Michael Kantor: What was Carousel about, in the broadest sense? You know, without giving us all the plot. But what’s Carous-
John Raitt: The basic story is about two young people, not so young, that couldn’t say I love you to each other. And a very mismatch of people, which also often happens in life. And it was the struggle of these people to reach that, just that a simple thing that I love, and Judy can’t say it until after he kills himself in the second act.
Michael Kantor: And what’s the, how does the drama sort of begins early on where they imagine, how do they begin by thinking, well, if I, it’s a sort of conditional thing that Oscar Hammerstein worked up, right?
John Raitt: Yeah, well, it was, they took a lot from the play, the original Lilium of Farrick Molnar. And Farrack Molnard was at rehearsals with a little monocle in his eye. And I shall never forget the first dry run we had in New Haven. That’s where you do a show and say, all right, kids, don’t stop. Let’s see what we’ve got. And he was sitting in the back of the house and as a young, thriving, aspiring Broadway performer, having only done Oklahoma before Carousel, he came up to me afterwards and said, This is not. Congratulations, this is thank you, which was a wonderful compliment to me at the time. Because I wasn’t sure I could pull off the acting part in Carousel, because I was a conscious singer when I first came to Broadway.
Michael Kantor: Set us up, what was the name of your character, and where is the first chance, I’m thinking of if I loved you, where you got a chance to really play with that central theme of expressing, you know.
John Raitt: Well, I think the best wedding of lyric and music and dialog is in what we call the bench scene. So it runs about eight minutes long. Remember doing the big television show that we had three networks, Honoring Rodgers and Hammerstein. And the director said, Oscar, you take John Clayton and John Wraite and cut some of that scene. It’s too long for us. So Oscar sits there and he goes over it and he said, no, that’s pretty good. We can’t cut that. Hell, it’s all good. Let’s just do it. So we did. But that’s the whole lead-up. Tremendous change in the Broadway scene as to have a prolog, first of all, for the opening where actors came on and started telling the story, and then they go immediately through this scene that runs almost 20 minutes before you get any of the chorus people or anybody on. You actually, at the end of that scene, could bring down the curtain because it tells that’s on the story.
Michael Kantor: Great, take us back, you know, they’ve done Oklahoma, but what you said before was carousel sort of melded both talking and singing in a way that was very special.
John Raitt: It’s interesting, all of the soliloquy, for instance, was prompted by my, when I first auditioned for the Theater Guild for Oklahoma, I had been doing operas in English out in Southern California and my favorite role was Figaro in the Barber of Seville. So when I got off the train, which we had to take in those days to audition for them, I signed the Figaro after Barber Seville and I guess it must have prompted the writing of the Soliloquist, which takes about seven minutes, has the fast patter in it. But originally all the sololoquy was sung. What the hell? What if he is a girl? And Ruben Mulian, our director, said, Johnny, don’t sing that. Say that. So if you sing like you talk, you have the option to either sing it or speak it. But it’s the same guy doing the same. Carousel was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s favorite show. And I think, especially for Rodgers, he challenged him to write all kinds of music. He got a philosophical song. You never walk alone. In a different high school. Choir has in their repertory. Songs about food, about seasons of the year, everything set it up to them in that score.
Michael Kantor: Tell me more about the bench scene, and what sort of Rodgers was shooting for musically, and why that was a real step, an important step.
John Raitt: And because basically the whole thing is continued in both music and dialog and the storytelling goes on either way, it goes back and forth. And I’ve grown a little bit as an actor between the time I did it in 1945, 1965, so that for instance he wrote, you’re a queer one, Julie Jordan, ain’t you sorry that you didn’t run away. You can still go if you wanna. And it’s OK when I first did it. But as I grew as an actor, I said, is that music sort of in my way? So I would tell, you’re a queer one, Julie Jordan. Ain’t you sorry it didn’t run away? Hey, you can still go. If you want, I can sing that one. That felt better for me. I think it also, this approach on the make-for-girl was a little more pointed.
Michael Kantor: There’s a spot where you sing we ain’t important, what are we, a couple of specs, and then you go into the song.
John Raitt: A couple of specs and nothing.
Michael Kantor: I don’t know, for me somehow that was like a really critical moment in the song.
John Raitt: There he had the great metaphor with you can’t hear a sound of the turn of a leaf nor the fall of a wave hitting the sand. Tides creeping up on the beach like a thief, afraid to be caught stealing the land. Beautiful thing to say.
Michael Kantor: So in terms of, you know, other, had there been Broadway roles that were sung and spoken? Yeah.
John Raitt: Yeah, sure. You bet you are.
Michael Kantor: That’s just the peak.
John Raitt: I thought so, you know, that. Also, I said at the time, it’s probably the greatest role on our brigade, and it was.
Michael Kantor: So, set up, say, maybe the most famous number in carousel, or one of the most, is the bench seat, and then just set it up.
John Raitt: Well, it’s a more like one act to operate itself. Because here he is. He’s picked out his little girl for eating, which he’s done many times as a carousel barker. And he tries all the wiles. He says, you want to go town, have a drink? Want to go dance? She says, no. And he just doesn’t know how to handle that. Then he begins to get poetic. He begins, for the first time, delving into himself and realizing that this is some kind of a special lady that he’s dealing with. And so the scene then develops, and she’s the same way, because she’s, I like to think that both Julie and Billy are pretty mature people, even though they’re a little naive. He’s not so much, but she is. But she knows what she wants. I think she falls in love with him. She’d been to carousel before. And so when she starts to tell him what he’s doing, working at the mill and so forth. I know what I’d be like if I loved you, you know. So she’s protected with that little if. So that’s interesting because when we first heard the songs, how can this be a hit song? If I loved, you. And most people today still say, if I love you, they don’t put the D on, you, and it’s important for the pause. If I love, you then he’s free to say what he wants to because he’s already protected himself.
Michael Kantor: That’s Oscar Hammerstein’s genius, right? The conditional ballad.
John Raitt: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, but he took it from the story. You get all those ideas that you read in Oklahoma and the Greenwood and Alex by Lynn Riggs. A lot of it’s right there, you know.
Michael Kantor: What is the soliloquy about?
John Raitt: The soliloquy from Carousel was a change for Billy as far as the audience is concerned. You’re not sure you like the guy when he goes around slapping her and being rough with her and everything until he gets to the soliloque when she just told him that he’s going to be a father. And this brings out a whole nother quality. I remember when Eve Ligalian came to me, who was the original Julian Lilliam, said, you’re the greatest of all the Lilliums. I said, thank you very much, Mr. Ligallian. But I’m not playing Lilliam, I’m playing Billy Bigelow in Carousel. He’s much more palatable because he can sing. People would say to me, you think Billy Bigilow can sing? I said, no, but John Raitt playing Billy Bigilower can sing.”
Michael Kantor: So set up that moment and just go into the beginning of the soliloquy where for the first time ever he sort of opens himself up.
John Raitt: Yeah, well, she brings a coffee out to break the ice and tell him that she’s going to be a mother and that he’s going to be father and leaves him alone on stage to approach this conference. Starts out just, I wonder what he’ll think of me. I guess he’ll call me the old man. I guess you think I can lick every other fellow’s father. Well, I can. I bet that he’ll turn out to be the spitting image of his dad. But he’ll have more common sense than his pudding-headed father ever had. Then he sings this, my boy Bill, I will see that he’s named after me. I will. My boy Bill. He’ll be tall and as tough as a tree. Will bill like a tree he’ll grow with his head held high and his feet planted firm on the ground and you won’t see nobody dare to try to boss him or toss him around. No pot-bellied baggy-eyed bully will boss him around I pretty well tell us where he’s standing, and then all of a sudden he realizes, wait a minute, what if it’s a girl? Then he’s gotta sing about my little girl, and then what am I gonna do about it? So it’s my signature song, and I’m forever grateful for Rodgers and Hammerstein for leaving me that legacy.
Michael Kantor: What were they like in creating the show? Were they sticklers, did they give you free reign, you know?
John Raitt: Pretty much, I never ever gotten a note from Dick Rodgers or Oscar Hammerstein about my singing of Soliloquy after we’d set it with the Blue movement, U-Beh-Mu-O-Yen.
Michael Kantor: What about throughout the show? What were they like as a presence there?
John Raitt: Dick was a very hard man to get to know. You know, he had a veneer around him. He never knew when he was going to needle you or when he’s telling you the truth about it. So, Oscar’s pretty much wide open, as he’s indicated by the lyrics he wrote. And, Oscar mostly wrote the lyrics first. I asked Dick Rodgers shortly before he died, how long it took him to write the soliloquy. He said, one afternoon. Then I said to him, I have a very strong feeling, Dick. Wherever it was difficult for you, ended up in the trash can.
Michael Kantor: What about Agnes DeMille, I’m thinking who were the principal creators of this really important show?
John Raitt: Well, Agnes DeMille was something special, especially with the work she did on Oklahoma. It was just a tremendous team, the three of them. Dick had little problems with Agnes somewhat because she was a pretty much strong lady that wanted her way and naturally, you know, that goes with our show. And she had some problems later on because she wanted to get paid for her ballet that she created as much This is Dick. You want to pay for it, which you had to do by union rules for the music. And so there was a struggle going on during the time, I think. I think she finally won out a little bit before she passed away.
Michael Kantor: Just rephrase that one more time, which is, Agnes was always, as a choreographer, fighting for the same rights that a composer would get for his work. Just run that past me one more.
John Raitt: I guess she sort of felt that she was secondary, just as Agnes DeMille was, that she didn’t get the importance or the recognition that Dick and Oscar got for the thing, and yet she contributed just tremendous to the progress of that show, especially Oklahoma, and that she felt that she consequently should get paid the percentage for her work as much as Rodgers and Hammerstein got paid for their work, and so that was a kind of a fiction friction between the two of them. Of all the shows that Dick and Oscar did, Carousel wound up being their favorite show. And not that we didn’t have problems with it. We closed it a quarter to one opening night in New Haven. So I would get up in the morning at nine o’clock and Oscar would stay up to three writing new scenes because we had a Mr. And Mrs. God scene in the second act. And especially the Christian Science Monitor when we got to Boston took umbrage with that. I’ll never forget. So one night… As Dick and Oscar walking from the Colonial Theater across the Common to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where they were staying, Dick says to Oscar, Oscar, we gotta get God out of the parlor. Put him somewhere, put him on a ladder, but we gotta him out of a parlor, that’s what they did. They devised to make it a rather green pastures type of thing. Also, we extended the show. The original play of Molnar, finished with Billy Singh, it would be in carousel, the reprise of If I Loved You. Now I’ve lost you, soon I will go in the midst of day, and you’ll never know how I loved you. It was war time, and I came in New York to audition for the takeover, and then they shipped me to Chicago where the national company was playing. And they brought Harry Stockwell, who was then playing in that company to replace Alfred Drake. But I had watched the show for… Two solid weeks in New York. So I just really get into it, you know? And it was pretty easy for me then to take over the lead. I was in, playing a small part for about two months, and then took over the league as Curley.
Michael Kantor: Just what, how did the show impact people? What was new about it?
John Raitt: Oklahoma probably made the biggest change in the musical theater of its time, because of the addition of Agnes DeMille’s ballet and the score of Richard Rodgers, the first act of Oklahoma’s son, just unbelievable. And, you know, in those days it was fashionable to come late to a musical, because you just missed a couple of chorus numbers. But if you missed the first five minutes of Oklahoma, you missed some two of the greatest songs ever written, Beautiful Morning And sorry with the fringe on top. Which was Oscar Hammerstein’s favorite lyric, by the way. You know, Curly starts backstage just after the orchestra’s overture. But there’s a bright golden haze right off that, come right on stage, and boy, it’s one of the great roads of all time. Most everybody that plays Curly can sing, halfway sing, you can get by playing with Curly. Not so with Billy Bigger and Carousel. Interesting enough, my friend Nick May will marry Janet Blair. Asked him if he could do a split weeks of Oklahoma Carousel. He said to Oscar, you know, the shows and the parts in the shows are interchangeable. Oscar thought of him and he said, embarrassing, isn’t it? But you have to cast for Carousels, not Oklahoma. All the Curleys can’t play Billy Bigelow, but all the Billy Bigeloads can play Curley. Probably one of the greatest entrants in the musical is in Oklahoma when Curley is backstage. And they just played the overture. And Aunt Ella is churning on the churn. And you hear, there’s a bright golden haze on the meadow. There’s a broad golden hazy on the matter. The corn is as high as the elephants are. And it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky. And then he comes on stage and sings Beautiful Morning. And that’s, you’re home free if you can sing half decently.
Michael Kantor: Great, oh that’s great. Let’s jump to pajama game. In the same way that you set up what Carousel was about so simply, what, just for, no, someone who’s never seen the show has no idea, what’s pajama?
John Raitt: Well, Hal Prince and Bobby Griffith were stage managers, assistant stage managers for George Abbott in Wonderful Town. And they picked up this book by Richard Bissell called Seven and a Half Cents. Said this would be a great idea for musical comedy. Gave it to Abbott to read. He said, that’s pretty good. He said you guys like it, it’s what you do. Why don’t you produce it and I’ll direct it. So then they got Jerry Robbins to come on. He said I’m a little tired of doing a film. Can I bring my assistant? That’s Bobby Fosse. And Bobby Fossie, can I bring my assistant. That’s Carol Haney. We became a big star out of the show. It’s about capital labor. And you’d think you’d be in hot water the first five minutes with a musical like that. But it’s so much fun to do. And it came in at May 13th of 1954. And you didn’t bring musicals in that late in the season. But it just took Broadway by storm. I did 1,060 performances of the show. Missed one, missed one matinee. I wish I could say I had a perfect record, but I didn’t.
Michael Kantor: Did you get cast in that?
John Raitt: Well, it’s interesting how I got the part of Sid Soroka, the superintendent of the pajama factory. I went down to audition and got the usual, don’t call us, we’ll call you routine. And then they, I heard that they had auditioned Van Johnson and Darren McGovern. Finally, I was called by my agent, said, John, they want to see you again back at the Winter Garden Theater after matinee on Saturday. So the whole thing is different because when you first audition, it’s a big black giant out there, which they wrote, me and Julie, at Roger’s Times. Here was George Abbott at the door. He said, I suppose you realize why we called you back. But what had happened was Bobby Griffin had said, you’ve got to have a singer in this role. Why don’t you call John back and read him with an actress and see if you could do work with him. So that’s what we did. And by six o’clock, I was signed to play in the show. They didn’t give me a run of the play, though. They just gave me two weeks. So when I got to New Haven and decided to give me a run on the play I get to make a little more money from it.
Michael Kantor: And what was the big hit in that song?
John Raitt: Well, when we were in New Haven and even started, Hey There was the big, big romantic hit song. And Hernandez Hideaway came along fast, too, on what we all called the Lucky Strike Hit Parade at the time. And it was, Frank Lester helped the boys write a couple of songs. They were, Jerry Ross and Dick Adler were proteges of his. But it was a lot of fun. We had Eddie Foy, and you know, we had… Janice Page playing opposite me and great performance. And then, of course, they got Carol Hay to become a big star.
Michael Kantor: Help us understand how in the movie some of the some of the numbers were reprised pretty much just as they’ve been done on stage like hey there and then go give us a quick hit of that song will you
John Raitt: Well, before we get that, they cut one of my songs for the movie, but everything else was pretty much in. We filmed the movie and did it in 30 shooting days, 22 days on the schedule, because we all knew our parts when they got Doris Day as the star. This is a song where in Pajama Game, he’s made a pitch for this gal from the union, and she didn’t mind. She said, you’re the superintendent on the grievance committee. I said, well, that won’t work. So he’s been dictating. So you pick up a, it’s not new that you sing back with yourself, but he gets an opportunity to sing a duet with yourself with Hey There. And that’s a, hey there, you with the stars in your eyes. Love never made a fool of you. You used to be too wise. It goes on from there, the song. It was, strangely, Rosemary Clooney. Got a chance to record it, it was one of her big hit songs, sold about three million copies. And Sammy Davis’ first single was Hey There.
Michael Kantor: Let’s talk about George Abbott, who was the director of Pajama Game, and what was he like?
John Raitt: I never met George Abbott, the director, but here’s a man that just epitomized Broadway. He worked until he was 107 years old, and when he died at 107, he was still advisory on revival of Damn Yankees. And there was only one George Abbot. I mean, most everybody called him Mr. Abbott. I called him George, but he had, after 10 days rehearsals, got everybody up on their feet, got. You’d be the first to admit that some of the scenes aren’t as good as they might be, but they work, so it works. And I remember the night, the afternoon of our opening in New York, gave a few remarks and didn’t even say good luck or anything, just walked out of the side of the theater, you know, because he was, I had mysis complimented after about six months of pajama game. He said, I think you’re one of the most consistent performers that ever worked for me, which I considered a fine compliment, Because that’s your job, you know.
Michael Kantor: What did George Abbott have to say to Bobby Griffith after the show was a hit?
John Raitt: Well, it was interesting. I had told Bobby Griffin and Hal Prince before we signed the contract that I had promised Dick Rodgers to sing with he conducting the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall the following fall, about November. I said, I want to do that. Would you want to put it in the contract? Or she’ll just honor it. No, I said we’ll honor it for you. Well, then B became a big hit. It’s like getting a visa to Russian in those days to take a star out of a Broadway hit musical or move them uptown. To sing at Carnegie Hall. So they got Stephen Douglas out of Damn Yankees, and then Dick Rodgers had to pay $1,000 for that night for taking me out. I got docked, of course. So that was interesting with that. And Dick Rodgers didn’t have a show at the time, so we used to see him about once a week backstage just because I like the theater so much. And it was a wonderful evening with Dick. I remember afterwards he said, Junior, call me Junior. I like the way he sang soliloquy tonight. So, you want to rehearse it? He says, yeah. I know what’s happening. So, the introduction to the hey there is the exact same introduction as to the soliloque except one’s in minor key, one’s in major. So, he’s going, pa-pa-pa, pa, pa. I go, hey there, you with the stars and you know. Typical Dick Rodgers sense of humor, which is very rye. Wonderful experience for all of us because, you know, it was a different kind of musical that had this wonderful effervescent score that these two young composers had presented us. And I’ve afforded me, I recall, however, having to do a musical where I sing six times in the first act and 16 bars in the second act. But you got such good things going for you in the first act, it didn’t really matter. And it was such a fun and great music and the overtures just set you up more, you know. There were basically three kinds of musicals. We have musical dramas, folk musicals, and musical comedy. And with Oklahoma Carousel and Pajama Game, I have one of each of those categories. There’s always exception with the dance musicals and change that we have today. It’s an interesting, like the hair was, a complete diversion.
Michael Kantor: But Bob Fosse, in rehearsal, he wasn’t really a factor in terms of your…
John Raitt: Bob Fossey was working over in another studio, you know, packed with all the dancers, and the only time I worked with Bobby was in the once a year day, because I started that, and then left, and then the dancers took over. But he was, boy, he was something else. On the energy level and the creativity, just beautiful to see and to be associated with.
Michael Kantor: So how does, set up Hernando’s hideaway for us. How did that go?
John Raitt: Well, these guys wrote Jerry Ross and Dick Adder wrote this song. It’s supposed to be a little hideaway or cafe across the river there in Dubuque, Iowa, where you could get alcohol. You couldn’t get it in Iowa. But so they had a wonderful time staging it, you know, like going through with the matches. We used real matches in those days. Three matches taped together and they’d blow them out. And with the tango, of course, it’s always been effective. And it was a big number in the show. We had three big, really. Herlano’s Hideaway, Hey There, and I guess, not two, basically. Those two numbers were the big ones. It was a man who was, of of course showstopper, but didn’t commercially do what the other two shows did, songs did. First at Oklahoma, I was surprised that they didn’t use microphones. Also, I believe it was the first Broadway show where they took the footlights. Put them up on the balcony railing down there and threw the lights at you. Then we go to Carousel and they added the microphones. We had five microphones on the apron of the stage. And I suppose it helped a lot with that because some of the singers needed it. I never needed a microphone, can I say? But shows of the 40s and 50s, especially had the two male leads. Many times they were stars or not stars, This is a case of. Oklahoma and Carousel. Nobody starred in those shows except Rodgers and Hammerstein. And then we get later on we get the character actors, you know, it’s coming in with with Richard Kiley and Manila Mancha and you know the rest of them. And, then we had shows that featured the women a lot of you know. Hello Dolly and Gypsy and all those shows. Who knows how they why they seem to go that way. And presently it doesn’t really matter I don’t think. You go, you don’t care about who’s in rent, really. You just go see the show, right? And so it isn’t so much star-studded anymore. I mean, Michael Crawford and, you know, family opera, but look at the guys that played it since and they still sell out.
Michael Kantor: All right, tell me about opening night of Carousel.
John Raitt: Well, opening night was special for us, because most of us never been on Broadway. And we knew we had something, because we had done so well in Boston with it. And Dick Rodgers had trouble with his back, and he had been in the hospital. So he wanted to come, naturally, the opening night. So they put him on a gurney, and put him in one of the boxes on the majestic there on stage right. And as we started the opening or the prolog. They pulled the curtains on it, and here they’re set, Dick Rodgers right there. So we actually gave the chauffeur Dick that.
Michael Kantor: I mean, in a certain way, the whole era beginning with Oklahoma is a Rodgers and Hammerstein era, isn’t it? They certainly-
John Raitt: They certainly can’t, you cannot leave them out, let’s put it like that, because they had, you know, someone asked them if they had four big hits in a row, what their formula was for a successful musical, and they said, we don’t have a formula, we just feel property, we feel compelled to write, surround it with the best people available, hope that it all works together. One of the big problems is whether the public will like it and want to come see it, and they certainly did, except for the few flops that they had, too. Well, it was interesting how this whole scene evolves of the bench scene, as we call it in Carousel, trying to figure out how they’re gonna get along. And so finally she sings, when I work at the mill, leaving at the room, sings, if I loved you, I know what it’d be like. And he says, well, I don’t know what it’d like if I love you. I can just see myself. Kind of scrawny and pale, picking at my food. Love’s sick like any other guy. I’d throw away my sweater, dress up like a dude in a dickie and a collar and a tie if I loved you. And she says, but you don’t. No, I don’t, but somehow I can see just exactly how I’d be if I loved you time and again. I would try to say all I’d want you to know. Then he goes on with that lovely song. But it’s not a duet. He never, since then I do it sometimes when I’m doing it in concert form. We make a duets out of the ending of it. But for some reason, Dick did not write duets for the leads. Secondary, like Mr. Snow, and when they do the, when the children are asleep, that’s a duete, you know. That’s very interesting.
Michael Kantor: Is something you know about that music that’s just hearing you sing it that it’s just so I don’t know
John Raitt: I believe that music in Carousel is classic, you know. I think in 100 years from now, it’s not as palatable for the audience as Oklahoma was, because that’s almost foolproof. But there’s something in Carousell with all that music that just gets to you, and I know some of my star friends would come and say, damn it, you made me make my mascara run, you, It’s like a four Kleenex musical.
Michael Kantor: And tell me, you know, what happens essentially, condense the plot for us, what happened at the end, he gets killed and he comes back to life.
John Raitt: He kills himself. Billy McGraw kills himself, which is unusual. I mean, when the play first opened in Budapest, Lilliam’s Lillium, I mean Molnar’s Lilium, it only ran about 29 performances. How dare you have the leading man kill himself in the show? It’s a weakness of this man. It made him do it. He’s trapped. He’s not going to go to prison. He won’t do that. So it was a little tricky. We had to go back, as a matter of fact, when we were staging it. Because it came so suddenly, that’s why when we go put the knife on the other side, when Jigger tells him, you see that he’s got the knife, and she says, Billy, I want it, don’t What do you got there? Let me have that, please. So we build that up. So he’s a doom. Somebody asked me, he said, you think Billy Biggolf had a second chance? He blow it? He said, yeah. And Jiggers would always get away, too.
Michael Kantor: But so what Rodgers and Hammerstein do is they bring him back.
John Raitt: Well, that was Oscar’s idea, basically. Wonderful line that he wrote when he finally said, your time’s running out. The heavenly friend says this, but I want an extension. Typical Billy Bigelow type. So all right, Billy. You can see his graduation. I want to see the graduation. He wants to make that rest. And we as an audience, the narrative, well, we wanted to see him make restitution of some kind. And you walk off in the sunset.
Michael Kantor: And what song is sung at that point just to…
John Raitt: You never walk alone.
Michael Kantor: What does it represent?
John Raitt: Broadway musicals are probably the most singular contribution we made to the arts of the world. Our operas are not particularly better than the European people that do operas and plays the same way. We’ve had a little influx of the English with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s works. But at the same time, when I went to the annual 50th anniversary of Oklahoma, I found out that there were 1,400 productions the year of 1993. Country of ours going on at that year. That’s tremendous, in fact, the kids performing Broadway shows. They’re not necessarily, you know, big commercial ventures. And people who have made albums of Broadway shows, very few of them have sold, tremendous. I said, when I went with my daughter, Bonnie, and to the Grammys, I said where are my people, Bonnie? She said, they don’t sell records. But at the same time, the impact is tremendous with it. We’ll always have it, you know. The date changes because we’ve got technical stuff that changes. It’s unbelievable what the holograms and pre-recordings and what they can do and what their challenge to do. The public likes that, you go to see Miss Saigon, you see the helicopter come down and you see it in the Phantom of the Opera, the big chandelier going up and they talk about that. You know, that show business, that’s the whole thing.
Michael Kantor: But if you were to pick words to describe the Broadway musicals that you were in and saw and so forth, what would the words that come to mind be in terms of?
John Raitt: Well, I think the era between 1940 and Oklahoma and probably 1960 was the golden era, we call, of Broadway musicals. You had the Goport of musicals, you had the Irving Berlin musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein, certainly. And a step up from the operettas that I started in as a young singer. I started doing Desert Song and Rosemary at the Hollywood Ball in 1942. 1957 was a banner year for me. I just finished doing Pajama Game, got the opportunity. Co-star with Mary Martin, West Coast Production, Annie Get Your Gun, which we knew we were going to put on television. So we went and played San Francisco, LA, went over to the NBC studios, Burbank, rehearsed it for another seven days on camera, put all the sets on the stages, used the hall, used everything, and piped some music in. And we were seven days on camera and we did a nonstop live television, to our television show about how to get your gun. I don’t think it even dare attempt it today. It’s a classic. It was a classic work. We recorded it before we went into rehearsals, so Mary was very fast. One of the best things she ever did was on that album. That was a highlight for me. She was my favorite Leighton lady. I loved to perform, and after we did that and to get your gun, I was told that they were doing pretty well at summer stock. You see, you did summer stock if you’re over the hill. But I suddenly realized that you could make a lot of money in it, and so not only was it fun, but it was lucrative for us to do summer stock, and I played all those theaters from Maine to California for about… I think he had 25 consecutive years at Summer Stock. And it’s where a lot of the musicals started. I started a play called Joyful Noise up in Wallingford, Connecticut that launched Michael Bennett to later become such a great choreographer, director in Chorus Line. And Tommy Toon was in that company, too. So that was fun to do. And you have now, you know, the La Jolla starts musical. They’ve had pretty successful lately, I bring in from. That little summer stock or just a little stock production, amplify it a little bit and take it to Broadway.
