by Ted Chapin
In the middle of the week, two dancers who could pass for an older ballroom couple were chosen from a last-minute audition. For some reason, signing them to a contract took a lot of doing, so they were on again one minute, off again the next. I suspected it was the budget. By the end of the week, Jayne Turner and Don Weismuller joined the company. Another woman was also hired as a swing dancer. She stood four feet ten inches tall in her fraying pink high-heeled dance shoes, cascades of obviously dyed red hair falling down over her character’s face, and had a name Michael couldn’t resist—Sonja Levkova. The next morning she was hard at work with Mary Jane Houdina, learning the tap steps to “Who’s That Woman?”
My gofer errands multiplied. For script and lyric changes and revisions, I would type pages on a red IBM electric typewriter set up on an old desk in the front hall of the Lab. I would use carbon sets and keep copy number four (of ten) for a running and up-to-date copy of the script, which I would hold on to in case I had to make subsequent copies. If I was going up to the Rockefeller Center office, I would bring new pages to Xerox. But I wouldn’t always have access to the machine, since the office’s world was more than just Follies. The touring production of Company, for example, was being cast, which meant that notes from Joanna Merlin to Hal had to be brought down to rehearsal for his responses, which I would then communicate uptown. Bills would be brought down for Ruthie’s okay. Petty cash was needed at rehearsal, and contracts signed downtown needed to be brought to the office for the files. I would be sent on occasional shopping excursions, like buying five umbrellas for the Prologue when the decision was made that the show would take place on a rainy night. And, yes, I made endless runs for coffee, tea, sandwiches, and oddball food requests—say, for Hal’s lunch, two hard-boiled eggs, a pickle, and soup. The music department also kept me pretty busy, fetching and delivering.
When Steve Sondheim finished writing a song, he would play it for Hal, Michael, and Jim. If everyone approved, he would then turn in his manuscript. This would consist of a vocal line, lyrics under, and two accompaniment lines playable on piano. While some Broadway composers’ manuscripts are sketchy, Steve’s are clean, precise, and full, with musician’s shorthand used to save time. The next person to get it would be Mathilde Pincus, the music copyist, whose task was to write out a clean copy of the song in a legible and reproducible fashion. She used a flat pen with black ink and wrote on 11” × 14” sheets of opaque paper called deschon, which had the musical staff lines printed in reverse on one side. Writing with ink on the other side allowed for errors to be erased without affecting the staff lines. This sheet was then placed on top of a piece of specially treated paper and run through an elaborate machine that reeked of ammonia. The treated paper could accommodate four pages of deschon at a time, and out would come a perfectly clear and readable copy of the song that looked almost like printed music, with the notes and staff lines equal in value, although done by hand. The three pages would then be folded, accordion-style, and taped together so the song was ready for the rehearsal room. These were the copies that were distributed to the rehearsal pianists and cast on the first day of rehearsal.
Once the keys were set (depending mostly on the actor’s vocal range) and the routining established (dance arrangements, how many times through, etc.), the song was then handed over to Jonathan Tunick, the orchestrator. His task was to apportion the music among the specific instruments chosen for the orchestra to give the musical impression desired by the composer. The size and makeup of the orchestra is a group decision, influenced primarily by the composer and the producer, the composer with artistic concerns and the producer with budgetary ones. (Theaters on Broadway also have union-determined minimum numbers of players that vary with the seating capacity of the theater.) The orchestrator also has to take the dance arrangements and blend them with the songs and any underscoring to create a score that flows together as one piece. He then creates the full orchestral score on a long piece of paper with a musical staff line for each instrument, starting with the woodwinds at the top, going through the brass, percussion, and ending with the strings on the bottom. Each page of full score usually contains only four bars of music, so one song can take up to twenty pages or so, and a long dance routine can fill many more. Once the score is completed, it goes to the copyist, whose next job is to extract parts for each instrument—the flute part, for example, is created by taking the line at the top of each page. When that job is finished, each player in the orchestra will have only his part, although the conductor will have the full score in front of him so he can see what everyone is playing. And this process goes for every piece of music in a show. In the case of Follies, there would end up being twenty-three songs and a Prologue. And, of course, every new song had to be taken through the entire process; there is no way to circumvent any of the steps if a musical is to be accompanied by an orchestra of any size. The Follies orchestra would have twenty-eight players. Each step takes time, a lot of effort, and money.
Bob Avian, Larry Cohen, Michael Bennett, Hal Hastings—in front of the mirrors
at the American Theater Lab, watching the showgirls run through “Loveland.”
My tasks were mainly to ferry different pieces of this score-in-progress around the city. Steve would usually bring the new song down to rehearsal, and he would tend to give his manuscript directly to Mathilde. But sometimes he would be working at home and word would come that a song was finished, so I would be sent over to his house in Turtle Bay to pick it up and take it to Mathilde. When she was finished with the piano/vocal, I would bring copies down to rehearsal, and once everyone had decided on the key, I would take a copy to Jonathan Tunick’s apartment on the Upper West Side. When he was finished with a score, I would pick it up and take it to Mathilde for the extraction of instrumental parts. Every day included some element of this circuit.
By Thursday, the end of the first week of full rehearsal, the logistics were changing subtly. More and more of what Michael was doing needed the large rehearsal room, as numbers were being put together with the full company. That put a squeeze on Hal, who was eager to put pieces together and have a run-through to see what they had. Michael, in addition to overseeing the ladies learning “Who’s That Woman?” was working his way through the Prologue and starting “Beautiful Girls,” both of which depended on the set for much of the movement. In addition, although solos would be worked on in the smaller room, it became more important to bring them into the large room to get a sense of the space. On Thursday, Hal was able to run scenes from the beginning up to and beyond “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs.” At the end of the day, Ethel Shutta came into the large room and ran through “Broadway Baby” for the first time “in public.” It was great. “That girl is precious,” said Hal Hastings.
Friday was the day off.
3 “Girls Looking Frazzled and Girls Looking Great”
REHEARSALS CONTINUE AT THE REHEARSAL STUDIO,
JANUARY 16–29
Hal came bounding in late on Saturday morning and announced: “One hour is all I’m allotted today, so I want to do the scene following ‘Waiting for the Girls Upstairs,’ and I’ve got a new idea.” The idea was to change two of the waiters to photographers. “I had the idea in bed last night. I began thinking that I hated what I had done, and there was no one from the production to talk to.” He began by telling the photographers to shoot indiscriminately. He then found places where some characters could be posed, and he put several of the older women on one side of the stage against one of the units. Ethel Barrymore Colt posed perfectly, her hand held at a discreet position away from her body, middle finger ever so slightly lowered. “I want everyone to examine that hand,” Hal noted. Mary McCarty laughed heartily, and he said, “Try not to knock it, Mary. Achieve it.” He realized he could use the photographers to help sweep focus from one part of the party to another, like a cinematic cross-fade. So he had both photographers stand in front of the Whitmans, take one shot, then part to the sides, revealing the couple for
“Rain on the Roof.” It looked like a nice way to get into the song.
He was longing to see sequences put together. He wanted to run the beginning of the show and continue through Ben and Sally’s song “Don’t Look at Me” and Ben’s song “The Road You Didn’t Take.” On Sunday he was able to muster the opening monologues, and then the book scenes, including “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs.” He also integrated Sally’s “In Buddy’s Eyes” and Ben’s “The Road You Didn’t Take” for the first time. Dorothy did fine, John muffed several lyrics, but they both got a nice round of applause from everyone in attendance.
Monday brought the first attempt at staging “Beautiful Girls.” The music had been learned, sort of, but this was the first go at getting it on its feet. Although Roscoe had the solo part of the song, it involved all the old gals. Hal Hastings assembled everyone in the middle of the room to sing through the song once. Michael Bartlett was very nervous, having to perform in front of everyone, sang in half-voice, missed most of his lyrics, and didn’t attempt the high note at the end. But it sounded pretty good. The room was turned over to Michael Bennett, who began with Roscoe. In an early script he was described as “an aged tenor in white tie and tails [who] appears high on a stairway, strikes a magnificent pose, opens his mouth and, in a glorious tenor voice, sings.” It didn’t look as if Michael Bartlett was going to strike a magnificent pose high up anywhere; just getting him onstage and in a downstage position looked as if it was going to take a lot of hard work. The women could strike their poses just fine, but getting them to where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there, was a challenge. Michael began to stage a true Miss America-style entrance for each woman: presentation, walk down the stage left stairs, and promenade. It was slow going, especially since there were more steps on the actual set than there were on the mock-ups in the studio, and that took some explaining. But he was patient. Later in the day, the rest of the party guests and waiters, who had spent the morning learning the song, came in. After one musical pass-through, Hal Hastings stopped and said, “Kids, you’ve forgotten everything we were doing in the other room. I am trying to get every note. It can’t be slop time, it’s got to be crisp. If you will attack each note, it will sound full of energy. Please don’t get jazzy on me and don’t hoax it up. Don’t do me any favors. Don’t let it get marshmallowy.” He asked for a chord at the very end: “You can sing any note you want on the final beat as long it’s either a C, an E, or a G, because I want the major triad, and ladies who can hit the high C, please do.” The day was getting late, but everyone stumbled through it one last time. “Maybe it was real, what was beginning to happen, but it was also getting to be boring,” Michael said. He realized that he had to make certain the transition into the next scene was correct and that all the actors finished the song in the positions Hal had assigned them for the party scene that followed. His solution was to have a brief encore, with Roscoe turning around like a majordomo, taking charge so everybody could move gracefully to where he needed to be.
Before breaking for the day, Michael brought in all the dancers to go through as much of the Prologue as he had finished. It looked quite marvelous.
Hal Hastings, as administrative head of the music department, was kept busy on all levels. Aside from teaching and coaching the songs, he had to find players for the onstage band. Because the players would be both visible and audible, he needed musicians who would also be believable as a band hired for a party. He was having a harder time than he thought he would, having auditioned and interviewed several candidates, all of whom had been found wanting. He had found a trumpeter in Taft Jordan, whose playing was deemed acceptable. There was a logistical problem with the onstage band since Boris, when he designed the platform, hadn’t taken into consideration the proper size of a piano. The space was large enough for a small spinet, which is the size of piano used in Cabaret. But this time the piano needed to be full-size upright, so someone made a paper template and the stage managers moved it around the mock-up platform to see if a solution could be found. Since the set was already in the shop, no one wanted any structural changes. As it happens, a slight adjustment could be made relatively easily. Also, in the script Carlotta’s escort was supposed to be a piano virtuoso, so they tried to find a position that allowed an actor to take over the piano. Unfortunately, that proved to be unworkable, so before too long, Randy, the escort, became just an escort. The actor didn’t know how to play the piano, anyway.
The Follies family was starting to find its character. The social ones lingered in the common hall chatting with anyone who wandered by. Dorothy Collins was warm and chatty—at one point so chatty that Ruthie said, “Save your voice!” Gene Nelson was in perpetual motion, always interested in any conversation about Hollywood. Alexis Smith never lingered long, but sometimes paused for a quip. Seeing an article about the show pinned to a bulletin board in which she was referred to as “tall and striking,” she remarked: “I wish I could someday play someone short and fat.” Yvonne enjoyed talking and giggling—anything but going over her tap steps or working on her solo song “Can That Boy Fox Trot!” Justine Johnston rarely took her eyes off the clock—either the one on the wall or the one hanging around her neck. She was a one-woman union police force.
A new observer joined the ranks. His name was Larry Cohen, and he seemed to be very chatty with Hal, Steve, and Michael. He was the legitimate theater critic for the Hollywood Reporter who was following the rehearsals of Follies with the idea of writing a book about the process of putting on a musical. There had been a comparable person following The Rothschilds, the last show for which I had gofered, and since I had never spoken with him, I decided to sit tight and ignore this guy, too. (That book did come out: The Producer, by Christopher Davis, all about Hillard Elkins.) But Larry was involved in some interesting conversations, and he seemed bright and well informed, so I started talking with him. We had very similar points of view about the state of the theater and the movies, we were both fans of the musical theater, and we had both figured that if anything in the musical theater was going to be exciting this season, it was Follies.
Michael took over the large room to continue his painstaking way through the Prologue. Each time he worked on it, he added more people, having begun with the dancers as ghost figures, then added party guests, and, finally, the principals. The aim was to integrate the monologues Hal had been working on and segue neatly into “Beautiful Girls.” When he got to Justine Johnston’s Heidi Schiller, after spending some time trying to figure out how to maneuver her wheelchair on, he remarked, “Heidi, I think you’re going to be on a cane very shortly.” On Sunday Michael attempted to put all the elements together for the first time. He gathered the whole company and sat them down. “We must get across to the audience what this evening means to each and every character we see enter. We must realize that as each person enters, he or she has had some business with this place in the past which has really ended. That is partly what this show is about. We must also establish the fact that time as we know it has no relationship to this evening. The show is really about time and what it does to people, so we must establish that we are going to stop it at will, turn it back and twist it around whenever we so desire. I realize that crossing on a count of eight can be tricky, but I want everyone to become so well drilled that it never looks like anyone is counting. In order to make sense of the whole show, I need everyone to pay close attention to their counts and where they are supposed to be going.” Then, slowly, he began to put it all together.
Steve Sondheim came by rehearsals on Sunday in a relaxed mood. He asked me how I thought things were going. It was a tough one to answer, because I didn’t know. The atmosphere was so charged—personalities emerging, work at such varying stages of development—that I couldn’t figure out how things were in relation to the whole. I told him I really couldn’t tell this early, but that some of what I had seen looked pretty good. We talked about the company; he was worried that there might be frictio
n between the generations. From my vantage point, I told him, it looked like the opposite, that there seemed to be friendly and collegial support between the two groups, along with respect. He said he preferred to stay away for another week or so before coming to rehearsals with any regularity.
This was Sunday, a week and a day since we had begun. As far as any of us knew, Sondheim still had at least five songs to write: one song for the Young Four in Loveland (“Love Will See Us Through”), Buddy’s character song (“The Right Girl”) and Follies song (“The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues”), Ben’s Follies song (“Live, Laugh, Love”), and a bolero for Vincent and Vanessa. It was unclear what Phyllis and Sally would sing in the Follies sequence, since both “Losing My Mind” and “The World’s Full of Boys” were still being discussed. Despite not knowing where he was in the creation of those songs, he did seem to be in an expansive mood.
