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[0:01] Patrick Oliver Jones: Even with all the right ingredients in place, a show can still falter on Broadway, and few shows have ever fallen as hard or as spectacularly as Nick and Nora, which emerged from the Thin Man novel and popular film series into a new musical in 1991.

[0:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: The talented artists leading this ill-fated venture seemed like a dream team. There was Arthur Laurents, the storyteller of West Side Story and Gypsy, Charles Strouse, the prolific composer of Bye Bye Birdie and Annie, and then Richard Maltby Jr., the creative force behind Ain't Misbehavin'.

[0:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: On stage, there was an equally all-star cast led by Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason.

[0:43] Joanna Gleason: Valiantly, Barry and I were out there every night with these bullseyes painted on our tosses because the show was just a fiasco from the beginning.

[0:52] Joanna Gleason: But he was Grace Under Pressure and, uh, darling. And, uh, we, uh, there we stood at the rock firing slug. But you gotta go through these things. You know, uh, it makes the best stories, and, uh, of course, it's where I met Chris 31 years ago.

[1:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: The Chris that Gleason mentions is her now husband, Chris Sarandon, who was part of the talented supporting cast for Nick and Nora, which also featured Christine Baranski and Faith Prince, among others.

[1:18] Patrick Oliver Jones: On paper, this musical seemed like a guaranteed hit, but the pieces just never seemed to come together as Nick and Nora announced a total of five opening dates in 1991.

[1:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: First in February, then April, months later in November, and then two dates in December.

[1:42] Mark Robinson: I do think it didn't help that it came right on the tail of City of Angels, which was another murder mystery musical playing on Broadway at the same time.

[1:50] Mark Robinson: However, I've studied Nick and Nora inside and out, I've read the script, I've listened to the score. Someone even sent me the tracks that they recorded in the theater of a performance. This show doesn't work. I mean, it should have, but I think the reason it doesn't chiefly is that I think that Arthur Laurents, who directed the piece and wrote the book for the piece, lost all objectivity about the piece.

[2:12] Mark Robinson: Originally there was another writer hired to create the book and story for Nick and Nora, but once he walked out, Laurents took over and completely controlled the show.

[2:22] Mark Robinson: And eventually, Laurents's prickly reputation caught up with him as he unleashed tirades on the actors and creative team.

[2:36] Richard Maltby Jr: And what is down there beneath it was a note of I don't want to whether to call it apology or not, but it's something like that.

[2:45] Richard Maltby Jr: That note Charles Strouse is referring to is beneath a poster of Nick and Nora in his home. The note is dated January 3rd, 2001, and says, "Dear Charles, I played the CD of Nick and Nora after all this time and was impressed by your music. It's so good. It's so bad that what happened happened. Happy New Year, Arthur."

[3:13] Patrick Oliver Jones: So what did happen? What led to all the fights, frustrations, and financial failures that ultimately closed this show after just one week? As you'll see, Nick and Nora serves as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks big names automatically mean big box office.

[3:30] Patrick Oliver Jones: Because even the brightest stars sometimes find themselves lost in the shadows. Yet Nick and Nora, as it has been called, has achieved a legacy and even some appreciation in the decades since its collapse on Broadway.

[3:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Welcome to Closing Night, a theater history podcast about famous and forgotten shows that close too soon. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, and I'll be your guide in this first season as we go through the ups and downs of one of Broadway's youngest venues, the Marquee Theater.

[4:12] Patrick Oliver Jones: These episodes will give a behind-the-scenes look at some of the shows that have come and gone from here and what led up to their closing night.

[4:35] Patrick Oliver Jones: The book was based on his experiences as a detective in Butte, Montana, and the witty banter between the two main characters was patterned after his own on-again, off-again, rocky relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman.

[4:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: The Thin Man novel inspired a radio program and a TV show, but it is best known for the series of six movies that were made in the 1930s and 40s, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, who play Nick and Nora Charles.

[5:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: He's from the bad side of the track, she's Radcliff, uppercrust, and they're a married couple and they solve crimes together.

[5:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: Myrna Loy credited much of the appeal of the murder mystery films to the director's pacing and spontaneity, which focused on the banter of Nick and Nora, made all the more witty and funny by the chemistry between Powell and Loy themselves.

[5:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: When talking about Loy, Powell said, "When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren't acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony."

[5:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: Decades later, in May 1985, two young men who worked on Broadway were going to see a double-billed feature of those old Thin Man movies at an art house theater in the East Village of Manhattan.

[5:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: One of them was James Pentecost, a stage manager for La Cage aux Folles and other Broadway shows, while the other man was Charles Sussman, a production assistant on shows like Dreamgirls.

[6:07] Patrick Oliver Jones: For months they had been searching for the perfect idea for a musical. And as the two of them watched the witty banter between Nick and Nora, they felt inspired to bring this endearing detective duo to a Broadway stage.

[6:22] Patrick Oliver Jones: But Pentecost and Sussman weren't actually wealthy producers. So the two began crafting their vision by creating an MTV-like mash-up music video of various Thin Man clips as a way to entice potential investors.

[6:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: But their first obstacle to overcome was securing the rights to the Thin Man films and characters in order to create an original murder mystery musical featuring a retired detective and his spirited wife alongside their beloved dog.

[6:53] Patrick Oliver Jones: The process took more than two years, but they finally reached a deal with the Lillian Hellman estate and media mogul Ted Turner.

[7:02] Patrick Oliver Jones: So, with the rights in place, now Pentecost and Sussman needed a director. And after the success of La Cage aux Folles, which closed on Broadway in 1987, the producers approached the Tony-winning director of that musical, Arthur Laurents.

[7:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: Though he had written the book to such iconic shows as West Side Story and Gypsy, Laurents wasn't really interested in writing this one, but did agree to direct.

[7:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: So the producers reached out to A.R. Gurney. He was a prolific off-Broadway playwright who had made his Broadway debut in 1984 with The Golden Age and was nominated for a 1988 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Love Letters.

[7:44] Patrick Oliver Jones: With a director and writer in place, then came Charles Strouse, a talented composer who had taken Broadway by storm with Annie in 1977.

[7:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: In the six years after that huge success, he had six more musicals come to Broadway. However, only one of them lasted more than two weeks, while his Annie sequel that I've talked about in a previous episode never even made it to Broadway.

[8:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: Strouse wrote in his memoir called Put on a Happy Face that by this point there wasn't much on the Broadway horizon for him. So he turned his attention to movies instead, mostly animated ones.

[8:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: But by 1988, he was ready for theater again, and saw Nick and Nora as his way back to Broadway.

[8:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: Throughout his career, Strouse was accustomed to working with different lyricists, and this would be no different as the producers brought in Richard Maltby Jr., who had written the lyrics for musicals like Baby and Miss Saigon.

[8:46] Patrick Oliver Jones: The two men had previously met while dramaturging together at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, but had never written a show together.

[8:54] Richard Maltby Jr: For Maltby, it was the chance to work with A.R. Gurney that really sealed the deal. So I was just thrilled. I thought it was a really perfect project for him. And so I went happily into it because I was going to be able to work with Pete Gurney.

[9:09] Richard Maltby Jr: But as soon as we started working on it, it was clear that Arthur had lots and lots of writer ideas that he couldn't get past. And Pete quite quickly, Arthur, you really want to write this, write it, because those are your ideas, you know, and what you're doing is telling me what to do as a writer. Don't do that.

[9:28] Richard Maltby Jr: So I had signed on for the sole purpose of working with Pete Gurney, and that was not what I had. And so, in an effort to solidify their new working relationship, Laurents invited Strouse and Maltby over for lunch.

[9:44] Richard Maltby Jr: Things started cordial and friendly until they sat down to talk about the musical. Maltby got out his yellow pad and began to scrutinize Laurents's script, showing how the complex whodunit plot didn't really make much sense.

[10:00] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, Laurents retorted that the last song Strouse wrote was awful. Not sure what to say, Strouse just let it slide and tried to keep the peace. Even as Laurents then began hinting that the two men had eaten too many sandwiches at lunch.

[10:17] Richard Maltby Jr: But neither Strouse nor Maltby felt this petty criticism was worth fighting over. It was complicated. He can be very, very charming when he wants to. He can also be very, very mean when he wants to.

[10:33] Richard Maltby Jr: Then we had an unholy position because when you have the director and the writer being the same person, there's nobody to turn to. So when Laurents wanted his musical team to pick up the pace, he firmly suggested that Strouse and Maltby retreat to his house in Long Island for a week or so.

[10:52] Richard Maltby Jr: This would offer an uninterrupted environment to craft new songs that needed to be written. Yet Laurents would interrupt them every day with phone calls, asking how it was going, which only added to the pressure and constraints of delivering the perfect score.

[11:09] Richard Maltby Jr: And when it came to the writing, this retreat highlighted the different working styles of these two creatives. Strouse was a rather fast composer, whereas Maltby worked at a slower, more meticulous pace, and didn't often finish his work to Laurents's timetable.

[11:28] Richard Maltby Jr: So while Strouse admits in his memoir that these daily phone calls may have been frightening for him, they must have been positively terrifying for Maltby, who bore the brunt of Laurents's criticism.

[11:40] Richard Maltby Jr: But of course, any mention of how the script could be shortened or changed was immediately dismissed and ignored by Laurents.

[11:48] Richard Maltby Jr: Arthur really didn't construct a mystery, in which there were clues, in which there were things that somebody had to put together in order to solve it, and there was a satisfying ending. So when he finally brought the second act in, and it turned out that the houseboy, who was the lover of the film actress who was played by Christine Baranski, but it turned out that he was the one who did it for her.

[12:13] Richard Maltby Jr: It was kind of ludicrous when I read it for the first time, I called him and said, "Arthur, are you kidding? The butler did it? I mean, is that not a joke? Won't that be laughed off the stage?" And you know, he said, "No, no, it'll be fine."

[12:28] Richard Maltby Jr: That's because while he was busy hatching a rather convoluted case, he was also rethinking Nick and Nora's relationship. He wanted them to not only find problems with the case and suspects, but also in each other, which was a different take on this witty and loving couple.

[12:47] Richard Maltby Jr: The thing that worked best about the Thin Man movies was the chemistry between Nick and Nora. And in this musical, they decided to give them marital issues and the fact that they were like on the brink of a divorce, she was gonna have an affair, and he was being dismissive of her and not including her in things, and they got into a competition with each other.

[13:08] Richard Maltby Jr: But eventually our detective duo did come together to sort out the alibis, charges, and countercharges. In fact, the script had so much information to relay that at times there wasn't much room for music, especially in the second act, which had half as many songs as the first act.

[13:26] Richard Maltby Jr: And many of the songs that were there got cut up into snippets and interspersed with dialogue. Still, the music did find moments to take center stage. What we did that was kind of satisfactory was there were big long sessions where the two Nick and Nora decide to pick up clues and put them together in very, very long musical sequences with lots of lots of elms. Those are very exciting. One was called A Busy Night at Lorraine's, which was all of the people who showed up in the evening before the murder.

[13:57] Patrick Oliver Jones: So any one of them could have done it.

[14:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: And it was certainly going to take a cast of talented performers to pull this off.

[14:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, you couldn't have asked for a better set of actors when it came to Nick and Nora.

[14:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: And at the top of the ticket was Barry Bostwick and the magnificent Joanna Gleason.

[14:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: Bostwick was known for originating the role of Danny Zuko in Grease, as well as his memorable turn as Brad Majors in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[14:23] Patrick Oliver Jones: And Gleason was just coming off her Tony Award-winning performance with Into the Woods.

[14:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: Both of them made a point of seeing all six Thin Man movies before starting rehearsals, but neither was concerned about any comparisons to Powell or Lloyd.

[14:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: Bostwick said it was, quote, like apples and oranges, two different people and two different decades.

[14:47] Patrick Oliver Jones: There was a strong supporting cast as well, featuring Christine Baranski, Tom Cessma, Deborah Monk, and one of my favorite actresses, Faith Prince, who was just coming off her 1989 Broadway debut in Jerome Robbins' Broadway.

[15:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: And for Nick and Nora, she was given one of the standout numbers in the show.

[15:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: She had a really good song called Men, about a secretary who had been kind of used by her employers over her career.

[15:18] Patrick Oliver Jones: And it was a belty song, perfect for Faith's voice.

[15:22] Patrick Oliver Jones: And then, uh, Arthur really, really knows how to write that kind of tough-talking girl, and wrote a really, and I mean she had really great lines.

[15:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: She was the victim.

[15:33] Patrick Oliver Jones: She was Lorraine, the one who was actually murdered.

[15:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: Um, I mean, the Christine Baranski before she hit her TV stardom, but she was just terrific.

[15:43] Patrick Oliver Jones: And nobody knew that Christine was a great singer.

[15:47] Patrick Oliver Jones: I mean, a soprano.

[15:48] Patrick Oliver Jones: She studied opera.

[15:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: Deborah Monk, who is as funny as anybody could possibly be, you know, they were spectacularly good.

[15:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: The cast was just wonderful.

[15:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: But despite this impressive cast and creative team, producers Pentecost and Sussman struggled to raise the money for the show.

[16:06] Patrick Oliver Jones: So they began courting the Broadway theater owners themselves, the Niederlanders, Schubert's and Jujampson, as well as other corporate investors.

[16:16] Patrick Oliver Jones: And in August of 1990, the producers decided to conduct a two-week workshop at the Manhattan Theater Club, which would result in three performances to entice potential investors.

[16:27] Patrick Oliver Jones: N.R. Kleinfield was a business and financial reporter, and he wrote an extensive article about Nick and Nora's financial troubles in the New York Times.

[16:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: As the workshop proceeded, disputes flared.

[16:41] Patrick Oliver Jones: Grave concerns were expressed that the musical was too long and some cutting was done.

[16:46] Patrick Oliver Jones: Then true doom struck.

[16:48] Patrick Oliver Jones: Barry Bostwick, who played Nick, had an attack of malaria and was unable to perform for investors.

[16:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: While Mr. Bostwick lay writhing in a bed at St. Vincent's Hospital, Richard Maltby, not yet known for his acting skills, volunteered to play Nick.

[17:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: It was not the wisest decision.

[17:07] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, a small side note here.

[17:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: I've actually seen Richard perform some of his music in a cabaret setting.

[17:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: He's very charming with a pleasant voice.

[17:17] Patrick Oliver Jones: But to take on a lead role in a new musical without much rehearsal to speak of would be a huge undertaking for anyone, much less the show's lyricist.

[17:27] Patrick Oliver Jones: But what else could they do?

[17:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: They had to raise the money, and this was the way to do it.

[17:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: So the producers sat back, watched, and after 20 minutes of the first performance, Sussman walked out.

[17:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: And Pentecost admitted afterwards that in hindsight they should have just killed.

[17:45] Patrick Oliver Jones: That's because not one single penny was raised from that workshop.

[17:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, to be sure, this was not because of Maltby.

[17:53] Patrick Oliver Jones: The show itself was not a finished product, and it was still working out the kinks, with or without Bostwick and performance.

[18:01] Patrick Oliver Jones: I mean, there were a total of 11 songs that ended up being cut from that workshop.

[18:06] Patrick Oliver Jones: And so the creative team went back to the drawing board again.

[18:12] Patrick Oliver Jones: Meanwhile, the producers were trying to raise money for an exclusive pre-Broadway run at the Mechanic Theater in Baltimore.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: Pentecost and Sussman had a $5.5 million budget to put up this out-of-town try-out, but unfortunately they fell about a million short.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: So in November of 1990, two months after that disastrous workshop, they had to cancel their engagement at Mechanic Theater as well as postpone the Broadway opening until the following season.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: The original canine left to pursue other projects.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: So by this time, Pentecost and Sussman found themselves in a difficult and rather unpromising position.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: Unable to secure the necessary financing to move forward and having now earned a reputation among some in the inner Broadway circles for being stubborn and not cutting good deals.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: At this point, Arthur Laurents, eager to see his work performed, got restless.

[19:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: He dropped in on James Niederlander and mentioned that the play was floundering.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Mr. Niederlander said that he and Terry Allen Kramer ought to do it.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: I always like the idea, Mr. Niederlander said.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: I'm a big dog lover.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Eventually, Pentecost and Sussman reluctantly agreed to turn the show over to Niederlander and Kramer.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: And in January of 1991, all the producers gathered in Niederlander's office to make the transfer official.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Everything was going fine until it was revealed that Pentecost and Sussman had actually renewed their licensing rights to Nick and Nora until November 1992.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Needless to say, Niederlander and Kramer were both surprised and furious.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: When Sussman got home, he found a message on his answering machine.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yes, an answering machine.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: He had a message from Arthur Laurents who said, Congratulations, you killed the play.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Laurents went on to give the producers an ultimatum.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: They had until the next morning to accept a take it or leave it deal.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Later that night, the two men who had birthed this whole project discussed their dilemma for a good hour.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: They ultimately came to realize they were out of options, and honestly, were tired of being yelled at.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: So the next morning, they settled for $35,000, a small stake in the new partnership, and a below the title billing in the program.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: When it was all said and done, Pentecost and Sussman lost about $70,000 on Nick and Nora and never again produced on Broadway.

[20:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: After the break, Nick and Nora gets a brand new start with a brand new producing team.

[21:08] Patrick Oliver Jones: James Niederlander and Terry Allen Kramer were now in charge of Nick and Nora and gathered a new production team around them that included Daryl Roth and Elizabeth McCann.

[21:20] Patrick Oliver Jones: One of their first acts as producers was to reduce the show's budget to less than $5 million.

[21:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: They also got the Mechanic Theater in Baltimore to give Nick and Nora another chance, this time as the opening show of their fall season in September of 1991.

[21:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: As a preview for this out-of-town tryout, Strouse and Maltby went down to the theater in May of that year to showcase seven songs from the show.

[21:46] Patrick Oliver Jones: During their half-hour presentation, Maltby was at the microphone while Strouse played the piano, on which was perched a terrier-stuffed animal representing Nick and Nora's dog, Asta.

[21:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: The audience was composed of group sales leaders who responded positively to this preview, expressing delight and interest in the show's four and a half-week run at the Mechanic, which was to be the precursor to Nick and Nora's Broadway opening in November at the Marquee Theater.

[22:15] Patrick Oliver Jones: Unfortunately, these new producers ran into old problems, and the show's financial woes remained, leading them to continuously cut costs throughout the production.

[22:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: And so, in an effort to save half a million dollars, a run at the Mechanic Theater was once again canceled, resulting in a tighter overall budget of 4.3 million.

[22:38] Patrick Oliver Jones: And maybe it was all for the best.

[22:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: Because according to producer Terry Allen Kramer, Laurents had said that Baltimore and the Mechanic Theater audiences, quote, would never understand the humor of Nick and Nora, because it was too sophisticated for them.

[22:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, whether that was true or not, this meant no out-of-town tryout, which isn't unheard of, but it's definitely risky to fine-tune a show in New York City, under the watchful eye of the Broadway community.

[23:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: If you've never seen it before an audience, you don't know how they're going to react.

[23:13] Patrick Oliver Jones: But they were very confident in this material.

[23:16] Mark Hoebee: This is Mark Hoebee, dance captain and swing for Nick and Nora, who joined the show as it prepared for Broadway.

[23:24] Mark Hoebee: But the script kept evolving and getting rewritten, kind of in some major ways.

[23:30] Mark Hoebee: Hobee has since gone on to become artistic director of the Paper Mill Playhouse, which has become an out-of-town tryout destination these days for many shows with an eye on Broadway.

[23:41] Mark Hoebee: So he understands the back and forth collaboration it takes to produce and create a new musical.

[23:47] Mark Hoebee: And even back in 1991, he recognized the wonderful group of actors assembled for Nick and Nora.

[23:53] Mark Hoebee: And these talented actors were the ones who really raised the level of expectation and potential for what Nick and Nora could become.

[24:01] Mark Hoebee: So significant adjustments were made by the creative team to give them a better show.

[24:07] Mark Hoebee: However, these changes came at a price, literally.

[24:11] Mark Hoebee: We did a lot of rewriting of the score.

[24:13] Mark Hoebee: Arthur didn't do a whole lot of rewriting of the script, but, uh, which he could have.

[24:18] Mark Hoebee: But we did change a lot.

[24:19] Mark Hoebee: There are a number of songs that went in and came out.

[24:19] Mark Hoebee: In and came out in different times.

[24:24] Mark Hoebee: Jonathan Tunick, who is the orchestrator of the show, said it was one of the shows he made the most money on ever.

[24:31] Mark Hoebee: Because every time you re-staged a number or rethought a number, you'd have to reorchestrate it.

[24:37] Mark Hoebee: Oh god, you know.

[24:38] Mark Hoebee: So he was doing very, very well.

[24:40] Mark Hoebee: I think Jonathan's the only person who did do well on that show.

[24:44] Mark Hoebee: And as the music changes, so does the choreography as well.

[24:49] Mark Hoebee: But for all his talents as an actor and singer, Bostwick wasn't exactly the best dancer, which is not uncommon for tall men like him.

[24:58] Mark Hoebee: Sure, there's the six foot six Tommy Tune who puts all of us tall performers to shame.

[25:04] Mark Hoebee: But being a tall actor myself, I can relate to Bostwick's hesitancy and concern when it comes to dancing.

[25:11] Mark Hoebee: They wanted the couple to dance, and it was not a natural thing for him, and it was very difficult for him to learn ballroom dance and act and sing at the same time.

[25:22] Mark Hoebee: And Joanna and him together, and the cast, you know, Deborah Monk, and they were all great in the acting bit, but anytime it got to a musical sequence, a dance transition, anything, you could just see Barry seize up, and it just wasn't what Barry did.

[25:37] Mark Hoebee: And they were asking him to do something that was not in his wheelhouse.

[25:42] Mark Hoebee: Hobee had heard stories of Laurents's temper and being hard to work with, but was surprised at how helpful he was with the cast, including with Bostwick and his dancing worries.

[25:55] Mark Hoebee: Mind you, this was Bostwick's return to Broadway after 13 years of doing television.

[26:01] Mark Hoebee: So he probably had his own internal pressure regarding this comeback to the stage.

[26:06] Mark Hoebee: But to be honest, there was pressure on everybody to get this right, which led to certain squabbles and disagreements as well.

[26:13] Mark Hoebee: The original actress, uh, who played, uh, the Spanish Maid was Josie DeGuzman, and she and Arthur were at odds about how the character was to be played, and he wanted it a kind of Charo Carmen Miranda, and she refused to do that, so she wound up getting fired.

[26:30] Mark Hoebee: Um, she was fired when we were in previews, uh, which was interesting for me as the dance captain because I used to get the show started, then run across the street to the Lunt-Fontanne and rehearse her understudy and the understudy's replacement, and then go back to the show because we couldn't fire her until there was a new person ready to go.

[26:49] Mark Hoebee: Previews began on October 8th, 1991, and this marked the first time the show was being performed on stage.

[26:58] Mark Hoebee: So every travail or triumph would be in plain view of a discerning and at times catty theater community.

[27:07] Mark Hoebee: This was especially true for that first preview, which for some reason was chosen to be an actor's fund benefit performance.

[27:15] Mark Hoebee: That meant it was going to be a house full of industry people.

[27:19] Mark Hoebee: So they get to the end of the show, and it was now revealed that Tracy, Christine Baranski, was the one who murdered Lorraine.

[27:28] Mark Hoebee: She did it to hide a secret affair she was having with the Asian houseboy played by Tom Cessma.

[27:36] Mark Hoebee: And she stepped out onto stage, and when they asked you, you know, why did you do it and why would you do it for him?

[27:41] Mark Hoebee: She sang this song called He Sees Me.

[27:44] Mark Hoebee: And that first performance, it was like the producers.

[27:48] Mark Hoebee: It was supposed to be a very serious moment.

[27:51] Mark Hoebee: And the audience started to laugh and laughed and laughed and laughed.

[27:56] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, I remember seeing the cast on stage just horrified because it was not supposed to be funny. And so, and that was the ending of the show. So you can imagine after your first preview, realizing the whole end of the show needs to be rewritten and rethought and re-figured out. And so there was a lot of tumult. To make matters worse, as previews started, the rumor mill began to churn about the show's troubles and gossip about the people in it. But once these insider stories began to show up in the newspaper, that's when things really took a turn for the worst. We had this horrible meeting once where he called the company into the green room at the Marquee Theater, and we were all sitting there.

We didn't know what it was, and the evil Arthur came out. And with Joanna Gleason and Barry and you know Deb Monk Faith friends, all of them in the front row. I was in the back. Him screaming at the company about there's a Judas among us, and just one of you is going to the press and telling, you know, inside family secrets, and it's broadcast all and like ripped into the company, and that's where he lost them. Because I remember Joanna and Barry stood up and said, We won't be talked like this, and they walked out. And from then there was kind of no saving the show. But the rumors and gossip were really just a symptom of a bigger problem. The show itself, which was constantly being rewritten.

And so Nick and Nora missed its scheduled opening date of November 10th and didn't actually open for another month. This affected advanced ticket sales, which had been going well as they began to dry up during this long preview period. And increasingly, some theatergoers would walk out midway through the show and grumble about having to pay full price for a show that was only half ready. Especially when there was another gumshoe detective musical already on Broadway, City of Angels. It had been running for two years and had won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The stark comparison between these two musicals was not lost on audiences. Frank Rich of the New York Times attended one of the designated press performances near the end of Nick and Nora's ninth week of previews, and he overheard this exchange between a father and his young son.

They made a mistake being so similar to City of Angels. But City of Angels was different. It wanted to be funny. Yeah, and this one, well, it wants to be that. I think they were going for sophistication. Well, whether it was sophistication or humor, Nick and Nora was still trying to find that missing ingredient just ten days before their December 8th opening. By that point, three new songs had been put into the show, some scenes had been completely thrown out and new ones inserted, and more revisions were still to come. My ego's not involved in thinking that I can really change this thing. I'm an employee. Of the puppets. But eventually, previews had to end after a record-breaking 71 previews, a record that stood for 20 years until the Spider-Man musical smashed it with 182 previews, a number that will likely and hopefully never be broken.

And so for Nick and Nora, the script and story and music would have to come together into a finished show, whether the show was actually finished or not. And come opening night, the writing was on the wall. Or more precisely, in the papers.

[32:12] Richard Maltby Jr: And we were in our opening night outfits, and we ran out to the front of the Marquee Theater, and you go through those glass doors down the steps and to the back. We didn't have seats, we were just standing in the back. And as we walked down those stairs, Liz McCann was lying, kind of lounging back on the steps, and I think she had either read the reviews or gotten tipped off, talking about how we were sunk. And we overheard that walking into the opening night performance, and I was like, I knew even before the curtain went up that I should start looking for another job. The reviews were not kind to say the least. The LA Times called the show a mess, long, flat, and boring. The New York Post wrote, What we have here is a bad idea turned sour.

The Associated Press said it was a half-hearted, sporadically entertaining show marred by an unsavory, almost schizophrenic book, an unfocused score, and one piece of major miscasting. And the Baltimore Sun cheekily said maybe it should have previewed in Baltimore. But it was Frank Rich at the New York Times who put the final nail in Nick and Nora's coffin. Like the less than gifted celebrity who is famous for being famous, this musical will no doubt be always remembered, not without fondness for its troubled preview period, its much postponed opening, its hassles with stooping journalists. Indeed, the story of Nick and Nora in previews, should it ever fully be known, might in itself make for a riotous 1930s style screwball comedy musical.

But the plotting show that has emerged from all this tumult is, a few bright spots notwithstanding, an almost instantly forgettable mediocrity, as no one will confuse it with the hit musicals its authors have worked on in happier times. That kind of review doesn't hurt, wrote Arthur Laurents in his memoir. He went on to say, it might anger, but my anger had been spent on my colleagues who had betrayed me and thus their own show with the items they had secretly said like dead fish to the newsroom sharks. Instead, I felt relief that the nightmare was over.

[34:52] Richard Maltby Jr: Yet only 15 survived. Nick and Nora was the only American musical slated for the 1991-92 Broadway season, so its quick dismissal was further evidence of a continuing decline in original musicals from the U.S. at that time. The European invasion was in full swing. However, months later, Strouse and Maltby were Tony nominated for Best Original Score, the only award nomination of any kind for Nick and Nora. And I asked Richard if that was at least some validation of the work and effort put into this short-lived show. Yeah, I mean, you know, it becomes kind of an inadvertent joke because here you are a show that ran one week and yet the score gets nominated. I think it was not a strong season for new scores, you know, and you have to fill out four slots.

But there were people who liked the show, particularly those big long solving the murder mystery sequences, which were very fresh and the sort of thing that you know people do more of now, but really hadn't done back then. Faith Prince would also be nominated that year and go on to win a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. But that was for her career-defining performance as Miss Adelaide in the big revival that year of Guys and Dolls. Still, Faith has a special place in her heart for Nick and Nora and the role that she played. Lorraine was sort of a lost child who kind of found her way with the wrong people. But she did have good lingerie. Thank God the show did not run because I didn't have any knee pads, and I got murdered in every scene and would fall to the floor.

And they did a huge kick line where I rolled down the stage as all the people were kicking me as I was rolling. And I said to Arthur Laurents, you know, this show would be a big hit if you would just knock me into the pit. And of course, he didn't, and it wasn't.

[36:59] Richard Maltby Jr: With Nick and Nora being such a notable and dramatic failure, so many have their own theories of what went wrong and why. The show has become legendary, not so much for the show itself, but for all the creative blunders and backstage turmoil that surrounded its short run on Broadway. But 20 years after Nick and Nora ended, Arthur Laurents sat down with director David Saint and reflected back on this difficult moment in his career. First of all, it showed me how I let my ego get in the way. Once the thing was underway, I knew it was never going to work. But the ego was, no, I can make it work. Well, I couldn't. Well, in recent years, Nick and Nora has been shown a bit more love and attention.

San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon Theater remounted the show for the first and only time in April 2015. Two years later, members of the original company reunited for two concerts at Feinstein's 54 Below here in New York City for a special radio play presentation of the musical.

[38:30] Richard Maltby Jr: Was eventually cut by opening night. It's a duet with Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason called Married Life.

[38:32] ♪ Musical number: "Married Life" — performed by Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason ♪

[39:08] Richard Maltby Jr: When Nick and Nora closed with a final Sunday matinee performance, David Richards of the New York Times revisited the show one last time and wrote, If it could just free itself from the nasty goings on, I have an inkling that the score by Charles Strouse might actually prove rather engaging. The lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. aren't half bad either. And you know what? After such a messy and disastrous process, that is probably the best way to remember one of the most notorious flops in Broadway history.

[40:27] Patrick Oliver Jones: Dan Delgado is editor and producer. Not only for this podcast, but also for his own movie podcast called The Industry. Theme music for Closing Night composed and created by Blake Stadnik. Maria Clara Ribeiro is co-producer. A special thank you to Richard Maltby Jr. and Mark Hoebee for their time and candor in discussing the difficult undertaking that brought Nick and Nora to Broadway. Be sure to join me next time as another production makes its way to Closing Night.

[41:06] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, there are movements afoot to do another version of it. And I must say, I have an assistant who came to me by way of his love of Nick and Nora. And we sat down and said, Well, how would we fix the murder mystery? And we did actually come up with an ending that was really great, which is not that just invent a character who wasn't even there who was the screenwriter, because the one person who could write a mystery that would outfox Nick and Nora would be a writer. If they figured out that the mystery that they solved was too pat, the only reason that it was too pat was that a writer wrote it, and in the process covered up his own tracks. It was a really good idea.