Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers (22 page)

Simon’s run of over 30 Broadway shows began with a comedy called
Come Blow Your Horn
pairing a 30-ish swinging playboy with his younger, far less sophisticated brother. Many years before the popular sitcom
Two
and a Half Men,
the show was a hit, running for 675 performances.

Being quite familiar with Sid Caesar’s comedic genius from writing for
Your Show of Shows,
Simon would then pen the musical
Little Me
, a vehicle in which Caesar got to portray his many characters on Broadway.

With two hit shows under his belt, Simon felt more confident about bringing aspects of his own life to the stage and did so with
Barefoot in
the Park
, in which he turned the trials and tribulations of his early years 126

6. Jewish Themes, Legends and Life in the 1960s and 1970s
of marriage, such as struggling to make ends meet in a small apartment, into a delightful comedic romance.

Simon’s characters remained genuine, and if the stories were not about his own life, they were based largely on those of people he knew, whom he portrayed complete with their foibles and insecurities. The 1965

comedy classic
The Odd Couple
puts a beer-drinking, cigar-smoking slob and an obsessively neurotic neat-freak under one roof. The show was not only a hit, on Broadway for nearly 1,000 performance, but it spawned a movie and a long-running television series. It also gained Simon his first Tony Award. But
The Odd Couple
was more than that. The show introduced Oscar Madison and Felix Unger to the American public, and they would go on to symbolize sloppy and neat in American culture.

Following
Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl
and
Plaza Suite
, Neil Simon would collaborate on a musical with one of the hottest songwriting teams of the era, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The show,
Promises, Promises
, based on the 1960 film
The Apartment
, opened in late 1968 and ran for 1,281 performances. The cast album went on to win a Grammy Award for best cast recording, and the musical returned to Broad way for a 2010 revival.

Simon moved from the 1960s into the ’70s with one hit after another, introducing a variety of leading characters in which audience mem bers often saw a glimpse of themselves.
The Last of the Red Hot Lov -

ers
was about middle-age crisis, and
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
wove humor into the realities of a couple losing their jobs and grips with their sanity. Among the other Neil Simon hit shows of the ’70s was
The Sunshine Boys
about a once-famous vaudeville team whose bitter breakup years earlier was now interfering with an attempted reunion for a television special honoring them, some 40 years later. Trying to get the unreasonable pair in the same room, much less on the same page, became the challenge from which humor ensued. Inspired by a couple of actual vaudeville teams,
The Sunshine Boys
ran for 538 performances and, as was usually the case with Simon’s works, became a popular film.

The 1970s also proved to be an introspective time for Simon as he coped with the death of his first wife. The play
Chapter Two
focused on a man starting the second chapter of his life following the death of his wife. The highly acclaimed show was touching, funny, poignant and successful, moving from the Imperial to the Eugene O’ Neill Theater, and 127

Jews on Broadway

playing a total of 857 performances.
Chapter Two
won a Tony Award for best play of 1978.

Always looking to diversify, Simon would follow with a musical.

Not unlike working with Bacharach and David in the ’60s, he joined forces with one of the most significant songwriting teams of the ’70s, Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager. The show,
They’re Playing
Our Song
, was based on the musical team’s relationship which starts out rocky and ends with them falling in love. Essentially a two-person show, with no major musical production numbers, it gave Simon the opportunity to do what he does best: move a story along with sharp, witty dialogue. Comedian Robert Klein and actress Lucie Arnaz opened in the leading roles, and the show was an instant hit, playing for nearly 1,100

performances. The Jewish-born Klein was not entirely new to Broadway having been in the Bock Harnish musical
The Apple Tree
, while Arnaz made her Broadway debut.

Small casts, moderate set design and linear story lines that related easily to the human experience helped facilitate Simon’s worldwide presence. In fact,
They’re Playing Our Song
was seen not only on the stages of London, but also in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Budapest, the Phil -

ip pines, Singapore and in other parts of the globe.

By the 1980s, with more than 20 years of success, Neil Simon earned the unprecedented opportunity to write, and stage, a trilogy about his own life, using the character Eugene to portray himself.
Brighton Beach
Memoirs, Biloxi Blues
and
Broadway Bound
took Simon from his youth through his military service to his start on Broadway. All three parts of the Eugene trilogy were very well received. They brought events from Simon’s own life, including friends and family members, to the stage and showcased his ability to siphon out humor and make challenging life events, such as military training in Biloxi, Mississippi, more bearable.

But what good is a trilogy if you don’t add to it? Following hits such as the Tony and Pulitzer Prize Award–winning
Lost in Yonkers
in 1991 and the stage adaptation of his own movie,
The Goodbye Girl
in 1993, Simon took on one more autobiographical story with
Laughter on
the 23rd Floor
, also in 1993. The show brought Simon full circle, returning him to his days as a television writer by recreating the atmosphere of the famous 1950s writing team behind
Your Show of Shows
, featuring 128

6. Jewish Themes, Legends and Life in the 1960s and 1970s
actors playing Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond and Larry Gelbart. The show saw only marginal success.

Through his many works, Simon always maintained the ability to create or recreate characters experiencing familiar life events, whether it’s in a small walk-up first apartment (
Barefoot in the Park
), military training (
Biloxi Blues
) or trying to cope with deeply embedded stubborn behavior among elderly relatives (
The Sunshine Boys
). Some characters had a Jewishness about them, while others specifically did not, allowing his work to be both reflective and mainstream.

One such Neil Simon character, the Jewish mother Kate in
Broadway Bound
, was played by Linda Lavin, who won a Tony Award for the role. Lavin, a Jewish actress originally from Portland, Maine, made a name for herself in the 1960s first Off Broadway and then on Broadway in the show
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman
. She was later featured in the comedy
Last of the Red Hot Lovers
before taking the starring role in the popular television sitcom
Alice
. By the time Lavin took on the role of Eugene’s mom in
Broadway Bound
, she had firmly established her self as an accomplished stage performer.

Directing for Neil Simon ... and Many Others:

Mike Nichols

Michael Igor Peschkowsky was born in 1931, in Berlin, Germany, to German/Russian Jews. His father, a known anarchist, would flee Nazi Germany to the United States and then send for his two sons, Michael (age seven) and his younger brother Robert (age three) in 1938. Their mother would soon follow.

The young Nichols grew up in New York City but went to college in Chicago, where he took up improvisation. It was while doing improv that he would meet Elaine May, another aspiring actress/comic who had first set foot on stage as a young child with her father, a Yiddish theater actor. Before long, Mike Nichols and Elaine May had formed a comedy team that would gain notoriety in the late 1950s at nightclubs and from television appearances. They would finally make their way to Broadway with a show simply entitled
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine
May
, which opened in late 1960 and ran for over 300 performances.

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Jews on Broadway

Unfortunately, disagreements would cause a split not long after their initial Broadway success. Both, however, would go on to successful careers, and they would reunite years later. Nichols would emerge as a Broadway director working with Neil Simon, directing
Barefoot in the
Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite
and
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
.

He also took on a comedy called
Luv
, written by Elliott Baker and Murray Schisgal.
Luv
ran for over 900 performances on Broadway, and the movie version would include Elaine May.

From his improvisational days and his years on stage touring with Elaine May, Nichols simply knew comedy. He knew the timing, the pac-ing and the nuances that made a comedy work on stage, and an audience laugh. He also knew how to direct for the silver screen, and starting with
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
in 1966, he would go on to direct numerous films including
The Graduate, Catch-22, Working Girl
and
The Birdcage
among others.

But for Nichols, there was always a love of theater, and he never strayed far from the Broadway stage. In fact, it was a few years after direct ing
Annie
that Nichols would take a chance and bring young comic/

actress Karen Johnson, better known as Whoopi Goldberg, to Broadway in 1984 and essentially introduce her to the world in her own one-woman show, which drew critical acclaim and launched Goldberg’s career.

Nichols would continue directing through five decades with the comedy
Spamalot
in 2005, receiving a Tony Award for his efforts. In fact, Nichols holds the rare distinction of winning an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony. Now in decade number six, as of the writing of this book, Nichols is working on bringing a new version of a 1963 Japanese film,
High and Low
, to the American audience. If you consider that Nichols is a comedic genius, it may be because genius runs in the family.

Supposedly, Albert Einstein was a cousin on his mother’s side.

David Merrick’s Broadway Magic

While Neil Simon was the most prolific playwright of the 1960s and

’70s, David Merrick was the producer with the most Broadway credits.

Yet, Simon and Merrick only teamed up on one Broadway hit. Unlike Simon, who took a low-key, understated approach with smaller shows, Merrick was a producer with a flare for the dramatic. In fact, along with 130

6. Jewish Themes, Legends and Life in the 1960s and 1970s
more than 80 productions, he often garnered media attention for his off-stage activities in the form of publicity stunts. For example, when his show
Fanny
met with unfavorable reviews, he drew attention to the production by erecting a statue of the show’s belly dancer in Central Park.

For another show that generated negative reviews,
Subways Are for Sleeping
, Merrick hired seven namesakes of major New York critics to provides quotes in newspaper ads praising the show. And then there was the time he had a woman run onstage during
Look Back in Anger
and slap one of the actors. While Merrick’s many hit shows drew their share of press, he also had writers, reporters and theatergoers wondering what stunt he would do next in an attempt to salvage a sinking show.

Merrick was born in 1912 to Jewish parents living in St. Louis, Missouri. His birth name was David Lee Margulois, but like many Jewish celebrities he would change his name to something less ethnic. After graduating from Washington University, he went on to law school and actually began a legal career. However, after only a few years in the profession, he grew tired of law and pursued a career in theater production.

It took several years until he had his first play produced, and a few more years until he had his first of 27 Broadway shows, entitled
Fanny
, which he co-produced with Joshua Logan, who also co-wrote the book and directed the musical. Based on a French film trilogy,
Fanny
was about one woman and two men who love her, one with whom she has a child and the other whom she marries. The show opened at the Majestic Theater and ran for 888 performances.

Just four shows and three years later, Merrick would bring the sights, the sounds and the ambiance of
Jamaica
to Broadway for 558 performances starring Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban. Merrick always had a knack for bringing major name stars, as well as soon-to-be stars, to the Broadway stage.

Never one to be predictable, Merrick veered from the usual musical fare to bring Joan Osbourne’s 1956 hit London drama
Look Back in Anger
to Broadway, where it won a Tony Award for Best Play, and ran for over 400 performances, while infusing the term “angry young men” into Amer ican culture. Merrick would do comedy as well, bringing Woody Allen’s
Don’t Drink the Water
to Broadway in 1961. It was also in 1961

that Merrick introduced a teenaged Barbra Streisand to Broadway in the musical
I Can Get It for You Wholesale,
perhaps Merrick’s most “Jewish”

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Jews on Broadway

show, based on a novel by Jerome Weidman. Merrick was constantly on the move seeking out new shows, while bringing in top performers. He was also seeking out new wives as he was married six times.

Being that Merrick was producing numerous shows, it was not unusual for him to have several shows running at the same time and to compete against himself for Tony Awards. For example, in 1959 he was co-producing
Gypsy
, starring Ethel Merman and Jack Klugman at the Broadway Theater. Then, within five months, he had Jackie Gleason, Wal ter Pidgeon and a young Valerie Harper on Broadway in
Take Me
Along
at the Shubert Theater. Both
Gypsy
and
Take Me Along
went up for Best Musical in 1960, but neither was able to grab the award from
The Sound of Music.
In 1963, he had
Tchin-Tchin
up for Best Play, as well as
Stop the World — I Want to Get Off
and
Oliver!
, both up for Best Musical. Again, he did not win in either category. In 1964, however, he won for both Best Play and Best Musical with Joan Osbourne’s
Luther
and with a show called
Hello, Dolly!