Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters (53 page)

        
When Irving [Cohen] was over last year, he said he was going to initiate, or try to, an audit of
Camelot
and
Paint Your Wagon
. Any news?

        
Oh yes! One very important thing. I don’t know what’s happening with that Goddamn album of
Dance a Little Closer
, but we certainly have no contract. Liz signed something which I assume has the usual clause saying that the artist may not record her songs elsewhere for five years. She is about to make an album and we are going to do three songs from
Dance a Little Closer
. If they ever do release the U.S. album, they will need a contract from me. In that contract, there will have to be a clause releasing her from that restriction. Do you think we should so notify Chandler whatever-his-name-is now or just go ahead and do it?
What is most important is that she be not liable for anything. The producer of the album over here brought this to my attention today. Please write me your thoughts about it.

        
That’s all.

Love and kisses,

Alan

Lerner’s candor in this letter is striking: he clearly no longer enjoyed working with Lane and was keen to focus his activities in London now he had moved his life there.

    
He continued to work on his book about musicals, but more slowly than anticipated, as he confessed to his publisher in April:

    
To Roger Schlesinger, Collins Publishers

    
April 16, 1984

    
Dear Roger,

    
A few years ago, Tom Courtenay
⁶⁷
did
Hamlet
somewhere out in the provinces and one night he was horrified to discover that Edith Evans
⁶⁸
was in the audience. She came back after the performance, went in to see him and said: “It’s coming.”

        
So is the book. A little slower than perhaps I might have hoped, so I fear spring will be a little late this year.
⁶⁹
The truth is, I have been working so hard, I am exhausted and before I go any further, I am going to take three weeks off. When I return, I will read what I have written and with renewed energy you will receive the bulk from me in June.

        
On May 25th, the head of Public Broadcasting in America is coming over to sit down and work out a deal with the BBC and Goldcrest/Primetime. I think their plan is to do it in late spring of 1985.

        
I think I am pleased with what I have so far and I hope you will be too.

        
All the best.

Aye,

Alan

    
In the summer of 1984, Lerner resumed work on what would be his final, incomplete musical,
My Man Godfrey
. Like
Dance a Little Closer
, it was based on 1930s material, this time a screwball comedy starring William Powell
⁷⁰
and Carole Lombard
⁷¹
(1936). Lerner teamed up with a new collaborator to write the music, Gerard Kenny, who was then perhaps best known for penning the hit Barry Manilow
⁷²
song, “I Made it Through the Rain.” They had started talking about the show the previous fall (as Lerner indicates in his letter to David Grossberg, earlier), but the writing could only begin in earnest after the opening of
Closer
. The producer was to be Allan Carr, who was then represented on Broadway by
La Cage aux Folles
, and Lerner had ceded the librettist duties to Kristi Kane, an American playwright in her mid-twenties. Writing to his manager, Robert Lantz,
⁷³
in August, Lerner was able to report that the project was going swimmingly:

    
To Robert Lantz

    
August 14, 1984

    
Dear Robby,

    
Re:
My Man Godfrey

    
Just a quick note because I am in the middle of a three-day recording session with Liz on her new album—which incidentally is going to be wonderful.

        
Kenny and I had a positive love feast with Allan Carr. We played him three incomplete songs which gave him a sense of the style and I gave him a general idea of my approach to the adaptation and we are all three going to take a house by the sea together. I told him now that we have finally solved the approach, things will soon be getting on to paper. All I can say is, he is planning a March rehearsal—about which I said nothing. Gerard Kenny has to go to New York to see his ailing father this week. Allan will be there and they are going out together Thursday night—with Kenny’s wife.

        
He also loves you dearly and said he thought you were the most intelligent, charming, co-operative gentleman he has met in the theatre! So, between the three of us, he is in a cocoon of happiness.

        
About
The Merry Widow
, I only wrote two lyrics and they only fit the story I was working on, not
The Merry Widow
.

        
So everybody is happy except Collins who are beginning to wonder where the hell their book is. And so am I.

        
That’s all.

Love and kisses,

Alan

    
In September, suddenly
Carmelina
was on the cards again, which caused Lerner a problem: in addition to
Godfrey
and the history book on musicals, he had agreed to revise his work on
Gigi
for its London stage premiere the following year. He tried to squeeze in some more work on the show with Lane when actress Raquel Welch
⁷⁴
(who had previously replaced Lauren Bacall in
Woman
of the Year
on Broadway) showed interest in the part of Carmelina in October, but in January he decided to take a backseat in the production. He also wrote a sample episode for the proposed BBC TV series to accompany his book and submitted it in October, as well as beginning the revisions to
Gigi
. All this would keep him busy for the rest of 1984.

    
In early December, he wrote the following letter to Sydney Gruson,
New York Times
correspondent, editor, and publishing executive, who was one of Lerner’s lifelong friends. The letter is an excellent reflection of the lyricist’s savage wit and good humor among those he was closest to. It also alludes to early details of the London
Gigi
for which John Dexter, best known for his work in the operatic sphere, was to be the director:

    
To Sydney Gruson

    
6th December 1984

    
Dear Chum,

    
I am sending you a book written by a man who I always told you should be the critic of the New York Times, but what can I expect from a journalist who makes the blanket statement he does not believe in “the conspiratorial interpretation of history”—which I assume includes Julius Caesar?

        
Anyhow, putz, you will find this an absolutely brilliant and penetrating book which should, with any luck, cut through the ice surrounding your frozen journalistic cortex.

        
Why I love you, I don’t know. I can’t believe after all the wives and associated women, I have a latent homosexual streak. Christ, you are not even pretty.

        
With it all, it was wonderful seeing you over here and my fondest dream is to lure you with pleasure, wine, women and the indescribable charm and wit of my company to moving here permanently—or, at least, semi-permanently. I will even find a Golf Club that will allow you in!

        
We are off to Egypt on the 21st and I hope the thought of my contracting diarrhoea, cholera and malaria will add to the joy of your Christmas season.

        
Give Marit my love—and of course sympathy—and a big hug for Christmas.

Aye,

Alan

    
P.S. “Gigi” is galloping ahead and goes into rehearsal in April. Louis Benjamin and Jerry Minskoff have worked out a partnership for the production and John Dexter is indeed a genius. I think it will be opening in Norwich for May for about a month and it would be great if you were here sometime around then to come up and see it.

    
Later that month, he met up with Kristi Kane and had a two-day meeting about their ideas for
My Man Godfrey
. In the following two letters to Allan Carr, Lerner gives his initial impressions about Kane and her work and also makes some suggestions about casting and staging. Additionally, he announces that he was to be honored with the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s Johnny Mercer Award the following March, a distinction of which he was evidently extremely proud:

    
To Allan Carr

    
December 17, 1984

    
Dear Allan,

    
Kristi is a charming and bright lady and we had a most interesting two days together. I think it would be unfair not to pass on to you my initial reactions.

        
First of all, there is the problem that she has never written a musical and no one knows better than you what a complicated form it is. We discussed many ideas, two of which disturbed me considerably, and I told her so. One was that she wanted to eliminate the scavenger hunt because she thought it is cruel that Irene (Lombard) becomes aware of it herself and begins to grow as a human being. I think I may have convinced her. Her second random thought was that Godfrey’s old girl from Boston should appear in the last scene, which I told her I definitely thought was unnecessary. Fundamentally, it is one of the best last scenes I can remember in a romantic comedy and it should be toyed with with considerable restraint.

        
I think I am right in assuming that one of the reasons you wanted a book writer called in was to expedite the project so that it would be ready for September rehearsals, but there are so many other things that are involved that would make September impossible. Mainly, for example, the director. Secondly, the cast. I do my best work when I know for whom I am writing.

        
I had lunch with Alan Bates
⁷⁵
last week who is immensely interested and enthusiastic. He and his agent are coming by on Wednesday to hear some of the songs. He told me that his agent in California whispered to him that Malcolm McDowell
⁷⁶
was also being considered. As much as I admire McDowell, I think he would be a great mistake. He is simply not man enough and Godfrey should be a man in every sense of the word, who has done some considerable living. The other possibility is someone who has become an overnight star over here named Charles Dance,
⁷⁷
because of
The Jewel in the Crown
, the thirteen-hour television series that knocked England off its bum last year and is by far the best television series ever made. I believe it’s coming to America starting in January. Dance is a little younger but a man and, I am told, sings very well. But, needless to say, he is not in the same class as Bates who is pure magic on the stage. I know
A Patriot for Me
⁷⁸
didn’t do well in California but that has nothing to do with anything. One can’t blame an actor for appearing in a play that doesn’t work.

        
The girl is also a major question. Have you any ideas? I have one which is—I appreciate—too much to hope for—Meryl Streep
⁷⁹
started her career as a singer. I realize she’s probably booked up until 1994, but there is no harm in asking. My God, wouldn’t she and Bates be something?

        
Bates seems to be available for September rehearsals at this moment but I don’t see how commitments can be made until the elements come together. In the meantime, I will exert my world famous charm to try and keep him in line.

        
Returning to the director for a moment—have you thought about Tommy Tune? Surrounded by the right people, I think he could be quite marvelous.

        
In any event, there is one quintessential aspect of the show and that is it must be the most elegant musical since
My Fair Lady
. To really work with the kind of score Gerard and I are writing, it needs ladies and gentlemen. Not only that, it is about the rich and the chic.

        
My final suggestion is that I am going to New York on March 16th because on the 19th, I am to receive The Songwriters Hall of Fame Award for lyric writing. It is only the third they have given in their existence—so I am, for the moment, quite unbearable! It would be lovely if Gerard and I and Kristi—if it still be she—and you could meet in New York for a couple of days of bringing each other up to date. Gerard and I will show you the new songs, etc.