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[12:57] Robert W. Schneider: The one that had to follow *Oklahoma* and *Carousel*, that really was a conceptual musical in the same vein as *Baker's Dozen*. *Allegro* told the story of small-time doctor Joseph Taylor, Jr., who wrestles with his duty to save lives and his desire for wealth and success. They did the show with a large Greek chorus, no sets, no money, as the show flopped, but it was an important flop. Such an important flop, a musical about what happens when you lose sight of your goals, that many said Sondheim shows were all attempts to show that *Allegro* actually had worked years ago. Now, back to Coleman Freed and Baker. With a new idea from Levin came a new title, *Home Again*. *Home Again* would start in 1925. Actually, it would start even earlier than 1925. It would start in a timeless, amorphous void. This is from the first scene of *Home Again, Home Again*.

[14:19] ♪ Musical number: "Home Again, Home Again" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[17:01] Robert W. Schneider: So, T.J. is born to a bootlegger dad, a Harold Hill type, who actually gets killed at the footbridge, leaving T.J. to be raised by his grandmother. But before dad dies, he sings a song of American gumption to his young son.

[17:15] ♪ Musical number: "When the Going Gets Tough" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[20:36] Robert W. Schneider: Well, you can't resist a good I Am song, so he is hired, covers an unfair trial, is thrown into prison for defending the honor of a young woman named Helen, who bails him out of prison, and surprise, surprise, they fall in love all over one page where they dance and she asks him, "How long have we been in love now?" And he says, "Six weeks, two days, four hours, and seventeen minutes." *Company* and *Follies* played around with time but never blatantly acknowledged it. *Home Again* acknowledges it somewhere. Hal Prince is salivating, glasses falling from his head, scrambling to pick them up but slipping on his wetness, but I digress. Follow me on Finsta for Hal Prince fanfiction. Helen and T.J. marry when her eccentric bohemian mother Andrea crashes the wedding.

The priest is T.J.'s dad, by the way, played by the same actor, and refuses for her daughter to marry someone so square, but the wedding occurs and the priest, T.J.'s dad, says, "You may give the bride a credit card and beget American children." Those are the vows. T.J. wants to be where the action is, but his editors think he is small potatoes. To prove him wrong, T.J. is going to break into the embezzling governor's office, plant a microphone in there, and then publish the evidence that will bring the governor down and send T.J. to Washington, D.C. to be a real reporter. Plus, in D.C., he'll come closer to his life's goal: play a round of golf with the president. But things don't go as planned.

T.J. is arrested, and he's bailed out by a mysterious man named Hugo. Hugo Victor, but he doesn't want to be called Hugo Victor, he wants to be called Daddy. Yes, Grinder was alive and well in the '70s too, it seems. Hugo promised T.J.'s dad he would take care of T.J., and now is his chance to do so. See, Hugo is the man who has been paying off the governor. He will give T.J. all the evidence he needs, which, yes, will send old Hugo to prison for the rest of his short life, but T.J. gets the story. T.J., however, has a conscience. He can't send a man to prison for his own personal gain. Hugo admonishes him, "To get to the top, kid, you gotta be me," but T.J. can't do it. Hugo even offers T.J. a job for $30,000 a year, and T.J. declines it, which makes the ghost of his father appear and chastise him. "You let me down. I told you, boy, this is a great country, but you..."

[25:55] Robert W. Schneider: You gotta be tough. Now, T.J. is in a tailspin, and he goes back home to a stable family and a stable house and stable problems, just like any other day. Take it away, title song.

[26:05] ♪ Musical number: "Home Again, Home Again" — performed by the cast ♪

[30:00] Robert W. Schneider: Time for a change. TJ decides to take Hugo's offer and to celebrate. He takes Helen out to dinner where they discover that Hugo is on the cover of Time magazine with the caption, quote, Prince of Darkness. But TJ doesn't care. He must be a success. And as he says, Wise up, Helen. For Christ's sakes, how do you think anybody gets ahead in this country? There's always some head knocker at the top, some mean son of a bitch who got there by walking over people who are too nice to kick back. From now on, I play the game like everybody else. It's kick or be kicked. That's the way things work. Soon, the Witherspoons are affluent and TJ believes it's the good of the country that got him to success. His hippie son disagrees that the country is perfect. And as he crafts protest signs, he sings to his dad.

[30:48] ♪ Musical number: "What Will It Take?" — performed by the cast ♪

[35:00] Robert W. Schneider: He won't be at Superland for long because he has nice teeth. Yes, very nice white teeth, which means Hugo says he will be running TJ as a Senate candidate who gives double-sided answers to questions like...

[35:13] Robert W. Schneider: Our first guest is a newcomer you've all read about in the papers. A man above politics. A man who is fed up with what's been going on in Washington. A man with fresh vision. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a man who cares.

[35:27] Robert W. Schneider: I come before you in deep humility. From the shining mountains to the windswept prairies to the deep bosom of the ocean. These are perilous times. Times, my friends, to stand up for the brotherhood of man. Yes, and for the sisterhood of woman. And for the motherhood. The motherhood of every American child, big or small. These are the great principles, ladies and gentlemen, which we must never shrink from defending. And let us never forget it. The hour has struck. The time is now. The decision is ours. Let us go forward together with faith and love and integrity to a great and shining future.

[36:14] Robert W. Schneider: I want to thank our guest for that moving call to action. Our other speaker who was going to discuss defense contracts has been delayed for a few minutes, but our guest has agreed to answer any questions you might want to ask him in the meantime. Yes, Mrs. Klaber?

[36:28] Mrs. Klaber: I'd like to know what you think of this awful street crime situation.

[36:33] Robert W. Schneider: I'm delighted you asked that question because it gives me the opportunity to say that I am unalterably opposed to crime under any and all circumstances.

[36:44] Audience Member: Where do you stand on the war?

[36:47] Robert W. Schneider: I'm going to be perfectly candid. I hate war. Everybody hates war. When our cause is just, however, we must fight. My son received his draft induction notice just the other day. It would be embarrassing for the clubs to get identified with anybody whose son was the draft dodger. However, a potential scandal might erupt. Robert, TJ and Helen's eldest, is saying he will dodge the draft. What should TJ do? He looks at his son and says he stands behind whatever decision he wishes to make, but if he chooses to go to war, he gives him a gift.

[37:19] Robert W. Schneider: A penknife. Not just any penknife. This penknife was with TJ's grandfather when he rode with Teddy Roosevelt. Inspired by this patriotic artifact, Robert goes to war, TJ wins the election, and as they are packing for D.C., an army officer arrives to let them know Robert was killed in Vietnam. TJ cannot take it anymore. He finally confronts his dead father.

[37:44] TJ: Father, I want to talk with you.

[37:47] Dead Father: Show a little gumption, boy, and straighten yourself up. It's time to get up, get out, and do. And here you are, mooning around the house like a sick calf. You ought to be ashamed.

[37:56] TJ: I'm not a child anymore, father. You've been dead a long time. I'm older than you are now.

[38:01] Dead Father: This is a great country, boy, but you gotta have the goal and the guts to stick to it. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

[38:07] TJ: Were you always a pompous ass?

[38:10] Dead Father: Don't you sass me, boy, or I'll wash your mouth out with soap.

[38:13] TJ: Did you ever believe any of it for one single minute?

[38:16] Dead Father: I've told you, boy, when you kick a cat, you've gotta really put the boot into them. Same with people.

[38:21] TJ: What a fool I was.

[38:23] Dead Father: Plenty of moxie, plenty of get up and go. You gotta be mean to beat him, boy. You remember this knife? Remember where it came from?

[38:31] TJ: Sure. I won it in a raffle at the county fair in 1925.

[38:35] Dead Father: It's junk.

[38:36] TJ: Sure, it's junk. Worth about 30 cents.

[38:40] Dead Father: What would you say if I told you I killed a man with this knife?

[38:44] TJ: I'd say you were a goddamn liar.

[38:46] Dead Father: And yet, it did kill somebody once.

[38:50] TJ: He must have been a midget.

[38:52] Dead Father: He was my son.

[38:53] Robert W. Schneider: I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

[38:55] Robert W. Schneider: I'm talking about what you taught me.

[38:58] Robert W. Schneider: Stop sniveling at me.

[38:59] Robert W. Schneider: You never even knew me.

[39:01] Robert W. Schneider: Some little half-pint nose picker. That's all you were.

[39:03] Robert W. Schneider: And now you think you've got the right to sit in judgment?

[39:06] Robert W. Schneider: You never even knew me. The knife was a lie you taught me.

[39:11] Robert W. Schneider: I don't remember giving you any knife.

[39:12] Robert W. Schneider: You made it all up. The whole thing. You made me up.

[39:17] Robert W. Schneider: I wouldn't lie to you, boy. Not to you. Not to my son.

[39:21] Robert W. Schneider: My son is dead. We all kill each other, boy, and that's the truth of it.

[39:25] Robert W. Schneider: Face up to it and do the best you can. That's all.

[39:28] Robert W. Schneider: When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

[39:31] Robert W. Schneider: You want to be somebody, don't you?

[39:33] Robert W. Schneider: Somebody? No. I want to start being me. That's it.

[39:38] Robert W. Schneider: T.J. snaps and refuses to accept his Senate victory. He goes to tell Hugo, but Hugo was busy singing about how America has failed.

[39:47] Robert W. Schneider: It's not bathed in sunlight. It's bathed in garbage. Inspired by a column about the feelings of industry, Baker wrote, called America Don't Know How Anymore, which led to this song.

[40:11] ♪ Musical number: "America Don't Know How Anymore" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[42:11] Robert W. Schneider: And just as he's done singing, Hugo is killed. Assassinated. So T.J.'s about to begin anew. A nice guy. A loser, but a nice guy. Suddenly, miracle of miracles, Hugo has left everything in his will to T.J. All of it. Companies, property, bank accounts. But T.J. wants none of it. He refuses it. And the president declares National Nice Guy Week with T.J. as the guest of honor at his golf course.

[42:47] Robert W. Schneider: As the curtain is about to fall, T.J. is on the brink of becoming a grandfather. And in a sweet bookend, he awaits the birth of the child the same way 50 years ago in the opening scene, his family awaited his birth. As the curtain falls, they sing America is bathed in sunlight. A new child, meaning a new start for America. Now, while this show is far from perfect, its archness distances the audience, and Act 2 doesn't really have a great payoff, it's fascinating.

[43:16] Robert W. Schneider: Big thanks to the wonderful Damon Booth over at the Cy Coleman Estate who sent me the script to Home Again, a couple of versions of it, which is quite funny and would have been perfect in the satirical 1970s. Newsday ran a big story in 1975 announcing the musical, and a month later, SNL debuted, and I think Home Again could have ridden the satirical wave that was in the zeitgeist.

[43:37] Robert W. Schneider: Then Radcliffe Joe of Billboard, you know, included it in the story about shows that might be a part of the 1976-1977 season, but it truly couldn't be because before Home Again could be explored, Cy Coleman had to open a musical that was further down the line, I Love My Wife, the wife-swapping musical, and it was having a bit of trouble.

[43:56] Robert W. Schneider: The show was originally to be directed and choreographed by Joe Leighton, but Leighton had a horrible accident and couldn't move, much less direct. Luckily, Gene Sachs, who directed Mame, and Anna White, who choreographed Mame, were available, and they helped turn this little show into a big old blockbuster.

[44:14] Robert W. Schneider: Sachs understood East Coast rhythms and suburban humor, and he was a perfect fit for I Love My Wife, and Coleman felt indebted to him and White for saving I Love My Wife. Remember that, kids. He's indebted to these two.

[44:26] Robert W. Schneider: Jack O'Brien, the voice of Broadway, not the director, did a little feature on Coleman's upcoming projects and was quite dismissive about the potential of Home Again, saying that Baker's stories don't seem at all potential for musicality. He went on to say, though, if anyone could turn garbage into gold, it was producer Herman Levin, but Levin had decided to retire, which left Home Again without a home.

[44:48] Robert W. Schneider: Now, the ever-prodigious Coleman was not ready to stop because the 1977-1978 season had his musical On the 20th Century, another big old hit. Now, with Levin out of the way, the producer's circle grabbed Home Again, Home Again—or, sorry, I should just say Home Again, I'm getting ahead of myself—because they were hoping that the third subsequent Coleman show would be an even bigger hit than the other two, I Love My Wife and On the 20th Century.

[45:13] Robert W. Schneider: Producer Mary Leah Johnson said the show was a little hard to describe to people, a little bit like Our Town, and the show would have big sets, like Saturday evening post covers, many primary colors, sunflowers, and gingham. Fascinating, considering no directors or designers were even on board yet, but thank God we know we have gingham.

[45:30] Robert W. Schneider: It seems that the inability to articulate what Home Again was about was a sign, as the producer's circle then backed out. Annie producers Erwin Meyer and Stephen R. Friedman jumped in, and soon it was announced that Home Again, an all-American musical extravaganza, would start rehearsals in January of 1979, play out of town at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut from March 10th to the 17th, 1979, then open on March 19th at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, then starting previews on Broadway April 19th, 1979, and finally opening on April 26th, 1979 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.

[46:09] Robert W. Schneider: Home Again would join a pretty hefty season. Not a particularly strong season, but a hefty season. Home Again would be playing alongside Coleman's I Love My Wife and On the 20th Century, but it would be nestled amongst new musicals, like the off-Broadway hit The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Michael Bennett's follow-up to a chorus line, Ballroom, the dream trio of Hamlish, Sager, and Simon doing their Playing Our Song, and Sondheim and Prince's Sweeney Todd. Plus, the greatest musical ever made, which introduced the world to an incredible powerhouse force known as Tove Felshu. Yes, Cereva, my friends, Cereva.

[46:44] Robert W. Schneider: It was a low-key amazing season for flop musicals like Ballroom, because this season also gave us King of Hearts, Platinum, a Broadway musical, the Grand Tour, Carmelina, Up in One, I Remember Mama, and the utter glory of Morrissey Hall. At this time, Home Again seemed to be on track to be one of the biggest hits of the new season. Meyer, Friedman, and Warner Brothers, which had absorbed Meyer and Friedman's production company as a subsidiary, invested $1.2 million or $5 million today, and Home Again and its story about three generations of the Witherspoon family in Illinois was now ready to begin to put together a real team.

[47:19] Robert W. Schneider: And this is where Home Again went off in a different direction. Literally. Musical theater is littered with strong collaborations between directors and writers. Prince, Sondheim, Cale, Miranda, Abbott, Rogers, and Hart, etc. If something works, why change it? Except Coleman didn't really have a go-to director in his career. Maybe Bob Fosse, but Fosse would not have been the right person for this show. His Home Again would have been done with people stooping while someone slowly waved the American flag.

[47:47] Robert W. Schneider: Home Again was cynical, but not Fosse cynical. Maybe Michael Bennett, but he was busy putting together Ballroom, and he also didn't have the right tone to bring Home Again to life. Bennett's world was always three-dimensional and layered with meaning. Home Again was a bit of a cartoon, but a cartoon that needed a heart. Who are we kidding? This show has Hal Prince written all over it. It's an extension of what Allegro was trying to do 30 years earlier, and what Prince had done so successfully with musicals he had directed up until that point. Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, the Candide revival. All of it had looked at what goes on below the surface of something, and how we can deal with compromise, regret, etc.

[48:23] Robert W. Schneider: So, Home Again would be under the guidance not of any of those crackerjack directors who understood this type of musical. Nope. It would go back to the I Love My Wife team of Gene Sachs and Anna White. Yes, yes, Sachs had directed Mame and turned it into a big old hit, but Sachs was really a brilliant director of boulevard comedies, those comic vehicles which dealt with upper-middle class issues like Same Time Next Year, which made adultery adorable, and California Sweet, which made adultery adorable, and the musical I Love My Wife, which made adultery adorable.

[48:54] Robert W. Schneider: Ironically, the one time T.J. cheats on his wife in Home Again, it had a charming soft shoe. I'm sure Bea Arthur, Sachs' wife at the time, must have loved all this. Sachs was at home with Neil Simon and Carl Reiner, Bernard Slate, all the people who gave birth to sitcom writing. How would he fare with the folksy idea that Baker and Coleman and Freed were bringing to the table? He also did not seem to understand the show and its impressionistic tone. In fact, Coleman begged Sachs to take the job. Sachs was kitchen sink realism, not part of the Hal Prince school of metaphor.

[49:26] Robert W. Schneider: But maybe Sachs was ready to unleash some hitherto unknown talent. Think of George Abbott, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, all who could do multiple styles and tones. Sachs' first decision was to hire Peter Larkin to do the set. This is a remembrance from the stage manager of Home Again, Craig Jacobs. The rule for the show was that all of the scenery had to come in in unconventional ways. So, for instance, the desks for the office scene were all bicycles, with a single wheel in the back and double wheels under the desks themselves. The young lawyers and such would ride themselves and their desks onto the stage.

[50:09] Robert W. Schneider: Same thing when you went into a restaurant in Act 2, the tables were bicycles. For a scene set in a Chinese restaurant, a huge dragon, of the sort used in Chinese New Year parades, was brought on with six men from the ensemble inside. It came down to the front of the stage, and with the dragon facing the audience, the mouth opened, and there were a table and two chairs inside of it. The centerpiece was a big fan that opened up during America's bathes in sunlight, and then would be able to change colors.

[50:45] Robert W. Schneider: Now, if you saw Home Again, you might go, there was no fan. Yep, because they cut it to save money and replaced it with a psych, like a dance concert. But if you got a good cast, no one is looking at the psych. I have to tell you, I'm sorry, if I see a psych in a musical, and like that's all the set is, I just get so nervous. It just reminds me of high school. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sure you can do wonderful things with a psych.

[51:06] Robert W. Schneider: For our hero, T.J., they hired Ronnie Cox. Yes, before he was in Total Recall, RoboCop, Beverly Hills Cop, and don't forget Deliverance, Ronnie Cox was a musical guy. As his wife, Helen, they would cast A Little Night Music's Terry Ralston and Anita Morris as T.J.'s possible mistress. Add these folks to the 25-member cast, and it looks like it will be in good shape with the right star. If you remember, the actor who plays T.J.'s dad plays 90 million other male roles in this thing. Who could do what Sid Caesar did in Little Me but with edge? Because that's really what we're looking here for T.J.'s dad. They would have to be able to act and sing and dance, and that limits the pool, and then he'd have to have a patrician edge to him, like a hippie and a banker's exterior.

[51:52] Robert W. Schneider: Who else could you think of but Dick Shawn? To date, most people might not remember the name, but they will remember at least three big things about him. One, he was Ethel Merman's hysterical son in *It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World*. He played LSD in Mel Brooks' original movie *The Producers*. And three, he died on stage of a massive heart attack, and no one helped him for 20 minutes because he used to end his stand-up acts by faking a heart attack and laying on the stage while the audience filed out. What a hoot! Let me tell you how I learned this little piece of trivia. You might be curious. I grew up in a very interesting family, to say the least, and for Christmas every year, I would get a calendar.

And it was a daily calendar. Now, most of you probably have daily calendars that tell you who was born on that day or a Jeopardy question or something like that. Now, this was a daily calendar that told you who had died on that day with a little biographical sketch, but also this very bizarre pencil illustration of how they died. And I remember reading about Dick Shawn's, and so I don't know why that's still ingrained in my memory. Needless to say, they still do not make the Who Died on This Day calendar. If they do, if they do, friends, the daily calendar, please let me know. I need to buy it. So Shawn signed on. He wasn't a neophyte to musicals. He had done *Fade Out, Fade In*, and was well-known to television audiences who watched his bizarre standup.

But right before they were going to go into rehearsals, Coleman approached Russell Baker and said he needed to write a new role in *Home Again*, a role for a Broadway actress named Lisa Kirk. Kirk was the original Lois Lane in *Kiss Me, Kate*. She introduced the gentleman as a dope in *Allegro* and tapped her troubles away in *Mac and Mabel*. She also dubbed Rosalind Russell in *Gypsy*, the movie. Why was she going to be in *Home Again*? Well, it seems Sy and Lisa were good friends, and Sy was in a state of good luck, Lisa was not. So why not help an old friend? Therefore, Russell shoehorned in a new character, the character of Helen's mother, Andrea, a sassy firebrand, who comes to stop her daughter's wedding to a conventional square.

And now she would also need songs, so she got one called "Traveling Together," which she sang to her grandson. A less buoyant "No Time At All." And they gave her the pop song they wrote years earlier called "When It Comes To Love." Ironically, the harshest critic of this song was its creator, Barbara Freed. It's not a good song. It doesn't even make any sense. It was the first thing we'd done together, and I was not the writer I later became. But no matter. *Home Again* went into rehearsals in January, and it seemed to be going well. Everyone was complimentary of each other. Everyone seemed unified in order to make this show succeed. Everyone was motivated by the experimental tone it was taking.

Here is Sy Coleman. People have been conditioned to a new kind of musical theater. It's a review and not a review, a question of latching onto the abstract. It's being put together in a journalistic style, but it's not a biography. It will take place inside the mind of a nameless observer. We don't have anyone for the part yet. Whoever it is will have to have plenty of charm. What I like is Baker's free association. When he's being cool, he hits a note and people get it. He doesn't have to hit every note of the chord. As for my own chords, it's hard to fight over an abstraction like music. People can fight over a word in a show, but who can fight over a note? No sense of problems, anger, egos, just a good group putting on a good show.

[55:21] Robert W. Schneider: What the cast and crew did not know, however, was behind the scenes. The producers were running into more and more money problems and were looking to cut costs, which explained why at the first performance they had to cancel it because the set just had not arrived, saving money everywhere, including on shipping. At this evening's performance, the role of the set will be played by your imagination. How NYU-tish of you. Eventually, *Home Again* did get its set, and it did open in Hartford, and its first performance left its audience baffled. First, why was the show over three hours long? Second, what is this show? Baker's book was drenched in sepia and a longing fondness for his past, and Coleman matched him with one gentle nostalgic melody after another, but Freed's lyrics were arch and biting and sax-directed with his usual realistic hand, never allowing the show to be buoyant.

It seemed as if there were multiple directions going on and no one to really coalesce the story into a cohesive whole. The reviews, unfortunately, validated this. This is from *Variety*. It's difficult to be constructive about a show as mediocre as *Home Again*. To use the old phrasing, there's nothing wrong with a show that a new book score, cast direction, choreography, sets and costumes wouldn't help. *Home Again* suggests an impoverished rerun of the 1947 Rogers and Hammerstein experiment, *Allegro*. Any musical that begins with a heavenly voice and conversation with an unborn child was immediately in trouble. So why not stop? Well, because some critics were encouraging. This is the *Hartford Current*.

There is much to like in this original musical. At the outset, in fact, *Home Again* really sings, evoking a clever collage of, say, *The Music Man*, *Lil Abner*, and even *Oklahoma*. Too soon, however, it becomes more like a *Candida* of the American heartland. The original Lillian Hellman version, that is, which suffered from fragmentation and longueurs. And as we all know, when the director flails, the choreographer usually comes in and gets it together. But Anna White was not the happiest of campers. Superland, the big opening number to Act Two, was greeted every night with cheers. It was the one freaking thing that was working. But she felt she had done a number like this so much before that all people were going to think about is that she was just a one-trick pony. So she got rid of the whole number. Yes, better a one-trick pony than a no-trick pony, Anna. Anna? Una? Anna? Anna? Una? Eva? Anyone? Thomas Meehan? Ima Uma? Annie Too? Did you listen to the episode?

[57:49] Robert W. Schneider: So, with no real focus, except knowing that they wanted to explore American ideas of good versus evil, the *Home Again* group trekked up to Toronto, where the show is now called *Home Again, Home Again*. Why the name change? I always think when a show is in trouble, I have a Christmas analogy. People saying, you know, we need this glass ornament. We need a plastic ornament. What they forget is that there's no tree. They don't have a tree. And this is what's going on here with *Home Again, Home Again*. They even got a marketing consultant to run polls on the title, and it seemed the one people liked the most was called *Sunshine Mountain*, which was a hymn. So why not just call it *Home Again, Home Again*, which the producers thought would be funny?

Okay, at least the long title was in line with Shawn's career of appearing in movies and shows that had long-ass titles, like, forget for people, it's a *Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World*. Four Mads. Four Mads. The creators made some pretty big changes. Gone was the cosmic voiceovers and T.J. as an embryo. The show, the show, hello show, the show now opened with T.J. delivering a monologue and singing "America is bathed in sunlight." Witherspoon's the name. Hamilton Witherspoon. Today I'm going to become a father. It's wonderful to be a father, to have somebody to love and love you back. To be able to take a tiny little baby boy and shape him, mold him, turn him into a man you can, a man you can be proud of.

A man like me, only better. I want my boy to have it better than I had. Want him to be somebody, not just a country storekeeper like me, selling gas and dry goods, candy, hardware, ginger snaps, cola, used cars, and a little moonshine on the side to pay the mortgage. I want him to have a big store like Macy's in New York. Like him to be somebody, maybe even president. Sure, why not? It's the greatest country on God's green earth. What a great time to be alive. 1925, the whole country going to town in a Model T and those great heroes. Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Al Capone. Now Witherspoon haunts TJ much earlier and says no father's ever dead as long as he's got a son to haunt. Hello, Freud. Lila, the mistress, became an actual temptation from day one for TJ, and the show is now focusing itself a bit more.

Could a nice guy succeed in America? That's now what they're coming to realize. It had been hinted out in Connecticut, now it was going to be blatant in Canada. Could a nice guy succeed in America? A new scene raised the stakes for TJ. He applies for a loan and the bank manager, who is his neighbor, goes to his house to tell him he doesn't have the loan and to insult him even more, demands TJ move his old car so the neighbors don't think the bank manager lives near gypsies. He snaps. He will be a cruel SOB and get what he wants, and as he fervently becomes impassioned, he leads his terrified family in a reprise of "When the Going Gets Tough." Okay, nice, Mr. Baker, an actual cliffhanger. Now will the audience want to come back?

Who knows? But now it doesn't end on a tonal reinforcement. Now it's what's going to happen to TJ with this new persona. The rest of the second act stayed the same, but out of an old MGM musical, Fried and Coleman sat in the theater's basement and wrote new songs for TJ and Helen. There's a beautiful one called "I Don't Remember When I Didn't Love You." The end of the show also seemed closer to something fulfilling. Senator TJ meets the president, and the president invites TJ to golf. It's his ultimate dream. But a steadfast TJ says he can't because he's going to run against the president, and he can't end up liking someone he will destroy. A very different TJ than who we met at the beginning of the show.

An evolution. However, the show still felt like a review connected by a leading character, not a book musical, which is what they were aiming to do. How to fix that? One of my favorite lines is from *Gypsy* when Herbie says, everybody in show business listens to everybody. And to prove that, here is Russell Baker. Psy got his New York psychiatrist on the phone one afternoon and must have started discussing the psychological makeup of the main characters in our floundering play. This was absurd, of course, since the chief characters were little more than bloodless stage cartoons. It became sillier, however, when Psy switched the shrink onto a conference call so he could lecture Barbara, Jean, and me on our failure to grasp the psychic ordeal our characters were undergoing.

[1:02:29] Robert W. Schneider: All this new work was for naught. The Canadian critics weighed in. This is from *The Globe and Mail*. You expect with a Broadway-bound show that somebody will still be caulking the leaks, hoping even for something buoyant. But those who bet today on New York Times' columnist Russell Baker's *Home Again* would have bought tickets on the Titanic yesterday. But Toronto star reviewer Gina Mallett summed up the biggest question still left unanswered. Can the show make sense and still keep its spirit? Usually this is a producer asking this question, but our producers were nowhere to be found. It seemed all they did was pace and yell at the writers over how much money it was costing them. And they didn't seem to want to advertise the show.

Finally, the writers cornered the producers and asked, are you taking this show to New York? And the producers said, oh yeah, of course we are. And with only 18 days left before the first preview in New York, that's when they decided to take out a full-page ad saying *Home Again, Home Again* was coming. But even more exciting than *Home Again, Home Again* was their other show they were producing that was coming in called Ira Levin's *Break a Leg*, which did get to Broadway, but only for one night. To add insult to injury, the ad said the theater box office would be open the next day for *Home Again, Home Again*, and it wasn't. So if you wanted a ticket to *Home Again, Home Again*, probably not going to get it.

And if you missed that Times ad, you missed the only ad they ever ran and only included the show in the NYT ABC's Five Days Before Opening. Five days before opening. They were like, oh yeah, there's a show coming in. The writing was on the wall, and the producers asked for a meeting with Sy and Gene only. And they said that the show was folding in Toronto, which did not sit well with these two legends who had never really flopped. Well, Saks was still steaming from the out-of-town closure of the *Prince of Grand Street*, which we'll talk about later on. The closing notice was posted on April 12th. The utter glory of Morrissey Hall took over the Hellinger. And Warner, realizing Meyer and Freeman didn't have a good grasp on theater, withdrew its financial support to any future theatrical endeavors.

Goodbye, Warner Brothers. Good idea, because only a few years later, they were sitting in prison as they were charged of conspiring to help investors file false tax returns in conjunction with tax shelter fraud. Not deterred, Coleman and team announced that eventually the show would go on, just with a different producing team. Looking back on it, Coleman said,

[1:04:49] Robert W. Schneider: This was my first show that ever closed like that. What was heartbreaking about it was to leave a show that's playing and the audience is howling with laughter. So the timing was off. Yet not all of Home Again, Home Again disappeared because soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Jean Saxe, Bea Arthur, had her very own variety special in 1980 where she sang "The Way I See It."

[1:06:11] Robert W. Schneider: Look at Bea promoting Home Again. But Coleman, Freed, and Baker had another trick up their sleeve. As Coleman said, I'll just have to thank those producers for giving me a wonderful workshop because we're going to do it again. Yep, you heard that right. But now it was not going to be Home Again, Home Again, oh no, but a musical about making Home Again, Home Again. A few things happened between the closing of Home Again, Home Again in 1979 and the year 1983. Baker had won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Growing Up, which further developed some of the ideas he was trying to articulate in Home Again. Cy Coleman had a big old hit with Barnum. And Barbara Freed, well, she Freed it, I don't know. The New York Times, July 22nd, 1983.

Four years ago, Russell Baker, reporter and columnist for the New York Times, found himself in the middle of one of the most colorful stories of his career. He had written the book for a Broadway musical that opened out of town and was in deep trouble. Like countless Broadway authors before him, Mr. Baker went to work day after day feverishly rewriting the show. But at night, in the solitude of his Toronto hotel room, his journalistic instincts took over. He recorded all the gory details of the experience in a diary. Mr. Baker intended to have the diary published in book form, but his collaborators on the musical, Cy Coleman, the composer, and Barbara Freed, the lyricist, had other ideas. We convinced Russell it would be better to do a show, Mr. Coleman says.

And so, a show is Mr. Baker, Mr. Coleman, and Miss Freed have written a new musical, As Yet Entitled, which tells the story of a frenzied attempt to put on a Broadway musical. The show in the musical happens to be the show that collapsed out of town. At first, it was called Home Again, but it was retitled Home Again, Home Again by a producer who said it needed a funnier title. The entire story of the new musical is told through the eyes of a character Mr. Baker has modeled on himself, a librettist, who also happens to be a journalist. The musical will be directed by Mr. Coleman and Robin Wagner, who will also be co-producers with the Schubert organization. The production schedule calls for a six-week workshop at Michael Bennett's studio, beginning November 7th, and a Broadway opening next April.

It is a larger-than-life look at the process of Broadway and the people who work in it, Mr. Coleman says. It is comic in tone, quick in pace, and loving about the theater. We are using some of the old score as well as new stuff. I must say this, Mr. Coleman adds, Russell was reluctant both times, but he really loves music. You can get him with the chorus of a good song. Reluctant? Gene Sachs was reluctant, and look what happened. But I digress. The idea for returning Home Again was that of set designer Robin Wagner, who did the set for The Incredible on the 20th Century. He told Coleman how much he loved the score for Home Again, and would he be interested in returning to the show. So, Coleman and Wagner met with Baker, but Baker had a bit of a surprise for them.

Russell Baker, smart journalist that he was, kept a diary of the entire process, everything that happened, how he felt, and observed a few key points. Just one more script and that island in the Aegean would be mine. I wrote another script. No longer were we doing a musical about a paraplegic cab driver who falls in love with a tollbooth collector at the Lincoln Tunnel. Somehow, inexorably, because there's no business like show business, the musical had turned into the story of a fast-food chain heiress who falls in love with a marine corporal during the Boxer Rebellion. The experience is instructive, like being lost in a bog. I saw other musicals last year and sometimes asked myself, didn't the producers and directors know they were awful?

I answered that question. No, you don't know? I still think we folded the makings of a good show. That was a great experience, truly dreadful but fun. I was sorry the show folded because I was having such a good time, but once is enough. Perhaps Baker put it best when he said, I committed to the absurd task of writing a book for a Broadway show for which the music had already been written. I was too ignorant about theatre to know that this couldn't possibly produce anything but disaster, probably even with Hammerstein writing the book. Wait, instead of publishing the diary, why not use it as a musical? A musical about writing a musical. If Home Again only had parts that worked, why not just use those and create a show about the making of a show?

It had worked for Kiss Me Kate, so why not this show? Now, being called Baker's Broadway, the show was first announced in October of 1984, telling the public that the new musical would be about a musical struggling on the way to Broadway. They would use what they could from Home Again and whatever new material was needed, Coleman and Freed would write. The plot of 13 Days to Broadway, formerly 10 Days to Broadway, that's the title, would now tell the story of all those people who conspire to make a show. The show is called Home Is Where It's At. The actors, directors, designers, critics, audiences as they plunge towards a Broadway opening. Interesting because the director is pompous and confused about how to tackle the show, the choreographer who wants to fix everything with more dances, the composer wants to put in every woman who is well endowed, and the producers have hired their little granddaughter, a fae done away in training, ego no talent, as their lead.

The characters would also turn to the audience and discuss their problems and take the audiences into their confidence. America is Bathed in Sunlight, which opened Home Again, was now used as a song that was troublesome, but was trying to find a way of working in the show within a show, and eventually it was the tone that was syncing the song. So every time you saw the song again, they would change the tone to it. So one time you heard it, it was a gospel number. One time you heard it as a Philip Glass opera piece. Then once in a very conceptual moment, it was being sung by a barking dog. And of course, new songs, each that were some of Coleman and Freed's best work. There was the flip side of There's No Business Like Show Business called Ain't Show Business Grand. So here goes. Opening song.

[1:12:28] ♪ Musical number: "Ain't Show Business Grand" ♪

[1:15:05] Robert W. Schneider: Broadway, the last stop. A song that predated Kander and Ebb's Curtains on those who criticized. This one was called The Critics Song. It's interesting to note, like, at the same time they're doing this, Kander and Ebb and Peter Stone are working on the Curtains musical. This is The Critics Song.

[1:15:21] ♪ Musical number: "The Critics Song" ♪

[1:16:42] Robert W. Schneider: And my favorite song called All-American Show. This is just ridiculous. Producers gotta eat. We must make a musical to knock them off their feet. When you give the public what they want, they'll kill to get a seat. An all-American show with some get-up-and-go. Manufacture us a lot of dough. Wave the red, white, and blue. Add a bimbo or two. Some highfalutin ballet and that old soft shoe. We'll feed your punkers, rockers, your beasts. And throw in kids and puppies. Not a moment to waste, though we do it in haste. We'll never surrender good taste. This will be a musical for everybody's needs. Balancing erotica with patriotic deeds. We'll give them burlap cupids, shiny spangles, and glitz. It wouldn't hurt to show a little legs and tits. Razzmatazz them with style. Make them chuckle and smile. We want to see them rolling in the aisle. We want pizzazz and show.

[1:17:47] Robert W. Schneider: There is another one called Money and Manure, which really went after Home Again's original producers. I hope those original producers could hear it. I don't know if they get Seth Rudetsky in prison, but if not, as for Sirius, it's worth it. Everything old is new again because some of the same problems from Home Again began to emerge. Firstly, the title kept changing until they ended up with 13 Days to Broadway. It used to be 10 Days to Broadway, but somebody said 13 was funnier. Gene Sacks was no longer engaged, which was probably for the best, and instead Ford Theatre's artistic director David H. Bell was brought in to direct the show. David sadly wouldn't have a great track record with shows coming to Broadway because he also helmed Don't Stop the Music, Arthur, Windy City, and Actor-Lawyer Indian Chief, all Broadway-bound shows I'm sure we'll cover at some point. Still a great director, just one who deserved more, damn it.

[1:18:59] Robert W. Schneider: They would do a workshop in 1984 and come to Broadway in the fall of 1985 and listen to this cast. Evan Pappas, Ed Dixon, Jonathan Freeman, Bebe Neuwirth, Christina Saffron, Bob Marshall, John Christopher Jones, Mary Robin Roth, and Tia Sparrows. Coleman was so confident it would be coming in that he sang a song from the show at the 1985 Tony Awards to advertise it for the 1985-1986 season. More on that song a bit later on. The 1985-86 season really needed a good shot in the arm. The 1985 season brought a lackluster group of shows led by Big River, Grind, and Quilters. One day I will tell the Queefing Quilter story, but we must carry on for now. The 1985-1986 season gave us Drood, Song and Dance, Big Deal, and one of my favorite musicals of all time, Tango Argentino.

Yes, that's the roster. And the best score noms went to Drood, Song and Dance, then The News, and The Wind in the Willows. Times is hard, though, Mrs. Lovett, and no money came in, so the show would not be around in the 1985-1986 season. Then Robin Wagner took over as director and producer, and then Joe Layton would helm the show, and it would be at the Drury Lane in Chicago in 1987, and that didn't happen. Then it was going to open on Broadway at the Ritz Theater, now the Walter Kerr, in 1987, and that didn't happen. And then it was going to open at the Cleveland Playhouse in 1988, but the producer, they found, never came up with any of the money, so 13 Days to Broadway went back on the shelf.

And omen, probably, was when Baker said in the Times, quote, I assume it'll never get to Broadway. And Baker was right. He never wrote another musical for the stage. Coleman went on to Welcome to the Club, a musical about divorce court that played 12 performances. Then he got his mojo back. Tony Award winners, City of Angels, and the Will Rogers Follies, and the iconic The Life. And then, and then, and gentlemen and then, January of 1998, Playbill announced that Coleman and Freed were reworking 13 Days to Broadway with one of America's funniest writers, Bruce Valanche. Known for his appearances on Hollywood Squares and for his iconic graphic T-shirts, Valanche was a camp icon. His writing credits included most every major award show in Hollywood.

Please watch the documentary Get Bruce if you've never seen it. He wrote for Sonny and Cher, the Brady Bunch Variety Hour, the Paul in Halloween special. Plus, he had done Platinum. Oh, he was also on Hollywood Squares with his good friend, Whoopi Goldberg. And Whoopi liked the show. She liked it so much, she agreed to star in it. Valanche's work was very funny, and his America is Bathed in Sunlight, mega mix of choices now, included doing the song but taking off on Hedwig, Disney, and Kabuki. It was such a sure thing that 13 Days to Broadway was going to come in the Playbill, included it in the show's Coming to Broadway in the 1999-2000 season, which made 1985 look like 1964. Also announced for that season were Chita Rivera in Dear World, Sam Harris in The Jazz Singer, Jason Alexander in Marty, and two more by Cy Coleman, including Alan King in The Great Ostrovsky, and a stage version of A Star is Born with his City of Angel collaborators.

Of course, none of these shows came in. But as happened many times before, 13 Days to Broadway did not materialize, and Coleman never had another new show on Broadway before passing away in 2004, Baker followed in 2019, and finally, at the ripe old age of 100, Barbara Free passed away in 2024. Having read both versions, I think the story of Home Again is actually a much stronger idea than 13 Days to Broadway. 13 Days to Broadway is low-hanging fruit. I mean, the observations about creating a musical are not very insightful, and the bitterness distances the audience, so there's really no one to root for. Layman Engle said you need to feel in a musical. Feeling is the number one ingredient to all successful musicals. Home Again with the right director could have been something really special and needed, and I think people would have seen themselves in TJ.

[1:23:34] Robert W. Schneider: At the end of 13 Days to Broadway, the show clearly does close out of town, and the delightful assortment of characters come back on stage, and the writer lets the world know what happened to each of them. And he says, ladies and gentlemen, I'm told that for the benefit of the lady from Scarsdale, who is a theater party lady, I must tell you what happened to everybody afterwards. Therefore, three years after our show folded, the leading man came out of the closet, confessed that he had always been a heterosexual, and married. He has not worked in the theater since. A year after our show closed, our leading lady turned 40 years old and thus became unemployable in the entertainment world. She is now on welfare.

18 months ago, our choreographer went back to school and can now count all the way to 10. Six months after returning to Idaho, our investor was charged with murder of a theatrical producer who asked him to underwrite a new Broadway musical. The jury ruled that it was justifiable homicide, but sentenced him to 15 days in jail for a misdemeanor, failing to notify the police of the presence of a producer in the state of Idaho. Broadway. The lights, the magic, the music, it all starts with a dream, and then sometimes the dream becomes a nightmare, and the lights and the magic and the music recede, and there are only screaming nerves, learning to hate, the poison of frustration, and defeat, and all of it out of town.

Homer would have laughed. So much labor and passion spent chasing what? A tinseled glory of monetary fame? A bauble of tinkling lights on a side street? No, we hadn't charged to glory up Cemetery Ridge, but in the strange suite after the bottle serenity of that final night, we felt something very close to what comrades in battle must feel. Something, for that one peaceful moment at least. Very much like love, for one another. Three wonderfully talented people all working on one show, being a sounding board for each other. Take it away, Sy.

[1:25:57] ♪ Musical number ♪