This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Earlier this summer, I began a new podcast all about Broadway history, diving into the journeys of shows that have come and gone from the Marquee Theater in Times Square.

[0:12] Patrick Oliver Jones: And one of the shows I talk about is the infamous musical Nick and Nora.

[0:17] Patrick Oliver Jones: Its creative team was filled with iconic legends of musical theater.

[0:22] Patrick Oliver Jones: There was the director, Arthur Lawrence, the composer, Charles Strauss, and the lyricist Richard Maltby Jr.

[0:30] Richard Maltby Jr: Hi, I'm Richard Maltby.

[0:32] Richard Maltby Jr: I was born in Ripon, Wisconsin.

[0:34] Richard Maltby Jr: Me and the Republican Party were both born in Ripon, Wisconsin.

[0:39] Richard Maltby Jr: I lived in Chicago for a while and then moved to Long Island.

[0:42] Richard Maltby Jr: I went to school in New Hampshire and then went to Yale and then came to New York.

[0:46] Richard Maltby Jr: So I'm a New Yorker.

[0:47] Richard Maltby Jr: I've been dyed in the wool, and I wrote the lyrics to Nick and Nora with Charles Strauss, who was the composer.

[0:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, several years ago, in my very first off-Broadway contract, I got to work with Richard.

[1:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: He was designated as the creative consultant, but for all intents and purposes, he was essentially the co-director of a brand new musical called The Magdalene.

[1:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: So when I decided to do an episode about Nick and Nora for my new podcast, I reached out to Richard to share his own experiences of working on that show.

[1:20] Patrick Oliver Jones: And believe me, it is quite the story to tell.

[1:38] Patrick Oliver Jones: That was extremely vague and extremely unclear.

[1:46] Patrick Oliver Jones: Welcome to the award-winning podcast, Why I'll Never Make It.

[1:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: I'm your host, Patrick Oliver Jones, an actor and singer for more than 30 years.

[1:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: And today's special episode with Richard Maltby Jr. is actually being released in conjunction with the Nick and Nora episode on Closing Night.

[2:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: So look for that podcast on this app, or you'll find a link to it in the show notes.

[2:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: And stick around at the end of this episode for a short preview of Closing Night's look at Nick and Nora.

[2:25] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, welcome, Richard.

[2:27] Patrick Oliver Jones: It is so good to reconnect with you again.

[2:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

[2:31] Richard Maltby Jr: Thank you for joining me today.

[2:33] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, uh, it's a pleasure, I think.

[2:35] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, tiptoeing through the tulips of Nick and Nora can be a mixed bag, but yes.

[2:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, we will tiptoe gingerly, but I look forward to our discussion about it because Nick and Nora was a short-lived Broadway musical back in 1991 and had book and direction with Arthur Lawrence.

[2:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Charles Strauss composed the music, and you wrote the lyrics.

[2:57] Patrick Oliver Jones: So who exactly came up with the idea to turn these Thin Man movies into a musical and how did you become involved with it?

[3:04] Richard Maltby Jr: The producers of La Cage aux Folles had a very successful time working with Arthur Lawrence on that show.

[3:11] Richard Maltby Jr: And they had the idea of using the Thin Man stories as a basis of a musical.

[3:17] Richard Maltby Jr: And they brought it to Arthur, and Arthur didn't want to write it, but he agreed to direct it.

[3:25] Richard Maltby Jr: And they thought that was fine because he had directed La Cage aux Folles.

[3:29] Richard Maltby Jr: And they suggested Charles Strauss, and Charles doesn't have a regular lyricist, and they knew me and suggested that I come in.

[3:41] Richard Maltby Jr: And the book was going to be written by A.R. Gurney, a playwright who I have always wanted to work with.

[3:46] Richard Maltby Jr: So I was just thrilled.

[3:47] Richard Maltby Jr: I thought it was a really perfect project for him.

[3:50] Richard Maltby Jr: And so I went happily into it because I was going to be able to work with Pete Gurney.

[3:55] 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.

[4:02] Richard Maltby Jr: And Pete quite quickly realized, 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.

[4:14] Richard Maltby Jr: Don't do that.

[4:15] Richard Maltby Jr: So I had signed on for the sole purpose of working with Pete Gurney, and that was not what I had.

[4:22] 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.

[4:31] Patrick Oliver Jones: Right. That's not very often that writers are also directors.

[4:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: What was that relationship working with him like?

[4:37] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, it was complicated.

[4:39] Richard Maltby Jr: It was from time to time it was really wonderful.

[4:43] Richard Maltby Jr: He can be very, very charming when he wants to.

[4:46] Richard Maltby Jr: He can also be very, very mean when he wants to.

[4:50] Richard Maltby Jr: And for some reason, on the basis of the sketch for the first act, Charles and I started to write the score, which was a really big mistake because we really had written a whole lot of almost all of the first act before I actually saw the second act and realized where the story was going.

[5:10] Richard Maltby Jr: We didn't really know.

[5:12] Richard Maltby Jr: And Arthur's major problem with the show, I think, this is my analysis.

[5:19] Richard Maltby Jr: He thought that the mystery didn't matter in The Thin Man, that as a mystery story, you could take it away, and what was charming was the characters.

[5:28] Richard Maltby Jr: That may be true that we were charmed by the characters, but there was a mystery, and that's what held the story together.

[5:34] Richard Maltby Jr: And it got solved at the end.

[5:37] Richard Maltby Jr: And 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.

[5:48] Richard Maltby Jr: 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.

[6:02] Richard Maltby Jr: It was kind of ludicrous, and the audience laughed at it.

[6:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: So you, as you said, you didn't know that until you saw the second act.

[6:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: So, how much of the first act had to change once you caught wind of what the second act, where it was going?

[6:16] Richard Maltby Jr: Not nearly enough.

[6:17] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, you know, we all sort of liked it.

[6:20] Richard Maltby Jr: 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 elements.

[6:33] Richard Maltby Jr: Those were very exciting.

[6:35] Richard Maltby Jr: One was called A Busy Night at Lorraine's, which was all of the people who showed up in the evening before the murder.

[6:41] Richard Maltby Jr: So any one of them could have done it.

[6:43] Richard Maltby Jr: And another one was another collection of clues.

[6:49] Richard Maltby Jr: It was called, I think it was called Murder Land.

[6:52] Richard Maltby Jr: And it was Nick and Nora putting the clues to it.

[6:57] Richard Maltby Jr: He had one really interesting premise, which was this actress friend of Nora's, Christine Bradley, had been accused of a murder, and she asks them to come in and solve it for her.

[7:12] Richard Maltby Jr: And Nora wants to do it, and Nick wants to be retired and just live off of Nora's money.

[7:19] Richard Maltby Jr: So he says, he turns it down, but Nora says, Well, what you do isn't very hard.

[7:24] Richard Maltby Jr: I'll do it, which is a nice premise.

[7:26] Richard Maltby Jr: So she starts to go off trying to be Nick Charles and be a detective.

[7:35] Richard Maltby Jr: And the twist of it is that even though Nick says he's going to stay out of it and let her do it, he's too much of a detective to not be sort of sucked in.

[7:44] Richard Maltby Jr: So he starts going in and undercutting what she's doing because he can't stop himself.

[7:51] Richard Maltby Jr: It's a nice device that lasted through the first act.

[7:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, and as we said, you worked alongside composer Charles Strauss, who will forever be famous for creating Annie.

[8:02] Patrick Oliver Jones: What was it like working with him creating the score?

[8:05] Richard Maltby Jr: Oh, he's a music machine.

[8:07] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, he just can't put his fingers on the keyboard without writing an attractive melody.

[8:13] Richard Maltby Jr: In a sense, it's almost his weakness as well as his strength because, you know, if you can write too many good melodies, it's hard to have the one exceptional melody.

[8:25] Richard Maltby Jr: As for example, the song Tomorrow, which actually wasn't written for Annie at all.

[8:33] Richard Maltby Jr: It was a trunk song.

[8:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: So now, do lyricists like you, do you have trunk lyrics in the same way that composers have trunk songs?

[8:42] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, well, there I did during the 80s.

[8:44] Richard Maltby Jr: I had a file which I called the urban file, and people would tell me stories about their life, or they tell me something about something else, or about some other person, or something would happen to me that seemed to be a song, and I would write a jotting, a paragraph, a stanza, sometimes an entire outline, and just sort of stick it in the file.

[9:13] Richard Maltby Jr: And along the way, I'd show it to David Shire every now and then, and then he'd write a melody, and then we'd work over it.

[9:22] Richard Maltby Jr: And slowly we began to assemble this collection of very personal story songs that are the basis of what was next time now but became closer than ever.

[9:36] Richard Maltby Jr: And so, yes, I have a little bit of a file like that.

[9:41] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, when it comes to Nick and Nora, what would you say was the easiest part about writing it and what was the most challenging?

[9:48] Richard Maltby Jr: None of it was easy.

[9:50] Richard Maltby Jr: It was a difficult thing all the way through because the central impulse of it was plot directed as opposed to character directed.

[10:00] Richard Maltby Jr: So therefore, our two main characters suffering through what is basically a happy marriage, but having a little dead spot in the happy marriage, neither of them actually expressed a lot of emotional feeling.

[10:16] Richard Maltby Jr: And then, of course, all the people who were implicated in the mystery, they weren't real people.

[10:22] Richard Maltby Jr: They were characters in a murder mystery.

[10:25] Richard Maltby Jr: So what seems like an extremely attractive idea when you get right down to it, lacks an inherent heart.

[10:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: Would that be because Arthur Lawrence just wasn't a true mystery writer in the truest sense of that term?

[10:38] Richard Maltby Jr: I would say that's certainly part of it.

[10:40] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, you know, he I don't think he understood mysteries.

[10:43] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, if you want to, there is Raymond Chandler, I think, wrote a beautiful short essay about the rules of making a mystery, a murder mystery.

[10:53] Richard Maltby Jr: And we broke almost all of them, but you can't.

[10:57] Richard Maltby Jr: There are rules like the ending has to be given a natural conclusion to all the things that have come in front of it.

[11:04] Richard Maltby Jr: You have to be given enough information along the way so that when it is unraveled, you have you can solve it yourself.

[11:12] Richard Maltby Jr: You know, all the facts are there.

[11:14] Richard Maltby Jr: They can be disguised, they can be any number of things, but they have to be there so that when the pieces come together and there's a twist, or it suddenly, you know, you suddenly understand it all, it's been fair.

[11:29] Richard Maltby Jr: And there are a bunch of other rules, but that's the biggie.

[11:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Right.

[11:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah.

[11:35] Patrick Oliver Jones: You have to give the audience a chance to figure it out, or at least part of it.

[11:39] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, they have to feel that they are going to figure it out.

[11:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[11:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: And if you're going to trick them with a twist of some sort, it has to be completely fair.

[11:47] Richard Maltby Jr: You can't like just bring in a character who's never been there before, or as in our case, suddenly decide completely arbitrarily that he did it.

[11:57] Richard Maltby Jr: I have to tell you that when Arthur brought in the second act and I read it for the first time, I called him and said, Arthur, are you kidding?

[12:04] Richard Maltby Jr: The butler did it.

[12:06] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, is that not a joke?

[12:08] Richard Maltby Jr: Won't that be laughed off the stage?

[12:11] Richard Maltby Jr: And you know, he said, No, no, it'll be fine.

[12:14] Richard Maltby Jr: And indeed, in rehearsal, we always got to the last scene, and the butler did it, and nobody laughed.

[12:21] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, and I thought, well, okay, maybe I'm wrong.

[12:25] Richard Maltby Jr: We hit an audience on the first preview, we got to that scene.

[12:30] Richard Maltby Jr: It turned out that the butler did it.

[12:32] Richard Maltby Jr: The audience burst into laughter, and it wasn't kind laughter, it was laughing at it and for the ludicrousness of it.

[12:43] Richard Maltby Jr: Arthur did not understand why the audience was laughing.

[12:46] Richard Maltby Jr: As soon as we got to the chic New York Press, they would understand what he was doing.

[12:46] Richard Maltby Jr: The chic New York Press did not understand what he was doing and clobbered, you know, up and down the wall.

[13:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, well, I want to turn briefly to the cast itself.

[13:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, were you present for any of the auditions or bringing people in?

[13:08] Richard Maltby Jr: Oh, of course.

[13:09] Richard Maltby Jr: Okay.

[13:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: Obviously, we know who was cast, but were there any people that you saw just stood out in that audition process?

[13:15] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, we had, I mean, look, we had Barry Bostwick, I mean, as good as you can get.

[13:20] Richard Maltby Jr: Joanna Gleason, who had just done, I guess has she done Into the Woods?

[13:20] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, she won the Tony, yeah.

[13:31] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, Christine Baranski before she hit her TV stardom, but she was just terrific.

[13:38] Richard Maltby Jr: And nobody knew that Christine was a great singer.

[13:41] Richard Maltby Jr: I mean, a soprano, she studied opera.

[13:44] Richard Maltby Jr: Deborah Monk, who is as funny as anybody could possibly be, you know, they were spectacularly good.

[13:51] Richard Maltby Jr: The cast was just wonderful.

[13:53] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, and I assume the show was fully written by the time you got to auditions, you know.

[13:57] Richard Maltby Jr: We go through rewrites, of course.

[13:58] Richard Maltby Jr: I think pretty much, yeah.

[14:00] Richard Maltby Jr: And once you had your cast, exactly what of the writing started to change as you had specific actors and characters now in these roles.

[14:10] Richard Maltby Jr: It's interesting. Um, the quality of the actors raised the level of the writing to some extent. You know, the writing had to be better. We did a lot of rewriting of the score. Arthur didn't do a whole lot of rewriting of the script, but, uh, which he could have, but we did change a lot. There were a number of songs that went in and came out, in and came out in different times. Jonathan Tunick, who is the orchestrator of the show, said it was one of the shows he made the most money on ever, because every time you re-staged a number or rethought a number, you'd have to reorchestrate it. Oh God, you know. So he was doing very, very well. I think Jonathan is the only person who did do well on that show.

Financially, you mean, yes. And the producers chose to not do an out-of-town tryout. Do you know why that choice was made? I don't think they had enough money to go out of town. I mean, it was foolish because it was such a complicated show. Uh, I mean, in terms of the things that the audience had to know in order to make the things go together. I mean, it was clearly there was going to be a lot of work that was going to be done to it. The problem again was that the author was sleeping with the director. And, um, then that's never a good idea. So that so, you know, if the director thought he needed something, the author convinced him that it was already there. And, you know. Yeah, and vice versa.

If the director needs something, the writer could just like whip it out, and there you go. Problem solved. There you are. They talked to each other, and, um, and it was, uh, very hard to create any kind of seamless show out of that.

[15:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: And I assume that that became difficult for you and maybe Strouse as well to work with.

[15:55] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, I mean, Arthur really liked me and was extremely kind to me up until the show opened. Um, but, uh, uh, but I it it he was he was difficult to to he was difficult in that he had his ideas of how things worked and, um, and couldn't be shaken. Um, he really did need a strong director to, you know, give him focus to tell him that scene isn't sufficient or that isn't enough, or the character we need to know more about this. Arthur, I mean, Charles and I would write these very long numbers in which the sleuths solve something, and it's really they were really good. They were well staged and everything. But at the end of at the end of something like that, you have to come up with a discovery.

If you're gonna do that, a big, um, a big mental process by which you figure out something, it has to be a turning point in the story. But that usually never happened. The story just sort of picked up and went on afterwards. I see. Yeah, yeah. Usually it's the book that's carrying the story, and the songs highlight or emphasize that, but it sounds like it was the songs that were really telling the story, but the book kind of went in another direction.

[17:20] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, yeah, that's that is sort of true. I mean, the show didn't make any sense. It didn't it it didn't grab you so that you were interested in the dilemma of the main characters. Um, you were interested in the murder mystery, you weren't interested in in the story between Nick and Nora. That was extremely vague and extremely unclear. And I also, they were very hard to write for those two characters. They were charming and witty and they and skin deep. They didn't have, you know, emotional complexity. So instead of songs like "Will I Leave You" from, you know, Alexa Smith, you know, we had this song called "Swell," which was the two of them solving something, but very, very painlessly. Um, and it just sounds like we're just gonna go on with this number for a long time.

They were hard characters to write for, and I'm not sure that we did a very good job of that. I find it hard to listen to. Uh, although there are people who call me up and tell me how much they like the score to Nick and Nora, I think they've gone mad. But well, it's a very subjective art form. You know, there are these shows that run for years and years and kind of, you know, don't have great music, and then vice versa. They're short shows that people love. So you just never know what people are gonna gravitate towards. I mean, there is a movement 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 um, 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.

[19:28] Patrick Oliver Jones: So have there been efforts made to revive it, you know, have another life?

[19:33] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, we had that. We had a real chat, nice chat over a glass of wine. That's all that was your effort. Yes. Yeah, yeah. You had a nice conversation. I must say the one thing that made me want to do it, the only thing that would make me do it was that when in the last scene, you know, where you all the suspects are summoned to a room and you go around and saying, Youth, what did you do it? And we think for a minute that's the person who did it, but then it isn't you move, you go around the room until you find the unmask who did it. Um, and when we figured out that, uh, Tracy, the Christine Baranski actress had, uh, seduced the screenwriter in order to cover up the murder. The line was, you slept with the writer.

You know, there's a Hollywood joke, which is she, you know, the Angelina was so stupid she slept with the writer. Right, instead of the director. Right. Yeah, right. You want to go if you want to make your way in the world, you do not sleep with the writer.

[20:34] Richard Maltby Jr: When it comes to the previews, it was a rather lengthy preview process. It was supposed to open in November of that year, but it didn't open until a month later. So there were 71 total previews. I assume the show was changing a lot during those, and that was the reason for the delay. I wish I could say that it was changing a lot. It really wasn't. We were play we would take this song out and put that song in, and we would write different songs, but basically the show remained pretty much the same. It didn't make use of a 71-day, you know, preview period. Um, you know, uh, that's not a terribly long time. If you in the old days where a show would open in New Haven, go to Boston for three weeks and go to Philadelphia for three weeks and then come into New York. It's sort of the same amount of time. Uh, and people would work on it the whole time. We did it all in one swoop, you know, and all in New York and all visible.

[21:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: Right, right. Because then the rumors started buzzing and different things.

[21:33] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah. Yeah. And that just makes it harder and harder and harder. You know, by the time we opened, I think everybody pretty much had made up their mind what they were going to think about the show. Now, from what I read though, Faith Prince kind of stole the show that she had a great performance. I since I was unable to see it, what was so remarkable about her performance?

[21:51] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, first of all, she had a really good song called "Men" about a secretary who had been kind of used by her employers over her career. And it was a belty song, perfect for Faith's voice. And then, uh, Arthur really really knows how to write that kind of tough talking girl and wrote a really, you know, I mean she had really great lines. She was the victim. She was Lorraine, the one who was actually murdered. And did she have this very dramatic death scene? No, she just appeared in these in the sequences in which they're trying to solve the murder mystery. I see. We never get to see the actual murder. Oh, yeah. Probably would have been a good idea. Yeah, yeah. I mean, staging a murder is always fun for actors at least. I mean, we certainly love to die and do our do our best dramatic or farcical death, depending on the situation.

[22:44] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah. As the actor says in Fantastics, the audience used to yell, die again, Mortimer.

[22:50] Richard Maltby Jr: Right, right. So by the time it did open, did you feel like it was at least the best version of the show possible? No, I felt that it was going to open. Yeah. It opened, and the next I took my family and we went off to, uh, Anguilla for a vacation, and I got the word that the show was closing while I was there. So I never even got to see the show again before it closed.

[23:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now you say that you were gone by the time the show started closing. Was there any whispers, even leading into opening night that it was gonna be a short run?

[23:34] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, I mean, no one expects it to be that short a run. Right. I mean, first of all, maybe somebody's gonna like it, and if a couple of people did, I think, you know, a couple people liked it, sort of, uh, not enough to make anybody want to go to see it, but they, you know, they weren't too terribly cruel about it. I mean, it was, you know, with, uh, Charles Strouse and, and, uh, Arthur Laurents and me and the producers of La Cage aux Folles and First Great Design Team, it was an A-list show, you know, and the cast, you know, which was, you know, breathtaking. Um, do you feel that the show kind of let the cast down that you had these great performers, but it just didn't rise to that occasion?

[24:17] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, I suspect that that's the case. I mean, it was not for want of trying. We kept trying to make to give everybody a real turn. We did, in fact, do a Faith Prince one that was just that was wonderful. Um, oh, and Chris Sarandon was in it too. Mm-hmm. Chris Sarandon, yeah. He and, uh, Joanna Gleason got together and got married, so we there was some something good came out of it. That's well then, then that's good, yes. And then months later, you and Strouse were Tony nominated for best original score. Was that at least some validation of the work and effort you put into the show?

[24:54] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, I mean, you know, it becomes kind of an inadvertent joke, uh, because, uh, 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 had didn't do back then. They were very impressive and clearly the sign of people writing it who, uh, you know, who were reaching for something interesting, and, and, uh, those sequences were, uh, what I think, uh, you know, attracted people. They were balanced out by what I'm sorry to say were kind of bland songs from the main characters, because I couldn't tap anything into either Nick or Nora that, uh, you know, would break your heart. And somehow a main character has to have a simple drive of some sort that you're connected to. Neither of them had anything at stake.

[26:02] Patrick Oliver Jones: And could that have been written in, or was that just kind of baked into that Thin Man series? And this is who the characters are.

[26:08] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, I suspect that's who the characters are. I mean, the attempts to make the marriage be somehow in trouble never got off the ground because the marriage is based upon a joyous ignorance of what of problems. If you check the banter, uh, between the two of them, he says unspeakable things and she doesn't care. She just laughs back at him and turns it on him. That's their joken. And, uh, that's never in trouble in the course of the show. Arthur attempted to make that the plot, the story that something happened between them in the marriage, but I don't think anybody ever believed it. She goes off and almost has an affair with somebody, but nobody believes that either with a gangster who had sort of artistic leanings that, you know, had sort of had a heart that was Chris Sarandon's part.

[27:03] Patrick Oliver Jones: So as the years have gone by, obviously we're decades removed from it now, how do you feel about the piece now? Is it something that you remember fondly or is just something that was amiss and, you know, how does it stack up now in your career?

[27:17] Richard Maltby Jr: It's hard listen when you if you do a show and you follow your idea through to the conclusion and you do it as well as you possibly can and it fails, it's okay because that's the show. What doesn't work is if you work hard and the underlying the foundation of it is shaky you never really believed it and other people took you down some other kinds of roads so what opens is not even what you liked. And then it gets treated badly it's like it's it's you know you can't go back to it. And, um, we had a similar circumstance with a show called Susatsuka that was played in Toronto. Um, I can't say that I I was drawn back to it because there were so many things that were wrong with it. And not the least of which was that the controlling artistic vision, which was Arthur's, was flawed.

[28:13] Richard Maltby Jr: Would you say that's the biggest reason why you haven't wanted to revisit or revive it?

[28:18] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah. I mean, what's to go back and do? I mean, the first thing you'd have to do is revisit the plot and by extension revisit the script. And I don't know that it would be worth the effort.

[28:30] Richard Maltby Jr: You also wrote the lyrics to Miss Saigon, which came out the same year as Nick and Nora. So were you working on both projects simultaneously?

[28:38] Richard Maltby Jr: Um, Nick, uh, Miss Saigon was, uh, was two years earlier. Nick and Nora was, what was the year of it?

[28:46] Richard Maltby Jr: 1991. Yeah, in New York. But, um, Miss Saigon was '89 in London.

[28:53] Richard Maltby Jr: Okay. So we, uh, other than the fact that every time we'd open a production of Miss Saigon, we would work on it. I mean, uh, every single time. Five years into the run, we rewrote the opening, the closing number of the closing scene. But, uh, no, but basically Nick and Nora was the one that took the time.

[29:14] Richard Maltby Jr: Now, you yourself, you've, you know, of course written lyrics, conceived shows, but you've also directed productions. Is there one that you enjoy more than the other?

[29:23] Richard Maltby Jr: Uh, I mean, Ain't Misbehavin' is, uh, you know, kind of a jewel in the crown. It, it, it, I guess I have to say it's kind of perfect. Um, it never fails. You know, the structure of it sends an audience out delirious, no matter what. Um, a good production or a bad production, they always sort of work. Um, it's really, really smartly organized and always surprises anybody seeing it.

[29:50] Richard Maltby Jr: And there are so many complex reasons. I mean, I, if you want to press that button, I can talk about Ain't Misbehavin' for hours, but, um, I'm sure. Because there are so many, you know, layers of stuff that's in it. What seems to be just an innocent entertainment using the Fats Waller songs to, you know, make an evening. And it is that, but also it's historical.

[30:14] Richard Maltby Jr: It's, um, it's a record of the great artists from the Harlem Renaissance who, uh, paved the way for the artists who are working today. Uh, it's got layers and layers that make me very proud. Um, but I love the way that Baby works and, uh, yeah, because much like Arthur Laurents wrote the book and then directed it, you wrote the lyrics to Baby and also directed it.

[30:39] Richard Maltby Jr: Do you feel that, uh, that you had any of the pitfalls that Arthur Laurents fell into?

[30:52] Richard Maltby Jr: Right. So I can't, I can't tell. But it was very much something that I was in charge of from the very beginning of the process, even when we brought in, uh, Sybil Pearson and, and, um, other writers in the cast and everybody. But we threw out the second act of the show on the first day of rehearsals for the Broadway production, and sort of the rehearsal period was a rewriting period. I, you know, really, really was, uh, as, um, intense a creative process as I've ever gone through, and I just am really proud of it, um, because we followed the ideas that we were following and, and we got to, yeah, that's a perfect example of you can like or not like Baby.

[31:40] Richard Maltby Jr: I don't care. It is exactly the show that I want, you know, I set out to do.

[31:45] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, as you said, that's really all you can ask for, that you created the show that you set out to create. And, uh, I was looking at your list of Broadway productions, and yeah, the ones that you directed, you either took part in the lyrics, you conceived it, but there was one production where you only directed, you weren't part of the writing team or conception, and that was The Story of My Life, at least as it's credited here. How was it just being a director and not having to work on the other parts of it?

[32:12] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, the show was written beforehand. It was, it was a show that, that, uh, I had attended a presentation in which three songs from the show were sung, and they were really, really impressive. And I asked the writers what else they had done, and they sent me the rest of it. And I sent a long email saying, I think this is the story that you really are telling. You know, it's not the story you think you're telling, but I think this is the story you think you're telling.

[32:39] Richard Maltby Jr: And they then went off and did a production in Canada in which they sort of followed that memo. And after that, the show was well received, but they weren't happy with the direction. And, uh, they asked whether I might do it. I thought, sure. And, um, I contributed in terms of inspiring them to write some dramatic things that were not fully realized in their version.

[33:08] Richard Maltby Jr: I scribed the, uh, where the numbers should go. And they, when I did that, they came back with spectacularly good numbers. Um, I think that the score to The Story of My Life is glorious, and, um, it probably should not have happened on Broadway. It was a two-character show. If it had been done, you know, in one of the new New World Stages theaters, it probably would be, you know, running today because it was, uh, was that kind of show.

[33:38] Richard Maltby Jr: It is done in Seoul, Korea.

[33:41] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I was looking at the productions that have happened.

[33:44] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, it only lasted three days on Broadway, but yet its regional and international productions have gone on for years.

[33:51] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah. I mean, there are lots of shows that do that, that don't succeed in New York and then go on and do extraordinarily well. Merrily We Roll Along was one. Obviously, that's a biggie.

[34:03] Richard Maltby Jr: Suessical, which was a, you know, a disaster the first time out, but Lynn and Steve rewrote it, and it's probably the biggest, um, money maker in stock and amateur that that's out there, except for maybe Annie.

[34:16] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[34:16] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, I got to do Suessical at Muni. It was a fun production.

[34:20] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, I mean, it's a really, really good show. It was not a good show when it opened in New York, but I think, you know, they fixed it. Uh, Ring of Fire that I did ran a month in New York, but it is done all over the world, um, you know, and done all the time. So, yeah, there's life after Broadway.

[34:39] Patrick Oliver Jones: There's plenty of life after Broadway.

[34:41] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, you've certainly had your list of credits and productions on Broadway and certainly made your impact on it. Uh, I greatly appreciate you joining me on the podcast and talking about Nick and Nora and some of these other productions. So I'm so glad you were able to join me.

[34:55] Richard Maltby Jr: Well, thank you for even asking about Nick and Nora. I mean, it's not exactly something that I, you know, people don't stop me on the street and ask me what I thought about Nick and Nora. But, uh, anyway, it's really fun to go and revisit it. I wish I remembered it more vividly, which, uh, I, you know, perhaps I could, but, well, I mean, it was so long ago, and it only lasted a week and you were gone, you were out of town when it opened and closed.

[35:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: So you, uh, I didn't even have a chance to like go down and, you know, say goodbye to the cast.

[35:19] Richard Maltby Jr: You know, right, right.

[35:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: Oh yeah, well again, thank you for this. Thank you for just for coming on. I look forward to putting this episode together and, you know, it's been interesting just reading about the show and the different things.

[35:19] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, I'll have to dig into and see if I can find that commissioner thing, whatever that issue was.

[35:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, interesting to find out what that was.

[35:19] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, when you're in previews that long, people start talking about the fact that you're in previews that long, you know.

[35:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: Right, yeah, that's one of the things that I was reading was that, uh, the reviewers kept talking about how long previews were and they were just tired of the show being there. They wanted to see it.

[35:19] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, the only other show that did that was Spider-Man.

[35:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: Spider-Man?

[35:19] Richard Maltby Jr: Oh yeah, well, Spider-Man was its own beast. I thought that everybody had forgotten Nick and Nora, but every time they talk about Spider-Man and how many previews it was, oh, I, you know, it's almost as many as Nick and Nora or it's longer than the previous winner, which was Nick and Nora. So it was like, well, I guess if you're gonna be famous for something.

[35:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, well, you know, usually they didn't mention who wrote Nick and Nora, but often they did.

[36:38] Richard Maltby Jr: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would assume that, you know, with your long career that Nick and Nora is but a footnote and, you know, you've obviously enjoyed many other things.

[36:47] Richard Maltby Jr: Yeah, I actually, you know, I loved the cast, and I'm, you know, there were many things about it that were fun.

[36:52] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, yeah, I mean, if you got that cast together now, even it would be the makings of a great show.

[36:56] Richard Maltby Jr: So, yeah, I totally get that. But I appreciate you, uh, coming on and talking about it.

[37:03] Richard Maltby Jr: Thank you. It was really fun. You're very good.

[37:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: As you can see, neither of us seem to want to end the interview. I mean, we could have kept talking for hours. So thank you so much for joining Richard and me in this special interview episode.

[37:21] Patrick Oliver Jones: Be sure to check out why I'll never make it.com, where you can support this podcast through donations and subscriptions, which will greatly help further my one-man production of these interviews and stories with lessons we can all learn from.

[37:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: Again, why I'll never make it.com.

[37:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: All right, as promised, I want to give you a small preview of that Nick and Nora episode on Closing Night, which showcases the kind of storytelling you'll find on that theater history podcast.

[37:55] 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.

[38:17] 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'.

[38:35] Patrick Oliver Jones: On stage, there was an equally all-star cast led by Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason. Valiantly, Barry and I were out there every night with these bullseyes painted on our tussles because the show was just a fiasco over the beginning. But he was Grace Under Pressure and, uh, darling. And, uh, we, uh, there we stood at the rock firing slug.

[38:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: 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.

[39:03] 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.

[39:15] 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. First in February, then April, months later in November, and then two dates in December.

[39:33] Patrick Oliver Jones: Theater historian Mark Robinson gives his own thoughts as to why Nick and Nora had so many delays and setbacks.

[39:40] 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. 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. The 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.

[40:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: 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. And eventually, Laurents's prickly reputation caught up with him as he unleashed tirades on the actors and creative team.

[40:33] Patrick Oliver Jones: 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.

[40:43] Patrick Oliver Jones: 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.

[41:10] 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?

[41:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: As you'll see, Nick and Nora serves as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks big names automatically mean big box office. Because even the brightest stars sometimes find themselves lost in the shadows.

[41:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: 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.

[41:46] Patrick Oliver Jones: Both Closing Night and Why I'll Never Make It are productions of WINMI Media, with me as host and producer of both podcasts.

[41:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: So be sure to go and check out Closing Night and then come back here and join me next time as we talk more about why I'll never make it.