I have no idea if my grade school best friend knew of my
obsession with his mother's record collection. We were usually outdoors, riding
bikes, shooting hoops, horsing around--not
listening to music. All the Real Housewives of Canoga Park played records I
loved, OCRs, Sinatra, Garland, Belafonte, Satchmo, Ella; adult pop with a latin
beat, or the sort of experimental kitsch that later came to be labeled as
Lounge. But more than Dodo, or Gloria, or Joyce, Eric's mom, Esther, was mad
for Bway musicals and seemed to always have one spinning. And of all the musicals
I heard at her house, none stands out more--and defines her as well--as How to Succeed in Business Without Really
Trying. In her Laura Petrie capris and Jackie Kennedy bouffant, Esther was Rosemary, the show's heroine, in
real life--living in a SoCal version of New Rochelle, tending house &
husband, and tho he wasn't in business (but an English teacher, like Albert in Bye Bye Birdie), happy to keep his
dinner warm. Esther cast a suburban-glamour sheen on Frank Loesser's modernist
satire that forever elevated my affection for this show. It was at once the
most New York of New York musicals, and along with Birdie, the most contemp-oraneous to my life in those pre-teen
years. Among the most vivid memories of my youth, is a Friday in September 1963,
when Esther--to my deepest envy--was going to see the show at the
Philharmonic over the hill in LA (the first national company). I don't know if
she or I was the more excited. Standing on Woodlake Avenue Hollywood --I
can still feel my visceral longing for Broadway Nights, while unconsciously basking
in the crepuscular beauty of Southern California .
A memory now so elegiac as to trump the fantasy later come true.
Contemporary musicals become period pieces over time--leading,
in a sense, a double life. What once was the very model of a modern
musical comedy, How to Succeed is now
a virtual time capsule of the Mad Men
era--1962 under glass. Prosperous and expansive as the Eisenhower years were, American
culture was so quickly repaved in the tenure of JFK--a turning point in
history's evolution still not fully recognized today. The regime's abrupt and
tragic conclusion lent facile comparisons to King Arthur and Lerner &
Loewe's Camelot (said to be a
favorite disc of Jack's) and was quickly embraced and woven into the mythology of
Kennedy lore. But if any show reflects the mood and feel of America Critics Circle
As I don't revere Guys
& Dolls the way most do in the musical comedy universe, I find How to Succeed is easily my favorite
Frank Loesser score--sharp and witty, both in lyrics & music, it seems
inconceivable that any one else could have written as perfect a score for this
show. Still, I confess I don't love all the songs. "Cinderella
Darling," and "Love from a Heart of Gold," sound like first
drafts that needed discarding, and "Coffee Break," as great a number as it is, intentionally drags,
musically. Still it's the first taste of the ensemble and suffers unseen for
Bob Fosse's staging. The show's semi-soft opening has Finch studying up on
"How to..." followed by the heroine's wanting song; but "Happy
to Keep His Dinner Warm," takes the era's gender-defining tropes (ie:
"I Enjoy Being a Girl") to another level: "To bask in the glow
of his perfectly understandable neglect." It's a brilliant song, but one
that falls on the ear uncertainly--with notes that work like banana peels. The
first taste of oldtime show-tune Loesser comes in "The Company Way,"
a catchy jingle-ish song, like "Guys and Dolls"--a hummable
show-defining theme: the Rules of Business here taking precedence over the
coupling of sexes. Romance, as depicted in Succeed,
is ulterior to self-promotion. (The show's hit ballad is sung by Finch to
himself). The stretch of brilliant numbers come one after another: "A
Secretary is Not a Toy," is a corporate memo on sexual harrassment as an
office march; syncopated with typewriter keys and carriage bells--and brought
to life in Fosse's hip bones connected to his funny bone. "Been a Long
Day," is a short story sung in thought balloons; punctuated with Loesser's
unique instrumental curlicues between sung lines (it's astounding how often he
uses these thru-out his score.) Whether by Loesser's intention or Fosse's
invention, this number has one of the single most rewarding musical comedy
moments in all creation: sung at the elevator lobby, the song concludes with
the trio belting, "Well, it's been a long, been a long, been a long,
been-a-long day," as the elevator doors snap open and two full cabs of
passengers encore the sentiment. Pure Rahadlakum. "Grand Old Ivy" is
a rousing college anthem, reminder of the Where's
Charley Loesser. Strangely, "Paris Original," has always been my
favorite song from the show; I just love its minor key descending line, to say
nothing of lyrics like, "Some irresponsible dress manufacturer just didn't
play fair/I'm one of a pair. . .Thirty-nine bucks I hand out/For something to
make me stand out/And suddenly I've gone into mimeograph." And the
operatic sweep of "Rosemary," makes a rousing first act finish. It
takes most of the second act to reach prime Loesser again, but "I Believe
in You," the show's sole pop hit, stands up to both comic and sincere
interpretations. And then there's the eleven o'clock production number,
"Brotherhood of Man," which turns a boardroom into a Baptist
choir--letting starched president's secretary, Miss Jones break loose in the
show's final minutes. This was the kind of Bway I worshipped most in my youth.
The sheer ridiculous glee of an all-out production number. Can't we all just get along? Loesser's score, tho appreciated,
wasn't embraced the way R&H or Lerner & Loewe, or even his own Guys & Dolls scores were. Maybe not
as dismissed as Sondheim's Forum was;
at least Loesser got a Tony nomination--but lost to Richard Rodgers' No Strings. Perhaps too clever for its
own good, Loesser's Succeed is a
better score.
Feuer & Martin (who made a star of Gwen Verdon,
brought Julie Andrews over from England, and Don Ameche east from Hlwd) cast
the show well, and yet it seems the distaff side might've soared a bit with
more familiar faces. I can't help but imagine what Carol Burnett would've done
for Rosemary opposite Morse. And while we're fantasy-casting: wouldn't Susan
Johnson, Loesser's big find, Cleo from Most
Happy Fella, have been a perfect Smitty? She was the star of Feuer &
Martin's late gigantic flop: Whoop Up--could
they have held that against her? And why not Stubby Kaye for the dual role of
Twimble and Charmain of the Board, to bring down the house with
"Brotherhood of Man," much like he did with a similar rallying cry in
Guys & Dolls. But it's hard to
imagine anyone better than Robert Morse for Finch. He was a rising player, with
a trio of previous Bway appearances, in supporting roles: as Barnaby Tucker to
Arthur Hill's Cornelius Hackl in The Matchmaker with Ruth Gordon; as a
thinly-disguised Hal Prince in the making-of-Pajama-Game demi-musical, Say
Darling (whose director, Burrows, saw him as a future Finch); and lastly as
the lovestruck Richard Miller in Take Me
Along, matching Jackie Gleason for critical notice. (Yet can anyone explain how Morse got a Tony
nomination in the Leading Actor category--along with co-stars Gleason and
Walter Pidgeon--while that same year, Tom Bosley, the Star and omnipresence of Fiorello! only qualified for
"Featured Actor" because he wasn't listed above the title? Here's the
thing: neither was Morse, and
whatsmore his part was clearly a supporting not starring role.) With his
gap-toothed overbite and boyish bangs, Bobby had a fresh, comic diffidence that
perfectly suited the character of J. Pierpont Finch, infusing a thoroughly
unscrupulous personality with charm and appeal--tho more boyish than sexual. A
role he was born to play (and win the Tony for) it was Morse's ticket to
Hlwd--at least for a few years, before the stage brought him back in retreat. He
later won another Tony for prancing about as Tru(man Capote), in a toothless monologue, neutered for the ladies matinee
crowd. And tho he initiated roles out of town in Wicked, and Harold Prince's lavish Show Boat, he declined continuing to Bway. Nor has he been tempted
to move up to playing boss Biggley in How
to Succeed--which might have added some gravitas to the underpowered '95
revival. His present-day casting in Mad
Men is a fitting bookend to his career as a Company Man--but how
disappointing that Matthew Weiner didn't use How to Succeed--clearly the hottest and most relevant (to
advertising) show of its era--even in passing mention (instead, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the
Forum is referenced twice as the show of the moment.) Bringing Rudy Vallee
out of mothballs was an inspired idea, tho reportedly he wanted to sing his old
hits as well in the show. His blank-eyed bumbling recalls the silliness of the
early Kern shows--and for much of the audience (tho surely not me) reminder
that this once humble bandleader had been a 1920s Superstar, mobbed by women;
the first crooner--adapting a style suited to the new electronic mircophones.
All this unknowable to one introduced to Vallee in his 60s; which gives me some
idea how I must appear now to anyone under 30. Charles Nelson Reilly, as
Finch's nemesis, gave Bud Frump a restrained hysteric spin that has never been equalled--winning
him a Tony as well. A flaming zany, Reilly auditioned when he was appearing in
the chorus of Bye Bye Birdie,
occasionally subbing for Dick Van Dyke, and regularly stepping into Paul
Lynde's shoes on Thursdays, when Lynde had a contract with the Perry Como show.
The audition was at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater then housing The Sound of Music. Reilly performed "Put On a Happy
Face," improvising a static break each time he veered too close to Music's scenery: "Doe, a dear, a
female dear..." His manic display sold Burrows & Loesser on the spot. Even more than Paul Lynde, he was truly one of a
kind--which makes his absence from the movie baffling.
The show did shockingly lackluster
business in Philadelphia
The movie opened at Radio City
Music Hall on March 9, 1967, where combined with the Easter show, it pulled in the
hordes for seven weeks; and on March 23rd at Grauman's Chinese in Hlwd--sans floorshow--to
much softer business. By June it came over the hill in wide release, where I
saw it at the Topanga Theater, across from our newest Acropolis of Shopping, California's
first all-indoor mall: Topanga Plaza (since 1964)--which housed my favorite store:
Wallach's Music City where I'd pick up cutouts of recent Bway flops (Bajour, I Had a Ball) and place special
orders from the yellow Schwann catalog, under the category, OCR: Original Cast
Recordings--impatient thru the week or two it took to get shipped from NY. I
had long listened to, and imagined How to
Succeed in my mind, which made this the first newly filmed Bway musical I
came to armed with knowledge of the show & score. And hence, the inevitable
letdown.
Untypically, I find a large
measure of my disappointment with the film (then & now) lies with the art
direction. The candy colored office decor looks both cheesy and off the mark.
It lacks the true mid-century modern aesthetic; and goes over the top only in
fakery, not honest opulence. The film starts off unpromisingly, with crude
stock footage of Manhattan Park Avenue , before panning up a glass
skyscraper, where from the roof he begins his descent as a window-washer. It's highly
unlikely that large panes of glass open at that height, but never mind, it's
cute how he arrives at the 30th floor lobby of World Wide Wickets (so named to
suggest nothing, tho wickets are actual things: wire hoops that serve as
goalposts in croquet; or, in other words: nothing.) He's picked up the title
paperback (with the Bway show's logo) at a newsstand, and when he consults it,
the action around him freezes--a hoary stage-bound device that Swift uses
sporadically to no advantage. Once Finch runs into Biggley, setting the plot in
motion, Rosemary appears out of nowhere all dreamy smiles. Even in a narrative of
quicksilver shifts, this feels unearned, and as we're deprived of her ambition
explained (in "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm"), her ardor feels
forced and annoying. Michele Lee is that rare Bway longrun replacement who
overtakes her predecessor's claim on the role. She was only 20 when she took
over for Bonnie Scott (who?--you see) a year into the run; coming off a
summertime flop, Bravo, Giovanni!
garnering kudos for her leading role. She has an undying friendliness and a
lovely contralto belt, but not the zany cartoonishness that other characters
embody in the show. Her cronies are Kay Reynolds as a thoroughly colorless
Smitty (Miss Smith); and Carol Worthington as Lucille Krumholtz--a chorus
standout for her height and flat delivery--who seems much better suited for
Smitty. There's a Jonesy, too (Miss Jones) played, as on Bway, by the
formidable Ruth Kobart (who scored roles in both smash hits of the '61-'62
season, leaving Succeed after but
mere months to assume the domineering Domina in A Funny Thing Happened...) Frump is played by Anthony
"Scooter" Teague, aping the spastic outrage of Charles Nelson Reilly,
but coming up with a bad Jerry Lewis vibe. Reilly's number, "Coffee
Break" (with Smitty and the chorus) was a twisted "charm" song, mostly needed to give Finch time offstage.
.JPG)
Yet
its excision here--it was filmed but left on the cutting room floor--feels perverse. Swift compensates with his own
cinematic "ballet," a montage of secretaries tending entirely to
sartorial matters in lieu of work--set to a symphonic instrumental of a barely
recognizable "Coffee Break." With so much already going off the
rails, the picture feels like a letdown up to the entrance of Biggley's
paramour: Hedy LaRue. Now, of course, I realize the name is a slip on Hedy
Lamarr--but what did I know about Lamarr in the '60s? To a 14 year old boy, or
at least this 14 year old boy, the
very name Hedy LaRue was hilarious; let alone this caricatured sexpot, like a
full-color Playboy magazine cartoon made flesh. It took a show as merciless and
unscrupulous as this to give us a broad so mercenary & unrefined--tho
there's a direct genealogical line from the creators' own Miss Adelaide. I
loved Hedy in the way I loved Marilyn. They tickled my brain, not my
libido--playing gender as if it were the character itself. In retrospect I
don't know how much I knew about Hedy from the OCR, where she wails only on
"Love from a Heart of Gold," (albeit in Virginia Martin's comic rasp);
the Biggley-Hedy-Frump reprise of "Been a Long Day," sadly missing
from the OCR. Which means Maureen Arthur was my first, and teenage template for
LaRue. She was a road company Hedy, who convinced someone she was the
definitive one for celluloid.
.JPG)
She doesn't lay down the thick New Yawkese accent
most LaRue's I've heard emulate, but sounds more like she's picked up Carol
Channing's unique cadence and vocal modulation--albeit in a higher register. I
can't tell if she's good, or just weirdly off-kilter. Her arrival sets off the
musical's brilliant treatise, "A Secretary is Not a Toy," with Bob
Fosse's original staging adapted by Dale Moreda--a much needed perk in the
movie, but not nearly as well done as it should be. Happily, "Been a Long
Day" survives, as does the twisted reprise; tho the first one misses the
mark; the elevator doors lacking the snap of the sudden chorus on the final
line. "Grand Old Ivy" is featured in close-up, giving us Morse &
Vallee unadulterated--but as the recent Bway revival showed, the number could
be raised to another level. Given my affection for "Paris Original,"
the shock of its exclusion was beyond redemption. The tune periodically pops up
in Nelson Riddle's underscoring, mostly in scenes with Hedy, including a tasty cha-cha
variation. The rhapsodic "Rosemary" survives, but not complete thru
its reprise and act closer. There is no act divide here, "Rosemary"
clocking in closer to the three-quarter mark.
.JPG)
.JPG)
The screenplay (also by Swift--tho
mostly with scissors, not pen) eliminates "Cinderella Darling" and
"Love from a Heart of Gold"--to no surprise. The final quarter is
consumed by Finch's adventures in advertising; a tacky giveaway TV gameshow
pilot; and the show's two biggest musical numbers. But the movie introduces "I
Believe in You," earlier, first as a ballad sung by Michele Lee, which
makes the later famed washroom serenade a reprise--to
much less effect. Lee gets a nice vocal from her moment, but the romance is
really so tangential that the script has to invent the flimsiest reasons for
Rosemary to break with Finch, not once but twice, only to have her simply return
without need of an explanation. I was baffled by the inclusion of a thoroughly
extraneous scene where she hesitates by the elevator--until I learned the lift-operator,
whose single, unnecessary, line, "Are you coming, or not, Rosemary?"
is director David Swift. It seems no one has ever made Hedy's launch as the
Treasure Hunt Girl into a decent musical number (I do think it possible), and
Swift scarcely makes an attempt. But if there's anything to say against
"Brotherhood of Man," it's in protest of the art direction. Absurd
(and awful) as Biggley's scarlet chamber reads, Finch's final office looks like
a Danish modern cathedral--at once, instantly dated and horribly inappropriate.
The movie takes its final joke, the suggestion of Finch moving on to
Presidential ambition, to a visual gag: him window-washing the oval office, coming
face to face with LBJ--tho the feel of the show's zeitgeist, is as gone as the
Kennedy era. With this we also come to Loesser's last mark on screen. By then
his final produced musical, Pleasures and
Palaces, tho directed by Bob Fosse, had crashed and burned in its Detroit Berlin
I've no idea why I missed the
musical when it played (with Vallee, no less) our local Valley Music Theater in
January of '66--still a year before the movie's release. The first time I saw
it on stage was Des McAnuf's '95 Bway-bound revival, in LaJolla, with a tepid
Matthew Broderick, and the not-yet-famous Megan Mullally & Victoria Clark
as Rosemary & Smitty. McAnuf's technologically tarted-up vision ("H2$" was the logo) had me scurrying
back to the movie. Rob Ashford's hyper 2011 revival was better, but
still too "reimagined," too tarted-up, as if trying to compensate for
inadequate material, instead of embracing its clockwork artistry. As was the
case with Matthew Broderick, Daniel Radcliffe and his successors put in stark
relief the brilliance of Robert Morse--who makes the role look so effortless, when
it's anything but. Perhaps the
most honest, enjoyable version I've seen was a community theater production,
which modestly played the original show without embellishment.
Hard to believe, but reputable
sources claim the movie's notices were unanimous raves. Despite the prevailing
trend, United Artists didn't think a Roadshow release appropriate (and this
would be the last Bway musical until 1970 to reject that route). The Big Street Hawaii
Next Up: Camelot
Next Up: Camelot
Report Card:
How to Succeed in Business
Without
Really Trying
Overall Film: B-
Bway Fidelity: B
Songs from Bway: 8
Songs cut from Bway: 5
New Songs: None
Standout Numbers: "Brotherhood of Man"
"A Secretary is Not
a Toy"
Worst Omissions: “Paris
Break" "Happy to Keep His
Dinner Warm"
Casting: OK leads, slipshod supporting
Standout Cast: Robert Morse, Rudy
Vallee
Sorethumb Cast: Anthony Teague
Cast from Bway: Morse, Vallee,
Ruth Kobart, Sammy Smith
Bway replacements: Michele Lee,
Maureen Arthur
Direction: Not so Swift
Choreography: 2nd generation Fosse
"Ballet:" D:
"Secretary's Morning"
Scenic Design: Office by Mattel
Costumes: Ready for stadium visibility
Titles: An overture over
generic city views
Standout Sets: None
Oscar Nominations:
None
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