October 23, 1968 – In a decade when the Broadway musical depicted decadence and Nazism (Cabaret), Russian anti-Semitism (Fiddler on the Roof), and contemporary youth in all its pot-smoking, anti-war glory (Hair), the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 might not have seemed so unpleasant.
But screenwriter William Goldman's complaint about the forecasting powers of Tinseltown—"Nobody knows anything"—might just as easily apply to the Great White Way. The talented real-life husband-and-wife team of Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones did little to smooth the way for Maggie Flynn when it premiered at the ANTA Playhouse. Even in times more forgiving of lackluster box office than ours, the musical was lucky to make it through six previews and 82 performances before its January 5, 1969 closing.
In recent years, interest in the inherent dramatic possibilities of the Draft Riots--a disturbance at the height of the Civil War that became one of the most convulsive urban uprisings in American history--has increased proportionately with historians’ highlighting of the tangled class and ethnic components of the event. Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York) depicted the deadly donnybrook on the big screen (with only intermittent success, as far as I’m concerned), while Peter Quinn and Kevin Baker have done so more successfully in the novel (Banished Children of Eve and Paradise Alley, respectively).
Why did Maggie Flynn tank? It didn’t help matters that critics saw too many similarities between that musical and The Sound of Music, another show about a young woman helping to raise orphans amid a background of prejudice and war. But shows have survived critical pans before.
One problem might have been that even musicals with challenging or even grim subject matter usually have something that lightens the mood. South Pacific, with its scathing denunciation of racial prejudice (“Carefully Taught”), included plenty of comedy and never seriously questioned that American servicemen and their nurses were engaged in a necessary war. Hair possessed novelty, and plenty of it—not only rock ‘n’ roll tunes but nudity.
In contrast, Maggie Flynn possessed no radio-friendly tunes and, despite the presence of a clown, not much in the way of humor; its subject matter darkly mirrored concerns about war and racism that many playgoers were dying to escape; and, unlike the young cast of Hair, Ms. Jones kept her clothes on, hewing closer to her wholesome Laurie character in Oklahoma than to her Oscar-winning turn as the prostitute Lulu Baines in Elmer Gantry.
Maggie Flynn not only didn’t become a hit, but it didn’t even achieve the status of a Sondheimesque success d’estime. Not only has it never been revived on Broadway, but the Internet Broadway Database only lists one other production associated with it: an off-off-off Broadway production at the Equity Library Theater in1976. Even the Goodspeed Opera House of East Haddam, Conn., long famed for bringing to renewed life long-ago shows (and certainly one of my favorite places to catch a musical), hasn’t gone near this one. Set in an orphanage, Maggie Flynn is itself something of an orphan among musicals of yesteryear.
But the factor that makes any show such a crapshoot—the many, many people who may or may not cohere in making it succeed—also offers the opportunity for at least some solitary golden moments. Despite its box-office and critical misfortune, Maggie Flynn was not without these.
Her backup singing behind stepson David Cassidy on The Partridge Family has inevitably colored baby boomers’ perception of Shirley Jones’ musical talents, but they’d be better advised to seek out her work on film in Oklahoma, Carousel and The Music Man (as problematic as those motion picture adaptations could be). What may come as a surprise nowadays, however, is how good the work of her co-star and then-husband, Jack Cassidy, could be.
As I pointed out in a prior post on a more successful musical, She Loves Me, Cassidy was associated with 13 original-cast soundtracks. That might at first only indicate how rich that period was with new musicals, except for the fact that the actor’s work was constantly recognized by his peers. During his lifetime, he was nominated four times for a Tony Award (winning once for She Loves Me). One of those nominations was for his role as Phineas the Clown in Maggie Flynn.
(Cassidy’s stage and TV persona was as a preening narcissist. As I contemplated this, I thought he might have made an interesting Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d actually been considered for the role. It’s probably just as well that he didn’t end up on the show. Had he played the part instead of Ted Knight, we would have seen the egotistical anchorman constantly lose not because he was an insecure yet lovable idiot, but because he was too clever by half, thereby diluting the warmth of one of the all-time great ensemble comedies in the history of television.)
I should also mention that Maggie Flynn added to the resumes of three young actors who would go on to greater prominence in the late ‘70s and ‘80s: Stephanie Mills (The Wiz), Irene Cara (Fame), and Giancarlo Esposito (“Bugging Out” in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing). Mills especially showed quite a bit of spunk in landing her role as Pansie, the orphaned child of a runaway slave, auditioning three times before she won it.
But screenwriter William Goldman's complaint about the forecasting powers of Tinseltown—"Nobody knows anything"—might just as easily apply to the Great White Way. The talented real-life husband-and-wife team of Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones did little to smooth the way for Maggie Flynn when it premiered at the ANTA Playhouse. Even in times more forgiving of lackluster box office than ours, the musical was lucky to make it through six previews and 82 performances before its January 5, 1969 closing.
In recent years, interest in the inherent dramatic possibilities of the Draft Riots--a disturbance at the height of the Civil War that became one of the most convulsive urban uprisings in American history--has increased proportionately with historians’ highlighting of the tangled class and ethnic components of the event. Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York) depicted the deadly donnybrook on the big screen (with only intermittent success, as far as I’m concerned), while Peter Quinn and Kevin Baker have done so more successfully in the novel (Banished Children of Eve and Paradise Alley, respectively).
Why did Maggie Flynn tank? It didn’t help matters that critics saw too many similarities between that musical and The Sound of Music, another show about a young woman helping to raise orphans amid a background of prejudice and war. But shows have survived critical pans before.
One problem might have been that even musicals with challenging or even grim subject matter usually have something that lightens the mood. South Pacific, with its scathing denunciation of racial prejudice (“Carefully Taught”), included plenty of comedy and never seriously questioned that American servicemen and their nurses were engaged in a necessary war. Hair possessed novelty, and plenty of it—not only rock ‘n’ roll tunes but nudity.
In contrast, Maggie Flynn possessed no radio-friendly tunes and, despite the presence of a clown, not much in the way of humor; its subject matter darkly mirrored concerns about war and racism that many playgoers were dying to escape; and, unlike the young cast of Hair, Ms. Jones kept her clothes on, hewing closer to her wholesome Laurie character in Oklahoma than to her Oscar-winning turn as the prostitute Lulu Baines in Elmer Gantry.
Maggie Flynn not only didn’t become a hit, but it didn’t even achieve the status of a Sondheimesque success d’estime. Not only has it never been revived on Broadway, but the Internet Broadway Database only lists one other production associated with it: an off-off-off Broadway production at the Equity Library Theater in1976. Even the Goodspeed Opera House of East Haddam, Conn., long famed for bringing to renewed life long-ago shows (and certainly one of my favorite places to catch a musical), hasn’t gone near this one. Set in an orphanage, Maggie Flynn is itself something of an orphan among musicals of yesteryear.
But the factor that makes any show such a crapshoot—the many, many people who may or may not cohere in making it succeed—also offers the opportunity for at least some solitary golden moments. Despite its box-office and critical misfortune, Maggie Flynn was not without these.
Her backup singing behind stepson David Cassidy on The Partridge Family has inevitably colored baby boomers’ perception of Shirley Jones’ musical talents, but they’d be better advised to seek out her work on film in Oklahoma, Carousel and The Music Man (as problematic as those motion picture adaptations could be). What may come as a surprise nowadays, however, is how good the work of her co-star and then-husband, Jack Cassidy, could be.
As I pointed out in a prior post on a more successful musical, She Loves Me, Cassidy was associated with 13 original-cast soundtracks. That might at first only indicate how rich that period was with new musicals, except for the fact that the actor’s work was constantly recognized by his peers. During his lifetime, he was nominated four times for a Tony Award (winning once for She Loves Me). One of those nominations was for his role as Phineas the Clown in Maggie Flynn.
(Cassidy’s stage and TV persona was as a preening narcissist. As I contemplated this, I thought he might have made an interesting Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d actually been considered for the role. It’s probably just as well that he didn’t end up on the show. Had he played the part instead of Ted Knight, we would have seen the egotistical anchorman constantly lose not because he was an insecure yet lovable idiot, but because he was too clever by half, thereby diluting the warmth of one of the all-time great ensemble comedies in the history of television.)
I should also mention that Maggie Flynn added to the resumes of three young actors who would go on to greater prominence in the late ‘70s and ‘80s: Stephanie Mills (The Wiz), Irene Cara (Fame), and Giancarlo Esposito (“Bugging Out” in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing). Mills especially showed quite a bit of spunk in landing her role as Pansie, the orphaned child of a runaway slave, auditioning three times before she won it.
No comments:
Post a Comment