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[0:01] Robert Viagas: This show is probably should be called Mack and Mabel. I think Mabel Normand is a much more interesting and valuable person to not only cinema but to the story than the musical Let's Her Be.

[0:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I think that's absolutely right. But they had Robert Preston.

[0:24] Robert Viagas: Yeah, well, there you go.

[0:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome everybody to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today we are discussing the musical Mack and Mabel, which was a listener request from both Bobby and Avery. Thank you so much to both of you for writing in. I've also requested Mack and Mabel before. Let's listen back to a past episode.

[1:03] Robert Viagas: For me, I think I gotta go with the Mack and Mabel. I know that everybody wants to fix that show. But I just really want that show to succeed so much. It's Jerry Herman, it's tap dancing. It's a fantastic score. That overture deserves to be in a show that's considered a hit.

[1:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, I find this musical flop fascinating. And you know, here on A Musical Theatre Podcast, the F word is not a bad word. And by F word, I mean flop. So here to chat with me about this fascinating show is someone I've looked up to for a very long time. He might not know that. He's the founding editor of Playbill.com, which means, Robert, you were very instrumental in my dial-up internet adolescence. I remember going to Playbill daily and picking one article to click. And then I'd have to go make a sandwich because that's how long it took for the article to come up. And then by the time I had to come back, I could read it.

[1:59] Robert Viagas: Yeah, that was back in the old days when they had to actually shovel coal into the computers and work up a head of steam before you could. I actually, thousands of years ago, I actually owned a 9600 baud connector for the internet. And when I would write a review, usually about 500 words, it took 15 minutes to upload to the newspaper. Newspapers are what they had before the internet. But you know, when I started, I had always wanted to do a newspaper. I love newspapers and I wanted to do a newspaper only of theater. I didn't know because I had my internship at Newsday, which is a big newspaper here on Long Island. And I started, I had a column in my local paper when I was 17 years old reviewing theater.

[2:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: At 17?

[2:48] Robert Viagas: The bug bit early. And I couldn't understand why newspapers wouldn't put theater on the front page, especially New York area newspapers. It's such an important part of the culture and the economy of the area. And I thought to myself, someday I'm going to start a newspaper and there'll be theater on the front page every day. But then the internet came along and I said, I could have my newspaper with theater on the front page every day.

[3:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly.

[3:14] Robert Viagas: And that was kind of the beginning of, that was the beginning of Playbill.com. But I had that idea when I was a teenager.

[3:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's incredible. Well, I'm so grateful because it meant that like a little, a little kid like me in Willard, Utah, didn't have to live in New York in order to see the front page of your theater newspaper.

[3:31] Robert Viagas: Well, that was it. Even in New York, they don't cover theater that much. And other places around the country, when there was a scandal, there would be something. When there was a big flop, there would be something. And the Tony Awards. That's the only, I mean, am I wrong?

[3:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Nope.

[3:46] Robert Viagas: That's mostly what people...

[3:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Even to this day.

[3:48] Robert Viagas: So it gave people the idea that theater was something that happened long ago and far away. And I wanted to convey that it was something that was alive and it was something that was happening right now and it was exciting and cool things were opening. And that gave me a chance to do it.

[4:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, on behalf of everybody, thank you so much for doing so. Anyway, everyone, please welcome Robert Viagas. I'm so sorry. That was like the longest introduction ever, but yay, I'm so grateful you're here.

[4:15] Robert Viagas: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[4:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're also an accomplished author and penned, in my opinion, the best book ever on A Chorus Line called On The Line, which was assigned reading to me by my director choreographer the first time I did that show. So hopefully every time Hector Guerrero does A Chorus Line somewhere you see a couple of coins come your way.

[4:37] Robert Viagas: Still friends with Bayork Lee. We still see each other.

[4:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Are you?

[4:40] Robert Viagas: Tommy is no longer with us, unfortunately, but Bayork, she's still out there directing shows. She directs all over the world. She's an amazing person. Well-deserved to win that special Isabelle Stevenson award from the Tonys a few years back. I was so proud.

[4:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's fantastic. So talk to me. Obviously, you have a great relationship with A Chorus Line. You also wrote a book about the Fantastics. What's your relationship like with Jerry Herman? How do you feel about the Herm?

[5:07] Robert Viagas: I was always a huge fan of Jerry Herman. As a matter of fact, for six years I had a show on what's now Sirius XM and I had Jerry come up and we talked for an hour. Can you imagine me just face-to-face with Jerry Herman? I couldn't get over it. I was so excited to have him in there for me because I had always liked his shows. I have to tell you, I started my interest in theater at just the right moment. I saw my first show in 1971. So I got to see the last shows of all these big stars. Just one terrific star. People who had Yul Brynner and all these people from the end. Zero Mostel and all these wonderful, wonderful people from the 40s and 50s and 60s. They were kind of at the end of their careers. So I was so happy that Jerry was still in the prime of his songwriting time. Of course, we all knew that he had done Hello Dolly. We knew he had done Mame and he did Dear World, which was not a hit, but even Rodgers and Hammerstein had a couple of flops.

[6:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely.

[6:14] Robert Viagas: So when we heard, it was 1974, so when I say we, I was 18 at that time and I had my column in my local newspaper. It was Robert Preston from The Music Man, which was going to be in a musical by Jerry Herman. At that time, Bernadette, she was young and she was red hot from having done Games at Sea. Everybody was like, he's getting together the old team, all the people who worked on Dolly are going to be doing this show and it's about show business.

[6:47] Robert Viagas: I have to tell you, for those of us who love musical theater, at that time, I have to say I grew up in a blue-collar community, so there were very few other theater lovers in my school. I played the lead two years in a row in my high school musicals and I'm terrible.

[7:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Get it, Robert.

[7:06] Robert Viagas: I'm terrible, but I'm tall, I'm male and I show up to rehearsals and in high school, that's key to success.

[7:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's how you book.

[7:16] Robert Viagas: That's right. But when I heard that this thing was coming, I was out of my mind with excitement because I thought I was going to see the next Hello Dolly. I remember going in to the theater to see the show and it was one of the big Broadway theaters and Preston comes out very early on and he sings When Movies Were Movies.

[7:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: First of all, let me go back. The overture.

[7:41] Robert Viagas: Oh my gosh.

[7:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The overture kills.

[7:43] Robert Viagas: No.

[7:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: All of Jerry's overtures are great.

[7:45] Robert Viagas: But this one in particular.

[7:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They all make you think you're going to see the greatest show you ever saw in your life.

[7:49] Robert Viagas: Yes.

[7:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then with the melodies and it's like, oh, he always has a Hello Dolly song in one of his shows where the leading lady comes back and everybody gets excited.

[7:56] Robert Viagas: Right. So when I heard Mabel come in the room from the overture, even though I hadn't seen or heard a thing about the show other than the names, because there was no Playbill.com then, I thought to myself, oh, that's the song. That's the Hello Dolly song. She's going to come back. Absolutely. She's going to come back from somewhere and everybody's going to get all excited and they're going to sing about the magnolias and the corn from Maine.

[8:27] Robert Viagas: But it was so wonderful to see the two of them. They came out, they sang, and gradually over the course of the first act, you start to think, you know, this just doesn't have the electricity, but I'm sure it's going to be great in the second act.

[8:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I didn't realize at that point how problematic second acts generally are.

[8:47] Robert Viagas: But I thought, oh, all right, the first act may be a little weak, but the second act's going to be sensational.

[8:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then the songs would start and you'd go, okay, okay, now we're coming.

[8:54] Robert Viagas: We're back in. We're back in.

[8:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then we'd get back to Michael Stewart's book. Michael Stewart is a wonderful librettist and lyricist.

[9:01] Robert Viagas: He also did some lyrics for a couple of Psy Coleman shows.

[9:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. Barnum.

[9:07] Robert Viagas: So I was a little disappointed and I thought, well, maybe I didn't care for it, but I'm 18. What do I know?

[9:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, and that's the thing, right? I'm sure the critics will love it.

[9:14] Robert Viagas: I'm sure they'll love it, and they didn't.

[9:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's such an interesting phenomenon when you go into a show like that and there's this, I don't want to call it an impending doom, but there's this feeling of, uh-oh, like, are we, is this show in trouble? You know what I mean?

[9:31] Robert Viagas: I felt that way when I went and saw Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. That was like my first experience of that.

[9:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: David Yazbeck musical.

[9:38] Robert Viagas: You're like, David Yazbeck score, this cast, insane. And then it starts going and you're like, uh-oh.

[9:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: There's too many stories going on here.

[9:47] Robert Viagas: Laura Benanti has that solo, that top speed solo, and you're thinking, oh, finally the show's up to snuff.

[9:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then no.

[10:00] Robert Viagas: But like, as I always say on this show, those are things that make me even more grateful to be able to witness it.

[10:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It reaffirms the ephemeral nature of theater and the great honor we have to sit in a space with other people and figure out what exactly is happening, what is our relationship to it.

[10:25] Robert Viagas: I'm just, I'm endlessly fascinated by these types of shows. And so when you have a big question mark like Mack and Mabel that has the score and cast album that are five stars, right, it becomes this title that almost weighs on your heart where you're like, there's still so much potential.

[10:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like it could happen.

[10:49] Robert Viagas: It could happen one day, but I'm starting to think it's never going to happen. You know, there's just shows like that.

[10:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like if you hear the, when you listen to the cast album of Baker's Wife.

[11:03] Robert Viagas: Yeah.

[11:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Another great example.

[11:05] Robert Viagas: It's like, oh, this show must be sensational. And then you go to see it and you're like, well, she has a choice between this old man and this young guy who is clearly, he's like a Don Juan and she has to pick one or the other.

[11:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's like, Zhovyev doesn't have to choose between these two guys.

[11:22] Robert Viagas: There's lots of other guys she could choose from, but they make it seem like these are the only two.

[11:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's the only possibility.

[11:27] Robert Viagas: It kills the momentum of the show.

[11:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And there are shows like that.

[11:31] Robert Viagas: I know people are going to get mad. I feel this way about Merrily We Roll Along.

[11:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You listen to that cast album or any of the many cast albums there are now, and they're all good.

[11:41] Robert Viagas: They're all good.

[11:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then you see the show and you just, why is it going backwards?

[11:48] Robert Viagas: You know, they've tried running it forwards. They've tried doing it forwards. The characters are not appealing.

[11:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And that's a little bit, I think, what happened with Mack and Mabel.

[11:58] Robert Viagas: And I talked to Jerry. Jerry said, you know, well, our problem with that show was Mac wasn't very romantic.

[12:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And Jerry solved that problem beautifully.

[12:09] Robert Viagas: In my favorite song from the show, I Won't Send Roses, because he tells her, I'm not a romantic guy. I won't send roses. I won't hold the door. I won't remember what dress you wore. But then at the end, he says, I won't send roses and roses suit you so.

[12:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And that's just a lovely tag to that.

[12:28] Robert Viagas: Another problem, Robert Preston, oh my God, it's the music man, and Bernadette, and she's so pretty, but he was 30 years older than she was.

[12:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome back to A Musical Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Scott Parsons, and today we are diving into the fascinating world of "Mack & Mabel" with my special guest, Robert Viagas. Robert, thank you so much for joining me today.

[12:58] Robert Viagas: Thanks for having me, Jeff! I'm excited to talk about this musical that has such a unique place in Broadway history.

[13:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely! "Mack & Mabel" is one of those shows that has intrigued audiences since its debut in 1974. I know you saw it on Broadway, which must have been an incredible experience.

[13:14] Robert Viagas: It really was. I was a teenager at the time, and seeing that production was a pivotal moment for me. The music, the story, everything about it captivated me.

[13:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And yet, despite its incredible score and the talent behind it, it didn't achieve the success many expected. What do you think contributed to its initial reception?

[13:30] Robert Viagas: That's a great question. I think there were several factors at play. The story itself is quite complex, and it doesn't follow the traditional musical theatre formula. It has a darker tone, which might not have resonated with audiences at the time.

[14:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right, and the real-life inspirations behind the characters add another layer of depth. Can you share a bit about that?

[15:12] Robert Viagas: Sure! The musical is based on the tumultuous relationship between Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand, two pioneers of early film comedy. Their story is filled with passion, ambition, and heartbreak, which makes for compelling theatre, but it also presents challenges in terms of audience connection.

[15:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It’s fascinating how the context of the time can influence a show's reception. What do you think are some of the unsung heroes of "Mack & Mabel"?

[15:38] Robert Viagas: There are so many! The creative team, including Jerry Herman, who wrote the score, and Michael Stewart, who penned the book, are often overshadowed by their more famous works. But "Mack & Mabel" showcases their talents beautifully.

[15:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Definitely! The score is filled with memorable songs that have stood the test of time. What are some of your favorites?

[20:55] Robert Viagas: I love "Time Heals Everything." It's such a poignant reflection on love and loss, and it really captures the essence of the characters' struggles.

[20:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That song is a standout for sure. It’s interesting how certain numbers resonate differently with audiences over the years.

[21:01] Robert Viagas: Exactly! And I think that's part of what makes "Mack & Mabel" so special. It has layers that can be appreciated in different ways depending on where you are in life.

[21:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. It’s a show that invites reflection and conversation, which is what we’re doing today!

[21:05] Robert Viagas: Yes, and I think that’s why it continues to be discussed and revisited in various productions.

[21:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I agree. It’s a testament to the power of musical theatre to evoke emotion and provoke thought.

[21:09] Robert Viagas: Well said, Jeff!

[25:15] Robert Viagas: Musical about making movies. Because I don't think we've quite created one yet. I don't think that we have mastered that. I think that there are a lot of great movies about creating theater, but I don't think that there are a lot of great musicals, stage musicals, about creating movies.

[25:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, I agree with you.

[25:34] Robert Viagas: So once the whole team creates Mack and Mabel, it does a full national tour before it was at the Muni. They did it at the, you know, this 14,000 seats at the Muni for people who may not know the Muni's legendary outdoor theater in Missouri. But it starts out on the West Coast and then, like you said, hits the Muni, goes to Washington. It gets pretty decent reviews. They did say, I read somewhere that they felt like the Muni was a horrible place to stop on this tour because it didn't help the tone or the style of the show to be playing things that big for that big of a house to then end up on Broadway in theaters that, you know, to be perfectly honest, are not as huge as some of our regional houses, biggest theaters like 2,000 seats.

[26:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, Radio City Music Hall is over 5,000.

[26:39] Robert Viagas: Yeah, crazy. So when it does end up on Broadway, like you mentioned, critics didn't love it. It opens in 1974 in a legendary Broadway season that also included The Wiz, which was the big winner at the Tony Awards. Mack and Mabel, despite its score, wasn't even nominated.

[27:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You read my mind.

[27:01] Robert Viagas: Tenant was nominated. So I was just gonna take us through. So the musicals nominated for Best Musical in this Broadway season were Mack and Mabel, so it did get a Best Musical Tony nomination, The Lieutenant, Shenandoah, and The Wiz. The Wiz wins for score. The nominations went to The Wiz, which wins, Charlie Smalls, Shenandoah, The Lieutenant, which I've never heard before in my life.

[27:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And you'll have to sing me a song from it because I don't know.

[27:37] Robert Viagas: It's about a My Lai massacre. It's a musical during the Vietnam War. A lieutenant, Lieutenant Calley, ordered that this entire village be wiped out.

[27:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my God, so they killed men, women, and children in the village and they made a musical out of it called The Lieutenant.

[27:57] Robert Viagas: Oh, good gravy.

[27:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then the last nomination went to Letter for Queen Victoria, which once again, couldn't sing you a song from if my life depended on it, even if The Lieutenant was about to kill my entire village. It was music really basically, and I don't know why that got nominated and Mack and Mabel did not. During that period of time, The New York Times had a critic who felt that traditional musicals, that we needed to get rid of the sound of original musicals, that kind of Broadway sound.

[28:29] Robert Viagas: Mm-hmm.

[28:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which Jerry Herman is the quintessential musicals with a way to go.

[28:37] Robert Viagas: Yeah, and so the most powerful critic on Broadway, who was Clive Barnes, anytime there was a musical with a traditional score, he would torpedo it. And in those days, you know, now we've undergone this democratization of criticism where, you know, people go on the web and they want to talk to other ticket buyers to get information about shows. The critics are not as powerful as they once were. In those days, The New York Times could still make or break a show, and they definitely broke Mack and Mabel.

[29:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting.

[29:07] Robert Viagas: All right, well one of the, this is where the story gets even more interesting. After Mack and Mabel flops on Broadway, the next big kind of cultural footprint for it came in the form of, and I am not kidding about this, Olympic ice skating. Torval and Dean, who are these ice dancers? Are they from the UK? Is that right? Am I remembering that?

[29:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know. Anyway, sorry, we're outside of musical. I know it's sorry now.

[29:46] Robert Viagas: Even though it is ice skating, but they win an Olympic gold medal for ice dancing, skating to the overture of Mack and Mabel. And it was such a sensation that it honestly gave a little bit more fuel to the Mack and Mabel fire of like, wow, this music is incredible because it is. And you've already mentioned that that overture is just absolutely glorious. But who knew ice skating would help us keep Mack and Mabel in the collective consciousness?

[30:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, it's interesting. Also, if you look at the history, the post-Broadway history, English people seem to like the show better than Americans. It got a lot of attention and revivals. It was at the Chichester Festival. It was done a bunch of times, never made a nickel, sure, but it kept getting done because people heard that score. It's like Baker's Wife. People hear that score and they think, I got to do this show. This is, I'm gonna rescue this show from obscurity.

[30:45] Robert Viagas: That's how I feel.

[30:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So I'm in Maui, and I remember when I first arrived here, there's this mall really close to me. It's called the Kaumanu Mall, and it's this beautiful kind of open space, and it's beautiful. But of course, it is also a mall, and malls are struggling right now, brick-and-mortar. And so in addition to like the beautiful scenery and vegetation and kind of everything in the center, there's maybe a Victoria's Secret and a Macy's, you know, like that's all that there is to it. And I remember going to it for the first time and telling somebody I was working with, "Oh, wow, this place has so much potential." And they gave me such an eye roll like, "Oh, I can tell you're new on Maui. You got the old potential thing going on." And now I understand what he's saying, but I feel that way a little bit about Mack and Mabel too, which is like you have this feeling of, "Oh, there's so much potential." And anyway, it makes me laugh. I see my foolishness sometimes in it.

[31:51] Robert Viagas: Well, they've tried. They've tried it. In fact, they even rewrote the ending so that they wind up in each other's arms at the end, but of course had nothing to do with anything real life. I didn't realize that their romance kind of petered out. She became a drug addict. She was involved in a number of Hollywood scandals that are not mentioned. And then, you know, she died in 1930. He lived on to 1960. She died of tuberculosis very young, late in her 30s. She died. It's crazy. Now you see her performing. If you look at her movies, they're all over the internet. You can see what she did. She did look a lot like Bernadette Peters, and I made a joke about, you know, Bernadette being in all of these shows that were spoofing early film.

But you look at her face, and it seems like a match made in heaven because Bernadette was a modern embodiment of this old-school silent film star with the porcelain skin and the big round eyes. And I mean, it's the cutie doll mouth. She was old and new in one, like perky little package.

[33:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's exactly right. So cool. And she was very attractive, as was Mabel. She was such a perfect mime because that's a lot of what they were doing in those movies was mime.

[33:13] Robert Viagas: Yeah, and her face was so expressive. She could just like shoot somebody like a little, you know, side glance at them, and you could tell her entire attitude toward the person that she was looking at just from that one little flicker of side eye.

[33:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And she just did a million things like that. You're so right. I've watched a few of her films that are still available, and man, she could communicate so much with that face.

[33:41] Robert Viagas: In preparation for this episode, I read the script. I went through the whole script, the original script. And so I'd like to talk through it just a little bit with you to help people understand what we're working with. But the show begins with this glorious overture that we've talked about over and over again. But truly, I only second to maybe Gypsy in my book. Is there a better overture?

[34:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: After the overture, we meet Mack Sennett pretty early on. Yeah, he comes in, he's immediately yelling at people because he's a prickly dude, and he launches into "When Movies Were Movies," which is the song about how it's a song that both celebrates his contribution to movies and also is fueled by his ego, saying that it was best when he was in charge.

[34:36] Robert Viagas: That's right. That's right. You have to remember when that song was being sung, you were watching his movies. I'm watching clips from his movies, and it's kind of better when you have the visuals.

[34:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I mean, there are a few songs like that where they don't come across on cast album as they do in the live theater, and that's one of them.

[34:54] Robert Viagas: Yeah, and you're seeing all these, if you remember, there's kind of an instrumental break in the song, and you're watching his movies. How cool during that scene, which was very helpful. And he makes a good case. He narrates this entire thing to the audience. He'll pop in and out of, you know, the scenes, basically saying, "Oh, if only I had known," or, you know, "What I mean with that was some sort of 20/20 hindsight." I mean, I would have loved to have Mabel be a narrator herself, and maybe it was kind of like a dual narratorship with them both telling their sides of the story. You know, whatever it would be, something to bring her up to his level instead of just being this prop because then once he meets her, which by the way, it's a great entrance. She comes in and is delivering a sandwich to one of Mack Sennett's actors.

[36:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They don't like the sandwich.

[36:03] Robert Viagas: And they don't like the sandwich, but she's demanding that she get paid for it. And there's this whole kerfuffle, a series of comedic things happen where like she grabs a sandwich and then slugs it with someone else, and there's like a prop baby that gets thrown. And it's comedy genius, right? And so Mack Sennett sees it and is like, "This girl's a star. She may just be, you know, Nellie from the deli, but get ready world."

[36:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly.

[36:28] Robert Viagas: And so Mabel becomes this star. She becomes his new star. They meet cute.

[36:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Meet cute.

[36:34] Robert Viagas: Yeah, that's the goal when you have to get into the romance as fast as possible. Something like that. Now the musical makes it sound like Mabel was really just his star that he made, and her contribution to film was best when he was in charge. But the truth is that she became a director. She had her own film studio. She was a writer. She wrote on many Charlie Chaplin films. So like her, once again, her contribution to film is not completely tied to Mack Sennett, and I think that there are some real missed opportunities. Did you ever see Sideshow?

[37:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[37:18] Robert Viagas: About the conjoined Hilton twins?

[37:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I did some research into the Hilton sisters. After the Hilton sisters retired from the Follies and from vaudeville, they opened up a hotel for theatricals, and all these famous theater people came through and stayed at their hotel, and the two of them were at the front desk. I said, "There's your musical." Instead, they have this scene of these two guys. They're not sure if they love them or not, and you know, they're conjoined, and I can't you, but I want to be with you. Let's look, go to the hotel.

[37:53] Robert Viagas: At this point, he has become, I think, our most covered composer on the podcast because we've done Hello, Dolly!, we've done The Grand Tour, we did The Grand Tour with Jason Grah, we've done La Cage, we've done... am I missing another one? Madame Aphrodite? Oh, Milk and Honey, and we also did Milk and Honey, and you even go back to Milk and Honey, but you even go back to that score and the rich, gorgeous stuff that he composed for that score in addition to the jaunty, optimistic tunes as well. Fertile is the right word. I wish he'd done more.

[38:34] Robert Viagas: So some of the other players in the show that get a lot of airtime, kind of this old hoofer named Lottie, who was originally played by Lisa Kirk. Who was Lisa Kirk? Do you know who she was?

[38:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. She was in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro. She was in Allegro and she sang "The Gentleman is a Dope." That was her big number.

[38:55] Robert Viagas: She's the original "Gentleman is a Dope." Oh, wow. She really is billed in this show kind of like "The And, also starring Lisa." So I knew she was somebody, but I didn't know that. That's really cool.

[39:06] Robert Viagas: Don't forget, it was only a little over 20 years, 25 years earlier. It seemed like it was much, much earlier, but it wasn't that much earlier.

[39:14] Robert Viagas: So Lottie is one of his players, one of Mack Sennett's players, and as the story progresses, she's kind of the voice of reason. She's the sassafras Maggie from 42nd Street who's going to put you in your place and tell you how it is, sort of thing. And then she also gets a couple of great songs, particularly when Mack's career goes to hell in a handbasket because sound comes on, right? All of a sudden, he can't do his crazy directing, yelling out things when motion pictures go to sound.

[39:46] Robert Viagas: However, Lottie, who has been this ex-Vaudeville hoofer, you have tap dance, you have her vocals, and now she becomes the star that she probably always should have been. But she sings what I consider to be the worst song on the show.

[39:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You don't like "Tap Your Troubles Away"?

[39:57] Robert Viagas: Let me put it this way. My least favorite song on the show is "Tap Your Troubles Away." I got to say, though, if that's your least favorite song, that's a pretty good score. That's a wonderful score. That's why I wanted to discuss this show, because I love it. But she lists all these troubles that you can have, and it was a vulgarity to the song that I did not associate with Jerry Herman. When a sky full of crap always lands in your lap, give a big smile and tap, tap your troubles away. It was just like, did I need that image? A sky full of crap? Where did that come from? That's not my Jerry Herman, wrote that line. And there's a whole litany of terrible things that could happen to you, but you could just tap your troubles away.

[41:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's so interesting.

[41:44] Robert Viagas: Gower Champion, who was the director, who also directed Dolly, I mean, he was one of the great directors of that period, director-choreographers. The show didn't dance as much as it should have danced. And you would think, with something like the Keystone Cops to work with, there's a song on the show called "Every Time a Cop Falls Down, My Heart Leaps Up." That's great. What he decided to do was to do it all in slow motion, so that you could see all the things that the cops with a K were doing.

[42:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting.

[42:15] Robert Viagas: But you know something? That's not the way to watch the cops. The cops were funny because they were moving so fast. And of course, in those days, the cameras were hand-cranked, and so it was hard to play them back and have the movement be consistent. Also, they used a very low number of frames per second when they were taking those films. So when they would play them back in contemporary projectors, they were like this. They would look like they were moving around really fast, and people would laugh at that. But they said, why do they do that? The original films, they didn't do that. Gower had a lot of movement things that he could have done, and of all the things that he could have done, he had the Keystone Cops move in slow motion.

[43:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's a missed opportunity.

[43:10] Robert Viagas: It was a mistake. Another song that I'm not crazy about from the show is that "Thousands of Girls" song, which is very non-PC today. But you know something? Even in that time, it seemed a little creepy, to tell you the truth. Although that number was staged in a very interesting way. He had the girls come down this spiral slide. They would slide down this thing, and they would land on the stage. It was very dramatic, but yes, he liked "Thousands of Girls." But even then, it was something kind of odd about that song.

[43:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Did you feel that way about ... because he later did "Dames" in 42nd Street, just a couple of years later. Did you feel that way about that song, or was it more specifically with this one?

[44:03] Robert Viagas: I don't know why that did not affect me the same way. Maybe because it's dames versus girls. That's the only thing that I can think of. Because dames are full-grown women, whereas girls, you're literally belittling them. Especially since Preston was born in 1918, so he was already in his late 50s when he was doing this. I don't know. It rubbed me the wrong way. I'll put it to you that way.

[44:36] Robert Viagas: Once again, I think that there's some interesting and kind of dark undertones of what's going on in the story, which is that he can't have Mabel, and so instead of having her, he's going to have Hundreds of Girls. That's what's underneath it all. There's definitely discomfort. It's not just a celebration of women. It's almost an addict-type trying to fill a void that is left by this person. Meanwhile, he treated her like just as big a star as the men. I think they could have emphasized that a little bit more instead of just making her the object of his romance.

[45:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Maybe I should do a Patreon where I sit down and rewrite Mack and Mabel, just for me. The problem is, at least how I understand it, is that Michael Stewart's family is very protective of his writing. No new book writer has ever been able to come on and give it another whirl.

[45:29] Robert Viagas: That's unfortunate to me.

[45:31] Robert Viagas: It is unfortunate. We may have to wait until the 2030s, 2040s before some of these things finally get done. Look how long we had to wait for a revival of Funny Girl.

[45:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's a good point.

[45:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Three generations we had to wait, two generations before we could get that revival of Funny Girl.

[45:49] Robert Viagas: It's so true. Can you imagine if David Lindsay-Abaire came in and gave Mack and Mabel a new book?

[45:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That could be cool.

[45:57] Robert Viagas: I was in the BMI Musical Theater workshop as a librettist. I wrote a couple of librettos that I can tell you right now were terrible. Writing a libretto is really hard. I have to say, composers deserve to get the applause they get. But you know something? If it wasn't for the librettist, the librettist tells the basic story. Without a good basic story, you can write the best songs in the world and they're just going to go. I love orchestrators. Phil Lang, who is the orchestrator of Mack and Mabel, managed to really incorporate the sound of that period into the score beautifully.

[49:01] Robert Viagas: At the beginning of "Time Heals Everything," you hear that saxophone, and it just pulls you right into the song. Before she said a word, you're already inside that song. I just wanted to pause for a moment and give props to the orchestrators and the librettists. The orchestrators certainly did master work on Mack and Mabel, but the librettist, unfortunately, he was given an impossible task to write a love story about two people whose love just kind of falls apart, and there's no second act in that show.

[49:43] Robert Viagas: The critics said it was too gloomy, which it was. It was too gloomy. Nowadays, I think a story like that could do better. It didn't have to have a happy ending, even though Mack does say, I promise you a happy ending, and then they didn't deliver a happy ending.

[50:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So when you saw it, did they have the pretend marriage?

[50:18] Robert Viagas: No.

[50:20] Robert Viagas: Not that I remember. If it was in there in the original production, I don't remember it. I'm pretty sure in the script, at least the one that I read, you know, they get to this point where it's...

[50:31] Robert Viagas: Mabel is addicted to Angel Dust cocaine, which, by the way, I did some research and there isn't a lot of evidence about her drug addiction other than she was hanging around with a lot of people who were convicted of that sort of thing. Like you said, she had a couple scandals including a murder that had been committed with her pistol. She didn't pull the trigger, but it was her gun, that sort of thing. So her life kind of devolves pretty quickly and Mack watches it and is unable to do anything about it. In the musical, he convinces her to come back and film this movie called Molly, which is a much more serious script that's worthy of her talents. The movie never is released and they don't end up together, but Mack's like, that's not how we're going to end this version of the story.

We're going to end with a big wedding. And so then there's this fantasy sequence that comes to life of him and her getting married at the end. And that was the new little stamp that they put on the show to try and make it a happy ending. But once again, it had nothing to do with the actual story or the actual people.

[51:48] Robert Viagas: No, once you have a song, I promise you a happy ending, you kind of have to deliver that even whether it's in this actual story or not. Okay, well, I enjoy talking about the show, but I honestly just really enjoy talking to you. So now I'm just going to ask you some questions. Because we've talked about Mack and Mabel, it almost makes me feel a little sad because I love it so much and want more for it than it wants for itself.

[52:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That was the critical reaction when it opened, exactly what you're saying.

[52:18] Robert Viagas: Interesting. So you went to the BMI workshop. Did you meet Lehman Engel?

[52:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I used to go to some of the BMI workshop presentations when Lehman was running it. But when I was in it, I was only in it for two years, 1996 to 1998. Lehman was gone and other people had taken over.

[52:41] Robert Viagas: What did you get from it? We talk about that workshop a lot on the show because it has brought so many of our modern day composing teams together.

[52:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, I felt that the composer workshop had people who had written shows. Composers were teaching the workshop. The librettist workshop at that time, I won't say who was running it, but it was somebody who had done one Broadway show and it had flopped.

[53:07] Robert Viagas: Interesting.

[53:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That was this person's entire background. This person was very respected and I think a lot of people expected that she was going to do great things. But at that time, the big popular shows were things like Floyd Collins and Violet, shows that were wonderful shows. But there was a sense of rejecting shows that had been successful. Phantom of the Opera, pfft, that stuff is crap.

[53:41] Robert Viagas: Populist.

[53:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Populist stuff. And I'm like, well, but those shows, audiences love those shows.

[53:48] Robert Viagas: But they work.

[53:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And they would say, ugh, you don't want to write that. You want to write a show like Violet, which is a really terrific show, which it is.

[53:56] Robert Viagas: Well, it is a terrific show. I felt like they were teaching me how to write flops. We never had a librettist come down to the workshop to talk about what they did and how they did their careers, how they did what they did, how they did their magic, what were their mistakes, what did they learn from their mistakes. We never got any of that. Basically, we would talk amongst ourselves. We were basically pooling our ignorance. That would be like having a Spanish class where people knew how to say chili con carne and not much else, and then trying to learn Spanish from each other, and never bringing in a Spanish speaker. It was the same thing. They were teaching us how to write librettos without anybody who knew how to write librettos, or had had successful librettos, or even who had had like seven flop librettos, but had learned a lot from it.

Again, we only talked to one another, so we were only breathing each other's air. After two years, it was like ... You know something? I learned well, because I wrote three librettos, which I still have on my shelf here, and they were all terrible. I learned how to write flops. I should have gotten a good grade in that.

[55:20] Robert Viagas: I will say I don't want to downgrade the BMI program. The BMI program for songwriters is wonderful. They bring in people who know what they're talking about. It's run by people who know what they're talking about. They present songs, and then they're critiqued. It's really a wonderful way to ... Rogers and Hart, they would write like three musicals a year, and a couple of them would flop, and a couple of them would be hits, and they would learn by doing. There's no place really where you can do that type of thing anymore. The workshops are the best thing we have to do that. ASCAP has a wonderful workshop. BMI has a wonderful workshop, but at least during the period that I was involved, I wouldn't say that they were doing as good a job as they could have done.

[56:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you, Robert Viagas, so much for doing this with me. What a great opportunity to learn and to connect. I really appreciate you.

[56:45] Robert Viagas: I do a lot of talks. I do presentations. I have a coming-up. I'm going to talk about going to be doing a series of lectures on the Tony Awards once the nominations come out. I was a Tony voter for 20 years, and for three years, I served a term as a Tony nominator. When those nominations come out and you think, who are the idiots who came out with these nominations? I was one of those idiots.

[57:35] Robert Viagas: I have 22 books that I've published, 21 of them about the theater and one about golf. I have two that were published in the last year. I have a book about Broadway ghosts. It's called Good Morning Olive. It's about the ghost who haunts the New Amsterdam theater, Olive Thomas. These are not ghost stories from a thousand years ago. These are not things that I pulled off the internet. During my 24 years at Playbill, I collected ghost stories from people who actually believed that they had had a ghostly experience at the Broadway theaters.

[58:21] Robert Viagas: One thing that I find is interesting, there are certain theaters where I would get ghost stories and they were pretty consistent from person to person, year to year, people who didn't know each other. They would always describe the ghost the same way. There are certain theaters that never had ghosts. It was almost as if some of the theaters had ghosts and some did not. My book, Good Morning Olive, which is out now, is ghost stories from all over the world that I have collected almost exclusively from first person, from people who have actually told me their stories.

[58:57] Robert Viagas: Coming up this summer, I have a new book that I'm very excited about. I call it my masterwork, if I may, because it involves everything that I've experienced throughout my career on Broadway. I've seen more than 2,000 Broadway shows. Just on Broadway, I've seen many off-Broadway and around the world. I saw shows in India. I saw shows in China. Every place I go, I see a show. So I decided that we have books about famous actors. We have books about famous writers, famous composers, famous directors. There are many, many books about the people who create what we see at the theater. But I've never seen a book about the most important collaborator of all, the audience. No one has ever written a history of the audience. It's a very interesting history. It's called Right This Way. It's a history of the audience, going back to the Greeks and coming right up to this year.

[59:57] Robert Viagas: I'll give you an example. I went to the National Archive, where they have a record of people who were there at Ford's Theater the night Lincoln was assassinated. Most of the accounts tell what happened backstage and things like that. Nobody talks about what it was like to sit there and watch Lincoln get shot. The night Lincoln was assassinated, it was on a Friday. Appomattox, the surrender of the South, had taken place on Monday. He'd had a busy couple of years. He and his wife decided we're going to go out on Friday night. We're going to go see a show. We're going to laugh our heads off and we'll begin our happy new post-war life. The audience was so happy to see him. They loved hearing him laugh.

Don't forget, they didn't have any television. The only images they had of Lincoln were these very serious pictures of him with the beard and that. He was laughing his head off. Then this horrible thing happened. I have an account from these two guys who were sitting in the audience. When Booth jumped out of the presidential box and ran across the stage, they decided they were going to chase him. They ran after him, but he knew his way through the back. He'd been at the theater many times as an actor. These guys got lost, but one of the guys said, but I got the scoundrel's hat. That was his big moment.

[1:01:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I've done a history of audiences.

[1:01:24] Robert Viagas: That's so fun. I would love to have you on Patreon as soon as that comes out so that we can talk about that.

[1:01:31] Robert Viagas: I would love to. I think the audiences are so important. It's got to be the reason why theater continues, otherwise we're just all on our couches watching Netflix. We have to talk more about the importance of audiences and their relationship to us.

[1:01:48] Robert Viagas: My friend, my central thesis of the book is this. Theater doesn't happen on the stage. What happens on the stage is designed to evoke theater. Theater happens in the hearts and minds of the audience.

[1:02:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love that. Come on, that's great. Gold Robert Viagas, well done.

[1:02:09] Robert Viagas: Thank you very much. I'm very grateful for your having me on. I rarely get a chance to talk about. Every once in a while, I'll run into Peter Felicia at a theater, and the two of us instantly get into it.

[1:02:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: How cute.

[1:02:21] Robert Viagas: For the most part, I spend most of my life around civilians, and so I just have to keep it inside myself. It would be lovely, lovely to talk more.

[1:02:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You are welcome anytime. Everybody, thank you so much for listening. Remember, we just want to make the world laugh, you know?

[1:02:41] Robert Viagas: That's right.

[1:02:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's all. That's all we want to do.

[1:02:43] Robert Viagas: You and Mack Sennett.

[1:02:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Me and Mack Sennett, we're like twins. We're like the Hilton sisters creating the hotel.