This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Robert W. Schneider: Fade in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Wait a minute, where's the film? I can't do the show without the film intro. What? David Merrick stole it again? He does this on The Baker's Wife. Who was watching him? Eton! Dammit, Eton!

[0:26] Robert W. Schneider: Hi friends, Rob Schneider here and you're listening to Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway, the podcast. I feel like Stefan on SNL because today's most troubled musical is The Baker's Wife. And it has everything. It has a thieving David Merrick, a 90-minute song about a bird, Patti LuPone popping Valium, Topol's chest hair, and MTV's Dan Cortez. Just kidding on the last one, but get ready for what is, by all accounts, the wildest ride we have ever taken on this podcast with The Baker's Wife.

[1:00] Robert W. Schneider: Now, the reason The Baker's Wife is so interesting to us is because even though it was a show that closed out of town in the 70s, because of Stephen Schwartz, because of this amazing score, and also a pretty damn good book which doesn't get the credit that it deserves, this musical has actually been around at a lot of regional theaters and it's had a lot of close calls coming into Broadway. The most recent production was done in New York in 2022 and it was directed by yours truly. But first, let me tell you a little bit about the source material for The Baker's Wife. And if you don't know it, I'm sure you know Meadowlark. I hope you know Meadowlark. And I don't, okay, I'm going to tell you this.

This is just between us. At 54 Below, we keep a little thing. And anytime anybody does Meadowlark in one of their shows, we do a little checkmark for it. And we've been around now for about 12 years or so. They've been around for about 12 years or so. And a lot of checkmarks, a lot of checkmarks on Meadowlark. I think it's the most sung song on that stage.

[2:01] Robert W. Schneider: In 1932, Jean Genet, a French novelist, published his book Blue Boy, which looked at life in the small provincial town in which he grew up in France. One of the colorful incidents that occurs in this town is that the local baker is left by his much younger wife, forcing him into a depression in which he can never bake again. God, if that is the case where I can never have bread again, just please pull the plug on me. So the small community works very hard to bring the two separated lovers back together so he can resume baking. By 1938, that aspect of the novel Blue Boy was turned into a movie called The Baker's Wife by Marcel Pagnon. And despite it being called The Baker's Wife, his wife Auréal is barely in the film.

She shows up at the beginning and then she doesn't really show up again until the end. So the rest of the movie is really about a community trying to get this guy to bake again. So it's a nice little bookend. And like I said, the movie is really about this community putting together their longstanding feuds to work for this common goal.

[3:19] Robert W. Schneider: The greatest actor in the world, according to Orson Welles, was a guy named Rameau, and he played the put-upon baker. And this movie was celebrated for its great performances and a very great screenplay. And then it made the rounds of the New York revival houses of films. But it wasn't really eclipsing the works of other wonderful French filmmakers who were pretty big, like Godard and Renoir. And so the film just sort of slowly faded from memory. But some people remembered it quite well, like the producers of Guys and Dolls, Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, who wanted to turn it into a musical. And in fact, it was going to be a vehicle for the cowardly lion himself, Bert Lahr. And it was going to have Abe Burroughs writing the book and directing it.

And Frank Lesser was going to write the score. In fact, this was going to be their follow-up to Guys and Dolls. But Pagnon said that the movie was his baby and he did not want anybody else touching it. Not surprisingly, better opportunities came along for each of the guys that I just mentioned, including the most happy fella for Frank Lesser, which actually explores a lot of the same things that The Baker's Wife is exploring. So they dropped the project.

[4:22] Robert W. Schneider: And then the rights were picked up by the one and only David Merrick, the abominable showman himself, and a man who actually had a hit with another Pagnon piece, Fanny. And this time it was Zero Mostel leading the charge to play Amabla, our baker. And again, the answer came back no. And no was not a word that David Merrick was used to hearing, except by his wives who said, can we settle out of court? No. David Merrick in the 50s and 60s was the go-to producer of Broadway at this time. He was one of the people that was responsible for bringing British productions over from the West End over to New York, which really had not been thought of as extensively as before. And he gave us things like Hello, Dolly! and Oliver! and the list goes on and on and on and on.

He also gave us Breakfast at Tiffany's, which we've covered on this show. But by the 1970s, Merrick was in a little bit of a slump. Things that he was producing didn't seem to be going all that well for him. There were things like Mac and Mabel and Sugar, which ran a while, but also not the greatest hit. And he was also going through a divorce. And Merrick decided maybe it was time to go back to this idea of The Baker's Wife. And he went back to his friend Pagnol. And Pagnol, unfortunately, was dying. But he respected David Merrick quite a bit. And he brought him to his deathbed. And he said, I want you to have the rights to The Baker's Wife and have fun with it. And he said to Merrick, I always liked you.

And the reason he actually liked Merrick was because Merrick, like him, was actually Jewish. And that was something that he really, really admired and respected. He recognized a fellow brother in that way and gave him the rights.

[6:06] Robert W. Schneider: Now, Merrick needed a crackerjack book writer for what is honestly a very thin story in The Baker's Wife. And he went to the hottest playwright around. And that was Neil Simon, who was cranking out hit after hit, including Promises, Promises for David Merrick. Unless this bakery is in Bensonhurst, I don't really imagine Neil Simon adapting the story, unless we all get very cool very fast with Marsha Mason as Geneviève and Vincent Gardenia as the baker. But I digress. Simon needed a songwriter. And he was very taken with an up-and-coming young songwriter fresh out of college named Stephen Schwartz. Now, Merrick actually knew Schwartz because they shared an agent, Shirley Bernstein, played by Sarah Silverman in Maestro.

And I hope that you've seen Maestro. The greatest CGI in Maestro is they CG'd out a whole interesting story about Leonard Bernstein's life. It's amazing what technology can do. Anyway, Shirley Bernstein set them up. Schwartz played some songs from a dissertation he was writing about King Charlemagne's son. And Merrick was very impressed, drew up a contract, but the show went nowhere. So Merrick released what was going to become Pippin to other producers who picked it up and made a mint, just like those producers probably did on Godspell. So Bernstein, sorry that she let this one slip through her fingers, promised David Merrick that Stephen Schwartz's next show would be his.

[7:27] Robert W. Schneider: Now, Doc Simon, that was his nickname, Doc Simon, when he met with Schwartz in 1974, actually had a list of other musicals he wanted to tackle with Schwartz before The Baker's Wife, like a musical version of Mutiny on the Bounty. And unless Marsha Mason is Lt. Bly, it might not happen. Schwartz was polite, but he didn't want to musicalize this, and neither did anyone else in his right mind. Who the hell would want to do a musical of Mutiny on the Bounty? So Simon remembered this Baker's Wife thing that Merrick had talked about, a project that most likely was not going to interest Stephen. That's what he said. And he tried relating the plot to Schwartz, who was immediately taken, actually, by the ending of the film.

This is from an interview with Stephen Schwartz from Carol DeGear's amazing, amazing biography on Schwartz called Defying Gravity. What hooked me immediately was the ending. I responded to the humanness of the Baker's behavior in that last scene, the obliqueness and complexity of his behavior, and how much of it was subtextual. It immediately appealed to me. And then as I thought more about it, I liked the idea of writing music with a French flavor.

[8:37] Robert W. Schneider: What Schwartz was really fascinated with was this ending of the film, in which the Baker's wife returns the same day as their missing cat comes home. And in a brilliant, brilliant stroke of genius, and it's brilliant subtext, the Baker picks up the cat and chides the cat for all the trouble that the cat has caused everybody. And it's so clear that the Baker is talking about his wife, not our cute little cat, Pom-Pom. And Schwartz was immediately attracted to this idea. It's very Chekhovian in a lot of ways, and I think that actually makes for a really good, interesting choice for a musical. And The Baker's Wife was actually an interesting choice for Schwartz. This was going to be his fourth big musical.

And the three shows that he had leading up to that, that would be Pippin and Godspell and The Magic Show, all leaned into a 70s pop rock sound. Now, it did not mean he was not capable of creating something amazing. For some, it just seemed like an outlier. But if you actually are listening to the other scores of his, you can hear the versatility in those scores. So you would know that he actually has this wonderful gift inside of him.

[9:41] Robert W. Schneider: But as time goes on, Simon lost interest and he moved to Los Angeles following the death of his wife. And that left Schwartz looking now for a book writer, someone who understood life in a village. So how about Fiddler on the Roof's Joseph Stein? Another client of Shirley Bernstein. Joe Stein was 62, Stephen Schwartz was 26, and they Netflixed and chilled or whatever the 70s equivalent was, maybe that was beta and lewds, and realized that the movie has the great benefit of showing you local color. How do you do that on stage? How do you accomplish in a song what the actor can accomplish with a sigh or a cocked eyebrow? Now, the wife in the movie is literally in heat, ready to get intimate with baguettes.

And the other man that she's going with is just there for some fun. Could they be three-dimensional in a musical? I mean, if you ever watch the movie, and it's on the Criterion app, the lady who is playing Aurel, or who would be, you know, Geneviève, she is horny. She is feeling all the fantasies and she is in heat, mama, as the young kids like to say.

[10:44] Robert W. Schneider: Now, before Schwartz plunged into writing the score, he wanted to do some research. Now, for most of you new writers of musical theater, research is when you look beyond yourself and you, well, never mind. Here's a quote from Stephen Schwartz discussing his process. I played Debussy and Ravel on the piano, just so my fingers would automatically go toward those chord structures, and I would have those sounds in my head. But when I started to write, I didn't pay attention to it, and what happened is what I'd hoped. I went instinctively to certain chords I wouldn't have gone to before I'd done that. It's like an actor's preparation, building up sense memory. And Schwartz's score that he was creating was rich and textured.

Dominique, the young lover who steals the baker's wife from the baker, he got the soaring song, Proud Lady. I'm in love, I'm in love again, I'm in love, I'm in love and isn't it a crime, isn't it a crying shame, that the love of my life should have to be another man's wife. And then the baker got a beautiful song when he realizes his new life without a partner, and that song I think is Stephen Schwartz's best ballad, and it's called If I Have to Live Alone. The house seems smaller since she's been gone, the lights stay dim and the blinds stay drawn, but the clock keeps running and time runs on, and there's time enough has flown. If I have to live alone, the leaves still rustle.

[12:39] Robert W. Schneider: But as he was writing, he could not figure out a song for Geneviève, the baker's wife, the title character, until he was in Boston at a tour of The Magic Show. And he was going through a pretty tough time personally and professionally, and he couldn't really crack this show. And you know, he was a young man with a wife and a baby, and the stress was just too much for Stephen, so he decided to release his stress the way a lot of composers do, and that's by playing the piano. So he snuck into the Wilbur Theatre one early morning where The Magic Show was on tour, and like an old MGM movie or Diana the musical, the words just came pouring out. In one sitting, he created a song that would humanize and illustrate the conflict Geneviève was feeling, and it was called Meadowlark. When I was a girl I had a favorite

[13:32] ♪ Musical number: "The Meadowlark" — performed by Carole Demas ♪

[15:50] Robert W. Schneider: One of my favorite anecdotes I use with directing students is the Jerome Robbins story about constantly asking the writers of Fiddler on the Roof, what is this about? So much that finally one of them screamed, it's about tradition! And that, that was Nathan Lane, and that influenced every decision from that moment on. And it was something Schwartz and Stein needed to ask one another as well. Was it like the movie, a story about a combative community learning to work together for a common goal, or was it about three lovers wrestling with their hearts and heads? If you wanted a community show, Stein would give you great colorful characters, and Schwartz could give you delightful ensemble pieces like the songs Bread and Luckiest Man in the World.

Or if it was about the lovers, Stein could give you subtextual scenes wrapped around Schwartz's beautiful numbers like Where is the Warmth and Chanson. But it really had to be one over the other, otherwise it's two stories running parallel to one another, and that's not really what you want in a musical.

[16:53] Robert W. Schneider: Now, let's hit the road. David Merrick had a pretty ambitious schedule before opening this musical November 21st, 1976 at the Martin Beck Theater. He was going to do seven weeks in Los Angeles, seven in San Francisco, a few weeks in St. Louis, then a few weeks in Boston, a few in Philly, a few weeks in Washington. But first they had to secure a director, and they got Joe Hardy. Not the guy from Damn Yankees, but the Joe Hardy, who had directed You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and won a Tony for the thriller Child's Play. Not really the person you think of for Baker's Wife, but that's okay. He did want to pipe the smell of bread through the house, and I'm very on board with that brilliant decision. Move over, David Cromer.

[17:35] Robert W. Schneider: Casting for the village of 16, only 16 in a musical, included Tony Award winner Keane Curtis as the arrogant Marquis and the boss of Dominique, David Rounds as the priest, and a few others to make up this small village, including Companies' Terry Ralston as cafe owner Denise.

[17:54] Terry Ralston: Originally, they made a big point of saying, because I was the cafe owner, the script is going to be, it's imbalanced right now because it's really going to be about the villagers. And so, from the get-go, they didn't quite necessarily agree what it was going to be about.

[18:23] Terry Ralston: I remember Joe Stein, who directed it, he had me over to lunch and wanted me to do it and kind of talked me into doing it, because at that point, it didn't look like that much of an interesting role. The villagers were just kind of, you know, just the villagers. But he said, it's going to be built into, you know, it's going to be about them. And he asked me to also stand by for the wife, which I agreed to do. So, that was the beginning. And I remember having, you know, our first rehearsal and Joe was all excited. We're going to pipe bread smells into the audience. We're going to make it this multi-sense event, and you're going to smell baking bread. You know, bread became, you know, the nightmare of the piece. We rehearsed the bread number for, what, nine months.

[19:30] Kurt Peterson: And I knew it was going to be a lot of competition, because, you know, I'm hearing things on the street, like Kevin Kline's auditioning for it. And, you know, this person, that, Barry Bostwick is auditioning for it. You know, all the sort of the men of Broadway. And so, the song I used, and I brought it into Larry, was Home from The Wiz. And we worked it really hard, and it worked, because it had a little bit of that pop feel that Stephen Schwartz works with, you know. And so I went in, and we auditioned on the stage of I forget which theater, but I got a callback. And then my callback was for David Merrick and Stephen and a few other people out there. And for that one, I did a number I used a bit in auditions when working on characters like that. It was the Rain Song from 110 in the Shade. And I did that, and I got the job that day.

[20:35] Carole Demas: And for the baker's wife of the title, Carol Demas, fresh from Greece. She would offer vulnerability and understanding as Genevieve, which is great, because you have to love Genevieve, and you have to be willing to forgive her when she does come back at the end of the story. So this is actually a really interesting choice in this particular role. After all of this casting happened, it was time for a little field trip. Carol and the rest of the cast went out to Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Stephen sat down and played it. And we were just in tears. It's a beautiful score, just a beautiful score. And I was thrilled with the songs I had. I just, oh, my God. Then after that, Stephen came over to my studio on the grand piano, and he played Proud Ladies for me again and taught it to me.

You know, I think it's wonderful when you work with somebody who's done both lyrics and music, like in Sondheim, and Jerry Herman, and Stephen Schwartz, because then you get the whole package. When they sit down with you and teach you, they're not just concerned with music or the lyrics.

[21:42] Kurt Peterson: I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but that I think is true. And we have to cast a baker. He really is the star of the show. And for the baker, Zero Mostel. Nope, sorry, not Zero. Zero, too. Topol, the sexy Israeli star who won great acclaim as Tevye in the movie Fiddler on the Roof. He was going to be the dowdy, dumpy, sad, frumpy baker. Honestly, Topol was Dominique, just a little older. The baker is supposed to be Zero Mostel, or James Coco, or Dom DeLuise, or Charles Durning, or Benny Hill. I would love to have seen John Candy do it in a revival much later down the line. And to quote the wonderful Patti LuPone, who's going to be joining this show quite soon, she says, quote, regarding Zero and Topol, In this particular case, the space between the best thing and the next best thing could have filled the Grand Canyon.

And by the way, folks, Topol at this time was an international Israeli star, and he was coming in for $9,000 a week. Good for you, Topol. And Merrick felt this was justified. I can pay him $9,000 a week because he was such a big star and so beloved. People were going to come out for him. And the whole way that David Merrick wanted to build this was American debut of international star. Topol.

[23:06] Kurt Peterson: Let's talk about what rehearsals were like. Here's our good friend Kurt Peterson looking back on the first day. I knew I had a crush on Carol Demas right away because she was so pretty. Well, Topol never really wanted, I don't think, to be the older fellow. And I think he wanted my part, to be honest with you, and dressed accordingly. You know, they wanted to make him a little pudgier or make him look older. But every time they tried that, he'd come and his shirt would be down to his waist with his hairy chest hanging out. So it was one of the big problems of the show is Topol and his inability to really honor the text script. So it seems our first problem is that Topol either hadn't read the script or didn't read it carefully. Why was he a sad French baker that nobody wanted to fuck? Everybody wants to fuck Topol. He wanted to strip to the waist and dance on a table. Yes, imagine Zero Mostel doing that.

[24:07] Terry Ralston: Here's Terry talking a little bit about the writers. Stephen Schwartz was writing a romantic love story. And Joe Stein was basing this very much on the movie, which was about the villagers. And that sort of French culture where bread was so important, you know. And his focus was on the village and the reason that the villagers help is because they want him to bake bread. And that's a very difficult concept for Americans. But Stephen was writing this love story, and it just didn't gel. I must say, as the rewrites kept and then, you know, I mean, it was initially miscast. And every time Joe Hardy tried to steer Topol back to the script, Topol would push harder until eventually he and Hardy just stopped communicating.

It was clear this was Topol's show. He was the muscle, like Peter Felicia says, the wonderful Peter Felicia always asks, who's the muscle on a show? Is it the director? Is it the writer? Is it the actor? Is it the designer? Every show has a muscle behind it. And on Baker's Wife, it is clear the muscle is not David Merrick. It's Topol.

[25:39] Robert W. Schneider: So it's time to now open this show in Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion where they had the Oscars for millions of years. And I don't know if any of you have been to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It is massive. It is really a place where the grandest, biggest operas are performed. So May 11th, 1976, it is a sold out run. And this is, like I said, a big house. So what do you need in a big house? Big shows, big costumes, big orchestrations, big set design. Everything in this show is big. Problem is, the story isn't. Trouble began when they loaded in Joe Milziner's set, which was, like I said, very grand at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He had two big ass turntables. There were houses.

There were bakeries. Fine. Change it. It's not working. Make it smaller. Except, Milziner had died, and his associates refused to alter his work without his permission. Well, get a Ouija board, because this intimate show now looks like The Ring Cycle meets How Green Was My Valley, a movie taking place in a Welsh mining town. For those of you who've never seen it, it's so good. The reviews were polite, saying, quote, uh, potential. But it needed some more humor, more delicacy. So Merrick did what he always does. He fires people.

[26:58] Terry Ralston: And L.A. was really traumatic, because when we were in rehearsals, they had basically decided to recast the wife.

[27:05] Carole Demas: So they had cast Patti LuPone. Now, you know, none of us knew that. And, you know, the thing that just, of course, stands out so huge to me, because it was a very dramatic situation, is they fired the lighting person and they fired the choreographer. I mean, those are the, you know, we went through, and again, you can, I'm sure you probably have more information on this. I think it was three choreographers, and I'm not remembering names, unfortunately. Wonderful guys. But every choreographer that came in, of course, re-choreographed a brand number. And this went on for eight months. And, you know, the firings and the firings. The orchestrator was gone. The conductor was gone. Joe Hardy was about to be gone.

Jerry Robbins was courted, but he was not interested. Goodspeed favorite Dan Serretta was dropped as choreographer, and he was replaced with Rob Iscov, who was then relieved of his interim duties with a guy named Robert Tucker. Each choreographer meant a new version of the incredibly complicated number, Bread, which involved the passing of specific breads and cutting each other off in such a precise way. Here's a little sample of Bread. Move over, Sondheim.

[28:53] Carole Demas: Oh, and the worst. Poor Carol Demas. Poor Carol. She had been fired from Nonononette, and now the baker's wife, and she was dating Kurt Peterson. Oof. Her vulnerability, her ability to be forgiven by an audience, which is what got her the job in the first place, was not cutting it, apparently, so they needed a new Genevieve. And I would like to go to bat for Carol. Everyone loved her, and having seen her on stage, you would forgive her for anything. Uh, they should have fired Topol, but they didn't. I had a fear that she was going to be let go, not because of her performing, not because of her performing, but because her personality, which is warm and open and generous and verbal, I could see the director pulling away from her.

I could see something like that happening. So, when the rumor about the firing happened, I was not completely surprised. I was very sad because I thought she was wonderful, and I also thought she was a scapegoat for the bad reviews the show got, too, you know? And it's often said, you know, when a show's in trouble, the first people to go are the director and the ingenue, and that's what happened in our show, too. And we were in our first week, and Carol Demas had an accident with her arm. She had to go to the hospital. She had to have stitches. And so, they called me on a Sunday. Now, this was the first week and said, you may have to go on tonight. Well, I hadn't even been listening to her.

You know, I was working on my role, Denise, you know. Now, my song, Chanson, wasn't written at that point. But Joe Hardy was so freaked out, he just, he left the theater. And the cast went into, Denise Lohr was my understudy, and they went in to help her. So, I called Topol, and I said, Topol, come help me, you know? So, he gave me blocking, and I'd say, okay, leave the room, and I'd, you know, memorize the song. I'd say, okay, we cut Metal Arc, and, you know, we did all this. I didn't have to go on that night, as it turned out. And Patty went on, but David Merrick, in not wanting to have to pay her off, said she wasn't capable. You know, the next day, Monday was our day off. So, I thought, okay, I don't have to go on.

But I learned Metal Arc, and I remember George Firth had a little party for me on my day off, and I went over, and he insisted that I sing Metal Arc with, you know, in this room, and I was very shy about it. And I remember, I got on the sofa and put a pillow in front of my face and sang Metal Arc, you know? But, I mean, you know, that's a seven-minute number. I mean, thank God for young brains, you know? Oh, my God, because I literally learned the whole role. I hadn't looked at a script or even thought about it, you know, because I was concentrating on my own role. Tuesday morning, I get a call, and they said, you're on tonight. So, and this is at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. So, I look back, and I say, who was that person?

You know, I learned it, and I went on that night. I remember rehearsal was, I remember poor Kurt Peterson was, you know, like crying because we all felt bad, you know? And the bad thing was is that they didn't have time to, they hadn't done costumes or wigs for me. So, Denise was kind of this frumpy, you know, owned the cafe, and I had to go on in my costumes and wig as Denise, you know, the sexy. Topol was wonderful to me. He was absolutely wonderful. He had come in that day, and he gave me, you know, he gave me the blocking, and, you know, he was just wonderful. And so, I went on that night, and I did really well. I did go up in Metal Arc. So, I'm up on this huge platform in a slip at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and I went up, and I look back, and I think, I was so cool.

You know, I sat there, and the stage manager was throwing lines at me as they went by, and Topol was in the wings supporting me, giving me the lines as they came up. So, I sat there, and I waited for an important, you know, for a pause, a dramatic pause, and came in strong and ended strong, you know. And I got through the show fine, and again, Topol said, you know, you're my wonderful wife, you know. Yeah. So, I did it, and I ended up doing it for two weeks, and Patty came in, and Patty actually learned it from watching me do it, and that was kind of traumatic. She was not real easy at that point, you know. I mean, we're grateful, you know. I love Patty, but at that point, you know, she was learning a new role, and one night, she was standing like this, looking at me, watching me, and you know, and I was never secure with it.

And so, Topol said, do you want me to have her stand back a little bit? And I said, no, I'll take care of it. So, I went to the stage manager, and very nicely said, you know, would you just please ask Patty to just move back a little bit, because it's in my peripheral, and I'm just not that sure of myself yet. So, I did, and then at a later time, she called me on it and said, you weren't helpful to me, you know. And again, very young, I went and sat down next to her, and I said, okay, what is this shit? You know, let's work this out. Now, when Carol Demas was injured in Los Angeles, Merrick tried to claim she was unfit to perform in order not to fulfill her contract. What an asshole. She was out of the show, but she did get paid.

I have another podcast called Behind the Curtain, Broadway's Living Legends, that I did for a number of years with the wonderful Kevin David Thomas, and we had the great pleasure of talking to Carol, and this is her discussing her experiences on The Baker's Wife. It was down to like Betty and me, I'm told. Betty Buckley. And then, so I came east where rehearsals were, I came back home, and we all gathered at Stephen's home, and he played through some of the songs for us, and he played Meadowlark. Oh, I bet that was exciting. And it just, you know, it just blew me away. And I later came to know that this almost came out of him full-blown. You know, sometimes writers labor over things, but I think Stephen, part of Stephen's magic is that stuff mauls inside him, and then the time comes when he sits down and it pours out.

I'm sure that, you know, he's an exquisite craftsman, and I'm sure that there are times when, you know, he has labored a lot over certain things, but I believe he even, somebody told me that, that, about that song. So, and I thought, and I'm going to get to sing that. So, we rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed in New York, and every once in a while, David Merrick would come around.

[37:06] Kurt Peterson: What was that like?

[37:08] Carole Demas: That was fine, because he seemed very happy with what was going on, and he was very encouraging to me. You know, you would be on a break or something, and he said to me several times, you're just beautiful in this. It's wonderful. So, I felt good, you know, this time. Fool that I was. So, then we went back to Los Angeles, where we went into previews, and then we opened.

[37:39] Kurt Peterson: And you were playing opposite?

[37:41] Carole Demas: Topol.

[37:42] Kurt Peterson: We have questions, but yes.

[37:44] Carole Demas: Topol, who was playing not the Tevye that they expected.

[37:54] Kurt Peterson: Okay.

[37:55] Carole Demas: From what I've been told. Now, there was no way for me to know at the time exactly what were their reasons for casting him, but I could tell in rehearsals that there was some effort to get him to, what are we looking for here? He was playing it like a very macho Israeli, which he is, which he was, you know, and attractive and virile. But that's confusing in this piece because, you know, why is she so drawn away from him to this handsome young man when she's got this guy? But that question did not occur to me at the time. Now, when you look at it this way, and you realize I had a run of the play contract, he had a run of the play contract. One can easily assume that his run of the play contract was a lot more expensive than mine.

Let's think about that while you're trying to figure out if there's anything left of your broken heart to break again. We opened to good reviews, really, and mine were great, and I was very, very pleased. It was too big a house for this piece, and I was going through some personal stuff at the time. I was living with Jeff Conaway and had been for some years, and he was having his issues, and it was becoming difficult, and Kurt was luring me away, Kurt Peterson, and it was working, and he kept saying, you know, why are you hanging on to this kid with all these problems, and you could have this life with me, and I was pretty torn, which isn't a bad way to be when you're playing this part.

[40:02] Kurt Peterson: Right. It's kind of perfect. Art imitating life, or life imitating art.

[40:07] Carole Demas: So, that was going on, and we opened, we were working on it. It was a pretty tight company. We liked each other a lot. We all saw a lot of promise in this. The music was beautiful. Everybody was giving it their all, and on opening night, and please, whoever is listening to this, I want you to understand something. I loved Jeff.

[40:37] Carole Demas: Very much. And he was a good person and beautiful and talented and a gentle soul. But yes, most people know that he had terrible, terrible issues with addiction. On opening night, he left before I did, and I came home to find him what appeared to be very passed out. But when I woke up in the morning, this was still the case. Now, that wasn't totally unusual, but it was beginning to worry me a little. But we had a rehearsal, even though we had just opened, you know, we were still working on it. And I went to rehearsal and I tried to reach him by phone and I wasn't having any luck. So I called a friend who had a key and said, would you please go in and check on him? And the friend did and he called me back and he said, you know, Jeff, he's just passed out.

He's fine. But when I got home that night, it wasn't fine. And in an ambulance, we went racing to try to save him. He was in a coma for, I think, four days. And Kurt was wonderful because he was trying to keep me from being totally exhausted. So he was driving me to the hospital after our show at night where, you know, a doctor had said to me, sometimes, Carol, they will come back. But it has to be for somebody. Keep talking to him. Keep talking to him. And so I did. And finally, he did. So on one day, I was going, they told me he was awake and I was, you know, going, I was driving to the hospital to see him and wash his hair. And he talked to me. He said, I'm such a filthy mess. I said, well, I'll come and I'll wash your hair and you'll feel better.

And you still have to stay a few more days. And I locked myself out of the stupid house. And my car, you know, is there in front of the house for me to drive, but I don't have anything. No keys, no purse. And I remember this door, window down the side of the house that I could get to. It was a casement window that sometimes is hard to lock, so I'm shaking it, trying to get it open. And my hand goes through. Oh, yeah. There's like a three-inch scar on her wrist. Yeah. Looks like I tried to kill myself, which I honestly didn't. But it was bad. And we were living where there were a lot of other houses and there were no cell phones. And I went running down the road kicking doors because I had to hold this together while I was, you know, like a fountain.

So I got somebody who called an ambulance and they took me and they stitched up, you know, my whole hand, all of this. I look like Frankenstein's bride. But I got to the theater and the stage manager said, Carol, we have a full house. Your understudy isn't ready. Can you do this? And I said, you're damn right, I can. So they explained to the audience that this cast that they had put on me so that this tendon wouldn't tear, you know, and I said, can you have to put it all the way around? Can you just so they put it like this so it didn't show, you know, quite so much. And we covered it as much as we could. And they said that I had had an accident, but I was fine because it was noticeable. Oh, sure.

And I remember very well that night was when I really, really bonded with Meadowlark. Oh, yeah. The audience just went nuts. And when the show was over, I got down on the floor as soon as the curtain closed because, you know, my legs just I didn't know where they were. Yeah. That kind of thing that happens when you push it, when you're running on adrenaline and it's gone and you don't need it anymore. And Topol came over and he said, the bravest thing I've ever seen. It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Stephen came over and said, oh, thank you so much for doing this. You were just amazing tonight. OK, so I go home and the next morning I hear the phone and it's my my our manager and he says, I'm coming over.

I have to talk to you. Yeah, he comes over and he said, I he said, I couldn't explain this if I tried. But Carol, we have found out that they have Patti LuPone here in a hotel room and they're planning to replace you. So he said, do you think you could go on tonight? I said, if I could go on last night, I can go on tonight. And I went to the theater every night for I think it was like a week or 10 days while they just try. And Equity kept saying, you can't have two people under contract. You have to make a decision. Meanwhile, different cast members are knocking on my door and saying, hang in there. You know, we're listening. We're trying to see what's going on. We'll let you know. But just hang in there.

Every night I came and I got dressed, put on my eyelashes, you know, did everything with one hand and went, you know, ready to go on. And then the stage manager would come and say, I'm sorry, Miss Demas, but we feel that it would be better if your understudy played the role tonight. So one, so my manager comes one night to see how I'm doing. And it happens to be the same night that David Merrick shows up from New York. David walks into the room and Bob Lamond, my manager, says, hello, Mr. Merrick. And David is looking at me and looking at me. And I'm trying to figure out what does this look mean? And he walks out of the room and Bob says, God only knows what they told him, but what he just saw isn't what he expected.

He said, he's amazed at how great you look and how ready you are. So then David comes back in again and my manager says, Mr. Merrick, I think we should tell you that we know what you're up to. Carol is here. She has a run of the play contract. You have to honor it. You can replace anybody for any reason that you want, as long as you honor the contract. Right. Simple. But obviously she is ready to go on. She has been ready. Yeah. And has performed it. And meanwhile, the director has been coming to my room. Well, it was a Merrick production. Yeah. He was coming to my door and saying things like, Oh, Carol, you know, we all love you and you're so wonderful in this part. And we have such a long way to go on the road and we want you to go home and rest and take care of yourself because, you know, there's a lot ahead.

What he was really trying to do was to get me to leave so that they could say that I wasn't up to playing the role and they wouldn't have to pay me. Right. Right. Right. So and I know and I said, I'm OK. I went on, you know, in shock, practically. I'm I'm good. OK, so it hurts. But you know what I can do and I'm ready to go on. And he couldn't talk me into going home and I wasn't about to do it because I was we were all, you know, my manager and I figured this all out. You know, you be ready. So David Merrick at this point goes out into the hall and starts screaming, this is my show and Carol is not fired. Talk about, you know, being bounced around until you think you're, you know, your insides are going to die.

He he goodness only knows how they had described my situation or whatever. You know, I think for them they had begun to look at the whole thing a different way, especially given their issues with Topol. And they they were trying to they thought, oh, this is a stroke of good luck. She's injured. Now we can get rid of her, you know. And anyway, finally, they made up their minds and equity called and said they'd made the decision. And so there I was. But the one thing that I will say is that that heartbreak gave me Metal Ark, which is one of the most extraordinary theater songs ever written and is often sung just as though it's a song. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it's a story. It's a brilliant story with so many layers of things going on at the same time that even today, when I sing it and I thank God that I still can.

I find things that I that I didn't know that I right in the middle of it, something will strike me. My God. Right. All this time, how did I not even think of that? And there's something else to bring to it to keep it going and keep it going. Now there's a new opening number. Thank you so much, Jerome Robbins. But there is still no directors. They've not hired a replacement for Joe Hardy. And there are new changes coming in by the writers. And there's nobody really leading this particular ship because the director is nowhere to be seen. One of the big changes that David Merrick requests is that they cut Proud Lady. Why? It's such a good number. And now they have a new leading lady. And they also have a new anecdote for the world of Broadway gossip.

And that is the meeting of Topol and Patti LuPone. In her wonderful autobiography, Miss LuPone says on the first day of rehearsal, he grabbed her breast, making a joke about meat on the bone. And she had to call him Mr. Topol. So this is automatically going off to a great start. Kurt and Terry look back on the switch from vulnerable Carol Demas to warrior Patti LuPone.

[51:11] Kurt Peterson: Well, I know Topol, Patti, when she came in, came in really strong and kind of aggressively with Topol. And Topol could be very difficult. I mean, there's a lot about him out there. I know Patti wrote a book. And as I said, we're friends now. And maybe once we get to that part of our story here, I'll tell you about that incident. She says, you're in my book. You know, I've heard just terrible stories about him, like in Fiddler. If he didn't respond to somebody, it could be really horrible to him. Because I heard, you know, he was horrible to some of his golders. You know, so I never was in on it. But at that point, I could imagine he was probably pretty rude to her. And Patti's strong. She's a really strong woman. I think she tried very hard to be, to have Topol like her, actually. You know, and came on, you know, kind of strong. You know, when something didn't click with him, he could be, I guess, pretty hard on the person.

[52:37] Carole Demas: Tell me about the switch in directors.

[52:39] Kurt Peterson: There were fights between she and Topol that I've never seen or heard anything like it in my entire life. What were they about? It didn't make any difference. They were at each other's throats. And it would be another something he did on stage. He was, you know, he was a pain in the ass on stage. He would do things because he was, he really was a chauvinist, a real sexist. And she would react. But the fights backstage were just incredible. But she and I got along great, got along great the whole time because we, we really didn't do, you know, we sort of met. When we came on stage, we met, we flirted with each other. Then we went off and sang our songs.

[53:14] Carole Demas: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[53:14] Kurt Peterson: You know, so there was not a lot of, of, of scene work that we had to do with each other. But we, you know, we got along.

[53:22] Kurt Peterson: Topol most likely didn't like Patti because she did not suffer assholes gladly. She was not interested in his shit. And it seems like she let him know it. And like any asshole, he puffed up and soon it was union meetings, discipline hearings, bad behavior, accusations, storming off, storming on, more bread, enough with the bread. Where's Eton, damn it? In her book, she discusses how Topol hated the lyrics so much. So he would just sing blah, blah, blah on stage in front of a paying audience. He would verbally and physically abuse the cast. And, you know, Patti in her book says there's two sides to every story, but every side thinks he's an asshole. And unfortunately, when they were in San Francisco, Schwartz had a family issue that demanded he returned home as his wife after five months of pregnancy had her water break. Thank God she and the baby survived. And I think that sort of puts life in perspective, doesn't it? Uh

[54:14] Terri Ralston: And then we moved to San Francisco, so that's when they really started making some changes when we moved to San Francisco. So they started bringing in other directors and they handled it so poorly. You know, I love Joe Hardy and you know, they were just terrible to him. They just started bringing in other directors without even talking to him about it, you know. And they brought in Gower Champion at one point and he watched it and he said, again, this involves me, he said, well, what you have to do is you have to give that girl a solo at the top of the show that lets people know what the show is about. Well, that girl was me. And so that's what Stephen went and wrote. You know, I remember him saying, you know, you want to hear the song I wrote for you?

Yeah. And quite a beautiful song. Yeah. Well, Stephen was, I went to school in San Francisco and so a teacher friend of mine was going to be out of town. He had this wonderful Victorian home, which he gave for me to stay in. And so Stephen's wife and son were coming in and he said, oh, I don't know where we're going to go. And I said, will you come stay with me? So I lived with Stephen and his wife and son and he and Topol were not getting along. And in San Francisco, the critics did not like The Baker's Wife. Even the ushers took pity on the cast, inviting them out to food and drinks, sending them candy, boosting their spirits. But then Merrick materialized for a post-show meeting with the cast.

He gave them four options. But Patty, in her book, remembers one very vividly in which they would drop a city from the tour. That would be Philadelphia. They would go back into rehearsals for nine weeks with the new director. But basically the stars and featured players would go back into rehearsal for no pay and the chorus would get a tiny, tiny, tiny stipend. They, of course, as a group, refused it off to St. Louis, Missouri, August 16th. At this point, Topol was driving everyone crazy and just saying, quote, he was only doing it for the money. At this point, Topol is driving everybody crazy and he just keeps going around telling people that he was only doing it for the money. It's a bad time.

King Curtis was seen weeping in a phone booth, begging to let go, be let go of the show. Tim Jerome, who played the schoolteacher, he visited Topol in his dressing room and he tried to gently enlighten Topol about his very bizarre performance. You see, Timothy Jerome had a line where he described the baker as old, jolly and in love with Geneviève. And he told Topol, well, because you aren't playing any of that, the line doesn't really make sense. So Topol said, ah, yes, let me fix that. And he came out on stage that night with white powder in his hair, playing cartoony jolly and making googly eyes at Patti LuPone. But what he was really doing was cutting Timothy Jerome down in front of the entire cast and company.

At notes, Topol would say things about Patti LuPone like he didn't believe a word she said to him on stage. So finally, Miss LuPone and seven actors wrote a letter to Equity demanding that Topol's union membership be taken away. So we were all called in a group and David Merrick stood up and was really trying to kind of humiliate Topol. And of course, here I am again. I stand up and I say, well, Mr. Merrick, I don't think all of this can be blamed on Topol. I don't think this is all his fault. And I don't know where I got the, you know, but, you know, I didn't respect, you know, I don't think I have that kind of courage now. But at any rate, the cast was not thrilled with me. So Hardy was eventually replaced by Joe Stein's friend, film director John Barry, whose greatest work had not even yet come out, and that would be The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

And John Barry was more interested in the authenticity of provincial France rather than fixing the broken musical. And now, rightly, Barry said, quote, France is light and bubbly. This is sluggish and heavy and Topol needs to come alive, which didn't really endear him to Topol. A little bit more on John Barry. He was a film director. He knew nothing about musicals. He spent most of the audition, most of the first days of rehearsal, I mean, endless rehearsals. Everyone that wasn't rehearsing the bread number up in the rehearsal room, the bread number was rehearsed every single day, I think, for eight months. There you go. He spent hours and hours and hours with the opening where they would have the, you know, the French bull, the balls, they use their little long balls.

They're throwing the long balls for hours after hours trying to get the realism in the rehearsal. The musical theater folks who were watching said, Oh, my God, we are in trouble. And we were we were they also cut my number there. Cut Proud Ladies. Yeah, it was one number that worked. Oh, I was irate. I, I was I, I screamed and I yelled and I said, You guys are crazy. This goddamn number works in the show. Rehearsals soon became very, very, very, well, at the end, almost violent. Pierre Epstein picked up a chair was going to throw it at the director. Who picked up a chair? Pierre Epstein picked up a chair, he was going to throw it at the director. That was the last day of rehearsal in Washington.

You get me started on this. I mean, you know, we all had t-shirts at the end. I survived The Baker's Wife. And I remember Ben Raisin, who had also been in A Little Night Music was in this and he quit. He had had it. And I remember us all, you know, rehearsing the bread number over and over and looking down and seeing him sit by the swimming pool. You know, one of the reviews said, quote, with an awkwardness that is painful, Barry squashes every chance for a build, punctures every potential uplift, stamps out all possibilities for charm, and then shrugs helplessly over the mess he has made. And in response to that criticism, Patti LuPone says, I thought that critic was too kind. Here's a little bit more from Patti LuPone's book.

He rubbed everyone the wrong way. Literally, he actually came to blows with Pierre Epstein. Pierre and John got into an argument about something. Pierre was so enraged that he lifted a cafe table over his head and started wielding it like a medieval axe preparing to smite the evil ogre, Barry. Barry came after Pierre with his fists cocked, and there was a moment in time when everything froze as we waited for one or the other to throw the first blow. That's when some people grabbed Pierre and pulled him away and others grabbed John and pulled him away. The rest of us went running out of the rehearsal room, some in tears, some in shock, all of us asking, why are we going through this in our lives?

They had to play six weeks at the Kennedy Center. Four would be with Topol, and David Merrick decided that the last two would be with a replacement because Merrick was finally bringing Topol up on charges, which meant the cast had to be testifying when they weren't in rehearsal, which might be a good thing because the new Amabla was driving everyone crazy with his joy and enthusiasm. His name was Paul Sorvino. Sorvino was a very respected character actor in his late 30s who had made a name for himself in the play That Championship Season and a bunch of those 70s neurotic film comedies. Plus, he wanted to be an opera singer so the guy could actually sing. And he came in as optimistic as can be to a group of people who had been suffering every single day for eight months.

Every time somebody new came into a room, Paul would just hit a high C to show off. This cast was not here for his joy. Not today, Satan. Poor Paul. He just wanted to be nice. Patty, in her book, described him as, quote, howdy-doody at Auschwitz. He came in all, you know, all this enthusiasm and the whole cast was just like.

[1:03:11] Terri Ralston: At that point, eight months of just, you know, firings and fights and we were and so he came in and I remember him. Well, as a song, one of the songs, you know, he was a tenor and Topol was a baritone. And we're used to hearing all this, you know, deep baritone stuff. And he's taught, you know, all has to sing the high, you know, the high note at the end. And we weren't good to him. I mean, I'm sure he said that cast was the worst group of people I've ever worked with. And in Washington, one of the most infamous stories about David Merrick and The Baker's Wife occurred. Josh was actually there. There's been a lot of stories. There's been a lot of versions of this particular story. So let's hear from Josh's.

[1:03:29] Joshua Ellis: Now, this is where everybody has a different version of a story. OK, there is a story and it happened in Washington, D.C. or it happened in Minneapolis or it happened someplace else. I will tell you my version of the story. I'm sure Stephen has his version of the story. Anyway, there's a certain moment in the show where Patty has run out of the house. She's standing on the edge of the stage, prepared to do "Meadowlark." And there is total silence. Not a single note is coming from the orchestra pit. And Patty freaks, I mean, you know, like what's happening and it turns out that someone has removed the sheet music of "Meadowlark" from every piece of every piece of every music stand in the orchestra pit.

So there is, in fact, no music for them to play the song and she didn't want to do it acapella. And so the show just continued right after where "Meadowlark" would have happened. Stephen is in the audience and is freaking out and he comes back and starts screaming, where is that fucking Merrick? Where is that fucking Merrick? I'm getting my agent and I'm getting the Dramatists Guild. This is unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. I think it was in Washington, D.C., because it was the first time I knew or heard that Stephen Schwartz's agent was Shirley Bernstein, who was Leonard Bernstein's sister. So it was like, well, we're talking clout here. OK, so the balance of power is completely misunderstood by me because I don't understand how much clout that she had.

I find out years later that David Merrick liked her more than any other agent and they had a lovely relationship. But who knew that day? It didn't seem so. So Stephen Schwartz flies into the company manager's office and confronts David Merrick and goes, what did you do with "Meadowlark"? And Merrick says, Stephen, Stephen. The "Meadowlark" blew away, OK? But aren't we lucky? We're in Washington, D.C., home of the FBI. Maybe the FBI can recover our little "Meadowlark." So this does not placate Stephen Schwartz and Iota. And David Merrick refuses to admit he had anything to do with removing the song from the. He wanted that song out of the show, as he used to joke, even if I have to kill it by replacing birdseed with poison, I will get rid of that song.

When Patty was told they want to cut a portion of "Meadowlark," she said, quote, take it out of bread, word of mouth spread about how bad the show was. And The Baker's Wife ended up breaking a Kennedy Center record because that's where it was playing at the Kennedy Center, being the least sold house in a house of twenty-seven hundred. There were only twenty-five people. Once again, twenty-seven hundred seats, only twenty-five people. Now, things came to a head during a note session where John Barry said, quote, tonight "Meadowlark" is cut for good. And Patty stormed out as now her role was basically high Amabla by Amabla. And she went back to her dressing room shouting, breaking things, letting her rage get out. I understand the cast swooped in and they forced her to take a Valium. Yes, they actually massaged Valium down her throat to calm her down. She still performed that night, and I would.

[1:07:42] Robert W. Schneider: Shirley Bernstein, Merrick's agent, looked at him and said, "David, what is going on? Why aren't you closing this thing?" And he came clean. Motown Records, yep, Motown Records, not him, was where all the money was coming from in The Baker's Wife. David Merrick didn't put in one penny from his pocket into the show, and an essential part of the contract he had with Motown Records was that he was going to bring this show to Broadway. So Shirley Bernstein, what a good agent, she got on a plane, went to Motown Records and said, "Look, this is not what you want. Let this go." And they did. And he posted the closing notice in Washington, D.C. two days before this thing was supposed to come to New York, losing one million dollars in the process. Here's Kurt and Terri.

[1:08:34] Kurt Peterson: And we played Washington where the houses were, I think maybe Josh maybe mentioned, the houses were the smallest houses they've ever seen in a theater in Washington. I mean, really, 24 people? That's how, that's what a bomb we were in Washington. And so the last day of rehearsal is memorable because we're all in this room. I mean, this sort of thing is in my memory. I mean, I picture it. I can take myself right there. And we're all in this room. And by the way, the director is making everybody crazy at that point. And oh, at one point, the director in Tocco almost got into a physical thing when we were in San Francisco when he first came. But so we're in this room in D.C. and the equity, I mean, I laugh about all this now because it's so dramatic. And the equity deputy and the director got into a physical confrontation and a table was picked up. They were going at each other and they had to be pulled apart. They literally had to be pulled apart.

[1:09:50] Terri Ralston: Oh, my God.

[1:09:51] Kurt Peterson: Yeah. And I remember our last, you know, I remember because both King Curtis and I, wonderful King Curtis, we, well, first of all, you know, luckily we had done Broadway shows. For many, it was going to be their first Broadway show, you know. And so we were opening in New York in two weeks. And I was, again, I can see myself walking down the street to the Kennedy Center and King Curtis came running up and met me and he said, "They posted our closing notice." And we screamed and hugged and danced around. We were so, so happy that it was closing. And I think now, oh, my God, how awful it was for so many.

[1:10:42] Robert W. Schneider: Merrick wouldn't return to Broadway again until 42nd Street, which was a big old hit. And that was his last one. He had a stroke in 1983 and that left him really a shell of his former self. He would produce and try. But at this time, Broadway was ready to move on from David Merrick and his style of producing a colorful character whose offstage personality was sometimes more interesting than what he would actually put on the stage. So The Baker's Wife would not come in during the 1976 season, and it most likely would have knocked side by side by Sondheim or Happy End off the best musical nominees. LaPone would have been nominated for best actress, but still most likely would have lost to Dorothy Loudon, maybe King Curtis for best supporting actor in a musical.

Sorry, Ned Sheeran. And Schwartz definitely would have gotten the score nomination. But the score, the magnificent score would need to be heard. But how? Nobody recorded musicals that didn't come in. Now we're going to meet a guy named Bruce Yeko. And in 1977, Bruce recorded The Baker's Wife in a Greenwich Village apartment. Bruce is a patron saint of musical theater history because he ended up recording tons of shows that no one wanted, like Pretty Belle, In Trousers and countless others. And he was able to get Paul Cervino, LaPone and Kurt Peterson, Terry Ralston back to record a few songs, which helped keep it alive. And that allowed few productions to pop up here and there. Finally, after some distance in 1985, Stephen Schwartz brought The Baker's Wife to the York Theater in New York City, a very intimate space.

And that starred Jack Weston from One Night Stand fame. And he was a mob. Kevin Gray was Dominique and Joyce Bowden was Genevieve. And one critic said, quote, "The show was Broadway bound and didn't come in. Now we know why." But honestly, the issue in this production really seemed to be Jack Weston, who was marvelous when he was in the right part. This just was not the right part.

[1:13:30] Robert W. Schneider: Now, over in England, hot shot director Trevor Nunn was riding pretty high. He'd done Nicholas Nickleby, Cats, Les Mis, and he was looking for a new project. And he was intrigued by the score because countless actors coming to audition for him would sing Where is the Warmth, Meadowlark, Chanson. So he opted to revamp the show with Stephen Schwartz and Joe Stein, who were unfortunately licking their own wounds after Rags had closed. So in 1989, Trevor Nunn led the team in a workshop where he asked the writers to do a 180. The show was about specific villagers needing a baker, not a domestic love story, which is ironic because for the lead, Trevor Nunn cast his then-wife Sharon Lee Hill. Alan Armstrong, the original London tenardier, was the baker, and this ran for a month in London, where they actually did pop the smell of fresh bread in the theater. Thank you. But this time it wasn't Jack Weston, Amabla, who was the problem. This time it was Geneviève, Sharon Lee Hill. She was called charmless and flat.

[1:14:00] Stephen Schwartz: I think it's important that for a musical to be successful, all the elements have to seem as if they belong in the same show. You can't have a book that's in one style and songs that are in another style, or even within songs, you can't have lyrics that have one kind of tone with music that feels completely different. And I think that one of the things that happened to make The Baker's Wife become successful is that both Joe and I moved toward one another tonally, so that now there seems to be more integrity of tone within the show. And then a few years later, the show would just sort of drift around. But in 2005, it went to Paper Mill Playhouse over in New Jersey with Lenny Wolpe, Alice Ripley, and Max von Essen under the direction of the great Gordon Greenberg.

He had done a 2002 version of this over at the Goodspeed Opera House. And despite all of its charm and wonderful performances, and it got really wonderful reviews, it still felt too small of a show to be in such a big environment. For this version, because it's Alice Ripley, Geneviève was now aged up, and they added a very French, Gaelic tone to everything. But it still didn't feel like it had found its correct playing space until 2022. And now you're gonna meet me. Yes, I actually played a part in the development of The Baker's Wife. I feel so honored and so excited. I have a theater company in New York City with a wonderful man named Jim Jamiro, and the theater company is called the J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company.

And our mission is to take musicals that we think deserve to be seen again by audiences. And we'll do shows like Woman of the Year, or our first show was Seesaw. And for our second season, one of the things that was important was looking at a musical that maybe had closed out of town, that people needed to see. Now we perform in a 99-seat venue. So by default, the show automatically has to be intimate. And so we approached Mr. Schwartz and said, "We want to do this, but we want to do this in a very intimate version in which the audience really does feel like they are part of this town." And to our wonderful surprise, he agreed. And we had an amazing, amazing group of individuals. Howard Pinhasick was our baker.

Maddie Claire Parks was Geneviève. Bruce Landry was Dominique. And the amazing Kelly Lester was Denise. And what we decided to do was we took Denise and made her a conduit throughout the entire show, consistently talking to the audience. So that way, the audience always felt like they had a tour guide. And then it sort of justifies why she opens the show with Chanson. We did cut a song called Endless Delights in Act 2, which was a song that Geneviève and Dominique sing when they're on the road together after they've escaped. Mr. Schwartz's reasoning simply was the audience did not care about those characters at that point. And what was interesting to me was after the show, so many individuals came up to me and said, "Where's Endless Delights?" Like I took away their greatest, greatest baby.

[1:17:20] Robert W. Schneider: Congratulations again on the wonderful production.

[1:17:25] Terri Ralston: Which Stephen talks about all the time. You know, he really does. And I loved it. I just loved it. Thank you. Wonderful. One of the greatest joys for me about getting to work with a living author, and especially Mr. Schwartz, and it's something that I wish all new musical theater writers were able to take with them, is that this was an individual who has every single right, because he's got the resume, to say that he wants things done a certain way. And I remember when we cast our wonderful Geneviève, who was, like I said, Madison Clare Parks. She has got an amazing, amazing voice, an amazing voice, but it doesn't sound like Patti LuPone. And I said, you know, it's not going to sound like that.

And she said, and he said to me, rightfully, he said, "Where in the script do we have to make it sound like somebody that we've done previously? We can play with keys. We can play with this. We can play with that." One of the things that I think is really cool is that I've had the great opportunity of seeing people like Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander, Aronson Flaherty working with directors and actors, and they have such a willingness to change and alter things that they've created for the betterment of the audience's enjoyment of a story. And that's something that I wish they taught to a lot of new musical theater writers, that just because you write it doesn't mean that that's the best version of it, and that you should be open to other suggestions.

And of course, you know, you can make a suggestion to a writer, and the writer will say to you, "No, I don't want it that way because of X, Y, and Z." But it's always about the story. It's not about the ego. And I think that's something that's impressive. I'd love to give Stephen Schwartz the last word on The Baker's Wife today, which who knows, I think out of all the shows that we've covered on this season, this might be the only one I can think of that would actually come back to Broadway and probably be somewhat successful. Eventually, Schwartz and Stein realized what this show was about. And in a lot of ways, I feel like not only is Schwartz talking about the show, but he's also talking about the actual way that we look at The Baker's Wife. Beautiful, yet flawed, but also much better than most of us think. Take it away, Mr. Schwartz.

[1:19:36] Stephen Schwartz: The central story is about relationships. For a relationship really to endure and be successful, whether it's a friendship or a marriage or whatever, each of the parties of the relationship has to face the truth about the other one, accept the other one's flaws as well as their strengths, and love them in spite of and because of those things. It requires being clear-eyed and honest about who the other person is.

[1:20:20] Robert W. Schneider: If you really like what we are doing, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to my non-profit, the American Musical Theater Archives, which is diligently working to ensure that the music, lyrics, and librettos of these shows, as well as many others, are being preserved for future academics and theater lovers. Every dollar that you contribute, once again, a tax-deductible dollar helps to legitimize the study and practice of musical theater. Simply click the link in today's show description or simply go to my website, www.robwschneider.com, look for the tab that says AMTA, and you can make a donation there. Please, let's make sure that the future academics who love musical theater and see it as the art form that it truly is have the financial resources necessary to keep spreading that love and preserving this history. See you next episode!