With playgoing on hiatus, the contributors to New York Stage Review have decided to provide our readers with alternate discussions of theater: think pieces, book/music/video reviews, and the like. We would much rather be reviewing live theater, and we look forward to the day when the curtain rises once again.
The following was written for an audience talkback discussion following the February 22, 2020, matinee of the City Center Encores production of Mack & Mabel.
The night of the final preview of Mack & Mabel, 1974. I was having dinner at Sardi’s. 8:30—the middle of the first act—in walks David Merrick, the producer of Mack & Mabel. He sits at his regular table, just across from me.
Now, Mr. Merrick, you wouldn’t speak to him. He might snarl back, lash out at you, or maybe just make believe you weren’t there. So you’d just nod, so he wouldn’t think you were ignoring him.
This time, he sat back and said “Hello. Have you seen—[pointing with his two index fingers across the street, presumably towards the Majestic]—the show?”
I told him I had tickets for the opening, the next night.
“This was a tough one. Did a lot of work, but I could only get it about 80 percent where I wanted it.” Then, after a lackadaisical shoulder shrug, ”Hope it’s enough!”
As it turned out, it wasn’t. There were a lot of interesting elements; but you felt like you were watching two different shows. Mack & Mabel, in a way, was two different shows. And that was the problem.
It started with an oldtimer named Leonard Spigelgass, who was already writing when Jerry Herman was born in 1931. He wrote 40 movies, several plays. He had one Broadway hit, A Majority of One, back in 1959; the only thing you might remember is his screenplay for the 1962 film version of Gypsy.
Spigelgass came across Father Goose, a 1934 biography of Mack Sennett by Gene Fowler—written before Sennett went bankrupt and was forced into retirement. Spigelgass’s idea was to do a nostalgic, happy musical about early Hollywood: Mack Sennett, pies in the face, Bathing Beauties, Keystone Kops. A producer named Edwin Lester—who had lucrative subscription audiences in Los Angeles and San Francisco—brought in Jerry Herman, and the pair wrote something they called Hundreds of Girls.
That happy musical never got on; Spigelgass took his script and departed. Jerry was left with his songs. He lamented the lost opportunity to his friend Michael Stewart, who’d written the book for Hello, Dolly! Mike said something along the lines of, “Didja know, Sennett alienated everyone he ever worked with, and lived on until 1960? And didja know Mabel Normand was a cocaine addict?”
So Mike signed on—Spigelgass wound up with a “based on an idea by” credit—and he and Jerry came up with a more realistic, darker, and less happy Mack Sennett musical.
And there was the problem. Mike’s new book retained many of the songs written for Hundreds of Girls; but they didn’t exactly fit the darker tone of what would become Mack & Mabel. The song “Time Heals Everything,” for example, is altogether remarkable, and it’s one of the few that actually fit the new, darker story. There are numerous rousing Jerry Herman-type production numbers: “I Like to Make the World Laugh,” “Big Time,” “Tap Your Troubles Away,” and the original title song “Hundreds of Girls.” But there’s a mismatch in tone between the upbeat songs and the downbeat story.
And there was another issue. Mike and Jerry realized that they needed to build the show around a star who could be charming but irascible, and thoroughly believable as a romantic misfit. They knew the perfect actor: Jerry Orbach, who had made his Broadway debut in Stewart’s 1961 hit Carnival! (produced by Merrick, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion) and won a Best Actor Tony Award for Merrick’s 1968 hit Promises, Promises.
Then along came Robert Preston. Press, famous for his role as Harold Hill in The Music Man, had won his second Tony for the Merrick/Champion I Do! I Do! and was just then making the film version of Jerry Herman’s Mame. He heard about Mack & Mabel and said something along the lines of, “Hey, boys, I hear you’ve got a musical!”
Press was legendary on Broadway, so what could they say? Jerry Orbach, who was what in those days they used to call a mensch, said: “I understand.” They promised him, we’ll do another show for you. And they eventually did: 42nd Street.
But here was the new problem. When Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand moved to Hollywood, he was 32 and she was 20. Jerry Orbach was 12 years older than Bernadette Peters, who ultimately played Mabel. Bob Preston? Thirty years older than Bernadette. And in those days, 60 was old. He sang about sending roses, yes; but onstage at the Majestic, there was no romance in this musical built around a failed but enduring romance.
The show has been worked on over the years, and it plays somewhat better today. But in 1974, when it opened on Broadway, Mack & Mabel—simply put—just didn’t work. The people on the show, they knew; during the long and difficult tryout, they started calling it: “Mack & Maybe.”
The original Broadway cast album of Mack & Mabel can be purchased at amazon.com
