by Daniel Keyes
Shortly after Bantam published the paperback edition of Flowers for Algernon, Cliff Robertson visited Ohio University to be honored by the Aeronautical Program. He piloted his small plane into the Athens airport, and cameras flashed as he opened the cockpit and climbed down. When he saw me, he smiled. "Dan, you're going to be proud of me when you see Charly. We kept your downbeat ending."
I remembered his plan for Algernon to wiggle his whiskers and rim the maze at the end to show he was still alive, but I said nothing.
His visit was, of course, a photo opportunity, and the Athens Messenger and Ohio University's student newspaper, The Post, had been alerted for pictures and interviews. The Biology Department provided a white mouse as a stand-in, and photographers took pictures of Robertson holding an Algernon look-alike as I show them both a copy of the new movie tie-in paperback with him and Claire Bloom on the cover.
The following morning, Robertson and I had breakfast together at his hotel. He talked about the film. As coproducer, he said proudly, he'd assumed major creative control. He'd sent director Ralph Nelson to Canada to learn the new movie techniques of EXPO-67, and then insisted on a modern look with split-screen projection and multiple images. The musical sound track was composed and played by Ravi Shankar featuring his sitar, and using both exotic and conventional strings as well as ancient and modern woodwinds.
He said, only one thing bothered him. As he had told me years earlier at the Detroit Airport, he had never intended for Algernon to die at the end. But in the film's convention scene, when Charlie holds the mouse in his hand, Algernon looks dead. Robertson said before the film's release, he'd phoned director Ralph Nelson, who was in London at the time, and told him to shoot a close-up of a hand—any hand—holding a live white mouse wiggling its whiskers, so they could splice it during the final edit.
"But yesterday, you said you kept the downbeat ending."
He shrugged. "Ralph never got to shoot that close-up."
The International Berlin Film Festival selected Charly as the "American Entry of 1968," and in the fell it premiered in New York. I stood across the street from the Baronet Theater, watching the line of moviegoers that snaked around the corner.
After a deep breath of Broadway air, I crossed the street to get in line, and bought my ticket. Inside, after the lights dimmed, I heard the twanging music of Ravi Shankar's sitar, saw childlike Charlie on the playground swing, and then lost myself in the movie of my "What would happen if...?"
I felt a twinge of disappointment that they'd changed the setting to Boston, instead of New York City, the place of memories I had given to Charlie.
Charly received rave reviews. The Long Island Press reviewer called it "Dynamic," with "...a chilling ending that speaks volumes."
So the original downbeat ending had made it intact to the screen, and people around the world would see it as I'd written it.
The film's first award came from Scholastic Magazine, which had published the "Flowers for Algernon" novelette version several times, in 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1967. Scholastic gave Charly the Bell Ringer Award in 1968, as the "Best Movie of the Year."
Someone at Bantam must have realized the potential for the use of the novel in education, because they launched a FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON—CHARLY—BANTAM BOOKS/CINERAMA JOINT PROMOTION pilot project. The plan was to sponsor a series of preview screenings for educators in key cities where the movie was to be shown.
At the first screening in Chicago, each of the 450 teachers who attended was given a kit containing a copy of the paperback novel, a study guide for teaching it, and an interview between Ralph Nelson, the film's producer/director, and Stirling Silliphant, the screenwriter, discussing their creative collaboration.
Cliff Robertson put in a personal appearance, and was greeted by a wildly enthusiastic audience and a standing ovation. He conducted a symposium following the movie. The next day he did the same thing in Milwaukee at a special screening for the National Council of Teachers of English.
In New York and Los Angeles, where Charly had already opened, teachers were invited to the movie during its regular playing schedule. Although New York teachers were on strike, more than five hundred teachers from private and parochial schools attended screenings and received copies of the teachers' kit.
Bantam and Cinerama arranged preview screenings in other major cities throughout the country, and more than 25,000 English teachers and their families saw the movie and received free copies of the novel. The director of sales wrote to keep me up to date: "The interest and activity are gaining tremendous momentum."
Hollywood buzzed that Cliff Robertson would be nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor.
He was and he won.
I am often asked, as are most writers whose work has been transformed into a film, "What did you think of the movie?" It's awkward to answer that without seeming petty or ungrateful. But then a postgraduate student from another university, doing his thesis on "Adaptation of Literature for the Screen," asked about my reaction to the movie version.
I wrote back that I understood changes had been needed to translate the story to film. Some of these enhanced the work, by adding to or intensifying it. For example: In the novel, when Charlie is frustrated at one stage of his growth, he goes on a movie binge in Times Square—as I used to do. The film version in Boston has him go on a midget-auto bumper cars binge on a midway. Much more visual. The idea of frustration is well-handled, and yet nothing is lost or harmed.
And when genius Charlie sees himself as the earlier Charlie—during a nightmare pursuit through a maze of hotel corridors—its imaginative and well done. The scene complements passages in the book, in which genius Charlie discovers the first Charlie is still within him.
But there are added sections, techniques, and scenes which I feel are unnecessary, and which detract from the story. As Charlie and Alice develop a relationship, they're shown in a slow-motion romp through the woods. It looks like a shampoo or deodorant TV commercial.
The scene in which Charlie forces his attention on Alice and then becomes a motorcycle-gang, black-leather-jacket, drug-cult member violates his character. One of my points in the novel is that his basic personality doesn't change with a change of intelligence. He is still Charlie.
These changes were obviously made for commercial reasons, as were the trendy film techniques: zoom camera angles, and split and multiple screens. One reviewer pointed out that these might have been needed to maintain interest in a film with a less compelling story line, but they weren't necessary for Charly.
Life Magazines reviewer wrote, "The best scenes, like those in which Charlie competes with the mouse in getting through a maze, are straight from the book The worst, like the medical convention where he tells off the doctors, were invented for the movie."
I think the film suffers when it avoids the denouement, and makes a quick jump from Charlie's discovery of what is going to happen to him to a sudden frozen-faced ending on the swing in the schoolyard. Robertson had warned me earlier that he felt the audience wouldn't be able to tolerate the agony of the downward curve of Charlie's deterioration. But I believe this is the major power and structure of both the novelette and the novel. Charlie's tragic fell should have been shown.
I don't insist that filmmakers are obliged to adhere to the original story, but I do think that changes should preserve the integrity of the work, rather than modify it for strictly commercial reasons.
As for Cliff Robertson's portrayal of Charlie, I feel he deserved the Oscar he won.
But I have to admit I'm glad director Ralph Nelson didn't find a mouse in London that could wiggle its whiskers.
22. Broadway Bound
SEVEN YEARS AFTER the movie was released, I received a letter from David Rogers, who had written a play version of Flowers for Algernon for nonprofessional theater, saying he and a composer were interested in doing a first-class dramatic-musical version for the stage. I was fascinated by the thought. Musical theater was the only m
edium in which the story had not yet appeared.
Rogers had presented the idea to Charles Strouse, composer of such hit shows as Bye-Bye Birdie, Golden Boy, and Applause. His latest, Annie, was soon to open, and Strouse was eager to write the music for Flowers for Algernon.
The amateur theatrical version had been performed successfully for seven years in high schools and in stock groups around the country, and now the Dramatic Publishing Company was prepared to help finance the musical. The producer planned to open the show in late 1977 or early 1978.
I reminded them that I would have to submit their offer to Cliff Robertson under his "right of first refusal," but they felt certain that, since he could have no interest in doing a stage musical, there surely would be no problem.
They were wrong.
After receiving the offer of "first refusal" Robertson contested my right to make the deal. It took the next three years to bring the case to arbitration in Los Angeles.
In the meantime, among the hundreds of letters from readers about Flowers for Algernon, one from a psychiatrist led me to a new path for my next two books.
She wrote that she and her colleague were doing research into literary examples of "autoscopy," now sometimes referred to as the out-of-body experience. They had noticed its frequent occurrence in Flowers for Algernon.
I knew what she was referring to, but I hadn't recalled that it had appeared frequently. Rereading the novel, I was surprised.
After Charlie becomes a genius, he often sees the other Charlie. When he and Alice are at the concert in Central Park, and he puts his arms around her, he believes he sees a boy watching them.
All the way back to her apartment, it was on my mind that the boy had been crouching there in the darkness, and for one second I had caught a glimpse of what he was seeing—the two of us lying in each other's arms. (Harcourt paperback edition, page 101)
Somehow, getting drunk had momentarily broken down the conscious barriers that kept the old Charlie Gordon hidden deep in my mind. As I suspected all along, he was not really gone. Nothing in our minds is ever really gone. The operation had covered him over with a veneer of education and culture, but emotionally he was there—watching and waiting, (page 195)
"I can't help feeling that I'm not me. I've usurped his place and I locked him out the way they locked me out of the bakery ... I've discovered that not only did Charlie exist in the past, he exists now. In me and around me..." (page 201)
For one moment I had the cold feeling he was watching. Over the arm of the couch, I caught a glimpse of his face staring back at me through the dark beyond the window—where just a few minutes earlier I had been crouching. A switch in perception, and I was out on the fire escape again, watching a man and a woman inside making love on the couch.
Then, with a violent effort of the will, I was back on the couch with her ... and I saw the face against the window, hungrily watching. And I thought to myself, go ahead, you poor bastard—watch. I don't give a damn any more.
And his eyes went wide as he watched, (page 209)
The psychiatrist's letter pointed out that authors in whose work autoscopy appeared seemed to fall into one of two categories: For some writers, like E. T. A. Hoffman, it revealed a symptom of mental disorder. For other writers, it was merely a literary device. She wanted to know in which category I belonged. I wrote back that I had never had these experiences, except as a conscious act of the imagination. As for as I was concerned, Charlie's self-seeing is a literary device.
Then, fascinated that this phenomenon appeared so often in my book, I began to study the psychiatric literature on autoscopy and related subjects. Out-of-body experiences led me to doppelgangers, doubles, alter egos, dual personalities, and finally multiple personality disorder (MPD), now called dissociative identity disorder (DID).
I read several short novelettes in which the double appears: Poe's "William Wilson," Dostoyevsky's "The Double," and Conrad's "The Secret Sharer."
And, of course, there were the two famous nonfiction case histories: The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil. But it occurred to me that no one had ever written a full-length novel dealing with this aspect of the multiple personality disorder.
The psychiatrist's comments about Genius Charlie seeing the First Charlie began to germinate into my third novel— The Fifth Sally—a story about a mind in conflict with itself. That letter had been another "given."
Shortly afterward, I flew to Los Angeles to face Cliff Robertson during two days of testimony. Several weeks later I received the award of arbitration.
"CLAIMANT, Daniel Keyes, under the reservation of rights provision of the contract of August 18, 1961 is free to convey to the offeree the stage rights in the dramatic-musical version of CLAIMANT'S work 'Flowers for Algernon.'"
So, while I was working on The Fifth Sally, my experimental novel, a singing Charlie and a dancing white mouse were rehearsing for the musical stage.
Let me describe briefly what I heard on the first audiotape Rogers and Strouse sent me. The show's opening number is a childlike melody with simple lyrics: "I got a friend today, someone to laugh and play. I got a friend."
As Charlie's intelligence improves, the songs become increasingly complex, sophisticated. At the high point he sings an operatic aria—"Charlie." Then, as his intelligence deteriorates, his songs become simpler, until it ends with a plaintive rock number. "I really loved ya—"
They had done, in lyrics and music, the equivalent of the story's spelling and sentence structure—showing Charlie's rise and fall by the way he communicates.
It is a one-act production. No chance of anyone "second acting." At the end, Charlie sits sadly by Algernon's grave in the backyard.
Because of the complex arbitration over the dramatic-musical rights, the show's opening was delayed. Since one of Charles Strouse's other musicals was having problems during its out-of-town engagement in Washington, D.C., he transferred one of Charlie's major songs to the new show.
"Tomorrow" helped make Annie a hit.
I couldn't get to the first out-of-town performances at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Canada, but the producers sent me the glowing notices.
I saw the show for the first time on opening night at the Queen's Theatre in London's West End—the British equivalent of Broadway. A young popular British actor I had never heard of before played the singing, dancing Charlie.
I watched, entranced as he carried the mood from the sad memories of his parents' suffering to the comic turn as he and the white mouse dance across the stage as a vaudeville duo. At one point, Algernon cavorts across Charlie's black turtleneck sweater, and then, in a soft-shoe number, under twin spotlights, Charlie dances, while Algernon runs in circles beside him. A showstopper.
The London production drew good notices, but there had been a cloud over it from the beginning. Opening week coincided with the British government's start of the Value Added Tax—a hefty tax surcharge on almost all products. Londoners were buying refrigerators, washing machines, and cars before the V.A.T. sent prices soaring. They weren't buying theater tickets.
As the Wall Street Journal wrote: "The London theater ... is in deep financial trouble ... the recent near-doubling of the national sales tax, known as value added tax or VAT, is forcing higher ticket prices and driving away new audiences. West End producers and actors were recently shocked by the closing of two productions everyone expected to be hits. 'Flowers for Algernon,' ...lasted only 29 performances."
I was on a driving tour through England with my family, when the closing notice reached us in Oxford. We returned to London in time for the cast farewell party as the set was struck—drinks in paper cups, sad good-byes.
Years later, when I visited the young actor backstage, in his dressing room in New York, he told me that after Andrew Lloyd Webber had seen him singing and dancing with Algernon in London, he offered him the lead in his new show.
Annie had gotten Charlies song, "Tomorrow."
And our singing, dancing Charlie—M
ichael Crawford—had become "Phantom of the Opera."
The producers still had their hearts set on Broadway. The new American production of Flowers for Algernon was renamed Charlie and Algernon, subtitled, "AVery Special Musical." Sponsored by the Kennedy Center, the Fisher Theater Foundation, Isobel Robins Konecky, and the Folger Theater Group, the show had its out-of-town tryout in Washington, D.C.
Charlie was performed by P. J. Benjamin, who dedicated his performance to his sister, and "to all the other special people in this world."
The Washington limited engagement received fine notices, and, after a brief standing-room-only run at the intimate Terrace Theater, it made a "Return Engagement by Popular Demand" to the 1,500-seat Eisenhower Theater.
Mel Gusso reviewed the Kennedy Center production for the New York Times:
This seemingly unlikely musical material ... becomes the basis of a show with a heart about our minds...[during] the title song, a cheerfully sardonic vaudeville turn about [Charlies] disillusionment, he places the mouse on stage in a spotlight, and on cue—do our eyes deceive us?—the mouse appears to dance to the music. This rousing tune is immediately followed by "The Maze," a Jacques Brel-like swirling carousel of a song about Charlie's labyrinthine confusion.... Algernon is in a class by himself. This is one mouse that earns its cheese.
After a review like that, the show moved to Broadway's Helen Hayes Theater in New York with high expectations.
The first hint of trouble surfaced when the producers learned that David Merrick's musical, 42nd Street, based on the 1933 hit movie, would be opening the same night. An extravaganza, with massive advertising and promotion, was pitted against our small show.