This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong, welcoming you to another episode of Broadway Nation. My

[0:28] David Armstrong: guest again today is Albert Evans, who once again joins me as we go in search of lost Broadway. This is an occasional series of podcasts in which Albert and I try to discover smash hit Broadway musicals from the past, which today are almost entirely unknown to us and forgotten. And this is the fourth and final episode that takes us in search of the 1934 smash hit musical The Great Waltz, one of the longest-running shows of the 1930s. If you missed the earlier episodes in this series, you may want to go back and catch up with them before listening to this one. Before we begin, I want to thank the patrons of Broadway Nation, such as our newest patron, Barbara Drower, whose generous support helps to make this podcast possible.

And patrons of the show will be able to listen to even more discussion of The Great Waltz with me and Albert. If you would like to join their ranks, there'll be information at the end of the episode about how you too can become a patron. Now, here we go. Well, Albert, welcome back to Broadway Nation for what I think will be our last waltz.

[1:32] Albert Evans: Oh, I wouldn't bet on it. There seems to be so much behind the scenes stuff. I think we probably could do a fifth, but I think that's enough for now. I think we'll call it quits for the time being in terms of The Great Waltz, but it has been surprisingly fascinating.

[1:49] David Armstrong: It has been. So today we're going to talk about the incarnations of The Great Waltz, which mostly happened in our lifetime.

[2:02] Albert Evans: Oh, my God. Which is somewhat hard to believe. And several of them gigantic, high-profile incarnations of The Great Waltz that happened while we were, you know, young adults. First of all, the show is reinvented by Edwin Lester and the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, which is partnered with the San Francisco Civic Light Opera. So Edwin Lester was an impresario producer, in other words, who created a very successful musical theater in Los Angeles. And then they would tour those shows to San Francisco, starting in the 1940s and then continuing through the 1960s. And these were largish theaters, right? So they needed big shows. These were big productions. And he was most attracted to the big sort of operettas of the past, the sort of grand shows.

He's sort of inventing this idea of a light opera company, which would then be replicated at cities across the country. Pittsburgh still has the Pittsburgh CLO, Civic Light Opera. People don't usually use that term anymore. We just think of them as musical theater. They do Broadway musicals. And that's in essence what he was doing as well, just at the time they were still being called light operas rather than musicals.

[3:15] David Armstrong: And when you say Civic Light Opera Company, was there a fixed company of singers and dancers, or was it just the structure of it was a company?

[3:21] Albert Evans: I think it was the producing organization. And probably most importantly, it was a subscription model. So you would subscribe to a season of shows from the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, very similar. I inherited some of that when I took over the Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle. When it opened in 1980, it was modeled on that idea. And certainly Frank Young, who became the producer of the Fifth Avenue Theater in 1989, who I literally took over from when I went there in 2000, was inspired by Edwin Lester to start the Theater Under the Stars in Houston. It was part of that regional theater movement, the musical end of the regional theater movement in America in the 1950s and 60s. So I think Edwin Lester can get a lot of credit for inspiring that, and very successfully, apparently. His whole first season, his shows were sold out. The subscriptions were filled immediately. It was a very, very successful venture.

[4:22] David Armstrong: And were they in existing buildings, or were the buildings built to be a Civic Light Opera?

[4:27] Albert Evans: I'm pretty sure they were in existing buildings. In San Francisco, his company was in the Curran Theater in partnership with the owner of the Curran Theater. In Los Angeles, by the time they were doing The Great Waltz in 1965, they're in the Los Angeles Music Center, which I think is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion now is what it's known as. And prior to that, I think they were in other existing civic buildings that were there. They also, like many other musical theaters across the country after them, would include touring productions as part of their season. So they would produce some of the shows, then they would present touring productions of the latest shows from Broadway and a mix of those. And that certainly is what Edwin Lester did.

[5:11] David Armstrong: And then the CLO productions, what would be the future of those productions?

[5:16] Albert Evans: Fairly early on, all of them would play both Los Angeles and then San Francisco, and then sometimes directly tour or certainly other theaters would pick up those productions and recreate them. And then very successfully, he sent several shows to Broadway. Most notably, he commissioned the original production of Song of Norway from Wright and Forrest, who we'll talk about in a minute. He also commissioned the original production of Kismet, which went to Broadway and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. And they also commissioned the original production of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin, which went to Broadway and then famously went to television. So he was very successful and very involved in the Broadway world from Los Angeles, based in Los Angeles, which is interesting to see this activity happening starting back in the 1940s and 50s.

[6:07] David Armstrong: We're used to the other way around, Broadway shows going out around the country and playing in suitable venues.

[6:12] Albert Evans: Well, we're also used to Broadway shows being initiated into regional theaters in the 80s and the 90s and today and going to Broadway. That's where Broadway musicals come from to a great extent is from regional theaters today. That this is starting back in the 1940s and 50s was somewhat surprising. If you read Edwin Lester's obituary in the Los Angeles Times, it was clear that he was a legend in Los Angeles. It says, he brought musical theater to Los Angeles in the mid-1930s and remained its reigning monarch until his self-appointed retirement in the late 70s. An empirical, benevolent ruler who ran his domain with the ironclad ethics and impeccable manners that earned him respect, even from those, perhaps especially from those, who did not necessarily share his musical tastes. He was clearly the king of musical theater in Los Angeles for decades.

[7:06] David Armstrong: And the Broadway star Patricia Morrison, of course, most famous for creating the role of Kate in Kiss Me, Kate or Lily Vanessie in Kiss Me, Kate. She had this to say about him. He lived his theater. The Civic Light Opera was his mistress. Musical theater was fun when he did it. He employed people in this town. He gave young people breaks. He could be old-fashioned and opinionated, but was also very loyal. So he was definitely a grand old man of the theater, I think, to a great extent. And clearly, we have these shows because of his vision to not only present old shows, but create new ones.

[7:48] Albert Evans: Now, he seemed to be especially interested in creating new shows based on the music of classical composers. And he fell in with Wright and Forrest very early on to create this, and they will continue through to The Great Waltz. So tell us a little bit about who Wright and Forrest were.

[8:07] David Armstrong: Well, Bob Wright and Chet Forrest, their nicknames, Robert Wright and George Forrest. They were a team from very early on, and it's hard to tell just in what sense they were a team, frankly. They met, I think, as teenagers. They went to school together in Miami, Florida, and they're 13 and 14, I think.

[8:27] Albert Evans: Yeah. And from then on, they were basically inseparable. For 70 years, they had a professional partnership. What their partnership was beyond that is not clear, but they do then retire together back to Florida. But it's clear that their professional partnership was based on something more solid than, let's just make money together, because they really enjoyed working together. They made great stuff. I believe they were on the MGM staff, just to do sort of odd musical jobs. In the film operetta, The Firefly, the score was by Rudolf Rimmel, but they were commissioned to write a couple of extra songs based on Rimmel's strictly musical compositions, instrumentals, ones that didn't have lyrics. And one of those was called The Donkey Serenade, and that became one of Nelson Eddy's stock performance pieces.

[9:14] Albert Evans: And a big hit song.

[9:20] David Armstrong: Yeah, a big hit song. The record sold everyone. There was a point at which everyone who would like that sort of thing liked that song and knew it. And it would be played by dance bands, and it was played all the time. I think it's, there's a song in the air, but the fair senorita doesn't seem to care for the song in the air. Instead, she wants The Donkey Serenade. And that puts them on the map at a very young age at MGM as the go-to guys for taking classical music and creating pop songs out of it.

[9:46] Albert Evans: Right. And they start doing that for multiple movies. And somehow they make this connection with Edwin Lester because of that. They also wrote their own songs at times. They wrote music not based on classical music. And later in their career, they started to do that more exclusively. And we'll talk just a little bit through their career. We should do a whole episode on them at some point.

[10:13] David Armstrong: That would be fun. Because they have a very long Broadway career. The quote I thought was interesting is Bob Wright, at the end of his career, said, writing original music is 10 or 20 times easier than the things for which we are best known for. The first thing you have to do as an adapter is learn everything a composer ever wrote. Then you have to assemble and assimilate the music and finally think the way he did.

[10:38] Albert Evans: Which is actually the opposite of what people would think. Oh, they just stole tunes from the classical composers and wrote some words to them.

[10:43] David Armstrong: Yeah, they're cheating in a way. It seems you already got tunes. How hard can that be? But it's actually much more a puzzle this way. And sometimes they would have to write original B section for a song. I mean, they did put some of their original writing to make these songs cohesive. Especially in Kismet, there are songs in there that have only the slightest affiliation to the Borden tunes because they have to make a song at the moment and to tell the story.

[11:14] Albert Evans: But then they also had some gigantic successful hit songs coming out of those shows, Bobbles, Bangles and Beads, This is My Beloved.

[11:20] David Armstrong: Strange music from Song of Norway.

[11:26] Albert Evans: Exactly. And of course, the biggest one, Stranger in Paradise.

[11:30] David Armstrong: Yeah. Which was a huge popular tune.

[11:32] Albert Evans: Exactly. You know, any baritone with a big voice made a record of that in the 50s.

[11:37] David Armstrong: Yeah. And even some rock and roll versions of it.

[11:42] Albert Evans: Yeah. And they were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song three times in their career. So they were quite big deals. We definitely should revisit them on another episode.

[11:47] David Armstrong: We should, yeah.

[11:49] Albert Evans: So to make our long story perhaps even longer, in 1949, the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera produces their first version of The Great Waltz with new English language lyrics adapted by Robert Wright and George Forrest, directed by somebody named Vladimir Rosing, who I have not been able to find out anything about. But ballet staging by Eugene Loring, who was the Broadway choreographer and film choreographer of Great Net.

[12:18] David Armstrong: And who will continue on in all of these incarnations of The Great Waltz that Edwin Lester produces. Then they do the show again in 1953 with largely the same team. If you look at the song list, it starts to evolve. The '49 version and the '53 version still have some of the lyrics and some of the songs from the original production mixed with new songs by Wright and Forrest. And then by the time we get to 1965, when there's a recording that's made, almost all of the songs have been replaced by new versions by Wright and Forrest. But before we get there, I just want to mention that the 1953 incarnation of this in Los Angeles stars Florence Henderson as Rezi. And then also Bill Shirley plays Young Strauss, and John Charles Thomas plays Strauss Sr., and Dorothy Kirsten plays the Countess, who was still a Countess at that point. That character will morph into not being a Countess by the next time they do the show.

[13:22] Albert Evans: He's always a rich lady with an eye for the men.

[13:24] David Armstrong: Exactly. So the same exact character is always there, but she goes back and forth between being royalty. I don't know if a Countess is royalty, but being of the aristocracy and not being of that. We had to look up the name Bill Shirley, and he had a couple of Broadway credits and some film credits, but is most notable for dubbing the voice of Freddie Einsford Hill in the movie of My Fair Lady. So it's a voice we've all heard many, many times. And John Charles Thomas, who played Older Strauss, had a long career in music and show business and Broadway, and that was a name that was familiar to you.

[14:03] Albert Evans: Yeah, I used to have a rather large collection of 78 RPM records, and he was on a lot of those from the '30s. And then Dorothy Kirsten was one of those crossover Broadway opera stars, often on the radio hour with Gordon McRae as the co-star.

[14:14] David Armstrong: Who had a great voice and could act.

[14:16] Albert Evans: So let's now turn to this 1965 incarnation. So they bring it back. Clearly, it's been twice before. So now Edwin Lester wants to bring it back. They're now going to do even more work on the show for 1965, and it was directed by Albert Marr. That same year would win the Tony Award as the director of Man of La Mancha, and who had directed Kismet with Wright and Forrest, and had worked with this whole team, obviously, on Kismet earlier. And again, the choreography is by Eugene Loring. This time, the cast includes Anita Gillette as the young soprano lead, and it's interesting to hear her on the album, really quite accomplished in that voice range that I had not heard Anita Gillette sing in before.

[15:03] David Armstrong: Yeah, I'm used to her from the Mr. President album, actually, when she's like the young ingenue and sort of sings perky.

[15:08] Albert Evans: Doing the Washington twist.

[15:11] David Armstrong: Yeah, the Washington twist. And being a teenager in the White House.

[15:15] Albert Evans: Yeah, and now she's doing the Viennese waltz.

[15:18] David Armstrong: Yeah. But fantastic voice.

[15:18] Albert Evans: Yeah, and actually, Mr. President is prior to this. And then also the cast includes Gene Fenn as the Grandin, who's now no longer a Countess, but a grand lady. And then Frank Perretta as Strauss Jr. and Giorgio Tazzi as Strauss Sr. And of course, Giorgio Tazzi was probably the biggest name of all of those. And as a consequence, it's interesting listening to this album, and then the London album that is very close to it from the 1970 London production, Strauss Sr. has more material than Strauss Jr.

[16:00] David Armstrong: Yeah, Strauss Jr. only is involved in four songs, including quartets with all of the principals, and Strauss Sr. has five songs, including the quartet.

[16:07] Albert Evans: Yeah, and they're big vocal displays, whereas Junior songs are basically songs that any musical theater performer could do. So it's really a showcase for Giorgio Tazzi.

[16:12] David Armstrong: Yeah. And in fact, Strauss Jr. doesn't have a solo. He only has duets. So it's interesting. We'll come back and we'll talk about that score in detail in just a moment. Here's an article from the New York Times, August 10, 1965. The Great Waltz, the operetta based on the apocryphal story that the two waltz kings, Johann Strauss Sr. and his son were jealous of each other, is expected to be revived here for the first time in three decades. Edwin Lester, head of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Civic Light Operas, yesterday confirmed reports that Alexander H. Cohen was planning a revival for November, or whenever a big enough theater becomes available. The operetta presented by Mr. Lester opened a seven-week stand at the new 3,200-seat Los Angeles Music Center July 27.

According to the producer, last week's gross was $129,100, at the top price of $7.50. It represented the biggest week to date of Mr. Lester's season, which had included The King and I and Pickwick. Recent musical revivals here, meaning in New York, Kismet did over $100,000 in its final week at the 2,759-seat New York State Theater, at a scale ranging to $6. The Merry Widow, with a one-week gross of $98,000, set last year's record there. Both revived by Richard Rogers were previously staged in California by Mr. Lester. The entire California cast of The Great Waltz is to appear here. After the Los Angeles run, the musical will move to San Francisco for a September 14 to October 30 showing. It will then wend its way eastward until the desired New York house is ready.

The show, however, never made it to New York, the official reason being that they could never find a large enough theater. It did, however, open in 1970 in London, featuring the same production and produced in association with the Los Angeles and San Francisco Civic Light Opera Associations.

[18:12] Albert Evans: When you look at the author credits of the London production, it demonstrates the long legacy of this production. Bear with me for a moment as I read them. Musical adaptation by Eric Wolfgang Korngold, Robert Wright, and George Forrest. Lyrics by Wright and Forrest. Additional lyrics by Foreman Brown. Book by Jerome Cordova, based on the version by Mosshart and Milton Lazarus. Original book and lyrics by Alfred Wilner, Heinz Reichart, and Ernst Mariska. Original musical adaptation by Eric Wolfgang Korngold and Julius Bittner. As we noted in the first episode of this series, Korngold was involved even before Waltz was invented with the actual Viennese production of the opera, and he was continuing to work on it into the 1970s. I also want to note that the scenery was by Oliver Smith and the costumes by Freddie Whittop, who probably most noted for My Fair Lady.

So this was a top-notch, apparently spectacular production of the show, and it will run 605 performances in London. So it's a big, big hit in 1970. The Great Waltz is a giant hit in London, which is why, against all odds and all reason, it will become a major motion picture in 1972, which Albert and I will talk about in just a few minutes.

[19:33] David Armstrong: But before we get there, let's talk about this new score by Wright and Forrest, which everyone has two opportunities to listen to. There's the 1965 album of the Los Angeles cast that you can hear on YouTube, and then there's a 1970 cast album of the London production, which you can hear on the Internet Archive, both of which we recommend listening to. You just Google The Great Waltz Internet Archive, and it brings it up, and it's very clean. The other one are individual tracks on YouTube, so you have to sort of track them down, and whatever record they use to record them is a little poppy and not of the greatest quality. They're from someone's personal copy, but lovingly played over and over and over.

It's not terrible, but there's a lot of surface noise. The '70s cast album is obviously from a much clearer source. It's more pleasurable to listen to, although there's some really good performances on the earlier version. And largely it's the exact same song list. There are a couple songs that are included on one and not included on the other, but seem to have been in both productions. I think the earlier one is shorter because of time constraints on how much you could put on a record.

[20:44] Albert Evans: Yeah, even in just five years' difference between '65 and '70, you'd be able to do that. Talk a little about what Wright and Forrest have brought to this. What is their contribution to The Great Waltz?

[20:55] David Armstrong: Well, in the live TV version from the '50s, with a joke spaniel Simon, it seemed like...

[21:01] Albert Evans: Ten years earlier.

[21:02] David Armstrong: Ten years earlier, yeah. It seems like they were trying to really turn it into a pajama game or something like a modern musical comedy. Then at its moment, it was sort of refreshing not to hear operetta dialogue, but on the other hand, that didn't really work with the tenor of the songs. Whereas this one, Wright and Forrest had such a lot of experience in adapting these classically based operetta scores to the new ways that they were doing musicals. These songs are designed to actually tell a story. They're not interruptions in the story and say, now we sing a song and the song will be the same from beginning to end. Now the songs themselves, they're introduced by dialogue, dialogue interrupts them.

You get from point A to point B within a lot of these songs the way a modern musical does. They're very skillfully written. They certainly know how to write singable and listenable lyrics. They're clever. They're smooth. They're easy on the ears. And I think that's what really distinguishes the CLO production, is that it's made it into something that sounds like it could have been written for the first time now, in the now.

[22:12] Albert Evans: Absolutely. As you say, Wright and Forrest are very skillful at doing this, and they think they're from the golden age. Their other two hit Broadway shows, even though they have classical music from the 19th century, are written in the golden age style. Both Song of Norway and especially Kismet are modern musicals to a great extent, influenced by Rodgers and Hammerstein and the book musical, this new golden age way of doing things. So they bring that, obviously, to this because that's who they are and where they come from.

[22:46] David Armstrong: That's a totally successful. There are still some songs because you have to hear the Blue Danube and you're not going to mess around with it. But still, it has lyrics that make sense. Don't interrupt your listening experience by going, what? What did they say? And there are more songs in this than were ever in it before.

[23:04] Albert Evans: Tales of the Vienna Woods.

[23:06] David Armstrong: Was not in the original Broadway production of The Great Waltz, although it was in the movie version. And it becomes another feature for Strauss Sr. And I was a little disappointed, maybe I'm just being a purist, but I assumed that when they wrote the show that the music that Strauss Sr. would sing would be based on Strauss Sr.'s actual compositions and the music that Strauss Jr. would sing would be based on Strauss Jr.'s compositions. Here we have a duet for Strauss Sr. and the non-Celtus.

[23:38] Albert Evans: The un-Celtus.

[23:39] David Armstrong: The un-Celtus singing one of Strauss Jr.'s most famous tunes.

[23:44] Albert Evans: Yeah, so they don't respect the authorship of these songs and the distribution of them. I think they just go for what would be dramatically best for this.

[23:52] David Armstrong: Yeah, and I think they were trying to feature Giorgio Tazzi.

[23:56] Albert Evans: Right.

[23:56] David Armstrong: That's a song that does not advance the story at all. It's sort of like, we're in the woods and isn't it wonderful? It might as well be winter wonderland in terms of its lyric content.

[24:06] Albert Evans: Isn't it wonderful to be in the woods? Not in the winter, obviously. In the summer, it's summer wonderland. They're out in the Vienna Woods having their experience.

[24:14] David Armstrong: Only this time they're not riding in a carriage, right? They're just strolling through...

[24:18] Albert Evans: They seem to just be strolling, yes.

[24:19] David Armstrong: ...the woods and some of the whole clip-clop of the horses. None of that, those sounds are not brought into the composition of the song.

[24:27] Albert Evans: Although, interestingly, there seems to be some elements from the MGM movie version, from Oskar Hammerstein's lyrics, that have been brought over into this.

[24:38] Albert Evans: Whether with permission, not with permission, no one cared, I don't know. But Helene, who's not the Countess, has a big introduction song, which is "I'm in Love with Vienna," which not only shares the same title and the same opening line, "I'm in love with Vienna, so in love with Vienna," which is exactly the way it was when Oskar Hammerstein wrote it. Then most of the rest of the lyric is different, but then at the end, there's three lines that seem to be exactly from Oskar Hammerstein.

[26:04] Albert Evans: "I'm in love with Vienna, so in love with Vienna. Every moment of every day is a gay and lovely song. All my life I have waited. All my life has been fated. To the lovely land of my dreams, it is here that I belong. To the lovely land of my dreams, it is here that I belong." For my money, that is the most, especially on the London cast album, that is the most thrilling cut on this recording. It is really exciting and beautiful, and the chorus comes in. I don't know why, I just found it completely captivating. I listened to it two or three times because I just thought it was sensational, and I had enjoyed that song in the MGM movie as well.

[27:14] Albert Evans: So we don't know. I mean, they may have said, "Oskar, can we use these couple? We can't think of anything else." Or they might have just done it, or by the time of these later productions, Oskar was no longer with us. But someone would have held the copyright and could have caused a fuss if they chose to.

[27:28] David Armstrong: Yeah, absolutely. So I thought that was interesting. I thought they were smart because it was good. They were like, "Well, we can't top this probably, so let's just use it." Or I doubt that they were doing it without any conversation with Hammerstein or the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization at that point. They chose, well, beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission.

[27:50] Albert Evans: Yeah, especially since it didn't say it in that Times article I read before, but another news article said that Richard Rodgers was going to present this new production at Lincoln Center. Somebody would have said something if they were using it without permission.

[28:06] David Armstrong: Well, and just to add on to that, I never recall Oskar Hammerstein actually mentioning The Great Waltz as part of his oeuvre. So I think it was something that he did for money. It was over. It wasn't his best work. It's professional. It never comes up in the great songs of Oskar Hammerstein.

[28:25] Albert Evans: Yeah, I checked in the index from the collected letters, that great book of Hammerstein that came out just a couple years ago, and not a mention of The Great Waltz in there. Now, that doesn't mean there weren't any letters about The Great Waltz, but they certainly weren't of interest enough to include in the book. So as we said, this inspires somehow the 1972 movie version of The Great Waltz, which we'll talk about right after this quick break.

[29:25] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong, and if you're enjoying this episode, I strongly suspect that you will want to read my new book, Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical. On sale now wherever books are sold, and I'm very happy to report that the early reviews have been terrific. The esteemed author Jeffrey Bloch says that Broadway Nation is a fascinating, comprehensive, and timely gem of a book that more than lives up to its promise of delivering no less than five books in one. Kudos to David Armstrong. And Tony Award-winning lyricist David Zippel says that David Armstrong's insightful history of the evolution of the Broadway musical and its creators is captivating and comprehensive as well as indispensable.

The book is, of course, available on Amazon, but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website, bloomsbury.com, where you will currently receive a 10% discount. Again, like the podcast that inspired it, the book is titled Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical. Now, back to the show.

[30:52] David Armstrong: All right, Albert, now it's time to talk about the 1972 movie version of The Great Waltz, which I'm surprised I didn't see at the time, because clearly I was somebody who was going to any movie musical that was happening in 1972.

[31:08] Albert Evans: Yeah, and I didn't either. I didn't see this movie.

[31:11] David Armstrong: I do remember going to see The Song of Norway.

[31:13] Albert Evans: Which we should talk about before we talk about The Great Waltz, because they were both directed by the same man, this guy, Andrew L. Stone.

[31:22] David Armstrong: And produced and written by.

[31:23] Albert Evans: And produced and written, swept up after the elephants. I don't know about all he did, but I was reading about him last night. I knew nothing about him, but he actually started becoming involved in movies in the silent era, just did anything he could to get in the movies. He wrote scripts. He probably did sweep up after the elephants. And eventually, he was offered a position in one of the silent film companies, but he wanted to remain independent because he wanted to do his own movies. He's a very stubborn man, and he kept that stubbornness all through his career. So his career had a lot of ups and downs. He would have a hit, and then a studio would hire him to do one or two movies, and then one would flop, and he'd be out of that studio. And this would continue throughout his whole career.

[32:08] Albert Evans: He had a short contract with, I think, MGM to do B-movies, I think in the 30s. But he had hit two kinds of hits. One was like movies like Sensations of 1945 or these Hells of Poppin' type movies, which would have no plot, just a lot of guest stars, were basically reviews. Some of those were popular. But then when he would try to do a drama, he was kind of hopeless because he insisted on writing the scripts himself. He and his wife formed their own production companies to do these. And what he had his most success with was in the 1950s, he did quite a lot of crime dramas. And if they were better, they would be noir. But they were like noir adjacent, but they were like people getting shot and cops and robbers and so on.

[33:03] Albert Evans: Then in 1956, based on these sort of B-noir-ish movies, he actually signed a two-picture deal with MGM. And for them, he made a movie called Julie, starring Doris Day and Louis Jourdan. And that was probably his most successful movie. Overall, he was actually, the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, even though it also is in the Razzie book of terrible screenplays. And that's the movie where Doris Day plays a stewardess or a flight attendant who her murderous ex-husband is on the same plane. He shoots the pilot and Doris Day has to land the plane with instructions from the tower.

[33:37] David Armstrong: I've never seen that movie, but it sounds hilarious.

[33:48] David Armstrong: Yeah, we have to dig that up. 1956. But Julie was a hit. So MGM signed them to make, I think, four more movies. And they were things like The Decks Ran Red and The Last Voyage and just a number of these movies. They were just movies. They did a Pat Boone movie. Then somehow, with that very weird resume, he got hired to do a big musical for ABC Pictures, and that was Song of Norway. And this was a $3 million movie, maybe $4 million, and that's a lot of money at that time. And it performed reasonably well. And that was by Wright and Forrest, had done the adaptation of their own Broadway show.

[34:29] Albert Evans: And again, they completely wrote the lyrics. There's not a single lyric in that version of Song of Norway that's actually in the show.

[34:31] David Armstrong: So they wrote an entirely new score.

[34:39] Albert Evans: They just can't help themselves.

[34:41] David Armstrong: But then the next one was The Great Waltz.

[34:43] Albert Evans: And these are a year apart, is that right?

[34:45] David Armstrong: Yes. It was, no, 70 and 72.

[34:47] Albert Evans: Okay. So they're basically made back to back.

[34:50] David Armstrong: Yeah, because Song of Norway made some money, and so they had him go and do The Great Waltz, which lost much more money than Song of Norway ever made. It's sort of a classic flop.

[35:04] David Armstrong: This is in the wake of The Sound of Music, these big roadshow movie productions. And in fact, this movie of The Great Waltz has an intermission in it, as The Sound of Music did, and all those other roadshow movies of the time did, which then made them very difficult to distribute later because they were so damn long. And Albert and I, we've sat through it twice.

[35:22] Albert Evans: If you want to buy us a cup of coffee, please. Again, sort of the same team. Andrew L. Stone is doing all of his jobs, you know, his credits go on for about a minute and a half. It's just the old joke of, you know, produced by, directed by, screenplay by, craft services by, and this is where his inexperience, I won't say incompetence, because obviously at this point he knows how to make a movie.

[35:49] Albert Evans: The movie is very well made. It's quite impressive. There's nothing wrong with the movie in terms of its moviemaking.

[35:53] David Armstrong: Except what's wrong with it, it seems like every scene seems to be directed by a different person.

[36:02] Albert Evans: So if you're saying that would be like, oh, did Richard Lester direct this?

[36:05] David Armstrong: Absolutely. The tone of the movie changes drastically from moment to moment. And some of it is like a farce comedy or like, chase scenes like Richard Lester, like, yeah.

[36:16] Albert Evans: Yeah, or like a Pink Panther movie. There's a lot of chase scenes knocking over vendors of vegetables and fruits in the street.

[36:25] David Armstrong: Yeah, sort of slapstick kind of stuff. So MGM is distributing this movie.

[36:29] Albert Evans: They're the distributor, but they're not the studio.

[36:32] David Armstrong: But in a certain way, it's sort of a remake of the MGM earlier version. I assume they got the rights from MGM.

[36:38] Albert Evans: Probably. And they probably thought, oh, well, it made a lot of money for us back in the 30s, we'll get involved with this.

[36:45] David Armstrong: Yeah, we'll help this happen. And movie musicals are the biggest thing of the moment.

[36:50] Albert Evans: Yeah, they're still looking for the hits.

[36:50] David Armstrong: So they're all trying to ride the coattails of The Sound of Music.

[36:54] Albert Evans: Of The Sound of Music, everyone's trying.

[37:26] Albert Evans: He does not do his own singing, but it looks like he's doing his own singing.

[37:30] David Armstrong: They did that very well, too, because I would have sworn he was doing his own singing.

[37:33] Albert Evans: The match to his speaking voice is exact.

[37:36] David Armstrong: And then Mary Costa plays — is she a countess again?

[37:40] Albert Evans: She's just Jessie Treffs.

[37:42] David Armstrong: Jessie Treffs.

[37:44] Albert Evans: I don't think she is. I think she is —

[37:46] David Armstrong: She's the mistress of somebody who seems to be a count.

[37:50] Albert Evans: He's a baron.

[37:51] David Armstrong: Oh, a baron. Okay.

[37:53] Albert Evans: She's the mistress of the baron who is played by Rosanna Brodsy.

[37:57] David Armstrong: And he is 10 years older than her in the plot.

[38:00] Albert Evans: I mean, he's an older man.

[38:02] David Armstrong: She's about 10 years older than Johan, so there's this generational thing going on.

[38:07] Albert Evans: Now, Mary Costa is probably best known now as she played Princess Aurora,

[38:12] David Armstrong: Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the cartoon version.

[38:15] Albert Evans: She was the voice.

[38:16] David Armstrong: She was the voice, yeah.

[38:17] Albert Evans: And you had mentioned that when video came in and Disney started re-releasing video, she —

[38:23] David Armstrong: And Peggy Lee.

[38:24] Albert Evans: And Peggy Lee.

[38:25] David Armstrong: They were the ones who sued Disney because they had it in their contract that there was not to be any audio representation.

[38:29] Albert Evans: Basically, they weren't allowed to make a record of it.

[38:33] David Armstrong: But now they had this VHS, and they said, well, this is a different version using us without compensation.

[38:39] Albert Evans: And they won.

[38:44] David Armstrong: And they won.

[38:45] Albert Evans: They got millions of dollars from Disney.

[38:47] David Armstrong: And still, Disney didn't hold this against her, oddly enough.

[38:50] Albert Evans: They kept her as, like, a big Disney legend.

[38:53] David Armstrong: She's one of the original Disney princesses.

[38:55] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[38:56] David Armstrong: And she's still alive.

[38:57] Albert Evans: And she's still alive.

[38:58] David Armstrong: She's in her 80s.

[38:59] Albert Evans: She had a big singing career and an acting career.

[39:02] David Armstrong: Did the most very well.

[39:04] Albert Evans: But she did something like 45 opera roles were in her bag of tricks.

[39:09] David Armstrong: So she was very legit.

[39:12] Albert Evans: But she was an opera singer that you could understand what she was saying, which makes her perfect for this.

[39:17] David Armstrong: And she was American.

[39:18] Albert Evans: And she was American.

[39:19] David Armstrong: She was from Louisville or someplace.

[39:21] Albert Evans: She's quite good in the movie.

[39:22] David Armstrong: She's very beautiful.

[39:23] Albert Evans: She sings beautifully.

[39:25] David Armstrong: The whole cast, I think, really does well.

[39:27] Albert Evans: Let's just talk a little bit about what's odd about this movie in terms of the script and the story is that the entire story of the original Broadway production is only the first 45 minutes of the movie.

[39:38] David Armstrong: So during that time, young Strauss struggles with his father, doesn't want him to become a conductor, to become a writer of waltzes.

[39:51] Albert Evans: That conflict is a little more realistic and closer to the facts, as I know you've read a lot about that, that Strauss really just didn't want him to have to endure the life of a band leader.

[40:04] David Armstrong: Because Strauss Sr. basically began as a street performer with two or three of his friends.

[40:09] Albert Evans: They sang on the streets for nickels.

[40:11] David Armstrong: And so he really got a rough start, even at the time, even the most successful composers.

[40:16] Albert Evans: Even as the waltz king.

[40:17] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[40:18] Albert Evans: Were treated as servants when it came to like the hierarchy of where you entered the building.

[40:23] David Armstrong: Right.

[40:24] Albert Evans: And he didn't want that for his son.

[40:25] David Armstrong: Plus Strauss Sr. was married to a woman named Anna. And together they had six children.

[40:31] Albert Evans: There were two girls and four boys.

[40:34] David Armstrong: One of the boys died early.

[40:35] Albert Evans: So there were two girls and three.

[40:37] David Armstrong: So there were five mouths plus the mother and the father to feed in that household.

[40:43] Albert Evans: He also had a mistress who had five children.

[40:45] David Armstrong: He was financially supporting a troupe.

[40:49] Albert Evans: But he didn't want them to be in show business because show business was too precarious.

[40:53] David Armstrong: Even at the height of show business, which he was, it could all fall apart any minute because he had to tour.

[41:00] Albert Evans: He had to show up every night to play these waltzes in order to make any money.

[41:05] David Armstrong: To me, it's sort of like being Benny Goodman or Glenn Miller, except they had the advantage of making money from selling records.

[41:11] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[41:12] David Armstrong: There was copyright at that time.

[41:13] Albert Evans: There wasn't.

[41:14] David Armstrong: When the Strausses were writing, you made your money from showing up and performing.

[41:19] Albert Evans: From butts in seats.

[41:20] Basically your job was to provide music for balls.

[41:25] David Armstrong: Right.

[41:26] Albert Evans: For these big elaborate balls.

[41:28] And if you didn't do that, if you were sick, if you died, he was also, he spent a lot of money.

[41:33] David Armstrong: I think we talked about that earlier too.

[41:35] Albert Evans: He spent it on the road because he treated his musicians the same as himself.

[41:39] David Armstrong: So he did send some money home, but it wasn't enough to then support them in perpetuity.

[41:44] Albert Evans: So they treat this story more realistically.

[41:47] David Armstrong: He's basically a pop star burdened by the workload that he has to, and he doesn't want his son to do that.

[41:54] Albert Evans: It's not so much about jealousy, although that fits in there as well.

[41:58] David Armstrong: There would be jealousy.

[41:59] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[42:00] David Armstrong: Within the first, as I said, first 45 minutes of the movie, they have the conflict.

[42:04] Albert Evans: Women, in this case, the character played by Mary Costa helps him to become famous, helps him to become known.

[42:11] David Armstrong: Strauss writes the Blue Danube. It's performed.

[42:15] Albert Evans: Strauss Sr. comes around. There's a reconciliation. Strauss Sr. dies.

[42:21] David Armstrong: And we're not even to intermission to the movie yet.

[42:23] Albert Evans: Which is true in real life. He gets scarlet fever, and he dies.

[42:26] David Armstrong: The Strauss Jr. story in the second half is about him becoming an operetta composer, which will climax in him writing De Flitermaus.

[42:35] Albert Evans: But that's not quite enough story for another hour and a half of a movie.

[42:41] David Armstrong: Again, we've said this before. It's impossible to dramatize a writer writing.

[42:46] Albert Evans: Right.

[42:47] David Armstrong: Because they sit at a desk. They just think, write things down. It's not dramatic. It's just hard work.

[42:53] Albert Evans: So it all becomes about his love affairs.

[42:56] David Armstrong: Well, in this case, it becomes about Mary Costa and Rosanna Brozzi, the conflict between them over Strauss Jr., and then she has a son who's blackmailing her, a grown son, an illegitimate son.

[43:10] Albert Evans: An illegitimate son that no one knows about.

[43:12] David Armstrong: Yeah, that's been kept secret.

[43:14] Albert Evans: So, in a way, Strauss Jr. becomes not at all the center of the story in the second half of this movie, which does it no favors.

[43:22] David Armstrong: There's this blackmail plot. There's some other plot that I can't think of.

[43:27] Albert Evans: Well, there's her leaving Rosanna Brozzi for Strauss and getting married to young Strauss.

[43:32] David Armstrong: But Rosanna Brozzi loves her forever.

[43:34] Albert Evans: And then the misunderstanding that she's going to go back to him, but that turns out to not be the case with a letter that only gets read halfway through.

[43:43] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[43:44] Albert Evans: So it's very melodramatic in some ways.

[43:46] David Armstrong: She's on the train. He has to, like, go jump on the train as it's leaving.

[43:50] Albert Evans: And again, it becomes like...

[43:54] David Armstrong: It becomes like the Keystone Cops.

[43:56] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[43:57] David Armstrong: When he's, like, chasing people around.

[43:58] Albert Evans: And so, for a while, it kind of has nothing to do with music.

[44:01] David Armstrong: But let's talk about the music.

[44:03] Albert Evans: What's interesting is that there are songs in this written by Wright and Forrest, all new, an entirely new set of songs that have no relationship to their previous version or any previous version of The Great Waltz.

[44:17] David Armstrong: I think that's probably because they want to be moderators. Now they have a new story. We want to tell this new story so we can't use the old songs.

[44:25] Albert Evans: Now, they don't always succeed in that. This is a much less engaging group of songs than they had on the two albums we listened to.

[44:33] David Armstrong: And in fact, there's some ludicrous stuff. There's a singing narrator.

[44:37] Albert Evans: Oh, I forgot.

[45:09] David Armstrong: When Vienna existed to dance, dance, dance. Never before, not ever again have so many danced in the glittering Odeon or the gleaming Spal in the Josefstadt, the Dianamon, the Zirgonitz, the Apollo, and the many more. From the wings of a thousand strings have a city or the Spal.

[45:50] Albert Evans: Who starts the movie singing and then continues throughout the movie, way beyond you think this would be sustainable, to sing what's going on in the plots and what's going to happen next.

[46:02] David Armstrong: It's just this disembodied voice and this, and then she decided to divorce.

[46:08] Albert Evans: And it's not even to tunes. It's like residue.

[46:12] David Armstrong: It would be good to play a drinking game every time this narrator comes on and see where you get.

[46:17] Albert Evans: That is hilarious.

[46:18] David Armstrong: And none of the other musical numbers really stand out as being effective.

[46:23] Albert Evans: There's a lot of choreography in the movie, so in some ways it does relate to the original Broadway production, which was filled with dancing.

[46:30] David Armstrong: This is by Anna White, one of the great stage and film choreographers of all time.

[46:35] Albert Evans: Unfortunately, they've just not given her anything to dance about, which hasn't stopped her from having lots of dancing.

[46:42] David Armstrong: And I think Anna White was a professional about anything else. They said, do a Mary Villager dance here, just to kill some time. She'll do a Mary Villager dance, and do a really good one.

[46:53] Albert Evans: But it doesn't necessarily tell the story of the Strausses.

[46:56] David Armstrong: And she was a great storyteller. I just think they didn't give her any moments to tell it on.

[47:01] Albert Evans: She'd already won a Special Academy Award for Oliver by this point.

[47:05] David Armstrong: So she's a big deal.

[47:06] Albert Evans: In some ways, she probably goes into this project with a lot of clout.

[47:10] David Armstrong: The dancing is quite impressive in her way that she can have streets filled with happy villagers dancing.

[47:18] Albert Evans: But unlike in Oliver, unlike in The Music Man, unlike in her greatest work, there's no substance to the story.

[47:26] David Armstrong: The choreography is not serving the story.

[47:28] Albert Evans: In this case.

[47:29] David Armstrong: No, the story at this point is either nonexistent or completely uninteresting.

[47:35] Albert Evans: Especially as the movie is passing the two-hour mark, and is nowhere near completion.

[47:39] David Armstrong: Absolutely.

[47:40] Albert Evans: And there's a ridiculous dancing in the rain sequence.

[47:44] David Armstrong: But again, Horst Buchholz is very game in all the stuff that they ask him to do in this movie.

[47:49] Albert Evans: Yeah, they're out in the woods dancing in the rain. Somehow, the sun is still shining.

[47:53] David Armstrong: I don't think they thought that through.

[47:55] Albert Evans: At least on them, it's raining. And it's all shot on location.

[47:59] David Armstrong: Part of what I think this movie prides itself on is being in the actual locations, the actual ballrooms, the actual theaters where Strauss would have been.

[48:08] Albert Evans: It's beautifully photographed. I mean, it's a beautiful movie. Didn't skimp on that. Just a lot of times there's no there there in this movie.

[48:16] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[48:17] Albert Evans: And then probably the lowest point of the movie for me is when Rosanna Brazzi and Mary Costa break up and she leaves him and then he wanders through this incredible mansion that he lives in.

[48:29] David Armstrong: It looks like the Palace of Versailles.

[48:31] Albert Evans: And he has this long, what would have been a musical monologue, except he doesn't sing. The narrator sings a song while he wanders woefully through this grand palazzo that he's in and singing a song that sounds like they wanted it to become a pop hit for Robert Goulet of the time.

[48:50] David Armstrong: In fact, it almost sounds like the same narrator isn't singing it. It almost sounds like Desmond wanted to do it.

[48:56] Albert Evans: Because suddenly the tone was very pop song. It's very 1960s, middle-of-the-road pop song. That song is called With You Gone. The narrating singer was named Kenneth McKellar, who was a Scottish tenor who seems to have had a significant career.

[49:15] Albert Evans: All of a sudden it turns psychedelic, which is so odd. And by that we mean that there's a waltz sequence toward the end. Strauss Jr., Horst Buchholz, and Mary Costa waltzing in various ballrooms. They start using these 1960s psychedelic techniques, which you see in other movies of the period, where all of a sudden everything turns pink and everything. It's like an Instagram filter, which we would see on TV specials during the period. It was very much in vogue of the moment. I mean, I think the basic neat they're using is reversing the colors so the green becomes red. And so it's not like in South Pacific, where just everything gets a wash of some color. It's like the actual colors of these living people are flipped.

Right. Their faces become green and their clothes become red. It just seems like, what is it? Is this in help or what? What's going on here? Yeah, it felt like that in the Beatles movies. Yeah, absolutely. And it was just very odd why. I guess it just was trendy at the moment. And somehow we're going to move this into the modern moment by using these techniques. And nothing else in this movie has been remotely like this. It's mainly like just gorgeous shots of ballrooms. They never go back to it. It's just in this one little two and a half minute at most sequence. It makes an impression. Well, because you are sort of going, what the hell is happening?

[50:54] David Armstrong: So if our goal of this series, In Search of Lost Broadway, is to get us as close as possible to the original Broadway productions of these hit shows that have been lost to time, basically, that never get talked about, none of the versions of The Great Waltz that we talked about today really help us very much in that regard. And sometimes it's from good intentions, from trying to make this a more accessible show dramaturgically. And in some ways, their goal is the opposite of what we're trying to do. They were trying to bring the show into the current day and evolve the original to make it as vital in that particular moment in time as they possibly could. They're trying to fix the show from their point of view.

But in a way, they've sort of lost the charm of seeing something that is close to the original, seeing something that is sort of just presentational and sort of, I don't know, it seems like the original version sort of just announced the story. They weren't even trying to act it out. They were just announcing what comes next. And these tried to make it into actually a psychologically believable story about people. And I don't think the original was about people. I think it was about this music. And let's tell a framing story about how this music was supposedly created, but not to really get you involved in these people's lives or shed a tear even.

[52:15] Albert Evans: Yeah. And more boldly, certainly was a jukebox musical in that we're going to create a vehicle to present this music. And now because they've all lived through the Golden Age, they're trying to bring the Great Waltz into that style of writing and that depth. And it's just hard to do. Then there's one other version we didn't talk about, which we'll just touch on briefly, which is the 1963 Walt Disney version called The Waltz King. Not the Great Waltz. It was part of the— Whatever Disney was calling his TV show at the—

[52:46] David Armstrong: The Wonderful World of Disney.

[52:51] Albert Evans: Yeah, so it was a TV movie, basically. I find this one very interesting. I think I like it more than you.

[52:57] David Armstrong: Oh, no, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was really, in some ways, it's the most enjoyable film version of it. Because it really boils it down. It's an hour and a half. It was telecast in two parts, consecutive weeks, the Disney show. And it stars Kerwin Matthews, I believe his name is, and Santa Berger, both of whom are sort of up-and-coming heartthrobs. Kerwin Matthews, who was in the middle of doing a sequence of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. There was a Gulliver's Travels one, something else one. He apparently hated doing these movies. In fact, later in life, I watched an interview with him. The interviewer asked, you know, well, what of your movies are you most proud of? And he said, none of them.

But I think I enjoyed acting the part of Johann Strauss in The Waltz King more than any of them. It gave me more to do. I felt more comfortable doing that than, you know, doing these silly swashbucklers and fighting animated, like, very Harryhausen monsters. So he left the movie business after that. He was very discouraged. And he settled down with his partner. The two of them were together for 46 years and they ran an antique store in San Francisco. So make of that what you will. But he's actually very, he really is good at this movie. He's very engaging in the movie. He really plausibly conducts the orchestra. If he had training or if he was musical, it looks like he's playing the piano. It looks like he's playing the violin. He does a very good job in this. And Santa Berger, who was mainly a German star, acquits herself wonderfully as well. The two of them make a very plausible couple.

[54:36] Albert Evans: And one of the things that I really liked about was the orchestra on the soundtrack is the Vienna Philharmonic. So these are people who really know how to play these waltzes. There are no songs, really, though. No, it's not really a musical. It's not really a musical version of the Great Waltz. But you can see I my interpretation is it's sort of an unofficial. We don't want to buy the rights to the Great Waltz, but we'll make our own version of it. And we'll tell this story, which is a very sophisticated, actually kind of adult for a Disney show.

[55:06] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's surprising. They don't shy away from the mistresses and the hints of adultery and things like that. I was actually kind of shocked that it was as well written as adult as it was for something that was on the Wonderful World of Disney. It's beautifully shot. It seems to be done on location quite a bit.

[55:24] Albert Evans: Oh, I think it's all done over there. Yeah, it's actually a movie I recommend, although, again, it's only Great Waltz adjacent.

[55:36] David Armstrong: Yeah, but the very oddest thing is they never play the Blue Danube Waltz in this movie, which is very ironic considering that's the culmination. Every other version of it, it all that's the big event. And even in the movie version, the 1972 movie version, even though they get to the Blue Danube early on, they get back to it at the end when he goes to the Grand International Exposition in Boston, whatever that big music, and play the Blue Danube with thousands, 3,000 musicians. The other odd thing about the Disney version is that the culmination of it is the first performance of Deflator Mouse, as the 1972 movie will do, except in this one. In this one, they actually say it in German, and this is Disney.

A long segment of it. A long segment. You get at least 10 minutes. The plot hinges on whether, because they kind of make fun of the Russians in Deflator Mouse, and the Russian countess or ambassador, she's sitting watching this, and if she dislikes it, it will be an international incident. But she likes it. Of course she does. But not in the Blue Danube. Hilarious.

[56:49] David Armstrong: Well, thank you, Albert. This has been a long journey, but it's been fun to waltz with you through the history of the Great Waltz.

[57:00] Albert Evans: Yeah, it was the perfect thing to do this with, because there have been so many different versions. It's not like, well, then when Susan Stroman did Oklahoma, she did this. These are completely different takes on not even the same source, the same idea.

[57:10] David Armstrong: Yeah. And as you said, we have now listened to the same Strauss waltzes in various versions, in all these different incarnations of the show, and we're not tired of them.

[57:22] Albert Evans: No. They're stuck in our heads, maybe annoyingly, but I don't feel like, oh, I could never listen to that Emperor Waltz one more time.

[57:28] David Armstrong: Yeah. And yet you can. Just one quote came across in the research for this was Richard Wagner said that Johann Strauss Jr. had the greatest musical mind of anyone he had ever encountered. And so that sort of blows up the idea that, oh, this is just frivolous, light music. Totally. And is why everyone kept trying to bring this music to the stage for so long. It's so captivating. For over a period of almost half a century, they just kept wanting to create a musical about Johann Strauss Jr. and his music.

[58:08] Albert Evans: Yeah. They give us our choice. They give us a selection. We now have a smorgasbord of Strauss to enjoy.

[58:15] David Armstrong: Well, thank you, David. I've thoroughly enjoyed this.

[58:20] Albert Evans: Me too.

[58:28] ♪ Musical number: "Charm" — performed by Albert Evans and David Armstrong ♪

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