"The lack of melody has hurt musical theatre. Isn’t it interesting that there are so many revivals on Broadway? Audiences like to leave the theatre singing. You have a lot of composers creating complicated, and maybe brilliant, scores. But the songs go right through my head."
–Jerry Herman

"Get your music heard at all costs!" That’s the enthusiastic advice legendary Broadway composer-lyricist Jerry Herman wants to pass on to up-and-coming songwriters. Speaking long-distance from his home in Bel Air, California, Herman gets most excited when he can talk about his craft and reach future generations.

The songwriter of Hello, Dolly! and Mame will be in Chicago on June 12 participating in a free Q&A seminar at DePaul University. High school and college-age participants will have a chance to get first-hand tips about the ever-changing business of musical theatre. Herman also will be accompanied by Broadway performers Jason Graae (Ragtime), Karen Morrow (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and Paige O’Hara (the voice of Belle in the Disney animated Beauty and the Beast)–all of whom will conduct master classes in vocal performance and auditioning.

Three aspiring teenage musical-theatre artists will each be awarded $1,000 worth of scholarships. The symposium is sponsored by the Chicago Humanities Festival. Scholarship winners will be presented with their awards on June 13 at DePaul’s Merle Reskin Theatre–during the same Chicago Humanities Festival benefit evening, titled "Hello Jerry!," showcasing Herman’s 40 years of hit songs, including excerpts from Hello, Dolly!, Mame, Mack and Mabel and La Cage aux Folles.

"This whole event is so rewarding," says Herman, "because I’m reaching young people. We’re helping to keep that flame alive. It’s obvious that Broadway theatre is not what it was in its heyday. But we still want to inspire and encourage young artists."

The New York-born composer relates how, in 1959, he "forced himself" into a cabaret on West 4th Street in Greenwich Village. He convinced the owner to give him a chance at mounting a topical musical revue to lend variety to a club more closely associated with jazz. So Herman played a few songs for the owner, who liked what he heard and asked the young accomplished show pianist how much this sort of revue might cost to produce. Herman threw out a $15,000 figure. And for that remarkably low amount, he created Nitecap, which ran for two years. A yet-undiscovered Charles Nelson Riley performed in it, and New York Post critic Richard Watts, Jr., hailed the twenty-something Herman the "new Rodgers and Hart."

"Then the limousines started arriving," he continues, "and we got noticed by influential people. I know this sounds like a script for a musical, but a Broadway producer came to the show looking for a fresh composer. He was a wealthy real-estate magnate who wanted to be a Broadway producer and invited me to fly to Israel with him to help write the songs for Milk and Honey [a musical in honor of Israel’s 13th anniversary]. It all just happened so quickly. Then [producer] David Merrick saw Milk and Honey–which was a smash at the Martin Beck Theatre [in 1961]–and he expressed an interest in my work.

"My point is that you cannot underestimate the power of those off-Broadway or off-Loop venues. I was a very shy kid, but I made the off-Broadway thing boldly happen."

Herman burst onto the Great White Way as its youngest creator of music and lyrics with the successful Milk and Honey and was nominated for a Tony and a Grammy. He won Station WPAT’s Gaslight Awards for "Shalom" as Best Song of 1961.

Hello, Dolly! (based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker) came next and, in 1964, he won the Tony Award and both Variety’s Best Composer and Best Lyricist Awards for his score. Louis Armstrong’s recording of the title song is considered one of the most popular numbers to come out of a show, and Carol Channing’s original cast album brought Herman a Gold Record and a Grammy.

When asked to musicalize Auntie Mame by playwrights Lawrence and Lee, Herman embarked on one of the most satisfying ventures of his career. Mame brought instant stardom to Angela Lansbury, won Herman another Best Lyricist Awards, another Gold Record and another Grammy.

Dear World in 1969 won Lansbury her second Tony in a Herman musical and made Herman the only composer-lyricist in history to have three productions running simultaneously on Broadway.

In 1974, Mack and Mabel–which is Herman’s personal favorite score even though the show was not a commercial success–opened at the Majestic starring Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters. In 1978, The Grand Tour, with Joel Gray, played the Palace. Herman also contributed songs to Tommy Tune’s A Day in Hollywood in 1980.

La Cage aux Folles, which opened at the Palace in the summer of 1983, broke the theatre’s all-time box-office record and won the Outer Critics Circle Award as the Best Musical. Herman won the Tony for Outstanding Musical Score and the Tony and Drama Desk Award for the Best Score for a Musical. There have been as many as 10 companies of La Cage playing around the world at the same time.

Jerry’s Girls, a revue of his life’s work, has played in every major American city and on Broadway. Some of its stars have included Carol Channing, Leslie Uggams, Chita Rivera, Dorothy Laudon, Andrea McArdle and Jo Anne Worley.

Herman was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Theatre Hall of Fame and, in 1987, was presented with the Johnny Mercer Award. That same year, he became the only composer-lyricist in history to have had three musicals which ran over 1,500 consecutive performances on Broadway.

Mega-success does not seem to have gone to Herman’s musical head. He remains an ardent supporter of aspiring writers and performers and is committed to the melodic musical-theatre form.

He shares an enlightening story about his first meeting with producer Merrick and provides insights into his songwriting process.

After Merrick saw Milk and Honey, he urged Herman to come to his office to discuss a "new Americana musical" that was in the works. Merrick, however, expressed concern that Herman might not be "American enough" for the musical’s red-white-and-blue spirit. This floored Herman, who insisted that the Israeli operetta, Milk and Honey, was a departure for him.

"My work was as American as Irving Berlin," shares an animated Herman. "I was as American as apple pie. My parents were teachers. We loved American movies and theatre."

Still skeptical, Merrick handed what was to become Herman’s most prized possession: the first draft of The Matchmaker. "I still have that script," he adds. "It’s all dog-eared. But, if I had a fire, I would go back in for it. It was with this script in hand that, over three days, I wrote four songs [for what would become Hello, Dolly!]."

Herman teamed up with a vocalist friend, who joined him in Merrick’s office on a separate occasion to sing the four songs he prepared. "That was the one time," he says, "I saw David Merrick truly blown away. He told me, 'Kid, the show is yours.’ David Merrick called my agent. I had gotten a Broadway show on my own. I really wanted that job."

The script was so significant because it inspired the musical’s strong character-based melodies.

"I wrote the beginning [of Hello, Dolly!] as you know it," Herman expounds. "It was important for me to show David Merrick that I knew how to write for characters. My songs always come from a character or a setting. With Dolly, because it’s set in the 1890s, the melody is like a horse’s hooves. I pictured the horse-drawn milk wagons and carriages. And I find the place in a scene that’s highly emotional or comedic, and I musicalize that. For instance, [in Dolly], when Cornelius tells Barnaby, 'Let’s get dressed. We’re going to New York,’ I thought it appropriate to write, 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes.’

"I consider myself a musical playwright rather than a songwriter."

Each song, he notes, materializes quite differently. The title song for Mame took 20 minutes to write; "Open a New Window" from the same musical took six months. Herman also says that "walking has been a wonderful catalyst." He shares this story about the creation of his bittersweet, "I Won’t Send Roses" from Mack and Mabel.

"I was walking along 8th Avenue in New York," he recalls, "when I passed a florist brimming with dozens and dozens of gorgeous flowers. I immediately thought of 'I Won’t Send Roses’ as Mack’s 'romantic’ song expressing his tormented feelings for Mabel.

"Mack is a man who didn’t know how to say I love you, yet he knew he loved this girl he turned into a star. The words and music just flowed–and I do write the words and music simultaneously: 'I won’t send roses or hold the door; I won’t remember what dress you wore…I won’t send roses, and roses suit you so.’ This is a quiet warning to Mabel. Mack can’t give her everything she needs. I galloped back to my apartment and pounced on the piano."

Throughout our conversation, Herman reiterates, "There’s nothing I love more than writing songs for the musical theatre." In the same breath, he admits how the musical-theatre industry has changed, particularly on Broadway. One of the major drawbacks is the current cost-prohibitive nature. Herman reports that a lavish musical like Milk and Honey cost $300,000 in the early 1960s. Today that musical would cost $9 million. Therefore, it’s a lot riskier to take a chance on a new composer. But Herman still believes that composers can get their start anywhere in the country before embarking on a Broadway career.

He also is distressed over the latest trend of mathematically complex scores with no memorable hooks.

"The lack of melody has hurt musical theatre," Herman asserts. "Isn’t it interesting that there are so many revivals on Broadway? Audiences like to leave the theatre singing. You have a lot of composers creating complicated, and maybe brilliant, scores. But the songs go right through my head."

The self-taught Herman, who demonstrated an early gift for playing by ear, made it a habit of coming home from the movies–most notably, Spellbound–and re-playing the score as if it were a concerto for his appreciative mother.

"My mother really led me into this field," he relates. "And it all started with my parents, who loved going to the New York theatre. In those days, tickets were $4.40 or $6.60. Irving Berlin is my idol. He wrote so simply, with such heart and feeling. I would come home and play 'They Say That Falling in Love is Beautiful’ or 'There’s No Business Like Show Business.’

"I told my mother, this is what I want to do. I want to give people this gift of melody. Throughout my life, I’ve had health problems and sadness, but that never squelched that joy I get from musical theatre."

His mother also served as his prototype for Auntie Mame. He offers the following priceless memory: "I had to have been about 7 years old. I came home from school–it was, I think, a Tuesday in the middle of winter–and my mother was preparing these elaborate hors d’oeuvres. I asked, 'Mom, what’s the occasion,’ and she joyously shouted, 'It’s today!’ That moment inspired the opening party scene in Mame–it’s so optimistic, so Ruth Herman and so me."

Herman’s latest project is the release (on June 9) by DRG Records of his concept CD, "Miss Spectacular," featuring Christine Baranski, Michael Feinstein and other luminaries. Originally commissioned as a Las Vegas revue, Herman is now promoting the recording for this romantic comedy about a young woman who travels to Vegas for a Miss Spectacular contest and meets a man who’s her opposite. She’s a dreamer, and her dreams are the show’s production numbers.

"It’s happy and very Vegas," says Herman. "This recording is so significant for me. It’s like going back to the beginning. I want the world to hear my new work."

For more information on the Chicago Humanities Festival benefit, call Brenda Langstraat at 312/661-1028, ext. 32 or e-mail brenda@chfestival.org; for more information on education programs, call Cris Kayser at 312/661-1028, ext. 11 or e-mail cris@chfestival.org.

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