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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the second of a three-part program featuring legendary composer Cy Coleman. In September of 1980, Cy came to my apartment in Manhattan and discussed everything from his collaboration with Dorothy Fields to working with Gwen Verdon.

[0:36] Paul Lazarus: You began your very long and wonderful collaboration with Dorothy Fields with a show called Sweet Charity, and I was wondering how that relationship began.

[0:46] Cy Coleman: Well, after Little Me, Carol Lee and I decided, well, I was furious.

[0:53] Paul Lazarus: In a word, you decided to break that one off.

[0:55] Cy Coleman: We decided, I went to Europe, and I don't know why, it was one of those things when I just, and Little Me was a tough experience, and I mean it was just a hard show. I mean it's a wonderful show, but hard. And I just took off for London, and I got in London and I said, well, what am I here for? So I just decided to run away to Europe, I did, and then I stayed for about a month, and then I decided to come back. And then I started fooling around with other people. You know, I mean, when you break up a collaboration, it's very difficult. You know, you wonder what you're going to do, and then you're not anxious to get involved in another collaboration. So I started writing with Bob Hilliard, and I started writing with Hal David.

I did a few songs, and he later went on with Burt Bacharach, and I just was figuring out what to do, and I was invited to a songwriters meeting at Dorothy Fields' house. And it was something about the copyright and all that sort of thing, and I was up there, and I said to her, and of course knew Dorothy Fields and her reputation, and she was a grand old lady of the theatre, and I said to her, would you care to write something with me? She said, I'd love to. And she hadn't been doing anything, and so we decided to collaborate. So we wrote a few songs, and I thought it was a collaboration that could work, and then Bobby Fossey came to me, and he said, Gwen and I would like you to do Sweet Charity.

[2:22] Paul Lazarus: Was that Fossey's idea to adapt the movie?

[2:25] Cy Coleman: Oh yes, oh yes. Matter of fact, he did an adaptation by himself. I have a poster that has his name on it, his book writer. He was the one who decided to do Sweet Charity, to do it as a vehicle for Gwen, and that it would be a wonderful property, and he asked who I wanted to write with, and I said Dorothy Fields, and it was like a grand old family. They had done Redhead, you know, with Albert Haig. So that's how we got to do Sweet Charity. Neil Simon became involved when Bobby decided that we needed the book writer, we got to get Neil involved, and Neil was in Europe, I think he was in Rome, doing a picture called The Fox, and Bobby flew over there, and he wouldn't leave until they got a yes from Neil.

[3:10] ♪ Musical number: "I'm A Brass Band" — performed by Gwen Verdon ♪

[5:50] Paul Lazarus: Gwen Verdon as Charity Hope Valentine, girl fall guy, from the musical Sweet Charity, a musical that was based on a Fellini film entitled The Knights of Cabiria, and Gwen Verdon performed I'm a Brass Band, a song written by Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman. Back to a pre-recorded interview with my guest today on Anything Goes, Cy Coleman.

[6:14] Cy Coleman: Dorothy Fields and I had one big problem. Dorothy is an early riser and I'm not. She was an early riser, I should say, and she couldn't understand why I was still in bed at eight o'clock, and she didn't want to understand, and I would get very testy about it because she'd call me up and she'd say at 8.30 or something like that, having waited since seven, looking at the phone. I find that people who get up very early in the morning look at the phone and wonder when it will be all right to call, but she'd call me up at 8.30 and she'd have this tone that used to drive me absolutely crazy. She'd say, are you still in bed? And I'd say, Dorothy, I mean, this is bad enough to be woken up, but to have that imperious tone telling me that it's wrong for me to be in bed is more than I can bear.

So she'd finally pushed it up to nine o'clock, and then I discovered how to, my phone would never shut off, and then I started burying it under pillows, and then she'd get angry because I was avoiding her. And so we had a big battle going on about when to start the morning. Now, Dorothy used to get up when she had a tune of mine, and when she'd work, when she'd put the lyrics to the music, and she'd get up at six o'clock in the morning, she had a card table, she used to meticulously sharpen her pencils, I heard this whole routine, and then she'd work until eight or nine, and she'd do her best work. You see, and then of course she was ready to call me.

[7:53] ♪ Musical number: "My Personal Property" — performed by Shirley MacLaine ♪

[9:32] Paul Lazarus: Shirley MacLaine performing My Personal Property, a song written expressly for the film version of Sweet Charity. You're listening to Anything Goes with guest Cy Coleman.

[9:42] Paul Lazarus: Why was the song Pink Taffeta Sample Size 10 cut from the score? Do you remember? It's such a...

[9:48] Cy Coleman: Oh, it's a beautiful song. Yeah, well, you know, as I told you, very often your favorite songs get cut. Pink Taffeta was cut because the whole scene went, there was a whole hypnosis scene. And frankly, that was before, that was written before Neil Simon became involved. When Neil came in and rewrote the book, or wrote the book as you like, whatever it is, you know, in Fellini's picture, Nights of Cabiria, there was a scene where she's sort of in a carnival, and she was sort of hypnotized, and that was the scene. Oh, I see. And she went back to her childhood, and she sang Pink Taffeta Sample Size 10, and when that went, the song went.

[10:31] ♪ Musical number: "Pink Taffeta Sample Size 10" — performed by Dorothy Fields ♪

[13:08] Paul Lazarus: Lyricist Dorothy Fields performing her own song, Pink Taffeta Sample Size 10, at a lyrics and lyricist evening at the 92nd Street YMYWHA. That same evening, her collaborator Cy Coleman came up on stage and sang another song from the score to Sweet Charity, a song entitled Where Am I Going.

[13:30] ♪ Musical number: "Where Am I Going" — performed by Cy Coleman ♪

[14:54] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to Anything Goes. I'm your host, Paul Lazarus. And you just heard Cy Coleman, my guest today on Anything Goes and the feature of this particular program, performing perhaps my personal favorite of all his work, "Where Am I Going?" from the score to Sweet Charity. How did you feel about when you first approached about Seesaw? I mean, it was originally a two-character comedy by William Gibson, which I think Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft were the stars in it originally.

[15:35] Cy Coleman: Right.

[15:36] Paul Lazarus: And suddenly Bennett wants to do a really big-sized musical out of it.

[15:39] Cy Coleman: Michael Bennett was not there in the beginning.

[15:45] Paul Lazarus: Oh, he wasn't? So who was presenting the idea?

[15:48] Cy Coleman: Seesaw, who brought us the idea? Michael Stewart.

[15:58] Paul Lazarus: Michael Stewart?

[15:59] Cy Coleman: Michael Stewart originally wrote Seesaw.

[16:05] Paul Lazarus: I didn't know that. Because, ah, because it says adapted by Michael. I assumed that he had done the book.

[16:11] Cy Coleman: No, no, no. What the story was in that was Michael Stewart had written the book. Ed Sheeran was the director. Lainey Kazan was the star. And we went to Detroit. And the show was not working. And we had a big disastrous turn of events and Grover Dale did the choreography. The producer came out. And Lainey was let go. Ed was let go. And Michael Bennett came in to take over. And there was a little bit of a... Michael stayed on for quite some... Michael Stewart stayed on for quite some time. And it was just one of those things where he was in disagreement and didn't want to hurt the show. So he said, thank you all very much, but I am taking off. And take my name off. So, Michael will kill me, but this is the truth. This is it, you know?

[17:13] Paul Lazarus: Is there anything he's still in?

[17:14] Cy Coleman: Oh, quite a bit. Quite a bit.

[17:16] Paul Lazarus: I didn't know this at all.

[17:22] Cy Coleman: Okay, now, very few people know it. Now, here we were sitting and we were in previews. And Joe Kipnis called me up and he said, listen, we need somebody to work on it. Neil Simon is having a little dinner. And it was a luncheon. And I'll never forget, I went to that luncheon and I played stuff from Little Me. And Joan, his wife, who had died, she was a wonderful girl, Neil's first wife. And she said to me, you really want to work on your show, don't you? And I said, yes, I do, Joan. She said, well, she said, why don't you bring it up to him? He says, and I'll talk to him. So we did that. I talked to him about it. He said, well, I'll come and see it. I said, you know, I just want you to cut it.

So actually, the meeting that we had eventually was Michael Bennett, Neil Simon, myself, and Joe Kipnis. And we sat there and we talked Neil into it. Now, Neil came in and he said, listen, it's going to be a present. He liked Michael a lot. And he liked me, you know, we had worked together. And he said, it's going to be my present to you. My name cannot go on at the moment. So he did extensive rewrites too. So we had Neil Simon working on it. Well, now we had a lot of stuff from Michael left over. We had a lot of stuff from Neil that Neil had put in. And the question is, who's going to, we need to put down the name of somebody. Somebody's name has got to go on there. So Michael and I decided that was going to be Dorothy Fields.

Well, she struggled with it for about two, three days and she called up and she couldn't sleep nights. She said, I cannot do it. I cannot put my name on something I didn't do. I said, well, you know, this is for the good of the show, Dorothy. So she said, no, she couldn't do it. So I turned to Michael. I said, well, you're the next, you're the director, you're the next logical contender. I said, we're going to have to, we're going to have to give it to you. So he was a little reluctant, but you know, we decided it had to be some name. So that was Michael's name.

[19:33] Paul Lazarus: Oh my, so that's, so that's where I get it from. That's amazing. Do you remember getting the lyric to "Nobody Does It Like Me"?

[19:40] Cy Coleman: Oh, actually, no, you just described that to me. You said that...

[19:45] Paul Lazarus: We sat up late at night doing that in Detroit. I mean, when Michael came in...

[19:48] Cy Coleman: So that was a song written out of town then.

[19:49] Paul Lazarus: Oh yeah. I mean, first of all, there was, we don't know what happened. I mean, there was one show playing on stage at the Fisher Theater and there was one show being rehearsed at the St. Regis Hotel. I mean, it was just an incredible time. We worked so hard and I had the London flu and people would come in and knock at my door and there were bodies all around and the hallways. I mean, it was just an incredible time. It was a very exciting, but a very incredible time.

[20:14] Cy Coleman: A very special time.

[20:16] Paul Lazarus: Some of the best things happen out of town. I mean, it's...

[20:19] Cy Coleman: And the worst.

[20:21] Paul Lazarus: And the worst, but that's a really great number. "Nobody Does It Like Me."

[20:25] ♪ Musical number: "Nobody Does It Like Me" — performed by Michelle Lee ♪

[22:30] Paul Lazarus: Michelle Lee performing "Nobody Does It Like Me" from Seesaw, a show with a score by Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman, my guest today on Anything Goes. I'm going to go to I Love My Wife in 1977. Where did you come across Lenny Baker, who ended up winning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in I Love My Wife?

[22:47] Cy Coleman: We auditioned him.

[22:48] Paul Lazarus: Had you seen him in Next Stop Greenwich Village?

[22:52] Cy Coleman: Not until after.

[22:53] Paul Lazarus: Oh, was that after I Love My Wife?

[22:55] Cy Coleman: No, I hadn't seen him in it. I hadn't seen him in the movie until after he had been cast. I thought we had wonderful cast there. I mean, Lenny Baker and Jim Norton, Eileen Graff, and Joanna Gleason. They were a really remarkable cast. And, you know, we started off with a different one director, a different director.

[23:17] Paul Lazarus: Oh, before Gene Saxony.

[23:18] Cy Coleman: Yes. I mean, it started off with Joe Layton. See, Joe Layton and Michael and I had worked on it for almost a half a year or a year. And then two weeks into rehearsal, Joe had an unfortunate accident. He was at a party at a loft in one of those kind of like balcony things and leaned against it and went over and he fell over 10 feet down and broke everything on one side.

[23:39] Paul Lazarus: Wow.

[23:40] Cy Coleman: Yes, it was a tragedy. And I got on the phone and called Gene Saxon California the next morning. I mean, poor Joe was in St. Vincent's and emergency care. And he was actually in a very intensive care unit.

[24:01] Paul Lazarus: I never heard this story either.

[24:05] Cy Coleman: Yes. And he went through a lot. It's amazing. You know, take a look at Joe and the way he's done Barnum and the remarkable things that he's done in his amazing recovery. And he's just as good as new. He's just patched.

[24:13] Paul Lazarus: Whose idea was to have the live band on stage? Was that something that evolved throughout the...

[24:18] Cy Coleman: Michael Stewart. That was a phenomenally good idea.

[24:21] Paul Lazarus: That was Michael Stewart's idea. And the practical application of it was done by Michael and myself. And in the beginning with Joe Layton, and then afterwards, the costuming and all the kind of thing, those little tricks that were Gene, Gene Saxon.

[24:37] Cy Coleman: That's very, very nice. So I can say, you know, we can give the initial idea to Michael and then all the little bunch of things that go on there, we can all take a bit of credit for. Because that made that show very, very special.

[24:51] Paul Lazarus: Oh, yes. That was the idea.

[25:17] ♪ Musical number: "I Love My Wife" — performed by Lenny Baker and the Original Cast ♪

[28:40] Paul Lazarus: Lenny Baker and the Original Cast performing the title song from I Love My Wife, a score written by Cy Coleman with lyrics by Michael Stewart.

[28:54] Paul Lazarus: I Love My Wife. You've been listening to Cy Coleman Part Two, the second of a three-part series. Associate Producer Jeff London. Anything Goes! Backstage with Broadway's Best is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. For more information, visit AnythingGoes.pl.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.