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[0:18] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:34] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and this is the second part of my recent conversation with author Barry Kester, whose new book is titled Round in Circles: The Story of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel.

[1:08] David Armstrong: Last time, Barry and I focused on the three people at the center of Carousel's creation: Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, and producer Theresa Helburn, whose vision and obsession it was to turn Ferenc Molnar's play Liliom into a musical.

[1:23] David Armstrong: Today, Barry takes us behind the scenes of Carousel's rehearsals and its rocky out-of-town tryouts, including its very first performance in New Haven when the show ran more than four hours long.

[1:35] David Armstrong: And in the process, we expand our focus to the other key members of Carousel's creative team, especially choreographer Agnes De Mille, all of whom were crucial in helping Rogers and Hammerstein turn what could have been a disaster into one of the landmark musicals of the Golden Age of Broadway.

[1:52] David Armstrong: This episode is made possible in part through the generous support of our patron club members Roger Kloresse, Elizabeth Troxler, and Chris Moad.

[2:01] David Armstrong: If you would like to support the work of Broadway Nation, I'll have information at the end of the podcast about how you too can become a patron.

[2:09] David Armstrong: Here we go.

[2:10] David Armstrong: Let's actually talk about some of these other members of the team.

[2:13] David Armstrong: Agnes De Mille is brought on very early in the process, even though she does not have the warmest relationship with Richard Rodgers.

[2:22] David Armstrong: Talk a little bit about why they felt she was so important to get on board even before their contract with the Theater Guild is signed and how that played out.

[2:31] Barry Kester: She was brought on board because she was very good at what she did. They loved her work on Oklahoma. And I don't think her relationship with Richard Rodgers, certainly not at that early stage. I don't think it had deteriorated. I think she felt that Rogers got a little bit full of himself, shall we say, after the success of Oklahoma. But the truth is they were both pretty characters. And she had become even more successful post-Oklahoma on her own. Yeah, yeah. She was now one of the major forces in the American theater in a way that she was not when she went into Oklahoma. She wanted to throw her weight around. Richard Rodgers wanted to throw his weight around, but he never lost sight of her ability.

He knew she was the best person for the job. She had difficult relationships with everybody. She hated Rouben Mamoulian. And in fact, as you will recall from the book, the dance rehearsals took place in a studio 40 blocks away from the theater. And that was on purpose to keep Rouben Mamoulian away from Agnes De Mille's rehearsals. Agnes De Mille felt she was underappreciated, both in terms of credit and financially. And eventually, years later, after both Rogers and Hammerstein had died, the family made a settlement with her, and she now gets credit for every production of Carousel as dance originator and a royalty.

[3:52] David Armstrong: Before we get to Rouben Mamoulian, let's talk about Agnes De Mille's right-hand person, which is of course Trude Rittmann.

[3:59] Barry Kester: I have a whole episode about Trude Rittmann, a fascinating, much neglected figure in the American theater.

[4:05] David Armstrong: I'm so delighted to hear you say that. As soon as we finished, I'm going to have that episode down because I fell in love with Trude Rittmann just reading her life story. And I understand, and I hope it's true, that her great-niece is writing a biography of her because it needs to be out there. She's a fascinating character with a fascinating life story. As you know, forced into exile from Germany, she may well have been one of Europe's greatest 20th-century composers. She was on track for that. She fled via Holland to the UK, taught at an art school here in Devon, where she was introduced to music for dance, went to America, met Agnes De Mille, worked for the American Ballet Theatre, and then was brought in on Carousel.

And then the list of musical credits is incredible. Very, very closely with Frederick Loewe on My Fair Lady's score. She's another one who has an ongoing but prickly relationship with Richard Rodgers, and he values her so much. She works on every single Richard Rodgers show, I believe, post Carousel.

[5:06] Barry Kester: Virtually, yes. And she wrote the entire Small House of Uncle Thomas ballet in The King and I. That's how much he trusted her.

[5:14] David Armstrong: Exactly. The episode where I could talk about Trudy. There's a quote from him after he sees the ballet for the first time that she and Jerome Robbins had concocted again in a rehearsal studio far away from the other rehearsals that were going on. He said, you know, it's supposed to be Rogers and Hammerstein, not Rogers and Hammerstein and Rittmann, but then he didn't change it. He kept it exactly the way she had written it.

[5:36] Barry Kester: Yes.

[5:37] David Armstrong: Yes. And that was his fear with Agnes De Mille. And perhaps because Agnes De Mille had a much more established record when they were doing Carousel, Rogers from time to time felt that she really did want Carousel to be Rogers and Hammerstein and DeMille's Carousel.

[5:55] Barry Kester: And they were not going to let that happen.

[5:56] David Armstrong: And she probably did.

[5:58] Barry Kester: What I think it's hard for people to understand now is the impact of Bloomer Girl at the time, because it's a show that's almost entirely forgotten. But at that moment, it was a giant hit show of which Agnes De Mille was largely the star.

[6:14] David Armstrong: Yeah. In the library at Lincoln Center, the New York Public Library, there is a video later on, and I refer to this in the book, when relations between the Rogers and Hammerstein families and Agnes De Mille had been resolved, they recorded Agnes De Mille talking about the dances in Carousel. And by way of introduction, Mary Rogers says that to see Carousel without Agnes De Mille's dances is like, can't remember the exact quote, but something like reading Oliver Twist without Fagin. Something like that. And that's how important the dances were to the story. And ironically, we haven't seen Agnes De Mille's dances in the most significant revival since then. Although they're still following her lead, no matter who the choreographer is.

[7:00] Barry Kester: That's right. And they are available on YouTube.

[7:02] David Armstrong: So now let's talk about Rouben Mamoulian, who becomes the director of the show, much to Agnes's chagrin.

[7:09] Barry Kester: Her husband was away in the war.

[7:11] David Armstrong: That's right. In World War II, and she writes a letter to him, furious that Mamoulian is going to be the director.

[7:18] Barry Kester: Yes, she says in that letter his direction is about as intelligent as a lamb results on the first line. And she says Mamoulian is going to direct. Oh hell L L.

[7:29] David Armstrong: And so, first of all, what's the nature of their conflict prior to this? Why is she so upset about this?

[7:33] Barry Kester: I'm not a hundred percent sure. Because he wouldn't listen to her, I guess. They had just had a bad working relationship. And he fell out with Rogers and Hammerstein after Oklahoma because he engaged a press agent, notwithstanding the fact that the Theatre Guild had a publicity and press agent in which he was claiming all sorts of things, such as he was responsible for the quiet opening of Oklahoma. He was responsible for the casting of John Wright and Joan Roberts, and much more on those lines. And Rogers and Hammerstein were furious. They didn't want to use him on Carousel. They wanted, first of all, I think I'd say, who was doing military service, as was Josh Logan. Mamoulian only got it by default.

[8:19] David Armstrong: So he's the third choice at best.

[8:21] Barry Kester: At best, yes. And yet they obviously have respect for his talent. They are eager to have him if they can't get the other two.

[8:26] David Armstrong: If they can't get the other two, yes, as I say, he got it by default. Which is fascinating in a way, because obviously, and I think you actually quote Mary Rogers again. It's interesting how Mary Rogers has resurfaced in our world so significantly of late. But doesn't she talk about Rogers having the same attitude toward Agnes De Mille as Irving Berlin had toward Ethel Merman?

[8:51] Barry Kester: Yes, what was that quote? To the essence of I'll never work with her again until I need her.

[8:56] David Armstrong: Yes, that's right.

[8:58] Barry Kester: Which is very Broadway.

[9:00] David Armstrong: You've read the book more recently than I have. But we end up with this quite high-powered team. And what does Mamoulian bring to the show? Why are they eager to get him in spite of their differences with him?

[9:14] Barry Kester: Well, Rogers had worked with Mamoulian a lot in the past. They did the film Love Me Tonight back in the early 30s. And he did a good job on Oklahoma. Again, I guess it's down to their professionalism. They're not going to let personal antagonisms get in the way of having the best man available, and he was available to do the job.

[9:34] David Armstrong: And one of the other key members of the team was Don Walker, who became the orchestrator for the show. What did he bring to the project?

[9:41] Barry Kester: He brought a great deal. He was not first choice. Rogers' go-to orchestrator was Robert Russell Bennett, but he was tied up with another project. So Rogers turned to Don Walker, and as it turned out, it was a tremendous choice. I personally believe that his orchestration for Carousel are as good, if not better, than any other of the Golden Era musicals. And Walker treated the score of Carousel as he would treat a Puccini opera. He likened it to that, which for me is interesting because I've always said that Richard Rodgers was Broadway's Puccini in terms of his melodic and harmonic gifts and the Puccini connection with the show in that Molnar turned him down. I just find that an astonishing comment.

He treated the score with so much respect and brought Rogers's melodies to the very best that they could be. So I think he had a tremendous impact on this score and many of the others that he did Fiddler on the Roof, Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, Pajama Game, and so forth, Cabaret.

[10:45] David Armstrong: And for Carousel, as you mentioned, he's orchestrating for a much larger orchestra than was typical, even of the time of giant orchestras.

[10:45] Barry Kester: Thirty-nine. They had to take seats out of all the theaters out of town and on Broadway in order to fit the orchestra in the pit.

[11:00] David Armstrong: Yeah, they did.

[11:01] Barry Kester: Yes.

[11:02] David Armstrong: And you would never see or hear a thirty-nine-piece pit orchestra in a musical again, I'm sure.

[11:07] Barry Kester: Unfortunately not. When an opera company does it, you may get to hear that.

[11:11] David Armstrong: As we go into the rehearsals and the tryouts period, this is a fascinating part of the book, and as often the out-of-town tryout aspect of any story of a musical is, because so much goes on. This is not a show that just works out of the box and is done and is perfect from the beginning. They first open in New Haven. What's the reaction you alluded to it a minute ago?

[11:33] Barry Kester: This show is, first of all, way too long. Yes, that first night ran for four hours, finishing well after midnight. Act one worked reasonably well, but the second was a complete disaster. The ballet, the response to the ballet, which everybody thought was going to be a highlight of the show, was totally negative. And the ballet, as I say, ran at about forty-five minutes. It was telling a very complicated story. There was dialogue involved. Rather than have ballet substitutes, they had the actual cast members, so the actual Julie, the actual Billy involved in the ballet, and it just did not work at all.

[12:12] David Armstrong: And just to be clear, this is a much more expanded, bigger idea than the ballet that would eventually be in the show and that we come to know.

[12:20] Barry Kester: It's not Billy looking back. He was watching this happening in real time en route to heaven. So sort of simultaneous events. His events and the events of what's happening in the world are happening simultaneously.

[12:31] David Armstrong: Exactly.

[12:32] Barry Kester: The ballet begins with Julie giving birth to Louise on the stage. That's how intricate it was, and shows every stage of Louise's development, showing her growing unhappiness, her loneliness, but in a very, very protracted manner. And this was something that DeMille and Hammerstein had worked up closely together. The idea was Hammerstein's, and DeMille turned it into a ballet. And yet it just sat there.

[12:59] David Armstrong: It went down like a lead balloon.

[13:01] Barry Kester: You talk about this meeting after the show, after the opening night. Was it actually that night or was it the next day?

[13:07] David Armstrong: I can't remember.

[13:08] Barry Kester: It was after that night. They went back to a hotel room.

[13:11] Barry Kester: This account is from Agnes De Mille, who obviously was part of it. She says that they retire to a hotel room for sacrifice and cold cuts. So here you are, one o'clock in the morning or something, and you've got all the key participants gathered round, but they were totally professional. They saw what needed to be done, they cut, they knew the ballet had to be cut considerably. There was a very expansive dance after we have a real nice clam bake that went out.

[13:41] Barry Kester: A couple of scenes went out. Agnes De Mille, interestingly, says that a couple of songs were cut, but I could find no evidence, and neither Ted Shapin nor Bruce Pomerhack at Rogers and Hammerstein could find any evidence of any songs being cut. Some choruses were trimmed, reprises were trimmed, Mr. God became the star maker. And within two hours, they had sort of fixed it. They had a plan. And over the next few weeks in New Haven and in Boston, Oscar Hammerstein would work through the night rewriting. The cast would rehearse from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then go on stage again at 8 p.m. for that night's performance. And bit by bit it came together. And I love that quote of the production assistant or somebody in that meeting afterwards saying, now I know why these people have hits.

Yeah, that was John Fierley and the production manager. Yeah. Because they were just totally professional. There was no special pleading. I like that scene. None of that. If it needed to be cut, it was kept.

[14:45] David Armstrong: Don't go away. There's more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[14:54] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong. And if you're enjoying this episode, I strongly suspect that you will want to read my new book, Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical. On sale now wherever books are sold. And I'm very happy to report that the early reviews have been terrific. The esteemed author Jeffrey Block says that Broadway Nation is a fascinating, comprehensive, and timely gem of a book that more than lives up to its promise of delivering no less than five books in one. Kudos to David Armstrong. And Tony Award-winning lyricist David Zippel says that David Armstrong's insightful history of the evolution of the Broadway musical and its creators is captivating and comprehensive as well as indispensable.

The book is, of course, available on Amazon, but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website, Bloomsbury.com, where you will currently receive a 10% discount. Again, like the podcast that inspired it, the book is titled Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical. Now back to the show.

[16:04] Barry Kester: We've talked a bit about that second act ballet and its challenges. And eventually, during the rest of New Haven and then in Boston, it gets trimmed down and rethought, moved to a different position as well.

[16:17] David Armstrong: Yes.

[16:18] Barry Kester: And becomes the ballet that we can still see Agnes De Mille's version of in the movie to a large extent. And becomes a quite notable, renowned element of the show. It's not like they have to take something and just make it kind of work to get on. DeMille is able to reshape it into a showstopping moment of the show.

[16:37] David Armstrong: Yes, as you say, it's moved to a different part of the second act. Billy is now up in heaven and he looks down and sees Louise on just one afternoon.

[16:45] Barry Kester: What do I gotta do to see it? Just look and wait. The power will come to you.

[16:57] David Armstrong: Is that her? That little girl there with a straw collar hair.

[17:03] Barry Kester: Ain't she? My little girl.

[17:17] David Armstrong: Well, that tells him all he needs to know about her mood and how desperately lonely and unloved she is, other than obviously by her mother.

[17:26] Barry Kester: Yeah. And do you know if that segment was in the original ballet and just sort of became honed down to that?

[17:34] David Armstrong: Or did they reinvent the idea of the ballet as well?

[17:37] Barry Kester: I think that the whole idea was reinvented, yeah. The opening is also a problem out of town, even though practically from the first meeting of the Glow Club, the idea of this pantomime opening set to waltzes is already formed in Rogers and Hammerstein's mind. It becomes much trickier to put it on the stage. Yes, there was a similar prologue to Lillian, but the stage notes for Lillian cover half a page. It doesn't tell the prior story to the first scene proper in the way that Hammerstein wanted his prologue to. So Hammerstein's prologue actually takes four pages in the script. It was difficult to stage at first, Agnes De Mille thought that she would get to stage it, although it was not and never intended to be a ballet. Hammerstein sort of notes, I thought that was odd that he specifically writes in there, this is not a ballet.

[18:32] David Armstrong: He does indeed, yeah. And do you think that was with Agnes De Mille in mind when he's writing that?

[18:37] Barry Kester: No, no, no, not at all. He knew how he wanted it to be. It was action set to music but not danced. And Ruben Mamoulian just had tremendous difficulty in staging it in a way that all the elements could be seen all over the theater. And in the end, it was Agnes De Mille who bailed him out effectively. She wrote a whole treatment specifying who should be where, literally at what bar number in the music, and describing the actions that should take place against the relative bar numbers in the score. She laid it out like a dance, even if they weren't going to dance.

[19:10] David Armstrong: Yeah, exactly. It needed someone with her capabilities. And there were 70 people on stage, which is mind-boggling for us today, other than going to an opera. I don't know that I've ever seen 70 people on stage in a theatrical production.

[19:24] Barry Kester: One could say that that is a reflection of the power that Rogers and Hammerstein had post-Oklahoma. Even in a time of big cast and big shows, this was even bigger than anything else. So the show finally comes into New York, and it's still mind-boggling for us today in the modern world of theater, to think that a show came in, it had a dress rehearsal, and then it opened the next night. They left Boston on the 15th of April and had that dress rehearsal on the 18th of April, the night before the Broadway opening. Which is crazy from the way we think of it today. And Rogers is not well. Rogers put his back out, he was dragged up to the hilt. He watched the dress rehearsal from a stretcher in the middle of the stalls. That's a great scene for a movie.

[20:08] David Armstrong: Indeed. Everybody refers to the dress rehearsal being a disaster, but nobody actually says why it was a disaster.

[20:17] Barry Kester: One can only assume you've got an orchestra performing in a pit that's been enlarged. You've got a new stage, different sizes obviously to New Haven and Boston. It was all very unfamiliar. One can understand it. And on top of which, all the stagehands would now be the New York stagehands doing the show for the first time. And the orchestra would be largely the New York musicians also playing the show for the first time in tandem with the cast. So you would think, of course, it's going to be a disaster because you are now having to have a hundred new people learn the show and figure out what to do.

[20:55] David Armstrong: Yes.

[20:56] Barry Kester: But it's interesting that they don't talk about that's why it was a disaster.

[20:59] David Armstrong: No, I think the miracle probably is that the actual first night went off as smoothly as it did.

[21:04] Barry Kester: And the show becomes a smash.

[21:06] David Armstrong: The show becomes a smash.

[21:08] Barry Kester: Not an Oklahoma-sized smash, but it became a smash.

[21:11] David Armstrong: And what was the reception, especially in terms of what Rogers and Hammerstein had set out to do? Were they acknowledged for this innovation they were bringing to it?

[21:20] Barry Kester: The critics all gave it a great deal of praise, apart from the one critic you referred to earlier, who said this Oklahoma formula is becoming a bit tired. She was a minority of one. All the critics unanimously raved about it. It won all the awards going. It was pre-Tony, but it won every award, and certainly Rogers and Hammerstein were delighted with it.

[21:56] David Armstrong: Will Bill like a tree grow with his head held high and his feet planted firm on the ground.

[22:06] Barry Kester: And you won't see nobody dare to try to pass him or toss him around.

[22:20] David Armstrong: And I always think it's fascinating to think of Carousel and Oklahoma, I believe, are playing across the street from each other for years.

[22:27] Barry Kester: Yes, they are. Oklahoma was at the St. James and Carousel at the Majestic across the street. And the impact of that is to me what solidifies the golden age of Broadway. Here are these two powerhouse shows playing across the street from each other for a period of years and dominating the airwaves, dominating all aspects of Broadway and showing this is it, this is how we do it now.

[22:51] David Armstrong: You've only got to look at the shows that immediately followed.

[22:55] Barry Kester: Irving Berlin did Annie Get Your Gun, Cole Porter, Kiss Me Kate, then in the early 50s, you had Damn Yankees and Pajama Game. All, yes, very different from what you saw in the 1930s and even the early 1940s. Their impact was enormous. Even the musical comedies had to take on the aspects of the musical play, had to be integrated, had to follow the Rogers and Hammerstein model. They could no longer be the loosey-goosey musical comedies of the past. They had to have fully drawn characters and all the music needed to come from the story.

[23:28] David Armstrong: And amazingly, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter were both able to jump on that bandwagon, in spite of not being young and having been almost their entire careers in the kinds of shows of the past.

[23:40] Barry Kester: Yes, I think it encouraged other composers or other writing teams to be bold. I mean, I cannot imagine that Lerner and Lowe would have dared look at Pygmalion and write My Fair Lady had it not been for Oklahoma, Carousel, and so forth. And then you go on to West Side Story, taking dance even further than Carousel did. It is all this amazing progression, just one thing leads to the next, which I find so fascinating about it. It evolves.

[24:09] David Armstrong: Barry Kester and I will be back in two weeks with the final part of our conversation about his new book, Round in Circles, The Story of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel. Next week, my frequent co-host Albert Evans will join me to celebrate the 100th episode of Broadway Nation. And together we will determine once and for all, who was the greatest Broadway star of all time. Don't miss this one.

[24:34] ♪ Musical number: "When I Have a Daughter" — performed by Barry Kester ♪

[25:14] David Armstrong: A donation of just seven dollars a month will not only keep Broadway Nation rolling along, it will also provide you with exclusive access to the complete unedited versions of many of the interviews that you hear on this podcast. And in fact, I often record nearly twice as much conversation as ends up in the podcast version. You will also have access to additional in-depth conversations with my frequent co-host Albert Evans that have not been featured on Broadway Nation. And all patrons will receive special on-air shout-outs and acknowledgments of your vital support for this podcast. To join, simply go to Broadway Nation Podcast.

[26:09] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pal's Mox for his help with editing this episode and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[26:21] ♪ Musical number: "I'll Try" — performed by Barry Kester ♪