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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. Today, the first of a two-part look at the career of Broadway orchestrator Hans Spialek. Spialek orchestrated many of the most famous shows of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. He worked with such notable composers as George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Cole Porter. This program was originally broadcast in 1983.

[0:40] ♪ Musical number: "On Your Toes" — performed by the original cast ♪

[2:52] Paul Lazarus: Good afternoon, and welcome to Anything Goes. I'm your host, Paul Lazarus. Today, we'll be talking to Broadway orchestrator Hans Spialek, Dean of Broadway Orchestration. Mr. Spialek, 89 years old and still kicking, recently celebrated his birthday on the stage of the Virginia Theatre, where his latest show, a revival of On Your Toes, is playing. Spialek was primarily involved in the Broadway scene in the 20s and 30s and the 40s, so unfortunately, few recordings of Mr. Spialek's work exist. However, he and I spoke at length in my apartment, and I'll be featuring excerpts from that conversation. Hans, welcome. It's a pleasure to speak with you. I've always wanted to talk with you about orchestration and all the many, many shows that you've been a part of.

[3:46] Hans Spialek: Well, entire shows. I did 147. And when I say 147 shows, those are shows I can prove that I had programs with my name on it.

[4:04] Paul Lazarus: The others you can't remember?

[4:06] Hans Spialek: But there are so many other shows. Where are there two numbers, one number, three numbers, or a finale or something? There are many others which I have in my diary. By the way, I have to tell you something.

[4:19] Paul Lazarus: What?

[4:20] Hans Spialek: I have a diary since 1912.

[4:26] Paul Lazarus: Every day you write on it?

[4:29] Hans Spialek: I can tell you every day.

[4:31] Paul Lazarus: Wow.

[4:32] Hans Spialek: No, no, that's true. I want to take you way back, because I want to find out what makes someone like you become a Broadway orchestrator. And when you were just beginning in music, what was your earliest training? Did you study an instrument? Did you study voice?

[4:47] Hans Spialek: Yes, I did. I studied violin. But one day my father bought a second, a third, a tenth piano. I come upstairs.

[5:02] Paul Lazarus: Was this in Vienna?

[5:05] Hans Spialek: In Vienna. And I sat down. I was seven, eight years old. I sat down and I played. Because I heard it downstairs in the movie. And from that time, I neglected the violin and I started piano.

[5:27] Paul Lazarus: Piano. Were your parents in music? Or you were the first in your family to go into music?

[5:32] Hans Spialek: No, I was the only one. I was the only black sheep.

[5:35] Paul Lazarus: Do you remember the first Broadway show you ever saw in New York?

[5:40] Hans Spialek: Well, I came in New York the 13th of January, 1924. And the first night, my wife was in the 7th one. I unloaded her at the hotel. There was a little flea bag on 65th Street. And I went the same night, I went to the Capitol Theater.

[6:02] Paul Lazarus: What did you see?

[6:05] Hans Spialek: Under the red rope. With the orchestra, David Mendoza was the conductor.

[6:13] Paul Lazarus: I have the program. I show it to you.

[6:16] Hans Spialek: I have a feeling you say program.

[6:20] Paul Lazarus: Who do you think the concertmaster was?

[6:24] Hans Spialek: Eugene Orman.

[6:35] Hans Spialek: I worked for Keith when I married Lil. And after a year I got young Phil. I couldn't pay the hospital bill. So I was born in vaudeville.

[6:52] ♪ Musical number: "Two A Day For Keith" — performed by Hans Spialek ♪

[9:21] Paul Lazarus: And you're listening to excerpts from a pre-recorded interview with Broadway orchestrator Hans Spialek. So when we came here, of course I didn't know anybody. And I accidentally met a doctor we met in Berlin. He brought us to a party where there was a violin player. That violin player was Maurice Wittke. He was the one who played all his life for John Barrymore, and did the missionaries for local aid to men who play in all those theaters, you know. So he wrote on a piece of napkin, he wrote a recommendation, and he sent me to Holmes. Holmes was a publisher. And he sent me to Robert Russell Bennett. And said that I am, you know, a great composer, you know. And I come there, there was the manager was Charlie Miller, in a small office, and I brought my scores, you know, and my Sunday writing, and I have a beautiful writing. And at the end there was a fat, big man there, big round glasses on his face, was just standing, he looked at his scores. And he asked me, that big man asked me, can you copy?

[10:38] Hans Spialek: That was an insult. But thank God I said yes. So he puts me in the last thing which I found out later on was the arranging room, and says, and he gives me a thing, I remember, the song was called My Dream Girl, it says copy this. I copy it, and I find him looking over my shoulder. Then came the second insult, it says, can you transpose? Thank God I said yes. He had to transpose it, I don't know. You know who the man was?

[11:13] Hans Spialek: Victor Herbert.

[11:29] ♪ Musical number: "My Dream Girl" — performed by Hans Spialek ♪

[12:30] ♪ Musical number: "My Dream Girl" — performed by Donald Dame ♪

[14:28] Paul Lazarus: Mr. Spialek went to work for Harms Publishing Company, and at that time, Max Dreyfuss was the head of Harms. What was Max Dreyfuss like at Harms?

[14:35] Hans Spialek: He, well, sort of nasty in a way. For instance, I'll give you an example. Gershwin came one day in and he played some new tunes. He had that time, Not Funny Face, there was another show. Lady Be Good? No, no, no. Treasure Girl. Oh, really? That was not a hit. Yeah. That's the only show where Gershwin did a 5-4 tune on it.

[14:58] Paul Lazarus: It was the only 5-4 tune in it?

[15:02] Hans Spialek: The ever, ever. Yeah. He played those tunes and they were very nice. And Gershwin played those tunes. You know how his way of demonstrating was he would whistle the melody and put Vanity Accompaniment. So he whistles. I mean, he didn't sing the lyrics, there were no lyrics yet. And he asked Dreyfuss, how do you like it?

[15:55] Paul Lazarus: So Dreyfuss said, I like the lyrics.

[15:57] Hans Spialek: I think my misery flies, when clouds are dark in the sky. I got a rainbow on my shoulder, a wolf knocked at my door, he doesn't knock anymore. I got a rainbow on my shoulder, oh it may rain and it may come as, but I have no reason to cry, for with a rainbow down, a good man never is down. So blues get out of my way, the joy that's coming to stay, with a rainbow all around.

[18:13] Paul Lazarus: Got a rainbow from Treasure Girl, the 1928 show by George Gershwin. And you're listening to Anything Goes with Paul Lazarus, and my guest today is Broadway orchestrator Hans Spialek.

[18:47] Hans Spialek: When he sat at the piano, no one could get him away from me. That's what they say. We had once a party, my wife was supposed to sing, John Pierce was supposed to sing. They were all waiting to go there. They couldn't because Gershwin sat down before until three in the morning, and he was fascinating, and he was so enthusiastic. No, the man was actually the only, actually, I would say, fanatic musician I know.

[19:23] Paul Lazarus: When you started orchestrating, who did you look up to?

[19:28] Hans Spialek: As an arranger?

[19:29] Paul Lazarus: Yeah.

[19:30] Hans Spialek: There was a, well, I came here the last year when Frank Sadler, he was the head arranger of all. He did all the Jerome Kern's and all. It was beautiful writing. But he died the year I came here, and his pupil was Maurice Dupac, big shot, big fella. And he, it was his pupil, and he adopted the exact handwriting Frank Sadler had. You look two scores, you can never say that.

[20:01] Paul Lazarus: And then, Russell Bennett wasn't so much to me.

[20:05] Hans Spialek: I worked with Russell Bennett for 29 years. We had to, we shared the same room.

[20:10] Paul Lazarus: Really?

[20:11] Hans Spialek: For 29 years at Chappelle. He died last year, wasn't he? And we became wonderful friends. But that time he was my ideal, and I learned a lot from him. Especially now, you understand, I come to a strange country. I don't know the way of writing for jazz, I know syncopating and all that. I went every day to either a wardrobe house or movies and all that. To learn the music.

[20:42] Hans Spialek: Movie houses had orchestras. Movie houses like 83rd Street Theater and all that. They had big wardrobe shops with an orchestra of 26, 30 people. And what about the Capitol, 50, or the Rialto, or the Rivoli, you know. They all had great orchestras. And of course, I played mostly jazz. And Woodman, I went up to 125th Street. I had Cicelyn Blake, who went up to the Cotton Club on Saturday, almost every Saturday.

[21:21] ♪ Musical number: "Emmeline" — performed by Noble Sissel and His Sizzling Syncopators ♪

[23:42] Paul Lazarus: This is Anything Goes. You're listening to excerpts from a pre-recorded interview with Hans Spialek.

[23:49] Hans Spialek: I had to go as a corpus that was sent out of town. We were sent to Long Branch with a show called Marjorie D. Herbert Stoddard was conducting it. And later on, Max Steiner was conducting the show. It was a pretty good show. But the arranger was Stephen Jones. And he was a golf player more than an arranger. I would wake up in the morning. I would ask for carping, my carping job. There would be nothing here because he's out playing golf. Then he would say, look Hans, you can arrange it yourself. That's a waltz, you know, it comes from Vienna. You arrange that. And I did well.

[24:35] Hans Spialek: All of a sudden, there came a show called Americana. The first Americana. Everybody wrote for that show music. Even George Gershwin. And Neil Parber. Duke had a song. And Phil Cherry had a song, Sunny Disposition. And it was the first time I had my name on the program.

[24:59] Paul Lazarus: As orchestrator?

[25:00] Hans Spialek: And yeah.

[25:01] Paul Lazarus: Spialek arranged a couple of songs for the Garrick Gaieties, including "Mountain Greenery," several songs for Chi-Chi, and a few songs for the Rodgers and Hart show of Connecticut Yankee. Then Richard Rodgers asked Spialek to orchestrate the entire score for the Fifth Avenue Follies, and on the strength of that job, he was offered On Your Toes. Hans recalls the first orchestra run-through of On Your Toes in Boston.

[25:39] Hans Spialek: The only real appreciation as an arranger, and that concerns newspapers, people, composers and all that, I got in On Your Toes, and neither from the composer, nor from the papers, nothing. But I'll show you what happened at the reading rehearsal, at the orchestra reading in Boston. No actor was supposed to be on the stage, nothing. But unknown to us, I didn't know this much, and I didn't know him that time either, Ray Bolger. And then they play "Small Hotel." Then I found out, I said, hey Ray, he was crying, tears were running down his eyes. I said, what's the matter, you don't like it? Because he's singing it. Not in the show, he or she sings it first. In the original, he's singing it first.

I said, what's the matter with you, you don't like it? He says, no, it's so beautiful. That was the only real appreciation as an arranger, among all those billions of notes I wrote through the years. I got much, and I got wonderful, but as soon as I got bad ones, because you have to take it for granted you'll get.

[27:07] ♪ Musical number: "There's a Small Hotel" — performed by Portia Nelson and Jack Cassidy ♪

[31:16] Paul Lazarus: Portia Nelson and Jack Cassidy singing "There's a Small Hotel" from On Your Toes. What were the differences for you doing it in 1936 and doing it now?

[31:28] Hans Spialek: Well...

[31:29] Paul Lazarus: Orchestration-wise, though.

[31:31] Hans Spialek: I'll tell you what I did. I almost changed nothing. There were holds, certain holds, where it used a little bit, you know. Times changed, and there are fingerings and, say, certain things for strings, you know. I'm done just a little bit. For instance, in the Senorita Ballet, when she comes out and the kids dance, you couldn't hear. It was only a flute solo. Don't forget, the theaters were small, and the orchestra didn't know. At that time, either it was louder, or you could hear the instruments, but the differentiation was not. So I added a xylophone today, and a little bit here, bells to this and this. But I used my exact orchestration that I had, and thank God we found at the Rodgers and Hammerstein office, we found quite a lot of my original scores.

[32:31] Paul Lazarus: The original manuscripts.

[32:32] Hans Spialek: And it's a funny feeling when you look at something you did 40 years ago. How beautiful they were.

[32:38] ♪ Musical number: "Glad to Be Unhappy" — performed by Lee Wiley ♪

[35:42] Paul Lazarus: Lee Wiley, performing the Rodgers and Hart tune, "Glad to Be Unhappy." He used to go to a bar with Richard Rodgers and talk about "Glad to Be Unhappy." He was very happy about that tune. He never, when the show was playing out of town in Boston, all the time, we never missed it in there. We may have missed "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" or something, because that was set that way, but we never missed "Glad to Be Unhappy."

[36:09] Hans Spialek: You would run into the theater just to hear it?

[36:11] Paul Lazarus: It was Doris Dalton.

[36:16] Hans Spialek: Ah, it's a wonderful song.

[36:19] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, that was On Your Toes, and it was an immediate success.

[36:23] Hans Spialek: It was an immediate success. Some of the critics in New York were falling over the book. They didn't, but oh, love the music.

[37:10] Paul Lazarus: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.