| Leroy Anderson's Broadway musical
"Goldilocks" was based on a book by Walter Kerr and Jean Kerr, who was also
author of "Please Don't Eat the Daisies". It was also directed by Walter Kerr,
who became the longtime Theater Critic of the New York Times. He had the following
rememberances of Leroy Anderson and "Goldilocks": "Once we got into rehearsal, Leroy was pretty much off in his own department (working with the arranger, watching dances rehearsed, training singers, etc.) while I was in mine (staging the book). In fact, the show itself got too departmentalized during rehearsal and I failed to bring it together early enough to give its elements a smooth fusion before opening. We had other problems (plenty of them) but the fact that I'd gone rusty as a director without realizing it was one of the causes of our mounting mishaps. "An example of Leroy's total concentration and single mindedness: At the last preview before opening in Philly, I think it was, we hit one of Those Nights when absolutely everything is fouled up. Platforms didn't slide in on time. The girl who was supposed to ride on the moon couldn't get onto it. Cues were missed. The snow bag in the high grid, which was supposed to be used late in the second act, got fouled on some ropes and began dribbling snowflakes all through the performance, until it was practically empty by the time the snow was actually called for. We were out of our skulls at the mess. Running into Leroy immediately after the performance, Jean said, 'Wasn't that the most awful experience you ever had?' Leroy replied, with intense sobriety, 'It certainly was -- that trumpet player must go!' "He'd been listening to the pit so closely and so exclusively that he hadn't noticed all those other things going wrong. And, I believe, he did get rid of the particular trumpet player who offended him. "One of the things I'd worried a little about before we asked Leroy to join us on the show was whether he'd be able to work fast enough on changes once we got the show out of town. We'd had a bit more experience of this sort of thing (we should have had more) and knew about what you had to be able to accomplish overnight. But Leroy presumably had always written on his own time, on his own order, and might not be able to turn out new songs as rapidly as they might be needed. Well, I needn't have worried. He was the fastest of the lot. New songs were needed, and he'd have them the next morning. Furthermore, they were good. I'm still extremely fond of 'Never Know When to Say When,' which was an overnight job, and absolutely perfect for the spot it was meant to fill. He also turned out 'Give the Little Girl' and the extended group number 'Two Years in the Making' in an incredible hurry. There may have been others, I forget. "The whole out of town period, in Philly and Boston, was a horror as the show got better but never good enough .... But the odd thing here is that everyone remained friends. Except for the one performer I mentioned, there weren't any fights. Everybody worked like trying to make something out of the show (I finally ran into George Abbott in Boston, where he had a show of his own. but had dropped by to see ours, and he said, 'Walter, you were licked when you devised that story line' and my guess is that that was the size of it). [Gossip columnist Walter] Winchell kept reporting that Agnes de Mille and I were fighting, and Agnes and I laughed about the item in the aisles as we hurried to restage numbers. Bob Whitehead lost a bundle and we're still close friends. But Leroy may have been the most stable and serene of all. Went about his own business efficiently, responded to your requests swiftly, kept cheerful and uncomplaining." |