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[0:00] Robert W. Schneider: Bea Arthur. Beatrice Arthur. Beatrice Frankel Sachs Arthur. Oh, no words excite me more than Bea Arthur. Bea Arthur of I Was Never In The Chorus. God'll get you for that, Walter. To Shady Pines, Ma. What could be more thrilling to the ears than hearing those lines bellowed, nothing less than bellowed than by that five-foot, nine-inch bundle of vinegar who could make the word wither with one glare? With a simple arched eyebrow, she could make Walter Findlay run for cover on Maude, or Sofia Petrillo wish she had lived with Phil or Gloria on The Golden Girls. But before she was one of TV's most iconic actresses, she was one of Broadway's most desired supporting players, the matchmaker Golda in Fiddler on the Roof, the boozy best friend Vera Charles in Mame, and dozens of other reviews, but always on the sidelines.

What if it was time to put Arthur front and center, and make her the big-name Broadway star she was always convinced she could be? A lot of eccentric personalities went from supporting to starring with the right vehicle. Think of Carol Channing. So why not Bea Arthur? Well, for many reasons. You see, what happened was—well, you'll just need to stay tuned to hear all about the one and only time Bea Arthur headlined and not just any musical—1968's A Mother's Kisses, the emotional incest musical comedy—yes, you heard that right—on today's episode of Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. Welcome back to Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. I'm Robert W. Schneider.

Today's episode concerns one of the strangest musicals of the 1960s, a show so psychologically uncomfortable that audiences genuinely did not know whether they were supposed to laugh or alert the authorities. The show was called A Mother's Kisses, and on the surface sounds like an adorable twee-turn-of-the-century musical comedy about a doting, eccentric mother looking over a large family. Think I Remember Mama or Life With Father, a musical that has a young twink looking at the audience at the end and saying, there's one thing I remember to carry in me heart on the journey of life, and that's me mother's kisses. And then the whole ensemble would come out and sing, you know, like with Shirley Booth or something like that.

But our Mother's Kisses was anything but twee. It was wee. A wee bit creepy. Don't believe me? How about the ballad called Fellas Kiss Their Dads? A ballad. Or a mother-son duet called I Told Them We Were Lovers. And yet, somehow, an astonishing collection of talented people became convinced that this story, in all of its Oedipus Goes to Bensonhurst glory, could not only be a musical comedy smash, but it would take a talented supporting actress and make her the above-the-title star she deserved to be. Where did this all begin? In 1942, Philip Wiley wrote a book about intentional emotional hindrance by mothers towards their children in a book called Generation of Vipers. Yes, it sounds like a sequel to Harry Potter.

Like, Harry Potter and the Generation of Vipers. Almost 30 years later, that concept would be illuminated and explored through song and dance. As my grandma Yenta once said, from this they make a musical? They did, and it was called A Mother's Kisses. Today we call them Tiger Moms or Helicopter Moms or life-denying suffocates of joy, but we in the Jewish community just always have called them Mom. Now, Jewish mothers have already been staples in comedy for decades. You had Molly Pekan. You had Molly Goldberg. You had Georgie Jessel singing about his Yiddish Mama. Hello, Mama, this is Georgie. But they were lovable, funny, warm women, mothers who wanted their children to thrive and blossom and to wear a coat on a cold day.

They were also characters being geared to Goyesha audiences. But then something changed in the world. Suddenly Jewish comedy began to become more prominent. The idea of like hiding your Jewish identity suddenly started to go away. In fact, it was encouraged or embraced. The Borscht Belt comedians who killed at the Catskills were suddenly in everyone's living rooms, their neurosis overbrimming. Think Woody Allen, Mort Saul, Shelley Berman. The list goes on and on. And they revealed that their mothers were not Molly Goldberg. They were responsible for every problem these men had ever encountered in their lives. Underlying it was this idea that Jewish mothers treated their sons more like husbands than their sons.

No girl was good enough for their boy. Only them. But this concept could only be hinted at on TV and in standup comedy. In literature, it could go further. The source material for our musical was a 1964 novel called A Mother's Kisses, written by Bruce J. Friedman, one of the hottest young satirists in America. Friedman belonged to a generation of Jewish American writers like Joseph Heller and Philip Roth who specialized in black humor and skewering cultural taboos. A Mother's Kisses is, at its heart, the story of every young person who just wants to become their own person and every mother who says, wonderful, I'll come with you. So, like I said, the show begins on a Bensonhurst rooftop where teenage Joe Miller is in full apocalypse mode because he's been rejected by practically every college in America.

He's convinced his life is over, his future is ruined, and no woman will ever love him. So, you know, he's 17. He sings about all the schools that said no, and immediately we understand exactly who this kid is. He's anxious, dramatic, deeply self-conscious, and one rejection letter away from putting on a black turtleneck and declaring himself European. Then enters Meg. Enterprising, compromising, right on, Meg! Thank you. And from the moment she arrives, A Mother's Kisses stops being just a coming-of-age story and becomes a one-woman military campaign. Meg announces that she has managed to get Joe an interview at Kansas Land-Grant Agricultural University, which is not exactly Harvard, Yale, or anywhere in Brooklyn a neurotic has dreamed of landing.

But to Meg, this is not a defeat. This is an opening, a crack in the door. And if there's one thing Meg knows how to do, it's to take a crack in the door and enter like the police with a warrant. She sings a song called When You Gonna Learn, which is basically her philosophy and song form. Trust me, I know better, and I've already decided what's happening. Right now, I can feel all of my friends, just like me, that are Jewish, sweating, sweating, because this reminds us of our own mamas, our own Yiddish mamas. Hello, mama! This is Georgie! And no Georgie Jessel fans out there? I was going to do Al Jolson, but I got canceled. Anyway, in the next scene, Joe is trying to get ready to leave, but Meg has turned his departure into a neighborhood coronation.

Friends, relatives, neighbors, everybody is suddenly invested in this poor boy's future. It becomes less Joe is going to college and more Joe is personally carrying the dreams of Bensonhurst on his back. The whole thing builds into this giant celebratory send-off, while Joe looks like he'd rather fake his own death. Then we get to the airplane scene, where Joe thinks he's finally escaping his mother. It's cute. Meg has come with him. And now, the flight to Kansas becomes Meg's personal cabaret act. She's feeding people cookies, talking to strangers, making connections, embarrassing Joe within seconds, and generally behaving as though Eastern Airlines has invited her to host a luncheon. Full disclosure, if you ever travel with me on a plane, this is exactly what I do.

Just so everybody's aware, it's exactly what I do. Joe, meanwhile, is trying to die quietly in his seat. He spots an alluring older woman and immediately becomes consumed by lust and fantasy, because of course he does. Joe is a Bruce J. Friedman protagonist, so his hormones arrive before his self-respect. That's also something that is similar to me. Once they land in Kansas, Meg gets to work. That's really the whole plot of A Mother's Kisses. Meg gets to work. Joe may think he's the protagonist, but Meg is the one with objectives, tactics, and a bloodhound sense for weakness. At the hotel, she charms everyone in sight, including the lounge singer and the university's dean of men, known here as the commander, and very quickly realizes that if Joe is going to get into this school, it will not be because of merit.

It will be because she can outmaneuver the institution. And honestly, she can. Joe heads to campus and encounters the various tribes of college life, the beatnik radicals, the fraternity boys, the pseudo-intellectuals, all the people who, in a musical comedy, exist to make one confused freshman feel even more confused. He's desperate to belong somewhere, anywhere. Every scene becomes Joe trying on another version of manhood or adulthood, and every time he gets close, Meg comes flying in like a sequined guardian angel from hell. That's what makes this show funny and also what makes it sting, because Meg is not wrong to love her son. She loves him ferociously. She believes in him more than he believes in himself.

She is willing to humiliate herself, seduce authority figures, invade private spaces, bulldoze institutions, and annihilate social boundaries for him. The problem is, she never stops. There is no line she will not cross because, to Meg, there is no line. There is only Joseph. Eventually, she gets him in. Victory? Curtain? Absolutely not. Because once Joe is at school, he starts doing the thing children are apparently born to do, which is separate from their parents. He tries to join a fraternity, fit in with students, explore sex, make mistakes, and build some kind of identity away from Meg, and every time he does, Meg appears to help, which is to say, ruin everything with the intensity of a natural disaster wearing lipstick.

There is a wonderful, painful comic engine in the show. Joe wants independence, and Meg wants proof that she is still necessary. Those two things cannot coexist peacefully, so every scene becomes a tug of war. Joe says, please leave me alone, and Meg hears, fight harder. When Joe gets into trouble and eventually gets expelled, Meg doesn't collapse. She escalates. She marches into the university, puts the administration on trial, turns Joe's private disaster into a public cause, and somehow winds up leading a campus protest movement, which is one of the reasons this show is so delightfully unhinged. Very few musicals can pivot from Mother Gets Son Into College to Mother Becomes Revolutionary Icon Without Blinking, but A Mother's Kisses absolutely does.

Take that, Evita. And then it gets darker. Because beneath all the comedy, all the shtick, all the pushiness and pastry and social climbing is something genuinely sad, Meg cannot imagine a self that is not built around being Joe's mother. His growing up feels to her like abandonment. His independence reads as a betrayal. So when he moves towards sex, adulthood, and a life that doesn't include her at the center, she doesn't just resist it. She experiences it as a wound. That's why the title song matters so much. A Mother's Kisses is not just a joke title. It's the whole thesis of the piece. Meg's love is real. It's overwhelming, inconvenient, embarrassing, manipulative, selfless, selfish, hilarious, and deeply human.

She's not simply a monster mother. She's a woman who loves so hard that she doesn't know when love has become suffocation. So by the end of the show, Joe is still trying to carve out a self and Meg is still trying to hold on. The plot resolves, but the emotional truth remains gloriously messy. Here's one of the New York Times book reviews on the wonderful Mother's Kisses, but specifically the character of Meg. Most of all, you've got the most unforgettable mother since Madea. Meg is heaven and hell jammed into a hammock-sized bra and a too-tight girdle. She is a Bensonhurst Mae West, a Jocasta with no intention of telling Oedipus who he really is. The novel that Friedman wrote is very funny, and that's the great thing about literature.

Your imagination is the guide. It's not literal. It's not three-dimensional. It's all in your mind's eye, which is where this story works best. A Mother's Kisses is a wonderful read, and if it were adapted into another medium, it probably should have been one of those wacky films of the 1960s with a folksy title song by Simon and Garfunkel.

[12:02] Robert W. Schneider: That's the world A Mother's Kisses lives in, but that was not the case. Riding the wave of success of other Jewish-themed shows like Milk and Honey and Fiddler on the Roof in the early 1960s, a gentleman by the name of Buddy Robbins noticed this influx of Jewish musicals and how financially successful they could be. Buddy Robbins was the man who ran Julie Stein's publishing house. He had never produced anything before, but he watched Julie Stein and he saw that, you know, a way a lot of people make money is not only just writing the show and producing the show, but then you own the music rights for the show. So he was looking at Julie Stein going, well, if Julie Stein can do it and I can help him do it, why can't I do it on my own as well?

So Buddy Robbins became a first-time producer, and him with investors Gabriel Katzka and Gustav Bernay, these are some great names, decided to buy the rights of A Mother's Kisses, the novel from Bruce J. Friedman, with the hopes that they would bring it into the 1966-1967 Broadway musical season. The book would be by Jerome Chodoroff, who had done the book for Wonderful Town, Bob Merrill from Carnival and Funny Girl would take on the lyrics, and Richard Adler of Damn Yankees and Pajama Game would compose the music, and Joseph Anthony, who was not really a musical director—he'd done 110 in the Shade, he'd done a lot of plays—he would direct it. Now, getting Adler and Merrill was a major coup because both of these guys never wanted to collaborate with anyone ever again.

Adler had lost his lyricist Jerry Ross in 1955, and Merrill felt he was living under the shadow of more prominent collaborators like Julie Stein. And even more impressive, Adler was a really busy guy at the time. He served as the impresario for President Kennedy and Johnson, producing their inauguration state dinners and theatrical functions. In between that, he was also turning the film Roman Holiday into a Broadway musical. Now, despite their desires to, you know, be independent and their busy schedules, both Adler and Merrill saw that this show was too good to turn down. Or so they thought. Robbins wanted the show in the 1966-1967 season, a season that would only see 10 musicals reach Broadway.

So the team got to work and had a draft completed by December of 1965, and I've read it. The tone was all off. It moved like an old-fashioned book musical. It was formulaic. It was predictable, unlike the novel, which was hysterically surprising. Plus, it all felt a little too edible. When he experiments in free love, the character of Meg in their script sings a song called, How Could You Do This To Me? Now, there is no recording of this song, but I do have the lyrics to it. So I'm going to read to you the lyrics from How Could You Do This To Me, the song that a mother sings when she discovers that her child—yes, her child—has engaged in an orgy. How could you do this to me? How could you do this to me?

Who do you think that you are? Some kind of a cinema star? A regular playboy? A king or a duke? A rich Maharaja? A Brooklyn Farouk? A new Errol Flynn? A Hollywood hero? To her, you're a lover. To me, you're a zero. Get a grip on yourself and come back to reality. How could you possibly, willfully, selfishly, consciously, purposely, and without asking, do this to me? I don't know about you. That doesn't sound like what a mom should say to a son when she finds out the kid's had an orgy. The first scene of the show, after Joseph has realized he's not going to go to college that year, has Meg pulling the letter of acceptance from Kansas out of her bosom, smothering him in said bosom, then singing a verse which feels more romantic than paternal.

Here are those lyrics. When you gonna learn to put your money on this baby? When you gonna learn this baby always comes through? When you think you're gonna wise up, maybe when Niagara dries up, then you'll learn how much this baby is for you. Think about that. In fact, let's hear it. In fact, this was the only song really to survive from A Mother's Kisses that became successful because it was covered by Edie Gourmet. When Edie's singing it to a lover, totally fine. When a mom's singing it to a son, call CPS. Here we go.

[16:58] ♪ Musical number: "Put Your Money on Me" — performed by Edie Gourmet ♪

[19:45] Then there was the song of encouragement that Meg sang to Joseph about not being a wallflower. Does it cost a person to smile? Does it cost? Does it cost? Here I'll pay you for that smile you lost. Here's a dollar to this philosophy I'm devout. Don't live inside of yourself. Come out, come out, come out. Does it hurt to make a few friends? Does it cost? Does it cost? Don't just sit there with a face like frost. Have a cookie. I've got a million good friends and why I don't live inside of myself. If I didn't come out I'd die. Does it hurt to give a good word? Does it cost? Does it cost? You should see the dirty look he tossed. Here's a dollar. I know some stick in the mud who can't digest me. I'm too peppy. I'm too zesty. Take away my license. Go ahead. Arrest me. When they take me away I'll shout. Don't live inside of yourself. Come out, come out, come out.

[22:04] The structure was not right. Merrill's lyrics were too icky. One of the things about Bob Merrill, and we'll talk about him later on in the season as well, is that he was a guy that really always wanted to push the envelope. I don't think he gets the credit that he deserves in that regard. But on a show like A Mother's Kisses, this was an envelope that I think he was pushing a little bit too far. So not for him. Buddy Robbins also backed out, realizing this was not the best idea, and he decided to sell his rights to A Mother's Kisses to Richard Adler. So now Merrill and Adler were realizing that collaborating was no longer in their wheelhouse, and they amicably parted. And that left Adler and Chodoroff as the sole writers of the show.

They decided to make the show feel a little looser and left a very specific note at the beginning of their script. Their new script started with a quote, We should have a fluid, scenic scheme in the play that allows for constant movement from one set to the other. Everything should be conceived on the lightest possible scale, with scenery resembling cartoons or line drawings rather than realistic settings. This is suggested not only for the sake of speedy changes, but because the play itself is designed as a caricature of reality. So the show would be a cartoon, like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. But Finch was lovable. Meg was frightening. Something was amiss in Chodoroff's adaptation.

He wasn't as funny as Friedman. So Chodoroff left the project, and he was replaced by comedian Avery Schreiber, who could punch up jokes but could not structure a musical. So he was out too. But Schreiber was able to get the show in front of Quartet Productions. This was a collection of producers, including comedian Alan King and future Uber producer Manny Azenberg, who did all the Neil Simon plays. And they took on the project and began seeking a new book writer, but to no avail. It would just be great if Bruce J. Friedman could also write plays so he could take over adapting his own story. So this could be a musical by Bruce J. Friedman. Well, Fortune smiled on this musical because at the same time,

[24:05] Robert W. Schneider: Chodoroff was about to exit the project, Friedman had actually debuted a play called Scuba Duba, and it was a big old hit. Now, Bruce J. Friedman wants to write for the theater. With Adler and Friedman working together, they were able to get funding from the Richmond Group, who coughed up the money when Adler signed an exclusivity publishing contract with them. Very smart. Very smart. Just listen to Buddy Robbins. But then the Quartet Productions — that was Azenberg and Alan King — they left the project, and so it went over to play producer Lester Osterman. He took the helm, and he decided that he was going to bring on director Gene Sachs and choreographer Una White, who had just had this rousing success with Mame.

The plan would be that A Mother's Kisses would open October 29th, 1968 at the 46th Street Theater, now the Richard Rogers, and it would be a very crowded season, making up for the dearth of shows in the previous season. So set to come in during the season were Zorba, Promises, Promises, Dear World — those did open on Broadway — and Love Match by Maltby and Shire, Arthur Schwartz's musical version of Casablanca, and Mary Rogers' version of The Member of the Wedding. Those three shows obviously did not come in. For the role of Meg, a wide collection of award-winning actors was looked at, including Rosemary Baby's Ruth Gordon and Lolita's Shelly Winters. But when it was discovered Shelly Winters couldn't sing, she was dropped.

Never fear, though, because her lack of vocal finesse would eventually be heard in Minnie's Boys only a few years later. Except for the fact she couldn't sing — and this was before Lauren Bacall proved leading ladies of the silver screen did not need to sing to do a musical — Winters would have been perfect for Meg. She could be overbearing, but endearing, sarcastic, but soft, brash, but vulnerable. Who could replace her? Well, the team decided to opt not for a major leading lady but a respected theater actor who had been making a name for themselves over the past few years on Broadway. As a supporting player, she could steal an entire show with a wry look from her tall frame or a line reading that was coated in a deep baritone.

Her name was Beatrice Arthur, and she was just waiting for her big break. Not someone who was there to support like she did to great acclaim as Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof or as Vera in Mame for which she won a Tony Award, but an above-the-title musical comedy star, and more importantly, the wife of director Gene Sachs. It was decided A Mother's Kisses would be the vehicle that would launch Bea Arthur to the same status as Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, and sadly, that is where A Mother's Kisses guaranteed its failure to launch.

[26:45] Robert W. Schneider: I love her, though. I love her. Arthur was great as a supporting player like in Mame or an ensemble piece like The Golden Girls, but as the primary focus of a show, a little Bea went a long way. In television, there's something called the Q rating, which determines a performer's likability. It's used when pitching actors in a TV series for casting. Hire him. His Q rating is through the roof. That would be somebody like a Steve Carell. Throughout the 70s, Bea Arthur always ranked at the bottom of this list, so Meg would be everything that people saw on the surface, and any moment of vulnerability would most likely be punctured by an angry line reading. Arthur would not be the only person that would star in A Mother's Kisses that would then go on to television notoriety, because the cast also included a slew of other familiar television faces, including Alan North, who was in Police Squad, Ned Werdemer, who played the doorman on The Jeffersons, and McHale's Navy very own Carl Ballantyne, who had by far the worst number of the show.

This is one of those numbers that makes you go, huh? Friends, this is a ballad called Fellas Kiss Their Dads, which wasn't so much paternal as it is predatory. Friends, here is Fellas Kiss Their Dads.

[28:14] ♪ Musical number: "Fellas Kiss Their Dads" — performed by Carl Ballantyne ♪

[31:35] Robert W. Schneider: The heart of A Mother's Kisses belonged to the son, Joseph, played wonderfully by the great Bill Calloway. His first song that we got is called Left by the Wayside. We all know what it's like to be left behind, but the specificity of Adler's lyrics, I think, are really, really smart in this particular version. Stanford, there's a perfect example. A guy with a dead dad gets into a college. Shouldn't he stay here and take care of his dead dad's affairs? And let guys like me with live dads go to college. Everybody's set but me. Seems I've been left by the wayside, left by the wayside. I've been sadly left by the wayside. There must be someone, somewhere, who can help a prince of a fella like me get a college, one of those wonderful catalog places, full of crew cuts and ivy and lawns that roll on endlessly.

There must be someone, somewhere, who can help a leftover fella left by the wayside like me. It's as though everybody in the whole Western world has a college to go to, you can bet. Even guys in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, young Czech fellas are all set. Smart guys, dumb guys with rotten complexions, really worthless guys, really rotten guys, guys who tell terrible jokes, guys with dandruff, bad ball players with rotten hook shots are getting into college. Deaf guys, paralyzed fellas, there's a paralyzed kid around the corner who's going to a wonderful paralyzed college up in Albany. And me, look at me. Left by the wayside, left by the wayside. I've been sadly left by the wayside. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could get into a college like Duke?

What a masculine place that must be. Can you see me as a Duke guy? Duke, put up your Dukes. Probably where John Wayne went. Or maybe I could be one of those fresh beaming Colgate guys with all those wonderful smiles and those rows of great teeth, and me one of them. And what about those little colleges like Hamilton or Iona or scrappy little Scranton, Oberlin or Bowdoin, gallant little Gainesville, Davidson or Bates, or Rollins in Miami, Miami in Ohio, Ohio in Rhode Island. That one really rates. Or Hampton-Sydney, Ogle, Thorpe or Tufts, or VPI or Carolina teachers, or Antioch or Oberlin or Kent, or Trinity for Baptist preachers. Or what about Guam? Jesus, what I wouldn't give to be grabbed by Guam.

The University of Guam, an offshore college fellow. It's so great, they didn't have room for it in the country. Go Guam, go get them, Guam. Gee, how I'd love to be a Guam guy. Wouldn't I give my life to be a Guam guy. Guys are going up to Maine, down to Georgia, out to Indiana, in to Outie Anna. How I'd love to be going up to, down to, out to, in to find proud, wonderful, glorious catalog places. There must be some.

[36:08] Robert W. Schneider: So rehearsals seemed to be going well. They were so well, in fact, that the team raised the price of the tickets to the Broadway production to a whopping $8 for a Wednesday matinee and $9 for a Saturday matinee. Oh, my God, can you imagine? That's how confident they were. How can I afford these things? I'll go. I'll sit in the back. I'll see another show. It does not matter. Don't even turn on the light. Save the money. I'll sit in the dog. The director, Gene Sachs, said, "I regard Meg as a typical woman of the 1940s. Her background is one in which women were not educated, never learned a profession, never worked unless they had to. She has a tremendous lust for life and fantastic unbounded energy, but no place to put that energy, so she channels it all in the direction of her only son."

In the sprawling novel, that is as clear as can be. In a two-and-a-half-hour musical, it got minimized or just lost altogether. When the show opened in New Haven, Connecticut on September 23rd, 1968, audiences were not ready to be bathed in a mother's kisses. In New Haven, audiences felt mighty uncomfortable, creating moment upon moment where you don't know whether to laugh or call the police. In one scene, mom and son share a hotel room. When the son angrily wants to know why the hotel would have them share a room, Meg sang a song entitled, "I told them we were lovers."

[38:21] Robert W. Schneider: I said, just this one night of pleasure, just this one night to play the lover's game. I told them in the morning I would be gone. Back to my old man before he caught on. Back to my old man before he caught on. And you know what's so amazing? They didn't bat an eyelash. They ate the whole thing up and begged for more. And after all, why shouldn't they? What else was left for them to say? Aren't we the most wonderful looking couple they ever saw? As a spoken line, it would get an uncomfortable laugh, but it would be fleeting. In song, it's interminable. In hindsight, it's concerning. Sachs once again said, "When we opened in New Haven, it was a disaster. Instead of laughing, the audience just sat there stiffly as though they were embarrassed by the whole thing.

The New Haven critics let us have it and two to three hundred people were walking out on the show every night." Variety started their review with, "Whatever it was that made A Mother's Kisses a popular novel has not been successfully translated into terms of a musical comedy. The entertainment values are too sparse with a lack of solid comedy, a dearth of solo vocal talent and a rather so what theme of a book." They even said it would be pointless to try to fix the show as nothing was worth salvaging. One of the worst reviews came from a New Haven newspaper, The Day. I don't know why I like that. It's called The Day. Do you get the new copy of The Day? No, but I got the new copy of the afternoon.

How about me? They killed us. Their critics said a little misleading at first. This was their first sentence. A Mother's Kisses is a classic. You must see it. Sounds pretty good. You may never again see a musical as totally atrocious on the professional stage. It just goes to show that the brilliant young genius of yesterday is a brilliant young flop of today. Some people don't know when they're well off. The story is set 20 years ago. The show is so dated, it might have been written 20 years ago. In Maine, the thirties came alive in A Mother's Kisses. We should be happy they're gone and dead. The saddest thing about this show is the complete waste of the talents of Beatrice Arthur, who probably could bring a lot to the character of Meg, the mother, if the part weren't so poorly written on a white's dance steps for Miss Arthur might have well been dreamed up for an agile cow.

Carl Ballantyne is as bad an actor as he is a magician. As far as I can see, the people who should make the best with A Mother's Kisses are Bernadette Peters and Martin Wolfson. Their names are listed on the ads and programs, but I couldn't find them in the cast. Guess they got smart and found greener pastures. Sachs knew what he had to do, "So we decided to make the positive side of Meg much more clear. We pushed back the opening in Baltimore a few days to give the cast time to adjust to the rearrangements we had made." For example, Meg sings a number called "There Goes My Life," which explains that her whole life revolves around her son. We moved that song to the very beginning of the show. Here is Beatrice Arthur on the 1974 Tony Awards singing that song.

[41:58] ♪ Musical number: "There Goes My Life" — performed by Beatrice Arthur ♪

[44:36] Robert W. Schneider: She's a great character the way she is. Jules Feiffer's satirical cartoonist saw the show in New Haven and loved the fact that for him the play was expressing something bitterly and making people uncomfortable. Now believe me, I don't want this musical to make people feel uncomfortable, but we're skirting a thin line between pleasing an audience and still remaining perfectly truthful to the concept of our main character. In Baltimore, they worked day and night and thought it was going well. The structure was changing slightly and new lines were going in, but none seemed to really humanize Meg, especially not in the voice of Bea Arthur. For example, when Meg was describing someone in the neighborhood, she said, "drives a Cadillac, owns an apartment house, wears alligator shoes.

You're supposed to forget that he has a wife who used to walk 18 blocks to a colored neighborhood to save three cents on a head of lettuce." Then they did that thing where they sang about the character because it wasn't clear that what the character was doing was noticeable to the audience. Once again, show me, don't tell me. In A Mother's Kisses, we have to tell you, not show you. Here's that song, "We've Got Meg."

[45:49] ♪ Musical number: "We've Got Meg" — performed by the cast of A Mother's Kisses ♪

[48:11] Robert W. Schneider: So, Mother's Kisses opened in Baltimore at the Morris Mechanic Theatre on October 1st.

[48:37] Robert W. Schneider: And once again, no matter what the changes were, the reviews still weren't strong enough. This is from The Baltimore Sun. Mr. Friedman's mother, on the other hand, at least as she appears in the flesh of Beatrice Arthur, gives one the impression of having been the product of a collaboration by Philip Wiley and Edward Albee. Be it to the actress's credit that she doesn't compromise with this gargoyle. She doesn't try to sweeten her with any of her own charm, but plays her precisely as written. Indeed, she gives her all she's got, and where Miss Arthur is concerned, that's considerable. Her voice is as hard as a death knell, and her movement and timing are superb. As a result of this timing, she manages to get laughs by the simple intonation of the word fabulous.

I've seen Miss Arthur on various occasions before, but I never realized the range of her dramatic talent. She would make an excellent Volumnia in Coriolanus. So once again, I think the main issue that we're dealing with here is there is a show here. It's just not Miss Arthur's show. This is not a show for Bea Arthur. This is a show, like I said, Shelley Winters, Kay Ballard, all of those women that could be Dodie Goodman, all of those women that could be crazy and silly and somehow be endearing. Arthur is not endearing. Arthur is not compromising, and softness and vulnerability were not colors that Arthur was comfortable living in as a performer. And when she did, I'm so sorry because I love her so dearly, it never really seemed to ring true, especially on stage.

[50:13] Robert W. Schneider: After this opening night in Baltimore, Gene Sachs noted, quote, "The opening night audience here really responded, but the next day the critics pounced on us and kicked the wind out of our sails. They didn't want to like anything about their show. Their premise seemed to be that you can't build a musical comedy around a woman who's crass, vulgar, overbearing, etc." And I say, why not? West Side Story had a tragic theme and it was extremely successful. Of course, the comparison is a little shaky because that show had Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics. Our score is not on that level. I am sure Richard Adler must have loved to have read that observation. Sachs is incorrect.

Audiences are willing to go after a Mama Rose. Audiences are willing to go after a Finch or a Sweeney Todd. It's just that in those instances, those characters had huge, massive, noble objectives and performers playing them that were so wonderful and so endearing. That's not this role and that's not Bea Arthur. Meg is a monster. That doesn't mean we could never have a musical monster. Mama Rose is also a monster, sure, but she's a three-dimensional character who wanted her child to succeed. She just had an odd way of doing it. Meg was not. Meg was a stereotype, a Jewish mother who pursued a not very active objective. Rose wanted her kids to fly. Meg wanted her kids to atrophy in her bosom. So how does one temper that to make the show interesting and not off-putting?

The most obvious answer would be to cast a Meg who could be adorable in her obsession. Shelly Winters, great idea. The best option to me would be somebody like Kay Ballard, a musical comedy star who proved she could be an overly protective mother and get an audience to love her. Think of her on the TV series, The Mothers-In-Law. But instead, the production selected a respected Broadway actress who has spent years quietly stealing scenes from everybody around her. Before Mother's Kisses, Bea Arthur was one of Broadway's greatest secret weapons. Not yet a television icon, no Maude, no Dorothy Zbornak, no legendary deadpan reactions over cheesecake. Instead, Arthur was a devastating supporting player, tall, imposing, bone-dry, and armed with a contralto so deep it sounded less like singing and more like a formal disappointment.

She'd appeared in Three Penny Opera, built acclaim as Yenta, and exploded as Vera in Maine. And Vera Charles was actually perfect for her. That role required exhaustion, sarcasm, acidic wit, the energy of a woman who had absolutely hidden liquor in her dressing room radiator. Audiences adored her. But supporting roles and starring roles are very different things. A supporting performance arrives like hot sauce. It's sharp, memorable, dangerous in the correct quantity. An entire evening built around the same energy? Much more difficult. And A Mother's Kisses was designed specifically to transform Bea Arthur from beloved supporting player into a full-fledged musical comedy star. The producers did not want scenes stealing Bea Arthur.

They wanted Bea Arthur above the title. Unfortunately, they may have misunderstood what audiences loved about her, because Bea Arthur was brilliant at puncturing tension. But A Mother's Kisses required her to create warmth. And warmth and vulnerability was complicated territory for Arthur. She was funny because she was intimidating. Funny because she sounded perpetually disappointed in humanity. Funny because every line felt like she had already survived the conversation and resented repeating it for your benefit. Those qualities made her unforgettable. They also made Meg terrified. And suddenly, audiences were trapped for two and a half hours with a character who behaved like a combination of Medea, Mae West, and an emotionally invasive parole officer.

[53:51] Robert W. Schneider: So at a loss of $405,000 on a $500,000 investment, A Mother's Kisses closed in Baltimore on its second out-of-town tryout on October 19, 1968, never coming to the 46th Street Theater on October 29, 1968, as promised. The news was so big, it was on the front page of Billboard magazine without outlet throwing the Richmond organization under their bus. Their feeling was that the organization was so dazzled by seeing potential dollar signs from the new score by Tony Award winning Richard Adler, the man whose musicals literally won Best Musical two years in a row, Damn Yankees and Pajama Game, they kept pushing the show to get some cash out of Adler's talent. If that was the only reason to keep A Mother's Kisses going, it was not enough.

So needless to say, the show closes, a couple of years later, the great Bea Arthur makes a guest appearance on the hit television series All in the Family. The president of CBS was so impressed with her cameo that halfway through the initial broadcast he called producer Norman Lear and said, "Who's this woman? Get her her own TV series." And with that, Norman Lear spun off the character of Maud Finley into the great television series Maud. If you've never seen Maud, it's not really played that much today, and I think there's a reason for that. Unlike the rest of Lear's shows, which were about heart than politics mixed in, this show was clearly about politics. The characters in Maud were not very kind, they weren't very sympathetic.

On All in the Family, you felt for Archie. In Good Times, you felt for Florida. On The Jeffersons, you understood the struggle of George and Louise. In Maud, you don't get that. Maud is wealthy. Maud is rich. Maud is overpowering. Maud is dominating. And maybe on television, in 23-minute increments, that kind of worked. However, the show is not really survived, unlike Arthur's next show, which went to a few years later, which was, of course, The Golden Girls, an ensemble piece. As wonderful as Arthur is on that show, she is tempered by the warmth of Betty White and Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, and Arthur was not the central focus of every episode, which kind of makes it, today, more palatable.

[56:14] Robert W. Schneider: What's interesting is, both times Arthur left her series, when she left Maud and when she left The Golden Girls, she said, "Well, I don't like having life in a box. I don't like living life in a box, a television box. I want to go off and sing, and sing with orchestras, and be in Broadway shows." And what's interesting is, she never really did that. After Maud, she did a couple of other pilots, and she did a couple of other concerts. She did The Floating Lightbulb, a Woody Allen play in 1980, which is basically The Glass Menagerie in Brooklyn. She was supposed to be the voice of Ursula in the Little Mermaid Disney animated film, but she didn't do that. She pulled out of that. That part, of course, went to the great Pat Carroll.

And in the late 90s and early 2000s, she was the role of Mrs. Mears in the workshop and reading versions of Thoroughly Modern Millie. But she didn't carry on with that. What she ended up doing was, she did come back to Broadway once in Bea Arthur, Just Between Friends, which was her one-woman show. What's interesting about it was, unlike her counterpart, Elaine Stritch, who was doing her own show at the time, At Liberty, Stritch's one-woman show was vulnerable, and raw, and visceral, and held nothing back. Arthur's one-woman show, on the other hand, was anything but. It was controlled. It was contained. It was stories that everyone had pretty much heard before, and her doing what she loved to do more than anything, which is to sing a lot of Kurt Vile.

If you're a fan of that Star Wars holiday special, and she sings that weird song in the cantina, when she was originally approached to do it, they said to her, "Well, what would you like to sing, V?" Knowing that she had been this big Broadway star. And she said, "I want to sing Pirate Jenny from Three Penny Opera." They said, "We can't do that, V. It's the Star Wars holiday special. It's not going to make sense for you to sing to any Ewoks about the horrible of German nihilism." And so they had to write her a song in the style of Kurt Vile that somehow still fit the Star Wars theme. So if you watch that, you're like, "What the fuck is happening?" That's the reason why. I should also mention that when she did Bea Arthur, Just Between Friends, she never mentioned A Mother's Kisses.

Now, the score for A Mother's Kisses was never recorded, but there are bootleg recordings of the show out of town, as well as the original Richard Adler demos. You've heard some of those today. When you listen to the bootlegs, you can hear Arthur channeling the character she would eventually introduce to television audiences, the overbearing Maud Finley. Album producer Robert Scheer toyed with the idea of doing an all-star recording with Debbie Reynolds as Meg, but that also never progressed beyond the idea stage. But what happens when a bona fide star can't get audiences to fall in love with her? Well, that's the story of Angela Lansbury and the musical Pretty Belle. Bye-bye.

[59:19] Robert W. Schneider: If you like what we are doing, please head over to robwschneider.com. That's R-O-B-W-S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R dot com. Click the tab that says AMTA, that stands for the American Musical Theater Archives, and make a tax-deductible donation to keep shows like this one on the air. Oh my gosh, I sound so much like PBS right now. I'm so sorry. And sadly, I can't even send you a tote bag, but I can wave energetically if I see you on the street. Isn't that worth the price of a donation alone? Actually, donate to PBS. That way they can send you a tote bag. You can put it over your head so nobody sees me waving at you if you're really ashamed and embarrassed of my vociferous energy. Once again, robwschneider.com. Click AMTA, make a tax-deductible donation, and I will be forever grateful.