NO, NO, NANETTE By Peter Filichia
You’re aware of one great book about a 1971 Broadway musical production, but do you know another?
For years, we’ve all celebrated Ted Chapin’s magnificent Everything Was Possible, about the gestation of FOLLIES.
But don’t overlook Don Dunn’s The Making of NO, NO, NANETTE.
The paperback’s back cover sports expected enthusiastic quotations from reviewers as well as a statement from the Chicago Tribune:
“Dunn had four lawyers read the book before it was printed.”
So, you know it’s going to be hot stuff. If The Making of NO, NO, NANETTE is not a tell-all, it’s a tell-plenty.
Dunn’s 1973 book came to mind as I was scanning my just-about-to-be-published calendar called A Show Tune for Today: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year. I saw that that we’re now only one year away from celebrating the centennial of the original NO, NO, NANETTE, which opened on Sept. 16, 1925, at what’s now the Lunt-Fontanne.
Although Dunn centered on the 1971 revival, he did reference that original production. During rehearsals, producer Harry Frazee was unhappy with the lyrics that Otto Harbach had provided to composer Vincent Youmans’ melodies. So, Frazee hired Irving Caesar – who’d penned the words to the Al Jolson hit “Swanee” – to replace Harbach’s work.
Youmans and Caesar would claim that they wrote one song in a half-hour, and another in 15 minutes. On the road, they took a bit longer to write the score’s most enduring hits: “I Want to Be Happy” and “Tea for Two.”
Caesar later admitted that he used the words “tea for two” simply as a dummy lyric – meaning the irrelevant words a lyricist chooses just to get a sense of the scansion and melody. So, Caesar never intended the eventual copies of sheet music would start with “Picture you upon my knee, with tea for two and two for tea.” However, so many liked the image that Caesar retained it.
(He later observed, “How can they be having tea if the girl’s sitting on his lap?”)
As for NO, NO, NANETTE’s 1971 revisal, Dunn’s account could almost pass for a murder mystery. No one was actually killed during NANETTE’s genesis, but plenty of egos were.
THE PRIMARY VICTIMS:
HARRY RIGBY: The three-time Broadway producer had the idea to revive the vintage hit. He’d cast it with legends from long-ago black-and-white films who’d now return to the stage in living color. Rigby met Cyma Rubin, who had money and agreed to co-produce – or so Rigby thought. He had unwittingly signed a contract without questioning the clause that said he could be fired.
Rubin eventually made him walk the plank.
BUSBY BERKELEY: The 75-year-old film musical legend was Rigby’s choice to direct and choreograph. When he arrived in New York and exited the plane, he immediately collapsed onto the tarmac. Once everyone saw that he couldn’t do the jobs, Burt Shevelove took over as director and Donald Saddler as choreographer. Berkeley was later relegated to punching three holes in each of the script’s new pages, so they could be accommodated in binders. Plenty of punching occurred, because Shevelove was rewriting the show.
CHARLES GAYNOR: He’d already rewritten the 1925 script, but Rubin had fired him, too.
CAROLE DEMAS. Her salary as Nanette was one-fifth of what original Nanette Louise Groody received in 1925. Demas’ mother attended a rehearsal in which Shevelove warmly introduced her to the company. The next day, Shevelove and Rubin fired Demas in favor of Susan Watson and gave her four months’ salary. Better days would come, for in 1972, Demas was in the original GREASE as the first Sandy Dumbrowski.
HIRAM SHERMAN: Despite a reputation for leaving a production at a moment’s notice, Sherman was hired to play Jimmy, the clueless husband who subsidizes three flappers just to be nice, unaware that his largesse will be misinterpreted. No, Rubin didn’t fire him; he left during the tryout. Sherman had a run-of-the-play contract but didn’t believe in the show and traded it for two weeks’ salary.
FRANK MCHUGH: He replaced Sherman – for three performances before Rubin fired him. Was she pleased with replacement Jack Gilford, or, with the Broadway opening less than a month away, did she not have the energy to find someone else?
CYMA RUBIN: So why are we calling the eventual sole producer a victim? Because that’s how she saw herself. “Why,” she wondered, “does the cast call me ‘The Black Witch?’”
THOSE WHO WERE WITH IT FROM DAY ONE – AND SURVIVED:
RUBY KEELER: The star, famed for the film 42nd STREET, had been retired for decades and was living in California. She warned them: “I haven’t danced in 20 years,” anticipating a remark we’d hear in FOLLIES. But she came through, dancing delightfully in playing Sue, the ever-trusting wife who won’t let Nanette go to Atlantic City with her flapper friends.
PATSY KELLY: Playing the sassy maid Pauline would land her a Tony. What a change from her recent defeats in television. (“I’ve made so many pilots, I could start my own airline.”) She stayed loyal to Rigby and thanked him in her Tony acceptance speech.
HELEN GALLAGHER: She won a Tony, too, helped by “Too Many Rings around Rosie,” the Caesar-Youmans song that they wrote in a half-hour. Walter Kerr’s review lauded how glorious Gallagher sounded when she sang the first syllable of Ro-sie. She did superbly with all the other syllables, too. Not bad for someone who had said after a certain rehearsal that she was “going to my group and tell them what I’ve been going through.”
BOBBY VAN: Despite Rubin’s insistence in only paying him half-salary during rehearsals, he stayed and triumphed. How stylish he was in “Call of the Sea,” which was not all that called him. Note that lyric, “Daintily showing all the beauties: rollicking, frolicking, sweet patooties.”
(Yup, “sweet patooties” was used decades before THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW re-introduced it.)
Van and Gallagher, as a married couple with issues, also shone in “You Can Dance with Any Girl at All,” the Caesar-Youmans song that they wrote in 15 minutes.
HILARY KNIGHT: The artist who provided the marvelous purple-and-pink NANETTE logo was furious at how Dunn described him. “He called me ‘diminutive,’” Knight told me with great umbrage. “He should talk! He only came up to my waist!”
And yet, listen to the confident and spirited cast album, and you’d never know that NANETTE went through worse birth pains than those endured by The Octomom. The excitement starts with Ralph Burns’ sumptuous orchestrations in the Overture, which features twin pianos (a convention that populated 1920s’ overtures).
Who would have thought they’d even get an album when they headed to Boston? Many pundits thought, “No stars, no relevance, no nudity, no chance.” Their first Boston preview would be on Halloween. Trick or treat?
Treat. Critics and audiences went wild there, in other tryout cities and then in New York. True, John Simon of New York Magazine panned it, only to later admit that he received more hate mail for that negative notice than for any other he’d written.
Despite Simon’s non-blessing, NANETTE was grossing “a whopping amount” each week, says Dunn: $107,000. Today, if you took that in, you’d close faster than Glory Days. But those were the glory days of a $12 top, $15 on weekends, and five bucks for standing room. Scalpers were getting $50. The $500,000 investment was paid back in six months.
Last year, the Ohio Light Opera, an esteemed company that’s been a mainstay in Warren for 43 years, mounted the NO, NO, NANETTE that London saw in the ‘20s. There’s a terrific video that will soon be available. It includes some songs not in the revisal, including “Flappers Are We,” in which chorines look forward to “petting parties with the smarties.” Visit ohiolightopera.org.
So, did NANETTE win a Best Revival Tony? No; not until the 1976-77 season would the Tonys establish such a category, one that then lumped together remounted plays and musicals. So, NANETTE probably would not have won in 1971, for Peter Brook’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM received even better reviews.
But NANETTE did set what was then a long-run record for a revival: 861 performances. Thanks to Masterworks Broadway, you can still hear it, and thanks to Ohio Light Opera, you can see it.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – will be released on October 15 but is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
