I may be an Anglophile, but I've always been immune to the
charms of certain bedrock British institutions like Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood,
and the whole fantasy universe of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. The first two were done no favors by the musicals Baker Street
Lerner & Loewe skirted the follow-up hurdle after My Fair Lady by going Hlwd with Gigi. But eventually they faced The Big
Street again, settling on Arthurian lore as a fitting volume to their catalog. They
certainly didn't lessen the pressure of great expectations by hiring much of
the same personnel from MFL,
including director Moss Hart, designer Oliver Smith, and actors Julie Andrews
and Robert Coote (Col. Pickering). The show's lead was another esteemed British
stage & screen star, also a non-singer--but mellifluent of voice: Richard
Burton. The package felt predestined, expensive, Important--and an easy sell. But
the road to Bway was a battlefield: first Loewe, then Hart were stricken and hospitalized,
leaving Lerner (the trio were the producers as well) in charge of the show.
Considering the biggest problems were all in Lerner's libretto, this wasn't the
pathway to clarity. After nine weeks on the road, the show opened on Bway, December
3, 1960. Despite fair to poor reviews the advance kept seats filled, tho lines
at the box office soon disappeared. Moss Hart returned post-opening to clean up
Lerner's mistakes; and the musical got a second wind after Burton & Andrews
performed a lenghty sequence on the Ed Sullivan Show--which ostensibly was to
honor My Fair Lady's fifth
anniversary. But even with this bump in business, the show was never quite the
smash hit it pretended to be. The Tony committee thought so little of it they
couldn't even let it fill the fourth slot for Best Musical, naming just three
in 1961 (snubbing The Unsinkable Molly
Brown and Tenderloin as well) Yet
the OCR album sold more than any other but MFL;
the best-selling record in the country for 6 weeks --remaining on the charts
for 265 weeks; just over five years. Incredibly, Lerner & Loewe built their
own Bway label and imprimatur (second only to Rodgers & Hammerstein) on the
strength of just five titles--and one
of those a film musical. Tho it must be said that without My Fair Lady to anchor their fame, their other musicals would not
have retained such luster.
Loewe wasn't enthused about Lerner's choice of T.H.
White's Once and Future King for
their next project, but once invested he gave it his usual melodic sheen--at
least where it counts. And for Loewe nothing counted more than The Big Ballad: the apex of all his musicals:
"Almost Like Being in Love," in Brigadoon,
"I Talk to the Trees" in Paint
Your Wagon, the Oscar-winning title song from Gigi; and top of the heap: My
Fair Lady's "On the Street Where You Live"--a song so geared for
the Hit Parade, it was virtually tangential to the show, sung by a secondary,
nearly minor, character. A song so popular you could retire on its income alone.
Loewe (& Lerner) made sure that Camelot
had--if nothing else--another like it. And "If Ever Would I Leave
You," filled the bill and then some. It's a full meal of a ballad, walking
thru the seasons on a lush, majestic line of updated operetta; manly,
commanding, a prime baritone aria. It became, unavoidably, Goulet's signature
song. Next to it, the title song is best known--but not much else; this isn't
the platter of hits that MFL was.
"Camelot" is a regal tune that captures the feel of the show, but isn't
it odd that Arthur's catalog of Camelot's virtues are entirely meteorological? Lerner
couldn't think of anything better than the weather? English weather? The song only earns its gravitas in the show's
coda, the adopted Kennedy epitaph:
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment . .
Arthur's establishing song, "I Wonder What the King
is Doing Tonight," sets the bar for high expectations; a spoken-sung
reverie that compares well to Rex Harrison's "Why Can't the English?"
Equally fine are two numbers that are extended conversations: "What Do the
Simple Folk Do?" (which sparked a box office run after being seen on
Sullivan) and "Then You May Take Me to the Fair," which Hart cut after
the Bway opening for a leaner pace. Yet the song survives, being better than
most in the show, tho Lerner's cleverness is shamelessly cute: ("You'll
open wide him?/I'll subdivide him/From fore to aft?/He'll feel a draft"). "The
Lusty Month of May," seems a direct steal of "June is Busting Out All
Over," (if not Pajama Game's
"Once a Year Day"), but it's a much needed lift to a show lacking high
spirits. "C'est Moi" has at least a tinge of humor, where there's
scarcely any elsewhere. The score, however, has a high turkey count: "Fie
on Goodness," and "The Seven Deadly Sins" were retained on the OCR,
but are often dropped, as well as a song for Mordred and Morgan LeFay (a
character often dropped as well) called "The Persuasion"--that to
date has never been recorded. Unforgivably, Julie Andrews' songs, which were such
a highlight of MFL, are mostly flat
here. When was the last time you heard "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood,"
"I Loved You Once in Silence," or "Before I Gaze at You
Again," in any concert or recital? The latter, which was handed to Julie
the night before the first NY preview, could be mistaken for a lullaby--it
nearly puts me to sleep. Burton
Whatever Camelot's
narrative shorcomings on stage, its cinematic potential was obvious. Arthur
Freed, once MGM's premier musical producer now independent agent, couldn't
convince the studio's new boss (and musical hater) Joseph Vogel to buy the
property. Freed wanted Vincente Minnelli to direct--a natural thru-line from Gigi--using the Bway cast. But the show was
sold in February '61 to Jack Warner, who was snapping up Bway properties like a
kid in a candy store; and had yet to make The
Music Man, Gypsy, and My Fair Lady.
He took his time getting around to Camelot--altho
he aquired it before MFL. The success
of the latter would only add cachet to the former. George Cukor navigated MFL to safe harbor and a personal
Oscar--as well as one for Mr. Warner. Nothing suggests Cukor was ever offered Camelot--tho it might seem a good fit.
Instead, Warner handed it to Joshua Logan--who'd done well with Fanny, and South Pacific--at least commercially. Logan Spain
Given that Julie Andrews and Richard Burton were now (post-Bway)
the #1 and #5 box office movie stars in America, it seems positively perverse
that anyone else would be considered for roles they had created--it wasn't as if they'd outgrown them. But
Despite his reputation, Lerner's scripts are consistently
problematic; they lack focus, and grasp at too many threads in every story. Adapting
a volume as large as White's 1958 best seller--four books in one--is typical of
Lerner's overreach. His one good libretto was structured for him by Bernard
Shaw. Camelot is chock full of barely-there
stories; popular mythical figures reduced to cameos; too many characters, too
little characterization. For a newbie to the world of Arthurian lore, Camelot was little help in
orientation--maybe even the root of my disinterest in the subject. Lerner's
screenplay begins with Arthur on the verge of battle and engaged in a
post-story "How did this happen?" monologue; the voice of Merlin
goading, "think back, Arthur..." as tho we need to have the flashback
structure explained to us. (Maybe flashbacks were invented during the Age of
Chivalry) Merlin even has to tell Art to remember the day he met Guenevere, and
state "That's the beginning." Thanks for telling us--why didn't we
just start there? (as they did on stage); to quote Oscar Hammerstein, "a
very good place to start." The story proper begins with a long
establishing scene in the R&H mode; a sort of snowy Bench Scene, in which
the leading characters reveal themselves to us in song, before joining together
on a third number: the seduction. It's easily the show's strongest section,
setting a standard rarely met as the musical progresses. Logan
.JPG)
The romance and marriage consummated, we jump four years
to the invention of Might for Right, democracy and modern chivalry--all thought
up by Arthur in his chamber, much the way composers casually stumble upon their
greatest hits in those Hlwd music bios. Lerner writes for Arthur as tho he were
still Wart; "Proposition: it is far better to be alive than dead. If that
is so, then why do we have wars in which people can get killed?" Hardly
Shavian dialogue--nor should it be, but must it sound like the mental process
of a fifth-grader? Intelligent discourse isn't furthered by the introduction
of another extraneous character, King Pellinore (a doddering old bumbler) meant
for comic relief--alas, an aspiration unmet. But the heart of the story and the
musical's true justification is, of course, the love that erupts between Lancelot
& Guenevere, and the triad of emotions with Arthur. To Logan
.JPG)
And then deep into the story, with no prior mention we
suddenly meet Mordred: Arthur's bastard son (the bad seed) come to destroy his
life and kingdom. But do we even need him to stir up trouble? Lerner has already
shown Lance alienating the court and fighting knights who dare call him out for
a secret everyone knows--and for which he is actually guilty. (So much for his
virtue; now he's an utter hypocrite) Isn't this enuf to tear at the fabric of
The Round Table, and lead to its demise? Arthur turns a blind eye to the truth,
but is said to make certain he never leaves the two lovers alone. Yet we've
just watched a four-season honeymoon album of private afternoons. Any of which Mordred
could've exposed, but instead Lerner has him direct his own sting operation,
catching the lovers in flagrante--altho
(oh, the irony!) they are in midst of final breakup. Of course the movie can
show all the events relayed in the chorus of "Guenevere," but words
and images in mutual description are superfluous, and ultimately all the action
merely seems to pad out an already long movie. Lerner felt it necessary to
clearly spell out Arthur's dilemmas in some ad-copy dialogue from Mordred:
"Let her die, your life is over, let her live, your life's a fraud."
Forced to seek battle on his favorite knight, Arthur has a last evening of
reverie. Lance & Jenny sneak in for a final rapproachment. But it's all
gone to shit. Not only has Arthur lost everything but Lance has too; Jenny has
entered a nunnery. (Away nasty feelings!) It's such a downer; a bad aftertaste from
most of the second half. But the coda is what people remember: the boy who
brings hope, the one who's heard the legend. So that's what it's all about:
storytelling; the creation of myth. The boy, Tom of Warwick, is, of course,
meant to be Thomas Malory--author of the 1485 Le Morte d'Arthur--the best known, primary source of Arthurian folklore.
"Run, boy, run," shouts Arthur on the strains of "Camelot,"
so that half a millenium later we might be watching such hoary romance tales
set to Lerner & Loewe tunes.
The Valley Music Theater in Woodland Hills lasted but
three summers in the mid-sixties, the first of those concrete-domed suburban LA
stages to end its program of Bway plays and musicals--following a last season
of such faltering fare as Frank Gorshin in What
Makes Sammy Run? and Anne Jeffreys in Do
I Hear a Waltz? My treasured local
venue offered one last highlight: a Carolyn Jones/ Mary Wickes High Spirits that suited them both
beautifully. The following summer, in the throes of withdrawl, I somehow
recruited my parents to trek down to Melodyland in Anaheim (some 70 miles), to
see Camelot with Kathryn Grayson--unknown
to me then as the former MGM soprano, now irrelevant in films; she was a replacement
Guenevere on Bway, which kept her much employed for years thereafter on the
road. But there are few things as depressing as a Sunday matinee in a
near-empty Theater-in-the-Round--especially for a show famous for its elaborate
scenery. And if that weren't bad enuf, my father's disinterest was more rabid
than usual--tho I could hardly blame him, bored as I was myself. Worst of all
was being across the street from Disneyland ,
with no amount of pleading getting me in. Oh, the humanity! This experience
having sullied my feelings for L&L's opus, I had little interest in the
movie's premiere Roadshow engagement in Hlwd that autumn. Especially with
actors I didn't even know. No, here was one I wasn't remotely keen to see. I did
see it two years later, not of my own volition but on the bill at the Los Altos Logan Burton
.JPG)
Vanessa Redgrave may then have been among the
hottest new film stars, but here appears surprisingly unformed. She has odd
moments acting for the camera--overly indicating her thoughts. Her singing
voice is adequate at best, with no attempt to match Andrews. Her "Lusty Month
of May" is slowed to a purr, and the ballads delivered in whisper. But
Redgrave is that rare actress whose beauty and talent would blossom with age,
and few would cite Camelot among her
greatest hits. Tho his singing voice is dubbed, Franco Nero hits all the right emotional
notes as Lancelot, sincerity oozing from his pleading eyes like a basset hound.
Tho the role is cast with movie-star cred, T.H. White actually describes Lance
as the ugliest man in Camelot--which surely adds depth to the love affair.
After all, it's easy to fall for a movie star, as Redgrave herself did. Lionel
Jeffries and Laurence Naismith disappear behind forests of facial hair as
Pellinore and Merlin, and David Hemmings is a properly creepy Mordred--slinking
about like a child molester--deprived of his two stage numbers. It's an
acceptable cast, just not an exciting, or muscially talented one.
After the success and prestige Hlwd accorded My Fair Lady and Sound of Music, Warner's expectations were high for Academy acclaim--surely
he had great hopes for the cast, Logan, and a Pic nomination; but apparently Camelot bores as many as it thrills. The
Tony committee liked Burton Burton
in Taming of the Shrew and Harrison 's Doolittle).
Hlwd did concede some technical noms to Camelot's
visual design. Logan
Other obsessions consumed me at the time. I had maneuvered
my mother into a library upgrade--the regional branch--which meant a longer
drive, but now I had access to better books, the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section and--gasp!--Variety. So while the world was shifting
on its cultural axis by the likes of one Sgt. Pepper and a headline-making "Summer
of Love" media-freakshow in San
Francisco
Instead he was molding
the year's other heartbreaker, Kander & Ebb's The Happy Time which came to tryout in LA--my first pre-Bway
musical experience. Whether the show was brilliant or I was just 15 years old and saw myself in 16 year
old Michael Rupert sharing the stage with Robert Goulet (making a timely bid to
move beyond "Lancelot") and David Wayne, I absolutely loved it--tho too
much reliance on photographs, made it seem spare of scenic splendor--I'd seen
enuf bare-bones sets via the limitations of theater-in-the-round. Whether it
was a cultural reflection or purely accidental, the Bway musical took an exit
ramp from The Golden Age in 1967; nothing seemed to work anymore; not a singing
Man Who Came to Dinner (Sherry!); not a saucy foreign film
musicalized for its original star--which some thought a sign of the coming
apocalypse (Illya, Darling); not a
cavalcade of African-American history by Styne, Comden & Green (Hallelujah, Baby!). A haggard Judy
Garland returned to the Palace--for her final time, and in legendary decline;
and Marlene Dietrich made her last Madame Tussaud-like stand on Bway in
October. The fall season reflected the uncertainty with only two new musical openings:
Henry and Merrick 's
How Now Dow Jones--both summarily
dismissed. By the time The Happy Time opened in January '68, hope
was high the tide would shift. But Barnes wasn't charmed by this one either,
and suddenly it seemed the Bway musical had lost it footing--or audience--or
both.
Instead he was molding
the year's other heartbreaker, Kander & Ebb's The Happy Time which came to tryout in LA--my first pre-Bway
musical experience. Whether the show was brilliant or I was just 15 years old and saw myself in 16 year
old Michael Rupert sharing the stage with Robert Goulet (making a timely bid to
move beyond "Lancelot") and David Wayne, I absolutely loved it--tho too
much reliance on photographs, made it seem spare of scenic splendor--I'd seen
enuf bare-bones sets via the limitations of theater-in-the-round. Whether it
was a cultural reflection or purely accidental, the Bway musical took an exit
ramp from The Golden Age in 1967; nothing seemed to work anymore; not a singing
Man Who Came to Dinner (Sherry!); not a saucy foreign film
musicalized for its original star--which some thought a sign of the coming
apocalypse (Illya, Darling); not a
cavalcade of African-American history by Styne, Comden & Green (Hallelujah, Baby!). A haggard Judy
Garland returned to the Palace--for her final time, and in legendary decline;
and Marlene Dietrich made her last Madame Tussaud-like stand on Bway in
October. The fall season reflected the uncertainty with only two new musical openings:
Henry and
Meanwhile in Hlwd, studios blinded by the phenomenon of Sound of Music, were green-lighting
musicals like they were going out of style; which in turn made it so. But in
Hlwd '67, the trend was bigger stars with bigger budgets, and bigger junkets
for Roadshow releases. The next eight Bway musicals coming down the pike would
follow this model--with very mixed results. Much
like Camelot itself. There are
moments that sizzle in dramatic tension, but virtually none of the musical
sequences are special. And at three full hours it drags on for far too long,
then races to an ending. As for the magic? Well, you know what the they say
about smoke & mirrors.
Next Up: Half a Sixpence
Next Up: Half a Sixpence
Report Card:
Camelot
Overall Film: C+
Bway Fidelity: B
Musical Numbers from
Bway: 12
Musical Numbers Cut
from Bway: 6
New Songs: None
Standout
Number: "C'est Moi"
Casting: Trendy, non-musical
Standout Cast: Franco Nero
Cast from Bway: None
Direction: Dull in drama,
cliched in action,
Best in scenes of sexual
tension
Choreography: Casual, Maypole whimsy
Ballet: None (An "Enchanted Forest
Ballet"
was cut prior to Bway)
Scenic Design: Opulent, if
rarely beautiful
Costumes: Intricate if rarely
stunning
Standout Sets:
Arthur's chamber
Palace Throne Hall, Secret Garden
Titles: Gothic serif
on purple forest scene
Oscar Noms: 5--Cinematography, Sound
3
wins: Art Direction, Costumes, Scoring.
*For those true fanatics interested, to quote Bob Merrill's aching ballad: "Here I Am." The melody seduces me every
time by its orchestration alone, especially its exquisite fanfare in the
overture--the ultimate Loretta Young entrance, and my would-be theme song; Playten's two numbers are
indispensible, and Neva Small's are enjoyable as well. But "Weary Near to
Dyin'" is a jaw-dropping Bway take on the "hippie sound," which
underneath its Bway orchestration could be mistaken for Galt MacDermot, and
builds to a truly orgiastic finish. A travesty, no doubt, to rock purists. But
I find it endlessly fascinating--one can only wonder how Michael Bennett set it
to dance. 
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