74. "Kiss Me, Kate" World Premiere

Copyright 2024 Peter Schmitz - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[AITH OPENING MUSIC]

Welcome to Adventures in Theater History! We’re jumping in with a quick episode this time - about a Broadway show that had its tryout in Philadelphia during the 1940s.

This is an approach to an episode I’m trying out, myself. I believed I mentioned last Fall, in our Introduction to Season Three, that I would occasionally be putting out brief, single subject episodes, instead of our usual 40 minute or so broad-ranging ones.

I fully intended to start throwing in some quickie episodes right away back then, but for one reason and another I have never really followed up on that idea. But now I have the perfect subject for it, because we’ve just reached the point in the timeline for a classic Broadway musical that - again, as I mentioned in that Intro episode had its tryout - in fact its World Premiere -  Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate.

[TRYOUT TOWN THEME MUSIC]

So first we have to go back to September of 1935: In the worst years of the Great Depression, Philadelphia theatergoers still had their choice of some great classic stage comedies coming through town to lift their spirits.

For instance, the famous husband and wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were at the Chestnut Street Opera House, with the Theatre Guild production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. The Lunts’ conception of the play kept the often-discarded framing device of Christopher Sly, who although moved quickly into one of the theater’s stage boxes kept drunkenly yelling drunken witticisms at the stage, or the audience, throughout the show. 

Their version of Shakespeare’s comedy about the brash Petruchio wooing (or, if you will, taming) of Katharine, the fiery and scornful elder daughter of a Padua merchant,  was full of full-on swashbuckling slapstick, set to jazz music. It was, by all accounts, quite a show, but it h prompted one sedate Philadelphia lady in the opening night audience to murmur, "But it isn't Shakespeare." Nonetheless, the production went on to New York and  Broadway, where it had a great run that season. It was one of the shows that really helped cement Lunt and Fontanne’s reputation as the greatest pair of classical actors in the business.

Working backstage as a stage manager on the show was a young man named Arnold Saint-Subber. He was the son of Saul Saint-Subber, one of the biggest ticket brokers in New York. Arnold Saint-Subber - who everyone just called “Saint” - couldn’t help but notice that the couple "quarreled almost as much off stage as they did in the play." He always thought that there was a play in that, somewhere. He sort of filed that away. He always thought there was a play in that, somewhere. Ten years later, he took the idea to composer Cole Porter.

Cole Porter had just merrily rolled along through the Great Depression. The former Yale undergrad’s shows regularly came through Philadelphia on their way to Broadway, starting with the revue Hitchy-Koo of 1922, to the Irene Bordoni vehicle Paris in 1928, to the musical called The New Yorkers in 1930 (It was while he was stuck working on that show in Philadelphia that he longingly wrote the hit number for the show “Take Me Back to Manhattan”).  And despite the generally depressed world of theater in the 1930s, his own successes just kept on coming, including Gay Divorce in 1932 and Anything Goes in 1934 starring Ethel Merman. Porter lived the high life, too, when the rest of the country was right on its uppers, with an inherited fortune to support his extravagant lifestyle, and an indulgent older wife (Linda), whom he adored, but who never interfered in all his many liaisons with male lovers. 

But in the fall of 1937 Porter had suffered a terrible accident while at a friend’s estate on Long Island. The horse he was riding rolled over, fell on both of his legs, crushing them and breaking the bones in multiple places. It was really horrific. He probably should have had them both amputated, but he wouldn’t consent to that. He couldn’t bear the thought of having no legs. Instead, he spent the rest of his life in constant pain, undergoing dozens and dozens of operations and medical procedures every year.

And how he started working with yet another husband and wife team, Sam and Bella Cohen Spewack. Both of them, born in Eastern Europe, had once been news correspondents in Russia in the 1920s, but now they had settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia. Sam turned out a few novels on his own, but mostly the pair wrote screenplays and stage comedies together, including Boy Meets Girl, which was a hit, also in the year 1935. 

In 1938 they teamed up with Cole Porter on a show called Leave It To Me, starring  William Gaxton, Victor Moore, Sophie Tucker, and a 22 year-old Mary Martin who made a debut smash with the number “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” Drawing on the Spewack’s Russian experiences, the show even featured a finale with an actor playing Joseph Stalin singing “The Internationale.”

Nonetheless, he kept writing musicals, including the comic Dubarry was a Lady with Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr in 1939. Now Porter became increasingly known not only for his lovely melodies and charming scores, but for his intricate lyrics, which didn’t just employ double entendre, they were clearly about sex such as the duet he wrote “But in the Morning, No” which could not get any airtime on the radio of the day . Bert Lahr once said that when Cole Porter got dirty, “it was dirt, without subtlety. Nothing I sang in burlesque was as risque as his lyrics.” 

But when he reached the 1940s, this was a frustrating time for Porter as a Broadway composer. He was intimidated by the innovations of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma and Carousel. - the well-integrated book and score was maybe beyond his talents, he feared. Increasingly he was turning out a lot of flop shows, and experiencing a lot of bad reviews. And he was in so much pain from his legs, and his wife was increasingly ill. But he kept going. By 1947 he was working on a Gene Kelly film called The Pirate, which was based on a former Lunt-Fontanne play. 

And then someone - it may have been Saint or it may have been Bella Spewack, came to him with an idea based on a Lunt-Fontanne hit - The Taming of the Shrew. Or rather - it was a backstage musical about The Taming of the Shrew. The idea was to utilize a couple of famous Shakespearian actors, obviously mostly based on the Lunts, but with their names changed to Frederick Graham and Lilli Vanessi. Fed and Lilli were still working together on a new musical version of Shakespeare, although technically divorced. Their sparring and bickering matched those of their real - life examples, both the Lunts and the Spewacks, frankly, who were by then having their own marital troubles. At her insistence, Sam always got full billing as a co-creator of the show, even he admitted that the script really was Bella’s. She even threw in a great subplot where a couple of Baltimore gangsters come to collect a gambling debt that they claim Fred owes them, and he adroitly ends up roping them into becoming part of the cast of the show.

Cole Porter took right to the ideas - enthusiastically writing to Bella that her script was “the best musical comedy book that I have ever read.” He quickly wrote a majority of the show's songs in an amazingly compact burst of creativity. And they really were wonderfully theatrical. “We Open in Venice” neatly captured the life of the touring players of the distant Italian Renaissance. And “Another Op'nin, Another Show,” for its part, detailed the traditional tryout route of the hopeful American musicals of the mid 20th century. In one weekend he came up with both “Where is the Life That Late I Led?” and (using Shakespeare’s own words) “I’ve Come to Wive it Wealthily in Padua.” Some of his most adroit and sexy numbers were the opening ot the second act “Too Darn Hot” and the numbers for the secondary female lead, Lois Lane, to sing to her boyfriend; “Why Can’t You Behave” and “Always True You, In My Fashion”. The meltingly beautiful melody of “So In Love” was brought out for the first act, sung by Lilli, and then repeated by Fred in agony when he thinks he’s really going to lose her to a wealthy rival, and admits to himself, and to us, he really wants her back.

In fact Porter wrote six songs that eventually had to be dropped from the show, but it wasn’t because they weren’t fantastic, they just didn’t fit in with the script. But by the end of the summer the show was mostly ready to go. Clearly, Cole was back at the top of his game once again.

And in a number that Bella didn’t originally want, but that Porter couldn’t resist writing, he created a number for the two gangsters that he though any couple of decent vaudevillians could manage, “Brush UP you Your Shakespeare,” using bawdry right in tune with Shakepeare’s own rudest jokes. And in the end, Bella had to admit he was right. Bella Spewack later remembered: “I knew Cold had come through brilliantly. I knew what I had done and what Sam had done was right. We had nothing to change. I knew it so I didn’t have to be superstitious. In the history of American musicals this is the only one where they didn’t have to touch a scene or a song.

Saint Subber and designer Lemuel Ayers, teamed up as producers were able to quickly gather an A-List group of backers, including his dad Saul Subber, the New Yorker publisher Raoul Fleischmann, the actor Rollo Peters, the actress - our old friend - Peggy Wood who wrote the book on John Drew, Jr., Mrs. Whitney Choate and Ellen Tuck (Mrs. John Jacob Astor, to you and me.) Casting for the show was reported breathlessly in all the showbiz gossip columns. Alfred Drake, the dramatic baritone who had been the original Curly in Oklahoma, was signed up for Fred. Patricia Morrison was just right for the part, Porter decided after a brief audition, she even looked like Lynn Fontanne. The young Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang were signed up for the younger pair of battling lovers.

And after all that, all that remained was the matter of the out of town tryouts - should it be sent on the usual round of cities? New Haven, Baltimore, Boston? Indeed those latter two cities were right there in the lyrics of the opening number, and the action where the play with the play, “The Shrew,” supposedly took place was in Ford’s Theatre in Baltimore. So maybe they should have started in Baltimore . . . “How’s the house?” Frederick Graham asks the stage manager, nervously. “You know Baltimore,” replies the stage manager. “I know,” snaps Fred. “There will be deer running around the balcony. Next time I play Baltimore I’ll bring my shotgun and eat.”

But Ayers and Saint-Subber decided that there was really only one tryout run needed, in Philadelphia - during the weeks of December leading up to Christmas. Philadelphia’s own wealthy set of reliable first nighters were already lining up for tickets - the Browning, the Caldwell, Edgar and Hope Montgomery Scott, the George Strawbridges, the Biddles.

The Shubert Organization - our old friends - coming in gracefully with a little extra backing, right at the end - that end money they were always good for, offered them the Shubert Theatre on Broad Street, and - remembering the public scandal over Annie Get Your Gun two years previously - they promised that this time there would be no ticket shenanigans this time. ‘Oh, sure there won’t,’ winked Saint Subber, who after all knew precisely what they were up to, and that Lee Shubert was going to hold on to his usual 60 house seats per performance to distribute in his own way. Meanwhile the production had quickly built up a $150,000 in legit box office sales, already almost covering its costs, and the Shuberts moved its scheduled Broadway home from the Broadhurst (close to Times Square) to the New Century Theatre - which was way up north near Central Park, but it had 500 more seats.

Rehearsals for Kiss Me, Kate began in October under the lead of director John C. Wilson, up on the old roof garden of the New Amsterdam on 42nd street. Cole Porter attended each one personally, despite his aching legs, always dressed elegantly and leaning on two gold-topped canes. He had a whistle on a string around his neck, and from time to time he would blow it, whenever he felt the lyrics were not coming across. “The lyrics counted more,” remembered one of the dancing chorus, “than the dancing, or anything else.”

Just before the troupe headed down to Philadelphia, there was a final run-through for the company, with no sets or costumes - only a rehearsal piano plunking out the accompaniment. The show seemed oddly flat, and everyone got nervous for a moment. There were some big Broadway names like the director Moss Hart and the choreographer Agness De Mille there to witness it too, and afterwards both of them looked decidedly grim.

It was only when the company got down to Philadelphia, got into their costumes, got onto the set, and finally got to hear the lush and stunning orchestral arrangements that had been made for the show by the great arranger Robert Russell Bennett, they all knew once again, this show was wonderful, this thing was wonderful, truly brilliant..

Opening  Night in Philadelphia, to a glittering audience at the Shubert Theatre, was on Thursday, December 2nd, 1948. Cole Porter came down himself with a retinue of friends, and to calm his nerves he even brought along five paintings to make his suite at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel more agreeable, including a large snowscape by Grandma Moses that he was particularly fond of. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted that he gave an interview in which he predicted that the show would sweep Lisa Kirk, a Pennsylvanian from the western part of the state,”right to the top.” So obviously the Moses painting was doing good work.

So, how did it all go? Well, we have lots of evidence. In those days a lot of national publications would show up to important out of town premieres, and so a lot of reviewers were well familiar with the Quaker City scene. To name one: the critic for Variety wrote, in that trade paper’s idiosyncratic lingo:

“Not since Finian’s Rainbow and before that Bloomer Girl has Philly had a musical preem that showed the class and style of Kiss Me, Kate, or received its socko reception. Here is a show that can’t miss, [with a] powerhouse appeal [and] almost miraculous harnessing of book and score. .  . . The humor of the book is, unusually enough, both keenly satiric and subtly literate, but also possessed of hilarious, even rowdy qualities.”

Meanwhile the Philadelphia area papers were all delighted, too. “There is only one thing that Cole Porter and [the producers] will have to worry about,” wrote the Camden Evening Courier, “and that is the excess profits taxes, because Kiss Me, Kate should be on Broadway for a long time and it is certain it will not be in Philadelphia long enough to take care of all the many who will want to see it.”

The theater critic of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in those days was the magnificently named R.E.P. Sensenderfer, who began his enthusiastic review, with the words: “Hat tossing, high in the air  . .  is the order of the day for Kiss Me, Kate, the new musical that completely won an overflow audience at the the Shubert last night where it was given, with a will, for the first time anywhere.”

“The music and lyrics are Cole Porter at his tuneful best and the production and performance tops. What more could anybody ask?”

The Philadelphia Inquirer, for its part, thought that the occasion demanded more than hat tossing. “A salute of 21 guns is in order this morning,” gushed Edwin H. Schloss, “ and maybe you’d better make it 25, to celebrate the arrival of one of the most brilliantly entertaining, charming, and beguiling musicals in many a season.  . . [The show] fairly rocketed to  . . distinction and it's going to take a thesaurus-full of superlatives to give you even a working blueprint of a delightful evening.”

And writing in the Sunday Inquirer, Schloss’ colleague, our old friend Linton Martin chimed in that Bella Spewack’s treatment was enough to make him discard his former dislike of the show-within-a-show backstage musical conceit. Martin lauded every member of the cast, and especially Cole Porter, for his “saucily sophisticated lyrics and tunes in the hit-studded musical score.”

Faced with all this overwhelming Philadelphia praise, and the entirely sold-out run of the sophisticated show in the supposedly staid and stodgy Quaker City, the delighted composer was immediately writing to one friend that “my new show opened in Philadelphia, and is the biggest hit of my life.” To another, Porter simply telegraphed: “SMASH = COLE”

Well, that was one of the absolute happiest stories I think I have ever had the pleasure of sharing with you folks! I must say it has given me a great deal of personal pleasure to spend some more time with Kiss Me, Kate - a show which I myself performed a couple of times back in my own younger days, and one that I remember with absolute and complete fondness.

Oh, and how did that other opening night of Kiss Me, Kate go - you ask - the one on December 30, 1948 at the New Century Theatre, up in New York when it took Porter back to Manhattan once again. Well that’s outside of the purview of our podcast, suffice it to say that the New York critics and audiences were no less wowed than their counterparts in Philadelphia. Let me leave you with a story from the great 1998 biography of Cole Porter, by the author William McBrien:

“From the theatre, where the audience reluctantly departed, filled with enthusiasm for a great new hit, Porter proceeded to the duplex of Sophie and Van Schley at 666 Park Avenue.  . . Lisa Kirk once said that her most poignant memory was arriving at the Schley’s and being greeted by Saint Subber at the top of a long stairway. He was waving a newspaper and announcing that the show was a hit. ‘Cole threw his canes down and walked up the whole flight of stairs, unassisted. I just stood there crying,’ said Kirk. At the party, Pat[ricia] Morrison, when asked to speak, said: “I feel like Cole Porter is six feet tall, wears golden armor, carries a sword instead of a cane, and has just lifted me out of my pumpkin coach.” And not long after Porter was sending around copies of the cast album of Kiss Me, Kate to all his dearest friends, with a card that read: “love from Cole.”

That’s our show for today. We’ll be back next time with that roundup I promised you of serious shows that came through Philadelphia in the post-war period of the latter half of the 1940s. Look for it coming up on your podcast feeds.

This is Peter Schmitz, and our original theme music is by Christopher Mark Colucci. The sound editing and engineering for this episode was all done by My Humble Self, here at our studios in our World Headquarters high atop the Tower of Theater History. 

Thank you for listening, and for coming along on another Adventure in Theatre History, Philadelphia.

[AITH END THEME]