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A podcast on shared humanity; discussing personal and professional perspectives. From serious to silly to sublime, coming from kindness and curiosity, it is all about connections.
Hi. I hope you're well. This podcast is a place for people to share personal and professional perspectives to talk openly and to ask questions. From serious to silly to sublime, it's all about communication and connections, Always coming from a place of kindness and curiosity, we talk about shared humanity, discuss ideas, and highlight people creating a better world. We've got to keep learning, keep growing, keep being.
Melissa Shere Beek:I'm Melissa Shere Beek and this is Beek on Being. Today's episode is Beek on being and the great American songbook. When I think of the pop and jazz songs that really stand the test of time, I think of greats like Rogers, Hammerstein, Hart, Gershwin, Porter, Berlin. They're inspirational. Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Armstrong sang those standards.
Melissa Shere Beek:Bette Midler, Rod Stewart, Harry Connick, and even artists of today remake albums with these standards almost a hundred years later. What contributes to their longevity? We're going to talk about all of that and so much more. Here today, we have Jack Viertel, producer and coproducer of a multitude of Broadway musicals such as Patti LuPone's revival of Gypsy, dramaturg for Hairspray, Dear Evan Hansen, The Outsiders, and many more, senior vice president and creative director of Broadway's Ju Jam Sin Theaters, artistic director for the Tony honored Encore series. He is a New York Times bestselling author.
Melissa Shere Beek:And if all of that wasn't cool enough, he began his professional life playing bottleneck national steel guitar for Bonnie Raitt and the Pointer sisters. So welcome. We are so excited to have you on the podcast. Is so much to discuss. I'm thrilled.
Melissa Shere Beek:So there's so much to discuss. So let let's start at the beginning. Tell us Mhmm. More about you and where your love of music and Broadway and all of it came.
Jack Viertel:Well, my my parents and my grandmother, Daisy, took me to see Peter Pan when I was just just about to turn six years old with Mary Martin. An old person, so, you know. And that pretty much ruined my life. I mean, I didn't wanna do anything after that except theater. Although I had a few interludes along the way in this longish life where I stopped doing it for a while.
Jack Viertel:But basically, that was, you know, that was what I how I wanted to spend my life in a theater. And then the
Melissa Shere Beek:Sounds perfect.
Jack Viertel:Exception of with the exception of those little moments when it went away, it's been that way ever since.
Melissa Shere Beek:That's amazing. So how did you go from playing music to being a writer to an artistic director to a producer? Like, what were the steps along the way?
Jack Viertel:Well, the the the music part of it, which was had nothing to do with Broadway or Broadway music for that matter, happened because I went to a summer camp in 1960 that was run by a couple named John and Ellie Seeger. And John Seeger was Pete Seeger's brother. Yeah. And so I learned to play the guitar there. It was not really a folk music camp, strictly speaking, but it was, you know, it was heavily musically engaged.
Jack Viertel:And this was in 1960 was the middle of the folk boom, so to speak, the commercial folk boom. You know, the Kingston trio had Tom Dooley at the top of the charts. And the people at at this camp convinced me that there was actually a more authentic kind of folk music. And one of the counselors took me into a cabin and played me a recording of the blind reverend Gary Davis singing Samson and Delilah. And I would again, it was like Peter Pan.
Jack Viertel:I was cooked again. So now I had two now I had two parallel lines to go along. And I learned to play the guitar at camp, and I never got all that good at it. But I I was okay with it. And and I was introduced to Bonnie Raitt who was I think a freshman at the time in college, and I was a sophomore Wow.
Jack Viertel:Maybe something like that. And we started to play together. Of course, we had this natural connection because her father was John Raitt who was a big musical theater star.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. Sure.
Jack Viertel:And she was a she was a blues and rock fanatic. So we were we were doubly connected. And
Melissa Shere Beek:I
Jack Viertel:you know, it it just grew out of that.
Melissa Shere Beek:Incredible. And so how did you segue from playing music to going into I said you you said you were a dramaturg. But can you tell our listeners what that means? What that entails?
Jack Viertel:I can. I should say that I actually started out in my professional career as a theater critic, not a dramaturg.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:Right. And I did that for seven years and realized that I was, much to my shock and amazement, that I was in the newspaper business and not actually in the theater business. So I had to get out of there before they made me a city editor or something.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:And I became a dramaturg at the Mark Taper Forum, which is the big not for profit theater in Los Angeles. Mhmm. And what that entailed really was everything from working with writers and directors on new work to doing research if we were doing a classic like Hedda Gobbler or Shakespeare. And, you know, giving the giving the actors context to work with and that kind of thing in the rehearsal room.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:And writing I ghost wrote the artistic director's, you know, welcome to each audience, which he then edited, but I wrote the first draft. And so, it was all kinds of things. And dramaturg can mean anything. What it has come to mean for me mainly is you know, sort of an old gray beard about how you structure a musical, how you how you work on these things, what you what the elements are that you need, trying to help younger younger artists who are very talented but don't have the experience and craftsmanship yet. How to how to do that.
Melissa Shere Beek:How to navigate through that. Okay. Got it. Mhmm. So how did what was your first recollection of theater?
Melissa Shere Beek:Not just going with Peter Pan, but like getting involved in the theater. Like how did you segue into I
Jack Viertel:was a very I was a very good actor in high school. It was a very small high school. And and because when you're a kid and you go to the theater, what you see are the actors. I assume that that's what you do if you're interested in the theater is you're an actor.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:When I by the time I got to college or you know, halfway through my freshman year in college where I did a couple of plays at the at the you know, like with real people in a much bigger world, I realized that I was actually not a very good actor at all. I was quite a
Melissa Shere Beek:terrible actor.
Jack Viertel:So but by that time, I had learned that there actually are other jobs in
Melissa Shere Beek:the theater. In the theater. Yeah.
Jack Viertel:Yes. Right. You know, you could be a producer. You could be a stage manager.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:You could do props. There's a million things you could do.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:So from from understanding that I was not a great actor or even close to a great actor and that I would never be a professional actor, I I I moved into other other areas. The first of which was actually a musical one, was was was producing concerts of folk artists, and which really taught me how to produce in a funny way. No. Wasn't producing theater. I was just producing.
Jack Viertel:So I knew, you know, I learned about ticket sales and advertising and all that kind of stuff because of because of the music stuff, not because of the theater stuff.
Melissa Shere Beek:And how did you get from the music stuff to the theater stuff?
Jack Viertel:That's a good question. I think I got you know, I kept going to the theater. I mean, all the time I was doing this. And I think what happened was I got this job as a theater critic. We moved to Los Angeles after we got married, my wife and I.
Jack Viertel:And a friend from college had a friend who was starting a free weekly newspaper and they needed a theater critic and they were gonna pay me $35 for every review that got published. So I went to work for the Los Angeles Reader as a theater critic. And then I got hired away by a real newspaper, you know, an actual non free newspaper called the Herald Examiner. And that was my first legitimate job where I could pay the bills every week.
Melissa Shere Beek:But it kept you going to the theater, so that's fabulous.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. I went to the theater more than ever before because I had to publish, you know, three or four pieces a week. So I saw plenty of really terrible theater. Saw some really good theater. And that was an education.
Jack Viertel:That was an important education. Good, the bad, and the indifferent over and over and over again. I
Melissa Shere Beek:guess it helps you appreciate all the great ones even more.
Jack Viertel:It did. And it also, because I had to write about it, it taught me how to think about what worked and what didn't work and why I had a good time on Tuesday, but a bad time on Thursday. And you you you just know, learn learn this stuff almost by osmosis.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. That's true. You learn it by doing that's great. Oh my god. So do you remember your first sort of theater with the great connected with the Great American Songbook?
Jack Viertel:It's a good question. You know, I grew up with the Great American Songbook. My family was a theater family. Right? My father was briefly a playwright.
Jack Viertel:His father built theaters including two Broadway theaters as a general contractor, not as the
Melissa Shere Beek:owner. Uh-huh.
Jack Viertel:Although, he did end up owning a theater briefly in the depression because he got it it was the the person he was remodeling the theater for was bankrupt. And so, he ended up owning the theater in 1934
Melissa Shere Beek:Where was that?
Jack Viertel:'5 or something like that. It it was it was on Broadway in, you know, between 46th Street and 47th Street.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. Sure. In the theater district. Yeah.
Jack Viertel:It was actually on 50th Street to tell you the honest truth. But he converted it into a very ritzy nightclub, and it went bankrupt over the course of a couple of years. This was the great depression. So, you know, everybody went bankrupt.
Melissa Shere Beek:Everybody was gonna go bankrupt.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. So I I the theater and the world of those songs, which the Great American Songbook, if you look at it as pre Rogers and Hammerstein songbook, Irving Berlin, Gershwin's Porter Yes. Etcetera. Yes. Already long over by the time I came along.
Jack Viertel:But did we have all the Ella Fitzgerald records in our house? Yes, we did. Did we have all of the original cast albums from shows like Oklahoma and Carousel?
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, yeah. Had to.
Jack Viertel:And then in and then, you know, I grew up with those songs. So and the more I listened to them, the more curious I got. So I went hunting for, you know, stuff by Kurt Weil and Jerome Kern and, you know, others kind of not the most famous ones. Although, in his day Jerome Kern was, but and it just grew. I mean, I I I didn't separate it from modern musicals.
Jack Viertel:The first show I ever reviewed for the reader was Annie, the national tour of Annie, which does not have a great American songbook score. I love that score, but it's a modern it's a it's a post sixties score.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:I didn't I didn't make any distinction between that music and and Gershwin. It was just all great great songs.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. Well, okay. I wanna talk later about why those songs have such an emotional impact, but we'll we'll get into that later. But so can we talk about what your definition of what the Great American Songbook is?
Jack Viertel:I it's a it's an eccentric one, I think.
Melissa Shere Beek:Okay.
Jack Viertel:My definition of the Great American Songbook are the songs that were written as operetta was going out in The United States, would have been 1927 probably.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:Up through Rogers and Hammerstein's beginning. Up through the up through Oklahoma. And while there are great songs from in the forties and fifties that are part of the great American songbook, I guess, that because they were written for Broadway at a time when they were inventing songs about characters, songs that forwarded the action, all those things that hadn't been done until then, they tended not to be as universally popular as some of the older songs, which are much more generic, which are, you know, I love you, why don't you love me? Someday the man I love will come along, you know,
Melissa Shere Beek:that kind
Jack Viertel:of thing.
Melissa Shere Beek:That's good one.
Jack Viertel:Some of the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs are are as great as they are, they're just because they're about specific characters, they're not as they're not as easily translated into the, you know, general world.
Melissa Shere Beek:True. I wanna get back
Jack Viertel:to Songbook where ends at that point, but actually it doesn't because, you know, many, many wonderful songs that are in circulation today were written after that.
Melissa Shere Beek:Okay. So I agree with you on this. I think it kind of ended then, but I think it was the foundation for what came afterwards. Because I wanna go back to what you said about operatic. So we can go back to sort of like Tin Pan Alley, and there was a combination of music going on at that time, like European opera, jazz, blues, ragtime, stuff like that.
Melissa Shere Beek:So can we sort of start before the Rogers and Hammerstein period and and talk about
Jack Viertel:Oh, sure.
Melissa Shere Beek:Like okay. Let's start with around Tip Pan Alley.
Jack Viertel:In the early part of, you know, Broadway history, most musicals, half the musicals were written by European composers and they were called operettas, which is a terrible name for them because that makes it sound like they were small baby operas in operetta. Were not babies at all. They were huge spectacles like, you know, Rosemarie and the New Moon
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, and
Jack Viertel:all those shows. Uh-huh. What's the famous one about the chic I can't remember the name. But anyway, they they they had exotic locations and, you know, women who fell into the arms of big strong men and, you know, that was this was in the teens and twenties. And all of that, I think, was accompanied to some degree by musical songs that came from Vaudeville that were much lighter and
Melissa Shere Beek:Mhmm.
Jack Viertel:Less and more American. And then in the twenties also, I think largely through a show called Shuffle Along written by two black artists, entirely produced and directed by black artists, Jazz began to enter the the wider vocabulary of of white people. And, most of the most of the songwriters who who were active in that period, The porters and the Gershwin, particularly Gershwin, but all of them really. Right.
Melissa Shere Beek:I think Gershwin was like Rhapsody in Blue was the birth of symphonic jazz for me.
Jack Viertel:They they all using these new much more urban tempos and much more American sounding, uniquely American sounding ways of composing than the European operetta composers who were no less talented necessarily. It
Melissa Shere Beek:just Right.
Jack Viertel:Their era came to an end. That's all. Right. So it really really a lot of it, I suppose, historically speaking, you would credit to Showboat, which was written in the twenties.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh,
Jack Viertel:yeah. And which was sort of looked at through a very hard lens. I mean, it's a great show, but is sort of half operetta and half modern. And it's a transitional show.
Melissa Shere Beek:It's the So it's a masterpiece but It's a masterpiece but it's the bridge.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Right. Exactly. It's it's a it's a neat play. And that was Hammerstein and Jerome Kern.
Jack Viertel:Right. Hammerstein then went into a tailspin all through the thirties and then started working with Rogers in the forties and that was the making of his fortune and his and his legend. Yeah. But Showboat really, in a funny way, started it all.
Melissa Shere Beek:I think so. I agree with that. So who or what were these composers inspired by at the time? There's a lot going on.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. I mean, I think to a great to a greater or lesser degree, depending on who you're which composer you're focusing on, they were certainly trying to combine this new, urbane, jazzy sound with a lot of the time a kind of Hebraic sound because almost all of them are Jewish.
Melissa Shere Beek:And
Jack Viertel:many of them grew up on the Lower East Side or in Yorkville. And so they had these two strains of music that they were working with and they invented something new. I mean, there's just no other way to put
Melissa Shere Beek:it. Magnificent.
Jack Viertel:Based on a whole bunch of sources that they had. It's like you have a you know, you go down in a in a gold mine and you pick up different pieces of gold and Right. You have a lot of gold.
Melissa Shere Beek:I have this vision of them on the Lower East. So just opening up the window and just hearing all of the sounds that they combined together from what they brought over and what they heard and yeah.
Jack Viertel:So But I mean, they were they were hearing, you know, push cart vendors and they were hearing
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:All kinds of essentially melodies that were brought from Eastern Europe.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah.
Jack Viertel:And then you could get on a subway and go up to Harlem and and hear, you know, go to the Cotton Club and hear Duke Ellington. So it all combined to make this incredible guillabez that, you know, is is an American popular song.
Melissa Shere Beek:It is. It is. It's the great American songbook. It's amazing. So so was is there, like, a certain melody or rhythm or chord arrangement that made these songs particular to what we consider the great American songbook?
Melissa Shere Beek:Like, what's Well, there was universal connection?
Jack Viertel:There was essentially a formula for songwriting,
Melissa Shere Beek:which
Jack Viertel:held sway for a very long time, which is this 32 bar form.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:It's two a sections followed by a bridge, followed by a final a section. Right. 90% of the songs written during that period all follow that exact pattern. But there also were things like I Got Rhythm, the chord changes of which have been used by literally hundreds of composers since. And they know they're doing it.
Jack Viertel:And and jazz improvisers no. You say, play the rhythm changes. They just start to play. I mean, you know, you don't to play the melody if I got rhythm.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:But but, you know, the the the theme from The Flintstones is written over the rhythm changes.
Melissa Shere Beek:It's so true. That's right. And and think about that. Right? It's gonna be song in my head now for the rest of the way.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. It was not a bad one if you have to have one.
Melissa Shere Beek:It isn't. So what was the impact of these Broadway musical songs at the time and then also today?
Jack Viertel:It was tremendous at the time and for a couple of different reasons that had nothing to do with the songs themselves, most especially the advent of radio. Yeah. You know, radio came in in 1920 and by about 1925, everybody kinda had one. So these songs could be broadcast in ways that, you know, were completely revolutionary. So the songs were kinda revolutionary.
Jack Viertel:The the distribution method was revolutionary. And people took them up all over the country and eventually all over the world because they spoke to them in very usually very plain English. Know, there are there were some very ambitious, complicated ones. But by and large, they they talk to you about your own life, your own ambitions Right. Your own hopes and dreams, your own sorrow and, you know, they were very clear and and
Melissa Shere Beek:You could connect to the content.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Poetic without being, you know, TS Eliot poetic. Right.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Easily understood.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Easily understood but but elevated beyond what you would have said yourself if you had to say it yourself.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:Because these lyricists were writing in a very, you know, very skillful way.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. Alright. What are some of your favorite lyricists from that time?
Jack Viertel:Oh, there are a lot. Some some interesting. Some of the ones that I loved when I was younger like Cole Porter Oh. They hadn't been supplanted but they've been joined by people like Irving Berlin who Mhmm. Strived incredibly carefully to write simply.
Jack Viertel:And when I was young, I thought, oh, well, he's just a hack, know. He's just his work is so simple and everything. Over the years, I've come to realize that a, I was an idiot for thinking that. And b, there's a there's a there's sincerity and a touching quality in a in a Berlin ballad that's often missing from a Porter ballad. I mean, no one's clever than Porter in that period.
Jack Viertel:But Right. Often those those ballads are very overwrought. You know, I've got you under my skin. Whereas
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, love them.
Jack Viertel:I know. And, but Berlin writing these very simple, you know, songs. It it wasn't easy to write simple. I mean, had to revise and and and reflect and redo and he had to know exactly what he wanted to say. It was never a well, sometimes it was a cliche, but it was generally not a cliche.
Jack Viertel:It was a it it it was an embodiment of of of of the people's music. He really felt he was the people's composer and Porter really felt he was sophisticates composer.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:Or songwriter. Music and lyrics.
Melissa Shere Beek:I mean, I think they're both geniuses in their own right. No question. Harry Connick junior did a whole and I've been to it many times because I love Harry Connick junior and I love Cole Porter, but he does a whole show with just Porter music. It's brilliant. Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh. Yeah. Love it.
Jack Viertel:No. It is working on a a Porter show now that that I I I don't wanna talk about. But but there's it's not an it it's not new songs, obviously, but it's a
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Right.
Jack Viertel:It's a yes.
Melissa Shere Beek:Anyway Okay. Off camera, you have to tell me more about that because I'm a 100% interested, and I need to see it.
Jack Viertel:So Well, I I can say this much. It was a show called the New Yorkers that Porter wrote in '30 or '31, I think, which we did at Encores and which there's now some commercial interest in. But it was fun it was fun to do. It was not all Porter. Was 80% Porter.
Jack Viertel:And then Jimmy Durante who was the costar of
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, I love Jimmy Durante. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Viertel:He brought his own material. So he did Jimmy Durante songs and the rest of it was written by Cole Porter.
Melissa Shere Beek:I need to know more about this.
Jack Viertel:It's it's just about alcohol and sex. That's those are the those are the only two subjects.
Melissa Shere Beek:Jimmy Durante subjects. Yeah. Right.
Jack Viertel:Gangsters, bootleggers Yeah. High society people, and Jimmy Duranty.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. And Jimmy Duranty. Love it. Love it. Okay.
Melissa Shere Beek:So we talked about the impact then. But what about the impact now? Because I feel it we're still we're gravitating to these musicals. I feel every time I go to a new musical, there's something that has that sort of emotional impact that I get that I got from all of the great great American songbook musicals. Do you feel that they're still influencing Broadway today?
Jack Viertel:Well, the great American songbook musicals if you use my eccentric definition of the great American songbook.
Melissa Shere Beek:Like Oklahoma, South Pacific. Right. Those kinds.
Jack Viertel:The earlier ones, the ones that predate Oklahoma.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:For the most part have not been influential as shows because the shows were ridiculous. Know, they were they were you know, a girl had had sat on a on a waffle iron and she had a scar on her butt and that's how she was found, you know. This is not the kind of show that we do today.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Right. No.
Jack Viertel:It was part of the fun of doing encores whether you actually could do a show like that. But but beginning with Oklahoma, the musical play started to grow and the songs from those shows stood up in a different way. And as I said, they weren't as they weren't necessarily all quite as accessible as the songs from the earlier shows. But many of them were. Certainly, if you look at Oklahoma, you know, no one's gonna sing poor Judd is dead in a nightclub.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. But on
Jack Viertel:the other hand, you know, people will say we're in love. It's a pretty good song.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, it's a great one.
Jack Viertel:It's a great song. So, you know, there there were plenty of songs that that continued to live. And I think the reason that they continue to live today to the extent that they do, which is not a 100%, is music lifts your emotions in some way. And if the lyrics are simple and clear and about your emotions, the music carries them to a place where they're still affecting. We may
Melissa Shere Beek:not You're transporting. World
Jack Viertel:yeah. We may not still live in a world where some of the things that are sung about happen, But
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:There is a you can you can make your own metaphor about why that's still a great song.
Melissa Shere Beek:Mhmm. Right. It's relatable.
Jack Viertel:You know? Yeah. It's relatable. Exactly.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Yeah. And I yeah. I do. But I feel that way too.
Melissa Shere Beek:I feel like what you said that the music and the lyrics sort of transport you. Because when you go to something like Wicked or or some of the other big ones, you you get that connection, that feeling. You're not in the same situation, but you understand the emotion. It's impacting you. And like you said, there's a metaphor for something in your life that still kind of connects you to that.
Jack Viertel:Right. I mean, the the big difference I think, or a big difference musically between kind of the end of the golden age of the Broadway musical, which I would guess is the sixties sometime.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah.
Jack Viertel:And and now, or we think it followed, is now fifty, sixty years worth of shows, is that rock and roll had become a national music. So a lot of the theater music employed rock elements which of course hadn't existed in Rodgers and Feinstein's line.
Melissa Shere Beek:So we got cut off for a second, but I we were talking about the post songbook era musicals. So can you tell us a little bit about your work post songbook musical era?
Jack Viertel:Sure. Well, I mean, my work started my work on shows started in 1987 by which point the great American songbook was, you know
Melissa Shere Beek:Long done.
Jack Viertel:A very active museum, but not not still being created. So, you know, I I worked on whatever there kind of whatever there was to work on, but I I was hired to help artists put together shows, help independent producers put together artistic teams, that kind of thing. And Which ones
Melissa Shere Beek:you did?
Jack Viertel:I'm trying to think what the first one I did was. What was the first one that actually came to light? I think it was probably Jelly's Last Jam. The Jelly Roll Morton musical.
Melissa Shere Beek:I remember that.
Jack Viertel:And then Grand Hotel and City of Angels and
Melissa Shere Beek:Good ones.
Jack Viertel:Going forward from there, you know, a lot of them and and hairspray and I really had nothing to do with the producers, but I always I always put it on my on my CV because I was working for the company that produced it.
Melissa Shere Beek:Love it.
Jack Viertel:And dear and on into Christmas story and dear Evan Hansen and the outsiders and I'm still doing it. But
Melissa Shere Beek:I think it's fabulous.
Jack Viertel:None of these were none of these were golden age musicals nor they have great American songbook songs in them.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. But you're still involved in a theater that's magical.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. I did work on
Melissa Shere Beek:the revival of Guys Dolls.
Jack Viertel:On the revival of Guys and Dolls
Melissa Shere Beek:that make You're rocking the boat.
Jack Viertel:Nathan Lane and Faith Prince started in Jerry Zaks directed, which was just a magnificent version of that show. I have to say, I can't take any credit for the magnificence of it, but it was fun to work on and it was great. What
Melissa Shere Beek:are you working on now?
Jack Viertel:Well, I'm working on sort of on this New Yorkers show, the Cole Porter show. I have a new show about New Orleans. Oh, no. It's a it's a show bay using New Orleans music through the years. It has a very very slender story, very, which I actually created.
Jack Viertel:But it's pretty slender. But the music is great. I mean, it's a fantastic bunch of music. It's from a 100 years ago to now.
Melissa Shere Beek:Where can we see that?
Jack Viertel:You can't yet. I'm hoping it'll
Melissa Shere Beek:be Okay.
Jack Viertel:I'm hoping it'll be available. I'm hoping we'll actually have a production of it. We did a production of it at the Phoenix Theater in Arizona last summer, and I'm hoping we'll have a production up by next summer.
Melissa Shere Beek:Where? In New York? Or
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Oh,
Melissa Shere Beek:okay. Well, I have to get there
Jack Viertel:to Wishful see that wishful thinking sometimes comes true and sometimes not.
Melissa Shere Beek:No. Yeah. We're gonna manifest that.
Jack Viertel:Okay. Good.
Melissa Shere Beek:So what is the involvement that it takes when you say you do creative directing and different kind of co producing? Like, what is it your day entail when you're dealing with this?
Jack Viertel:Well, back in the days when I was working for Jude Jampson on those earlier musicals, it was it was a lot of a lot a lot of meetings with the creative types. And in some cases, the producers as well. And And we were often a producer. Jude Hampson was often a producer. My interest was really in the material.
Jack Viertel:There were other people who were more interested in casting and advertising and marketing.
Melissa Shere Beek:Were you dealing with mostly writing and editing or
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Writers and directors mostly. Mhmm. And and on many straight plays as well as musicals. Probably more straight plays than musicals at the
Melissa Shere Beek:time. Uh-huh.
Jack Viertel:Because we had Joojansson had five theaters and generally speaking, two of them at least, sometimes three of them had straight plays in them and the others had musicals. So I was working on all kinds of stuff simultaneously. I worked a lot with August Wilson and Tony Kushner and, you know, Terrence McNally and people who were, you know, bringing plays to our theaters.
Melissa Shere Beek:That's fascinating.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. It was it was great. It was an incredibly Did you pinch yourself? Did I teach my pinch myself?
Melissa Shere Beek:No. Did you pinch yourself? Like do you dream as a young man was Absolutely. Being in How you're living it and you're going
Jack Viertel:Absolutely. To Our offices were on 44th Street in the Top Floor of the Saint James Theater, which was a theater I had been to many times many times to see shows. And and, you know, I would walk down 44th Street saying, I can't believe I'm walking down 44th Street. I I, you know, I first walked down 44th Street when I was 13 years old to box offices to buy ticket for a matinee in the balcony. Aw.
Jack Viertel:Now here I was, you know, they were paying me every week to walk down 44th Street. It was amazing.
Melissa Shere Beek:Do you need an assistant? At
Jack Viertel:the moment, but I'm not on 44th Street anymore.
Melissa Shere Beek:Okay. But just to be involved in that, it seems magical to me.
Jack Viertel:It was. It really was. And and and it often not often. It sometimes mirrored what you think of when you think of, oh, this is a forties movie about a show that's in trouble in Boston. Yeah.
Jack Viertel:And, you know, those things actually happened. And Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:I love that.
Jack Viertel:And simultaneously, I was dealing with them and also being nostalgic about the fictional ways in which I had encountered these kinds of situations. You know, with the temperamental composer and the
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:Possible producer and the star who's drunk all the time. You know, all that stuff.
Melissa Shere Beek:I love those movies.
Jack Viertel:I love
Melissa Shere Beek:those movies.
Jack Viertel:That that was that was great fun. I mean, there were some terrible mistakes made and flops produced, but, you know, even that's fun in its way.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. That's a learning experience.
Jack Viertel:Not the night it happens. Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. It's
Jack Viertel:not fun the night it happens.
Melissa Shere Beek:So what what's the most difficult part of doing all of that?
Jack Viertel:I think in a funny way, most difficult part was building trust with the people you were working with. Because generally speaking, they were the artists who had made the piece Right. Unfinished as it may have been. And, there was no reason to think that I knew better than they did about their own work. So it took a lot of it took a lot of learning about how to talk to artists and how not to talk to artists.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. I
Jack Viertel:bet. Yeah. And my vision. Early in my book, I describe a situation in a bar where Lanford Wilson almost threw a margarita at my head. You learn a lot from an experience like that.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. It's
Jack Viertel:And so I learned little by little, and he and I became very close eventually. But not that day.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Right.
Jack Viertel:Later. Yeah. I I I learned to try to perceive what they were trying to do. Reassure them that I was not trying to change what they were trying to do. That this was their show, not my show.
Jack Viertel:Know.
Melissa Shere Beek:You were just gonna help
Jack Viertel:I with used to say the first the first rule of dramaturgy is don't don't talk if you can listen. So, you know, I would be the last one to speak often because I was just absorbing what the artists were attempting. Trying to fashion a response to it that was within what they were trying to do. And, not saying, if it was up to me, I'd set the whole thing on a submarine, you know.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:Which is always a mistake.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. You're lost at that point.
Jack Viertel:Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:So what's the most exciting part of everything that you do in the theater?
Jack Viertel:I'm not sure there is one. The most fun for me has always been actually sitting in a room with the artist with a scene that we all know doesn't work and trying to figure out how to make it work. That's like a puzzle.
Melissa Shere Beek:I was just gonna say you like puzzles.
Jack Viertel:It's a delving into human emotions that may be clear or not clear in the scene and as it exists. It's structural. There's a million things that you can think of that might be wrong or right about any given scene or any given work. And, that was I think more fun than sitting in the theater watching the finished product. Really?
Jack Viertel:Which I always found nerve wracking.
Melissa Shere Beek:Really?
Jack Viertel:Yeah. I mean, I wasn't unfun, but it was, you know
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Nerve wracking because you're waiting for the audience response because you wanted to see if everything that you had done had come to fruition. What was the nerve
Jack Viertel:And, wrecking you know, did they did they laugh at that joke or didn't they laugh? Well, they laughed last night. I don't know why they didn't laugh tonight. Right. And, you know, they're having a good time or they're not having a good time.
Jack Viertel:You know, they're starting to cough. They're starting to sneeze worse yet.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:They're starting to look through their programs. Oh, no. Don't want anybody to be safe
Melissa Shere Beek:this stage. Right?
Jack Viertel:You you know you're in trouble at that point. So that all of that is very anxiety producing. Whereas when you're sitting in a room with the artist, there's nobody there to tell you that's a terrible, you know, this is no one likes this. You're just And
Melissa Shere Beek:you're all together working for the same goals. It's exciting work and collaborate.
Jack Viertel:And then finding out whether you reached it or not on stage in front of an audience is nerve wracking.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, anxiety producing.
Jack Viertel:It's funny that the movie director Robert Alton said the most most mortifying heart of making any movie is sitting with an audience for the first time watching the rough cut of the movie. And you've because they have nothing at stake, they're not your friends.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:You can feel when they hate you. And it's an awful feeling. And then you gotta go back and re edit the movie or make it movie better somehow, and sometimes you can't make it better. But that was that was much harder than anything you ever had to deal with with actors or cameramen or anything like that. Just watching the with strangers.
Jack Viertel:I agree completely.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. The stress of that response. Wow.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. It's fun when it's great. It's fun when And it's a couple of times, really only a couple of times, two or maybe three times, you had a show that was a hit right from go.
Melissa Shere Beek:You know instantaneously?
Jack Viertel:Yeah. You had to make it better and make it shorter maybe or do this or that, but you could just smell the success of it. It happened with hairspray. It certainly happened with the producers, which as I said, I didn't really have much to do with. But they were very rare.
Jack Viertel:Usually, half a show works or three quarters of a show works and some of it doesn't work. And some people like it better than others and whatever. But you get one where every you know, we did we did a reading of the first act of Hairspray for a bunch of potential co producers and investors.
Melissa Shere Beek:Now I'm seeing good morning Baltimore.
Jack Viertel:At the
Melissa Shere Beek:end of the Morning.
Jack Viertel:It was only it was only the first act. At the end of the reading, the audience was sort of throwing money at us. I mean, was not literally, but figuratively. Right. And it was just I I I rarely experienced anything like it.
Melissa Shere Beek:Do you feel that energy shift immediately? You know.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. You know when that's happening.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. I can imagine it's only
Jack Viertel:And when and when it's not happening.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. But that feeling, like I I just like I said, I'm in my head, I'm singing Good Morning Baltimore now in the opening, and I I can almost feel the the electricity of that.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, wow. That's amazing.
Jack Viertel:There was lots of work to do on that show, but it was it it it hit it hit the nail on the head right from the beginning.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, agreed. A 100%. So so back to the songbook though. Do you think do you think since it's been so influential the last hundred years that and artists are still recording those standard sort of albums, do you think it'll still be influential the next hundred years?
Jack Viertel:I don't know. Music has changed so much Mhmm. That young people today, I mean, people being born now, it's a long way away. I mean, those songs will have been hundreds of years away. I I I I don't don't think they'll vanish, but I don't think they'll be dominant in any way.
Melissa Shere Beek:Or appreciate it the way that they were?
Jack Viertel:I think some people will appreciate them. The way that some people appreciate, you know, German leader or Gilbert and Sullivan. Right. But there are fewer and fewer. I mean, when I was growing up, Gilbert and Sullivan were still everywhere.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:But no more. Hate very occasionally.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. Oh, that's insane.
Jack Viertel:That's that's the way that's the way the world works. Right?
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. That's true.
Jack Viertel:Stuff gets sluffed off over the centuries.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah. But still, I mean, there are things that stick over the centuries. When you think of great composers and great lyricists, there are things that just stand the test of time.
Jack Viertel:I think these will stand the test of time. I think the enthusiasm level of people who are basically into a completely different kind of music will not be what it was. In the same way that it isn't for grand opera and it isn't for, you know, classic song or even classical music, you know. There's there's Right. There's a lot of people who really never listen to Beethoven anymore.
Jack Viertel:Many more who don't than who do.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. That's true.
Jack Viertel:That's just that's just the way it is.
Melissa Shere Beek:That's unfortunate.
Jack Viertel:Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:Okay. So any great other fabulous stories you wanna share with us about all the wonderful things that you do that you can say on camera that I I won't I won't press you off camera on?
Jack Viertel:No. I don't think so. I think you've sort of covered it. If you have any other like ancillary out of the box questions, I'm happy to talk about that.
Melissa Shere Beek:Well, I have something well, I have something I do at the end of of my episodes, which is like a quickie question kind of thing. But Mhmm. Like I said, if you ever need an assistant for any of or if you want, like, a critic to come and watch the shows that you're doing, I'm happy to volunteer myself. I'll I'll be out there in a heartbeat. Okay.
Melissa Shere Beek:So you have to keep me informed.
Jack Viertel:Alright. Well, if the New Orleans show happens, I'll let you know, and you can get on a plane
Melissa Shere Beek:and come
Jack Viertel:see it.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, I will. I have every excuse. My daughters live in New York, so I have every excuse. So them and the theater, I don't need any other reasoning. That's it.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Okay.
Melissa Shere Beek:That's it.
Jack Viertel:Come on up and see us.
Melissa Shere Beek:So much for being here. Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me today. I love your stories and just what an exciting life.
Jack Viertel:It was my pleasure. Glad to be asked.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, no. I was thrilled. When I met you that evening, I was just mesmerized by the stories that you had to say and the information and and your personal experiences and knowledge of everything. It was really it was a great honor to have you on today. So thank you so much.
Jack Viertel:Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Melissa Shere Beek:Before I let you go though, I do a thing at the end of every episode called
Jack Viertel:Oh, is the speed quiz?
Melissa Shere Beek:Game. Is This the
Jack Viertel:May not have answers, but I yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:That's okay. First childhood memory?
Jack Viertel:Earliest childhood memory of any kind. Is that what you're asking? My first childhood memory, and I hope it's a true memory, is of being lifted out of a crib after a nap at my grandmother's house in in Connecticut. And I I because it's a crib, I sometimes doubt that it's really a true memory, but I do have it.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Do you think maybe it was lifted out of a drawer or something else instead of a No.
Jack Viertel:I I I remember being on my belly and having two big hands of my grandmother's maid, who was named Estelle Dunmore, lifting me out of a crib. This could be completely made up.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, no. But it seemed
Jack Viertel:But I I do remember it. Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, I like that. That's a good memory. Okay. What's your favorite journey?
Jack Viertel:Favorite journey favorite travel journey of our lives was to the Galapagos Islands.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, wow. Did you go with your family?
Jack Viertel:We went with our family when our kids were teenagers, young teenagers, on a very small boat with, I don't know, 12 other people or something. It was an amazing, completely amazing experience.
Melissa Shere Beek:Wow. That sounds beautiful. Okay. Best advice you ever got and you still follow to this day?
Jack Viertel:Did I ever get any? No. Although Lanford's advice, after he decided not to throw a
Melissa Shere Beek:margarita Oh, glass gonna say with the margarita throwing? Okay.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. But he he picked up the glass and then he put it down again. And he said to me, when you're talking to an author whose work you appreciate and you're talking about a specific line in a play, find a word that isn't cliche. Because I guess I had used the word cliche and it really pissed him off. Uh-oh.
Jack Viertel:And I've thought of I've often thought of that. I mean, that's a dramaturgical piece of advice. I've probably gotten other pieces of advice about other things, but
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, that one stuck. Okay. Do you have a daily ritual? Either to start your day or end your day or?
Jack Viertel:Well, yes. My wife and I do three do three games in the New York Times. Wordle connections and the one that has the spangram in it, whatever it's called.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, yeah. No. I have that here. I forgot the name of it, but I do them every day. Yeah.
Melissa Shere Beek:And it the instant wait. Hold on. I'm gonna right now. Do you do octortal octortal or plural? No.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, those are great. You have to
Jack Viertel:do that. I don't do the games where you have to spell because I can't spell.
Melissa Shere Beek:No. It but it's instead of Wordle is just four, and then Quartal is like no. Wordle is one. Quartile is doing four at a time, and Octortile is doing eight at a time. Oh, no.
Melissa Shere Beek:They're great. They're fascinating. But wait. I have the other one that you're talking about because I do it two every day.
Jack Viertel:Strands. It's called strands. Right?
Melissa Shere Beek:Yes. That's it. Strands. I do strands and connections. Connections is great.
Melissa Shere Beek:And what about letterbox? Do you do letterbox? Oh, that's spelling. You don't wanna do that one. Okay.
Jack Viertel:I don't do spell.
Melissa Shere Beek:Love Traumatized because I daughters every day.
Jack Viertel:I was such a bad speller in in school. And I was, you know, and I went to a school. I went to school in the fifties when teachers weren't necessarily nice. So, know, I I was teased and I was given a hard time because my spelling was so terrible.
Melissa Shere Beek:Okay. So what's your Wordle go to word that you start with then?
Jack Viertel:I we don't have one. We we we we know that the that the bot likes Slate, but we we try to do different ones.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh my god. So every day you do a different one? That's so
Jack Viertel:Well, we end up repeating them a lot because train is a good word.
Melissa Shere Beek:Good work. Right?
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Right. Yeah. Good work.
Melissa Shere Beek:Okay. Do you have a favorite song from either the Great American Songbook or from a musical?
Jack Viertel:Weirdly enough, I wouldn't say this is my favorite song by any means. But the song that I find myself humming inside my head and sometimes whistling publicly is a song called That Old Piano Roll, which was cut from Follies. But it's in the underscoring at the beginning of Follies. The music is
Melissa Shere Beek:I'll have to check it out now. It Old Piano Roll?
Jack Viertel:That Old Piano Roll. Listen to that old piano roll play. And that piece of music is the piece of music that never never leaves me for more than a day or two. Don't know
Melissa Shere Beek:why. Really?
Jack Viertel:I have absolutely no idea why.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, I have to check that out now. I can't they cut it from Follies, you said?
Jack Viertel:It was cut from Follies. It's in the the underscoring is in the there's a long entrance of the guests kind of scene at the beginning of Follies. This Mhmm. All underscored. There's no singing in it.
Jack Viertel:And it's in there. As each person, each principal person comes in another melody plays. Comes in. Melody plays. And this one just because it got cut and I don't even know who was supposed to sing it originally.
Jack Viertel:You know, it it it it's very uptempo and kinda jazzy.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, like that. I have to check that out. I'm definitely gonna check that out. Okay. Coolest behind the scenes story you have yet to share.
Jack Viertel:Well, the coolest is also the cruelest. Oh, no. We did a show with the first play I was a lead producer on. I actually found the script and functioned as a lead producer working for Jujansson. Was a comedy called I Hate Hamlet.
Jack Viertel:And it was written by Paul Rudnick who later went on to write many more successful things. But it was really funny. And it was about a kid who's a television star, sort of shallow television star who's been cast as Hamlet in a Shakespeare in the Park production in New York. And he's terrified and doesn't know what to do or how to do, but he lives in John apartment in New York because he has so much money from his television series.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right.
Jack Viertel:And the ghost of John Barrymore comes back to teach him how to act Shakespeare. And the actor playing John Barrymore was an English actor, now no longer with us, named Nicol Williamson, who was a, a terrible person, and b, a terrible drunk. And I never saw him sober once in my life. Wow. The kid playing the kid was a kid named Evan Handler who I think still works.
Melissa Shere Beek:Yeah.
Jack Viertel:Probably mostly in television. And they they hated each other, but Nickel really hated Evan Handler. And he behaved badly in every possible way to him and to everybody, including me. And at the end of act one, there was a scene in which John Barrymore is teaching this kid how to how to sword fight because in Hamlet, you have to there's a sword fighting.
Melissa Shere Beek:Right. Right.
Jack Viertel:And Nickel who was completely drunk decided that he was gonna try to kill poor Evan Handler with a sword. And he just came at him. I mean, the the the the all the blocking was forgotten. And he came at him and Evan ran out the stage door and down 48th Street. Cole turned to the audience and said, well, shall I sing?
Jack Viertel:The stage manager dropped the curtain. My god. But it never came back to the theater. We closed the I think the understudy played the part for two or three nights. The New York Post ran a full page, front page headline that said Broadway's swordplay turns real.
Melissa Shere Beek:Uh-oh.
Jack Viertel:Which you can probably find on the internet if you want.
Melissa Shere Beek:I'll look that
Jack Viertel:up That was the most terrifying and
Melissa Shere Beek:Exciting and thrilling and terrifying all in one.
Jack Viertel:Yes. Exactly. Yes. In my in my in my long and somewhat, you know, endless history. Was nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since.
Melissa Shere Beek:Well, hopefully, it doesn't again. Yeah. We don't want that. That's too No. Too much excitement we don't need.
Jack Viertel:We we shouldn't have cast Nichole Williamson. He was, in his younger years, a brilliant, brilliant actor. Uh-huh. But he just succumbed to the bottle.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, that's a shame. That's a shame. Oh. I could talk to you for hours. So fascinating.
Jack Viertel:Feel free.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, no. I might call you again. That's it. That's it's so your stories are incredible and the life you've led is incredible. And and well, are are you coming back down again to the hub?
Jack Viertel:I hope so. They have to book us.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh. Well, I need
Jack Viertel:who's the who's our artistic director. She's in charge of all that stuff. I just go where I'm told.
Melissa Shere Beek:I need to harass them.
Jack Viertel:My little piece. Yeah. Okay. Please do.
Melissa Shere Beek:You need to harass them. Well, thank you
Jack Viertel:so bunch of other shows that we do. So
Melissa Shere Beek:Down here or in New York?
Jack Viertel:No. I mean, we we you know, no. We just have them in our pocket.
Melissa Shere Beek:Oh, yeah. Have a
Jack Viertel:Berlin show. We have a sixties show. We have a, you know, we we could easily
Melissa Shere Beek:I think I voted on all of them.
Jack Viertel:Okay. Well
Melissa Shere Beek:I just need to harass her a little bit more. So.
Jack Viertel:Yeah. Give give them a hard time.
Melissa Shere Beek:I will. On my behalf. I will. On my behalf too. Oh, thank you so much again.
Melissa Shere Beek:I really appreciate it. It was a great honor to Do be you want to stay on for a minute while I do my outro and we can talk after? Do you have time?
Jack Viertel:Do want
Melissa Shere Beek:me Okay. Yeah. Sure. Hold on just second. To our listeners, thank you so much.
Melissa Shere Beek:So grateful you're here. Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep laughing. Keep up with Beek on being.
Melissa Shere Beek:Listen to Beek on being wherever you get your podcasts. All episodes are automatically transcribed. DM us to share thoughts, ideas, or nominate a guest. A big shout out and a huge thank you to Steven Chen at Penthouse Studios. Beek on being was recorded at Penthouse Studios and is a proud member of the Penthouse Podcast Network.