One of the highlights of the June 11-16, 2002 American Theater Critics Association conference in Chicago was a lunchtime Q & A with composer Jerry Herman at the new Goodman Theater. Herman, born in Manhattan, now makes his home in L.A. "because I wanted to wake up every morning and see something green; I just wanted the climate and beauty Southern California offers."
He comes by his love of theater naturally: "My parents were musical theater buffs and took me to all the Broadway musicals." Herman said he was inspired by such shows as Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun and Brigadoon. He would come home and play by ear the songs he had just heard. Herman said he wanted to become an architect and enrolled in the Parsons School of Design. His 'Mama Rose' had other ideas and recognized his musical gift. She took it upon herself to make an appointment for Jerry to meet with Frank Loesser and play for him. Jerry journeyed from his home in New Jersey to keep that appointment in New York, and the rest, as they say, is history. His leading ladies are a virtual who's who of Broadway legends including Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, and Molly Picon.
Yet Herman's architecture background did not go to waste, as he utilized it to inform his shows. Of Dolly!, Herman said, "I visualize every song that I write, and I could see all the waiters in green. I told Gower Champion (Dolly's director) that it contrasted with Dolly's red gown." In a show of trust for his visual acumen, "Theoni Aldredge allowed me to choose the fabrics and colors for La Cage Aux Folles." "The musical theater is all about collaboration," Herman added as he discussed the importance of the gestation period.
The one-hour ATCA program was moderated by Chicago member Jonathan Abarbanel, who coaxed Herman away from a program he was conducting on musical theater for high school and college students at DePaul University. It is part of his Jerry Herman Legacy Tour which he described as "probably the most important thing I've ever done in my life."
Herman's concept album on CD, "Miss Spectacular," was released in June 2002 by DRG Records and features Christine Baranski, Faith Prince, Steve Lawrence, Davis Gaines, Michael Feinstein and Karen Morrow. Commissioned as a Las Vegas revue, the piece marks the first time Herman has done an album prior to a show. He is currently negotiating with an unnamed network to do Mame with the original script by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. (They were relative unknowns when the late Margo Jones, a Texas pioneer of theater-in-the-round, produced their seminal play about the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, Inherit the Wind, in its world premiere at her Theater '55 in Dallas, January 1955 (the theater changed its name each New Years Eve). Herman is adamant about not letting the network rewrite Mame: "I let it happen twice before, and I got hurt." ("Mame" the movie, starring Lucille Ball; and Hello, Dolly!, starring Barbra Streisand). Herman says of his tete a tetes with the network: "We're still talking." When asked why the network wants to change the script, Herman was equally candid: "I don't know; they have these people sitting behind these desks, and I think they think it's their job."
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