Then and Now (12 page)

There is no question about it—the 1950s were a great time for Broadway musicals. It wasn't just
The Music Man
and
West Side Story
. It was
Damn Yankees
,
My Fair Lady
,
Gypsy
,
Guys and Dolls
, and on and on. It's no wonder those shows are consistently revived—they are terrific musicals with strong books and first-class songs. I loved
Damn Yankees
—such a wonderful Adler/Ross score, and the great Gwen Verdon at her peak. She was a terrific dancer who oozed star quality—audiences adored her. Oddly enough, I was disappointed when I first saw
My Fair Lady
, not because I didn't think it was good—I could see how beautifully constructed it was. It's because I had heard so many details about the show from so many people that there were no surprises left. It was as if I had already seen the show before the overture even started.

As
Music Man
settled into a standing-room-only hit, I became pregnant. Deliberately so. As soon as David and I started trying, I became pregnant. We were both incredibly excited and I left the show in July of 1959 when I was about five months pregnant and really starting to show. The funny thing is that I don't remember my last performance in the show at all; I guess I was so happy about being pregnant that everything else receded. That said, I was and remain incredibly proud of my association with
The Music Man
. It wasn't just that it was a fine show; it's that rare show that really entered into the American consciousness, and thirty years later, when President Reagan left office in January of 1989, the
New York Times
ran an editorial, comparing the president to that well-known salesman, Professor Harold Hill. Remarkable.

WHEN I LEFT
the show I knew I was losing a nice income, but money had never been the main focus for me, and David, who seemed to have no problem with my earning power, seemed similarly untroubled at our losing that steady income. I always felt supported by David as he helped and coached me, and while he may have felt the strain of my success, I never sensed it. I tried to be careful about money, but my joy came from performing, not making money, and when I became pregnant with my son, even performing came in a distant second.

I had grown to depend heavily on David, and before we became parents, that suited both of us. I trusted him completely, both personally and professionally, and valued his advice. Ironically, by now so, too, did my mother; David and I had been married for seven years, and with the passage of time, as she came to know the real David, she had gradually overcome her prejudices and come to respect his integrity. She actually asked for David's advice on matters ranging from finance to housing.

Aside from developing an aversion to the smell of cigars (David was a cigar smoker), it was all smooth sailing while I was pregnant, and I gave birth to my beautiful son Adam at the tail end of 1959. Motherhood seemed like the ultimate miracle to me. It still does. I remember going into labor, and driving to the hospital with David
saying, “We're going to bring a new human being into the world.” I was so happy to be a mother, and really thrilled to be Adam's mother. I love him so much—and besides loving him, I admire and like him. We have many of the same interests in the arts and he has been very helpful to me in dealing with finances. I am very lucky to have my son.

After giving birth to Adam, I was breast-feeding and I became interested in the nutritional advice of Adelle Davis; Adelle suggested that if you're breast-feeding, it's good to drink a Carlsberg beer because it has yeast and B vitamins. We used to buy that beer by the case, and while I'm not so sure about Adelle's nutritional theories, it did make for some interesting times while breast-feeding.

We were living in Port Washington, on Long Island, and doing pretty well as a family. There were, of course difficult moments, especially when my mother came to visit, but David, Adam, and I were a family. David was so protective of me, and at first that all felt great. He provided certainty, and when I would put my head on his shoulder he would comfort me, as a father would a child.

At the same time, the itch to perform had certainly not disappeared, and when I was offered the role of Anna in
The King and I
, I accepted immediately. In fact, if I had to choose my favorite role from my entire career, it would be playing Mrs. Anna in the City Center
King and I
revival in May of 1960.

Our King was Farley Granger, and he was terrific. There was a very healthy sexuality between our characters. Our complicated onstage relationship built and built throughout the evening until we finally touched for the first time as the music swelled up for “Shall We Dance?”; let me tell you, that moment was all about sex! We made that scene work like gangbusters, not just because it's a terrific Rodgers and Hammerstein song, but because we made the moment
real: the dialogue leading into the song explained our growing attraction because we believed it and lived it onstage. David was really, really helpful to me with that show. He coached me on every scene, and I think I responded with my very best work.

I loved that role—you can't ask for more as a musical-theater actress. There was such beautiful music—“Hello, Young Lovers,” “Getting to Know You”—and meaty dramatic material to boot. The critics really praised the production—the
New York Times
called it “the best performance of Miss Cook's career”—and what made it all the sweeter was the response from Rodgers and Hammerstein and their peers. Oscar and Dick sent me a note that said: “We wish last night had been the Broadway opening.” To receive that sort of praise from Dick and Oscar was a very big deal for me.

Arthur Laurents, who was definitely a tough man of the theater, wrote a letter to Dick saying that it was the best production of
The King and I
that he had ever seen, and that
The King and I
had now supplanted
Carousel
as his favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein show. Arthur, who wrote the extraordinary book for
Gypsy
, said that our production made the book a “revelation . . . It's more pertinent today and, being better acted, is more real and touching. The difference is that where Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner were strikingly electric personalities, Barbara Cook (what a difference her singing makes!) and Farley Granger—surprise, surprise!—are better and more honest actors. Enough gushing. It's an absolutely marvelous show and I could see it once a year.”

What made all that praise even more meaningful was that Dick wrote back to Arthur, stating: “There is no question in my mind as to the justification of your feeling that Barbara and Farley are more honest and really better artists than the people who played the parts originally.” That was music to my ears.

I have to say that a large portion of the credit belonged to Farley; he was excellent in the role and his vulnerability and sensitivity as a person really made you believe that at the end of the show the king's spirit has been broken. As great as Yul Brynner was, it's hard to believe anything could ever break his spirit.

I'm my own worst critic and always think I can do better, but this time both Farley and I each felt we had surpassed ourselves. I loved the role so much that I couldn't wait to get to the theater every night. There was even talk that they were going to move the production to Broadway, but there was an Actors' Equity strike and by the time it was over we had lost all of our momentum. Farley and I were able to play it one more time in an outdoor arena production in Washington, but we never made it to Broadway. I would have loved the opportunity to explore that role in depth over the course of a months-long run, but the show lives on as one of my favorite memories.

Farley and I were unable to make a recording of that production, but four years later I recorded a studio version with completely new orchestrations by Philip J. Lang. It was part of a series of stereo recordings of shows that previously had been available only in monoaural, and it was a thrill to record that gorgeous music with a full studio orchestra. The King was sung by Theodore Bikel, a man I liked a great deal, and the recording was produced by Thomas Z. Shepard, with whom I'd be reunited twenty-one years later for the Avery Fisher Hall recording of
Follies
, as well as my CD
The Disney Album
. It was great to now have a permanent record of my work.

I had so much respect for Rodgers and Hammerstein—they were geniuses, and I do not use that word lightly. I wish I had been able to originate a role in one of their musicals, but I never did. I do
remember auditioning for
Pipe Dream
, but I think I had too much of a little-girl look. They wanted a more womanly look for the role of Suzy, which is what they got with Judy Tyler. It was not one of their better shows, but look at their legacy:
Oklahoma!
,
The King and I
,
South Pacific
,
Carousel
,
The Sound of Music
. They received every possible honor, and justifiably so—but I do think Oscar still hasn't received enough credit for the books he wrote. His terrific books are a big reason why their shows are constantly revived. They possess real dramatic structure and genuine conflict. The old Irving Berlin and Cole Porter shows, for all of their brilliant music, just don't possess the solid dramatic bones that Oscar gave the R&H shows.

My next role turned out to be in
The Gay Life
, a musical that opened on November 18, 1961. The show had a dazzling score, and I had a terrific role. It was the first time I didn't have to audition for a role, as well as the first time I had my name above the title. Clearly my career was entering its prime, but of course I didn't realize it at the time—you never do. You just keep working and wondering what will come along next. At the time of
The Gay
Life
,
however, it was all pretty heady and I was very happy.

The Gay Life
was based on
The Affairs of Anatol
, by Arthur Schnitzler. There were several ladies playing Anatol's paramours, and when it became evident out of town that the show was in trouble, Herbie Ross, who had taken over the direction, suggested that I be allowed to play all the ladies. Of course I thought that was a great idea, but the creators were afraid to make such a big change. The structure of the show stayed exactly as it was, which proved fatal.

It's often hard to know exactly why shows don't work. Usually it's the book that's blamed, which makes you realize how incredibly
difficult it is to write the book for a musical: just as you're building a scene to its dramatic climax, you the librettist are pushed aside so that the composer and lyricist can take over. A weak book may well have been the cause of
The Gay Life
's quick demise, although I'm not sure. It's the same old problem: when you are in a show it's hard to judge because you live behind the curtain, inside your role. You can't really know what magic is or is not happening out front. The book for
Gay Life
was written by Fay and Michael Kanin, who had just written a first-rate screenplay for the Doris Day/Clark Gable comedy
Teacher's Pet
, but this script never caught fire. Adding to the problem was the fact that our leading man, Walter Chiari, was badly miscast.

Walter did his best, and I adored working with him. He was a dear, sweet man. He had gone through a hot, internationally publicized affair with Ava Gardner and was generally thought of as the quintessential Latin lover. God knows he was handsome enough for the role of Anatol, but what we didn't know in advance was that his greatest talent was as a comedian—he was extremely adept at improvisation—and that he possessed very little real acting technique. The net result was that if he found something that worked well in a scene, he couldn't always repeat it. In addition, his accent was quite strong, so it was hard to understand him, yet for all that, the cast loved him and so, too, I think, did the audiences.

I used to love the fight scene at the end of the show, a scene that provided me with my favorite memory from the entire show. That concluding fight scene was really a brawl—all choreographed, of course—and during the scene Walter would hold me tight, trying to keep me from “killing” Elizabeth Allen, who I thought was after my Anatol. On one particular night, as Walter was holding me, he whispered, “Bar-ba-ra, Bar-ba-ra, de pants, de pants, they
are
spleeet
.” He kept whispering, “De pink is showing, de pink is showing.” Of course the audience was hysterical with laughter. He really worked that moment and added at least five minutes to the show. As I said, he was a great improviser.

Even with all of the show's problems, nothing can take away from the blazingly wonderful score written by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, two hall of fame songwriters who had written “Dancing in the Dark,” “I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan,” and “That's Entertainment.” They gave me such great songs to sing—“Magic Moment,” “Who Can? You Can,” “Something You Never Had Before,” and “The Label on the Bottle.” That last song was put in the show out of town and exemplified how terrifying working on musicals can be: I first heard the song on a Monday night right after the performance. I rehearsed it for hours on Tuesday—it was a big singing
and dancing
number, and, heaven help me, I performed it at the Wednesday matinee. I learned it fast—dance and all—and never made a mistake. I don't think for a moment that I could do that now. I've no idea how I did it then.

Sometimes shows come and go far too fast, but fortunately this extraordinarily good score is with us forever, because the original cast album was recorded. Arthur and Howard were one of the finest songwriting teams we've had, and let me tell you, they were two of the greatest guys I ever met.

The show just never caught on, however, and Kermit Bloomgarden, our producer, was utterly distraught over its failure. We didn't have a long run, closing after three months, on February 24, 1962; Kermit came into my dressing room on closing night, sat in a chair with his head in his hands, and was practically crying at the loss of $450,000, a huge amount in 1962. He kept saying to me, “My God, Barbara, half a million dollars. Half a million dol
lars.” Nowadays, with musicals routinely costing more than ten million to produce, $450,000 probably wouldn't cover the cost of the star's wardrobe.

The Gay Life
closed the same year that the movie version of
The Music Man
came out. I had screen-tested for the movie twice. Morton Da Costa was going to direct the film, and both he and Meredith Willson wanted me to reprise the role of Marian. The tests went well, although I remember having to wear a long skirt and only discovering after the test that I had worn the skirt backward throughout! But—the studio heads went with Shirley Jones, who had just won an Oscar for
Elmer Gantry
and was considered a box-office name. Shirley was good in the role, and when I recently watched the film again I enjoyed it. The problem with the movie was that there was no dirt—it was too clean. Put bluntly, the horses never shit in those streets. The movie wasn't bad—it was just . . . too clean. I think
The Music Man
is an earthy show, and that really didn't come across onscreen.

Fortunately for audiences everywhere, the real tragedy of Bob Preston not repeating his role onscreen was avoided. Warner Brothers initially felt that Bob was not a big enough name overseas and offered the role to Cary Grant, who smartly turned it down. Cary Grant was a sensational actor, but that role belonged to Bob, lock, stock, and barrel. He was great onstage, and he was great in the movie.