Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters (49 page)

    
58
Liz Robertson (1954–) is a British actress whose many credits include
I Love My Wife, Song and Dance, The Music Man
, and
The Phantom of the Opera
in London.

    
59
William Borders, “A New Fair Lady Delights London Theatregoers,”
New York Times
, November 26, 1979, C15
.

Lerner’s critics and biographers often focus on a perceived European aesthetic in his writing, and he regularly visited the Continent on holiday, as well as having been educated at Bedales School in England. Many of his musicals are set in Europe, including
Brigadoon, An American in Paris, My Fair Lady, Gigi, Camelot, On a Clear Day
(in part),
Coco
, and
Carmelina
, and several of his collaborators were of European descent or training. His life therefore came full circle with his move to London in the 1980s. It became his main home during his work on most of his remaining theater, film, television, and book projects. Lerner’s sudden death in 1986 cut short a career that was still full of promise: he left incomplete a musical version of
My Man Godfrey
, a film version of
The Merry Widow
, and a television series about the history of musical theater. He was also supposed to write the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
¹
The Phantom of the Opera
, until his final illness forced him to withdraw. One or more of these might have provided the career resurgence he longed for but never enjoyed.

    
New productions of his classics kept his name in the news, however. The Burton revival of
Camelot
was scheduled to open in the late spring of 1980 and preview in Toronto (where it had received its world premiere in 1960) before coming into New York. Harrison’s revival of
Fair Lady
was then planned to follow it with a New Orleans tryout and national tour before reaching Broadway in the summer of 1981. But there was already a major problem. Harrison and Lerner were determined to have an English actress in the role of Eliza and had cast a relative unknown, Cheryl Kennedy,
²
in the part. But American Equity ruled against her and said Eliza should
be played by an American. Lerner supported Harrison’s outrage at the decision and wrote to Mike Merrick, one of the revival’s producers, to beg him not to stage the show in light of this ruling:

    
To Mike Merrick

    
February 6, 1980

    
Dear Mike,

    
I was appalled to learn this morning that Equity had ruled against Cheryl Kennedy.

        
Although you have a signed contract from the Dramatist Guild which gives you the rights to produce
My Fair Lady
, I beg you, for your own good and for the good of the play, to abandon it. I agree with Rex’s position entirely that to do
My Fair Lady
with an American girl, especially after our recent experience, is self-defeating and doomed.

        
This is a painful decision to make, but I deeply believe there is no alternative.

        
What an outrage!

Faithfully,

Alan Jay Lerner

Eventually, after a series of appeals, an outside arbiter ruled in favor of Kennedy, but she struggled vocally during the tour to the extent that she had to be replaced on Broadway by an understudy, Nancy Ringham
³
—who was an American.
⁴
The
Camelot
revival was no less troubled, and the original Guenevere, Kathleen McKearney, had to be replaced after three weeks’ rehearsal by Christine Ebersole,
⁵
who went on after three days of rehearsal and two previews.
⁶
When the show opened in New York on July 8, Ebersole received positive reviews, but the acclaim was mostly Burton’s: the
New York Times
said “he remains every inch the King Arthur of our most majestic storybook dreams,”
⁷
though the actor
struggled through the run and had to withdraw in March 1981 due to back surgery.
⁸

    
The third Lerner-Loewe Broadway revival of 1980 was
Brigadoon
, which opened at the Majestic Theatre on October 16. Its major feature was the return of Agnes de Mille to restage her original choreography, and Lerner was clearly thrilled:

    
Telegram to Agnes de Mille

    
October 16, 1980

    
DARLING AGNES
,

    
WHAT A PITY I CANNOT BE THERE TONIGHT BUT I WOULD PROBABLY WEEP MY WAY THROUGH IT RECALLING ALL THE YEARS WE HAVE WORKED TOGETHER. THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE AGAIN
.

ALL MY LOVE AS ALWAYS
,

ALAN

He also paid tribute to the choreographer’s skills in a newspaper article on October 12, in which he talked about how “in this computerized, dehumanized, directionless society we have created for ourselves—or allowed others to create for us—there is once again a longing for feeling, melody and a more affectionate view of humanity,”
⁹
hence the then-current trend of revivals of post-
Oklahoma!
musicals. The
Brigadoon
production received several enthusiastic reviews in the press, including one from Frank Rich, who described it as “a miracle that is pure Broadway.”
¹⁰
A month later, back in the UK,
Gigi
was revived at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, in a new production featuring British names such as Hugh Paddick
¹¹
and Betty Marsden.
¹²
Though it failed to transfer to London, this meant that all the main Lerner and Loewe shows apart from
Paint Your Wagon
were currently to be seen in major British or American revivals, and Lerner’s period of nostalgia was at a climax.

    
The main projects that he pursued in 1981 were a Broadway musical with composer Charles Strouse
¹³
and a new, liberal film adaptation of the operetta
The Merry Widow
. He signed up to write the screenplay and lyrics in mid-April while in New York to lend a hand to the writers of
Copperfield
,
¹⁴
a new musical based on Dickens’s
David Copperfield
that was struggling on its way in to New York (the producers were Merrick and Gregory of the
Fair Lady
and
Camelot
revivals),
¹⁵
and spent the spring working on the first draft.
¹⁶
The intention from the start was to involve international star tenor Plácido Domingo
¹⁷
in the film, with Barbra Streisand as a favorite to play the titular Widow in the reconceived storyline; others they discussed included Julie Andrews, Audrey Hepburn, Christopher Plummer,
¹⁸
Mikhail Baryshnikov,
¹⁹
Michael York,
²⁰
and Kenneth MacMillan
²¹
(as the choreographer). From the start, though, there were problems in obtaining the rights to adapt
The Merry Widow
so liberally. Although Lerner wanted nothing more than to be left simply to write the screenplay, he was urged by Terence Pritchard, of Chardmark Productions, to write a synopsis that could be used in brokering the deal. Lerner replied in slight exasperation at the delays to the film:

    
To Terence Pritchard

    
August 19, 1981

    
Dear Terry,

    
Although I am cursed with understanding your problems, as far as doing a synopsis is concerned I must decline. I do not write good synopses—most authors don’t—and there are people who work in studios for $50 a week who know how to do this sort of thing with some experience.

        
As far as the score is concerned, I have indicated in the script that almost all the songs will be included, which, as I also pointed out in the prologue, will be the first time the entire score will be heard on the screen. But I cannot say at this moment in what order the songs will be heard, because to make that decision I need the assistance of the director and the musical director, as I mentioned in the prologue.

        
I must confess to be more than a little impatient to get on with the project, complete with whatever drafts and changes are necessary, have my meetings with a musical director and finish the lyrics. Some of them, like “The Merry Widow” waltz, I have already begun.

        
I am very worried about being caught in a squeeze because of my obligations to Charles Strouse and the new show, and I must say I find it rather disheartening to hear that it takes three weeks even to translate a contract. Be that as it may, enclosed is the musical synopsis you sent me and I hope it all can be solved as quickly as possible, so that we can all get on with it.

Sincerely,

Alan Jay Lerner

    
In September, a new rewrite of the screenplay was requested in order to satisfy the original writers’ estates, and Lerner was furious at the extent of the changes (“It’s like doing an all-white
Porgy
. Yes?” he wrote underneath the letter suggesting the new format). Streisand was approached in early November, but anticipated being too busy with the filming of
Yentl
²²
to take part, even though she promised to read the screenplay. Hollywood was suffering financially during the fall of 1981, and with the kind of casting and personnel ideas Lerner was pursuing, he ultimately had to agree to rewrite his first screenplay:

    
To Terry Pritchard

    
November 30, 1981

    
Dear Terry,

    
The Merry Widow
, as we know, has been filmed twice in the last forty years by MGM. It is no coincidence that in order to preserve a semblance of the original plot the major ingredient that has made
The Merry Widow
endure had to be junked—namely the score. Even a wizard such as Ernst Lubitsch
²³
was unable to incorporate the music into a plot that was conceived at the turn of the century as a stage conceit. Even in the glorious days of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, when operetta flourished on the screen, it was impossible to present both plot and music on the screen and preserve some form of the reality that the screen requires.

        
The intent in this present version is to reverse the tradition and put the score of
The Merry Widow
on the screen in the only way it can be done, which is by photographing the stage production itself on the stage. In so doing, the outline of the original plot can be retained, but the songs will take on an added meaning because of their relationship to the plot that surrounds this stage version. There is no validity to the criticism that the photographed stage production could be any operetta of that or any other period. The situations were so devised to heighten the pertinence of the songs of
The Merry Widow
and
The Merry Widow
alone. It would not work with
Annie Get Your Gun, My Fair Lady
, or any operetta by Stoltz or Leo Fall.

        
In this year of 1981 one cannot go from dialogue to music as it is done in the theatre without stamping the entire project as hopelessly old-fashioned. The motion picture is too real a medium to permit it. This is especially true when one deals with operetta music, no matter how great it may be. One can photograph an opera, as Joe Losey
²⁴
has just done with
Don Giovanni
, but it becomes an art piece for a limited
audience. One can make a film of the stage musical
Annie
,
²⁵
because the plot has a relevancy to human emotions in 1981. There is no way under God’s heaven that the story of a widow from an imaginary country, who is so rich that her failure to marry a fellow countryman would cause financial havoc to the country of her origin, can be expected to relate to any human emotions in 1981. It is a pure and simple operetta plot, totally remote to our times.

        
To present my credentials for this seemingly authoritarian point of view, there have been seven musicals in the past that have won Academy Awards, and I have written three of them.

        
Despite the fact that almost the entire score of
The Merry Widow
will be, for the first time, presented on the screen, and despite the fact that the bones of the original story will be retained while the plot is being presented on the stage, I am now asked to rewrite the present material for reasons that are not artistic, but purely legal, i.e. to placate the widows of the original book who objected strenuously to the first two productions of
The Merry Widow
where the plot was retained and the music was not. This seems to me the shabbiest excuse for rewriting in all my experience as a writer, both for the stage and the screen.