by Barbara Cook
And then . . . On matinee days I would have an early dinner by myself so I wouldn’t have to talk, after which I would go back to my room to have a brief nap before the evening performance. On one of those afternoons I happened to pick up a copy of Pageant magazine so I could read while I ate, and inside I found an article about experiments with self-hypnosis that were being conducted at Duke University. As I read the article I began to wonder if self-hypnosis could help me with “Glitter and Be Gay.” I decided that instead of napping in my room between shows, I would spend that time attempting to hypnotize myself. I relaxed, and, just as the magazine suggested, began to ease myself into a hypnotic state. I immediately knew that it was working. I felt very sure that I was in a suggestible state, so I told myself that when I “woke” I would feel a great surge of energy, and that I would be excited to arrive at the theater. I told myself “The moment you touch the stage door you will feel terrific energy and a great desire to sing the aria. With every application of makeup you will be filled with energy and a desire to be onstage singing ‘Glitter and Be Gay.’ ” I was convinced this was going to work and that I would finally enjoy my potentially show-stopping moment.
And I did! And oh, how I enjoyed it. After the performance, the “brass” came rushing backstage to congratulate me. I had made the breakthrough! Maybe it was pure desperation that made it work, but it worked. Even though I had used the self-hypnosis in order to gain the extra energy, I never again needed it to help me sing that devilish aria. I tried to utilize the hypnosis for other areas of my life, but it never worked quite as well as it did that first time.
Thomas Pyle, who played multiple roles in the show, used to stand in the wings every night to time my applause. It was, well . . . spectacular! Sometimes it would last two or even three minutes. One night he swears it was four minutes—an eon in a show! I don’t believe that it lasted four minutes, but I think the response was enormous for a combination of reasons: it’s a great piece, I sang it well, and it was completely unexpected from this musical-comedy singer Barbara Cook. People felt “in” on this discovery, and audiences love the thrill of discovery. By now of course, I had come to love the song and my big moment.
Because Candide was such a demanding score, my doctor suggested I have complete vocal rest from the end of the Saturday-night show until the next performance on Monday evening. In theory I’d be resting my voice for a full forty-eight hours, but of course I’d forget to keep silent, and so I put a tiny Band-Aid over the corner of my mouth as a reminder not to speak! It worked.
The response to “Glitter and Be Gay” was thrilling, but, even with the big ovation, it was clear that the show had problems. The audience was often confused by what was happening onstage. Dr. Guthrie was a highly respected director, one whom Sir Peter Hall later termed “A towering figure, a brilliant and at times great director.” Indeed, when it came to classical theater, I concurred; one of the best and funniest plays I’ve ever seen was his production of Troilus and Cressida (there was a five-minute comic section about heel-clicking and saluting that I will never forget!). But—and it’s a big “but”—even with all of that talent, I think he was probably not the right person to direct Candide.
Lillian and the producers seemed to feel the same way, because when we came back to New York, Lillian herself took over rehearsals for a couple of days. I can’t imagine what the meetings were like that led to her assuming the role of director, but I will say that our creative team were complete professionals—we never heard even one word of dissension among them.
My take on being directed by Tony Guthrie was that while he cared very much about production values and the overall concept, he was not particularly interested in helping the cast with whatever acting problems they might have been facing. I think he expected you to have all of those issues solved, because he had other, more important, matters to consider. I learned this firsthand when we were still out of town and I asked him for help with a new scene.
“Have you read it, my dear?”
“Dr. Guthrie—the scene has been in the show for a week now, so, yes, I’ve read it. I just don’t fully understand it.”
“Well, read it again, dahling.”
As a result I worked out my approach to “Glitter and Be Gay” myself. When I was a teenager in Atlanta I had somehow acquired a 78 rpm recording of Orson Welles and Fay Bainter performing Macbeth, and I used to perform the “Out, damn spot” speech just for myself. Nobody was at home and I’d emote up a storm. “Out, I say! . . . Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” It wasn’t until some time after Candide closed that I realized I had based the “Glitter and Be Gay” dialogue on Fay Bainter. It was real, yet highly emotive.
I have two distinct memories of opening night in New York, December 1, 1956, at the Martin Beck Theatre. The first is that the overture stopped the show—people loved it, and to this day it’s one of the most frequently played pieces by symphony orchestras around the world. In 1975, when I did my first big concert at Carnegie Hall, it occurred to me that, for sure, someone was going to ask me to sing “Glitter and Be Gay.” Well, there’s no way I was going to do that. But what I did do was pull out my kazoo and perform the beginning of the overture—on that kazoo!
My second big memory from opening night was Lenny coming backstage to wish me luck. He was just about to leave when he added, “Oh yes, Maria Callas is out front.” If there was anything I didn’t need to hear, it was those seven words. I said, “Oh my God, I could have done without knowing that.” Lenny laughed and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. She’d kill for your E-flats.” Callas did not come backstage, and I’m sorry to say that, much as I would have liked to meet her, I never did. I would love to know what she thought about the show, and me, and “Glitter and Be Gay.”
Oddly enough, for such a high-profile show, there was no big opening-night party. I went to the Plaza to have a little supper with my husband, Bob Kobin, and his wife, Joan. The reviews came out and, like the show itself, they were all over the place. We did receive some terrific reviews—John Chapman called it “the greatest addition to musical literature since Rosenkavalier”—but a great many critics called it confusing and overly ambitious. Walter Kerr in the Herald Tribune was the most damning of all. His opening paragraph ran as follows: “Three of the most talented people our theater possesses—Lillian Hellman, Leonard Bernstein and Tyrone Guthrie—have joined hands to transform Voltaire’s Candide into a really spectacular disaster.”
I never got to see our production from out front, so I couldn’t objectively judge exactly what didn’t work and why. I do know that audiences would leave the theater wondering what they had just seen. Was it a musical comedy? Not really. Was it an opera? No. It was unique, and in this case “unique” did not sell tickets.
The show lasted only seventy-three performances, closing on February 2, 1957, although later that spring the show was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Everyone blamed Lillian’s book, and certainly there were major faults with it, but it’s also just a problematic show. I’ve never seen a production of Candide that I thought worked. I think some of the problem lies in the fact that you just don’t care about these people and their exotic misadventures.
But—Candide did great things for my career and I am extremely proud to have been a part of it. More than any other show in my career, Candide has given me a certain musical credibility I wouldn’t have acquired otherwise, especially within the classical world. People who knew my work pre-Candide were, to say the least, surprised by this new “classical” Barbara. Franz Allers, the conductor with whom I worked on Plain and Fancy, was stunned and often spoke to me about the show throughout the ensuing years.
Candide has now had two Broadway revivals, most notably the first one, in 1974, directed by Hal Prince. It was an environmental production where they took all the seats out of the orchestra floor and replaced them with benches and cushions, an odd and cramped seating configuration; wh
en Katharine Hepburn went to see the show with her Lion in Winter director Tony Harvey, she was so uncomfortable on her stool, that after deciding the actors onstage looked much more comfortable than anyone in the audience, she turned to Harvey and said to him: “Dare me to join them onstage?” He did, and she did.
But brilliant as Hal is, he made a very strange choice in that production. At the end of the show, the entire cast sings the absolutely gorgeous “Make Our Garden Grow,” which was written while we were in rehearsal. Wilbur wrote the lyric first and Bernstein then went home to compose that beautiful melody. It’s a transcendent, even spiritual moment, but while the cast was singing that extraordinary song, Hal had the cow come onstage and die at their feet. I just can’t figure that one out.
That said, I must add that he is one of the most talented directors I’ve ever worked with. Yet here’s another choice Hal made in Candide that strikes me as passing strange. In “Glitter and Be Gay” the singer takes center stage, but over on the left Hal had some person playing a pipe organ; the jewels, which are so important to the song, remained over by the pipe organ instead of being handy for Cunegonde. It was like the song was being performed by two different people—Cunegonde and the lady on the pipe organ. Frankly, all you have to do is stand there and inhabit the song.
Candide has lived on in our original cast recording, which I think is a good one. I remember singing all day during that recording session: there were trios, duets, and quartets that all featured Cunegonde, and we recorded those before I sang “Glitter and Be Gay,” which was scheduled for after the dinner break. In other words, instead of just singing sporadically during a two-and-one-half-hour performance, I was scheduled to sing full out on multiple takes from eleven a.m. to five p.m., and then beyond. Knowing this could spell trouble for my voice, I forgot about dinner and went right to my doctor’s office, where for the only time in my life I had my vocal cords shrunk with a spray. The doctor said they looked like a picket fence, they were so swollen from singing for so many hours. The spraying of vocal cords is a tricky procedure for a singer, but I trusted him, and it worked. (I’ve also never done it again.) I then went back to the recording studio and did three takes of the aria.
The funny thing is that Lenny couldn’t be in the studio for the cast recording because he had a concert somewhere in the Caribbean. He showed up about eight p.m. and listened to some of the songs. He said Sam’s tempos had been too fast. Maybe—but I think most people perform “Glitter and Be Gay” too slowly. Our recording is exciting as hell. To this day I receive compliments on “Glitter and Be Gay,” and I repeatedly hear that no one has ever bettered my rendition. But—
The truth is that I hear lots of things wrong with my version. I think the main mistake most people make with this aria is thinking that they have to “make it funny.” It is intrinsically funny and best when presented in earnest, as if sung by a dramatic teenager. It has to be carefully sung, particularly the “ha, ha, ha”s, because Bernstein did not intend them to be “runs.” Each “ha” should be sung separately so that they sound like laughter. Lenny also wanted me to emphasize certain notes—for instance: “hahahahahaHAhahahaHAhahaha.” I never managed to fully accomplish that task. My voice teacher, Bob, told me that each “ha” is a little “push”—something you really ain’t supposed to do. But, he assured me, the ensuing musical lines are legato and if I sang them purely I would immediately be okay after all those “pushes.” It’s not your typical musical-comedy song; it’s a brilliant, scary, exhilarating aria, and I remain immensely proud that I introduced it to audiences.
Candide ran for only two months, but it acquired a cult following, and the closing-night performance was just like an opening. There wasn’t a seat to be had and people were actually standing on their seats screaming: “No! No! Keep this show open!” There just weren’t enough fans to keep it going indefinitely, and when the show closed I had a feeling of the rug being pulled out from under me. I always do at the end of a run. That’s just how it is—especially when you have bonded with your fellow castmates. The cast, the crew, the ushers, the box office—everyone is working together with one goal in mind: to put on the best possible show. You experience a sense of belonging as soon as you walk through the stage door—you’re a family. During a run your entire day is colored with the knowledge that you’re going to perform the show that night no matter what. When the show closes, the entire structure of your daily life is yanked away and simply vanishes overnight.
I was fortunate to receive great notices for my work in the show, and, frankly, I was surprised not to receive a Tony Award nomination. Maybe it was because people just didn’t know what to make of the show. When I did win the Tony Award the next year for The Music Man I decided that part of that award was for Candide.
After Candide a lot of people, including Bernstein, said, “You ought to do opera”; but I was never really tempted. I had a light soprano voice, and if I entered the world of opera I’d be singing Barbarina and Susanna the rest of my life. If I couldn’t do Tosca I didn’t want to play. There’s just no way in hell I could sing the roles I liked—I’d kill myself trying to do that stuff. I also think the lifestyle of an opera singer is hard. There is constant, wearying travel, and you don’t have the benefits of a long run, in which you can work on specifics and ask yourself, “How can I do this better tonight?” I love that kind of detailed work.
Difficult as it was to sing, Candide made my voice stronger. Singing the score became second nature, like breathing. Richard Wilbur made me angry years later when he was on The Dick Cavett Show and said I had nearly ruined my voice by singing Candide eight times a week. The exact opposite was true. I was singing properly, and by the end of the run my voice was stronger. And better. So there, Richard Wilbur. I was ready for my next adventure.
9 • THE MUSIC MAN
PEOPLE MAY HAVE been talking about the possibility of my singing opera, but I knew that I was meant for musical theater, and shortly after Candide I performed in a second production of Carousel at City Center, this time in September of 1957, as Julie Jordan, the female lead.
Before Carousel, however, there was a detour to television for a live broadcast of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard. Alfred Drake, who had become Broadway’s foremost musical leading man after his performance in Oklahoma!, was my leading man. I was pretty nervous about the live telecast, but Alfred was even more nervous. We began the performance, I looked at Alfred, who was usually unflappable, saw terror in his eyes, and knew I needed to stay calm.
The cast included Celeste Holm and Bill Hayes, and the great Franz Allers, who had conducted My Fair Lady on Broadway, was our musical director, so Alfred and I knew we were in very capable hands. In the end it all unfolded quite well, and then I was onstage at City Center again, playing Julie Jordan.
I actually had a better time playing the secondary role of Carrie in the production three years earlier, because Carrie is more fun. When I was playing Julie I couldn’t fool around much backstage—I had to keep myself pulled in. I think the key to the role was to remember that Billy Bigelow was a very troubled man and Julie had to be his calming influence. David gave me a terrific piece of advice when he suggested that I think of her as a cool, calm, lake. Well, as Dick and Oscar wrote, she’s “quieter and deeper than a well.”
Shortly before Carousel I found myself in Hollywood filming an episode of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. My appearance on the show was thanks to Plain and Fancy; Paul Henreid had come to see Plain and Fancy and told me later that he had made a note in his Playbill that read “Use this girl.” As a result, when he was hired to direct an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on television, he cast me—as a nymphomaniac!
Hitchcock was not around, but Paul was very, very kind, especially to a still unseasoned television actress who was a bit unsure of herself on camera. I starred opposite Vic Morrow (who later died in that tragic helicopter accident during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie) and someh
ow got through the episode with Paul’s kindness and David’s help. The episode aired in June of 1957, right before Carousel, by which time I had signed for the female lead in a new Broadway musical.
I had received a call to come hear the score of this new musical, called The Music Man, at conductor Herbert Greene’s apartment. Only one other actor was present, Andy Griffith, who was being considered for the leading role of Professor Harold Hill.
There was already a lot of buzz about the show, with people saying that the lead role was a terrific one for a singing actor. A great many people were considered, and many even tried out for it. You know who really wanted the role? Ray Bolger. Meredith Willson was not a proven Broadway composer/lyricist, however, and I have heard that the list of those who actually turned down the role was a long one: Art Carney, Gene Kelly, Bert Parks (who later actually replaced Robert Preston on Broadway), and Jason Robards.
Now, Ray Bolger was a talented man and great fun, but that casting would have been all wrong. The key to the role of Harold Hill is that he has to be sexy as hell, and one of the things that made our production of The Music Man work so well was that Bob Preston was an extremely sexy guy; you really could imagine that the whole town—men, women, dogs, cats, and sheep—could have fallen in love with him. That’s why it was so funny when Helen Raymond, who played Mayor Shinn’s wife, Eulalie, would get so flustered talking to the Professor; she fluttered around him and did this funny little bit of business with her feet because she just couldn’t keep still around Professor Harold Hill. It worked because Bob Preston was pure, walking sex—and, my God, he was great in that role.