I finished Second Act Trouble: Behind the Scenes at Broadway’s Big Musical Bombs by Steven Suskin.
Disappointing. You would think that in a book about Broadway musicals you’d at least have the basic facts about the musicals themselves. But this book doesn’t give you the plots of the musicals it covers, or even a lot of the background to those plots. This book tells you that Golden Boy was adapted from an earlier plat by Clifford Odets, but you’d never know that the original play was about an Italian-American violinist/boxer, while the musical was about a black non-musician boxer (weird, considering they wrote the play with star Sammy Davis Jr. in mind. The original novel was about an aspiring surgeon who boxed to make money).
The book mentions that the musical flop Kelly was inspired by Steve Brodie, but doesn’t explain that what Brodie was famous for was claiming to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. You’d think that detail would be important to understanding the play.
What this book consists of is a collection of contemporary reports (or long-after-the-fact memoir excerpts) about the musical. You get to see the personalities and interactions involved as they struggle to save these musicals, but the author pretty much assumes that you know the plays involved and who the major players are. (He does, in inserted comments, explain who some of the lesser figures are, even if he doesn’t fill you in on the plays themselves). The attitude seems to be “If you don’t know these plays already, or the major players, then why are you reading this book?”
His choices of plays is a bit odd, too. I’d have expected the musical adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie to be in there – a major flop if ever there was one. It’s not even mentioned. Via Galactica was a majorly weird science fiction musical that flopped on Broadway. It’s mentioned in passing twice.
And several of the plays listed were highly praised and later revived. Golden Boy, The Act won Liza Minelli a Tony. Several of these ran for 200 or more performances and weren’t complete financial disasters.
Suskin reportedly has considerable wit and the ability to sum of shows in a few lines, but neither capability is on display here, where he’s mainly an editor and brief commentator.
What I found most interesting were the many playbills reproduced. Glenn Close was in that? Charles Nelson Reilly was in all those? And it’s amazing how many non-singers were given major roles in musicals. – Louis Jordan, Richard Chamberlin, Julie Harris – Rex Harrison must have convinced people that this was a good idea.
For me personally, the most jolting thing was learning that Albert L. “Pete” Gurney was tapped to write the book for the musical Nick and Nora, based on the “Thin Man” series of movies. This, despite the fact that Gurney was not noted for writing musicals or mysteries. What he WAS noted for was writing plays about almost painfully WASP characters – “Love Letters”, “The Dining Room”, “The Golden Fleece”. Maybe somebody figured that Nick and Mora Charles were the ultimate WASP couple. Maybe somebody saw Gurney’s “Who Killed Richard Corey?” and mistook it for a mystery drama because of the title (It isn’t). Most telling is the Gurney quote Suskin gives – “I threw out the plot because I found it boring.”
(Gurney was one of my college professors. An interesting character himself. But I don’t think I’d have hired him to write a mystery or a musical.)
Next – on to Dan Simmons’ Ilium or the translation of The Elder Edda I picked up over the weekend.