Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters (45 page)

    
I have been lost behind a pad for the past several weeks and only just heard about Felicia and what she has been enduring.

        
What can I do other than say that I am thinking of you and her—with love and sympathy—and with impotent rage at the frivolous cruelty of whoever is up there.

Always,

Alan

    
He also started to pursue
The Little Prince
once more, this time from the point of view of publishing the songs in a readily available form. Some of them had been published individually at the time of the film’s release but were now practically unobtainable. Lerner had always considered the score to be among his and Loewe’s finest, yet little had been done to exploit it after the failure of the movie, so in this letter to his friend Charles Bluhdorn, chairman of the conglomerate that owned Paramount, he makes the first steps toward a possible songbook:

    
To Charles Bluhdorn

    
May 31, 1978

    
Dear Charlie,

    
I was so upset—as I know you were—about Stanley Donen’s butchering of the script and score of
The Little Prince
, but it undoubtedly meant a great deal more to me because I know it was Fritz’s last score.

        
I would love to try to do something with that score and I was wondering if there were any way I could acquire, by some arrangement, the publishing right from Paramount Music. At the moment the score just lies there fallow, of no use to anyone.

        
I am well aware that this sort of thing is undoubtedly handled by someone in a less exalted position than you, old friend, and I would be grateful if you would tell him to call me or tell me who he is so I can call him.

        
Comment va la famille? Bien, j’espere. I see your driver from time to time who tells me you are well and who always promises to send you my warmest regards. I hope he does. If he forgot,

Warmest regards,

Alan Jay Lerner

    
In the fall,
The Street Where I Live
was released to generally enthusiastic reviews, and Lerner publicized it internationally. For instance, he gave an interview in the UK-based
Guardian
in September in which he talked about his early ambitions to be a composer, his study of French and Italian literature at Harvard,
and his love of writing poetry, topics that were not usually the focus of his discussions with journalists. He also contrasted Loewe’s musical style with that of Gershwin, and explained how he loved Loewe’s “chanson style which is marvelous for writing lyrics.”
³⁰
Mel Gussow’s review of the book in the
New York Times
stated, “In a time when gossip can masquerade as literature, what a pleasure it is to encounter in print such an urbane and intelligent writer as Alan Jay Lerner.…Mr. Lerner is gentlemanly, demanding on himself and hopelessly in love with the theater.”
³¹

    
The nostalgia involved in revisiting the creation of his three great hits set the tone for various of Lerner’s activities in the immediate future. The book brought him widespread acclaim, and the collaboration with Lane marked the continuation of a partnership that had started 40 years earlier with
Royal Wedding
. Columnist John Corry remarked: “The big Broadway musical frequently has been pronounced dead, and the talent that could put one together frequently has been thought to be off doing other things. Now there is ‘Carmelina,’ which will employ virtually all the talent you have ever heard of at work on a big Broadway musical, and which will open in New York at the end of March. It will have music by Burton Lane, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and a book by Mr. Lerner and Joe Stein.
³²
It will also have Peter Gennaro
³³
as choreographer, Oliver Smith as set designer and Donald Brooks
³⁴
as costume designer. If you do not know what these people have done in the theater, then you simply have not been paying attention. If you do not know what the director has done, you haven’t been paying attention at all. The director will be José Ferrer.”
³⁵
Plainly, Lerner had put behind him the disappointments of
Lolita
and
1600
and had joined forces with some of the greatest names in musical theater for
Carmelina
. The only marked difference with the project was the presence of a co-librettist (Joseph Stein, the award-winning book writer of
Fiddler on the Roof
). Having been criticized in recent times for his scriptwriting, Lerner was manifestly trying to make a difference here.

    
The next letter was probably Lerner’s last of 1978. He had been asked to name his ten favorite living song writers for a book project and came up with the following list, which contains a preponderance of Broadway names (of these, he had worked with Bernstein, Lane, and Rodgers, and had discussed working with Bacharach and Styne) mixed with a couple of more contemporary figures:

    
To Carol Orsag, Managing Editor, The Book of Lists

    
December 26, 1978

    
Dear Ms. Orsag,

    
In answer to your letter about the Ten Best Modern Songwriters, I must assume that you mean the Ten Best Songwriters alive and writing. On that list, in alphabetical order, my choice would be:

        
1) Burt Bacharach

        
2) Leonard Bernstein

        
3) &

        
4) Kander & Ebb

        
5) Burton Lane

        
6) Richard Rodgers

        
7) Paul Simon

        
8) Stephen Sondheim

        
9) Jule Styne

        
10) Jimmy Webb

Sincerely,

Alan Jay Lerner

    
The New Year brought with it the excitement of the rehearsals for
Carmelina
. These started in the third week of January, and by now operatic bass Cesare Siepi
³⁶
and Georgia Brown
³⁷
(the original Nancy in
Oliver!
) had been cast in the lead roles, adding two more distinguished names to the lineup. Lerner wrote briefly to his friend, novelist Herman Wouk, to inform him that he would be in Washington in March. In spite of some typically self-derisory comments, he seemed quietly confident about the new show’s chances of success:

    
To Herman Wouk

    
January 31, 1979

    
Dear Herm,

    
I’m in the middle of rehearsal of a new musical (I must be out of my mind) so forgive me if this is brief.

        
1) Your book is terrific.

        
2) The musical, called
Carmelina
, is opening at the Kennedy Center on March 6th, so I will be in Washington all month unless chased out.

        
3) I have thought about “Marjorie”
³⁸
many, many times over the years. Let’s talk about it when I am there.

        
4) I miss you and it was good to receive your letter. All I usually hear from my old friends these days is thump, thump, thump.

        
I am not aging gracefully. I have lost a good deal of my charm but I am still very nice.

        
Can’t wait to see you.

Faithfully,

Alan

    
But like
1600, Carmelina
was to have problems with its tone, book, and structure that would make the tryouts problematic. In anticipation of the March 21 opening in Washington, Lerner, Lane, Ferrer, and Stein gave a joint interview that attempted to paper over the problems. The show was destined to flop, but the interview contained some interesting comments from Lerner about the process of putting the show on the stage:

    
I had been in Italy the summer before, three summers ago. I was in Capri, sitting on a rock and toasting and having a little vino and I thought, “My heavens, why don’t I ever have this feeling in the theater any more?” Just ease and gentleness and charm and joy. When Burton mentioned “Lovers and Other Strangers” [a film that Lane had proposed for musical adaptation], the memory of that feeling bubbled to the surface again, and we settled on the subject that eventually became “Carmelina.” The plot is a true story I had read in The London Times many years ago. We discovered a film had been made of it, “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” which concentrated on the man, not
the woman. Burton and I saw it together, and we both felt it should be about a woman who lives a lie for 16 or 17 years. In those little Italian villages, the widows are sort of the “duennas,” and that’s what was fascinating. This woman was the most respected lady in the community, but she was the widow of a man she made up.…We saw a play about a lovely Italian village, not three Americans. The woman has been living a lie like in a Goldoni play. It’s a love story, too, because she has a lover, and she cannot say anything about it because she lives this chaste life as a widow. …

        
I spent a lot of my youth in Italy. My mother lived in Venice. I had gone to Italy many, many times, so life in a little Italian community is not unknown to me. …

        
[The music] has to have a little larger-than-life quality, like a Neapolitan street song. With the book and lyrics, too, the whole idea is not to write it so it requires an Italian accent, but to write it in that special cadence that Italian in English has…If it needs an Italian accent, it’s written badly. …

        
I first saw Siepi at the Met about 16 years ago in “Don Giovanni.” I went every time he did it. I was so enamored of him I asked him to lunch and said, “If I ever have an idea for a musical, would you consider it?” He said, “Do I have to sing every night?” I said, “Yes, you have to sing every night.” Time went by. One day my secretary mentioned him and I said “Oh my gosh.” He happened to be passing through New York, so we made an appointment and as he walked in he said, “Well, it took you quite a while to think of an idea, didn’t it?”
³⁹

    
The Washington reviews of the show were tepid (“
Carmelina
makes
Sarava
⁴⁰
look good,” smirked Kevin Kelly in the
Boston Globe
),
⁴¹
but the Broadway premiere was fixed for April 8 and the production moved ahead as planned. Nervously, Lerner wrote to thank producer Stevens in advance of the opening, acknowledging his support on a second consecutive stressful project:

    
To Roger Stevens

    
April 6, 1979

    
Dear Roger,

    
My affection for you runs so deep that the words could not come harder—even if it were a lyric. As far as this show is concerned, had it not been for your kindness and fairness I think we would have gone from the Kennedy Center to Menningers.
⁴²

        
So once again, I thank you. I hope your faith in
Carmelina
will be rewarded. God knows, you deserve it.

Much love to you and Christine,

Alan

Speaking to the
New York Times
a week before opening, Lerner confessed that he had, as usual, been agonizing over the lyrics of the show: “Yesterday I went all day on two lines.…I started at 6 a.m. and finished at 2 p.m. I won’t tell you what the lines were. You’d think, ‘How could that take so much time?’ All right, I’ll tell you: ‘Why does he make my feathers fly / and get my dander up so high?’ I was trying to find more lyrical ways of saying, ‘Why does he irritate me so?’” He also commented on the opening scene and on the show’s overall approach: “You have to tell the audience on what level it’s going to be thinking and feeling that night.…‘Carmelina’ uses the artifices of the
commedia dell’arte
. It’s a romantic farce. I want to make the style clear”
⁴³
.

    
When the show opened on Broadway, it was to mixed reviews. But they were by no means as condemnatory as those for
1600
had been. Indeed, Clive Barnes in the
New York Post
said that “Lerner’s lyrics twist in the sunlight of his invention—fantastic. Nowadays, only Stephen Sondheim has this gorgeous gift for lyric language.” But he, and all the reviewers, had to admit that the show was professional yet old-fashioned. On a Broadway scene that was currently reveling in musicals like
Sweeney Todd
and the open-ended run of
A Chorus Line
, there was no place for
Carmelina
and it closed after a couple of weeks. Lerner summed up the situation simply to Irving Berlin in this short note:

    
To Irving Berlin