Two On the Aisle, with music by Jule Styne and lyrics and comedy sketches by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, has the reputation for being the last of the "old-time" Broadway revues, which specialized in musical production numbers and comic bits that often bordered just this side of burlesque.
"Dolores [Gray] came to us a name after making a big impact on the West End in Annie Get Your Gun," recalled Green. "We were excited because we knew we were getting someone fresh and good with an established reputation. She was a little uneasy when she started; then she got more and more self-confidence.
"In addition to being wonderful, first rate," he added, "she was statuesque. Tall and quite stunning, she looked great."
"Dolores had this marvelous voice," notes Comden, "and a great body, too. It was the only time we worked with her onstage, but a few years later we worked with her on the movie, `It's Always Fair Weather.' [Two On The Aisle] was a lovely, underrated musical. It's my personal favorite. It had a remarkable story and I'm proud of the score."
The songs in the 1951 show, just released by Decca Broadway for the first time, digitally remixed, on CD, poked fun at such New York institutions as the Metropolitan Opera and Copacabana. The composers wrote an opening number, "Show Train," that, in a forerunner to Forbidden Broadway, parodied in capsule versions the season's hits: Guys and Dolls, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The King and I. Lahr, alternately, portrayed a not-so-bright ballplayer, Queen Victoria, silent screen heartthrob Valentino, a super hero and, in a burlesque of Wagner's Ring, Siegfried to Gray's Brunnhilde. Comden says Decca Broadway had done a wonderful job of making a show from the 50s sound brand new.
Comden and Green went on to write such classic stage shows as On the Town, Wonderful Town, Applause, On the Twentieth Century and The Will Rogers Follies (Tony Award). Working with Comden and Green as lyricists, Styne composed Bells Are Ringing, Fade Out, Fade In and Hallelujah, Baby! (Tony Award), as well as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Gyspy and Funny Girl.
Green said he and Styne were impressed by Gray's extraordinary versatility, her vocal inflections and her ability to shift moods.
"She could deliver the velvety 'Hold Me, Hold Me, Hold Me (Hold Me Tight)', then do a lush ballad like 'There Never Was A Baby Like My Baby,' turn around and belt 'If (You Hadn't, But You Did)' and, finally, render a poignant torch, 'How Will He Know?' In the latter, while taking her clothes off!"
Did she and Lahr get along? "Yes," Green said hesitantly, then added, "after a while."
"Actually," says Comden, "they didn't get along ever. That didn't matter, though. Onstage, they were professionals. Dolores and her mother, who was around all the time with here two toy poodles, were pretty resentful. Dolores created quite a sensation in London in Annie Get Your Gun. She would say, 'Did I have to come back to do this?'"
"She wasn't that happy in the show," continued Comden, " and the fact that she knew she was a replacement for a great star like Lena didn't help."
Comden notes that she and Green were attracted to develop the show because it was to be Lahr and Horne. "We wrote a couple of songs very specifically for her, but she decided not to do it. The idea of Bert and Lena onstage would have been extraordinary. There weren't combinations like that in shows, a white man and black woman, and it would have been groundbreaking."
Green said he adored Lahr, but "he wasn't a great enthusiast. It took a long time for him to get in the swings of things, then he'd be great. He always had doubts, doubts, doubts about himself." Still, according to Comden and Green, Lahr was a nice man, filled with good will for everybody. "But," Green adds, "for such an established star, I was amazed at how unsure he was at how he would be received by audiences. He wasn't a natural, all-out optimist. He was uneasy opening night, worried someone would give him a lousy notice. After a while, Betty, Jule and I came to view his gloominess and lack of confidence as a certain charm."
He adds that there was no reason to define Lahr "to anyone who knew the theater in that era. He was a genius of a comedian. He had this wonderful, low-key and deadpan way of delivering comedy. Bert was very special."
Gray had the biggest musical showstopper, "How Will He Know?" Comden and Green described her character as a shy, modest secretary very much in love with her boss, an architect, played by Lahr.
"Every day," says Comden, "she moons around the office, but the boss says, 'Miss Prentice, you must have a boyfriend. Go out and have a good time.' But she says she doesn't mind staying late. She keeps coming by his desk, where he's drawing blueprints, and leans over him making suggestions. She said, 'How about adding windows?' He replied, 'Yes, windows!' Then she starts to sing this torch song. Dolores did two choruses and then danced."
"As Bert fiddled away at his desk," reports Green, "Dolores stripped while singing and dancing," complimented Green. "After she got down to her panties and bra, she threw herself across the desk and removed her glasses. There she was almost completely naked and Bert would look up and say, 'Why, Miss Prentice, I've never seen you without your glasses.' It always got a scream."
Lahr wasn't happy with the number, says Comden. "He said, 'What do you mean? I'm supposed to sit there doing nothing? I won't do it!' So we brought in one of the guys to do it. The next night Bert heard the uproar and charged down from his dressing room. 'What was that?' he demanded. 'What's happening?' He heard the enormous laughs and burst of applause. The next night you didn't have to drag him onstage! He played it from then on."
Comden says that Two On the Aisle was a modest success. "It opened in the middle of the summer. We were in this huge theater, the Mark Hellinger [now the Times Square Church]. No one opened a show in the middle of July! We had a form of air conditioning. In those days, theaters were air-cooled or refrigerated. There used to be a joke that, in their theaters, the Shubert brothers had a huge block of ice and were fanning it with a towel. But people were away, and tourism wasn't the thing it has become, especially for revues. It was a ridiculous thing to do.
"After Two On the Aisle," she goes on, "revues fell out of favor. It became a time when you made your money from a sale to the movies, and Hollywood was buying book shows. They couldn't get a story out of a revue."
Green claims to be a bit worried about the state of theater, and wishes "we had more creative minds at work. They're out there, we just need to be more supportive of them for them."
In a personal aside, when told it's always nice to see him and his wife out and about, Green quips, "You're speaking of Phyllis, not Betty, right?" Yes, he was informed. "Good," he says, "Well, through the years, that's happened a lot since we've been a team for so long, but I clear it up in a few minutes. Since I spend literally every day with Betty, I can understand why people think we're married."
And how's he doing? "We're sitting here chatting away, so what does that tell you?" He notes that he and his wife -- Phyllis, not Betty -- go to the theater often. "We keep up by seeing as much as we can."
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