Michael Kantor: So you say it was a square show, it was square show in a way done by a very square man Mr. George Abbott. Tell me about what did it mean when he wanted to do a show with you?
Richard Adler: Well, first of all, George Abbott might have appeared to be square because he was straight-laced about certain things. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he was very athletic, he very conscious of his body, and he only lived to be 107 years of age. What did I think of George Abbott? The world. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Chance to work with the legend of the American musical theater in this century. And it was a great experience. I learned an awful lot. He and I became friends over a 30-some-odd-year period, and even in about the 20th year, Mr. Abbott asked me to call him George, which floored me, and I did. With great hesitation at first.
Michael Kantor: Who were, in a way, I read your book and I talked to Joe Sullivan Lesser, and in a way you came out of the two titans at the time. Who were they and how was it that they were so important to the musical theater then?
Richard Adler: Well, Frank Lesser, you’re referring to. Frank Lisser really. He kind of owned us contractually. I was very young, I mean, in my 20s. And Frank took me to lunch at 21. It was the first time I’d ever been to 21. I was sort of carried away with that too because I had heard about 21 is the place where celebrities go and all that junk. And he was a very short man, physically. But only physically, he was a giant. When he had examined some of the things that I had written. He said, do you work alone? I said, sometimes. He said who else do you with? I said well, I’ve just recently joined forces with a young guy named Jerry Ross, who’s younger than I am. He said well could I meet him and see some of his stuff? I said I don’t see why not, Knowing that Jerry would jump at the opportunity, which he did, and then Lesser signed the two of us up under contract for, I think, two or three years, something like that, at an enormous amount of money, $50 a week apiece, against future earnings. He was a hell of a businessman, I can tell you.
Michael Kantor: And he brought you to New York.
Richard Adler: Well, he brought George Abbott and said, it’s very good, but you’re not ready, meaning for the Broadway theater. Year later, same thing. He said, your work is improved, but you’re still not ready. Year later we expected to hear that it’s still better, but we’re still ready. He said no. He said the work is wonderful, and I think you’re ready. I’m going to get a book to you, which I’d like you to read tonight, overnight, and tell me what you think tomorrow. The book was called Seven and a Half Cents. Now, in the interim, I had written most of the songs for a review called John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. Not all of them, but most of them. And other contributors were Cy Coleman. And Sheldon Harnack. As you know, Sheldon Harnick, in my estimate, is the greatest living lyricist today, having written such lyrics as Fiddler on the Roof, which is a magnificent score, and Fiorello and others. He’s a brilliant, brilliant man and a wonderful man, a very good friend of mine. So, read seven and a half cents and loved it, but if I had… It wouldn’t have mattered. I would have written the Scott Tissue Gazette into a musical if offered. I wanted to do a musical, a Broadway-bound musical.
Michael Kantor: What did Broadway mean to you as a young? I mean, describe Broadway as this sort of thing to strive for, and to…
Richard Adler: Well, Broadway, this is during the 50s, the 50’s were called the golden age of musicals and quite different than the Broadway of the 90’s or as we approach the new millennium. Lord knows what it’s going to be like. Hopefully, it’ll go back to where it was. I don’t mean back, but into tasteful and elegant stuff.
Michael Kantor: But paint a picture of a young man who’s a songwriter. Why was Broadway the pinnacle?
Richard Adler: Because people like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Frank Lesser, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and before that, Rodgers in Hart. The creators of the fabric that made Broadway what it was.
Michael Kantor: People on Pajama Game were sort of, not novices, but newcomers to Broadway, weren’t they? Who was the team?
Richard Adler: The producers were Griffith, Prince, and. Jeez, I can’t remember.
Michael Kantor: Ready for results.
Richard Adler: And Freddie Brisson, good for you, I forgot. And Prince was a new name. Griffith was George Abbott’s stage manager for many, many years. But Hal Prince was very young, looked even younger, and filled with enthusiasm and good ideas. And Then there was a young choreographer that, Carol Haney, who had been brought to our attention, suggested, named Bob Fossett. Mr. Abbott and the producers were a little nervous about this young unknown named Bob Fosse. So Abbott made a deal, or they made a for Abbott to co-write the book with Jerry Robbins, Jerome Robbins. Jerome Robbins never wrote a word, nor could he have. He was brought there as a backup in case Fossey fell on his face. But he didn’t. Fossy. Thank you very much. You know, choreographed numbers like Steam Heat, which several years ago, a few years ago there was a PBS documentary on Bob Fosse that Gwen Verdon, his widow, narrated called Steam Heat. That is his signature number because that is typical of Bob Fossie’s every movement, the whole thing with the legs. The hats and all that stuff, you know. That was wonderful. I’m very curious about a new production that’s being done in London, in England right now, in rehearsal. So I’m curious to see how that works because the hats and steam heat seem to be wedded to me, and of course it’s a matter of habit, I guess.
Michael Kantor: Tell me about the story that Bob Fosse says he needs a number and it comes to you.
Richard Adler: Said what?
Michael Kantor: Says he needs a number for the show, and he comes to you, and how does steam heat end up in the show?
Richard Adler: Very simply. He had concocted a… Production number to open act two, many people, rather complex, sophisticated type of number, and George Abbott didn’t like it. And I have a Why don’t you get me something simple? Something with two or three people. Make it a pep song, a rally song. You know, the pajama game is a spoof about the labor management conflict of that era. So he said, make it a they’re selling the union something type of song. Oh, Fassi came and to me and he said… Do you have such a number that he wants, a kind of a number, in your trunk? And I simply said, Bobby, we don’t have a trunk. We don’t even have a valise. He said, well, don’t you have something that might be appropriate for what he wants? I said, yes, but I don’t think it’s good enough. Steam heat had been written by me in the bathroom.
Michael Kantor: We’re picking up that story. You were saying steam heat was written in the bathroom. Take it from there
Richard Adler: Steam heat was written in the bathroom. As I said, I was a very compulsive guy. And I said to myself, I’m not leaving this room until I’ve written a song in this room. And it has to be about something in this room, and that, of course, considering the location, is a rather limiting factor. So I sat, and I sat and I said. Then the faucet started to drip. And I said, oh, that’s a good idea. That’s it. And then I remembered that Frank Lesser had written a song called Bloop-Bleep, The Faucet’s Dripping, and I Just Can’t Sleep. So that was out. And then, I sat some more. And then the radiator started to clang and hiss. And I say to myself, that it. And I wrote Steam Heat. And I write it really quickly, because I want to get the hell out of that room. I wrote it in about 10 minutes. And then Jerry liked it very much, what I had done in there. And we put together the rest of the number in the next day, which is he told me to pour some more oil and the burn of that interlude stuff, you know. And I thought it was a good and commercial number. So I called Mitch Miller up, who was the A&R chief then of Columbia Records. A&r means artist in repertory. That’s the guy that matches the song with the singer. Made an appointment with him, did him the song. He didn’t like it. And when Mitch didn’t liked something, he had a special way of brushing it off, which made you know that it was the kiss of death. So. Nice song, save it for a show. That was the end of it, as far as Mitch went. So I was depressed because we, you know, I was poor, needed something, thought that might be it. Forgot about it in a couple of days and now back to where Fosse’s asking me for this particular type of song. So I said, steam heat, but I don’t like it for this show. Why? I said it’s not a good enough song for this show, so let me hear it. Did him the song. He grabbed the music, ran off, and said that’s it. The way he choreographed it originally is the way it was done in the motion picture as well and the way its always done when its done in a production of a pajama game.
Michael Kantor: The songs from Pajama Game, and when did they hit the hit parade?
Richard Adler: Uh… Avid asked for a song to be written. In a nightclub, he said, and make it a dimly lit, picture it as a dimely lit nightclub smoke filled with a lot of sleazy looking people running around. And then he said make it Latin. That rang a bell with me because I’m part Spanish and I speak, read and write Spanish fluently. An hour and a half later, Hernando’s Hideaway was written, but it was initially pronounced by me. Hernando’s Hideaway because the H in Spanish is aspirate, silent. That quickly, however, became Hernando Hideaway. It was recorded by Archie Blyer five days after it was finished. It was released two weeks later. Three weeks after that, it was number one in the United States on the hit parade. The other song which followed it poorly recorded by Mitch, by Johnny Ray, who had had a huge hit called It Doesn’t Matter. But I didn’t like the record, and I went to Mitch and complained about it, because I knew him well enough to be able to do that, and said, this is a song that should be sung by a girl on a record.
Michael Kantor: Was baseball naturally a great idea for a show on Broadway?
Richard Adler: Baseball was a taboo for the theater that had never been licked. That didn’t mean a damn thing to Mr. Abbott. He wanted to do uh… The year the yankees lost the pennant was the name of the book as a musical which he called damn yankeez that was his title which is a great title and uh… I would have done anything George Abbott wanted to do. Everything. I told George Abbott very recently, about a year before he died, that I thought that if Gwen Verdon hadn’t been in the show that it wouldn’t have been a hit like that. She was unbelievable. Nobody has ever come near what she did. She had magic, theater magic, a great star. She’s, that’s a real star. Mary Martin had it in her way. But Gwen for this kind of a thing, I mean, she was adorable looking. She had a great stage body, looked great. She was a fantastic dancer. She sang the songs perfectly, exactly the way they should have been sung, not in an operatic, legitimate way at all. But, you know, like the way a dancer sings. Because that was the, I always liked. A good dancer singing better for musicals than all of this stuff, you know.
Michael Kantor: Why do you think, I mean tell me how she and, you see Fossey and Verdon dancing together and who’s got the pain. I mean they’re the perfect fit, describe how they work together.
Richard Adler: Perfectly. They worked together as well on the stage as their marriage worked. They had a wonderful child, which neither of them had had, named Nicole. I mean, it was a good marriage. And the first good marriage for either of them. And they just worked magically. I was a fantastic choreographer. He knew exactly what to do with an artist. Add a number.
Michael Kantor: What about Shoeless Joe from Headable Moe? Why is the team singing about this guy at that point in the show?
Richard Adler: You don’t want me to really go into the whole story of damn Yankees.
Michael Kantor: No, I just want you to set up.
Richard Adler: Well, you know about how the character of… Joe Boyd, the middle-aged man, was turned by the devil on stage into a young athlete. He couldn’t wear the shoes that the middle-aged man had been wearing. He took off his shoes because he couldn’t, you know, his feet were hurting. And the devil led him to the ball club and the manager of the ballclub, et cetera. And he gets up to bat and he hits everything out, you know, 10 miles away. And he does it barefoot, and that is brought to his attention and they go into a big production number.
Michael Kantor: What about, you know, shortly thereafter your partner died? Tell me about Jerry Ross’s special gifts and what his passing meant to both you and musical theater at the time.
Richard Adler: I can’t tell you what his passing meant to the musical theater because I’m not able to predict what the future might have been. However, We were probably the hottest team in the world at the time. And his death was a shock to me and a blow to me, not only because I lost a great partner, but because he was like a brother to me. And he was my best friend as well. And it was terrible. And Cole Porter, who had become a friend of mine and who had gone to see damn Yankees five times and Loved it and invited me up to his apartment at the Waldorf Towers the first time and picked my brains as to how whatever Lola wants had been written. He was so interested in that song and I can understand it because it sort of sounds like a Cole Porter song in a way, you know, Porter-esque, let’s say.
Michael Kantor: Why is JFK linked to Camelot?
Richard Adler: One, he was a very good friend of Alan J. Lerner, who wrote Camelot. Kennedy was a vital, very young, very attractive man with a terrific sense of humor and was a natural orator. And he attracted young, interesting people to the White House. So therefore, the White house under Kennedy was called Camelot.
Michael Kantor: From a sort of Abbott pep. There was sort of a different kind of sophistication, wasn’t it?
Richard Adler: Oh, yeah, lines like wrapped in mink or saran. I mean, he was a genius. That’s all. How do you describe the word genius? Go to the dictionary. Or refer to people like Alan Lerner or Dick Rogers.
Michael Kantor: What was, you know, Lerner wrote this book on the Broadway musical, what was it about My Fair Lady and Lerna that was a perfect fit?
Richard Adler: Well, because he adapted Pygmalion by Shaw into, he did it literally. I mean, it is the same play with great songs by wonderful lyrics with lovely tunes by Fritz Low. You don’t get that every day. And boy, I wish today that would happen. I have one show that I consider the best thing I ever wrote.
Michael Kantor: But he won’t quit, will he? Why not?
Richard Adler: That’s what kept him going. And I loved Dick Rogers. He was a wonderful man. We were very good friends. And he wanted to work again. And I put him together with Sheldon Harnick as a team. I produced the show, something I would never want to do again. I’m not a producer. I hated it. But I wanted to do this for Dick, for Dick Rogers.” Rogers had passed his peak with his illness and everything. And Sheldon was probably too dazzled by a legend to write the kind of stuff he’s capable of. So it did not work. And anyway, it was my stupidity, really, that made it not work, because I wanted it to be about Henry VIII. Well, Henry VII went from woman to woman to woman to woman, etc. And you can’t do that in a show. You have to build one relationship with conflicts, et cetera, in the relationship throughout the entire evening. I should have done it about Elizabeth. But I was not smart enough to think of that at the time.
Michael Kantor: That were on the roof in the mid-sixties. Broadway seemed to change. What happened as far as you could see?
Richard Adler: Nothing. Nothing happened. That’s what’s wrong. Nothing happened! You would think that, and you’re right, after Fiddler, I think Fiddlers probably the last great score. And it’s a great show. I’ve seen it several times in different productions. It’s always great. I think that answers your question. It’s kind of a strange answer I realize. But you said, what happened? Nothing happened. And I said, you’re right, nothing happened.
Michael Kantor: Why do you think that was? Why didn’t anyone write another fiddler or another? Pajama game.
Richard Adler: Taste seems to have changed, audience taste. I mean, I go to shows where people are clapping and laughing and I’m doing the opposite. Audiences, I’m not going to mention the ones. Some of them running now leave me pretty cold. That doesn’t mean they leave a lot of people. This is just, this interview is a very personal thing. I’m giving you a personal reflection. Means. Very little to me would I see. Now, I’m talking about-
Michael Kantor: What do you think in the 50s that Broadway musical meant to America?
Richard Adler: I think a lot. I think it was a reflection of what people might have referred to it as the American the true folk play, the musical, because it started here. The musical is, or used to be anyway, a very American type entertainment. You know, with the kind of music that came that Cole Porter wrote and that Irving Berlin wrote, very American.
Michael Kantor: Why do you think it happened here as opposed to in England or France? Why did all that stuff bubble up here on Broadway? Any idea?
Richard Adler: No, I mean… It was not, I mean, the English have taken to the musical very, very firmly in the last 25 years. But you know, they didn’t start it. Begin with their expression, I mean the American musical has been the biggest successes they’ve had over there. There have been some English successes too.
Michael Kantor: Why is My Fair Lady such a great work of art?
Richard Adler: So’s Gypsy, Apples and Peaches, you know, they’re so different. I love Gypsy. I think it’s Steve Sondheim’s best lyrical efforts, though his lyrics are wonderful. Very much overshadowing his music, brilliant lyricist.
Michael Kantor: Any of those, Fernando’s Hideaway, could you just give us a lead in to Steenheed? How does it start, or Fernando’s hideaway? Just the way you were doing part of some people. Give me one of your songs.
Richard Adler: Oh, God. You have to give me some kind of a lead into it.
Michael Kantor: How’s steam heat start?
Richard Adler: How did it start?
Michael Kantor: How does this song start?
Richard Adler: Steam heat I got, steam heat I’ve got. Steam heat but I need your love to keep away the cold.
Michael Kantor: Great. How about Shoeless Joe? How’s that start?
Richard Adler: Who came along in a puff of smoke? Shoeless joke from Hannibal Moe. Strong as the, strong as the something of the mighty oaks. I don’t remember.
Michael Kantor: That’s okay. That’s great. I just want to… How much footage do you have?
Richard Adler: I remember other people’s songs much more than I do my own.
Michael Kantor: Much more than I do my own how what’s going to happen in the future it seems like there’s a lot of corporations out there fighting now
Richard Adler: I’ve heard just a little of the work of a 25-year-old songwriter. His name is Andrew Gettle. I predict he’ll go places. He’s also the grandson of Richard Rogers, so he inherited something, something genetic. His mother, Mary Rogers, is also a songwriter. But, you know, I’ve heard some of his stuff. It’s very good. You should get a hold of him.
