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[0:05] Andrew Child: Hello Harry.

[0:09] Leroy Reams: Well, hello, Louie.

[0:12] Andrew Child: It's nice. I'm Andrew Child and welcome to Fifty Key Stage Musicals, the podcast, a companion piece to the Routledge Press publication Fifty Key Stage Musicals, which is available for purchase by going to Routledge.com or clicking the link below in today's show description.

[0:31] Andrew Child: Today's episode focuses on chapter 18, HELLO, DOLLY.

[0:36] Andrew Child: And with us today is performer, choreographer, and director Leroy Reams, whose Broadway credits include Sweet Charity, Beauty and the Beast, Lorelei, Applause, La Cage, 42nd Street, for which he was nominated for both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award, and the 1978 revival of HELLO, DOLLY, starring Carol Channing.

[0:58] Andrew Child: Reams also directed and choreographed the 1995 revival of HELLO, DOLLY, which also featured Ms. Channing in a return to her iconic role. Leroy, thanks so much for being here with us today.

[1:09] Leroy Reams: It's my pleasure, Andrew.

[1:11] Andrew Child: So tell me a little bit about your extensive relationship with HELLO, DOLLY, the show in question for today.

[1:20] Leroy Reams: Okay, well, it all started. Let's jump back to my previous Broadway show, which was Lorelei, which starred Carol Channing. The year was 1973 and then 1974 because we did a year's tour, then we came back and played on Broadway. And then after a while, about a year or so, I got a telephone call from Carol Channing. Ring ring, hello, hello, Leroy. It's Carol. Carol Channing. Like I didn't know. Uh-huh. Well, I'm going to do a revival of HELLO, DOLLY. And I want you to play Cornelius Hackle. But Jerry Herman, uh, and Lucia Victor, the director, don't know you, darling, but don't worry, you got the job. And indeed, I got the job, and that was my meeting with Jerry Herman. The beginning of a beautiful and lucrative friendship, which I miss him every day.

And that began HELLO, DOLLY. And Lucia Victor was Gower Champion's production stage manager. She basically did most of the shows after the original Broadway production, which was around 1966. And I liked her very much. I thought she was a wonderful director for me. And she allowed me to make Cornelius my own, which I thought was very smart. And I was in on the creative process. And then, of course, with Jerry, I mean, to make a longer story longer, the first day that Jerry heard me sing "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," and I went, "Out there," and Jerry jumped up and he said, "That's the voice. That's the voice I heard in my head when I wrote this song. And for the first time, I'm hearing that voice."

Well, obviously, he became my best friend after that. And then Florence Lacey, who was his choice to play Mrs. Malloy, and I didn't know Florence, and Florence didn't know me. And so after about the first day of rehearsal when we met, I got up enough nerve and I said to Flo, who was actually a beautiful Irish girl with blue eyes and a big belt voice that was thrilling to hear, and so I said, "You know, Flo, I have to tell you something funny. When I was told that the part of Mrs. Malloy was being played by you, and you happened to be Jerry Herman's best friend, you can't imagine what I thought you would be like." And she said, "Stop right there. Imagine what I thought when I heard you were Carol Channing's best friend."

So that was the beginning again of another beautiful friendship. And we have all remained very close during the decades. It was a thrilling production. It was with Eddie Bracken, who was a wonderful Vandergelder. And Carol was then, how old was she? Oh gosh. I don't know exactly. I know when she did the show originally, she was like about 46, which was back in 1966, so you jump ahead. And that kind of gives you the year of her age. But then with the revival, which was in '94, Carol was then 76 years old.

[4:30] Leroy Reams: Wow. And the interesting thing is when I directed it and choreographed it, I actually put in more dancing for Carol. And I restaged the "So Long, Dearie" number, which had more movement. So actually, Carol at 76 did more dancing than she did in 1966.

[4:49] Andrew Child: Wow. It's amazing.

[4:51] Leroy Reams: It's amazing. Was it ever an option on the table to put someone else in the role or that revival, it was going to begin?

[5:00] Leroy Reams: The only reason the show was being done was for Carol Channing.

[5:03] Andrew Child: Got it.

[5:04] Leroy Reams: The only reason. She was the money attraction, and we with both tours toured a year before the show came back into Broadway. And interestingly enough, they both played the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Broadway. They're 46 off, you know, right off Broadway. And it was thrilling both times. And then with that production of HELLO, DOLLY, I went on to direct many productions of it myself with stars like Madeline Kahn, which was one of the thrills of my life. We actually had a mad love affair without the sex, Joanne Worley, Nicole Kazan in the Paris production, Leslie Uggams, Randy Graff. So many then I actually played DOLLY myself at the Wick Theater on Boca Raton, which was quite a thrill. And the only reason I got to do it is because of Jerry and also the Michael Stewart estate, which had Mike had passed on by then.

But you know, I was the first American actor to play the role because of that, and they knew that I was going to do the original concept, and also that I would play it without doing, you know, a drag impersonation thing. I made it my own, and I actually my mother was Irish, and so I kind of based a lot of this stuff on my mother, and of course I knew the comedy timing because of Carol, but because I had directed so many women, and also Michelle Lee, I forgot to mention her, who was wonderful. They all brought their individual talent to it, and that's the secret of it. You're youth actress and what she brings to it, that's what you focus on, and they were all very different. They did the concept of the original production with the original staging, the original choreography, which no one has done it better than Champion.

And I'm telling you, the choreography is brilliant, the acting we interpret it, and I made some changes in it when I directed. For instance, at the end of the dancing number, originally DOLLY comes out, and the last person who circles her is Minnie Faye, who blows her a kiss and goes off. But I took it literally as matchmaker. So when we danced back on, I had Carol in pantomime with the dancing put Cornelius and Mrs. Malloy together, send them off. And then when Minnie Faye danced around, Barnaby was left on stage. And so DOLLY looks at Barnaby and motions for him and he pulls off Minnie Faye, which means that she was matchmaking. She was putting people into pairs. And then she's the one left alone.

And that's when she, you know, goes into her speech about "Let me go, Ephraim." And that's when she rejoins the human race. So I felt it was much more dramatic. And also, Marge Champion at that last revival that I directed, she was my date for opening night.

[7:57] Leroy Reams: Oh, wow. Marge said, "Leroy, it was wonderful." She said, "You brought so much heart to it." And also, because I'm a romantic, I brought a lot of the romance back into the piece. And it was only because of Flo Lacey, who I just fell in love with every night, that there was much more of a romantic feel rather than the comedy thing in that production. And it was very important to me to bring that Thornton Wilder theme back into the piece, you know, rather than making fun or just doing vaudeville shtick. I wanted to do the heart of the piece. And so I was very proud of that. And then in "So Long, Dearie," when Marge saw it opening night, she was sitting next to me and she punched me and she said, "You fixed it."

And I said, "Fixed what?" She said, "Dearie. Gower never had enough time to really fix it." She said, "You did it better because you made it sexy." Because my whole purpose of that moment was the one thing at the turn of the century, a woman couldn't vote. She had no voting rights. She basically married and she became, you know, the husband owned her, otherwise. And the only thing a woman had to her advantage was her sex. That's how she could get what she wanted. So I used that into the piece. So when Vandergelder says, "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last woman on earth," and her thought is, "Oh, really? You don't want to marry me? Well, guess what? I don't want to marry you. But what I've got is so good, but you can't have it. So wave your little hand and whisper so long, dearie, you ain't gonna see me anymore." Look at this boy. Boom. Sex.

[9:37] Andrew Child: And did you keep that sort of mentality when you played the role?

[9:42] Leroy Reams: Yes, very much so.

[9:44] Andrew Child: Wow.

[9:45] Leroy Reams: Very much so. When you are eventually taking on the role of DOLLY yourself, you've worked with all these big names playing DOLLY. You've worked with DOLLY herself, Carol Channing. You've also worked with Gower Champion. Is there all kinds of stuff from all of that going on in your head? Is that coming into the room with you when you're taking on the role yourself?

[10:10] Leroy Reams: Well, I never discussed HELLO, DOLLY in a great degree with Gower.

[10:16] Andrew Child: Okay.

[10:16] Leroy Reams: But I didn't have to because I had learned it from Lucia, but also I brought my spin into it, and so I made up this whole synopsis about the backstory of HELLO, DOLLY. So I thought, well, DOLLY was an Irish girl at the turn of the century, who the only thing that they were, they were either maids or they worked in sweatshops. That's what the Irish ladies did. So, in my mind, DOLLY worked in a sweatshop, you know, sewing. And Vandergelder had a hay and feed store, so he would come into New York to buy things for the store, you know. And then also Ephraim Levi came to buy goods because he had a dry goods store in the Lower East Side of New York. So they probably came into the factory and they spotted DOLLY, this cute Irish lady at the sewing machine.

And so Horace, I mean, Ephraim. Ephraim Levi started dating her, and he knew Horace Vandergelder, who was dating the boss's wife, because that song "Penny in My Pocket," which was taken out of the show and then put back in for the revival. A good story about that. We'll get back to that story. Okay, but anyway, so Vandergelder and Ephraim Levi knew each other and they dated these two women at the same time. They probably all went out together. But Vandergelder was after the boss's daughter, but he was probably attracted to DOLLY Gallagher because that was her maiden name. So there's a little bit of thing that that's why they knew each other so well. So then, of course, when Vandergelder's wife died young, and then when finally Ephraim Levi died, then there was that tension there between the two of them.

But Vandergelder was going after a younger woman, and so DOLLY had to, when she finally realized that she's gonna rejoin the human race, then she started teasing him, and that's how she rearranged everybody. She got Irene Malloy passed off to Cornelius. She manipulated all this matchmaking business. So it's very interesting to have that backstory. And now "Penny in My Pocket." Uh-huh. That song, it's a long story. But David Merrick, the legendary producer, and that's I met David on 42nd Street. And I was appearing on the weekends during the run over at Reno Sweeney's on the east side.

[12:51] Leroy Reams: I would do my club act late at night on the weekends. And David Merrick had had his stroke and he was incapacitated. And his former wife, who then eventually he remarried again and divorced again, he was staying with her while he was going through a divorce from Karen Prunzig. And I got a call from Aton, and she said, Leroy, David has lost his speech. He's very stubborn, he doesn't want to speak, and we're having a hard time. But he sees your picture in the paper. They're charting Reno Sweeney's, and we gather, he wants to come and see you. And the doctor said, take him because that's the first time he's wanted to go out. So she said, but we don't want anyone to photograph him, he's just not speaking well, and he's walking with a cane.

I said, bring him over and we'll handle it. So they come to the club that night, and the car arrives, and I went out to meet him, and we go into Rena's Sweeney, it's a little dark club on the east side. And as we're walking in, David starts falling, and he's going, we couldn't understand him, and he pushed us away. He found a penny on the floor, picked it up and put it in his pocket. And so I looked at Aton and I said, I think David's feeling better. So he saw the show, and everything was wonderful. So the next day I'm having a vocal rehearsal with Peter Howard, who did the original dance arrangements for DOLLY and conducted it many times. So I told Peter the story, and Peter said, oh my god, Leroy, there was a song in DOLLY called Penny in My Pocket.

I'm gonna go get it out of the file. So he went back, got the song out, and I learned it. And I said, I'm gonna do it. So we called Jerry, and I started doing that song Penny in My Pocket. Then Jerry gave it to Michael Feinstein. And so the song was kind of brought back into the public, and they put it again in the last revival with Bette Midler. So the song was, and it explained in the song how Horace Vandergelder became Yonker's first half a millionaire. And that's how the song. So I was responsible for bringing that in a strange way. So that's a long story, but that's it.

[14:54] Andrew Child: And so were you able to see Bette Midler in the revival?

[14:58] Leroy Reams: And of course.

[14:59] Andrew Child: What did you think?

[15:00] Leroy Reams: Oh, I thought she was wonderful.

[15:02] Andrew Child: Oh, I'm so jealous.

[15:03] Leroy Reams: I feel it. Bette Midler is a performer. I mean, she comes out on stage, she can fill Madison Square Gardens. She has her own personality, her own brand of humor. And I thought she was just wonderful. And happily so and also Bernadette Peters was wonderful.

[15:27] Andrew Child: Oh, you saw her as well.

[15:29] Leroy Reams: Absolutely. Because people forget Bernadette, 16 years old. I mean, she was in Gypsy, she was in all of these shows. You know, the off-Broadway Dames at Sea. Bernadette knows how to do comedy. I mean, in later years she became the Sondheim heroine, but they forget that Bernadette knows how to be funny, and she was wonderful as DOLLY. She got all the humor, very different, they're all very different, but every single one of them worked. It was a star performance.

[16:05] Andrew Child: Were you also able to see Donna?

[16:07] Leroy Reams: Betty Buckley do it because I went to California because Louis Stadlin is one of my best friends, and I directed Lewis in three productions. He did it with Randy Graff, Leslie Uggams and me, of course. And so, but my husband was not ill, got ill when we were in California, and we had to bring him back to New York, so I didn't get to see Betty Buckley do it, but I'm sure she was wonderful because she's—and I'll tell you who else would have been wonderful playing that part, Patti LuPone.

[16:39] Andrew Child: Oh, do you think we'll get her doing it someday?

[16:43] Leroy Reams: No, you don't think she won't touch it now.

[16:46] Andrew Child: Okay.

[16:46] Leroy Reams: She's quite brilliant, by the way, and Company.

[16:50] Andrew Child: I saw.

[16:53] Leroy Reams: Patti LuPone on a stage is one of the best lessons any young person can ever get. Because you talk about a person who knows how to work on stage, who speaks up, who enunciates, who knows how to play front, who knows that there's an audience there, and knows how to give that performance to the audience. And her presence is so powerful. When Patti LuPone walks on a stage, you're in very good hands. She really knows what she's doing, and what we have lost now, and I say to all the young people, we have lost stage performance because now we rehearse in very small rooms, we audition in very small rooms, and we are microphoned, and people have forgotten how to embellish to reach an audience in a theater, and we're losing that. Everybody's doing what I call TV acting.

[17:53] Andrew Child: Okay.

[17:54] Leroy Reams: They're forgetting that there's an audience how to face front and give the performance out. And God knows Carol Channing knew how to do it. She made an art form of it. And not saying that you have to go to that extreme. You don't have to lose any of the reality. You just have to make sure that you speak up, that you're understood. And many times I go to the theater now and I'm older. But when I go to see plays, although they have amplification but not mics, it's very hard to hear the actors because they're not taught to use stage voices. And I miss that. I miss the energy. I went to see August: Osage County.

[18:31] Andrew Child: Okay.

[18:31] Leroy Reams: With the replacement cast, and Estelle Parsons was playing the lead by then. The play began, and a couple of the actors, I could not hear them. But when Estelle Parsons came on stage, I heard every word and I saw everything she did. And I ran into her at the New Dramatists lunch, and we don't know each other. And I went up and I said, Estelle, my name's Leroy Reams. We don't know each other, but I have to tell you this. And I told her the story, and I said, and when you came out, I understood everything you did. You faced front, I could see it in your face. And she looked at me, she got tears in her eyes, and she said, you know, darling, the actors have forgotten that there's an audience out there now. And it's something to really be conscious of. It's a different technique, the same thing that you can't speak too loud when you do film and television, because it becomes too big of a performance. You have to adjust to the mediums, and the stage requires that energy.

[19:28] Leroy Reams: When I was a senior in high school, I saw the Lunts in The Visit.

[19:33] Andrew Child: Oh wow.

[19:33] Leroy Reams: Back in the day when we did not have amplification. Uh-huh. And I understood everything they did and everything they said. And I was in the balcony.

[19:44] Andrew Child: Wow.

[19:44] Leroy Reams: Because people knew how to use their voices then to give a stage performance. We're missing that now. Even when you have a microphone on, you still have to be understood. So the diction is very important. And many times in colloquial accents and stuff, you still have to be understood. And I think we're missing that now because we rehearse in small rooms and people are giving small performances. And then when they get on the stage, it's not reaching into the house. So I think we need to get back to our techniques.

[20:23] Andrew Child: When we're going back to these classic, these key musicals that were originally performed, sans amplification on the big proscenium Broadway houses and touring the country, bus and truck. We've got these revivals happening that are pared down. We've got radical reimaginations of West Side Story and Oklahoma. Do you think that there is a future in that for HELLO, DOLLY? Or do you think that HELLO, DOLLY will stay as this big spectacle?

[20:59] Leroy Reams: You know, the recent revival. There's a lot that is different. There's a lot that's new, but she still rides out on a horse, but that's two guys, and there's still a big terrain. You know, are we gonna keep DOLLY big? Are we gonna keep doing DOLLY?

[21:14] Leroy Reams: Well, I think that it depends on the creative people who are doing it. I mean, you know, it's difficult. We don't have to always do everything exactly the way it was done. I don't go by that but when it's good it should be maintained so that people know what it is when it works best and I know that some of the Gower's original direction was better than what the revival was forgive me but it's there it was still terrific because it was done in the vein of but a lot of times in musicals you have to focus and when there are important plots when actors sit down and talk plot you pay attention if there's too much physical movement or when people are singing and dancing and acting at the same time you don't listen to the lyric. And Dorothy Fields, a great lyricist once told me she said I always have an understanding no choreography until the lyrics are introduced so the audience knows what the song is about.

[22:19] Leroy Reams: Example interesting example, hey big spender and charity the girls come down they face front they sing one chorus just with the words to the audience then they start moving so then you hear what the lyrics are now when a number starts everybody starts dancing and yelling and screaming and you're not listening to the lyrics because movement distracts from the words so we need to get back to understand that. As I said, there's a technique. And we've got to get back and try to understand that. That's my big thing.

[22:58] Leroy Reams: So, but yet, you know, you see something as different as the Oklahoma revival. I mean, nothing could be farther from the original production, which by the way, I did at Lincoln Center back in 1969, at the New York State Theater for Richard Rogers, who you know cast me in the park. And we did the original Oklahoma there. Wow Agnes DeMille choreography, she was still alive, and her disciple Jim Zelapry staged it, but Agnes came to rehearsals and supervised. So we did that production now that last revival couldn't have been farther from that original production, whether you like it or not, but I'm all for creativity. I really am. Whether you like it or not, let's be creative. And we can add our little things here and there. I think that as an artist, you have to be creative. You know, that's what makes our—that's what makes it an art form. So nothing should be put into stone, but whatever works best you do.

[23:59] Leroy Reams: So, I'm open, but I as I said, and God knows Oklahoma was just so different from the original. My God, you know, whether you like it or not, but I think there's room for everything, and people are creative, like this new revival of Company. It's so different. And I was there opening night with Pam Myers, Donna McKechnie, and Barbara Berry from the original cast, and I played Bobby at the prestigious Darien Dinner Theater back in 1979. Wow. I mean, a year before 42nd Street, which was 1980. So I played Bobby, and I did a whole different thing with the show. And I thought the director did a marvelous thing by the change of gender, and it just made it a whole new show. As Pam Meyer said that night, you know, people said, what do you think?

She said, well, how do you talk about an apple and an orange? She said they're so different. But you know, and I really respected what the director did. It was very interesting. The cast was phenomenal. And Patti LuPone is up there hitting home runs with every line. Wow. I mean, it's if you want to learn how to perform in a show, go watch Patti LuPone and Company now while she's doing it. You'll get a doctorate lesson in how to act on a stage.

[25:28] Leroy Reams: Wow. And it's so brilliant. Now, are you gonna compare her with Elaine Stritch? Up to your personal taste, whether you like an apple or whether you like an orange. But it's two pros up there servicing the material and giving a stage performance. That's what's exciting about the theater. And, you know, even when your microphone, you still gotta give that energy with that thing. It translates, it really does. But anyway, I'm on my soapbox. No, no, you seem very open, which we’ll just say, you know, elephant in the room, gay men talking about HELLO, DOLLY. People aren't always open to talking about the different women, the different people who have played this role. You seem very open to all the different choices that are being made, and obviously people can have their opinions, but so many iconic women have done it. I'm, I’ll say it, I'm a big fan of the movie. Do you have opinions on the movie version with Barbra Streisand?

[26:36] Leroy Reams: I mean, Barbra Streisand can do no wrong in my eyes. It's unfortunately she was just wrong for the part.

[26:43] Andrew Child: You think so?

[26:44] Leroy Reams: She was too young. And, uh, also the thing about the movie, as you realize in the play, uh, and not that you have to be ethnic or Irish or whatever, but if you notice in the play, they never call her DOLLY Gallagher because in the original play, she's Irish, and in the movie, she's only called Mrs. Levi, and, uh, because she's obviously Jewish, right? And that's the way that they went. So that was a whole different interpretation. And I mean, Barbra Streisand, honey, can sing anything she ever wants to. It's the voice that makes the hair on my neck stand up. And, uh, she's only three months older than I, and I met her during Applause after she had won, uh, the Oscar, and we had a conversation in Bacall's dressing room, and, and, uh, I've only been in her presence twice.

We don't know each other, and, uh, but I think she's just terrific, and it just, uh, it was not the right casting for the play. But there's no way that Barbra Streisand's never gonna be interesting or whatever. Walter Matthau was correct casting.

[27:51] Andrew Child: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Would you have wanted to see Carol Channing with Walter Matthau in the movie, or would you have someone else in the world?

[28:00] Leroy Reams: Well, it would have been interesting, but Carol is a stage animal. I don't know, uh, if she would have been too big. It's like Ethel Merman in the film.

[28:09] Andrew Child: Okay.

[28:10] Leroy Reams: Some stage people are too big for the film. But I'll tell you who might have been a very interesting DOLLY in the movie, would have been Lucille Ball.

[28:17] Andrew Child: Oh, that's a good choice.

[28:21] Leroy Reams: And she never did DOLLY.

[28:24] Andrew Child: No.

[28:24] Leroy Reams: Well, she's not really a singer, but neither. I mean, Carol Channing's not, you know, right, the greatest singer in the world, but her presence is just iconic. But, uh, Lucille Ball would have made a very good DOLLY. She could have certainly played the comedy and the songs she could have done. And, uh, instead of Mame, she should have done DOLLY. But anyway, and of course, you know, Barbra Streisand won an Academy Award. She was the hottest thing around. So she could have done anything she wanted to do at that time. Right. And it's a musical, and she wants, so the powers that be said, it's a musical. She won the Oscar, give her the part, you know, and that's it. But, um, I wasn't fond of the movie.

[29:03] Andrew Child: Okay.

[29:04] Leroy Reams: I really wasn't. And Gene Kelly was my idol, but I'm sure he had a very difficult time, uh, doing that movie. I don't know because I wasn't there. But, uh, I don't think the movie, uh, serviced the play, the Thornton Wilder play, as well as the Broadway musical does. And are you, uh, a fan of the play, The Matchmaker?

[29:25] Leroy Reams: Well, I’ve read the play. The problem with the play now, because the musical is so iconic, you miss the songs, right? Okay, it's very hard to do the play anymore without doing the musical. That's why people don't do it anymore. Right. You want to hear those songs, and Jerry Herman, I mean, my God, it's one of the greatest scores ever written for the musical theater. I mean, every single song is just so, that's what you want to see, and you want to see that production. You want a stage full of people singing "Put On Your Sunday Clothes." You want a stage full of people singing "Before the Parade Passes By." And you want to see a stage full of men doing "Hello, DOLLY."

[30:06] Leroy Reams: Yeah. I once wanted to do an all-male version of HELLO, DOLLY.

[30:11] Andrew Child: Oh yeah.

[30:12] Leroy Reams: Like back in Shakespeare's day where women did not act. Okay. I wanted to do a whole straight version, not anything campy or anything like that. Do it very straight. Find guys like finding a tenor like Mrs. Malloy to play Mrs. Malloy, but play it straight and get a guy and make him very beautiful and have him sing in a nice tenor voice. And I thought that would be so interesting. And also to make it multiracial. But just do it with men. I thought it would be an interesting concept. I couldn't talk anyone into doing it. And I wasn't a big enough thing to get it done. Okay. But I thought it would have made a very interesting, uh, you know, just because it's creative. And so I know it'd be cool.

Gender switching and plays and stuff. I'm all for anything that's creative as long as the people are good and they play it the way they want to, not camping around and winking at the audience. Just play the goddamn play and get dressed up and play the character. If you're going to do an accent, then do an accent but get good people who know what they're doing. Like if I were a woman, I'd love to play Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady.

[31:20] Andrew Child: Oh, yeah.

[31:21] Leroy Reams: I think that would be a good gender switching role.

[31:24] Andrew Child: But you're not interested in that role.

[31:26] Leroy Reams: Just as you doing it.

[31:29] Andrew Child: Oh, I would love to do My Fair Lady.

[31:31] Leroy Reams: Okay. I've never been offered it. And number two, because of Rex Harrison, you're always going to get compared. So why bother? Because it's been done. Rex Harrison is the quintessential. I mean, look what just happened with, uh, The Music Man, which I haven't seen yet, by the way. But Hugh Jackman is one of the charismatic actors you'll ever see on a stage. And yet, you know, the reviews were not as kind as I think they should have been. Now I'm gonna see it and I'll figure it out for myself. But the thing being, Robert Preston doing The Music Man is so identified with that. It's hard for anyone else to play the role. The same thing with Yul Brynner and The King and I. Regardless of who you are, they've had all the Asian men play the part. You're still, it's still owned by Yul Brynner.

[32:23] Andrew Child: And why do you think that DOLLY is not like that?

[32:30] Leroy Reams: I mean, we do sort of in certain ways, we say, oh, well, it's not like Carol, it isn't the way Carol would have done it. But so many women have done it and have come away from those comparisons. What do you think makes DOLLY such a different role?

[32:47] Leroy Reams: Well, Carol originated, and Carol is so special and, and, uh, she does what she does. Anyone else who would try to do what Carol did would be an imitation and it wouldn't work. But you know, Carol didn't originate the play, it was Ruth Gordon, who was a brilliant actress. So that's why whoever does the role takes on the personality. For instance, I'll give you an example. The difference between Carol Channing and, uh, Madeline Kahn, who was one of the highlights of my life, getting to know her and working with her.

[33:22] Andrew Child: Oh my gosh, I'd love to see her do DOLLY.

[33:24] Leroy Reams: Well, everyone thinks that Madeline Kahn is this comic. She's not. Madeline Kahn happens to be a brilliant actress who can be funny, but she's not a comic. And, uh, when we started, uh, the whole thing of doing DOLLY, uh, Jerry and I had a meeting with Madeline, and I said, you know, Madeline, I have 10 days to have you do this role. Because we did it down starting out down in Atlanta at the Theater of the Stars. And then they went to the Muni and so forth. And I said, and the only way that I can give you everything is if you're off book the first day of rehearsal. So while you have time, memorize the lines, Madeline. I said, if you're fighting lines and I'm trying to give you all the direction, we're never gonna get through it. And she was smart and she learned her lines.

[34:13] Leroy Reams: So when we started out, now she's bringing her own thing into, so our first, uh, rehearsal. I always start out with the eating scene because it's the most complicated. So with Vandergelder and DOLLY, and then they get to know each other, the two actors, and John Schock was playing opposite her, wonderful actor. So we're doing the eating scene, and there's a line where DOLLY goes, "Horace Vandergelder, you go your way, and I'll go mine." Uh-huh. Madeline looked at me and said, I don't do bits. I said, Well, Madeline, I don't want you to do bits, but I'm telling you, this is the laugh that it's going to get. And the reason it works this way is because the physical addition gets a big laugh from the audience because they get the idea, now you can do it like this, and you can try, or you can just say the lines, but I said it's that physical movement that gets the laugh.

But if you need a reason for doing that, I'm gonna give it to you. "Horace Vandergelder, you go your way, and I'll go mine." You've got on your gloves. A woman doesn't eat in her gloves. So after you do it, you take off your gloves during the laugh, which takes doing a bit. And she thought about it. And so later in the scene, the line is repeated. She said, Okay, what's my motivation now? I said, Well, very simple. You're serving him food. You've got the fork and the spoon that you're serving, but so you go your way and I'll go mine. You click the utensils together, you put them down. And she said, uh, well, that was cheap. And I said, Yes, and you got your fucking motivation. And she laughed, and that was it.

And I tell you from that point on, like when we got into the hat shop scene, and, uh, DOLLY gets up against the closet at the end of the number of motherhood, and she says, So you see, Mr. Vandergelder, there couldn't possibly be a man in that cupboard, and then there's a sneeze in the cupboard, which is Cornelius, and then Carol would face front and go, God bless you. Madeline couldn't do that. So I said, Well, Madeline, what would you do? Instinctively play the scene, give me what you could do. She said, Okay. So you see, Mr. Vandergelder, there could possibly be a man in that cupboard, not you. She looked at Vandergelder and she said, God bless you. I said, He's the one that sneezed. And he goes, you know, worked just as well and got the laugh, which is the result.

But it was her way of getting that laugh rather than, so you buy it. And there's another thing where Madeline in the first scene, there's a line where she's hanging out the cards, and she says, "Varicose veins reduced." And Madeline said, I can't say that line. I said, Madeline, it's in the script. She said, Well, you know what varicose veins are? I said, Of course I know what they are. She said, That's terrible. That's not funny. I said, Madeline, it's not so much what they are, it's the sound of the word. "Varicose veins reduced." There's an tempo. And that gets the laugh. So I said, But if you can come up with another line, Mike Stewart's dead, and we'll never tell him. So you and she went home that night, she called her mother, she called her analyst.

She came back, she had a list, "Facial warts." I said, That's even worse than varicose veins. I said, But I'll tell you, Madeline. A funny word is "brasier." "Brazier" is a funny sounding word. So the heavy set girl, you hand her the card and you say, "Brazier's reinforced." Because she had. So I said, now let's do it at rehearsal, not tell anybody. And if the company laughs, I get it. She said it's a deal. Of course she did it. They all laughed. And we let that end the show. But you see, that's how she made it her own. Now I'm bragging about this, but this is, uh, the result of all of that. After, and, and also to make tell another story about Madeline. Uh, in the HELLO, DOLLY number, she goes out on the ramp and, uh, at our dress rehearsal.

[38:15] Leroy Reams: Uh, that's the first time she saw the ranch. Oh, Leroy, I'm so afraid to go out there. And I feel like I'm going, here she is, Miss America. She said, I said, but Madeline, don't you understand? You're at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant. These people who are there, you know them from the old days. They're dining there. So when you're out there, you're going, HELLO, Mrs. Schwartz, hello, and Mrs. O'Malley, it's DOLLY, I'm back. That's what you're saying. And I took her by the hand and I said, Walk with me. There she is, there. So, you know, I said, That's how you make it a reality, Madeline. So, this is the way we worked the whole piece. It was uh very creative, actually, because of her. Now, fade out on that story.

She's now in Sisters Rosen Schweig at Lincoln Center. And I go see the play. And by coincidence, Carol Channing was there with her husband at the same performance. We go backstage, and Madeline saw me, and of course she ran up and huggy kissy kissy, and I said, Madeline, you're wonderful in this play. She said, I want to tell you why I am wonderful in this play. It's because I worked with you last summer. You taught me how to trust my instincts. And everything that we did with DOLLY at every performance, I got my laugh. It was a real laugh. It was an honest laugh. And you taught me how to trust my instincts and be confident. And she said, and I didn't like this director of the play, but I didn't let him get on my way because I kept saying, Remember what Leroy said, Madeline, follow your instinct.

She said, So when I put on that Chanel suit, I was DOLLY on the ramp. And I said, and I'll tell you what's gonna happen, Madeline. Don't let Jane Alexander put you in the featured category for a Tony nomination, because you're gonna win it. The night she won at 12 o'clock midnight, my telephone rings. I pick it up, there's noise in the background, and Madeline said, I called my mother first, honey. And uh that's what happened. And uh, and when then when we did that last revival, Madeline came to the opening night, and she grabbed me at a mesh and she said, Was I that good? I said, You were that good, and in some ways better. So she was a brilliant actress, and we we literally, and I know one night she said to me, you know, you're the kind of man I used to fall in love with before I knew what was what?

Yeah, so it was, but that's the thing that you do with actress. Now I'll tell you another actress who should have played HELLO DOLLY. It would have been wonderful. Tyne Daly. Oh my gosh, of course. And I wanted Tyne to do it, and she said, I'm not gonna do it until Carol dies. Well, okay. Carol's dead now, and uh, you know. So there you go.

[41:00] Andrew Child: Right, right. Do you think so? Speaking of Tyne Daly and everything you're talking about, it's making me think of Arthur Lawrence has a book about uh mainly on directing Gypsy and West Side Story, and one of the big through lines of the book is there are different problem areas in Gypsy, and every time he's in the room, and of course he got to work with Ethel Merman, he got to work with Angela Lansbury, and then he was later working with Patti LuPone. It's he talks about it like a progression, like, oh, I didn't get this right last time, so we're focusing on the no, I don't I don't know. Uh Arthur did not work with um Ethel Merman. That was uh uh that was still uh uh Jerome Robbins. I didn't know I know he didn't direct it, but he was in the room oh he did the book, so he talks about um and then he directed it on the West End with um Angela Lansbury, and he did one of the performances with Patti LuPone.

Um, I know she's done the role multiple times. Do you feel similarly like with DOLLY for you? Is there a natural progression of building on certain moments? What you learned with Madeline Kahn, does that come into the room with you when you're working with Carol Channing again?

[42:21] Leroy Reams: Yes. Every every every every actor has their own individuality. You can't force someone to imitate another actor. It doesn't work. And I've replaced in two uh musicals on Broadway, Beauty and the Beast and The Producers. And it's very hard to come in and uh redo a role that's been done by somebody else because unfortunately the stage managers become responsible for putting you in the show, and they know what you're supposed to do because of what originally was done with the original actor. So they don't have the uh power to be able to change things. That's not their job. And it's very limiting to an actor going in as a replacement. It really is very difficult. I've been through it, I know, and it was hard.

But what I found was that once I started doing the part, then I found my way by testing with the audience. Then uh I bet I had a difficult time. It wasn't easy right away, but eventually I found my way. For instance, with The Producers, I have a hairy chest and I had very hairy legs. Uh-huh. And uh, and they wanted, of course, to put me in the pantyhose, but I said, well, with my hairy legs, gonna look like I have varicose veins. And then to put me in opaque tights, then the things it's gonna look like I I'm not a man. And the joke that's so funny in the scene is that it's a man in a dress. That's what makes Leo go, what is that thing? If I came out really looking like a woman, then I had to be the man in the dress.

You want to see my hairy chest, you want to see my hairy legs. What's funny? And when I come out, I don't have a wig on. I'm done up and drank with no wig. So that's the joke. And but it wasn't done that way originally. So in rehearsal, I talked to Mel and I said, Mel, they want this. And I they don't Mel said, No, hair is funny. Hair is funny. Show your leg, show your legs. And I used to throw up my dress and show that there was a man underneath that dress. So, you know, you find your way of doing that. Uh, not always easy, but uh eventually we get around to do it. You can't make another actor imitate somebody. You have to, if you had know what you're doing casting wise, you used to have actor to the advantage of what they do.

And every one of my Dollies was totally different. Michelle Lee, who is a brilliant singer and a very sexy woman, her DOLLY was sexy. Um Madeline Kahn was just in another world, and it they all were Leslie Uggams, a singer, and we put in the song of in the version we did with uh uh Leslie, we put in Love Look in My Window. Okay, and because Ethel did it, and they because Leslie is a really a singer, right? And so we did Love Look in My Window. And originally when we did it, uh I had Leslie sing it, then go right into the speech and then go into parade, so there was no applause. Jerry didn't want that. He said, I wanted to sing it like Ethel did, like Ethel did. Well, this is not gonna work, but and in a preview, I thought, well, I told Leslie, I said, we'll do it Jerry's way, because Jerry was there.

I said, we'll do it, Leslie. Go for the big ending. And if it doesn't work and we can't get the audience back to go in, uh it, but let's try it. So Leslie went out, she finished the song. My God, they gave her a standing ovation. Wow. And I thought, well, now hell, that's it. Now she's gonna do the serious speech and go into parade, it's gonna ruin that. No. She did a speech, she went in a parade and she got a second standing ovation. Wow. I told Jerry, I said, I guess you know what you're doing. Now, when I played it, I didn't do that. I did Love Look in My Window, went right into the speech and went right into parade. I made it all one section. That worked best for me. Okay. And uh so that's what you have to do when you if you've got a very rare talent, use that talent.

And uh it it it just works out better for the show. Now talk about Gypsy. Uh it's not that I want to wear and be a woman and put all that stuff on, you know, and doing an alakage and all of that, the when you dress up with all that stuff on it's it's it's a lot of work.

[46:44] Andrew Child: Oh, yeah, it's hard. And DOLLY is an aggressive masculine character. And also Rose is an aggressive masculine character who controls things. I wanted to do Gypsy and as an actor. Uh-huh. I wanted to play the role. And I knew Arthur Lawrence, and I sang with him for the show that he did, Arthur Lawrence and his musicals, and I was the male singer, and KT Sullivan was the female singer. And uh we became close. And so I called Arthur and I said, Arthur, please don't laugh at me. If I can find someone who will let me do Gypsy and play Rose, will you give me the rights? And I took a beat, and he said, if it's you, yes. Wow. He said, because I know you'll play it straight. I said, absolutely. And he said, Yes.

If you can find someone who will let you do it, I'll give you permission. He said, now I may have trouble with Stephen. But he said, I'll handle that. I wouldn't have trouble with Julie Stein because I work with Julie Stein. And Julie was dead by then, but his wife, Margaret, would have given me permission. But uh, but I couldn't find anybody who would let me do it. And now I can't do it. I'm too old. But uh a man could play Rose. But I do it, do it like you know, a uh a camp version of play it straight, play it as a feminine woman. And I know in doing DOLLY, Louis Stadlin, who's one of our great actors, by the way, and he was absolutely perfect as Horace Vandergelder. He was just wonderful.

And Lewis said to me, Lewis said, Leroy, the strangest thing about doing this play with you as well as I know you. He said, When you came out and you were all in costume, he said, I never once looked at you as Leroy. He said, You were DOLLY Gallagher Levi. He said, I just every night played with you as if you were an actress, that you were to me in the moments we were together, you were DOLLY Gallagher Levi. And I know somebody on Facebook had put down I said, Well, I didn't really much care for Leroy's uh rendition of uh DOLLY because he played it like a real woman. Oh wow, and I said, That's the best review I could have ever gotten. Right, that's it. But they were expecting me to run around and do a camp version of it, like Carol Kane. And you won't do all of that. You see, no, you just play it your way as an actor. Play the play.

[49:14] Andrew Child: So what sort of considerations? Because you've talked a little bit about, you know, working with other people and yourself taking on this iconic role that other actors have already created. You've talked about working as a replacement. What goes into when you did Albin for La Cage?

[49:36] Leroy Reams: Well, uh, what's interesting, uh I auditioned, and in the beginning I was too young, you know, to play it. And uh then when it got around to the last replacement, uh Jerry had me come in and I did my audition for Arthur. And at the end of my audition, Arthur said, I'm not saying if I do this play with you, I'm saying when I do it. Because he's not gonna do this with you. He said, uh, and it's gonna be a whole different thing. And uh, but then uh, you know, he offered me the bus and truck, but I was in 42nd Street, I didn't want to go on the road, got it, and also the money wasn't that good. I wanted to stay in New York, so I turned it down. But then when they offered me the last replacement on Broadway, because they were going to have to leave the Palace Theater because they were building the embassy suites.

Okay, so they had to get out of the theater, and they were gonna go to the Mark Hellinger Theater, and I was gonna come in as a surprise, play the last week, then they were gonna open up the play at the Mark Hellinger with a whole big ad campaign. I was photographed, I was advertised on the side of buses, but then there was the uh the stock market was in a bad way. Uh there was a lot of uh uh problems about the original investors who didn't think they were getting the money they should have because there were too many people skimming off of the show.

[51:03] Leroy Reams: So there were a lot of problems, and with the AIDS epidemic, they decided at the last minute not to do it. I left 42nd Street, I was in rehearsal for a week, and at the end of the week, uh Arthur was not there, he was gonna come back to work with me. Then Jim Pentecost, his assistant was putting me into the show, and then Arthur was gonna, you know, uh make it better. And uh, and when I did my run through, and uh Jim was crying after I did I said, Oh Leroy, you could have been so wonderful. And I said, the show is closing. They posted the notice that day. Oh it would have cost 200,000 to transfer the show, and they decided not to do it. And then as a result, the Mark Hallinger is now a church.

So that's what happened at that moment, and there I was without a job, you know. And uh Jim said, What do you want to do? You know, I said, Well, no sense rehearsing anymore, and just give me those high heels and a feather bog and on Times Square and go, hey Sailor. Yeah, right. I was without a job. But then they did a production at the Paper Mill Playhouse where I had worked. So I got to do it there. That was the first place I did, and then I did subsequent productions all over the place. And I did the 10th anniversary tour of La Cage. So I got to then make it my own. Uh Arthur never directed me in the production. Jim Pentecost did, and he directed the production at uh Paper Mill. And when Arthur came to see it at Paper Mill, we had added things to it.

For instance, in the La Cage number, I did impressions, and Jerry and I put that routine together, where I did uh Mae West, uh Tallulah Bankhead, Betty Davis, Ethel Merman, and I made it the way that drag performers did in those days. They did impressions. That was part of the art form. And uh, so when Arthur came to see the piece, Arthur uh was not coming into my dressing room. And I said, Oh, Arthur, just come on in here. I said, Stop it. Of course, you didn't direct it, so let's talk about it. He said, Well, I didn't like all those impressions. I said, But Arthur, that's the reason that he's a star on the Riviera. He's a performer, he shows his legs, he does lines like Charles Pierce and all those wonderful drag performers.

That's what Albin was. And Arthur said, Well, that's the reason I didn't want to do it. I said, But Arthur, that's not a reality. That's just your personal opinion. Right. That doesn't make it a reality that they didn't do that because that's what they would have done. And he said, I also didn't like when you were dancing around, you pulled your skirt up as Mamal. Mamon wouldn't do that. I said, No, but Zaza would have. And I said, Because that's why he becomes Zaza, that's why he rips off his wig, like he does in the show every night, Arthur. There's a legitimate thing for it. So I said, it's a reason. I disagree with you. So fade out on that story. Then I did a re uh uh production with Gene Barry, who was the original Georges, and we were a little concerned because I was younger, and uh uh after the first day of rehearsal, we went out and we had lunch, and Gene Barry said, Well, you're gonna, of course, gray your hair, you're not gonna go out there with your dark hair.

I said, Well, why not? I said, Gene, I wear wigs and hats during most of the show, and besides that, you're gray, and I'm not. And I said, You have gray hair. I would be attracted to you, and probably back in the day, you were probably the star on the Riviera. And I was a chorus boy, and we had an affair and fell in love, and I became the star and you promoted me. I said, There's a reason for doing that. And Gene's wife, who was also in the show, said, That's right. Uh, we never showed Gene the La Cage number. And we kept putting it off because I because he could have said, Well, he's not gonna get out there and do all that stuff. We didn't do that originally in the production, and you know, and he's not gonna upstage me and all that kind of stuff.

So whenever we would rehearse, we could that moment say, we don't need to go through this, let's cut to the end, you don't need the time. That's not what I'm doing. So finally we had our original run through, and I had to do the number. And when I finished the number, Gene Barry stopped rehearsal, and he got up and I thought, Oh, here it comes. And Gene said, now the show makes sense. Now you know why that character was a star on the Riviera. He's a performer, he's showing his legs, he's doing impressions. He said, Now you understand the piece. George couldn't do that. He was a man in a dress. He's not, he's really a drag queen. I mean, doing all this stuff. So that made the thing, and our performances together were very good.

And Gene said, he said, I'm so sorry, I didn't know how good you were gonna be in this part, because we should have booked a longer tour. Because it all worked, and so, you know, it's just the adjustment that you make. And La Cage was uh wonderful, and you know, you can see my performance in that I did uh a production in San Jose. And if you go on YouTube, the American Musical Theater of San Jose, La Cage aux Folles, and you'll see my entire performance. Now, it's a stage performance, it's only in one angle, right? So it's not gonna have close-ups and it's not an intimate thing. I'm giving a stage performance, but you'll see what it was that I did with the piece. And uh, so anyway. Would you say, because you talked about it a little bit with Albin, you talked about it a little bit with DOLLY. Is the backstory something that is very important to you and something that you do a lot for roles you take on?

[56:59] Leroy Reams: Absolutely. I make a backstory for everything. For instance, when I played Company at the prestigious Dairy and Dinner Theater. Oh, of course I've heard. Yes, and Jim Coleman was the conductor, and Robert Johansson was the director who directed a lot of productions at Paper Mill Playhouse, and uh so when they offered me the role and I took it because I loved the show, and but I knew who Bobby was, because my husband Bob was Bobby, who was a man in advertising who was gay, but you couldn't really be gay, you had to be straight or at least pretend. And uh, so what you did uh for this character, I thought this is what this man is. He wants to be straight, he's passing for straight, he keeps all of his couples separated.

They're all married, and he can go out with them as the third party, and he can enjoy the woman without having a fucker. So that's how he gets his voyeurism, wanting to be straight. And then once in a while, to feed his ego, he can have sex with someone for a one nighter. The way that you would you could pretend for one night, but not in a relationship. That's why. And because he's a nice guy with a flight attendant, he says, Oh, come on, stay after they have sex. And then finally says, okay, I'll say that he goes, Oh God. But he's gonna have to have sex with her again. You see, that's how you play. And then what happens in the last scene with Joanne? The thing he did with Joanne, he liked her sarcastic sense of humor, but also they got drunk together.

And this night they just got a little too drunk. And she realized she looked at Bobby, he's getting older, and she realizes he's gay. And she thought, I don't want you to turn out to be a drunk like me. And I'm gonna make you face up to reality. So when are we going to make it? And he laughs. She forces him into the reality. So in his drunken state, at least in my mind, I left and I knocked over the table and I was drunk, and I went into Central Park and I looked up to God and I said, somebody hold me too close. Somebody hurt me too deep, meaning a man. And that's when he makes the decision. So that's the way I played it now. Now we never told the rest of the cast. We never discussed it. We never changed a line of dialogue.

And every night when I did Being Alive, Jim Coleman, the conductor cried. I was just gonna say your description just gave me chills. That was a beautiful lead-in to that song. That's incredible. All of the original people said, No, he's not gay, no, he's not gay. Well, okay, but in my interpretation, yes, he's fighting it, he doesn't want to be gay. Uh he wants to be that, he wants to try to. And I told the director, I said, Don't lose me in the scenes. You've got to keep me there, you've got to see me watching them, wanting to be that. How can I learn how to do that? So when he does, you know, uh uh, you're always sorry, you're always grateful, while he's singing it, have me there with him because I want to feel that.

I want to know what it's like because I want to be like that, but I'm not. And you know, all of our lives as gay men, we're not taught how to be gay, right? We grow up being taught how to be straight. The boys play with cars and trains, the girls play with dolls. We're we go into school, you have to take woodworking and all I mean, we're trained to do that, but we're not that. Our genealogy is we are homosexuals, and that's been the way since man, you know, was made. So we have to understand that, and that's the way I could play the part. So uh and and back in those days, Company uh uh audiences, uh, straight audiences were not very uh susceptible to uh married people not being happy, and so in intermission, a lot of them didn't come back because of that, and that's why the show never made back his original investment.

Okay, but now we've all progressed enough, and I think this uh revival is fabulous. And I think the director made some wonderful choices, and the change in agendas is fascinating to me. I I enjoyed it so much. I'm going back to see it again next week.

[1:01:40] Andrew Child: Oh, good.

[1:01:41] Leroy Reams: Yeah.

[1:01:42] Andrew Child: Good. Well, thank you so much, Leroy, for chatting with me today. This was fabulous.

[1:01:46] Leroy Reams: Well, Andrew, you know, we all you have to do was just get started on a subject. I'll talk to you for, you know, 24 hours. We could do uh we could do uh um telephones together. Put a number on my back and ask on a subject and keep talking. I feel very passionate about what I do, Andrew. The age now where I want to pass this on and try to reach out to the younger people because I learned too, and we must have more conversations about what I'm learning from the younger people, and vice versa, because that's how we create what we do. That's how we make it an art form.

[1:02:22] Andrew Child: Well, thank you. Thank you so much because all of that is so evident. You had so much insight, you had so much to share, so many fabulous opinions, so much great analysis, and I'm really excited that I was able to have this conversation with you.

[1:02:39] Leroy Reams: Well, we'll do it again, and you know, you know, just bring us the topic matter, Andrew, and I'll we'll just keep on going because we love what we do.

[1:02:46] Andrew Child: I agree. I agree. Aren't we?

[1:02:49] Leroy Reams: Yeah, we are.

[1:02:50] Andrew Child: Yes. Thank you, listeners, for joining us as well. Please make sure to purchase a copy of 50 Key Stage Musicals by visiting Routledge.com or by clicking in today's show description. If you want to learn more about HELLO, DOLLY, please also review the links in the below description. I'm Andrew Child, and thank you for listening to 50 Key Stage Musicals, the podcast.

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