In Gratitude: A Fan's Remembrance of Harold Rome

Author's Note: Last Saturday, May 27 would have been the late Broadway composer & lyricist Harold Rome's 98th birthday. For the past year, I have been acting as a Production Advisor for the 60th anniversary revival of the master's post World War II smash revue, Call Me Mister, being performed for five performances only (June 15 - June 18) by The American Century Theater in Arlington, VA.  Consult their website: www.americancentury.org for further details. Although "Hecky" died only thirteen years ago, his work is but a hazy memory for most of today's theatergoers. Hopefully, this article written as a handout for a musical theatre history class I was teaching to senior citizens a few years back will explain why recognition for the contributions Rome made to the American Musical Theater is long overdue.

The passing of Composer-Lyricist Harold Rome (of Pins & Needles, Call Me Mister, and Fanny fame) Oct. 26, 1993 at age 85 marked the end of a 21 year casual acquaintance, which was originally sparked by my attendance in 1958 at a summer stock production of Rome's musical, Wish You Were Here, my very first live theatrical experience. 

Admittedly, the presence of a swimming pool on stage at that theatre in the round under an enormous circus tent was what fascinated me most about Wish You Were Here at age 5 ?.. My appreciation for Mr. Rome's invaluable contribution to this show began the following year when a family friend presented me with a gift of Wish You Were Here's original cast album. I couldn't wait to listen to it. When I did, I could pick out several songs that were quite pleasing to my youthful ears.

One number (Where Did the Night Go?) became the first song lyric from a musical that I memorized for singing purposes. Another tune, Don Jose of Far Rockaway, began my passion for tango rhythms (You should have seen how I acted out the Hernando's Hideaway sequence from the movie version of The Pajama Game at home during my childhood!).

From Wish You Were Here, I began the practice of collecting Mr. Rome's musicals' original cast albums (Destry Rides Again; I Can Get It For Wholesale, The Zulu and the Zayda; and Gone With The Wind). When I was 12, through my best friend at the time's influence, I began writing to musical theatre and film celebrities for their autographs. This period was my first direct contact with Mr. Rome, who obliged me with an answer, thanking me for my letter and my interest.

As an undergraduate at Syracuse University in the early 1970's, one semester I elected to take an independent study of the musical theatre for course credit. I thought immediately of interviewing Mr. Rome about his career for the final research project. He agreed to a meeting at his impressive Fifth Avenue apartment with his collection of African art sculptures on display in his living room, having recently returned from London where his musical, Gone With The Wind, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Margaret Mitchell novel and Academy Award-winning Best Picture of 1939, had been playing in the West End theatre district.

The Harold Rome I met with that day in the Spring of 1972 was very opinionated and very informative about his own particular approach to writing songs for musical theatre. I'm always trying to write what is best for the show. I have never consciously written a hit song. If it happens to work out, that's fine; but I cannot write what I think the public will like," Mr. Rome told me.

During our nearly 90 minute session, there was evidence given by Mr. Rome's comments that although he was proud of the outcome of his numerous musical efforts through the years, beginning in 1937 with the vastly successful International Ladies Garment Workers Union revue, Pins & Needles, that his songs, in general, were not sung nearly enough by popular recording artists and that critics did not frequently understand or sufficiently appreciate the approach he took in writing.

I began to think of Harold Rome as an overlooked veteran of musical theatre, a composer-lyricist whose tremendous output of songs were not as well known by modern day audiences as the ever-popular creations by Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Frederick (Fritz) Loewe, and Cole Porter, all of whom Rome knew personally and admired.

In my estimation what made the songs Mr. Rome wrote of lasting value was his ability for capturing the thoughts and feelings of the average human being and putting this precise choice of words to catchy and frequently emotionally moving melodies. Mr. Rome once told me in a passing thought that if he ever wrote

his autobiography, it should be called, A Rome With A View. For him, every song must have expressed a point of view in order for it to have worked well within its context of the show from which it came.

A specialty among his songwriting abilities was the married couple's love song. Rome first essayed this ballad form in the musical, Fanny (1954), for which he composed To My Wife, a husband's tribute to his new, young bride. He repeated this song style in I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962), where Rome had the middle-aged Bushkins sing Have I Told You Lately? about their still happy union after years of wedded life. Tony Bennett once publicly stated that this song, which he recorded, was one of the best ever written. Finally, for his last produced musical, Gone With The Wind (London-1972), Rome wrote Strange and Wonderful, which finds Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara blissful in their marriage.

Mr. Rome patterned all of these songs after his own contented union to his charming wife, Florence, an accomplished authoress in her own right, which last 54 years.

When Mr. Rome appeared on stage in the late 1970's at NYC's Ballroom nightclub to sing and play his own compositions, I was there in the audience to cheer his performance. He obviously enjoyed presenting his material since he recorded three albums of his show songs, a fourth album of specially written tunes meant to depict the subjects from a collection of his own paintings entitled Harold Rome's Gallery, and was guest performer on the Columbia Records' studio recording of Pins & Needles.

My favorite Rome appearance on record is on the Chappel Music Publishing demo of the score from Gone With The Wind, which he had completed shortly before our first meeting. Mr. Rome gave me this non-commercially issued recording as a gift. On the long playing disc, he sings in his untrained baritone voice most of the songs from the London production of this musical while accompanying himself on the piano. In one selection, he sings a 4-part round with himself; and on another album cut, he sings the verse the second time in Japanese in tribute to the country where this show, then known as Scarlett had its world debut.

Gone With The Wind, according to Mr. Rome, "had more music in its score than any musical written up to its time, including The Most Happy Fella and possibly Porgy and Bess. He explained to me in 1972, "It has music going continuously all the way through recalling things, like an interwoven tapestry, going further than any other musical in the use of music to connect a story." Yet, Gone With The Wind never reached the Broadway stage due to the expense of producing such a mammoth undertaking and the failure of the Dallas, TX, and the West Coast productions of the musical. This was a tremendous disappointment, no doubt; as was the inability of getting his attempt at turning Anouilh's Waltz of the Torreadors into a musical (Waltz of Love) produced.

Fortunately, the last two decades of his life brought Mr. Rome his share of accolades from his theatrical peers celebrating the body of his work. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame and named to the Theatre Hall of Fame. Rome was also honored by ASCAP with the Richard Rodgers Award in 1985. His musicals, Wish You Were Here, Fanny, and I Can Get It For You Wholesale were revived within the last ten years of his life by theatre companies in N.Y.C., East Haddam, CT, and Milburn, NJ. At the time of the 1991 off-Broadway revival of 'Wholesale,' Mr. Rome received a Special Award from the Drama Desk for "his distinctive contribution to musical theatre."

We met for the last time in August 1987. I asked if I could interview Mr. Rome on some other issues that were not covered in our first conversation, or at our second session in 1976, which unfortunately wasn't captured on tape. When I arrived at the Rome apartment, Mrs. Rome graciously welcomed me as she had done on my premier visit, when she asked me to accompany her to their kitchen where she hospitably brewed a pot of tea for us to drink while Mr. Rome was kept occupied by an important phone call. She asked whether I was there to talk to her husband in conjunction with this being the 50^th anniversary year of his monumental and pivotal work, Pins & Needles. I had to confess that my reason for requesting an appointment wasn't specifically tied to any particular Rome production. Mr. Rome and I had exchanged letters through the years in which I told him of my dream theatrical projects, many of which involved reviving his musicals Destry Rides Again and I Can Get It For You Wholesale, both of which I had yet to see performed at this point and neither of which at that time had received a New York or regional theatre revival. Unfortunately, none of my plans came to fruition. But Mr. Rome always regarded my wishful ideas with respect, never suggesting that I was wasting his time writing to him with well meaning notions concerning his shows, which never saw the light of day.

At 79, his voice sounded huskier than before because of years of cigarette smoking. Although he seemed more relaxed than he had at our 1972, at which he came across as being agitated but apologized for sounding that way, he had difficulty remembering the names of people with whom he worked on musicals. After about an hour, he grew somewhat impatient and kept asking me, "So what else would you like to know?" before each question I posed. However, I did cover all of the topics I had wanted to discuss.

Then as I was getting ready to have minor outpatient surgery in late October 1993, I read the obituary section of The New York Times, which wasn't unusual for me to do. I saw the headline I was hoping wouldn't be written for years to follow: Broadway Composer-Lyricist Harold Rome Dies at 85. In July that year, I had written a lengthy letter to Mr. Rome; but unfortunately, I never mailed it. In it, I wrote, "To my way of thinking, I am still [your] Number One Fan. . . . Due to the influence of [your] gifts as a composer and lyricist, I've devoted the focus of my life to studying musicals."

Since I couldn't attend his funeral because of my surgical appointment, I put together a package for Mrs. Rome of three cassette tapes including the two interviews I had done with Mr. Rome and on the third cassette my a cappella rendering of all of my favorite Rome songs. While he was alive, I never had the nerve to ask Mr. Rome if he would accompany me on the piano while I sang. I was afraid that my voice wouldn't be acceptable to his ear accustomed to listening to professional singers performing his songs. Yet, I realized that Mr. Rome's singing voice was acceptable but not a threat to all of the stellar musical talents who starred in his shows (Ezio Pinza, Jack Cassidy, Patricia Marand, Florence Henderson, William Tabbert, Harve Presnell, Andy Griffith, Dolores Gray, etc.).

Mrs. Rome was very touched by my gesture in memory of her husband's career. She wrote to me, ". . . You really did understand the essence of Harold's work and heart, and I thank you for it. I'm delighted to have the tapes and accompanying notes." She passed away four years later in 1997.

Finally, in 1999 when I was searching for a musical theatre personality on whom to devote my Rosemont College graduate school thesis, which was going to be sample chapters from a proposed biography, it was suggested to me by historian-author Gerald Bordman that I consider Harold Rome since no one had written a book about his life and estimable career. I gratefully took his advice and wrote about the two shows that meant the most to Mr. Rome (Pins & Needles and Call Me Mister) and the Rome musical which I feel has his best score (I Can Get It For You Wholesale).

Most of my research was done at the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University, where Mr. Rome, an alumnus, had bequeathed the majority of his private papers, scripts, and sheet music from his shows. I was greatly moved by the unexpected honor of finding my 1972 letter requesting the initial interview I had with Mr. Rome saved as part of his archives now housed at Yale for future scholars to ponder. It reinforced my empathetic feelings for Mr. Rome, who never knew that I consider him to be "my musical theatre mentor."

 Bruce F. Winston lives in suburban Philadelphia but travels to Manhattan and elsewhere whenever he can to see new productions. He has been a close observer of the professional theatre scene for the past 47 years and has had the privilege of interviewing many of its participants: Hal Holbrook, Richard Kiley, George Grizzard, Eileen Heckart, Julie Harris, Herschel Bernardi, George Rose, Arlene Francis and Martin Gabel, George Roy Hill, José Ferrer, Pat Hingle, Michael Stewart, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Harold Gould, among others. Bruce was recently drama critic for the new [Philadelphia] Evening Bulletin. While attending Syracuse University in the early 1970's, he served for three years as Entertainment Editor and Drama Critic for the weekly newspaper, The Syracuse New Times. He has worked as Press Assistant at the former American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, CT, where a fellow beginner was actress Christine Baranski, and as production assistant for the York Theatre Company's highly acclaimed revival of 110 in the Shade (1982). Bruce has successfully taught musical theatre appreciation courses to senior citizens. He has aspirations of starting a new theatre company in Philly to present concert versions of past musicals. Naturally, all of Harold Rome's shows would be included in its repertoire, along with works by his other favorite composers and lyricists: Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, John Kander & Fred Ebb, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, Cy Coleman, Albert Hague, and more.

He can be reached for comments and questions by E-mail: fredric47@yahoo.com.