Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Burton, Chapter 26
����������� In early December of 1956, immediately after the
opening of Candide, Bernstein fled to Nassau to get away from it all. He
talked to no one for three days, except to order his meals, as he rested and
lucked his wounds far from the madding crowds of Broadway. Even had the show
been an unqualified triumph, too much of his music had been jettisoned along the
bumpy road from Boston to New York for him to feel comfortable about the
hit-and-miss business of composing a Broadway show. As it as, he must have
experienced a brief sense of despair at all the hard work and agonized hours
that had failed to jell.
����������� West
Side Story was still waiting in the wings, but Cheryl Crawford, who had
become the show�s producer the previous April, had not yet succeeded in
assembling a production package. Meanwhile, Bernstein had committed himself in
the months ahead to a heavy new load of conducing and television programs. In
November 1956, shortly before Candide opened, he had been appointed joint
principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, effective the 1957-1958
season, sharing the title with Mitropoulos, who was stepping down as musical
director. The appointment was widely seen as an interim move which would test
Bernstein�s willingness and ability to devote a substantial portion of his time
to the Philharmonic. His first contact with the orchestra, after a six-year
hiatus, would be the month-long engagement arranged before negotiations for a
more permanent position had begun. This was brought forward and additional two
weeks to December 13, as a result of the death in the Pairs airplane crash of
Italian Conductor Guido Cantelli. Bernstein kept to Cantelli�s planned programs,
which mean restudying among other music the grand Mathis der Mahler
Symphony by Hindemith.
����������� His own
programs began after Christmas with three performances of a virtually complete
Messiah, presented in two parts rather than three � in Part One, the
Christmas music, culminating in the �Hallelujah Chorus,� and in Part Two, after
the intermission, the music for Easter. There was controversy immediately. His
interpretation was �grotesquely unauthentic,� according to Paul Henry Land, who
had succeeded Virgil Thomson at the Herald Tribune, and �one of the
finest things yet to his credit� if one was to trust Irving Kolodin. Altogether
he conducted twenty-two concerts in six weeks. His repertoire included
Prokofiev�s Second Violin Concerto with Isaac Stern and Beethoven�s Second Piano
Concerto, his first collaboration with the eccentric but brilliants Canadian
pianist Glenn Gould. The two concertos and Messiah were immediately
recorded by Columbia. The recording company was beginning to influence
repertoire and soloist choices, but it also gave the orchestra a strong profile.
Emphasizing his commitment to American music, Bernstein conducted Toy Harris�s
Third Symphony and the American premiere of Copland�s challenging Short
Symphony of 1933, as well as the first performance of the full orchestra
version of his own Candide Overture. �A smart sophisticated little
piece,� judged Harold Schoenberg, then a second-string critic of the
Times, it rapidly became Bernstein�s most popular concert hall
composition.
����������� In between
concerts Bernstein wrote and hosted another major �Omnibus� essay, An
Introduction to Modern Music. Essentially he wanted to persuade his enormous
audience that twentieth-century music was as beautiful in its own way as that of
earlier centuries. He demonstrated convincingly that �beauty� and �dissonance�
were relative terms, and explained the tonal system of harmony in terms of a
baseball diamond on which the home plate represented the tonic key. Though he
granted that a composer like Alban Berg could use Schoenberg�s system of
composing with all twelve tones to compose beautiful and moving music, his
skepticism concerning the universality of the twelve-tone system and his
preference for Copland and Stravinsky were clear for all to see. Dimitri
Mitropoulos had led the Philharmonic in major works by Schoenberg every year
from 1950 to 1954. Bernstein was choosing instead to highlight contemporary
American music, and his �Omnibus� lecture gave early notice that he would be an
articulate spokesman for musical conservatism, while all around him the tide was
flowing toward serialism.
����������� A few days
before Candide closed, Leonard Bernstein and Felicia left tow for a
two-week holiday in pre-Castro Cuba with Marc Blitzstein, who was recuperating
from a hernia operation and was depressed by the impasse in his composing career
since the production of his musical Reuben Reuben had been canceled
before its Broadway opening in the fall of 1955.� Ironically, he now earned higher praise as
the translator of Brecht than as composer. Bernstein was equally disconsolate
following Candide�s failure, but the two friends and their families
consoled themselves with ever more elaborate word games, incorporating French,
German, Italian, and even Latin words to add spice.
����������� Their
professional prospects could hardly have been more different. Although
Candide had been a box office flop, Bernstein�s music for it had been
widely praised � only Irving Kolodin wrote it off as �padded out by formula� �
and he was ready to bounce back with West Side Story. Several important
developments would soon improve his finances. An exclusive recording contract
with Columbia, signed in April 1956 and announced to the public in the fall with
the issue of five Bernstein LPs in a single month, provided an annual
fifteen-thousand-dollar advance against royalties, and he was promised a busy
schedule of new recordings. His television fee was almost doubled when �Omnibus�
switched to AMV and Sunday night screenings. Even his concert work was set to
expand in a new direction: it was announced that he would take over artistic
control of the Philharmonic�s �Young People�s Concerts�.
����������� While
Bernstein was still on holiday in Cuba, Time published a profile of him
in which it listed five different Bernstein Careers and had laudatory comments
about them all. His portrait appeared on the magazine�s cover, the first time an
American conductor had ever been singled out for such acclaim. Significantly,
the caption read �Conductor Leonard Bernstein� � this in the very week when his
most ambitious composition, Candide, was set to close. It seems fair to
assume that during their Cuban vacation Felicia encouraged him to concentrate
for the next few years on conduction. (The Time article said Mitropoulos
was �very likely to quit soon.�) There was no certainty that West Side
Story would fare any better on Broadway than Candide had done. The
immense effort involved in preparing a musical no longer seemed commensurate
with the uncertain reward. In any case Bernstein was not a natural commercial
Broadway composer. He had just sailed through six weeks of Philharmonic concerts
with great panache. Now he had the chance to follow Gustav Mahler�s footsteps
and become New York�s music director. Like Mahler, he could be a conductor in
the winter months and a composer in the summer. On the financial side there
would be handsome additional income form the television shows and the Columbia
recordings. Whatever the grumbles to his friends, he loved being in studios and
he loved teaching. Above all, he reveled in being a celebrity, as he had ever
since the heady days following his Carnegie Hall debut in 1943.
����������� Felicia
too, enjoyed the society role. There was tremendous status in being the wife of
New York�s leading musician. In the fall of 1956 she had been photographed for
the Herald Tribune in the dress she would wear for the opening concert of
the Philharmonic season. �It was of floor length which faille,� the report read;
�the pearl and gilt embroidery began just under the empire bodice.� She looked
breathtakingly beautiful. To maintain that kind of elegant lifestyle, money was
essential, lots of it. A gossip columnist estimated that from all sources
Bernstein earned one hundred thousand dollars in 1956; examination of his
financial records indicates that before taxes he actually did slightly better.
But a nine-room Manhattan apartment at a prestige address was not easy to keep
up, and there were the Chilean cook and nanny to pay for. (Julia Vega joined her
compatriot Rosalia Guerrero in 1954.)
����������� Decisions
taken in the weeks following his Cuban holiday reshaped Leonard Bernstein�s
career still further. The first move, the assumption of the �Young People�s
Concerts,� was soon followed by successful negotiations with William Paley of
CBS (a member of the board of the Philharmonic) to have four programs a year
televised on Saturday mornings at noon. And in April, before he had given a
single concert in his official role as joint principal conduction, negotiations
began for him to become the Philharmonic�s music director when Mitropoulos
stepped down.
����������� Two weeks
after receiving his first Emmy Award, for Best Musical Contribution to
television, he demonstrated his versatility as a conductor with an hour-long
�omnibus� feature broadcast on Easter Sunday. The subject was the grandeur of
J.S. Bach, and the program featured excerpts form the Magnificat and the
St. Matthew Passion. Considering how rarely he had performed the choral
music of Bach, his enthusiasm and knowledge were impressive � he conducted,
played piano and harpsichord, even sand a little. His talk touched on many
aspects of Bach�s genius � the strength and beauty of his counterpoint, his
numerological complexities (which Bernstein compared to the Talmud), his musical
pictorialism, the mystic fusion of words and music in the chorales, the high
drama of the Passion story. He spoke finally of Bach�s religious spirit; simple
faith; he argued, was the spine of Bach�s enormous output.
BY late spring of 1957 the eleventh hour for West Side
Story had arrived, and with it the crisis withouth which no Broadway story
is complete. Having nursed the production for more than a year and seen it
postponed in March, allegedly because of casting difficulties, Cheryl Crawford
called its creators into her office on the morning of April 22 and told them she
was quitting. Bernstein felt suicidal. �I don�t know how many people begged me
not to waste my time on something that could not possibly succeed . . . a show
full of hatefulness and ugliness.� Sondheim remembers his sense of shock and
surprise at being rejected. But when Crawford�s partner Roger Stevens was
telephoned in London he confirmed his interest and urged them not to give up.
That night Sondheim enlisted the support of his producer friend Harold Prince,
to whom, unbeknownst to Bernstein, he had already played much of the score.
Prince and his partner Robert Griffith flew down from Boston the following
weekend. Prince recalled the subsequent audition in his memoirs: �Sondheim and
Bernstein sat at the piano playing through the music and soon I was singing
along with them and Bernstein would look up and say, �My God, he�s so
musical!��
����������� There was a
rapidly approaching deadline: Bernstein had to leave in September for concerts
in South American and Israel, to be followed by his first New York appearances
as joint principal conductor of the Philharmonic. Production had to be now or
never. Robbins threw in his own bombshell. He wanted Herbert Ross to do the
choreography so that he could concentrate on directing. Prince threatened to
pull out unless Robbins agreed to be in change of the dancing (his was the
hottest name among the collaborators). Robbins relented, on condition that he
would have eight weeks rehearsal instead of the customary four, there was to be
more dancing in West Side Story than in any previous Broadway show and
extra rehearsal was essential to block all the numbers. Even so, Robbins
entrusted some of the dance numbers to the choreographer Peter Gennaro.
����������� In their
brief careers as producers, Griffith and Prince had had three hit shows in a
row. With Roger Stevens behind them, they quickly raised the case and
established a production schedule. They chose a bid New York theatre, the Winter
Garden, and booked a five-week pre-Broadway tryout, three weeks in Washington
and two in Philadelphia.
����������� Fine-tuning
on the scare of West Side Story went on throughout the early summer. They
dropped what Bernstein described as the �militantly aggressive: opening chorus,
�Mix,� sung by the Jets and the Sharks.�
The replacement number, �prologue,� was another big chorus for the rival
gangs with, as Bernstein put it, �millions of lyrics to insanely fast
music.�� Eventually, the lyrics were
dropped in favor of pure dance; the only sounds the chorus produced in the
opening five minutes are a whistle and the rhythmical click of fingers snapping.
����������� Bernstein
had originally intended his song �Somewhere� to serve (with a different lyric)
as the love music for the balcony scene between Tony and Maria played on a
tenement fire escape. Laurents and Robbins were not convinced, so Bernstein and
Sondheim created a new love duet, using the �Tonight� music from the quintet
heard later in the act. �Somewhere� found its ideal position in the second act
as the introduction to the dream ballet.
����������� Composing
West Side Story and Candide in tandem let to some surprising
switches of material between the two works. Tony and Maria�s duet, �One Hand,
One Heart,� was originally intended for Candide and Cunegonde. The music of the
satirical number �Gee, Officer Krupke� was annexed form the Venice scene in
Candide, where its punch line (to Latouche�s lyrics) had been, �Where
does it get you in the end?� The traffic flowed both ways. The marriage duet in
Candide �O Happy We,� started life as a song for Tony and Maria in a tea
party scene that was dropped.
����������� Once the
green light had been given, Bernstein had two main tasks; coaching the company
in his music and supervising the orchestrations, which began in late June, with
Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal carrying out Bernstein�s wishes. Ramin was especially
knowledgeable about jazz and vaudeville. He suggested some of the slapstick
effects in �Officer Krupke.� Kostal had been a student of Stefan Wolpe: he did
the music for the weekly �Show of Shows� starring Sid Caesar. He described
Bernstein as a great orchestrator. �If he�d had the time he wouldn�t even need
us. . . . .When it came to West Side Story every note is his: still, he
would say once in a while, �Who said that orchestration can�t be creative?� He
was entirely appreciative of anything that we did. Jerome Robbins, if you
changed anything, would really get angry. Lenny would say, �Jesus, why didn�t I
think of that?�� Bernstein once told Kostal he was like a sponge; �I learned
everything I know from everyone I meet. I pick their brains.� Kostal�s wry
comment was: �Yeah, sure. He learned everything I know, but I didn�t learn
everything he knows.�
����������� As a first
step in their preparation, Bernstein and his orchestrations went to the Winter
Garden to hear the resident band. Under the prevailing union rules, certain
players came with the theater; they were officially knows as house men but
Bernstein called them �Shuberts,� after the name of the owners of the theater.
�how would you guys feel if we got rid of the viola Shuberts?� he asked his
orchestrators �If they don�t come to the theater we�ll have to pay them anyway,�
warned Kostal. �Okay,� Bernstein said, �Let�s just do without them, because I
couldn�t stand listening to my show every night and hearing what those guys
would do to the viola parts.� The two �guaranteed� cellists were also
disappointing, and Kostal suggested dividing the cello parts so that the
freelance musicians on the first desk would play the difficult music while the
Shuberts �played the potatoes.� A similar procedure was adapted for the violin
sections. Doing away with the violas created a little more room in the crowded
pit for the elaborate percussion section Bernstein needed for a score that was
heavy with jazz and with Latin-American rhythms.
����������� With
Bernstein totally reoccupied with preparations for his musical, Felicia and the
children flew to Chile on July 9 for two months with Felicia�s mother in
Santiago. Bernstein�s letters provide a more accurate and detailed �log� of the
weeks leading up to West Side Story�s first night in Washington than the
one he subsequently published in Playbill.
����������� Leonard
in New York to Felicia in Santiago, July 19, 1957: :Darling: The work grinds
on, relentlessly, and sleep is a rare blessing. Jerry continues to be � well,
Jerry: moody, demanding, hurting. But vastly talented. We start on the book
Monday, trepidation in hand; and the score is still not completed. At the moment
the Problem is the usual one of the 2nd act ballet, which is
finished, and will probably not work at all and be yanked and we�ll have the
manufacture a new one. It�s going to be murder from here on in. My nights are
all spent in work, so no fun at all.�
����������� In Chile
Jamie, nearly five, and Alexander, just two, met their cousins � the children of
Felicia�s sister Nancy. �Jamie is the queen, the glamorous beautiful imperious
pixie and they�re at her feet ready for her slightest whim,� Felicia wrote in
her first letter. �I miss you so that it hurts � I think it�s the incredible
depressing distance between us.�
����������� Leonard
to Felicia, July 23: �The show � ah yes. I am depressed with it. All the
aspects of the score I like best � the big, poetic parts � get criticized as
�operatic� � and there�s a concerted move to chuck them. What�s the use? The
24-hour schedule goes on � I am tired and nervous and apey. This is the last
show I do. The Philharmonic board approved the contract yesterday and all is
set. I�m going to be a conductor, after all.�
����������� A few days
later Bernstein had to interrupt work on West Side Story in order to
attend a Columbia Records sales convention in Miami. �Home tomorrow, in time . .
. for a RUN-THRU of Act One! Imagine � already! Where does the time all go to?
In a minute it will be August, and off to Washington � and people will be
looking at West Side Story in public, and hearing my poor little marked-up
score. All the things I love most in it are slowly being dropped � too operatic,
too this and that. They�re all so scared and commercial success means so much to
them. To me too, I suppose � but I still insist it can be achieved with pride. I
shall keep fighting.
����������� �I mess you
all terribly � especially you, who have come to mean something miraculous to me.
You reside at the very core of my life, my darling.�
����������� Felicia
responded with the king of emotional support Bernstein needed: �Don�t give up
the ship, Lennuhtt. Fight for what you think is right � you are so far ahead of
all that mediocrity and in the long run they�re only interested in the �hit�
aspect of the theatre. What you wrote was important and beautiful. I can�t bear
it if they chuck it out 0- that is what gave the show its stature, its
personality, its poetry for heaven�s sake! From way down here protest!!
Promise me you�ll make an effort to get enough sleep � and don�t take too many
pills. Are you eating correctly or just pastrami sandwiches and coffee in
cartons? Lennuhtt?�
����������� On August
3, Leonard wrote:
���������� . . . I signed the Philharmonic contract. . .
. Big moment. Bruno arrived at 10:30A.M.; contract in one had and a huge chilled
bottle of Brut in the other. . . . I made a coup. The lawyers had fallen out so
far that the contract was up to 20-odd pages, and growing; and the disputes were
growing correspondingly. So I scotched it by tearing up the whole thing, and
writing a one-page letter that said I was engaged for such a period for so much
money, sincerely yours. They loved it. Simple, and trusting. We�ll settle the
details as they come along.
����������� Other
events � nothing but the show. We ran through today for the first time, and the
problems are many, varied, overwhelming; but we�ve got a show there, and just
possibly a great one. Jerry is behaving (in his own way - and Arthur is doing
well. But the work is endless: I never sleep: everything gets rewritten every
day: and that�s my life for the moment. And imagine, we open two weeks from
Monday.
A week later, her reported on a last-minute change:
8 August already!
����������� . . . I
missed you all terribly yesterday. We wrote a new song for Tony [�Something�s
Coming�] that�s a killer, and it just wasn�t the same not playing it first for
you. It�s really going to save his character � a driving 2/4 in the great
tradition (but of course fucked up by m with 3/4s and whatnot) � but it gives
Tony balls � so that he doesn�t emerge as just a euphoric dreamer.
����������� These days
have flown so � I don�t sleep much; I work every � literally ever � second
(since I�m doing four jobs in this show � composing, lyric-writing,
orchestrating and rehearsing the case). It�s murder, but I�m excited. It may be
something extraordinary.
����������� The show
had its first run-through � for an audience of Broadway dancers and singers � on
August 10. It is traditionally done without sets or lighting or costumes, but on
this occasion, Arthur remembered, �the case came out on stage in colors they had
chosen for Jets and Sharks and their girls. They did it on their own, by
themselves, and it was very, very touching.� During rehearsals Robbins had kept
the rival groups separate offstage as well as on. �I thought it was
pretentious,� Stephen Sondheim said, �but of course it was perfect, because
without any animosity or hostility, there was a sense of each gang having its
own individuality, so that you had two giant personalities on stage.�
����������� On Tuesday,
August 13, the company moved to Washington. Tow days later Leonard wrote to
Felicia again:
����������� Dear
Beauty,
����������� Well,
look-a me. Back to the nation�s capital and right on the verge. This is Thurs.
We open Mon. Everyone�s coming, my dear, even Nixon and 35 admirals. Senators
abounding, and big Washington-hostessy type party afterwards in Lennhutt�s
honor. See what you miss by going away. Then next Sunday, which is my birthday,
there is the Jewish version � a big party for me, but admission is one Israel
bond. All helps the show. We have a 75 thou. Advances, and the town is buzzing.
Not bad. I have high hopes.
����������� . . . If I
sound punchy, it�s because I am. Up all night trying to put together an overture
of sorts, to carry us through until I do a real prelude. [He abandoned this
idea, preferring to have no music before the Prologues began. Later he claimed
not to have written the overture, but his letter surely confirms that he
wrote something.] Orchestra reading all day yesterday � a thrill. We have
surprisingly good me, who can really play this terribly difficult stuff (except
one of two of them) � and the orchestrations have turned out brilliant. I tell
you this show may yet be worth all the agony. As you can see, I�m excited as
hell� - oh so different from
Candide.
����������� The show
opened on August 19. Relying on adrenaline to get his performers through the
evening, Jerome Robbins called a final dress rehearsal at 3P.M. It was a risky
move, but it paid off. The evening performance had none of the embarrassing
stumbling that had marred the first performance of Candide in Boston.
President Eisenhower�s chief of staff, Sherman Adams (later famous for the
scandal surrounding his vicuna coat), was in the audience. So were senators
Fulbright and Javits, together with Mrs. Robert Kennedy, three ambassadors, and
Justice Felix Frankfurter, whom Bernstein found in tears at the intermission. In
Felicia�s absence, Helen Coates went to the post performance party on
Bernstein�s arm.� When the reviews
arrived � all of them �raves�� -
Bernstein read them out to the guests before going on to the case party where he
played jazz piano with the dancers until five in the morning. When she received
a cable from her husband next evening, Felicia was beside herself with
happiness. She wrote back: �Oh joy oh bliss, oh rapture! Your cable with the
frabjous news has just arrived � thank you! I�d been desperate for some
word all day long. Congratulations to one and all � how happy, how marvelously
happy you must be. As for me I�m bursting with pride and frustration � of all
the moments to miss sharing! . . .Oh God how exciting it must have been! Were
you very nervous � did you sit through it or pace?�
����������� Later in
the week Bernstein went to the White House for lunch. �Such credenzas, such
breakfronts!? He exclaimed to Felicia. �I really felt in. . . . All were talking
of nothing but West Side Story. I think the whole government is based on
it.� But despite the pressure to return to America (she had also just received
two offers to do television plays) Felicia preferred to make her mother happy by
remaining in Chile for another week. When the Washington reviews reached
Santiago, she was one again trembling with excitement � �such reviews, my God, I
carry them around with me to read over and over again.� The Washington Post
called West Side Story �a uniquely cohesive comment on life . . . .
The violence is senseless but Leonard Bernstein�s score makes us feel what we do
not understand.� The Daily News said I opened �a new field in the
American stage.� A critic for the Seattle Times perceptively noted that
�perhaps the love story is a little too reminiscent of Rome and
Juliet.�
����������� Flushed
with success, Bernstein told a journalist that he felt like he did after his
first dance. A celebrated photography caught him leaping for joy outside the
National Theatre. He had just been told that the box office had �gone clean� for
the entire run. �It�s only Washington, not New York,� he wrote to Felicia;
�don�t count chickens. But it sure looks like a smash . . . the book works, the
tragedy works, the ballets shine, the music pulses and soars, and there is at
least on history-making set.� (Bernstein is referring to Oliver Smith�s magic
moment when the tenement walls fly up to reveal a sky filled with stars.)
In Washington the program credits read �Lyrics by Leonard
Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.� �I can see you�re upset,� Sondheim remembers
Bernstein saying to him as they drove back to their hotel from the day�s
rehearsal. �The lyrics are yours an you should have sole credit and I will
arrange that.� Sondheim thanked him. �And we�ll make the financial adjustment
too,� Bernstein went on. �Oh, don�t bother about that,� said the grateful
Sondheim. �After all, it�s only the credit that matters.� When Sondheim told the
story later, he would ruefully add: �I�m sorry I opened my mouth.�
����������� As
Bernstein�s most intimate collaborator, Sondheim recognized early on that his
task was �to bring the language down to the level of real simplicity. The whole
piece trembles on the bring of self-conscious pretentiousness anyway. . . and
Lenny�s idea of poetry was much more purple than mine. Back up by Arthur
Laurents, I got stronger about it as I felt more sure of myself.� Out went
Bernstein�s draft lyric of �Maria� � a song he had already sketched for East
Side Story in 1949 when Maria was going to be Jewish and Tony was an Italian
Catholic from Greenwich Village. �I had a dummy lyric,� Bernstein said later:
�Lips like mine � divine � very bad@ Like a translation of a Neapolitan street
song.� Sondheim perceived that since Tony had only just met Maria the song
should not be about the girl herself but about the loveliness of her name � �the
most beautiful sound I ever heard/All the beautiful sounds of the world in a
single word.� Bernstein later claimed that it �took longer to write that song
than any other. It�s difficult to make a strong love song and avoid corn.�
����������� The melody
of �Maria� begins with the tritone interval Bernstein pinpointed as the kernel
of West Side Story � . . . in that the three notes pervade the whole
piece, inverted, done backwards. I didn�t do all this on purpose. It seemed to
come out in �Cool� and as the gang whistle [in "Prologue�]. The same three
notes.�
����������� When it was
decided to add Tony�s first-act song �Something�s Coming,� Bernstein and
Sondheim raided the scene-setting page in Laurents�s outline. �something�s
coming,� Laurents had written: �it may be around the corner, whistling down the
river, twitching at the dance � who knows?� The lines were incorporated in the
lyrics. �We raped Arthur�s play-writing,� Bernstein said. �I�ve never seen
anyone so encouraging, let alone�
generous, urging us, �Yes, take it, take it, make it a song.��
����������� Like
Sondheim, Laurents was working on his first Broadway musical, but he was an
experienced dramatist and screenwriter. His invention of a teenage language and
his skillful updating of Shakespeare�s plot intricacies are t the hear of
West Side Story�s success. The show�s climatic moment when, with a gun in
her hand, Maria makes a speech over Tony�s lifeless body, is one of Laurent�s
most striking contributions. According to Sondheim, Bernstein wanted at this
point to create a mad scene for Maria, but he could not find the appropriate
style. �It cries out for music,� Bernstein said himself. �I tried to set it very
bitterly, understated, swift. I tried giving all the material to the orchestra
and having her sing an obbligato throughout. I tried a version that
sounded just like a Puccini aria, which we really did not need. I never got past
six bars with it. I never had an experience like that. Everything sounded
wrong.� So Maria�s words, which Laurents had written merely as a guide to
lyricist and composer, became the dramatic text. �I made,� Bernstein confessed,
�a difficult, painful but surgically clean decision not to se it al all.�
West Side Story is a true marriage of all the arts. It is emphatically
not an opera.
����������� The West
Side Story creator whose name receives especial prominence in every for of
billing is Jerome Robbins � his �original conception� is contractually protected
by a �name in a box� clause. Robbins in rehearsal is a formidable personality.
Sid Ramin remembers an early cast meeting at which Robbins said, �I knows I�m
difficult. I know I�m going to hurt your feelings. But that�s the way I am.�
Bernstein remained in aw of him. When there was the threat of confrontation
about music to be cur or an orchestration to be changed, Bernstein would back
down. �I hate scenes,� he confined to Ramin. At the dress rehearsal in
Washington, Sondheim, who was sitting with Bernstein, was startled to see
Robbins do down to Max Goberman at the conductor�s podium and five orders for a
rhythmic pulse to be added to the second verse of �Somewhere.� Instead of
remonstrating, Bernstein slipped out of the theatre, Sondheim found him with
several scorches lined up at a nearby bar.
����������� What
counted was the chemistry between Robbins and Bernstein, which was as strong as
it had been for Fancy Free. �I remember all my collaborations with Jerry
in terms of one tactile bodily feeling: composing with his hands on my
shoulders. . . . I can feel him standing behind me saying, �Four more beats
there,� or �No, that�s too many,� or �Yeah � that�s it!�� Robbins described
their work together as one of the most exciting collaborations he ever had.
After Bernstein�s death he spoke of �the amount of fuel that we fed each other,
the ideas and chemistry between us, each one taking hold of something and
saying, �Hey, I think I can do that,� or saying �No, don�t write it as music, we
can do it better in book� � or �don�t do it in song, I can do it better in
dance.� The continual flow between us was an enormous excitement.�
����������� Robbins had
no problem defining the genre of West Side Story. �It�s an American
musical. The aim in the mid-50s was to see if all of us � Lenny who wrote
�long-hair� music, Arthur who wrote serious plays, myself who did serious
ballets, Oliver Smith who was a serious painter � could bring out acts together
and do a work on the popular stage. . . . the idea was to make the poetry of the
piece come out of our best attempts as serious artists; that was the major
thrust.� For Robbins it was a �musical�; for Bernstein �a tragic musical
comedy.� In his heart Bernstein refused to yield primary authorship to his
colleagues. Writing to David Diamond for Philadelphia he insisted that �this
show is my baby . . . . If it goes as well in New York as it has on the toad we
will have proved something very big indeed and maybe changed the face of
American Musical theater.�
����������� West
Side Story ran nearly two years (772 performances0 THEN TOURED NATIONALLY
FOR CLOSE TO A YEAR BEFORE RETURNING TO New York in 1960 for another 253
performances. In 1961 it was released as a feature film.
BERNSTEIN was criticized by the critic Brooks Atkinson for
having �capitulated to respectability� when he withdrew from Broadway to become
music director of the New York Philharmonic. The truth is more complicated:
Bernstein knew that the creative collaborations he had enjoyed (and endured)
with Lillian Hellman and Richard Wilbur on Candide and with Sondheim,
Robbins, and Laurents on West Side Story were experiences too intense and
exhausting to be renewed on an annual basis. The creators were not permanent
teams like Rodgers and Hammerstein or Gilbert and Sullivan. Besides, the rival
attraction of being sole lord and master of the New York Philharmonic,
encouraged week in and week out to journey among the masterpieces of two
centuries of music, was for Bernstein too strong. Coupled with Candide,
West Side Story made a splendid climax to Bernstein�s composing years.
But it was neither the end of an era nor the beginning for Broadway Bernstein
claimed it to be.� West Side Story
was a singular marvel of style and substance created by what Stephen Sondheim
dubbed a �unique concatenation of people.�
����������� The New
York premiere on September 26, 1957, was not a total triumph. �The show is, in
general, not well sung,� wrote Walter Kerr, the man Bernstein most feared, in
the Herald Tribune. �It is rushingly acted. . . . And it is, apart form
the spine-tingling velocity of the dances, almost never emotionally affecting.
But Kerr led off his review with two much-quote phrases: �The� radioactive fallout from West Side
Story must still be descending on Broadway this morning.� He applauded �the
most savage, restless, electrifying dance patters we�ve been exposed to in a
dozen seasons.� All seven morning newspapers were strongly positive; Brooks
Atkinson of the Times, the most important of the bunch, called it �a
profoundly moving show . . . as ugly as the city jungles and also pathetic,
tended, and forgiving . . . Everything contributes to the total impression of
wildness, ecstasy and anguish.� This is
one of those occasions when theater people, engrossed in and original project,
are all in top form. . . . This subject is not beautiful, but what West Side
Story draws out of it is beautiful. For it has a searching point of
view.�
����������� The only
consistently hostile review was Harold Clurman�s in The Nation: he called
it a �phoney� and accused the writers of intellectual slumming for the purpose
of making money. The offended Sondheim informed Bernstein, tongue in cheek, that
he was canceling his Nation subscription immediately. Sondheim�s
handwritten not to Bernstein delivered on the afternoon of the New York premier
provides a touching epitaph to an important chapter in the history of American
musical theatre: West Side Story means more to me than a first show, more
even than the privilege of collaborating with you and Arthur and Jerry. It marks
the beginning of what I hope will be a long and enduring friendship. Friendship
is a think I give or receive rarely, but for what it�s worth, I want you to know
you have it from me always.
����������� �I don�t
think I've ever said� to you how fine I
think the score is, since I prefer kidding you about the few moments I don�t
like to praising you for the many I do. West Side Story is a big step,
Leonard, for you as it is for Jerry or Arthur or even me, and in an add way, I
feel proud of you . . . . May [it] mean as much to the theater and to people who
see it as it has to us.�
© 1994 by Humphrey Burton.
All rights reserved.�