Looking Back: '69-'70
Stephen McKinley Henderson Drowning Crow, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, King Hedley II, Jitney has replaced Hinton Battle as Van Helsing in the Broadway Dracula.
I hear that Hank Azaria, Tim Curry, and David Hyde Pierce have been offered roles in the upcoming Spamalot.
Debra Monk will appear in the Second Stage Theatre/Manhattan Theatre Club production of Craig Lucas's Reckless starring Mary-Louise Parker at the Biltmore this autumn. Monk appeared in Lucas's Prelude to a Kiss with Parker.
___________________________________________________
It's been some time since I've examined a past Broadway season. So today I thought I'd journey back thirty-five seasons, to 1969-1970. It began with the final production of the short-lived Music Theatre of Lincoln Center, which had already presented original stars returning to their roles in Annie Get Your Gun, Carousel, and Kismet. The company's last production was a June '69 Oklahoma!, distinguished by its Curly, the rugged baritone Bruce Yarnell, and the Aunt Eller of Margaret Hamilton, who had previously played Show Boat's Parthy for the company.
June also brought the opening of the season's first play, and if you think nothing could top the disaster Jackie Mason had with his recent Laughing Room Only, his A Teaspoon Every Four Hours came close. This was not a solo stand-up performance but instead a light comedy in which Mason attempted to act a role his character's name was "Nat Weiss". Mason was also the co-author of Teaspoon. What made the show notorious was its refusal to open. The June premiere came only after a record ninety-seven previews. And guess what? Teaspoon closed after one performance. Talented folk like Marilyn Cooper and Bernie West were trapped in Mason's vehicle, albeit not for long.
October saw the arrival of two serious dramas by major writers, both first performed in London. John Osborne's A Patriot for Me featured an enormous cast, headed by film star Maximilian Schell and marking the return of operetta star-of-yore Dennis King. Set in Europe around the turn of the century, it was about a military man who was a closeted homosexual. But this Patriot turned out not to be for most, folding after six weeks. Arthur Kopit's Indians was an intriguing conceptual piece that returned to the Broadway stage Annie Get Your Gun's Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull. Stacy Keach, Sam Waterston, Tom Aldredge, and Charles Durning were in it, but it too had a disappointing run. A family comedy-drama called The Penny Wars was a quick flop presented by David Merrick, but it was notable for the directorial debut of Barbara Harris, whose career as a Broadway musical star On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, The Apple Tree was already over.
October also brought two bright revivals. Three Men on a Horse returned with original star Sam Levene opposite Jack Gilford, Dorothy Loudon, Hal Linden, Paul Ford, and Butterfly McQueen. The entertaining production was directed by co-author George Abbott. I had previously seen Levene in the routine musical version of the play, called Let It Ride!. A bigger success was the Hecht-MacArthur The Front Page, with a colorful cast headed by Robert Ryan, Peggy Cass, Dody Goodman, and Helen Hayes, the latter replaced by Molly Picon and Maureen O'Sullivan.
The Front Page was imported from summer stock, as was the fall's surprise hit, Butterflies Are Free, with a droll Eileen Heckart and a discovery in irresistible and Tony winning Blythe Danner. I had recently seen newcomer Danner at the Tappan Zee Playhouse, in a summer-stock package of The Killing of Sister George with June Havoc. I returned to Butterflies Are Free in subsequent seasons to see in Heckart's role a classy Rosemary Murphy and a glamorous but not very effective Gloria Swanson.
Before October was over, the season had the first of its many high-profile musical flops, Jimmy, about New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, and boasting a classy turn by Julie Wilson as Jimmy's estranged wife. Twenty years later, Wilson would return to the same '20s setting in another bomb, Legs Diamond. Frank Gorshin was unable to make anything dynamic of the title character, although he was at least better than he would be, years later, in a national tour of On the Twentieth Century.
Two grand revivals followed. Henry Fonda, Mildred Natwick, Ed Begley, and Margaret Hamilton headed a lovely Our Town, superior in all respects to Broadway's most recent version. And Tammy Grimes and Brian Bedford co-starred in a choice Private Lives. Grimes won a Tony for it, just as Lindsay Duncan did in the same role two years ago. In addition to Grimes and Duncan, I've also seen the Amandas of Elaine Stritch, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Collins, but my favorite remains Maggie Smith.
More musical disasters arrived in the form of the wildly ill-advised Buck White, an inflation of an off-Broadway drama into, quite unbelievably, a vehicle for Muhammad Ali a.k.a. Cassius Clay, and the one-nighter La Strada, with Bernadette Peters, in her Broadway-flop period, providing an enchanting performance.
Then came the season's first big deal, Coco. I ran to an early preview, unable to imagine how a musical could be made of the story of the later years of dress designer Coco Channel. Katharine Hepburn struggled valiantly, but the show was as yet uncomfortable and unready. Returning to the critically reviled production near the end of the season, one found a much improved show that was playing surprisingly well, with Hepburn, in grand form, winning hand after hand for her comic retorts. Michael Bennett's musical staging was lovely, the score felt right, and audiences were having a great time. As panned musicals go, Coco was among the most entertaining. Hepburn, who never missed a performance, saw to it that Coco made a profit by taking the show out on tour.
With Promises, Promises and Plaza Suite still going strong, Neil Simon remained at the top of his game with Last of the Red Hot Lovers. If one were to read the script, it might very well seem thin. And don't go by the disastrous film version. But Robert Moore's direction and a perfect cast made Red Hot Lovers sparkle. James Coco carried the evening, and I've never seen Linda Lavin, Marcia Rodd, or Doris Roberts better. I returned to catch replacements Dom DeLuise, Rita Moreno, and Barbara Sharma, who were not as good.
February's musical flops were the ghastly Gantry with Moreno and the pleasant but unnecessary Georgy, based on the hit film Georgy Girl. In between, there was David Merrick's thriller Child's Play, set at a school for boys. It won Tonys for two of its stars, Fritz Weaver and Ken Howard, and for its director, a then-hot Joseph Hardy. The sort of commercial melodrama Broadway no longer bothers with, Child's Play was a hit that would, in later years, be forgotten.
February also saw the mediocre comedy Norman, Is That You?, about parents adjusting to their son's gay lifestyle, and greatly helped by the work of Lou Jacobi and Maureen Stapleton. Stapleton didn't appear until late in the evening, and only took the small role because she was dating the show's director, George Abbott. I loved the big February revival, a hot-ticket, limited-run Harvey with James Stewart repeating his film role and Helen Hayes.
Broadway finally came up with a reasonably well-received musical in Purlie, based on the Broadway comedy Purlie Victorious and with adorable Melba Moore stealing the show. The next night brought in one of the season's curiosities, a double bill of one-acts, Grin and Bare It! preceded by Postcards. Few paid much attention to the curtain raiser, and that's because the second piece, Grin and Bare It, featured, as the title hinted, more outright nudity than just about any Broadway play to date. The reviews saw to it that Grin and Bare It would vanish in two weeks. But the previews were well attended.
March ended with the season's biggest musical hit, but not before the month brought in three more musical flops. There was the curious Blood Red Roses, which dealt with the Crimean War. There was Jule Styne and Josh Logan's Look to the Lilies, another unnecessary stage adaptation of a film, in this case Lilies of the Field, set to a pleasant but undistinguished score and featuring a typically warm and stellar performance by Shirley Booth. And there was Minnie's Boys, about the early days of the Marx Brothers and a vehicle for Shelley Winters, who played their mother. The majority of the season's musicals played New York previews rather than out-of-town tryouts. In the case of Minnie's Boys, an inexperienced creative team made radical alterations throughout a month of previews that were not always to the show's advantage. But as flops go, Minnie's Boys was quite pleasant, with a bouncy score by Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady.
The hit was, of course, Applause, a show I did not care for on a first viewing but grudgingly enjoyed on repeat visits. Lauren Bacall made a huge splash, one that deprived her friend Katharine Hepburn of a Tony for Coco. Two days before the opening of Applause, the seaon's second-biggest musical-theatre event happened when Ethel Merman took over from Phyllis Diller in Hello, Dolly! Still in peak form, Merman remained to close the show at year's end.
In between Look to the Lilies and Applause, there was Borstal Boy, an overrated, now forgotten piece that won the 1970 Tony as Best Play. Celeste Holm was only fair in an unwanted revival of Shaw's Candida that lasted a week. And April brought in a couple more musical disasters, including the intriguing Cry for Us All, based on William Alfred's blank-verse tragedy set in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn; the completely forgettable, four-actor Park, another Julie Wilson bomb; and a moderately entertaining revival of The Boy Friend, starring "Laugh-In"'s Judy Carne but purloined by dancer Sandy Duncan.
I quite enjoyed such Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center productions as Saroyan's The Time of Your Life with James Broderick father of Matthew; the semi-musical Beggar on Horseback with Leonard Frey and Susan Watson; and Tennessee Williams' bizarre Camino Real, with a knockout cast that included Al Pacino, Jessica Tandy, Philip Bosco, and Jean-Pierre Aumont.
And what was the season's best musical event? Company, of course, which opened in late April and therefore qualified for Tonys in the following season. I first saw Company at the gypsy run-through at the Alvin, just before the show went to Boston. I found it completely electrifying, one of the few times in my experience that one felt one was seeing something genuinely groundbreaking. After improvements, Company seemed even sharper at a Broadway preview. I paid $2.00 to sit at the top of the balcony on opening night, and I can still recall how thrilled I was at how well everything played. I was not happy about the mixed-to-negative reviews Company received from two New York Times critics. Fortunately, though, there were more than enough critics who realized that Company was special. I was delighted that one of my favorites, Elaine Stritch, had finally found a first-class musical. And the '69-'70 season couldn't have had a more exciting conclusion.
________________________________________________
For upcoming Q & A columns, please send questions by clicking on the byline above kenmanbway@aol.com
