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[0:00] Robert W. Schneider: There are stars, there are legends, and then there's Ginger Rogers, the woman who spent the 1930s making Fred Astaire look good while dancing backward in heels, a feat that remains impressive even after decades of historical revisionism and several generations of men discovering they can't even walk forward in loafers. For a while, Ginger Rogers was untouchable. She was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, an Academy Award winner, a box office champion, and the kind of celebrity who could open a picture simply by having her name above the title. She conquered Hollywood, survived the studio system, outlasted most of her contemporaries, and somehow managed to remain Ginger Rogers throughout all of it.

But by 1959, things looked a little different. Television had arrived, the movie musical was beginning to wobble, much like me when I'm dancing, a new generation of stars was taking over, and Ginger Rogers, still famous, still beloved, still very much Ginger Rogers, found herself searching for her next act, which is how one of Hollywood's most glamorous legends ended up in a Broadway-bound musical called The Pink Jungle. Now, if you've never heard of The Pink Jungle, don't worry. Most people haven't. It lasted exactly long enough to generate confusion, lawsuits, hurt feelings, nervous investors, critical panic, and enough backstage drama to make All About Eve look like a company picnic. See, what happened was, well, you'll just need to stay tuned to hear all about Ginger Rogers, her mama Leila, and the identity crisis known as The Pink Jungle on this episode of Broadway-bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway.

[1:39] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert Schneider, and welcome to another episode of Broadway-bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. Today, we're looking at a woman who not only shattered countless glass ceilings, she tap-danced all over them. Armed with nothing but a time step and a stage mother from hell, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, just backwards and in heels. Now, if you're listening to this show, you most likely know her as one half of the dance team Fred and Ginger, but I know her as the star of the worst episode of Here's Lucy ever, ever broadcast. Friends, I don't know if you know this, I'm obsessed with Lucille Ball, and one thing I love more than anything is her later shows. Yes, I Love Lucy is great, but God, give me Here's Lucy any day, which was just an excuse for her to run into any celebrity possible.

Okay, so in this episode, she is going to go to a Ginger Rogers film festival because she loves Ginger Rogers so much. Hasn't mentioned her in the six seasons before, but now she loves Ginger Rogers. So she and Mr. Mooney or Otis Carter, whatever Gail Gordon's character's name is in this one, decide they're going to go to the film festival together, but guess who also is going to be there unbeknownst to them? Why? It's Ginger Rogers, who loves to dress up in a disguise and go watch her old movies. And of course, she flees and leaves her purse behind and then Lucy goes, Oh, look, Mr. Carter, it's somebody's purse. Who is it? She opens it up. Oh, it's Ginger Rogers. She needs it. And so then Ginger Rogers has to go to Lucy's house to pick up her purse.

And of course, Lucy messes everything up and screws everything up. Now, this is where it gets really, really bizarre. As Ginger Rogers is leaving, Lucy goes, Oh, Miss Rogers, I know everything about you. I know that you were the Charleston champion in Texas. And Ginger Rogers says, Oh, really? Well, then let's Charleston. And the next thing you know, her, Lucy and Lucy Jr. like rip off their skirts and just start Charleston, Charleston, Charleston. What is that? What is that? What is the active verb of Charleston to Charleston? They dance. They dance the Charleston and they're throwing their arms up and legs up in the middle of like and you're like, what is happening? What is happening? There is a lot of ludicrousness in Here's Lucy, but to me, that's one of my favorites.

So that's how I know Ginger Rogers. Wasn't that a great story? So who was Ginger Rogers? Before she was gliding across the screen with Fred Astaire, before she was clutching an Oscar, before she became one of the most recognizable women in the world, Ginger Rogers was just another ambitious kid trying to claw her way into show business. And trust me, there were a lot of them. Shirley Temple once killed 12 men with one single lollipop gun. But I digress. She was born in Virginia, Catherine McMath. Ginger didn't arrive in Hollywood riding a wave of glamour. She arrived the old fashioned way by working hard and by having a stage mom who worked for the papers, teaching her daughter that your face and name is what sells you, kid.

So it should always be out there working. And she worked a lot as a teenager. She won a Charleston contest in Texas. And unlike some stars who emerged fully formed from studio publicity departments, Ginger built herself from the ground up. She sang, she danced, she acted, she toured relentlessly, and most importantly, she survived. Vaudeville was a brutal training ground, as Fred Mertz. If audiences were bored, they let you know immediately. By the end of 1930, she landed on Broadway in the Gershwin's Girl Crazy, introducing a little song called Embraceable You. Not a bad addition to her resume. What makes Ginger Rogers so fascinating is that by the time Hollywood discovered her, she wasn't some fresh-faced ingenue waiting to be molded.

She was already a pro. The movie studios didn't create Ginger Rogers. They inherited her. And that's important to remember because when we get to The Pink Jungle, we're not talking about an aspiring star hoping for her big break. We're talking about a woman who had already conquered Broadway, conquered Hollywood, won the Academy Award, and danced her way into American mythology. The question wasn't whether Ginger Rogers could be a star. The question was whether a star that big could still surprise people.

[5:21] Robert W. Schneider: Now, if you know one thing about Ginger Rogers, it's probably that she danced with Fred Astaire. If you know two things about Ginger Rogers, the second is probably that she did everything he did backwards and in high heels. And if you're Fred Astaire's publicist, that's where the story will end. But here's the thing. Audiences weren't buying tickets just to watch Fred Astaire. If they were, he could have danced with a lamp. What made those movies electric was Ginger. Beginning in 1933, Fred and Ginger became Hollywood's equivalent of Taylor and Travis, except with significantly better footwork and fewer podcast discussions. Together, they cranked out one hit after another. Top Hat, Swing Time, Follow the Fleet, Shall We Dance?

These weren't just successful movies. They were cultural events. During the Great Depression, audiences would scrape together a few precious dollars just to spend 90 minutes watching two impossibly elegant people glide across a ballroom floor and remind them that life could still be beautiful. And let's be clear about something. Ginger Rogers wasn't some pretty accessory being twirled around by a genius. She was a star, a genuine, honest-to-God box office draw. In annual surveys of theater owners, Astaire and Rogers consistently ranked among the biggest attractions in America—not among dancers, not among musical performers, but among everybody. What audiences loved was the fantasy. And then she looked around and basically said, great, what's next?

Because Ginger Rogers wasn't interested in being remembered as Fred Astaire's partner. She wanted to be remembered as Ginger Rogers. But Ginger had spent years hearing audiences say Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Now she wanted to hear them say Ginger Rogers. So she walked away from the most successful partnership of her career, which sounds incredibly brave until you remember it also sounds completely insane. Imagine being part of one of the biggest franchises in the world and saying, no, thanks. I think I'll try something else. And that's essentially what Ginger did. Somehow, the gamble worked. In 1940, she starred in Kitty Foil, a dramatic role that allowed her to show audiences something they had rarely seen before.

There was no ballroom, no feathers, no wisecracking dance partner, just Ginger. And then she won the Academy Award, which is an effective way of ending an argument. Ginger became one of Hollywood's biggest solo stars, headlining comedies, dramas, romances, and mysteries. She wasn't borrowing anyone else's spotlight anymore. She was the spotlight. In fact, by the mid-1940s, Ginger Rogers was reportedly the highest paid performer in Hollywood. Not highest paid actress, highest paid performer, period. Think about that for a second. So what do you do when you've already become Ginger Rogers? The 1950s were a really strange decade for Ginger Rogers because she wasn't a fading star exactly, but she wasn't quite a current one either.

She occupied that awkward Hollywood category known as living legend, which sounds glamorous until you realize it's often industry code for we adore you. We just don't know what to do with you. Hollywood itself was changing. Television was arriving. The studio system was beginning to crack. A new generation of stars was taking over. Marlon Brando was mumbling. James Dean was brooding. Marilyn Monroe was—well, I'm sure she was doing things too. Suddenly, the sophisticated elegance that had defined Ginger's generation seemed less modern than it once had. And Ginger, being Ginger, wasn't particularly interested in quietly disappearing, so she spent much of the decade trying everything. Movies, television, nightclubs, radio appearances, stage work, guest appearances, tours.

If there was a stage, microphone, camera, spotlight, her paying audience involved Ginger, and her mama was willing to give it a try. In many ways, she became what we now call a brand. She wasn't simply selling performances anymore. She was selling Ginger Rogers, and audiences still loved her. The problem wasn't popularity. The problem was finding material worthy of someone who had already done everything. She was American royalty. People who'd grown up watching Top Hat now brought their children to see Ginger Rogers. People who remembered Kitty Foyle still spoke of her with admiration. People who never saw a single Astaire Rogers movie knew her name anyway. She had become larger than any individual role, and that's precisely why Broadway started to make sense.

Broadway, in the late 1950s, loved a star vehicle. If Hollywood didn't quite know what to do with a legendary performer, Broadway often did. The theater offered something films increasingly could not—a chance to build an entire evening around a personality. Oh, and what a personality. By the time The Pink Jungle came along, Ginger Rogers wasn't looking for a comeback. She didn't need one. She wasn't washed up. She wasn't forgotten. She wanted desperately to chase relevance. She'd done a Broadway show in 1951, Love and Let Love, which ran a short amount of time. What she was looking for was a challenge, a chance to remind audiences that she was more than Fred Astaire's partner, more than an Oscar winner, more than a beloved movie star.

The irony, of course, is that The Pink Jungle was built around a woman fighting for power inside a cosmetics empire, while the actress playing her was engaged in a very similar battle. An actress changes roles. Why not mediums, is what she asked.

[10:08] Robert W. Schneider: So what was The Pink Jungle, you ask? Well, believe it or not, it was supposed to be a play with music, or a comedy musical, as they dubbed it. The idea for the show starts with a playwright named Leslie Stevens. We don't remember his name, but he was one of those boulevard comedy writers, like Neil Simon, who had some nice hits, including The Marriage Go-Round, which starred Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer. Most of his hits were produced by a very sexy go-getter of a producer named Paul Gregory and the director Joseph Anthony, from, of course, The Most Happy Fellow. One day, while taking Julie Newmar to a salon to get her hair dyed for a production of The Marriage Go-Round, Paul Gregory noticed that everything in the salon was pink, pink everything.

Then, as he waited for Julie, he read an article about the $4 billion cosmetics industry. Is there a play there? Maybe a musical? Maybe a new form of entertainment? Together, these three guys wanted to create a new evening of entertainment. They wanted to present an intimate comedy in which music was merely an ornament, something which would help one scene blend gracefully into another. Not a musical, per se, but a comedy that had some songs peppered throughout. In the planning stages, the show would only have four slight songs, and the orchestrations were done to produce an intimate salon sound. There would be no percussion section, nothing that felt like there was a showstopper coming. They'll get someone to pen a few ditties, but first they need to craft the story.

Friends, here's the story of The Pink Jungle. Eleanor West, or as she's called The Shade of Eleanor West, greets the audience to tell us that she is dead, she's a ghost, and she cannot get into heaven because she has done nothing good while on Earth. She has two weeks to fix that. Now, the actors on stage can't see Eleanor, but they can see her when she assumes other guises, like an Irish policewoman or a secretary or a telephone operator. In life, Eleanor ran the most successful cosmetics industry in the world—think war paint, but good—and she made Miranda Priestly look like a saint. Her will states that her successor will be chosen by four people—her husband and her three sons. The contenders include four female vice presidents.

There's Chris Taylor, Annette Printeps, Susie Harkness, and Tess Jackson. Annette and Susie are just kind of there. The real two contenders are young Chris Taylor and young Tess Jackson. That's going to be the role Ginger plays. Chris is young and wants to marry Brian, the oldest son who inherited his mother's ruthlessness. Now, the problem is he also once dated Tess. Tess runs Motivational Research, a quirky division that studies consumer behavior. She's practical, witty, and highly intelligent, though often underestimated, and she once dated Brian, but their lives went in opposite directions. Now, Tess goes for a meeting with Pierre Aubasson, the company's rival, for what she thinks is a business meeting, but the only business Pierre wants is the funny kind.

Tess rejects him with such lines as, don't you know I'm old enough to be your mistress? Problem is, Chris sees the two of them together and thinks Tess is cheating on the company. Once the stage is cleared, Tess gets her first number. So, let me fill you in on the songs for The Pink Jungle. The cast and crew were assembled before they not only wrote songs for the show but hired a songwriter. They wanted a sophisticated sound, so they went with the great Vernon Duke. You know, Vernon Duke, autumn in New York, April in Paris, I Can't Get Started With You, a commercial writer with a class background to write those songs. Now, Duke had done some musicals before, like Cabin in the Sky, but he was a pop songwriter.

So, when you hear these songs, just know they were never shared with anyone to entice them to get to be in the show. In fact, only after she had signed the contract did Ginger Rogers realize, oh, this is a musical? Anyway, this is the first number they had in mind for Tess.

[14:04] ♪ Musical number: "It's Tough to Be a Girl" — performed by Ginger Rogers ♪

[22:17] They say that two-thirds of the nation's debt reposes in women's purses. They say that our hearts but seldom crack, that we suffer fewer reverses. They claim that a man is foolish to wed, and a dame is a fool not to marry. Cause should he desert the bridal bed, she'll get all the candy she can carry. The above may be true, I've heard of it, don't you believe a word of it. It's tough to be a girl in a world run by trousers. It's tough to be a cat in a yard full of blousers. It's tough not to yield to a sharp Ivy Leaguer should he get too eager. Relax, discuss an income tax, let others jump in bed while you stick to your artwork. Bright future lies ahead if you don't let your heart work.

And should you weaken, here's my advice to you, pal: stay vertical, forget you wear a skirt, be distant and alert. It's tough to be a purdy girl. It's tough to be a girl and behave like a neuter. It's tough to snub a guy when he couldn't be cuter. It's tough when you're born in a place like Hawhawkers, dangerous style, be rockers, and rude, a whirly attitude. Don't advertise your gams, make your entry dramatic, keep spouting epigrams, skin all mellow and placky. And should you meet a charmer who's making you melt, get your chastity belt. You'll always walk uphill, you loveless, jackless still. It's tough to be a brilliant girl. It's tough to be a girl and give up sweets and butter. It's tough to have to act, oh, so utterly awful.

It's tough when romance is regarded as comic in this age of comic. You fool, you're just a molecule. It's tough to be a lass and be told you must eat less. No chap will make a pass at a gal who is meatless. If your derriere gets more than it's worth a pass, cut down on fat. Don't take a man by storm. Well, if Zeno is that form, it's tough to be a normal girl. And by the time the show gets in front of audiences, that song will belong to the other three contenders because Tess will get this song.

[22:38] ♪ Musical number: "A Hundred Women in One" — performed by Ginger Rogers ♪

[25:58] If she can win over each one, she can become the new president. But before she can think about it any longer, Chris appears, they get into a brawl, and Tess throws a pie in her face. That's the end of Act One. Ginger Rogers throwing a pie in somebody's face. Act Two opens up in Central Park with Tess and Brian.

[26:19] We grow up too soon than once we've grown. We disdain the simple joys we've known. And yet what wouldn't we give if we could get away from it all and behave like two small uninhibited babes in the world. Just like children we two greeting springtime together in Central Park. Let's be children, it's riding the swing time. An old-fashioned lie. Got a quarter, let's buy a balloon now and see it zoom to the sky. Are you hungry? We'll feast pretty soon now on coats and hot dogs and pie. There are heights to scale, lovely boats to sail, bears and monkeys to tease in the zoo. I feel so free and easy with you. Here on the Mall, life's a ball. Just like children we'll squirrel and make up, then watch evening shadows fall. If it's only a dream, let's not wake up at all. We'll be children, it's riding the swing time. An old-fashioned lie. Got a quarter, let's buy a balloon now and see it zoom to the sky.

[28:26] ♪ Musical number: "The Pink Jungle" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[29:49] Robert W. Schneider: Act Two featured even more hijinks ensuing, including parodies of television commercials, which they'll use a massive color TV screen for, live in the theater, marketing, consumerism, fashion, sincerity and vulnerability, and then pure farce, like a bedroom scene that lasts forever with all four suitors hiding in various locations in Tessa's bedroom, including a bathroom shower, a grandfather clock, a liquor cabinet, and under a stack of harem pillows, which we all have harem pillows, and a fashion show for the ladies and for some of the special men in the audience, set to a beautiful Vernon Duke melody. As the author of "Autumn in New York," I don't know how original "Paris in New York" is, Mr. Duke, but here we go.

[29:49] ♪ Musical number: "Paris in New York" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[32:55] Robert W. Schneider: Well, like all things in all musicals, things work out with Eleanor playing Cupid to Tess and Brian, the company stays in the family, Tess becomes CEO, and Eleanor ascends finally to heaven. This is a feel-good musical that would be visually stunning, I'm sure. Chances for lots of sets and costumes, and if it succeeds, I'm sure it will be the latest musical every boy is chatting about over drinks at Stonewall. The show is budgeted at a whopping $350,000. That's double the amount for a play at that time. Today, that would be about $4 million for a play, which was unheard of back then. Donald Onslaugher will do the sets, and he's going to spare no expense. He wants to use 18 different sets, aerials, and three treadmills to make the whole thing look cinematic so there's never a break.

Now, these treadmills are going to be 60 feet in length and 5 feet in width, and he's also going to custom build each furniture piece out of plastic to give it all a modern look. When the show gets transported around town, they're going to need two 28-feet boxcars and two cargo planes to transport this entire set. The whole show is about fashion, so legendary Hollywood designer Jean-Louis is brought in to make it look stunning. If you don't know the name, you know his dresses. Rita Hayworth's Gilda dress? Him. Marilyn Monroe's Happy Birthday, Mr. President dress? Him. Practically anything worn by First Lady Nancy Reagan? Him. $135,000 of that budget is for costumes alone. The show will rehearse over the summer of '59.

It's going to try out in Denver, then Boston, then open January 11, 1960, at the Plymouth Theater, making this the first musical of the decade. And Paul Gregory is partnering with a new organization called Theater Security Syndicate to produce this mega-musical, which is becoming front-page news all over the country. Even when they push the date back a bit to open at the 54th Street Theater, it's on the front page. When it comes in, it's got to join such new musicals as, listen to this season, "Gypsy," "Once Upon a Mattress," "Take Me Along," and "The Sound of Music," which when I was reading the old newspaper, somebody got it wrong and said the new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical is going to be called "The Sound of Battle."

It's a very different title. Now, they have to find a cast. This is Tess's story, so they need to find a Tess. The first choice is the veteran comic actress Eve Arden. Sardonic, witty, sophisticated, she was a popular star of the TV show "Our Miss Brooks." We know her today as Miss Lynch from the "Grease" film, but she turned it down. What about Ginger Rogers? She had done musicals, was sophisticated, looked great in clothes, and she had never headlined a big old musical before. The public would love it, and it would show her in a new medium, a Broadway leading lady. Her mother, Layla, encouraged her to take it. Actually, her mother encourages everything. Honestly, had this show come in, Mama Rose would look like Mother of the Year next to Layla, who was a publicity-seeking promoter from all angles.

She was smart. Yes, in fact, Lucille Ball said Layla taught her how to act, but she was not to be messed with. Her daughter could play the sweet innocent, while Layla would yell at everyone and demand her daughter's way be done. Mind you, Ginger is 48 at the time, but Mama enrolls her in acting lessons, dance lessons, voice lessons. This is a big opportunity for her, um, them. This is it. Change the medium so Ginger Rogers will star in "The Pink Jungle." The word gets out, and before Mama and her can even pop the champagne, Mama Rose gets the news in her gossip column with, Eve Arden was unavailable, so it'll be Ginger Rogers. This is one of the many slights that Ginger and Layla will feel with this production.

No one says Ginger Rogers is second choice. She has to assert her dominance. Well, Layla does, but more on that later. The rest of the cast is assembled with Leif Erikson as nice son Brian, Ray Hamilton as son David the charmer, whom Ginger will be linked with romantically by the time the show is over. Maggie Hayes is the rival Chris Taylor. Louis Nye is the company's marketing guru, and as Eleanor West, or the shade of Eleanor West, as they call our ghost in the script, bewitched in Dora, Agnes Moorhead. Oh, Agnes, if you only knew what awaited you. Well, once in rehearsal, it was clear Rodgers wanted the star treatment. They would not rehearse in New York, but Hollywood. They would not open in Denver, then San Francisco, then Detroit, then Boston, then Broadway.

She would give interviews, not Agnes. Not four-time Oscar nominee Agnes Moorhead. Ginger needed at least 14 costume changes, a record for the time, so Jean-Louis provides her with 14 costume changes and a $35,000 chinchilla coat for one scene, a $22,000 white fox jacket made of 82 skins for another, and an $8,000 beaded dress with 20,000 beads. And the comedy with music is now a Ginger Rogers musical with a 16-piece orchestra. Why is my daughter not singing more? Layla asks. Why is she not dancing more? Why does Agnes Moorhead get all the laughs? Ginger doesn't need this. You know, she's a star. She can walk out that door anytime. Well, time step out that door anytime. So the producers are a little bit of a quandary.

This was supposed to be a play, but now it's turning into a musical. The problem is, if this was supposed to be a play, the rehearsal period is only four weeks. If it's a full-on musical, they should have scheduled it for six weeks. So what are they going to do? Well, work fast, and in four weeks, they will try to get this show up and running as a musical. Those four songs are now 12. A three-hour show is now bordering on the Pink Jungle Millennium Approaches. But it might be worth it because the show has taken in about $1 million in advance sales across all the shows it will play. Why? Ginger Rogers. And Ginger and her mama will talk to any reporter to get their names out there, leading her to deliver such moving statements like, quote, "Cosmetics are almost as necessary to womankind as is sunlight to the world.

They are a vital accoutrement for the woman who thinks of herself as a woman and wants men to think of her in the same way. And what woman doesn't want masculine admiration? After all, we use makeup just for them. This is important to shoes. And who would think of going out without shoes?" I need Jennifer Coolidge to say this in a movie somewhere. So, San Francisco, October 14th, 1959, the Alcazar Theater. "The Pink Jungle" makes its eagerly awaited opening night. The audience is packed. The critics are all there. This is going to be the event of the year, and it's a disaster. The show had never been run all the way through without stopping. The treadmills kept breaking with the audience sitting in the dark for long periods of time.

The orchestra doesn't know when to come in, so the actors keep having to say, "Now!" Ginger Rogers couldn't remember her lines or her blocking, and at the end of the show, when Eleanor flies back up to heaven, the fly system got caught, so Agnes Moorhead just dangled from the flies. What time did the curtain come down? 12 a.m. Here is an account from William Gackling, who was the Sacramento Bee critic. "A delectable shambles," he says. In the second act of "The Pink Jungle," the new Paul Gregory musical which opened for the first time anywhere last Wednesday at the Alcazar Theater in San Francisco, the lights came up a little too early, characteristically, on Agnes Moorhead, alone on the stage in a maze of shifting scenery.

She had just played a scene as a telephone operator, an extremely funny bit gently needling Judy Holliday, while perched precariously inside a picture frame several feet above stage level. If you are beginning to feel confused already, stick around. In the intervening darkness, she had managed to get down from this perch by some means—Miss Moorhead is an extraordinarily resourceful performer—and now stood eyeing uneasily the vista which confronted her from the rear of the stage. A queasy sight. Immediately in front of her, a treadmill went slowly shifting part of the setting off the stage and running some of the new set on. In front of that, another treadmill, traveling in the opposite direction, was moving furniture and props on and off.

Miss Moorhead stood there for a moment and for the first time in a harrowing opening night seemed to blanch. She may have had a mental picture of getting one foot on one treadmill and one on the other and being pulled apart like some victim of the Roman games. She may even have toyed with the idea of saying the hell with it and going back to Hollywood, but Agnes Moorhead is not only a superb actress, but a trooper. She stepped gamely forward and stood there looking for all the world as if she really knew what was happening, and the scene finally got set and underway and more miraculous got played through, but it was touch and go. The moment was typical. As opening nights go, it was a rough one, but it was rougher than it needed to be.

Well, Layla went out to get all the newspapers around time for their views, and they were great if she was the mother of Agnes Moorhead. The Oakland Tribune's headline, "Talent Wasted in the Pink Jungle," devoted three paragraphs to the brilliance of Agnes Moorhead, then a paragraph saying, "Ginger Rogers with the thin voice in it, too." They called the whole show yawn-inspiring. The Chronicle said the suburb clowning of Agnes Moorhead who runs away with the show. Then they mention Ginger. Thin voice, but they love her pas de deux with a men's raincoat. Show's not cohesive. Berkeley Gazette. "The Pink Jungle" falls flat on its face. Odds are it will.

[42:10] Robert W. Schneider: The Pink Jungle is a musical about a couple of people who are in love with each other and they're trying to make it a musical. They never make it to Broadway. There's not enough of a plot to make The Pink Jungle a straight comedy and not enough of a score to make it a musical. The result is an intermixture of the two that fails to reach any goals. But the biggest complaint comes from the San Francisco Examiner, which is offended by the whole thing, saying, basically, San Francisco is not New Haven. And in New Haven, these shows are at lower prices. What you showed us last night was a disaster at full price. Shame on The Pink Jungle. Then they lay into Ginger. Miss Rogers often fumbles the dialogue, probably as a result of too little rehearsal.

But she is an arch-comedienne and so attractive that some of her miscues can be forgiven. Where she really needs help is in the songs. It's tough to be a working girl, 100 women in one, together on Central Park, among others. But when she dances, especially in one memorable scene where she illustrates her anger by doing a takeoff on a bullfighter, she's outstanding. This gentleman ends his review with, the curtain went up and down, okay. Well, the next day, Hurricane Layla and Ginger hit the theater. Is this team going to allow the public to think Ginger has a weak voice? Why are you saddling her with subpar material? Why is Agnes Moorhead getting all the great lines? She's upstaging Ginger, ma'am.

She's flying in the air. We can't help that. Ginger should dance at the top of the show. It's what the public wants. So the creatives meet up and decide they'll add new songs for Ginger. But she can't learn them. We'll add new dances for Ginger, but she can't learn them. New scenes, which she can't memorize. It's beginning to dawn on these people that when she was filming a movie musical, it was done in chunks. Continuity is a problem for her. They send the director, Joseph Anthony, out to do an interview defending Ginger Rogers singing by saying, quote, it's a strong voice, stronger than Mary Martin's. Ginger was tired and she was not used to singing in a theater this large. It's growing every day.

She has 10 weeks before Broadway. We have nothing to worry about on that score. Then more reviews come in, like the L.A. Times, which basically says, Agnes is great. Ginger's among the cast. They list Ginger with three other people. My personal favorite is a fashion magazine, which discussed the things people wore on opening. Then they mentioned the show by saying, quote, everything needs trimming except Agnes Moorhead, who's delightful. So once again, they try to make once again, they try to take more stuff away from Agnes Moorhead, demanding that her funnier scenes get cut. So Ginger gets more stage time and laughs. Agnes puts a spell on Layla, turning her into a cat. No, wait, that's the plot of Bewitched.

Agnes lets Layla have it, basically saying in a shouted dressing room brawl, don't fuck with me, fellas. This is not my first rodeo, which leads to Ginger and Agnes not speaking to each other backstage. Agnes's personal joy is that when she has to give the last second to last bow to Ginger. But when Ginger comes out, the applause dips down. Ah, the joys of passive aggression. The press department must be loving it because every day in Hedda Hopper or Dorothy Kilgallen, there's another mention of this feud. Hey, Ryan Murphy, you listening? Sarah Paulson is Agnes Moorhead. Evan Peters is Ginger Rogers. I'd watch it. Now, while the team is dealing with egos, they're also dealing with a show that is not working.

They do add a waltz for Ginger Rogers, more dancing, the whole stupid bedroom farce bit is gone, along with 45 other minutes. And now instead of making her a vice president, she's a Cinderella, a lowly beauty operator who has some really great ideas. It is so bad backstage. The cast just calls it the jungle Detroit. Next stop for two weeks is Detroit. And before they even arrive, there is trouble. The negative press is really making Ginger America sweetheart look like a real you know what? And with her lackluster performance, the last thing she needs is the critics working against her. So before they arrive, Mama sends an airmailed note from Detroit to all the gossip columnists that says, quote, Our show needs work, as do 99 percent of the shows that try out.

But as far as I'm concerned, no work is needed on the friendship of Moorhead and Rogers. My admiration and appreciation for Aggie's talent shall always exist. We have had nothing but the nicest of relationships since we started this pink jungle jaunt. And if you believe that, I have some land in Florida for you, of course, signed Ginger. But I know who wrote that right, Mama. Then Ginger is in trouble again because it's getting out that it's not Ginger being a troublemaker, but it's her mother. So Rogers must skip rehearsals to defend her mother, her attitude. During a sit down interview with The Detroit Newspaper, she said her mother was great. Lili, as she called her, has let her make all her own decisions.

And she was seven. That's weird. And that if anyone is the heavy, it's her, not Mama. Her mother is her advisor, business manager, doctor and next door neighbor only being three minutes from each other. She goes back into rehearsal when once again, Ginger puts her foot in her mouth. And she was in England recently. She gave an interview saying her behavior doesn't really matter because she was, quote, she was rich, terribly, terribly rich. I'll tell you who wasn't rich. The producers for the cast theater where the show is playing, they repaint the theater's lobby pink. They fill it with pink flowers and douse the entire theater with perfume. They spent so much money, none of the creatives were getting paid on a weekly basis.

The show opens in Detroit. And once again, it's the same old story. What is this? This is a play, a musical. Why can't Ginger Rogers project? Well, actually, they try to get her to project, but when she was too close to the mics, it would boom. And when she was away, it was thin. Vernon Duke wasn't really a musical theater writer, and he was like, whoa, I thought this was supposed to be just like four songs, more choreo, more costumes, more scenery, more orchestra, more cast members throughout all of this. Dorothy Kilgallen keeps running articles entitled Backstage Strife about Moorhead and the Rogers family. Joseph Anthony, our esteemed director, has had enough and he quits. Leslie Stevens will take over for him in Boston until they can find someone else.

Now we're in Boston at the Shubert Theater. The producers sit Ginger and Layla down and say, look, all of this is bad for Ginger. The focus is the show, and if that means Agnes Moorhead gets more to do, so be it. Ginger's reputation is being ruined in the press, so shut up or get out. Well, really, Layla shut up and get out, which she does. Like I said before, the show is sold out weeks ahead of time. Its entire 14 performances in Boston are standing room only, but the show has ballooned out of control. The cast started at 15, now 30, orchestra 16, now 22, four songs, now 12, and an additional $170,000 added to the budget. These reviews needed to be stellar to save it and get it to make any financial sense to keep going.

Boston Sunday Globe. In so many words, The Pink Jungle is a good idea show gone wrong, badly wrong. At the moment, The Pink Jungle is in trouble, desperately needing a master showman to take over, prune the script, improve the jokes, and revise the direction drastically. And then they say, quote, then there is Ginger Rogers, whose figure is still a natural basis to show off gorgeous clothes. Her best review is that she wears clothes well. Needless to say, Agnes Moorhead gets great reviews. What to do? The show was getting lackluster reviews, but it was selling out, so what to do? Carry on to Philly for its December 14th four-week sold-out run at the Erlinger Theatre and hope the show could get in great shape by then.

Well, respectfully, Gregory decided he would put the brakes on it. As much as they love the money, they want to present a product they were proud of instead of a cash cow. Current contemporary Broadway producers listen to what Paul Gregory did. Did you hear that? He said, I know that it's not good and not worth the money people are paying. So he stopped it. So they will close in Boston, take time off to make a full-fledged musical with a whole new creative team, retain Rogers and Moorhead, and then open in May of 1960. All the advanced sales from Philly and Broadway would have to be returned, which really pissed off the Erlinger Theatre in Philly, which was like, hey, assholes, we now have four weeks to cover.

You better bring that pink nonsense here. They don't. And Paul Gregory was not forgiven anytime soon. Between the show, Ginger, Layla, and the fact he was being investigated for alleged financial impropriety, he didn't really produce after The Pink Jungle. Years later, he would say, quote, Ginger Rogers. She's one of the reasons I left show business. The only other people I ever had to deal with who were almost as rotten as she were was Claudette Colbert, Charles Laughton, and Raymond Massey. Rogers is a totally manufactured commodity. We'd give her a new scene. She couldn't remember the lines. She couldn't sing. And more surprisingly, she couldn't handle the dances when they were not all done in separate takes.

And all through the horror of the show, she'd be there smiling and grinning and utterly unreal. There's no denying her nostalgia appeal to the public. That's what makes her so dangerous. She almost smiled me into bankruptcy. God knows I don't mind her being a Christian scientist, but I just wish she'd put a little more emphasis on the Christian. Christians are taught to forgive and forget, but not Ginger. Layla has her go on a publicity tour of interviews saying that she was not at fault for The Pink Jungle not coming in. A quote from Ginger Rogers. The play was light and fluffy as a meringue, but it had no substance. It was a big nothing. The women were charmed by it. They came backstage and told me it was delightful.

Men could see through it. They hated it. We did excellent business. We pleased audiences, but it was not a play for intellectuals. We would have been foolish to face the seven New York critics. They would have shot us out of the water. The other problem was in the writing. The author made a lot of changes, but he never attacked the real problem. Finally, he said he could do no more. Under Dramatists Guild rules, we couldn't bring in another writer without his permission, so we had to close. To which our playwright, Leslie Stevens, retorted, I think Miss Rogers is incorrect. I did a great amount of rewriting. I wrote 55 pages of her dialogue alone. I think the problem was that one actress got rave reviews for her part written by the same author, while another actress drew pans for hers.

To which Ginger replied, I don't know how that story got started. I suspected the place's press department, but of course they denied it. The fact is I have the greatest admiration for Miss Moorhead as a performer and a person. There was never anything but good feeling between us. To which Leslie said, no, there was no friction between Miss Rogers and Miss Moorhead, but there was enormous friction between Ginger's mother and Miss Moorhead. But Ginger ended on an upbeat note. Naturally, you don't invest six months of your life in something you have no faith in. I had great hopes for this show. I was disappointed, but I don't feel the experience was lost. You learn something from everything you do.

Well, The Pink Jungle closed, and Ginger Rogers spent the rest of her life capitalizing on the fact she was Ginger Rogers. She did play Hello, Dolly! on Broadway, but then it was talk shows, award shows, failed marriages, none of them living up to mom's standards, by the way, and basically would sit down for interviews and be asked not really about herself, but what was it like dancing with Fred Astaire? And maybe that's the real story of The Pink Jungle. Not a bad musical, not a cursed production, not even a star vehicle that ran out of gas before reaching Broadway. It's the story of a woman who spent her entire adult life fighting to survive in an industry that told actresses they were only as valuable as their youth, their beauty, and their position at the top of the call sheet.

By 1959, Ginger Rogers had been a star for nearly 30 years. She had won an Academy Award. She carried major motion pictures. She'd become half of one of the most famous partnerships in entertainment history, but success had taught her something unfortunate. If you wanted to survive, you had to protect your territory, and that's a lesson that works in Hollywood. It's not always a lesson that works in the theater, because the theater is a strange art form. The best leading ladies understand that the spotlight isn't a pie with a limited number of slices. The audiences don't love you less because they love someone else, too. In fact, the opposite is usually true. The stronger the company, the stronger the show.

The stronger the show, the brighter the star at its center shining. Theater asks artists to trust one another, to share, to collaborate, to believe that everyone can win at the same time, and perhaps Ginger, after decades in Hollywood's survival of the fittest ecosystem, simply couldn't make that leap. Maybe she was scared. Maybe she felt threatened. Maybe she worried that if someone else got the laugh, the song, the moment, there would be less left for her. It's a very human fear. But The Pink Jungle became a cautionary tale about what happens when a production is built around protecting a star instead of serving a show. The irony, of course, is that a few years later, Ginger finally found her Broadway success, not in a musical built entirely around Ginger Rogers, but by joining Hello, Dolly! and becoming part of a company.

And she was wonderful, because beneath all the anxiety, beneath all the control, beneath all the fear of being replaced, there was still the performer audiences had loved for decades. The woman who danced backward in heels. The woman who could light up a stage. The woman who, in the end, didn't need The Pink Jungle to prove who she was. She was Ginger Rogers. And that was enough. Now, while Ginger Rogers was using 1959 to question why she ever agreed to do The Pink Jungle, in England, a young man was becoming a singing sensation. His name was Anthony Newley, and he, like Ginger, loved the movies. Well, not just the movies, movie stars. And one of his favorites was Charlie Chaplin. What if, well, Anthony Newley and the 1982 bio-musical Chaplin, on our next Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. Bye-bye.

[55:01] Robert W. Schneider: Hi friends, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. Just a reminder that it takes a lot of research and assistance to get these episodes produced, and any financial assistance is always appreciated. 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.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, and 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.