Something Wonderful

by Todd S. Purdum

  Lawrence’s longtime understudy, Constance Carpenter, played the dress rehearsal, and by the New Haven opening on February 26, Lawrence was running a fever of 103 degrees but went on anyway. Lawrence had asked the partners to delay the opening, but they refused. The curtain rang down after nearly four hours, a stretch for any audience and a certain financial disaster since the show had to be over by 11:30 p.m. or it would incur crippling overtime costs for musicians and stagehands. The reaction of the New Haven critics: The show was no South Pacific. It was not for the tired businessman. It was forty-five minutes too long. Its score was not written with an eye toward the Hit Parade.

  Leland Hayward’s verdict was the most dire: he told Dick and Oscar that they should close the show rather than risk bringing it into New York. Robert Emmett Dolan was more sanguine, writing to Oscar on the day after the opening with only minor complaints. He wondered if Lawrence was playing Anna as too young. He couldn’t always hear all of “A Puzzlement” and wished that Brynner were a better singer. He praised Rodgers’s score. “This show represents a real striking out for new forms on Dick’s part and I think he has been very successful.” Still, the company had its work cut out for its three-week run in Boston, which would begin on March 5. There, The King and I would undergo more pre-Broadway changes than any other Rodgers and Hammerstein show. Five songs would be cut entirely, along with several stanzas of others.

  One early number, “Waiting,” was to have been sung by Anna, the king, and the king’s prime minister, the Kralahome, about her long wait for an audience with the king after her arrival in Bangkok; instead the wait would merely be described in a couple of lines of dialogue. Another song, “Why, Why, Why,” a broadside by the king that dismissively catalogued the absurdity—to Eastern eyes—of prevailing Victorian customs, was jettisoned in favor of a new second-act opening number, “Western People Funny,” in which Lady Thiang and the harem, struggling with hoopskirts in preparation for an elegant banquet to entertain visiting British dignitaries, bemoan the same phenomenon.

  To prove we’re not barbarians

  They dress us up like savages!

  To prove we’re not barbarians

  We wear a funny skirt!…

  Western people funny,

  Of that there is no doubt.

  They feel so sentimental

  About the Oriental,

  They always try to turn us

  Inside down and upside out!

  The critical doubts, the changes, her illness, and Rodgers’s seeming dissatisfaction with her singing had by now left Gertrude Lawrence shaken. She poured out her feelings to Rodgers in a long, handwritten note on Ritz-Carlton stationery. “There seems to be an idiotic impression around that there is a ‘feud’ between us—you & I, and it strikes me as an extremely unhappy and most unfortunate situation,” she told him. “For my part the explanation lies in the deep-rooted feeling which has been settled in my heart since our early rehearsal days that you were not happy with my portrayal of ‘Anna’ or even of my presence in the whole play. As you know, I have never had a ‘big’ voice—but ever since ‘Lady in the Dark’ I have been studying to correct my faults in placement & to at least improve my breathing and thus to sing on pitch.” She acknowledged that there had been gaps in her lessons, but added, “To my horror you seemed to bite your nails to the quick every time I sang before you & so my throat would close up & my heart has been sore with disappointment.” In closing, Lawrence insisted,

  My only desire is to please you, but I am a very shy person & would rather crawl into a hole somewhere than face disapproval. I have not changed in any way—but you have in some manner—to the extent that you no longer seem the warm-hearted friend that you used to be but rather a big businessman with much at stake—which seems to be all my fault!! I have no wish to “vocalize” but I have endeavored to improve & repair a fault simply because I wanted to be worthy of your music & it has been saddening to watch you walk away during rehearsals, even as late as Tuesday afternoon when the new arrangement came for Lovers. You didn’t even seem interested. I will work until I drop in my tracks, but a kind word is worth more than all the glowing and gushing of others. Please be my chum again and let’s dispel this idea of a feud between us.

  She reported that the conductor, Frederick Dvonch, “seems very happy over the music now, & I am getting more relaxed in the singing of it, but my heart just aches inside me when I think that you are unhappy. I would rather leave altogether than go on this way. ‘Mrs. Anna.’”

  Lawrence was not the only one with doubts. Her entourage shared Josh Logan’s feeling that the first act lacked warmth and that there ought to be a musical number for her and the children. Mary Martin, who claimed to have seen the first performance in New Haven—a somewhat doubtful possibility since she was still playing nightly in South Pacific in New York—had the perfect tune in mind, the discarded “Suddenly Lucky” from her own show. Oscar got to work, and in short order found the perfect matching syllables with which Anna could greet her new charges:

  Getting to know you,

  Getting to know all about you,

  Getting to like you,

  Getting to hope you like me.

  As Rodgers would note, the song not only immediately became a high point but served as a vivid and charming articulation of the show’s East-meets-West theme. And the composer’s relations with Lawrence seemed to improve as well. There is no record of his reply to her anguished letter, but sometime after she wrote it, he evidently reassured her, because she wrote again, to thank him for his “sweet letter,” and borrowing a line of dialogue between Mrs. Anna and the king, to assure him, “I am so much happier now that ‘everything seems to be going well for us.’”

  * * *

  FROM THE BEGINNING, Oscar Hammerstein had realized that an unspoken sexual tension and mutual attraction between Anna and the king would be the emotional center of the show. As early as his July 1950 draft of the script, he was outlining “a new song which will be Anna’s attempt to describe a romantic love totally foreign to the king’s idea of relations between man and woman.” The moment comes at the climax of the play. The dinner for the visiting British, which Anna has helped plan, has been a smashing success, scotching any European notion of making Siam a protectorate, and the king in his gratitude gives Anna a ring.

  In Yul Brynner’s words, the king was “the most refined barbarian you’ve ever seen … if his jacket was off, he did not look naked, like, like a panther cannot look naked.” But all during the dinner, the king has been fascinated by the sight of Anna’s bare shoulders in her ball gown, because it does not conform to his own impressions of Western propriety. Now they tangle over the very idea of monogamy as he sings:

  A woman is a female who is human,

  Designed for pleasing man, the human male.

  A human male is pleased by many women,

  And all the rest you hear is fairy tale.

  To which Anna counters:

  Then tell me how this fairy tale began, sir.

  You cannot call it just a poet’s trick.

  Explain to me why many men are faithful

  And true to one wife only—

  “They are sick!” the king concludes.

  Anna then endeavors to explain to the monarch that, just as he is king, so every man and woman falling in love the world over feel themselves the same. She summons memories of the dances of her youth, when shy couples meet:

  We’ve just been introduced,

  I do not know you well,

  But when the music started

  Something drew me to your side.

  So many men and girls are in each other’s arms—

  It made me think we might be

  Similarly occupied.

  And then she launches into a joyous, vibrant polka:

  Shall we dance?

  On a bright cloud of music shall we fly?

  Shall we dance?

  Shall we then say good night and mean goodbye?


  Or, perchance,

  When the last little star has left the sky,

  Shall we still be together

  With our arms around each other

  And shall you be my new romance?

  On the clear understanding

  That this kind of thing can happen,

  Shall we dance?

  The teacher undertakes to instruct her employer, and they count to the “one, two, three and” beat of the polka, holding hands in the innocent manner of a square dance. But suddenly the king stops, insisting that this is not the way the visiting Englishmen had danced with their ladies. Anna acknowledges that it is not, and after a pregnant moment, the king grasps her waist, draws her close, and they fly gloriously from side to side across the open stage. Until. Until they are interrupted with the news that the fleeing Tuptim has been caught—and that her lover presumably soon will be, too. Tuptim rushes into the room, begs Anna for mercy, and faces the king’s wrath. To Anna’s disbelief, the king proposes to whip Tuptim into submission. He says perhaps she will believe he can do it when she hears the slave’s screams as she runs down the hall. Anna refuses to oblige him, vowing to stay and declaring “You are a barbarian!”

  The king tears off his jacket, raises the whip, but freezes as he sees Anna’s eyes, then flees in humiliation.

  “You have destroyed king,” the Kralahome tells Anna before shouting with what Oscar’s stage directions describe as “heartbroken rage,” “I wish you have never come to Siam!”

  “So do I,” Anna sobs. “Oh, so do I!”

  Anna has indeed destroyed the king, and in the scene that swiftly follows, Lady Thiang delivers a letter in which the king tells Anna that he is dying. “You have spoken truth to me always,” Anna reads aloud, “and for this I have often lost my temper on you. But now I do not wish to die without saying this gratitude, etcetera, etcetera. I think it very strange that a woman shall have been most earnest help of all. But, Mrs. Anna, you must remember that you have been a very difficult woman, and much more difficult than generality.” Anna rushes to the king’s study, where he orders Prince Chulalongkorn to describe his first planned acts as the new king. The crown prince announces that he will end the custom of crouching “like lowly toad,” and the king points an accusing finger at Anna, saying this edict is her fault. “Oh, I hope so, Your Majesty,” she replies. “I do hope so.” As the strains of “Something Wonderful” swell, the king quietly slips from life. Anna takes his hand and kisses it as the curtain falls.

  The dramatic demands of this quick change for Lawrence were intense, and now it was Oscar’s turn to receive a wrenching supplication from the star. He had cut a transitional scene in which Anna’s son and the crown prince play chess and discuss their parents, and Lawrence not only had to change heavy costumes while still dripping wet from the vigorous dance, but to compose herself for the high emotion of the final scenes. “Dearest Occie,” Lawrence wrote. “Please I beg of you put back the chess scene for the reading of that most important letter—until you can get some further cuts elsewhere.” But the cut remained.

  * * *

  THE NEW YORK opening was Thursday, March 29, 1951, and for all the tensions and doubts on the road, anticipation was high. John Van Druten would later say that it was in such situations that Gertrude Lawrence knew just what she was capable of, once the curtain went up at last. The effect was electric. “On the opening night she came on the stage with a new and dazzling quality, as though an extra power had been added to the brilliance of her own stage light,” Van Druten would remember. “She was radiant and wonderful.” Fanny Holtzmann, sitting next to Billy Rose in the orchestra, watched “Getting to Know You” for the first time and surprised the impresario with a sharp, delighted dig in the ribs. “We’re in, Billy, we’re in!”

  Howard Dietz, the lyricist and MGM publicist, was so excited that he ducked into a bar after the show and scribbled a note to Oscar on a scrap of paper, calling The King and I the “most tasteful show I’ve seen and I think it will be a big hit and will make other writers careful not to be too vulgar.” Oscar’s old partner Sigmund Romberg called it “a monumental piece of work,” and Dorothy Fields described the show as “beautiful, touching, charming and funny.”

  But as Oscar had feared, the critics were more restrained.

  “No match for South Pacific,” was the verdict of Brooks Atkinson in the Times, though he allowed that “strictly on its own terms, it is an original and beautiful excursion into the rich splendors of the Far East, done with impeccable taste by two artists and brought to life with a warm, romantic score, idiomatic lyrics and some exquisite dancing.” And with a myopia that seems incredible in hindsight, many critics found the score wanting. In the New Republic, Harold Clurman was especially dismissive, calling it “probably the weakest of the Rodgers scores.”

  The show would win five Tony Awards—for best musical, best actress, best featured actor, best costumes, and best scenic designer—and would prove an unquestioned commercial and popular success, racking up 1,246 performances on Broadway and 926 in London. But now it was Dick Rodgers’s turn to have hurt feelings, and he did. A chill settled over the partnership. No rupture was publicly announced or even acknowledged. But for the rest of 1951, Dick and Oscar went their separate ways, their collaboration at least temporarily on ice. They would resume it gingerly, and with the scars to show for it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Catastrophic Success

  There’s a vast difference between being what’s known as a “Businessman” with capital letters and being a fool. And I don’t think I’m a businessman, nor, I must admit, do I think I’m a fool. I put my business in the hands of people who know how to handle it.

  Richard Rodgers

  The commercial success of The King and I meant that Rodgers and Hammerstein once again had back-to-back hits running on Broadway, with South Pacific still packing them in at the Majestic, and Brynner and Lawrence doing capacity business at the St. James. It meant, too, that Dick and Oscar had reached the stage in their partnership at which they were just as apt to be celebrated for the remarkable feats they had already accomplished, as for any achievement they might yet turn out to top themselves. One such occasion was a two-part tribute to Oscar on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town television program on CBS. Rodgers and Hammerstein had been guests on Sullivan’s very first show in 1948 and made frequent appearances thereafter. It had provided superb, free, nationwide publicity that cemented Dick and Oscar in the public mind as an inseparable team. Now, in the second installment of the Hammerstein tribute show, on Sunday, September 16, 1951, Oscar insisted that there was no magic formula for success in the theater. “The next five plays we write could well be flops,” he said.

  He offered a heartfelt tribute to his partner. “This fella Dick to whom I keep referring—he’s my collaborator,” Hammerstein said. “In the eight years of our association, we’ve never disagreed about anything at all. It sounds too good to be true, but it is true, and I’m reporting it here for the record. I think good things should be reported just as well as bad things. A cynic might say that, of course we have a happy partnership because we’ve had so much success. But I suggest that part of our success has been due to the fact that we have a happy partnership. I’ve never sat in a room with Dick and told him how grateful I am to be working with him. I think I’d be too self-conscious to do that.” Here Oscar permitted himself a sly smile and went on, “But somehow or other, standing up here, being looked at and listened to by a good proportion of this country’s population, I’m not self-conscious at all. And I find it a great and easy pleasure to publicly announce that I’m proud and happy and lucky to have him.”

  At this, Sullivan welcomed Dick himself to the stage. Rodgers stuck out his hand in the self-conscious manner of a man averse to any public display of affection or emotion. He then stammered awkwardly for a moment, shifting his weight, searching for words, and looking at his feet, before finally blurting out, “I think he’s the greatest.” />
  It was a revealing moment, reflecting in its way the complexities that lay beneath the surface of the partners’ public facade. In 1951, Rodgers and Hammerstein would each earn something on the order of $1 million—when the average wage was about $3,500 and a new car cost $1,500—from their shows then running and from ASCAP royalties on past works. Not for a moment did either of them have the slightest desire to rock the boat, and certainly not in public. “I don’t believe the firm of Rodgers and Hammerstein was full of problems between them,” Robert Russell Bennett would recall. “They were both products of a practical, commercial age and they probably agreed that temperamental clashes would be bad for business. I once saw them together with tears in their eyes, but they were tears of joy after the first performance of South Pacific.” It is worth noting, in an era of greater social reserve, that each man invariably signed his correspondence to the other with a single word, “Love.”

  Still, there were tensions. Josh Logan once reported that Dorothy Hammerstein would sometimes wonder aloud to her husband why the Hammersteins were forever relegated to the second-best suite, or the second-largest stateroom, or the second-plushest Pullman compartment when traveling with the Rodgerses. Oscar, ever mindful of his eleven lean years before teaming up with Dick, would reply that this subordination was simply the cost of doing business—and the price of enjoying a much higher income and much greater degree of success than he otherwise might have. Dick, for his part, seemed never to forget that he’d had an unbroken run of success when he took Oscar on as his collaborator—he once said that he’d feared Broadway would assume his mere teaming with Hammerstein meant he was washed up, too—and assumed top billing above his older, more experienced partner as his due, just as he had with Larry Hart. It was by no means a Broadway or Hollywood convention that the composer’s name should come first, and indeed it did not with such songwriting teams as Lerner and Loewe, Dubin and Warren, or Cahn and Styne (and later Cahn and Van Heusen). In all those cases, the lyricists’ credits came first (and in alphabetical order, to boot). Rodgers once told the arranger Don Walker that his billing—in each partnership—had been determined by a coin toss, a claim Walker found hard to believe. Even in The Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book, a massive compendium assembled by the partners’ longtime public relations team, Rodgers’s credits are listed first, though Oscar had been at work in the professional theater while Dick was still in high school. Indeed, Oscar would sometimes chafe at promotional copy that dated their success to the premiere of The Garrick Gaieties, Dick’s first hit in 1925, when Oscar’s first professional play had debuted six years earlier. In the film Main Street to Broadway, a slender 1953 backstage drama that amounted to an excuse for cameos by the theater’s biggest stars, Rodgers and Hammerstein appear as themselves. When Josh Logan introduces Dick to a stage full of chorus girls, he luxuriates in their applause. But when Oscar arrives moments later and is given a similar greeting, Dick sardonically cuts the clapping short with a wave of his hand, saying, “That’s enough.”