Muny at 100: Local theater makes national moves, avoids 'immoral' shows

“The Little Mermaid” and “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aida,” “Newsies” and, later this year, “Frozen.” • Thanks to those titles and others, the Disney brand gleams brightly in Broadway’s neon lights. • You know where that started? Not in Anaheim, not in Orlando, not even in New York City. • It started at the Muny. • In 1969, the Muny presented the world premiere of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a stage version of the landmark 1937 animated film.

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• Muny executives had spent 10 years negotiating for the rights to a show that didn’t really exist; at the time, no Disney movie had ever been adapted for the stage. Maybe Edwin Culver III, the Muny board president, and Roy Disney, chairman of the Disney board, had an inkling of what the future would hold. Or maybe Culver just knew that names like Doc, Sneezy and Grumpy guaranteed box office gold.

ABOVE THE TITLE

As the Muny entered a new decade of performances, it counted on star-power fuel. The “Snow White” season opened with another world premiere based on a movie: “State Fair,” with TV stars Ozzie and Harriet Nelson on the stage and composer Richard Rodgers in the audience.

These were the years when the Muny boasted lots of big stars, often playing the Broadway roles with which they were identified.

You could see Yul Brynner in “The King and I,” Lauren Bacall in “Applause,” Zero Mostel in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Angela Lansbury in “Gypsy” and in “Mame.” Carol Channing played the Muny in “Hello, Dolly!” and so did Pearl Bailey, co-starring with Cab Calloway.

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Robert Morse reprised his star turn in “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” Jerry Orbach reprised his from “Promises, Promises,” and Joel Grey both starred in and directed “Cabaret.”

Sid Caesar played Fagin in one Muny production of “Oliver!,” as St. Louis native Vincent Price did in another.

Starring in a revival of “Irene,” Debbie Reynolds charmed the audience when she kept “singin’ in the rain” through a sudden shower. Speaking of showers, Milton Berle played Noah in “Two by Two.”

Betty Grable — hailed by Post-Dispatch writer Jack Rice as an “indispensable, praise the Lord and post the pin-up” wartime asset — starred in a nostalgic revue with Rudy Vallee, Dorothy Lamour and Don Ameche. Folk singer Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary washed that man right out of her hair in “South Pacific.” Up-and-comer Patti LuPone starred in “The Baker’s Wife,” and another emerging star, Bernadette Peters, played opposite Robert Preston in “Mack and Mabel.”

Two stars of legendary stature, Carol Burnett and Rock Hudson, made their Forest Park debuts together in “I Do! I Do!” Impressive casting or not, this was a decidedly odd choice for the Muny: a two-character, no-chorus show that takes place entirely in one room.

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At least “I Do! I Do!” is a musical. “The Odd Couple,” a Neil Simon comedy that also takes place in one room, has no songs whatsoever. But in the 1970s, the play about mismatched roommates turned into a popular sitcom starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. And that’s who starred in “The Odd Couple” at the Muny.

The big, big stars. The somewhat odd, though popular, choices of material. What was going on?

Two words: Tour shows.

ON THE ROAD

From the beginning, the Muny had nearly always mounted its own productions. In the early years, it functioned almost as a stock company, with the same principal players and chorus in show after show.

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Eventually that proved unworkable, and casts were hired by each show. Certainly there were performers who came back year after year. But with very rare exceptions, they came to do Muny productions, directed and produced in Forest Park and presented only in Forest Park.

Tour shows already came to the American Theatre downtown and to the Kiel Opera House. Plainly, they had an audience. (Today, tours continue to play at the Kiel, renamed the Peabody; the Fox Theatre, built as a movie palace, reopened as a tour house in 1982.)

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Most tours were built for the road. Some — like “Mack and Mabel” or “Gigi” — were basically Broadway-bound “out of town” runs, working out the kinks before they got to New York. Some, like the Betty Grable vehicle “This Is Show Business,” were designed for touring.

But in the 1970s, a few Broadway productions actually shut down for a week or so to move to the Muny — lock, stock and stars. “Follies,” “Chicago” and “Over Here!” — a World War II show that starred the Andrews Sisters and featured John Travolta as a soldier — are among those that made the move.

It wasn’t easy, Post-Dispatch writer Olivia Skinner reported. “Producing a musical is like fighting a war,” explained Charles Allen Blackwell, the New York production manager who supervised “Promises, Promises” in its Muny “sabbatical.” “Everything has to be in the right place at the right time. (Even) a cocktail glass can be an important prop.”

Blackwell had to know exactly where that glass was, amid the furnishings and costumes and makeup and tools. He made a lot of lists, he said — including lists for getting everything back to Manhattan in good shape.

Was it worth it? Not everybody thought so. The Muny’s first production of “Cabaret” “was brilliant,” Post-Dispatch critic Myles Standish wrote in 1971.

“But where the credit should go is hard to figure out: This is, alas, another package show. The opera has had such shows so often this season that it is in danger of losing its identity.”

Three years later, Lawrence Lewis Bierman of Olivette echoed Standish’s sentiments in a Post-Dispatch letter to the editor. “St. Louis’s pride and joy has declined to a local theater for traveling road companies,” Bierman wrote. “Of the nine productions scheduled for this season, only three will be produced locally . . . New leadership is definitely needed.”

“We have problems,” Culver, by now the Muny’s general manager, acknowledged to Post-Dispatch critic Joe Pollack in May 1977 — six weeks before the start of a season that still had two open slots. Pollack, calling that “one of the major understatements of the year,” observed that “the conservatism of the Opera board makes it move with incredible slowness.

“Another part of the problem is that Culver and Robert Hyland, who heads the (board’s) repertory committee, are committed to what they call a ‘star system,’ but which is really a policy of booking second-rate stars (for) local productions, or of buying already-packaged touring shows.” On top of that, he observed, “The Opera won’t touch ‘A Chorus Line.’”

Not to mention other shows. “‘Hair’ and ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ are out of the question, of course,” Culver’s predecessor, Muny general manager William Zalken, had told Standish. Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” he added, “is immoral, and our audiences aren’t ready for that kind of thing.”

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But Zalken didn’t extol the “good old days” of operetta. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” the “hippie Shakespeare” musical, was fine with him, as of course were such still-new hits as “Man of La Mancha” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

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But when “Chicago” came to the Muny “direct from Broadway,” some words were eliminated, altered or “bleeped” — which of course did nothing to disguise the musical’s trenchant, sordid story. Pollack warned that if the Muny didn’t broaden its approach — by appealing to younger audiences and to people who like the theater, an art form, at least as much as they like a theater, a civic institution — it would turn “its motto, ‘Alone in its greatness’ . . . to ‘Alone in its stodginess.’”

back in the seats

Joseph Campanella, starring as Captain von Trapp in the Muny’s 1972 production of “The Sound of Music,” took time out for a backstage chat with three St. Louis sisters: Elizabeth Lerner, Nehoma Lerner and Rose Lerner Fox. The sisters had not missed a single Muny show since the theater opened in 1919, sitting in “their” seats every Tuesday.

Although they fondly recalled such old favorites as “The Desert Song” and “The Student Prince,” they heartily approved of updates in lighting and sound. “The orchestra is more professional, too,” Fox said.

The Muny hired its first female conductor, Liza Redfield, in 1974. She led the orchestra in “Good News,” not exactly a cutting-edge work. But Donald Chan, the Muny’s music director at the time, told Patricia Rice of the Post-Dispatch that every musical-theater period had its own plusses and minuses.

“Recent scores, like that of ‘Fiddler,’ are carefully done,” Chan said, “but those old scores are pretty messy . . . It would be fun to do a new work (but) it is difficult to get new plays. Maybe we could once in a while cater just to adults.” Tell that to the general manager.

WORK-AROUNDS

If there weren’t enough suitable new shows available to the Muny — well, who said everything had to be a musical? The 1970s were the era of Muny “specials,” concert shows that ran just a night or two. They offered a wide range of music and comedy styles.

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Most of the shows were built around such entertainers as Red Skelton, Dinah Shore, Glen Campbell and Robert Goulet. Diahann Carroll and John Denver teamed up for a show; songwriter Burt Bacharach and British singer/composer Anthony Newley did, too. Roy Clark, Minnie Pearl, Mel Tillis and other country artists turned the venue into the “Grand Ole Muny Opera.” But whatever actor Carroll O’Connor did in his show is lost in the mists of time.

Probably the most successful special of all was “The Sonny and Cher Show.” The 8:15 performance sold out at once, so a second show was quickly added, for midnight. It was an unheard-of solution to a very rare problem at the enormous outdoor theater.

BOOM!

On the opening night of “Anything Goes,” a boom — a high, curtain-like wall — hit the star, famed dancer Ann Miller. The rest of the performance was canceled; Miller suffered a concussion, and for the rest of the week chorus girl Pat St. James stepped into the lead. Years later, after a lot of legal wrangling, Miller returned to the Muny in “Sugar Babies.” And St. James once again played Reno Sweeney, this time at Stages St. Louis.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT

The Leather Bottle, a Clayton restaurant, promoted a Muny tie-in. For $5.95, you could get a steak dinner with all the trimmings, plus a certificate for a $3 seat at the Muny.

The Muny wasn’t averse to suggesting a good deal itself. A 1969 ad pointed out that for about $150, you could buy a round-trip ticket to New York and a ticket to one Broadway hit. “Or for as little as $11, you can treat yourself to a gift that says it with music for the ENTIRE SUMMER,” a season ticket. And you’d probably have something left over for a steak.

FANCY FOOTWORK

“Ballet, youngest of the performing arts in America and perhaps the unlikeliest postulant for acceptance in beer-and-baseball country, seems to have gained a foothold in St. Louis,” Post-Dispatch music critic Frank Peters wrote after the Royal Ballet’s performance in 1969. “The crowds were composed mostly of people who go habitually to the outdoor theater for a diet of Broadway musicals; but that is all to the better, for the brightest hope of serious music and dance is to find an audience outside the hard core . . . the habits of a big, middle-class, short-hair audience like the Muny’s have been largely ignored.”

But the ballet of the 1970s was glamorous and fun. Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn, giving the Muny’s “star system” international heft, were such a big draw that on opening night, the Racquet Club lifted its ban on women so that couples could dine together before the show. Besides ballet companies, the Muny also showcased folkloric troupes from Eastern Europe, known for their dazzling costumes and awe-inspiring leaps. It was colorful, it was athletic, and nobody ever said anything that needed a bleep.

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For some people, of course, the point was to get out of the audience and onto the stage themselves. In the 1970s, the Muny issued occasional pleas for people with special talents: bagpipers for “Oliver!” (only one woman, Margaret Will of south St. Louis, showed up), very tall men, described as “basketball types,” to carry spears in a ballet. But the real auditions were, of course, for singers and dancers.

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Despite long odds, hundreds of young men and women auditioned for the choruses every year. One set of dancers auditioning on the Starlight Roof at the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel “strutted and turned like muscular flamingos,” wrote Harper Barnes of the Post-Dispatch.

“There are only three categories: poor, okay and good. It is a tough business.” But perhaps a little easier than planning a Muny season.