Special Coverage! Jerry Herman Previews His New Documentary

Words and Music by Jerry Herman, a new documentary that will air on PBS next January, was screened Monday evening in Manhattan for members of the Paley Center for Media (known until two weeks ago as the Museum of Television & Radio), with Angela Lansbury, Barbara Cook and Herman himself in the audience. After the screening, Herman received a long standing ovation as he went up on stage to hold a Q&A with the film's writer-director, Amber Edwards.

Edwards, a senior producer for NJN, New Jersey's public television station, started planning a documentary about Herman—a Jersey boy—after she met him in 1988 when Paper Mill Playhouse did Mack & Mabel. She just completed the 85-minute film last November. Among those interviewed on camera are Lansbury, Carol Channing, Phyllis Newman, Arthur Laurents, Michael Feinstein, Charles Strouse, Fred Ebb (who died in September 2004), Marge Champion and Charles Nelson Reilly (who passed away last month).

"Jerry's music is totally identifiable because of its tunefulness, and the joy that comes within oneself when they hear it," Reilly, who originated the role of Hello, Dolly!'s Cornelius Hackl on Broadway, says in the film. "It's cheerful, it's optimistic—which a lot of people would sneer at, because it's so much safer to be cynical."

"He has succeeded so well in his mission that people don't give him credit…to be simple without being cliché is nearly impossible," adds Feinstein, who performs "Penny in My Pocket" (a character-defining song written for Horace Vandergelder but cut from Dolly!'s final score) in the documentary.

Ebb, whose The Rink score was bested by Herman's La Cage Aux Folles at the 1984 Tonys, says on camera: "There's craft there…. The use of a word like 'brilliantine,' and 'dime cigars,' and all those wonderful images [in 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes']—that's just wonderful stuff. And I don't think you have to be a lyric writer to know that."

Words and Music details the creation and fate of every Herman show, from super-duper hits like Hello, Dolly! and Mame to the flops Dear World, Mack & Mabel and The Grand Tour. It includes extended excerpts from original Broadway productions, as well as such rare footage as a 1955 college revue that Herman wrote, Mary Martin performing Dolly! in Japan (and singing the title song in Japanese), Channing singing "Hello, Lyndon" at the 1964 Democratic Convention, Ethel Merman (who was then playing the title role) celebrating Dolly!'s becoming the longest-running show in Broadway history—and Lansbury in a bikini at Herman's 40th birthday party on Fire Island.

In the film, Herman goes back to his childhood home in Jersey City. He recalls coming home one day from school to a spread of hors d'oeuvres his mother had put out; when he asked her what the occasion was, she said, "It's today." Which, of course, became Mame's mantra, though, sadly, Herman's mother died of cancer before he made it to Broadway. Herman is also shown coaching performers at rehearsals of Showtune, the 2003 Herman revue presented by the York Theatre Company. Attendees of the special event received the Showtune CD in their gift bag.

Amber Edwards, filmmaker of Words and Music by Jerry Herman, with her star subject.

Calling her "my Angie," Herman told attendees: "I can't even speak about this woman, I love her so dearly. She has been the most loyal, loving friend on top of all the obvious talent and how much she's meant to my career."

From the stage, Herman said: "I'm looking at a lady who is responsible for turning 'Time Heals Everything' into a standard: the great, the only Barbara Cook" (seated in the audience).

Cook chats with Lansbury at the reception after the screening.

"When they passed out talent, he stood in line twice," Carol Channing says of Herman in the documentary. She also says her title song as Dolly is "the greatest production number in the history of the theater."

Herman told museum members about the search for someone to play Mame. "Every woman in the musical theater who was breathing came and auditioned for it. There were some wonderful ladies, very talented, and nobody hit us in the heart." It was his idea to pursue Angela Lansbury, since he remembered her "absolutely astounding me with that voice" in Anyone Can Whistle. The producers were not so enthusiastic; one of them, Herman said, told him: "That's the woman who plays everybody's mother." But when Lansbury came to Herman's home to audition, "I opened the door and there stood this stunning lady in a mink coat…. I knew at that second, before we even started to talk, that I had found her."

Asked if he's going to write another show, Herman said, "I would love to, but I don't know…I feel too old." Then he revealed: "I'm working on the kids of mine that didn't become the world travelers. I'm working very hard on Mack & Mabel, and I'm going to try Dear World with a new book. I can spend my time very well making those kids healthy."

Lansbury with Cosmo queen Helen Gurley Brown, whose husband, David, produced Showtune.

Lansbury poses with Don Pippin, musical director of Mame, Dear World, Mack & Mabel and La Cage, who appears in the documentary.

Edwards and Herman during the Q&A.

"I did not write 'I Am What I Am' to make a political statement," Herman says in the film. "I was doing my job as a musical playwright." George Hearn (above, as Albin/Zaza) says La Cage "was more than a play; it was a social moment in America." In the doc, following a clip of him singing "I Am What I Am," Hearn reflects on the song's—and the show's—impact. "Theater can do things that you can't legislate, or preach, or make laws about," he says tearfully. "The theater can do this thing of getting into your heart."

Where would the American musical theater be without these three?!

They're all music makers: Barbara Cook, Jerry Herman, Don Pippin, Angela Lansbury.

Hearn photo by Martha Swope. All other color photos by Adrienne Onofri.