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‘I've got a treatment of Anyone Can Whistle, set in the Swiss Alps, called Anyone Can Yodel. If you know anyone who might be interested in producing, give me a call.' – Sondheim's email to Lin-Manuel Miranda
‘Mr. Sondheim – you are a sombre fellow. Couldn't you put a ray of hope into your show by having a ballerina in white coming down from the flies – and dancing across the stage - in such a dark piece as the one you've written?’ – Katharine Hepburn on Assassins
Made by Steve's friends, with Steve friends.
Jamie Bernstein, the author, broadcaster and filmmaker is the daughter of Leonard Bernstein and his actress wife, Felicia Montealagre. Jamie remembers how during the nineteen fifties and sixties, Steve and her parents produced and starred in very elaborate home movies, including a horror film parody of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and a Puccini opera, both directed by Steve.
Jamie Bernstein:Every summer, my parents would put together a scripted eight millimeter silent home movie. Steve came to visit. He brought along a 16 millimeter movie camera and filmed our parents acting out the end of the second act of Tosca. Our dad was Scarpia and our mother was Tosca, and Steve himself had a cameo in which he comes out as the lackey for Scarpia. And the summer that they made Tosca, it was like a big ramping up of everything because now there was sound, you see. And they lip synced to the recording by Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi, the whole end of Act Two of Tosca. And because it was all so low tech, the sink was horribly wrong. Apparently, anytime they turned on a vacuum cleaner or a wearing blender or something on in the other part of the house, that slowed down the record player a little bit, and that made doing the syncing up later in the edit room completely impossible. And that task fell to my uncle Burton, who was my father's younger brother. And it wasn't until decades later with modern technology that we were finally able to more or less sync it up. Then the summer after that, there was yet another home movie. There was all a takeoff on Young Man With A Horn, was a very popular film.
Jamie Bernstein:And this time, they were using regular sound on the 16 millimeter movie camera, and there was dialogue. But Steve, who was behind the camera, the auteur, neglected to observe that the cap was still halfway on the lens of the camera. And so when my Uncle Burton, once again, was dealing with the footage to do the editing, he discovered that all you could see was people's legs and feet. And it was a heartbreaking calamity for everybody. By the time they made whatever happened to Felicia Montealegre , which was my mother's stage name. It was in color, which was a novelty. My parents and Steve were absolutely focused on what they were doing, and everybody was very concentrated. Steve could have easily been a film director. He's just got all those little moments where he finds the thing to do. It's so clever. It's so fun.
Martin Milnes:Welcome to Loving You: The Untold Sondheim, a podcast made by Steve's friends with Steve's friends. Hosted by me, Martin Milnes. And me, Peter E. Jones. PJ, we've just heard Jamie tell us that she thinks Steve could have made a fabulous director, and that opinion was verified by the great director Franco Zeffirelli Loving who saw the Tosca home movie and said it was the best opera film he'd ever seen.
Peter E. Jones:I didn't know that. I'd never heard that before. I think he certainly would have been a good director because he had that kind of attention to detail and such an interest in in film as an art form and as an entertainment form.
Martin Milnes:In our previous episode, we explored Steve's great all round passion for old movies. From his encyclopedic knowledge of cinema to his camp hero worship of legendary stars like Bette Davis and Margaret Sullavan. But as well as being a movie fan, Steve, as we just heard from Jamie, was very much into making movies of his own.
Martin Milnes:He loved making films. He had a Moviola. He had all the equipment, and he shot and edited all of his short films himself.
Martin Milnes:And just occasionally, Steve appeared as an actor in other people's films too. Probably the best known example is from 2013 when James Lapine directed the TV documentary Six by Sondheim. The song Opening Doors from Merrily We Roll Along was filmed as a movie, and the role of producer Joe Josephson was played by Steve. James remembers ...
James Lapine:Oh, that's a funny story. That's a funny story. He thought it was kind of a kick. He came in. He was sick that day, and he was hoarse. And he became an actor. It was bizarre. He was going, I don't know James, you know, I have a beard and people didn't have beards at that point in time, you know. I'm like, what are you gonna shave? You know.
James Lapine:And then it was like, can I do another take? Can I do another you know, literally? And then we're breaking down the set and everything because we're running out of time and he comes out of the costume and he says, you know, I have a great idea. Can we set it up again? I wanna do one more take.
James Lapine:And then he went, oh my god. Who have I become? You know, he caught himself. He said, I'm like an actor. I can't believe I'm actually having this conversation with you. I said, it's okay. But no, we can't do it. We can't rebuild a set and do it again.
Peter E. Jones:You know, Martin, Steve loved acting in college. When he was at Williams College in the nineteen forties, he took lead roles in several of their productions.
Martin Milnes:Yes. His favorite appearance was as Dan, a psychopathic killer in the Emlyn Williams play Night Must Fall, for which Steve learned to smoke as the character was a chain smoker. And Steve smoked for decades afterwards, but said that because he'd started it for Night Must Fall, smoking was well worth it.
Peter E. Jones:Well worth it. A lot to answer for. Of course, he quit in 1978.
Martin Milnes:And Steve got a great review for Night Must Fall in the college paper, praising his "high talents which have been previously confined." So Steve always retained a great affection for that student production.
Peter E. Jones:He was so proud of it that he had all the pictures from Night Must Fall framed in this long strip as though they were an enlarged piece of film. It was about, I'd say, 11 feet long. At any rate, his interest in acting peaked after Night Must Fall. He lost his interest in pursuing it. So his appearances as an actor after that were rare indeed.
Martin Milnes:Except for 1974 when Steve returned to acting, but this time on film, for a really lovely TV movie called June Moon. Now June Moon was based on a nineteen twenties Broadway play, and Steve had the role of a world weary but wise pianist in the style of actor musician Oscar Levant. And most of Steve's scenes were played opposite a young actor who became his lifelong friend, the adorable Tom Fitzsimmons.
Tom Fitzsimmons:The play was called June Moon, and we had Kevin McCarthy and Jack Cassidy and Estelle Parsons. Estelle Parsons! Susan Sarandon, Steve, and little me. Steve was very nice. He played Oscar Levant, and I was sort of the young lyricist.
Tom Fitzsimmons:Well, suppose June Moon's a big smash. What's the most we could make from it?
Steve On Film:All depends. Take a song like, Swanee River, but it's still going big.
Tom Fitzsimmons:Yeah. But that's because it wasn't a big production like Show Boat. How's that? And during the off times, I used to play the piano and I would play some Ravel and stuff. And Steve would say, Oh! you you know, because it's his favorite. So at the end of the shooting, I said to him, "It's been wonderful getting to know you. Would you like to go out for a drink or something sometime?" He said, "Well, yeah, sure. That'd be great. What's your number?" I said, "Oh, I don't have any paper or pencil with me, Steve". He said, "No. What's your number?" "You mean I'll I'll just tell you my phone number?" He said, "Yeah. Yeah. Tell me your phone number. And I don't know. Maybe a week later, ding ding ding. Hello? "Hi. It's Steve". Amazing. I didn't know anybody who could memorize Little Punk's phone number.
Martin Milnes:Steve and I once had a chat about June Moon, and he told me that when he was cast, he went to Hal Prince. And Steve said, "Hal, you've gotta help me out here. I'm no actor. What do I do?" And Hal replied, "Wear a hat. It'll change your character completely". And Steve said it was the best piece of direction Hal ever gave. But June Moon itself was directed by Steve's great friend, Burt Shevlove, wasn't it?
Tom Fitzsimmons:And when Burt Shevlove said, Steve, I want you to play this character. Steve said, "I can't act". And he said, "Yeah. You're gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine." So he Steve said, "Okay. I'll do it if you say introducing in his farewell performance, Stephen Sondheim". So he did that.
Martin Milnes:PJ, regarding June Moon and Burt Shevlove, Steve really did that film as a favor to Bert because he absolutely loved him, didn't he?
Peter E. Jones:Steve just adored Burt. I can't remember how many times he said to me over the years, oh, I wish you'd known Burt. I wish you had met Burt.
Martin Milnes:And it was at one of Bert's parties that Steve met Princess Margaret.
Peter E. Jones:Oh, Burt was quite the host. He had a small soiree once, and Princess Margaret was one of the attendees. When she came in, Burt asked ...
Burt Shevelove:And what can we get you to drink, ma'am? Anything you'll like.
Princess Margaret:I'll have a vodka martini.
Peter E. Jones:Now that's a specialty of Steve's. And every time that I ever heard a order one, it was vodka martini not too dry with an olive. So it fell upon Steve to make Princess Margaret's martini. So he went over to the bar and he made the martini the way he would have it. And he brought it over to Princess Margaret. And it was one of those movie moments, you know, where the whole room got very quiet and everybody froze. And Princess Margaret took a sip of her martini, looked around, looked at Steve, and said,
Princess Margaret:Perfect.
Martin Milnes:Steve told me that Burt Shevlove as a director could be pushed to his limit by difficult and temperamental artistes. And when this happened, Burt was known for his somewhat colorful language. This came up when I mentioned the singer actress Dinah Shore, and Steve said that Burt had directed Dinah Shore in some of her TV specials. But apparently, PJ, Burt told Steve that Dinah was an absolute Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I couldn't possibly. Let's just say that Burt couldn't stand the lady.
Peter E. Jones:Oh, well, there's Steve's love of gossip again. So how did you get on to Dinah Shore?
Martin Milnes:Well, bear with me on this because it does eventually lead to Dinah Shore. But first we need to set up the context. This came about through a series of emails. And in these emails, Steve would share with me anecdotes from his life while simultaneously challenging me with wordplay puzzles and games. Now here's the important bit to know.
Martin Milnes:We signed our emails with the names of obscure movie character actors. People so obscure, they didn't even get billing in the films they made seventy years ago, but Steve and I knew exactly who they were. And signing out emails like this led to a wordplay game making up silly jobs for actors inspired by their names. For instance, there was an actor named Porter Hall, And Steve asked me
Stephen Sondheim:Did it ever occur to you that Porter Hall may have been a pseudonym derived from reversing his real profession?
Martin Milnes:So I replied, I hope that Porter Hall is there to take your bags next time you check into an hotel. Then I suggested to Steve that actor Rip Torn must have worked in the studio wardrobe department and that actress Gail Storm got her start in the special effects department working on that famous movie, The Rains Came. In response, Steve signed his next email to be as ...
Stephen Sondheim:Hurd Hatfield, who obviously came up through the sound department. Was it a horse trainer?
Martin Milnes:So I rise to this challenge responding, interesting that Hurd trained horses. Maybe he crossed paths with Stepin Fetchit who trained dogs. Meanwhile, historical advice about prehistoric animals in the movie 1,000,000 BC was provided by Dinah Shore.
Stephen Sondheim:To paraphrase one of my biggest hit songs, "God, you're good". Dinah Shore indeed. Anyway, she survived the crunch pretty well.
Martin Milnes:On a separate occasion, when I signed an email with the name Porter Hall, Steve responded ...
Stephen Sondheim:Oh my God! You're staying in Porter Hall?
Martin Milnes:And we began a word play game about imaginary buildings named after old movie actors with the surname Hall.
Stephen Sondheim:I hear Porter Hall is not as glamorous as Jon or as sophisticated as Alexander, but a good deal less bombastic than Thurston. True? Hooray for us buildings. Signed, John Lodge.
Martin Milnes:And in Steve's descriptions, he's encapsulated each actor's on screen personality to describe their imaginary building. So actor Jon Hall was glamorous. Thurston Hall's screen persona was bombastic. I said to Steve, "I looked into staying at Juanita, where the sky meets the sea", but living here is very much like chop suey". To explain, Juanita Hall starred in the musical South Pacific and Flower Drum Song, and I've quoted lyrics from her numbers.
Martin Milnes:Then I told Steve, "But in the end, I still opted for Porter for its convenience to 34th Street. This is because in Miracle on 34th Street, Porter Hall is the villain who claims Kris Kringle is crazy. And I signed myself as the actress Peggie Castle to be another building. And this went on and on and on until eventually Steve replied.
Stephen Sondheim:I want you to swear to me that you are not using IMDb, Google, or a thesaurus in our correspondence. Otherwise, I have no interest in anything you write.
Martin Milnes:But I promise you I was doing this from memory. The rules were laid down very firmly. Steve was challenging me to do this, and I wanted to rise to his standards and the challenges that he was setting me. So not only was this friendship hugely entertaining for me and hugely gratifying, but I was learning from him. I learned from him a lot.
Martin Milnes:And he once gave an interview in which he said that his passion for Latin was sparked by a teacher who inspired that passion. And Steve said it was like being thrown the ball. The ball was thrown to me with such passion, he said, that I couldn't help but pick it up. And for me, it was very much the same in our movie emails. Steve threw the ball to me with such passion that I had to pick it up and throw it back with equal force.
Peter E. Jones:I can't imagine you not picking it up with passion, Martin. This was made to order for you. In these emails, did Steve also mention what was going on in the revivals of his shows? Because there were a lot of them at that time.
Martin Milnes:Yes. We talked about the upcoming London production of Company directed by Marianne Elliott. This is the revival in which Bobby was played by a woman, the actress Rosalie Craig. Steve had agreed to Marianne's gender swap concept, but when I saw him at the townhouse prior to company rehearsals, Steve made a confession.
Stephen Sondheim:Don't pass this on to anyone else for God's sake, but I don't know if I believe in it. But I'm doing it because it's Marianne Elliot, and she's been so enthusiastic about it that I've been swept up in her enthusiasm. Enthusiasm counts for a lot in this industry.
Martin Milnes:Not long after this, Steve and I both attended the first preview of company and he told me, I think it's one of the best evenings I've ever had at a musical. He loved Rosalie Craig, he loved Patti LuPone, and especially Jonathan Bailey. But until that moment, Steve really hadn't been sure about Marianne's gender swap casting. Anyhow, prior to company opening, I told Steve that I'd just seen a movie called Abroad with Two Yanks, a 1944 comedy featuring men in drag. And William Bendix, the lead actor, was not someone you'd expect to see wearing tights at all.
Martin Milnes:So I told Steve, it's not every day that William Bendix sings All I Need Is A Man in a rather fetching gown. And I sent Steve a link to watch the film online.
Stephen Sondheim:I blush to say I saw it when it was first released. I don't remember Bendix in drag, but, you can get your fill of him soon when in Marianne Elliott's interpretation of company, he appears under the name of Rosalie Craig. Oh my god, I meant Patti LuPone, not Rosalie Craig. I had another joke about Rosalie Craig, but I ditched it and her name remained behind.
Martin Milnes:Come on, Spill. What was the Rosalie Craig gag?
Stephen Sondheim:Oh, I don't know. It was one of those stoned moments.
Martin Milnes:And to round this all off, my favorite wordplay email also ties in with company, as it involves an obscure old movie actor named Regis Toomey. When Steve briefly returned to London for the recording of the company cast album, we weren't able to meet up, but his apology was typical of our kind of humor.
Stephen Sondheim:Martin, sorry not to have had any time to get in touch with you this weekend, but I was at the recording studio all day and into the evening every day I was there. However, to recompense you, I've changed a lyric in side by side. "Two's impossible. Two is gloomy. Give another Regis Toomey." You can explain it to your friends. Signed Russell Hicks. You can call me Hicksy.
Martin Milnes:Two's impossible, two is gloomy. Give another Regis Toomey
Martin Milnes:So that is my lyric. That is my lyric. And now, PJ, I have a question for you. What was it like being the next door neighbor of Hollywood icon, Katharine Hepburn?
Peter E. Jones:It had its moments.
Martin Milnes:To explain, in 1960, Steve bought his Manhattan townhouse in Turtle Bay, 246 East 49th Street. And next door to him, for over forty years at Number 244, was Katharine Hepburn. She became a four time Oscar winner and was a fabulous, fierce fighting, no nonsense, independent trailblazer.
Peter E. Jones:Usually, I would see Hepburn when she was leaving her house. She had a driver named Jimmy, and he drove this white town car. And he would show up, she would come out always, always, always in those black sweats with a red sweater tied around her shoulder. I never saw her in anything else.
Martin Milnes:Katharine Hepburn could be eccentric, sharp, and unconventional. As next door neighbors, she and Steve had quite a prickly relationship. But PJ, did you have any encounters with Hepburn?
Peter E. Jones:I came downstairs one day. We had a very sweet man named Eric who worked at the house. And at the front door, I heard a little bit of mumbling from Eric. And then I heard very distinctly.
Katharine Hepburn:Do you understand what I'm telling you?
Peter E. Jones:So I walked to the front door and there is Ms. Hepburn in her black and red talking to Eric or trying to talk to Eric. And she thought Eric hadn't understood her because Eric is from Chile and had an accent, but he understood her perfectly well. I then intervened and said.
Young PJ:Hello, Miss Hepburn. How may I help you?
Katharine Hepburn:Does Mister Sondheim have a limo I could borrow? Because Jimmy's late, and I want to get out of here, and it's such a boah.
Peter E. Jones:Katharine Hepburn actually said to me "It's such a boah" the way we've all imitated her for years.
Young PJ:I'm afraid he does not have a limo, but I'd be happy to call a town car or something for you.
Katharine Hepburn:Oh. No. I'll just
Peter E. Jones:She didn't finish her sentence. She just sort of put an ellipsis on it and walked away.
Martin Milnes:And how would Hepburn's eccentricities manifest themselves with Steve?
Peter E. Jones:One of the famous stories is that she was preparing Coco around the same time Steve was writing Company.
Martin Milnes:Coco is a musical by Andre Previn and Alan Jay Lerner, and Hepburn bizarrely was playing Coco Chanel in her Broadway musical debut.
Katharine Hepburn:Who the devil cares. What a woman wears. Is it worth a stitch ending up a witch in a golden shell?
Peter E. Jones:She was preparing this musical, and she would hear Steve pounding away at the piano. One night she came she came over. Steve had these wonderful glass windows in his study. I gotta go. And she took a broom, and she pounded against those windows.
Katharine Hepburn:Young man, young man, I'm trying to sleep. Stop that racket. I really need my sleep. Don't you understand me?
Peter E. Jones:And he always claimed that she did that so she would go into rehearsals and say ...
Katharine Hepburn:I didn't sleep because this man is pounding away at his piano.
Peter E. Jones:And she could have that as an excuse to not be able to sing. Another choice moment of Miss Hepburn was that because they obviously shared a wall between their two townhouses, that was also the wall that had a fireplace. And at some point, there began to billow into the room smoke in Steve's fireplace. So he went to Miss Hepburn's and he said,
Stephen Sondheim:Kate, I think we have a problem. I seem to be getting smoke in my room and I haven't lit a fire.
Katharine Hepburn:I don't believe it.
Stephen Sondheim:Well, come over and see for yourself.
Peter E. Jones:So she did. She came over. She saw the smoke in the room and she left. She had it repaired and sent him half the bill.
Martin Milnes:And another very Hepburn thing is the note she gave Steve about Assassins.
Katharine Hepburn:Mister Sondheim, you are a sombre fellow. Couldn't you put a ray of hope into your show by having a ballerina in white coming down from the flies and dancing across the stage in such a dark piece as the one you've written?
Martin Milnes:This is my favorite Hepburn Sondheim story. Let's call it, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?". One night in Turtle Bay, there were two dinner parties. At Number 246, Steve had the playwright Tom Stoppard to dinner, and next door at Number 244, Katharine Hepburn had Michael Jackson to dinner. At some point during Hepburn's party, a note arrives from Tom Stoppard, and Hepburn's chef Norah delivers it to Hepburn who reads, I hear you've got Michael Jackson there. My children will never forgive me if I don't get an autograph".
Martin Milnes:And Hepburn's furious because everyone had been sworn to secrecy about this dinner party, but, of course, Norah had told Steve's housekeeper, Luis, all about it. So Hepburn explains to Jackson that Stoppard is an eminent playwright, and Jackson says he'll sign the autographs. Hepburn's other guests are then dispatched next door to pick up Stoppard. Steve answers, absolutely tickled pink by Hepburn's chagrin, and dispatches a flustered Tom Stoppard next door to see Michael Jackson.
Martin Milnes:Stoppard is effusively grateful to Hepburn, who dispatches Stoppard back to Sondheim just as fast as she can, and then both dinner parties simply continued. And by all accounts, that's just a typical night in Turtle Bay. But I think it's important to highlight that professionally, Steve did admire Hepburn very, very much.
Peter E. Jones:Steve and I did watch a lot of movies over the years together, and one of them was Song of Love.
Martin Milnes:And in this movie, Hepburn's playing the pianist Clara Schumann.
Peter E. Jones:Yes. And Steve and I always liked any old Hollywood movie where somebody's playing a musician or a composer. So in the very opening during the credits, the camera is on a close-up of hands playing this credible piece, and the hands are accurate. So we're mesmerized by this opening. The hands are playing away, and the camera trucks back without a cut, and all of a sudden we see it's Katharine Hepburn playing the piano. So we were stunned at how well she played. Obviously, to a track, but it was amazing. So Steve wrote her a note and said, we just saw Song of Love. How did you prepare for that? Did you learn? Did you study? What did you do? She writes back.
Katharine Hepburn:Never took a lesson. Watched like mad.
Martin Milnes:PJ, while we're talking about famous stars dropping into 246, let's give a nod to Steve's very dear friend, Anthony Perkins, who, of course, many people remember as Norman Bates in the movie Psycho. But Tony Perkins and Steve wrote a murder mystery movie together.
Peter E. Jones:Yes. They wrote a screenplay for a movie called The Last of Sheila, which was directed by a friend, Herbert Ross.
Trailer V/O:That was the last of Sheila. That was what they thought anyway, until they started playing Sheila's game.
Martin Milnes:In one of my emails to Steve, I threw in a reference from the last of Sheila, and he didn't recognize it. We were talking about James Mason, who was in the film. So I paraphrased Mason's line, "Am I just pottering my wave with a debris of my rusty imagination?" And Steve replied ...
Stephen Sondheim:I don't recognize the quote, dare I ask?
Martin Milnes:So I reminded him it was from The Last of Sheila, and I signed myself as the actress Yvonne Romain, who played Sheila. And, of course, Yvonne Romain was married to songwriter Leslie Bricusse.
Stephen Sondheim:Dear Missus Bricusse, I should have guessed. It did sound familiar, but it was Tony's line. All the elaborate, no cowardish dialogue was his. The plotting and expository stuff was mine.
Martin Milnes:Love it. I hope you paced around a smoke filled office in shirt sleeves with the sound of clacking typewriters from other nearby writers' offices penetrating through the door.
Stephen Sondheim:Well, no smoke filled rooms, but a couple of pot smoking sessions in my living room. We wrote alternate scenes and then revised each other's work. It was great and easy.
Peter E. Jones:And as well as writing the screenplay with Tony, Steve also composed some film scores, including two for Warren Beatty, the first called Reds. And the second Warren Beatty film was even better known, Dick Tracy, which won him an Oscar for best song, Sooner Or Later, performed by who? Martin.
Martin Milnes:It was performed by Madonna to great success. But initially, Steve was not enthusiastic about working with Madonna.
Peter E. Jones:She had originally planned to write all the songs for Dick Tracy. And I think she did write them and submitted them to Warren, and he decided he wanted to go with Steve. So when she first met Steve, she came up to him and said, we both know my songs are the real shit. Wow.
Martin Milnes:And there's a story about Steve and Madonna waiting to start a recording session, but the piano tuner was taking, in Madonna's opinion, too long. She cried, "Will this man hurry up? I wanna earn my money". And Steve quipped, "That's impossible". And Madonna said, "That's the meanest thing that anyone's ever said to me". But nevertheless, Steve ended up really admiring Madonna, and he was big enough to admit he'd underestimated her.
Peter E. Jones:He compared working with Streisand and Madonna, and he noticed how when he was doing The Broadway Album with Streisand, she would show up with a retinue of people. Her hairstylist, her her fingernail manicurist, her, you know, the whole The entourage. Entourage. Yes. Came with her. Whereas Madonna would drive her little convertible to the lot and come by herself ready to work. Oh. He noticed that difference between them.
Martin Milnes:And Madonna, of course, performed Sooner Or Later at the nineteen ninety one Academy Awards when Steve won the Oscar for Best Song.
Peter E. Jones:Yes. But the occasion was marred by fate, shall we say. He actually broke his ankle and could not attend the Oscar ceremonies.
Martin Milnes:This occurred shortly after you first met Steve.
Peter E. Jones:But that's another story. Never mind anyway. He didn't wanna go he didn't wanna go down the aisle on crutches if he won, so he didn't go.
Martin Milnes:But when it came to movie versions of Steve's Broadway musicals, Steve had quite particular opinions, didn't he? Because in general, Steve didn't like movie musicals. There were exceptions, The Wizard of Oz being one. But PJ, were there any other movie musicals which Steve particularly liked? Yes.
Peter E. Jones:There was an earlier one called Love Me Tonight.
Martin Milnes:I love Love Me Tonight! Oh. It is an extraordinarily great film. So this is 1932, score by Rodgers and Hart, starring one of my screen heroines, Jeanette MacDonald.
Peter E. Jones:And he liked her too. I don't know if you knew that.
Martin Milnes:No. I didn't.
Peter E. Jones:He liked Jeanette Macdonald. He thought she was a great actress and ...
Martin Milnes:She is. And I'd guess that Steve enjoyed Love Me Tonight because it was a musical created specifically for the screen. Love Me Tonight is very, very cinematic, unlike the film versions of many Broadway musicals, which Steve described as "photographed stage plays." He felt strongly that Broadway musicals should be totally reimagined to become a cinematic experience because stage and screen are totally different art forms. For instance, Steve didn't think that the 1961 West Side Story was a very good movie. It won 10 Oscars, but Steve felt it was too rooted in its stage origins. And he certainly didn't like the movie of A Little Night Music, which was a notorious flop. And sadly, Steve's original cinematic concept for night music is not what eventually reached the screen.
Peter E. Jones:People don't know this, but he had created all these new ideas for the songs. Like, Remember? was specifically re conceived for being shot on film. Those things never got made in the movie because they the movie ran into a lot of trouble, and it is now an infamous adaptation of his of his show. But his original notion, his original plan was extremely cinematic, and it would have been wonderful if it had happened.
Martin Milnes:But towards the end of his life, Steve did enjoy several new movie musicals created by Steven Spielberg, Jon M. Chu, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. And, of course, the reason he liked them? Because as Lin-Manuel recalls, these Broadway adaptations were totally cinematic and reimagined specifically for the screen.
Lin-Manuel Miranda:We had a lot of talk about movies in that last year because it was Heights, it was Tick Tick, it was West Side, and he was just so excited about Spielberg's West Side Story. I think the last time I talked to him on the phone, he had just seen a cut of it and was just so thrilled. Just like with you, with Spielberg, like, talk about the more obscure the movie, the better. Here's this. It's another email I found, which is after he saw the In the Heights movie in 2021.
Stephen Sondheim:Ola, Lin. We saw In the Heights last night. Once again, congratulations. I hope this starts a trend of exotically located film versions of early works by Broadway composers. I've got a treatment of Anyone Can Whistle set in the Swiss Alps called Anyone Can Yodel. If you know anyone who might be interested in producing, give me a call. Meanwhile, have a good time withering your laurels. Leggero, Steve.
Martin Milnes:Did you and Steve ever discuss other movie versions of his shows?
Lin-Manuel Miranda:He loved Sweeney Todd. Like, I love talking to him about the adaptations of his work. He really loved Sweeney Todd, and he was like, it's been made into this other thing. Like, it's a proper horror movie, Grand Guignol. Like, it's not the same as the stage show, and that's what he liked about it. Whereas, you know, the purists are like, where's the chorus? And, like, it's like, well, Steve disagrees with you, so what are you gonna do with that?
Peter E. Jones:Well, Martin, I can add to what Lin just said about Sweeney. Steve felt it was fairly successful in being a cinematic adaptation of his original work. Those of us who love Sweeney as a vocal piece were a little disappointed in the movie because it was weak vocally, but that wasn't the emphasis. The movie was trying to be, what, Grand Guignol horror. We were watching a screening of it. After the opening credits came up, if you listen carefully, it's the ballad of Sweeney Todd, which is not performed in the movie, but it serves as the intro music for all the credits. However, there's no melodic line in it. It's all the accompaniment and no melodic line. And Steve turned to me and said, of course, I'm gonna ask them to put the melody. And I said, don't. It's right exactly the way it is. It gives it the feeling of something creepy and ghostly and dark. And if a melodic line were in there under the credits, it would be almost Muzaki. So I think they were right to leave it out. It had this modern edgy quality to it because of there being no melody in it. And sure enough, he he left it alone.
Martin Milnes:What did he think of Into the Woods?
Peter E. Jones:Oh, he really liked Into the Woods. In that case, the score was handled so well. It was not watered down. It was a full, huge, wonderful orchestration, and the vocal parts were well handled.
Martin Milnes:But, of course, before the 2014 Into the Woods movie, we nearly had a film of Into the Woods in the nineteen nineties. The Jim Henson Company had two readings of the screenplay with all star casts. And the second in particular was stunning among others, Robin Williams as The Baker, Goldie Hawn as The Baker's Wife, Cher as The Witch, Danny DeVito as The Giant, and Steve Martin as The Wolf.
Peter E. Jones:He was hairy enough to be The Wolf. He would have sang it well too.
Martin Milnes:And the Henson Company wanted to film this second reading to have something to show the potential movie backers. But at the very last moment, just as the reading was about to begin, one of the major stars, but I won't share which, said, "You know, I don't think I wanna be filmed." And so because the Henson Company couldn't film the reading, they had nothing to show the backers, so everything collapsed and the movie fell apart. So that's the Into the Woods movie that never was.
Martin Milnes:But in addition to that, there is another Sondheim movie that never was going all the way back to 1974, and that is the abandoned movie of Follies.
Peter E. Jones:With a screenplay by Hugh Wheeler, who Steve had just worked with on A Little Night Music.
Martin Milnes:Steve first told me about the proposed Follies movie when I was round at the house. I said to Steve, I really wish that a movie of Follies had been made during the seventies. You could have had all those MGM people. You could have had Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, and Steve actually cut me off and said, but Martin, do you know what you're saying? That's what it was going to be.
Martin Milnes:And Steve explained to me that Hal Prince had wanted to direct a movie version of Follies. He proposed to completely reinvent the piece. So instead of taking place at a reunion party at a Broadway theater the night before its demolition, it would now be about a reunion party at a Hollywood film studio the night before its demolition. And Steve, I think it's important to point out, really loved this concept because it absolutely tapped into his passion for making his shows into a different thing for the screen. Hal took this concept to an MGM executive named Daniel Melnick and told him, we'll film it on the old MGM sound stages and studio back lot.
Martin Milnes:And just to explain this, during the seventies, MGM had a lot of their old film sets from decades earlier still standing on the back lot. For instance, the street from Meet Me In St Louis was still there. The house which featured in Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy film series, was still there. But all these sets were now rotting and decaying. And Hal explained to Melnick, in the Follies movie, you can have Mickey Rooney walking down Andy Hardy's street and doing his number in Judge Hardy's house.
Martin Milnes:Fred Astaire walks down the railroad platform where he did his number in The Band Wagon, meaning that these now much older stars would be performing on the same Hollywood sets from their movies made thirty years earlier, which is perfect for Follies. And Melnick kind of and ahed about it, Steve said, and then never got back. And then Steve told me, "Two years later, the movie That's Entertainment comes out. And what happens?" And my jaw dropped because I knew exactly what Steve was about to say.
Martin Milnes:"Mickey Rooney walks down Andy Hardy's street. Fred Astaire walks down the railroad platform. They stole it from Hal!" But if the Follies movie had been made, just think how many golden age Hollywood stars were still working in the seventies. That cast could have been sensational.
Peter E. Jones:The thing about Follies is show, movie, whatever it is, what spins around it is who you could cast in these parts. It is the ultimate show for going, oh, if we only could get so and so and such and such and imagine if we had had this cast and that cast. And people spend a lot of time creating dream cast of follies. One of the, actresses discussed for Sally was Doris Day, which was a great idea. They had thought of Doris Day when they were writing the show too, originally. The very first idea for Sally was Doris Day. That makes sense to me because of Gene Nelson.
Martin Milnes:So they'd have been Sally and Buddy having made several movies together in the fifties. Perfect casting. They thought again of Doris Day when the movie came around. Again, perfect casting, but so would Jane Powell have been.
Martin Milnes:And go on, PJ. Tell us who wanted to play Phyllis.
Peter E. Jones:Well, our star of the evening, Bette Davis. Can you imagine it? I I mean
Martin Milnes:Bette Davis singing 'Could I Leave You?' She learned it, didn't she?
Peter E. Jones:She learned it apparently on a plane trip. She was flying overseas or something, and she was singing it on the plane. She loved it so much. Oh my god. Okay. Adn then nothing came of it.
Martin Milnes:But loads of other songs were going to be cut. One More Kiss was gone, In Buddy's Eyes, the road you didn't take, Loveland, and the characters were completely different too. Ben was now an ex movie star turned senator tipped for presidency. Buddy was a washed up comedian, and Sally and Phyllis were ex starlets. And at the end of the film, a matron from the mental home arrives, and that's a quote from the screenplay, to take Sally away.
Martin Milnes:Broadway impresario Dimitri Weissman became an ancient Hollywood movie mogul named, get this, Gordon Glass. And the reunion party took place on a soundstage at the Gordon Glass Studios. The Follies performers like the Whitmans, Solange, and Hattie were replaced by new characters, all of them faded ex movie stars. One named Leila Rowland even had a secret history with studio boss Gordon Glass. And Steve was going to write a lot of new music for this movie.
Martin Milnes:So with these many changes to the score and the whole Hollywood concept, Follies would have been almost unrecognizable. But then again, so was the movie of Cabaret, which also cut songs and characters from the stage show replaced with new material. And Steve actively encouraged all this for Follies. When I read the screenplay, I mourn the loss of the movie that never was, not just as a film in its own right, but also to show how much Steve really championed the reinvention of his work for the screen to become, as Lin-Manuel said, this entirely different thing. And I've always wanted to know what this movie of follies would have been like.
Peter E. Jones:Well, wouldn't it be great if we could give a little taste of that to our listeners? What do you think? We create a little soundtrack of what the movie might be like.
Martin Milnes:And we could bring the abandoned screenplay to life. And let's choose a short sequence from early on in the movie. How about the reunion party with the Hollywood characters which don't feature in the stage show? That would give a snapshot of how different this movie would have been.
Peter E. Jones:That would be great if we could hear the sound stage come to life.
Martin Milnes:For the reunion party, we need a studio mogul, a Gordon Glass. So I've got an idea. Why not ask Gary Raymond? Gary played Dimitri Weissman in the national theater production of Follies, so he'd be perfect to play the equivalent character in the movie.
Peter E. Jones:And who would we get to play opposite Gary?
Martin Milnes:You mean for Leila Rowland, the star with The Secret History? I'm thinking, let's ask the 1961 Tony winner for Best Actress In A Musical, Elizabeth Seal.
Peter E. Jones:Wow. Because she was miss Irma la Douce herself.
Martin Milnes:Yes. Elizabeth Seal dazzled Broadway and London in her star vehicle Irma la Douce When Elizabeth won the Tony, her fellow nominees were Julie Andrews, Carol Channing, and Nancy Walker. And Elizabeth played Irma in London with Gary Raymond in 1958. And Elizabeth and Gary haven't played opposite each other since. So to reunite them after sixty eight years would be so appropriate for Follies.
Peter E. Jones:But Martin, I just realized as we're presenting the movie as audio only, we're going to need some kind of description of what we see.
Martin Milnes:Well, what if we ask Tom Fitzsimmons
Peter E. Jones:Oh, Tom.
Martin Milnes:To provide a narration for us? Because Tom and Steve filmed June Moon together in 1974 at the same time this screenplay was being written. Tom can be our narrator describing the visuals of this movie. So after more than half a century, we're going to bring to life Follies, the movie that never was, based on a concept that Steve loved, but which became a road he never took. Now, PJ, there might, of course, be some of our listeners who really like and are fascinated by Steve and Hal's movie concept for Follies. But equally, others may be so devoted to the stage show that they mourn the loss of the cut Broadway score, and they might find the whole Hollywood reimagining bizarre.
Peter E. Jones:Well, but then again, haven't such passionate and divisive audience reactions always been the legacy of Follies?
Martin Milnes:Dear Listeners, we invite you to join us in actively using your imaginations. This reunion party will not be the follies you know, but it is the reinvented Follies which almost was. So close your eyes, concentrate, concentrate, and cinematically envision in your heads what Steve always wanted, a bold and radical reinterpreted Follies for the screen. This other thing, complete with its new movie score and new dialogue, and a concept designed to capture that lost world of old Hollywood which Steve so dearly loved. As they say in the show, "it's like a movie in my head that plays and plays".
Tom Fitzsimmons:A crumbling cavernous soundstage plays host to a reunion of the ages. Beneath this rickety roof where once great movies were made, long haired waiters without knowledge or care for history served cheap champagne to superannuated stars of yesteryear. A parade of forgotten faces glimpsed from the past who now mean nothing but once meant everything. In glory days, this ghostly dream factory had its own symphony orchestra. This party boasts merely a tin pot touring club band.
Tom Fitzsimmons:Rising with aid from his throne night chair is pioneer Hollywood studio chief Gordon Glass, former autonomous mogul of this very studio, the giant who could make or break a career or a life is now but himself a broken remnant, crushed just as his decaying seat of power will be crushed and gone.
Gordon Glass:Ladies and gentlemen, today on my ninetieth birthday, I have in so many minutes been called a bastard, a son of a bitch, and another word, fair. Absolutely fair. That's what we were, all of us. Me, Goldwyn, old Louis B, Zanuck, Harry Cohn. Bastards, all of us. Sons of bitches and that other word. But thank God, we were something else too. And that's the reason we're all here today. Tomorrow, this great studio will be pulverized to dust to make way for a parking lot, a message parlor. Who knows? But what I what all of us created will never die. And there isn't an American alive today who's not been taught by us what this great country aspires to be. So now, today, they're throwing out old Gordon Glass, the last of the SOBs. Okay. Let's see how you're all going to get on without us. Thank you.
Tom Fitzsimmons:The party begins. Septuaginarian starlets brush shoulders with yesterday's film crews, actors, executives, and today's curiosity seekers. Close-up on Leila Rowland, a great star of early talkies. She holds court with reporters, her first audience in years.
Leila Rowland:I fought. That's what I did all through my career. I fought the front office, the producer, the director, the writer, the cameraman, the lighting man, the makeup man. Give them half a chance, any of them, and they'd screw you to a fairly well. Talent. Well and good. But what kept you on top was guts.
Bitchy Party Guest:Hi, Leila. Darling! Guess who's sitting over there? Carlotta LaRue in all her glory.
Leila Rowland:I wasn't aware she had any glory left. As I was saying, guts, guts, guts.
Tom Fitzsimmons:Leila spies the mogul who long ago made her a star.
Leila Rowland:Mister G! You old bastard. Leila. So you showed up after all. The last I heard, you were tucked away in bed indefinitely giving hell to round the clock nurses.
Gordon Glass:That's not what you heard, Leila. It's what you hoped. But you've got those sexy gowns I see. A sexy tramp and an old bastard, We're, well paired. Let's head to the guillotine together.
Leila Rowland:Would that it were a real guillotine. What a kick it would be to see that head of yours roll into a basket, you old sinner.
Tom Fitzsimmons:Our aging pioneers meet one last time. We shall not see their like again. The golden age is dead.
Peter E. Jones:Wow. After all this, do you know, Martin, we still haven't heard the end of the Hitler story. At the start of the movie chat, you told a story where Steve emailed you about Hitler with Spielberg cc'd.
Martin Milnes:Oh, Spielberg and Hitler. So Spielberg asked Steve to identify a photograph of this mystery character actor who looked like Hitler. Oh. Steve didn't know who it was, so he forwarded the photo onto me, and then I had to name this unknown Hitler lookalike for Sondheim and Spielberg. It was no easy task, but eventually, I had a thought, and I sent an email to Sondheim and Spielberg entitled, that's our Hitler. And I said, I think it might be a Czechoslovakian actor named Hugo Haas. But I signed the email in our usual fashion with the name of an obscure character actor. And I chose the actor Bobby Watson because I knew that he had played Hitler in nine different movies. And then Spielberg replied, oh, actually, the mystery man is Bobby Watson. Now ironically, the photo Spielberg had sent hadn't been of Bobby Watson playing Hitler, but clearly, Bobby Watson just looked like Hitler in every movie he made. And Spielberg clarified, the film is nineteen forty eight's The Big Clock. Mystery solved.
Peter E. Jones:What a Hollywood ending to that,
Martin Milnes:But really, everything that we've discussed, and certainly with regards to the emails which I got from Steve, it's less than the tip of the iceberg. It really, really is. The friendship really meant everything to me. I have this movie passion right from when I was really young. I mean, I was watching old Hollywood films from when I was about four, five, six years old.
Martin Milnes:And it was a passion I was never ashamed of, but it did mean that I was growing up, it it ostracized me from other people. It was hard because people didn't get me. People didn't get me at all, and that was it was hard, and it made for a very lonely upbringing as well. But when I had this friendship with Steve, I found somebody let's leave aside the fact that it was Stephen Sondheim. I found somebody who totally got me. The fact that Steve accepted me, what he gave me personally. Nobody can take this away from me now. I'm looking down at these emails now. He would just occasionally throw in some really beautiful, really sincere comments.
Stephen Sondheim:I admire you more every day. You are making my life a joy and ruining my career. We must stop riding each other, or I'll never get any work done, which I'm not sure is such a bad thing.
Martin Milnes:What I treasure most of all is it was one of the nights I was round at the house and we were talking about him doing interviews.
Stephen Sondheim:Oh, I hate having to do anything in public.
Martin Milnes:Well, you certainly know how to present yourself in interviews, though.
Stephen Sondheim:Yeah. But the person I am then is completely different to the person I am now here with you.
Martin Milnes:And I think that's the greatest compliment I've ever had.
Peter E. Jones:You see that what was difficult for you in your youth is something that he celebrated, and that's something that happens to us misfits. Is that the things that we are teased for turn out to be our specialties, are the things that others love about us when we come into ourselves. And you certainly found that out with Steve, didn't you?
Martin Milnes:Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Steve.
Peter E. Jones:Thank you, Martin. As I say, you gave him a lot of joy at the end. You really did.
Martin Milnes:Thank you.
Peter E. Jones:So hold that with you.
Martin Milnes:I will. I will.
Mehran James McCullough:In this episode, Stephen Sondheim was portrayed by Alastair McGowan, featuring Charlotte Page as Katharine Hepburn. Young PJ was played by Eddie Andrews. The movie of Follies starred Tom Fitzsimmons, Gary Raymond, and Elizabeth Seal as Leila Rowland. And introducing Daniel Cane as the Bitchy Party Guest. The screenplay was by Hugh Wheeler with narration written by Martin Milnes. The movie was produced and composed by Peter E Jones.
Mehran James McCullough:Bert Shevlove was played by James Gower Smith and Princess Margaret by Rebecca Ridout. The party pianist was Steve Ross who played Cole Porter's Night and Day and From This Moment On. Dramatic reenactments were written by Martin Milnes and produced by Peter E Jones. Give another Regis Toomey and the music of Ravel was played by Gareth Valentine.
Mehran James McCullough:The music of Stephen Sondheim was played by Colm Molloy. Sondheim and Bernstein instrumental tracks were provided by Broadway Studio Orchestra. Visi Darte by Puccini was sung by Maria Callas. The Glory of Love by Billy Hill was played by Benny Goodman and his orchestra. Love Me Tonight by Rodgers and Hart was sung by Jeanette MacDonald.
Mehran James McCullough:I Love The Way You Say Goodnight by George Wyle and Edward Pola was sung by Doris Day and Gene Nelson. From Irma la Douce by Marguerite Monnot, Julian More, David Henecker and Monty Norman, Our Language of Love was sung by Elizabeth Seal. From Coco by Andre Previn and Alan Jay Lerner, Always Mademoiselle was attempted by Katharine Hepburn.
Mehran James McCullough:Final mix and mastering is by Chris Traves, and I am 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 Kin Limited. The mix engineer is Phoebe Murdoch. Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics are featured courtesy of The Stephen Sondheim Trust. The podcast's original score is composed by Peter E. Jones.
Mehran James McCullough:The series is written, devised, and directed by Martin Milnes.