Jerry Herman: He'll Be Here Tomorrow

When Father Jim Gallagher was the pastor of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Petersburg, Virginia he received a Christmas letter in December of 2001.  He read it with great interest and caught up with the events in his friend's life.  It had been only a few months since the tragedy of 9/11 and the newsletter contained an allusion to Jerry Herman's "We Need A Little Christmas" from the musical Mame.  The priest couldn't get the tune out of his head for the rest of that day nor for several days afterwards.  He wound up having his children's choir learn the song and he incorporated references to it in his Christmas homilies, stressing that after the horrors our country had experienced, we had to "haul out the holly" and face the future with optimism.   When the story was recounted to the composer, he audibly sighed and remarked, "How lovely.  What a beautiful thing.  I love hearing that!" 

Reached by telephone in Florida on the day after Christmas, Jerry Herman had just taken his morning swim and was enjoying the balmy weather.  "It's beautiful here.  You know you take your chances with the weather this time of the year even in Miami, but it's just been beautiful."  After doing considerable reading about the composer and enjoying a lengthy conversation with him, it is quite apparent that much of this man's life has indeed been quite beautiful.  That's not to suggest that he hasn't had his share of woes, but he's always landed on his feet and possesses a sunny disposition that is reflected in his music and lyrics. 

Born on July 10, 1931 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Herman is the offspring of Harry Herman who taught physical education in the New York City public school system and Ruth Herman who was also a teacher for a while.  In his memoir Showtune, Herman credits his love of music to his mother, Ruth, and tells a story that was related to him by his cousin Millicent:  When Ruth was pregnant with him and experienced her first labor pangs, she went to the piano and started playing a song.  Her relatives were on the verge of hysteria and couldn't understand what this soon-to-be-mother was doing.  Ruth Herman calmly replied, "I want my child to love music." 

There is no doubt that Ruth Herman's son does love music. He has written the music and lyrics for Broadway's Milk and Honey, Hello Dolly!, Mame, Mack and Mabel, The Grand Tour, Dear World and La Cage Aux Folles as well as the score for television's Mrs. Santa Claus and is the recipient of numerous Tony Awards and Grammy Awards.  His music in known for its tuneful ebullience and the memorable quality that often has audiences humming the tunes as they leave performances.  More importantly, though, Jerry Herman is one of the most respected men in show business. 

Herman is able to pinpoint the exact moment in his life when he knew he wanted to become a Broadway composer.  It was in 1947 and his parents had taken hm to the Imperial Theater where Ethel Merman was starring in Annie Get Your Gun.  At the time, young Herman was planning to enter the fields of either architecture or interior design, but all that changed when he experienced that show for the first time.  "When I saw this larger-than-life woman stand on the stage and belt out those Irving Berlin songs, I was able to go home and play three or maybe four of those songs on my mother's piano.  I'd  never heard those songs before seeing the show without saying it out loud, something within me said 'Oh boy, what a wonderful thing it would be to do something like that."  Herman did, actually go on and do what that interior voice had expressed and there have been many comparisons between his music and that of Berlin.  It should also be noted that Ethel Merman starred on one of Herman's greatest successes when she took over the title role in Hello, Dolly! in 1970. 

Carol Channing has said that when Jerry Herman writes music he does so with his mother's voice in his head.  "No, that isn't true," said the composer.  ""It's just that my mother's optimism and humor and good spirits are naturally a part of me, but so is my father.  He didn't have a lot of those qualities.  He was a very sensible man.  Sensible and not really filled with the same attributes I just talked about.  He's also in my psyche and that's just two people that we're talking about.  When I write it's the sum of a lifetime's experience that comes out. I don't write about one person, I really write about the character who will be singing the song.  Now I don't know anyone who was like the Countess Aurelia in Dear World.  I really don't know anybody like that but in my head I had to create that woman.  That was one of the most stimulating and satisfying projects I've ever worked on.  I certainly didn't write that music with my mother in mind. She wasn't anything like the Countess at all.  Oh, Carol likes to say that because she knows how close I was to my mother and what a wonderful influence she was on my life, but I really pride myself in writing for the character--whatever the character is." 

In the upcoming PBS documentary, "Words and Music by Jerry Herman", Arthur Laurents  claims that he felt Herman's best work came from La Cage Aux Folles because that was really the Jerry Herman that the composer had never been able to talk about before. "That is totally untrue," states the musician.  "I love Arthur and he was very kind to me and he says wonderful things about me in the documentary but that statement is no more true than Carol Channing's because I wrote for the characters in La Cage who I loved the original movie and I loved the French play it was based on.  I mean, I am the last person in the world who would ever put on a dress.   It's so foreign to me that I can't even think about it!  I did, however, put myself into Albin's head and I thought about it.  Nowhere in the movie or the original play does it say why this man does this.   Why does he become Zaza and what makes him so happy as Zaza?  That's where I got the idea for one of the most important songs in the score, "A Little More Mascara.". Albin starts off as a middle-aged, unhappy man in an old bathrobe and we watch him turn himself into this glamorous creature named Zaza.  He suddenly takes over and becomes someone he's not able to be in the skin he was born in.  I got very excited about writing a song that could capture all that. All this is saying very simply is that if I have a great character I can write a great song." 

It was commented that obviously Jerry Herman hasn't been able to find any great characters lately because he hasn't been writing anything new in the past few years.  "That's true," he responds. "But I haven't been looking.  I really decided after the huge success of La Cage that my style of writing was very obviously slipping out of fashion.  I was very lucky to have done La Cage Aux Folles at a time when it was so beautifully accepted.  I didn't want to to have to fight a very natural trend in plays and music which was happening in front of my eyes and I think I was very wise.  I ended on a high note and I've spent the time since La Cage re-tooling the shows that didn't really work or have the great following that some of my other shows have.  It's been very satisfying because I have turned Mack and Mabel into a very workable show.  The new productions of it feature a new book by Francene Pascal  and there are lots of things that I've done to it also.  The present version really works.  I'm about to do that now with Dear World, but I haven't worked on anything new."   

It has been well documented that the Detroit try-out of Hello, Dolly! wasn't a particularly happy one for Herman.  Producer David Merrick (who had been nicknamed "The Abominable Showman") made life extremely unpleasant for the composer. "He was extremely difficult because he had no reason to trust me at that time.  I had one successful show, Milk and Honey, which was all about the new State of Israel and it was very ethnic. It had no relation to the style of Dolly!  Also, he was just a tough old bird because the show got mixed reviews in Detroit and he was expecting this enormous positive reception.  He was angry and his anger was taken out on the librettist Mike Stewart who had to rewrite about eighty percent of the book   Number Two on Merrick's list was me because I was the newcomer to his coterie.  It was a very tough time but he did turn around and was so pleased with the work I did on Dolly! that we worked together again.  After all that sturm und drang I let him produce Mack and Mabel in 1974." 

After Hello, Dolly! opened to incredibly sensational reviews, Herman and director/choreographer Gower Champion went back to the show and reworked parts of it after its opening. "It was just one musical number" recalls the composer.  "That was because Gower Champion couldn't stop fiddling with it.  You know nobody else in the world would have touched a productiion that had gotten such ecstatic reviews.  They were the most astounding opening night reviews that I've ever read and you'd have to be a little nutty to go back and do anything but Gower kept wanting to make this change and was very nice about it. He asked if I'd mind if he turned the entertainment in the Harmonia Gardens into t polka contest?  There was no song that had to be added there; he just wanted to use musical phrases, so I wove in segments from such songs as 'I Put My Hand In'. It wasn't work that had to do with character or with writing songs.  I did it just to please Gower." 

One thing with Jerry Herman feels rather strongly about in his musicals is the change-of-scene-music that he considers the "glue" of each performance.  "I use my own themes for the change-of-scene music Mame and Mack and Mabel I have more melodic lines in their change-of-scene music than any other shows I've ever seen.  These lines woven together are what make the show one piece that you constantly hear."  For example, the first few notes of the tune "Big Time" from Mack and Mabel is used throughout the set changes in the vehicle and becomes a prime example of what Herman refers to as "glue", it binds the rest of the show into the theme that these characters are all striving to reach the big times of their careers.  The repetition of such musical themes may also be responsible for the audiences leaving Jerry Herman productions humming the music.  Why not?  It's good music and it's been heard enough within the show for them to become familiar with it. 

Currently, The composer/lyricist is brimming over with excitement for "Words and Music by Jerry Herman" which will air on PBS stations across the nation on New Year's Day.  New Yorkers may consider themselves fortunate enough to get a sneak preview because it will be shown on Channel 13 on the previous evening. [Check local listings]

The project is the brainchild of Amber Edwards.  "She has done not only a magnificent job, but she has given me a gift—and it truly is a gift to have something on disc that will be with us forever.  It will give a face and this kind of talk to the work that I have done and continue to do.  You won't believe it but I just signed a contract for La Cage to play in Slovakia.  Is that hysterical?  I laughed for ten minutes thinking about how Georges and Albin will sound when they're singing with Slavic accents!  At first I thought it was a joke, but it had the proper credentials on it.  Still, it made me laugh..  There are productions of Dolly! playing every night somewhere in the world; and multiple ones.  Mack and Mabel just played six months in the Shaw Festival up in Canada. I went to see it and it was a wonderful production. It worked like gang busters."   

A while back, The New York Times ran a news item that the Nederlander Organization was to present major revivals of Herman's Big Three (Dolly!, Mame, and  La Cage).  No other follow-ups were published and La Cage was the only Herman musical to be revived in recent years.   "We really would love to do the other two but we really haven't been able to put the pieces together.  They still might happen.  I love the Nederlanders and they're  lifelong friends and producers of my work. There are other producers who would like to do Mame and Dolly! also.  It will inevitably happen."    

It's obvious that Herman's shows are still being performed and what Amber Edwards has done is allow people years from now to know who Jerry Herman was and what he did.  "I'm just so grateful to her that I really only want to talk about her," he says with a warm chuckle.  "Audiences are going to get more than they expect because when you hear about a documentary of Jerry Herman's work, you're going to expect to hear "Hello, Dolly!" and "Mame" and maybe see some clips of people doing those songs.  However, what Amber has done is to humanize the whole thing.  She goes with me through the difficult years; through the death of my mother and my personal life—things that the average person who goes to the theater would never think about or never be interested in.  Yet the combination of seeing the work in its original form in many cases is stunning.  Amber has found film clips taken from balconies of theaters (illegally, actually) and created something extremely special.  It's remarkable to see Angela Lansbury at the age of 40 sliding down a banister in gold lounging pajamas.  Those clips of Carol singing "Hello, Lyndon!" at the Johnson convention, combined with very human and very honest talks with me and people who knew me best, make a very, very unusual 90 minutes.  No one's expecting that combination and that's what she's been able to accomplish.  I just think she's done a staggering job and I feel she's a terrific film maker." 

Not everyone who works on projects about Jerry Herman come up with such buoyant approbation from the subject.  In 2004, a writer by the name of Stephen Citron wrote a book entitled Jerry Herman: Poet of the Showtune.  Even the most casual reader found it to be filled with egregious errors and inaccurate assessments of Herman's music and lyrics.  Herman agrees that the book has its shortcomings but realizes that is always going to happen to someone in his position.  "You can't make a big thing out of it.  There are some things you just can't fight," said Herman.  "I always find inaccuracies in reviews that are written about my work.  There was a critic who called the song 'Look Over There' from La Cage a sappy ballad, It's the song in which the father is choking the son by his shoulders and saying 'Look over there you ungrateful kid' and to me it's what the musical is all about.  It's written in a very strong 6/8 rhythm that has an anger to it.  This critic called it a 'sappy ballad'.  It most definitely isn't a ballad.  What can I do about that?  It was in a major newspaper and I wasn't going to write a strong letter but it wouldn't do any good.  It's something I had to learn and it's taken me a very long time to get there.  There will always be something in print about me or my work that I don't approve of or that isn't fair.  There's absolutely nothing you can do about it except realize that in a few days people will no longer have that newspaper in front of them and will probably forget the thing that is completely inaccurate."

It's logic like that that makes Jerry Herman an endearing and vital presence in musical theater.  His positive outlook on life comes through in the words and music of every score he's written.  It can be summed up in the lyric that Joel Grey sang in Herman's The Grand Tour: 

I'll be here tomorrow

Alive and well and thriving

I'll be here tomorrow

It's simply called surviving

If before the dawn

This frugal world might crack

Someone's got to try to put the pieces back

So from beneath the rubble

You'll hear a little voice say

'Life it worth the trouble

Have you a better choice?'

So let the skeptics say

Tonight we're dead and gone

I'll be here tomorrow

Simply going on. 

Lovers of musical theater who will be flocking around television sets to see "Words and Music by Jerry Herman" will surely hope that their hero will be around for many moons to come!