Martin Milnes: In 1993, there lived a precocious seven year old with unusual specialist knowledge about Broadway musicals and old Hollywood movies.
TV Announcer: It's "Aspel and Company" on London Weekend Television. With your host, Michael Aspel.
Martin's Mum: Oh, Martin. Look who Michael Aspel's guest is.
Martin as a Child: Stephen Sondheim?!
Michael Aspel: Welcome back. My next guest has been described as Broadway's most influential composer lyricist of the twentieth century. And now he's in London for the revival of his musical masterpiece, "Sweeney Todd". Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Stephen Sondheim.
Steve as a Child: He wrote "A Little Night Music", Mummy. I've got the cassette tape upstairs.
Martin's Mum: Oh, yes. I know you like that one.
Michael Aspel: Stephen, the score of "Sweeney Todd" is renowned, and it was inspired by your private passion for old movies. In fact, it's been said that your knowledge of classic film is encyclopedic.
Stephen Sondheim: Yeah. When I was 25, I was almost accepted as a contestant on the $64,000 question. But when the producers realized I was working in a related field, they disqualified me. They they wanted nuns who were experts on boxing. My memory for trivia is failing rapidly now.
But if you'd asked me twenty years ago, I could probably have told you all the statistics of any movie from about 1942 until the studios broke up in the mid fifties, which is when I lost interest. I used to hunt the museum programs and film societies, especially film noir and foreign movies. The only kind of film that doesn't interest me at all is the movie
Steve as a Child: Mommy, do you think Stephen Sondheim has seen Gold Diggers of 1933? It's my favorite movie.
Bus Announcement: Next stop, Darleydale Avenue.
Peter E. Jones: So Martin, tell me out of all the experiences you had with Steve, sharing your passion for movies, which was the craziest?
Martin Milnes: That, PJ, would be August 2019. I was on a bus en route strangely enough to see a production of West Side Story, and my phone vibrates. So I open the email, and it's from Steve. By this point in our friendship, I was used to getting regular emails from Steve bantering about old movies, movie stars, obscure character actors, all the things which we regularly discussed. But this time, Steven Spielberg was cc'd into this correspondence.
And Steve's email to me says
Stephen Sondheim: Martin, Spielberg asked me who the character actor below is. His resemblance to Hitler is pretty remarkable. He doesn't know the movie and the actor doesn't look familiar to me. I told him that I check with my British experts. So any idea? Signed Adolf who played Hitler in Manhunt.
Martin Milnes: Attached were several photos of this mystery mustachioed actor and Spielberg's original message to Steve saying, "Hi, Steve. Who was this nineteen thirties character actor? He looks like Adolf Hitler. I'm trying to remember the film." And I love that Steve had now included Spielberg in our movie emails. Steve often challenged me setting cinematic puzzles, but this time I thought, Spielberg's watching. I have to get this one right. So I replied saying, on the case. And as had become Steve's and my regular joke, I signed my email with the name of an obscure film character actor. This time, I chose Tom Duggan because in the movie To Be or Not To Be, Tom Duggan enters dressed as Hitler and says, "Heil myself". And that, PJ, was the start but not the end of my craziest Sondheim movie experience. It was a typical example of how Steve and I would geek out together, sharing our niche passion for classic film, and just having lots of fun.
Peter E. Jones: Wow. Besides you being you, Martin, you came along at just the right time for Steve. He was having less and less moments of levity and joy in his life. And as we both know, humor is so important to him. People think of him as being so gravid and serious, but he liked to have a lot of humor, a lot of laughs, and a lot of levity in his life. And for you to come along and tickle that part of him that loved old movies was such a timely thing and very special. His college chums, those were the people he had a big time with movies. So all these years later, someone with the encyclopedic knowledge of it the way you had, that kept him on his toes, which he liked. I think it really helped him a lot in the end, especially once COVID hit because he was isolated up there in Connecticut. So I think you meant a lot to him.
Martin Milnes: Oh, thank you. You've never told me that before. Welcome to Loving You, The Untold Sondheim, A podcast made by Steve's friends with Steve's friends. Hosted by me, Martin Milnes.
Peter E. Jones: And me, Peter E. Jones.
Martin Milnes: "Beat The Devil." The great Hollywood flop of 1953, starring Humphrey Bogart, directed by John Huston, screenplay by Truman Capote, and my friend Angela Allen was script supervisor. Now, Angela, on the set of "Beat the Devil", in Italy, you met 22 year old Steve.
Angela Allen: Yes. On Beat the Devil, I did meet Stephen Sondheim because he'd come with a friend of his whose father was a friend of John Huston's. The two of them were there probably couple of weeks. There were two hotels but which interconnected with each other, the Palumbo and the Caruso. And I remember Stephen used to strum away on the sort of out of tune piano there, and I don't know what made me say it, but I said to somebody, "Oh, I think that young man has tremendous talent. And I was told what an idiot I was.
Martin Milnes: Steve gave me all the gossip from Beat the Devil. He told me that every morning, he and Humphrey Bogart played chess without a board. They'd just recite different moves at each other, and sometimes Steve won the match. And Steve told me all the business with Truman Capote.
Angela Allen: Truman was very, very funny because we were the young ones, you might say, on the unit. And he'd be there with all the gossip that was going on in the hotel, and he was having an affair with who and all this business.
Martin Milnes: Well, Steve gave me a candid audio recording of Truman Capote drunk, claiming to have seduced both Houston and Bogart. Truman said that Bogie had an eight inch cock. "Pretty, rather thick, and nicely bushed". Now it's probably all junk as Truman was well known for telling tall tales. But Angela, do you think there's any chance Truman Capote did seduce such rugged heterosexuals as Bogie and Huston?
Angela Allen: Well, not unless they were completely drunk too. And I didn't know what they were doing, which I suppose is possible. But I think highly unlikely.
Peter E. Jones: Now, Martin, why are you telling a nice 96 year old lady like Angela Allen all about Bogie's eight inch nicely bushed cock?
Martin Milnes: It was an alleged nicely bushed cock. And that gossip I got from Steve, he always said publicly that he didn't like gossip, but that is completely untrue. Steve loved gossip.
Peter E. Jones: He loved it.
Martin Milnes: His emails and our conversations in person were filled with gossip.
Peter E. Jones: He had certain pet gossipy things that he liked to tell that meant something to him.
Martin Milnes: Yes.
Peter E. Jones: Like, Jean Arthur and Mary Martin, that sort of thing.
Martin Milnes: You you now have to share the Jean Arthur ...
Peter E. Jones: Oh, do I?
Martin Milnes: You do. I see. You do. So this is Jean Arthur, one of Steve's all time favorite movie stars, and Mary Martin, Broadway legend.
Peter E. Jones: If you said Mary Martin, if you just dropped the name, you would probably get back "Who had an affair with Jean Arthur and she dumped her". Something like that. I heard that I don't know how many times.
Martin Milnes: I had a similar exchange. I sent Steve a link to watch a picture from 1938 called "When Were You Born?" Starring Anna May Wong and Margaret Lindsay. And Steve said, oh, yes. I saw it when it came out. The only thing that's distinguished about this film is that it stars two lesbians".
Peter E. Jones: Which is actually not that distinguishable if you think about it. Right? How many lesbians are in Hollywood in those days? Many.
Martin Milnes: Well, Steve said that he did meet some lesbians on the set of "Beat The Devil", so he really did lap up all the backstage gossip. And "Beat the Devil" itself has become a cult camp classic. It was made in an atmosphere of chaos. Truman Capote's script was being written completely on the fly, and new pages of script were arriving every day. And ultimately, the finished storyline makes no sense whatever. But there are so many brilliant people involved with this movie and associated with it.
Peter E. Jones: It's built a reputation because of its background. It's built a reputation. Because of everything that went on. Yes.
Martin Milnes: Precisely. And a myth has sprung up around Steve and Beat the Devil because various sources say, oh, Stephen Sondheim was a clapper boy. Oh, Stephen Sondheim worked on the set as a runner. But he didn't. Steve visited the movie set in a purely social capacity. As Angela Allen said, Steve came with his friend, John Barry Ryan, whose family were friends of the director, John Huston. So the boys stayed in Italy for several weeks as Houston's guests, watching the movie being made.
Peter E. Jones: Who could resist being on on a set with these people?
Martin Milnes: Steve's vacation on the set of beat the devil really ties in with his passion for film. He was quoted as saying, during my formative years, movies really molded my entire view of the world. And there really wasn't an old movie which Steve didn't know, from the most obscure to the most famous. He knew and had seen everything made during the nineteen thirties, forties, and fifties. And not only that, he could still remember every movie he'd seen, including the year each film was made, which studio, and the entire cast list, which is remarkable considering back then, these movies were not commercially available and had to be hunted down.
Peter E. Jones: He had the first Betamax VCR you could get in the mid seventies when it came out. So he himself had started recording any afternoon Delight movie that the TV stations used to run-in those days.
Martin Milnes: Early on, Steve told me, if you see the movie collection of my house, you will not want to leave. And he explained about all these films he'd inherited from Roddy McDowall, who was a great movie preservationist. Roddy had recorded about a thousand films on videotape, which subsequently Steve had transferred onto DVD.
Peter E. Jones: The movies from Roddy McDowall were all very carefully cataloged with little index cards, and Roddy had this whole thing down to a system. Not only did the movies come to Steve, but all of the little 12 by 12 inch portable televisions that were used to record them came as well. And I guess he had them set in a room side by side, and they were all tuned to the various movies that were broadcasting every day. So Roddy could get them all, and then these index cards were made, and sometimes they were cutouts from TV Guide that were pasted on the index card. It was quite exhaustive.
Martin Milnes: And regarding movies molding Steve's entire view of the world, from what I gleaned from our conversations, I think Steve thought of his own life in movie terms.
Peter E. Jones: You make ze understatement? He certainly did. His personal worldview was often black and white. Now, would write and he would, of course, in philosophical terms, would say there's all kinds of gray in the world and, of course, that's what he wrote about, ambivalence. But when it came to his own life on a daily basis, things were often very black and white. And that may have come from the whole image of the black and white movie world. He wanted the world the way it was in those nineteen thirties, all champagne and caviar and effective lighting and glamour and glitz. And he loved that, and he referred to it all the time as his constant metaphor for one thing or another.
Martin Milnes: And he did always say as well that growing up, he'd imagined life as a composer would be how it was in the movies.
Peter E. Jones: Yes. Up in your penthouse on the 35th Floor at your nine foot grand piano that is next to the windows looking across the city, and the curtains are billowing, and you hold a glass of champagne and you're waiting for the muse to come and inspire you to write your concerto. He actually thought it when he was young that that was what a composer's life was.
Martin Milnes: Well, this romanticized vision of life depicted in old movies is exactly how I expected life to be as well when I growing up. From the age of five, I was watching MGM musicals and then all the great Bette Davis melodramas and "Gone With The Wind" and nineteen thirties screwball comedies. And from this very early age, I knew the name of every star, every director, every supporting actor. So these movies, especially those from MGM, shaped who I am. They really shaped who I am. So maybe subconsciously, that's another reason why Steve and I connected. We both saw life in these romanticized old Hollywood terms.
Peter E. Jones: And you could so easily banter back and forth about it that it brought him joy in that sense. He didn't have to explain it. He didn't have to halt it or hold down the pace of it because you knew exactly what it was. Not unlike he and I in our first meetings in terms of music and theater. He could look at you and see a young version of himself too.
Martin Milnes: Oh.
Peter E. Jones: It was a passion with him. I don't think the passion ever faded. It's just that he kept it in a proper place, shall we say, because he had other things going on in his life for a long time. But it always kept coming through as we'll discuss. And you brought all that to him, opened it up to him again the way he might have been in college with his friends.
Martin Milnes: When Steve died, I printed off all the emails he'd ever sent me, and it came to 200 pages. And that's not one email per page, that's entire email chains bantering back and forth. And in these emails, Steve shared many personal stories from his childhood, which I believe he'd never discussed publicly. Steve often talked about his mother, known as Foxy, being a celebrity hunter. For instance, she famously befriended Oscar Hammerstein's family because of their celebrity status.
But Foxy also collected movie stars as friends. So growing up, many great stars of the time regularly dropped by the Sondheim apartment. And Steve seemed to like sharing these stories with me because I knew who all these people were. Steve could mention an obscure name from his childhood like Benay Venuta or Florence Desmond, and I lapped up his anecdotes about them. And this, I feel, really cemented the friendship and led to us talking about so many other things.
And right up to his death, Steve generously shared with me his time, his wisdom, and indeed his archives. Because very early on, Steve sent me a DVD of his 1952 home movie filmed behind the scenes on the set of beat the devil, which he'd shot on his friend John Barry Ryan's Bolex camera. And Steve's Home Movie is fascinating because of its unguarded informality. We see Humphrey Bogart, this major Hollywood star, just sitting there without his toupee. The great character actor Robert Morley leans back putting in his eye drops.
Truman Capote arrives with the morning's latest scripts under his arm, and the great sex symbol, Gina Lollobrigida is simply being herself. When Steve and I discussed this home movie, he was so proud of it, and he became quite childishly pleased. And with this big grin, he told me, "I got some good shots, didn't I?" And he sort of puffed up as he claimed, "John Huston acted for me!" Steve had managed to persuade John Huston, this legendary director, to clown for the camera, very pretentiously peering and squinting through his viewfinder. And Steve said, "All this stuff Huston never actually did, but he did it for me so I could get it on film."
Peter E. Jones: And Martin, when Steve told you these stories, did he mention the Hollywood married couple that he met, David and Jenny?
Martin Milnes: Absolutely. This is a story about how Steve's musical company took inspiration from "Beat The Devil"'s leading lady, Jennifer Jones.
Jennifer Jones: There are two good reasons for falling in love. One is that the object of your affections is unlike anyone else, a rare spirit such as lord Byron. The other is that he's like everybody else, only superior.
Martin Milnes: Jennifer Jones was an Oscar winning actress married to Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick, the man who produced "Gone With The Wind". And by 1952, Selznick's glory days were very much behind him. So like Steve, Selznick was just hanging around the set of beat the devil as a spectator, mostly just being quite a nuisance for Jennifer. And in the home movie, Steve pointed out to me his shot of Jennifer Jones looking totally calm and composed, but she's looking down. And Steve said to me, "That was Jennifer. Outside, she was collected, but inside, she was screaming". Then Steve said, "Okay. Now I'm gonna tell you something. This is something you can tell all your smartass friends who think they know everything. Do you know the pot smoking scene in "Company"?
And he asked me, "What are the names of the two friends? It's David and Jenny. And then Steve explained that George Furth, who wrote the book for company, had known Jennifer Jones. And Jennifer Jones had wanted to learn how to smoke pot, but she didn't want her husband David to know about it. So George parked his car outside David and Jennifer Jones's mansion, and Jennifer snuck out. And Jennifer Jones sat with George Furth in his car, and George Furth taught Jennifer Jones how to smoke pot. And that, Steve told me, is who David and Jenny are in Company!". And I loved it.
Peter E. Jones: Were you floored?
Martin Milnes: I was. I was completely. And subsequently, when the revival of Company opened in London soon after that conversation, I was at the first preview thinking, I know who David and Jenny are! And it was just one of those lovely examples of Hollywood having an effect on Steve's work in subtle ways that many people don't realize. But to round off Steve's links to "Beat The Devil", there is a very special moment in the home movie which I consider historic.
Steve candidly captures director John Huston and fallen movie mogul David O. Selznick. These two Hollywood legends are casually smoking at a table outside a restaurant, and none of the locals have any idea who they are. When they get up to leave, Steve follows them with his camera down this little Italian street, Huston and Selznick just strolling and chatting away oblivious to being filmed. And to me, this is the stuff that dreams are made of because the shot encompasses three generations of titans. Selznick by then, a giant from the past, Houston, at that time, a giant of the present.
And behind the camera, 22 year old Sondheim, a giant of the future. This magical little moment never fails to thrill me, and for Steve to share this with me all those decades later really really meant something.
Peter E. Jones: And you know Martin that that David and Jenny's story isn't the only time movie stars influence Steve's work. "Saturday Night" is packed with references to silent films and movie stars.
Martin Milnes: Yes. In his song 'In the Movies', Steve rhymes the name of actress Vilma Banky with 'hanky panky'. And a few years later, he wanted to recycle this rhyme in "Gypsy". So what became 'Let Me Entertain You' originally had entirely different lyrics with three references to silent movie stars.
Let's go to the movies. Let's go to the show. Let's be Hanky Panky along with Vilma Banky and lovely Clara Bow. With Milton Sills there, we'll note some thrills there, but we will steal every scene. So let's go to the movies, but let's not watch the screen. No, sir. We won't watch the screen.
And here's another movie influenced PJ. The score of "Sweeney Todd" is a homage to composer Bernard Herrmann's score for the gothic melodrama "Hangover Square", released in 1945 when Steve was 15. The movie is about a Victorian composer driven to murder, and he's triggered by a high pitched whistle, much like the factory whistle in "Sweeney". "Hangover Square" also features a piano concerto, and at one point, the score of the opening bars flashes onto the screen for just a couple of seconds. Teenage Steve sat through the entire movie several times to memorize these chords and then go home and play them.
To the end of his life, Steve could still play the opening bars from "Hangover Square"'s Concerto Macabre by Bernard Herrmann. And, PJ, after Steve died, when you kindly invited me over to the townhouse, everything was just as Steve had left it. And I was really moved to see that the score of the concerto was still there on top of Steve's piano. And of course, "Hangover Square" meant so much to Steve that age 15, he even wrote a fan letter to Bernard Herrmann.
Peter E. Jones: There were a few letters, you know, he wrote one to Judy Garland.
Martin Milnes: Did he?
Peter E. Jones: Oh, maybe you don't know.
Martin Milnes: No. I don't know that one.
Peter E. Jones: There's a a song of his called A Star Is Born. Yes. And, of course, A Star Is Born is the title of the famous Judy Garland movie from 1954. But that same year, Steve's dear friend Chuck Hollerith had his first child whose name was Kitty, and so Steve wrote him this song to celebrate Kitty's birth.
Stephen Sondheim: Make a wish and wish that tiny star well. Be glad she's born beneath the sign of Jane Darwell. Shout hooray. A star star star star star is born to day Cathy Lou.
Peter E. Jones: But there was a version of A Star Is Born that was written before that. It was just an instrumental, and he sent it to Judy Garland. And he got a response back, something about, we're very touched that you sent it, but we can't accept unsolicited manuscripts and that sort of thing.
Martin Milnes: I have a little theory which I believe shows a fascinating movie influence on Steve's work, and it goes back even further to his childhood and the stars befriended by his mother, Foxy. At one point during our emails, Steve mentioned to me ---
Stephen Sondheim: My memory is is truly bad. So at the risk of geezer redundancy, I have to ask. When we first met, did I tell you about the silent movie stars, old ladies, whom I grew up with as they played mahjong, etcetera, in our in our living room.
Martin Milnes: Now silent movie stars, well, this was news to me. So I replied, no. You didn't tell me. Kindly elaborate.
Stephen Sondheim: Okay. Briefly, and please don't slobber all over the couch. Throughout the thirties, my mother played mahjong in our living room with her friends, Dorothy Mackaill, Mary Brian, and Carmel Myers. And one of her best friends and a terrific lady was was Glenda Farrell. Also, I was about seven, she went out to California and scored me an autograph photograph from Barbara Stanwyck. My next batch of celebrities, couple of decades later, was the Beat the Devil gang. After that, it's it's been all downhill. PS, in case you didn't know, my father was a dress manufacturer and among his models were Kim Stanley and Lauren Bacall when she was still Betty Perske.
Martin Milnes: Now within this email, there's a lot of Sondheim history to explore. Firstly, the silent movie stars playing Mahjong. Dorothy Mackaill, Mary Brian, and Carmel Myers were goddesses of the silent screen. But, of course, by the nineteen thirties, when Steve would have known them, talking pictures had pretty much ended their careers. But remember, these ladies would all have known Steve by the name of Josh because although that was Steve's middle name, he was known as Josh right up to the age of 10.
So to get an idea of what this must have been like for Steve at the age of, say, six or seven, and the effect which I believe knowing these silent stars might have had on his later work, let's actively use our imaginations. So close your eyes and picture this scene. It's mid nineteen thirties Manhattan. We're in the Sondheim's living room, and Foxy is playing mahjong with these still young, but fallen silent movie goddesses.
Radio Announcer: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, and Chrysler now bring you Major Edward Bowes, his original Amateur Hour.
Foxy Sondheim: Six and five.
Mary Brian: Okay, Foxy Honey. So you're East wind and I'm South. Carmel, you're West. Dorothy, you're North.
Carmel Myers: Josh, be a good boy and turn off that radio, will you? Your Andy Carmel needs to concentrate.
Steve as a Child: Okay, Auntie Carmel.
Foxy Sondheim: Ladies, your titles.
Mary Brian: Say Dorothy, when's the British press gonna dish about the Prince of Wales?
Dorothy Mackaill: The American press is printing everything about the affair. But in England, the public's never even heard of Mrs Simpson.
Steve as a Child: Mommy, mommy, can I pay you all my cross hand piece?
Foxy Sondheim: Not now, Josh. Mother's playing mahjong.
Steve as a Child: But mommy
Foxy Sondheim: Josh, just empty this ashtray, will you? Okay. Mother's busy.
Carmel Myers: Foxy, you're neglecting that kid.
Foxy Sondheim: Just take a tile from the wall, Carmel.
Martin Milnes: But after their movie careers ended, these ladies did so much with their lives. Dorothy Mackaill became active on TV. I've seen that. And Mary Brian, during the Second World War, entertained for troops in the European and Pacific war zones. And she was on board the Enola Gay the day after the plane dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Carmel Myers had her own TV show and went into real estate. She also published a book on bereavement, and she ran a perfume distribution company. So all things considered, these ladies were still here. And I wonder, did this have a subliminal effect on Follies? Because remember, they were playing mahjong ...
Peter E. Jones: With their platinum hair?
Martin Milnes: With their platinum hair. Dorothy Mackaill had even been a Ziegfeld Follies dancer before she entered movies. And of course, Carmel Myers had a perfume brand, as does the character of Solange in Follies. So there's got to be a connection somewhere. Absolutely has to be.
Now, with regards to the other ladies Steve mentioned in that email, firstly, his mother's friend, Glenda Farrell. She stars in one of Steve's favorite movies, "Torchy Blane in Chinatown". It was part of the nineteen thirties Torchy Blane film series in which Glenda Farrell played a sleuthing reporter. And in this particular movie, there's an in joke. Glenda gives Steve's mother, Foxy, a name check by addressing a character as Mrs Sondheim.
Movie Extra: Good night, Miss Blane.
Glenda Farrell: Good night, Mrs Sondheim. Good night.
Martin Milnes: Steve's email also mentions two young models who worked for his dad, Lauren Bacall and Kim Stanley. Soon after, Lauren Bacall shot to major Hollywood fame. The other model, Kim Stanley, became one of the great American stage actresses of her time. And George Furth's series of one act plays, which eventually became Company, were written for her as a vehicle to play all the wives. And in yet another email, Steve shared how a major Hollywood star personally dispatched global headlines to their front door.
Stephen Sondheim: The news about Russia entering the war was brought to our apartment by none other than Rosalind Russell.
Rosalind Russell: Oh, I've got some news for you.
Steve as a Child: Oh, you're kidding, Annie, Roz.
Rosalind Russell: I tell you I'm not kidding. I'm not good enough to make this one up.
Stephen Sondheim: She and her husband, Freddie Brisson, co producer of West Side Story, subsequently and coincidentally were other celebrities that my mother managed to corral.
Peter E. Jones: It does show it was his everyday life to be around these people from one end to the other. He was rarely flummoxed by the idea of being with these people.
Martin Milnes: And there's one movie star who keeps cropping up in Steve's life, and that's Gloria Swanson, who played Norma Desmond in the movie Sunset Boulevard.
Gloria Swanson: I am big. It's the picture that got small.
Martin Milnes: Gloria Swanson's first link to Steve is through his dad, Herbert, and his dressmaking business. Swanson had always designed her own clothes, and Herbert Sondheim advised Swanson about going into the fashion industry for herself, which she did to great success. Decades later, it was a photo of Gloria Swanson in the rubble of the Roxy cinema, which provided the inspiration for Follies. And in the nineteen sixties, Steve considered turning Sunset Boulevard into a musical. But Billy Wilder, who directed the film, told Steve, it's about a dethroned queen. It isn't a musical. It's an opera. And Steve really wasn't that interested in opera, so he agreed with Wilder and put the idea to one side. But later, in 1981, Hal Prince suggested to Steve that they collaborate on a musical of Sunset Boulevard to star Angela Lansbury as Norma Desmond. And there was a news cutting about it, wasn't there? P up on the bulletin board in Steve's office with all his other quirky thininnedgs.
Peter E. Jones: For example, pinned up on the bulletin board was a a 45 RPM record. On it was the song 'People' with Sondheim underneath it as the writer. So there were things like that, goof up things like that. But one of the things that was hanging there was a bifold from a magazine, like Life Magazine, probably. Yeah.
That had Steve and Hal bowling. And the caption read, Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim take a break from working on Sunset Boulevard. But that was then. That wasn't 1981. Uh-huh. That was back in the sixties.
Martin Milnes: So it would have been at that point, Gloria Swanson consulted Hal, and I think Steve, about her stage musical of Sunset Boulevard. Because the first ever attempt to make a musical of Sunset Boulevard was by Swanson herself.
Peter E. Jones: Yes. Gloria Swanson wanted to write a musical of Sunset Boulevard, and she'd been introduced to this songwriting team of Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley and commissioned them to write the songs. And they made a demo recording of the entire score of this musical, which Swanson had named Boulevard, exclamation mark. And Steve, who collected recordings of everything ever published and unpublished, had managed to get his hands on the complete demo recordings of this Boulevard musical. This included the only recording ever made with an orchestra of the musical's big number, the equivalent of Andrew Lloyd Webber's song, 'With One Look'. But in Swanson's musical, this number was called "Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark". And in 1992, when Lloyd Webber announced his musical of Sunset Boulevard, Steve gave a copy of this Gloria Swanson recording to the new Norma Desmond, Patti LuPone.
Patti LuPone: Oh, the recording. Oh my god. I've got it. It's downstairs. Oh my god. I've got it.
Peter E. Jones: I don't know who was approached by whom, but Hal and Swanson did have a meeting. And when they did, she brought out this big bolt of cloth which she proceeded to roll out across the floor. And on the cloth were, three lines, each a different color. And the lines would get wider and narrower so that one color was more predominant than the other. And she looked over this long bolt of cloth and said, you see, now whenever there's too much red, we add a little more green. Whenever there's too much green, we add a little more blue. And that's how we balance out the music and the lyrics in the book.
Patti LuPone: Oh, fantastic.
Peter E. Jones: And the whole the way they contoured the whole thing was by she looked at it and saw how the colors were working.
Patti LuPone: My god. That's brilliant. Can you imagine? That's madness.
Martin Milnes: I never knew that.
Patti LuPone: But it's it's a kind of madness. I wonder if you could ever compose that way.
Peter E. Jones: I love the idea.
Patti LuPone: I know. It's kind of great.
Martin Milnes: Yeah. So did Steve give you the Glorious Swanson package in London or when you got back?
Patti LuPone: I think it was in London that I got it. Andrew created this press event and flew me over for it. And that night, we went and saw assassins. That was I said, I can't believe I'm doing. And we went and saw Sam Mendes' Assassins at the Donmar. And I we sort of my silent fuck you, Andrew Lloyd Webber. I first of all, I thought, if he knows I'm seeing a Sondheim he'll flip out and then I'm like, yeah, but I gotta go see this one. I've gotta go see it.
Peter E. Jones: So, Martin, in all these email exchanges you had with Steve about old movies, there must have been some revelation of what Steve was like personally. So did anything stand out that surprised you?
Martin Milnes: Yes. His shyness and how he openly admitted it. In one of his emails, Steve confided a lasting regret.
Stephen Sondheim: I may have said this before, but I'll never forgive myself for not cultivating Raymond Walburn's acquaintance when he was in Funny Thing. Ditto John Carradine. I was too shy.
Martin Milnes: Raymond Walburn and John Carradine were supporting players who sometimes didn't even get billing in the movies they made, but Steve knew exactly who they were. And fascinatingly, it's these obscure actors by whom Stephen Sondheim was starstruck. Another example, in 1953, Steve worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter for the TV sitcom Topper, featuring actors Leo G. Carroll and Lee Patrick. Again, not the biggest names at all, but Steve regretted not making their acquaintance.
Stephen Sondheim: Ditto Lee Patrick and Leo G. Carroll when I was writing Topper, but, yeah, I was I was even shyer then.
Martin Milnes: Think how many people in later years would have been too shy, too awestruck, to overcome, to have spoken to Stephen Sondheim. And he was exactly the same with these unbilled character actors playing supporting roles.
Peter E. Jones: The irony of him being too shy with some of these performers when he was so at ease and at home with Humphrey Bogart and John Huston and
Martin Milnes: I never thought about that.
Peter E. Jones: The dichotomy. Yeah. He had a
Martin Milnes: I never thought about that. So Steve would play chess with a major star like Humphrey Bogart and not be starstruck at all. But with somebody hardly known like John Carradine, Steve gets totally starstruck. And Leo G. Carroll, movie buffs might recall him as the government agent who eventually rescues Cary Grant in North by Northwest.
But we're not talking major stars here. We're talking reliable, solid working actors, and that's who Steve loved. And in our emails, it's these unknown character actors which Steve loved talking about.
Peter E. Jones: So you've just hit another point as to why you were important to him because you knew that and you were interested in that. Those people, very rarely, would he probably
Martin Milnes: But it's it's also PJs. Who else would I talk to about those people? Exactly. It was a two way thing. I'm getting I'm getting emotional now thinking of it. Yes. It was.
It was a two way thing. He pushed me because I would sometimes know if you said to recognize his names, but then I would actually start watching the films to spot them and find these people. And I started thinking of them as our friends. Oh, one of our friends in it, you know, Leo Leo G. Carroll's in the movie.
But in addition to unbilled character actors, Steve was equally starstruck by some of our great ladies of the screen.
Peter E. Jones: I know one because she came up a lot between us, and that was you know who,
Martin Milnes: Bette Davis, a great favorite of Steve's, yours and mine. I had a Bette Davis related email from Steve during lockdown, which he spent glued to the Turner Classic Movies TV channel. And he told me, I've just set the video for Deception. Now Deception is a glorious melodrama from 1946 in which Bette Davis gets acted off the screen by my favorite actor of all time, Claude Rains. And Claude Rains is playing this megalomaniac composer named Hollenius, and he's chewing the scenery like mad. It's just wonderful.
Bette Davis: You're not ever going to see him again. Swear to me you won't.
Claude Rains: I'll swear nothing. I'll do what I please. See whom I please. Say what I please.
Martin Milnes: And Steve told me ---
Stephen Sondheim: When I was in college, every now and then I'd get drunk enough, though it didn't take much, to fall down the fraternity staircase as Heleneus did when BD shot him. I learned how to fall down steps and never hurt myself, and, of course, none of my fraternity brothers had any idea what I was doing no matter how hard I tried to set the scene for them. I can't imagine why.
Martin Milnes: So to conjure up the passion of 16 year old movie mad Steve, let's picture all this in our minds and visualize Steve's drunken deception escapades at Williams College in 1946.
Young Steve: Oh, but fellas, you gotta understand. This is why it's a really great movie. So Bette shoots him like this. Bang. And then Hollenius goes, you fool. You cowardly hysterical fool. You and your
Student #1: Get the hook.
Student #2: Well, Sondheim's at it again.
Student #3: Hey, Steve. You'll never amount to more than just a lousy stuntman.
College Matron: Mister Sondheim, pick yourself up at once.
Young Steve: I just wanted to show him what it's like to be Hollenius.
Martin Milnes: And I love that Steve did this because it's exactly the sort of thing I would do when I was at school, and nobody ever had any idea what I was doing either or what or who I was talking about, and Steve was doing the same. But in 1952, Steve saw Bette Davis on stage, didn't he, in Two's Company, her musical theater debut?
Peter E. Jones: Two's Company was a revue that was built around Bette Davis, if you can believe The show went out of town to Detroit, and since Steve's movie loving friend Chuck Hollerith also lived in Michigan, Steve joined him out there, and they went to see Bette Davis live on stage. Bette Davis comes out in the opening number and she sings and I don't know the melody but I can quote the lyric. "Good little girls go to heaven, but bad little girls go to sax and Bloomingdale's and Cartier" and etcetera, that sort of thing. Third, fourth line in, she passes out flat out cold on the stage. And the stagehand comes out, puts his arms under her armpits, and pulls her off the stage, and her heels are dragging on the floor in a very klutzy comedic, and everybody's aghast in the audience.
Martin Milnes: Steve and Chuck are loving this.
Peter E. Jones: Oh, they're loving this thinking, can you can you believe it? You know, they wanna call 10 of their closest friends. So a few minutes go by and the orchestra's going, and finally, she comes out. She says, "Well, at least you can't say I didn't fall for you".
Martin Milnes: And decades later, Steve would imitate her saying that?
Peter E. Jones: But that number was cut out of the show and never heard from again, and they replaced it with [BETTE DAVIS SINGS]
Martin Milnes: PJ, what else would Steve do for you in his Bette Davis voice? Because he did a good Bette Davis impression.
Peter E. Jones: He did. And that was the one thing he did love to do was her. Bette Davis is infamous for a movie called Beyond the Forest. She was too old for it and it was extremely camp and so some of us really liked it for that reason. But So this was a movie that he showed me and shared with me and we had a wonderful time watching.
This is the line he loved to quote the most. She shoots a porcupine and in the movie she says
Jennifer Jones: I don't like porkies. They irritate me.
Peter E. Jones: Steve always quoted that line as, "Porkies! I hate porkies!" That one I heard more than anything. He would if you said Bette Davis, he would come up with that eventually. He loved that line.
Martin Milnes: This leads us on quite nicely because Chuck and Steve shared this love of camp in their late teens and early twenties, and they were both crazy about two movie stars in particular, one of which was Jean Arthur. But more than anyone else, Chuck and Steve worshipped Margaret Sullavan, a great, great star of the nineteen thirties and forties. And many decades later, Steve and I loved to discuss all the ways in which Maggie, as he called her, died Because Margaret Sullavan very rarely made it out of a movie alive. On screen, Margaret Sullivan died from TB. She died in childbirth. She died from cancer. She died from malaria. She was shot by the Nazis while fleeing on skis. She ran into a burning building. And Maggie had these magnificent melodramatic death scenes and dying speeches, which Steve absolutely loved.
Peter E. Jones: Oh, he loved Margaret Sullavan's death scenes and even immortalized them in at least one of his early songs. And Martin, I remember I shared this with you soon after Steve introduced us because at some point he said to me, "I've told Martin about certain things of my early works, so let him hear whatever he wants".
Martin Milnes: You then began sending me these treasures from Steve's archives, which nobody had ever heard before. And there were in fact two Margaret Sullavan songs from the early nineteen fifties, neither of which Steve had included in his lyric anthology books and which have never seen the light of day until now on this podcast. So, dear listeners, you're about to hear two Sondheim premieres. The first of these unknown pieces written by Steve was inspired by Maggie's movie, No Sad Songs, in which she plays a woman dying of cancer. So for a 1950 Williams College review entitled, Where To From Here, Steve wrote this number entitled No Sad Songs For Me. It's a very sincere but melodramatically camp tribute to Margaret Sullivan's infamous dying speeches.
SINGS "NO SAD SONGS FOR ME"
But as we said, there is in fact another Maggie song from this period, which in later years, Steve kept under lock and key, and it was a great Hollywood epic entitled The Party of the Stars. The song is about a decadent Hollywood soiree, and Steve packed every single line with movie jokes and references. But they're so obscure, you have to be a real Hollywood specialist to understand them. And because this song was so camp, Steve left it out of his lyric anthology books. In the party of the stars, Steve pays camp tribute to all the ways in which Margaret Sullivan died in her movies because Maggie arrives at the party contaminated with every disease known to medical science. Steve's stage direction reads, to be sung with intense and magnificent suffering. So now, PJ and I are proud to present the world premiere of the Maggie section from Stephen Sondheim's The Party of the Stars. [SINGS "THE PARTY OF THE STARS"]
Now, PJ, because you told me that Steve could be rather skittish about these early camp songs, I didn't know whether or not to mention to him that you'd sent me the party of the stars. So you and I kept this to ourselves until a good few months later when Steve and I were emailing and Margaret Sullavan cropped up. At that point, he said
Stephen Sondheim: I wrote a lyric about her and all the ways that she died.
Martin Milnes: And I thought, ah, this is party of the stars. So I played innocent and said, oh, well, I'm not sure I know this song because, of course, he had not included it in his lyric anthology book, but Steve seemed to think he had.
Stephen Sondheim: Maggie's lyric is in, look, I made a hat, a song entitled the party of the stars. I can't believe you don't know it. You and Alfred Uhry are the only people I know who'd understand it. If you haven't read it before, do so without reading the footnote explanation first to see if you miss anything.
Martin Milnes: So I have to remind Steve, no. In Look I Made A Hat, it's your other Hollywood song, A Star Is Born. It's definitely not The Party Of The Stars.
Stephen Sondheim: Good grief. I totally forgot that I'd excluded it. It was too camp, I feared. See if I can dig it out of the files and send it over to you.
Martin Milnes: To clarify, Steve still didn't know that I'd already heard the party of the stars because I'd been too shy to tell him. So at that point, I messaged you, PJ, saying Steve's about to email you and ask you to send him The Party Of The Stars to send to me. And then you responded, I've already got his email, and he wants to send it to you personally. So all these messages between Steve, you, and me are flinging back and forth.
Peter E. Jones: Right.
Martin Milnes: And you and I agreed that when the party of the stars eventually landed in my inbox from Steve, we shouldn't spoil his fun, and I'd act totally surprised. And then a few minutes later, Steve emailed me triumphantly replying,
Stephen Sondheim: Found it.
Peter E. Jones: Yes. He found it!
Martin Milnes: And then he says
Stephen Sondheim: Now you know why I omitted it from the book. Remember, was only 18, which in 1948 meant 12. Don't show it to anyone. In fact, once you've read it, burn this email.
Martin Milnes: But I don't feel bad about sharing the party of the stars now because it is such an endearing window into Steve's youthful passion for movies and just how much he truly worshiped his idol, the great Margaret Sullavan.
Peter E. Jones: And I can tell you that nobody's heard that song. He's probably not shared that with anybody but you and Chuck.
Martin Milnes: As we have this chat, PJ, there is a very special Maggie link here. On this desk next to me is a silver frame. This was originally a gift from Chuck Hollerith to Steve. And in this frame are seven eight by 10 black and white movie stills of Margaret Sullavan, all one behind the other. So Steve had a different photo of Maggie on display every day of the week. He would rotate them. So he had Monday Maggie, Tuesday Maggie, Wednesday Maggie, Thursday Maggie. He did this quite religiously. And this frame of seven Margaret Sullivan's is something which you very kindly passed on to me after Steve died.
Peter E. Jones: Chuck gave this to Steve. I actually don't know when. I just remember one day I saw it there, and Steve loved it. He kept it on the piano, and he changed the picture. I think he was pretty good about changing it every day.
Martin Milnes: Thank you for letting me be Maggie's custodian because in Steve's memory, every day, just like him, I rotate Maggie. So today is a Thursday, and Thursday Maggie is watching over us as we chat about Steve's love for her.
Steve as a Child: What's she wearing?
Martin Milnes: Oh, this is the very melodramatic one. She's swaved in fur with her hand up around her neck very expressively, and she gazing off to the side.
Peter E. Jones: No one more suited to be her custodian than you, Mark.
Martin Milnes: Thank you. It's fun because I think Steve's camp sentimentality and love of camp humor would come as a surprise to those who only know Steve from his work.
Peter E. Jones: He loved to say to people, little camp goes a long way with me. Well
Martin Milnes: We we we know differently.
Peter E. Jones: I guess in the professional sense, it's certainly a little camp went a long way. But in his personal love of things, he certainly It had its place.
Martin Milnes: It had its place.
Peter E. Jones: I remember Mary Rodgers Guettel telling me that she remembers a lunch in the Plaza Hotel
Martin Milnes: Uh-huh.
Peter E. Jones: In which she and Steve and Chuck discussed what the word 'camp' meant. This was what they were talking about! They actively dissected camp. Yes. And what it meant, what qualified as and so on. So that would have been the early fifties and I don't know when that term came into vogue.
Martin Milnes: But in addition to Chuck, there were other chums from college with whom Steve shared his passion for movies, including a chap named Ford Schumann and his wife Caroline whom Steve affectionately dubbed the Shus.
Peter E. Jones: Ford Schumann was one of the college chums, and he would have lunch with this group every so often through the years, and it was called "Lunch With Hats". That was how he referred to it. So there Chuck, there was Ford Schuman, there was Howard Erskine, and then there was Nick Dunne.
Martin Milnes: Whom they gave the camp nickname Irene after Irene Dunne, the fabulous thirties movie star. The college chums had a lot of fun playing around with movie stars' names, including married rhyming names. So for instance, Joan Crawford was married to an actor named Franchot Tone, so she became Joan Tone. Margaret Sullavan, her fourth husband was Kenneth Wagg, so Maggie became Mag Wagg. So Joan Tone, Mag Wagg, you get the idea. And this was Steve's long running joke with the Shus.
Peter E. Jones: Through the years, Steve kept in touch with Ford and Caroline Schumann and would write them letters, document his adventures, a very florid style, shall we say?
Martin Milnes: Especially in 1953, when, as mentioned, Steve was working in Hollywood, not as a composer or lyricist, but as a script writer for TV sitcom, Topper. During his time in Hollywood, and I love this, Steve had a date with Grace Kelly. And she was extremely shortsighted, but she wouldn't put on her glasses and therefore was blind as a bat all evening. But he also went to a preview of a new Joan Crawford movie called Torch Song. And Steve wrote a letter to Ford and Caroline Schumann about his Hollywood adventures along with his personal review of Torch Song, which he'd written on a preview card given to the audience to jot down their feedback.
Peter E. Jones: Now for those of you who have never heard of Torch Song, it is easily one of the campiest movies ever made, and it never fails to please. Joan Crawford is in her fifties playing a Broadway musical star, a tempestuous one named Jennie Stewart, who falls in love with her blind rehearsal pianist named Ty Graham. Hilarity ensues.
Martin Milnes: The camp, gay, carefree abandon in Steve's review of Torch song and his letter from Hollywood to the shoes captures a unique moment in Steve's life. His exuberance completely unrestrained. So to conclude this episode, although Steve's love of movies is to be continued, let's now imagine ourselves in 1953 as we hear excerpts from Steve's review and letter. Young Steve is writing to Ford and Caroline Schumann about the camp old time that he's having in Hollywood.
Young Steve: 07/31/1953. Well, darlings, here I am in the land of citruses and citrus. Stall showers and stalled ambitions, cabbages and movie queens, Canaan on the coast, Israel by the sea. I have stars in my eyes and a song in my heart. Greer wants to say hello. Hello there. So does June Preisser. Hi. Alright, girls. Back to Ramanov's. I wanna talk to the shoes. Saw Crawford's latest and greatest Tuesday night. Met Crawford afterwards. Just a hello and a a feel. She was great. Held court from her limousine. God, how the fans love her. Why don't they love me the same way? Filled out a preview card which I dispatched to the Holleriths with explicit instructions to forward it to you.
Hollywood Announcer: And now, presenting Stephen Sondheim's private review for the Shus and the Holleriths of Joan Crawford's fabulous musical melodrama, Torch Song.
Young Steve: Joan Tone gives one of her greatest performances. Dressed in a stunning succession of wide shouldered negligees, wide hip tights, and wide bosom suits, she poses in her magnificent modern New York penthouse suite against a skyline of great skyscrapers. Alone, but famous. Unhappy, but rich. Unloved, but the toast of Broadway. The fabulous Jennie Stewart rehearsing for her new music. Then one day, out of nowhere comes a blind pianist, Ty Graham. She hates him for his keenness, his heart probing sincerity. He hates her for he has always worshipped her from afar, and now he finds her cheap, hard, and and inhuman. As a last move of desperation, she goes to his apartment. There, she accuses him of hiding behind the mask of his blindness. She breaks him, and in a fit of anguish, he hurls music at her, then falls down, tripping blindly over an expensive pouffe. Together. On the floor, feeling each other's face, they kiss. The music swells. At last, Jenny Stewart has found her happiness, and she's still rich.
Darlings, it was great, great, great. Apart from Joan giving one of the campiest performances of all time, the picture rises above mere soap opera by a kind of parable like simplicity that is tremendously effective and impressive. I shan't write anymore now. I'm too choked up. Stay well, o keepers of my days. Stay well. Come well to my heart. It's our kind of picture. Signed, Jennie Stewart.
Mehran James McCullough: In this episode, Stephen Sondheim was portrayed by Alistair McGowan and Young Steve by Daniel Cane. A special appearance was made by British television legend Michael Aspel as himself. The television announcer was Harry James-Taylor . As Martin's Mum, Pauline Milnes played herself. Young Martin was played by his niece, Tess.
In Mahjong at Foxy's, Carmel Myers was played by Melissa Redman, Mary Brian by Rebecca Ridout, Dorothy McKaill by Rosanna Roscoe, and Foxy Sondheim by Victoria Ward. Steve as a child was played by Arthur Magee, and Rosalind Russell was played by Rosalind Russell. The Williams College students were Karsci Wright, Theo Bracey, and Sam Trotman. The college matron was played by Hazel Ascot, celebrated child star of the 1937 British movie musical Talking Feet and the even bigger smash hit of 1938 Stepping Toes. The Hollywood Announcer was Jonathan Christopher.
Dramatic reenactments were written by Martin Milnes and produced by Peter E. Jones. My Funny Valentine by Rodgers and Hart was sung by Mary Martin. Sondheim's I'm Still Here was sung by Nancy Walker. Martin Milnes sang Let's Go to the Movies, No Sad Songs for Me, and The Party of the Stars. These recordings, dedicated to the great Margaret Sullavan, were produced by Chris Traves with Musical Direction by Gareth Valentine.
The music of Stephen Sondheim was played by Colm Mplloy. Sondheim and Lloyd Webber instrumental tracks were provided by Broadway Studio Orchestra. The National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Charles Gerhardt, played the main title from Beyond the Forest by Max Steiner. The soloist for Concerto Macabre from Hangover Square by Bernard Herrmann was Joaquin Achucarro. The score of Deception was composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Those Wonderful People by Richard Stapley and Dickson Hughes was sung by Gloria Swanson. Turn Me Loose on Broadway by Vernon Duke, Sammy Cahn and Ogden Nash was sung by Bette Davis. Final mix and mastering is by Chris Traves. Additional credits are read by Samuel Black, and I am Mehran James McCullough.
Samuel Black: This episode is dedicated to Martin's dearest friend and greatest inspiration in the theater, the late Jean Bayless, star of West End and Broadway, who in 1961 was chosen by Richard Rodgers to create the role of Maria in the original London cast of The Sound of Music.
Mehran James McCullough: Loving You, The Untold Sondheim is produced by Martin Milnes and Peter E. Jones. The executive producer is Jason Caffrey of Creative Kid Limited. The mix engineer is Phoebe Murdoch. Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics appear by courtesy of The Stephen Sondheim Trust. The podcast's original score is composed by Peter E. Jones. The series is written, devised, and directed by Martin Milnes