learned that Bert Lahr meant many things to many people, especially his family: Mildred, Herbert, Jane, Mrs. Cele Levine, Georgeanna Motts. They all discussed their recollections generously. Each of them has a special story; this book is just one of them. I am especially grateful to my mother for advancing me money and keeping my father placated in her inimitable fashion when his “editorial suggestions” were not immediately taken up. Herbert Lahr discovered the invaluable film sequence of Lahr and Mercedes’s vaudeville act.
I have been many thousands of miles in search of my father’s past. Traveling the country, discovering old vaudevillians in sad boarding houses, witnessing the spectacle of clipping books brown with age hauled down from closets as carefully as memories—these images linger in the mind as powerfully as the kindness and enthusiasm of nearly everyone with whom I talked.
Mrs. Billy K. Wells has been especially helpful, allowing me to look at her husband’s burlesque notebooks and to reproduce some of his sketches and songs. E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen have been continually encouraging and constructive, answering my many questions and talking with me at length about writing songs for my father.
There were many acquaintances of my father who disregarded my squeaking tape recorder and talked frankly with me. Some—Louis Shurr, Bert Wheeler, Charles Lahrheim, Emmett Callahan, Vinton Freedley—did not live to see the book. But there are still many to be loudly thanked: Sol Abrahams, Steven Aronson, Art and Pepper Arthur, Brooks Atkinson, Mrs. James Barton, Eve Bealey, Herbert Berghof, A. L. Berman, Nick Blair, Larry Blyden, Ray Bolger, Sam Berk, Abe Burrows, James Cagney, Carroll Carroll, Dave Chasen, Judy Cowen, Charlie Dale, Jean Dalrymple, Jack Dawn, Harry Delmar, Anna Delpino, Jeanie Drake, Alvin Epstein, Eddie Foy, Arthur Freed, Gale Garber, Luella Gear, Peter Glenville, Bert Gordon, Max Gordon, Bill Grady, Jack and Flo Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Ray Henderson, Angela Lansbury, Mervyn LeRoy, Beatrice Lillie, Leonard Lyons, Joe E. Marx, William McAffrey, A. J. McLain, Jack McGowan, Frank McHugh, Michael Myerberg, Jack Pearl, S. J. Perelman, Alan Schneider, Lester Shurr, Joe Smith, Noel Willman.
In acquiring original photographs, Richard Avedon has been as devoted to my father’s memory as his pictures are pertinent to his craft. He made his entire collection of negatives of Bert Lahr available to me. Paul Himmel was also kind enough to dig up some of his famous studies of my father. Since the facts of Broadway theater are a labyrinth of misinformation, I was fortunate to have the guidance and help of Robert Kimball, Curator of the Yale Musical Comedy Collection, who not only read the manuscript but also allowed me to see the Cole Porter scrapbooks. Warren Lyons’s chronology of American musicals was invaluable in checking facts; and Paul Myers, Dorothy Swerdlove, Avi Wortis, and the rest of the harassed staff of the theater section of the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts never lost their good humor in answering interminable questions.
This book now seems like a Gothic cathedral, where everyone has had a hand in building it. Al Burt of the Miami Herald was the first to respond to my writing and suggested the idea for this book. Richard Solomon, then Assistant Professor of English at Yale University, read the first attempts and made helpful suggestions for future revisions. A great deal of care has gone into publishing this book. Phoebe Larmore and John Cushman have gone beyond the responsibilities of dutiful agents in their loyalty and incisive counseling. And many people at Alfred A. Knopf are also responsible: William A. Koshland, who encouraged me and asked the right questions about comedy; Suzi Arensberg, the Babe Ruth of copy editors, who nipped my ellipses in the bud, not to mention my misspellings; Janet Reder, who endured the retyping and my pestering with aplomb; and especially Michael Magzis, my editor, whose blue pencil is much more accurate than his jump shot.
Finally, what I owe to my wife, Anthea, is beyond words. She was there through it all—badgering, snooping, editing, criticizing, typing, indexing, making me laugh at myself until it was all over.
J. L.
New York
May 1969
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Acknowledgment is gratefully extended to the following for permission to reprint from copyrighted material:
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: In Search of Theatre, by Eric Bentley. Copyright 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953 by Eric Bentley.
The Confessions of Felix Krull, by Thomas Mann.Copyright © 1955 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Atheneum Publishers: Curtains, by Kenneth Tynan. Copyright © 1961 by Kenneth Tynan.
“Baseball Sketch,” by Abe Burrows, is reprinted by permission of the author from Two on the Aisle, a revue by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule styne. Directed by Abe Burrows.
Chandler Publishing Company: Comedy: Meaning and Form, by Robert W. Corrigan. Chappell & Co., Inc. Copyright renewed.
“Dainty, Quainty, Me,” copyright © 1967 by John F. Wharton as Trustee of the Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trust.
An excerpt from an interview with Alan Schneider in Chelsea Review, Autumn, 1958, is reprinted by permission of Alan Schneider.
Leo Feist Inc.: “If I Were King of the Forest,” from the M-G-M motion picture The Wizard of Oz—lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, music by Harold Arlen. Copyright 1938 (renewed) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Copyright ©
1968 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Rights throughout the world controlled by Leo Feist Inc. Used by permission.
Grove Press, Inc.: Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in Two Acts, by Samuel Beckett. Translated from the original French text by the author. Copyright © 1954 by Grove Press.
Embers: A Play fro Radio, from Krapp’s Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces, by Samuel Beckett. Copyright © 1957 by Samuel Beckett.Copyright © 1958, 1959, 1960 by Grove Press, Inc.
Proust, by Samuel Beckett. All rights reserved.
“Hostility,” a sketch by Arnold B. Horwitt and Aaron Ruben, is reprinted by permission from the Broadway revue The Girls Against the Boys, 1959. Directed by Aaron Ruben.
The Macmillan Company: introduction by Brooks Atkinson to The American Musical Theatre, by Lehman Engel.
Random House, Inc.: Actors Talk About Acting, by Lewis Funke and John E. Booth. Copyright © 1961 by Lewis Funke and John E. Booth.
Simon & Schuster, Inc.: The Beauty Part, by S. J. Perelman. Copyright © 1961 by S. J. Perelman.
Warner Bros.—Seven Arts Music: “Quartet Erotica” (Harburg-Gershwin-Arlen) is used by permission of New World Music Corp. © 1969 by New World Music Corp. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
“Things” (Harburg-Gershwin-Arlen) is used by permission of New World Music Corp. © 1969 by New World Music Corp. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
Thanks are also due to Joan Blondell, Benedict Freedman, E. Y. Harburg, Ray Henderson, Herbert Lahr, Jack McGowan, Johnny Mercer, David Merrick, Michael Myerberg, Joe Smith, and Mrs. Billy K. Wells for graciously allowing me to draw upon private correspondence and other material belonging to them.
Copyright © 1969 by John Lahr
cover design by Mauricio Diaz
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