TV Exchange of the Day (“The Nanny,” on “Cats”)

Maury Sherry (played by Hal Linden): “Turn it into a sitcom.”
Max Sheffield (played by Charles Shaughnessy): “Why?”
Maury: “'Cause I like funny.”
Max: “Mr. Sherry, my play is an allegory dealing with early man's struggle to survive.”
Maury: “So was The Flintstones.”
Max: “You see, Maury, I am a man of the theater and there is such a thing as artistic integrity. And I can't sign this! I have an obligation to…”
Maury: “You'd make more money in one season of a sitcom than a ten-year run of Cats.”
Max: “Do you have a pen?”—The Nanny, “California, Here We Come,” Season 6, Episode 14, written by Suzanne Gangurski based on a story by Mary Lindes and Gangursky, directed by Peter Mark Jacobson, air date March 31, 1999

This wasn’t the only reference on The Nanny to Cats: There are at least two others that I know, and true aficionados of the long-running sitcom (unlike myself, who comes across it while channel-changing) may well be able to turn up more.

Max, you see, as nanny Fran is not reluctant to remind him, passed on the musical that ended up running “Now and Forever”--or at least close to it. It premiered at the New London Theatre in London’s West End on this date in 1981, and didn’t close for another 20. When it came to the U.S. a year later, it enjoyed similar success. Today, its total number of performances on Broadway is surpassed only by another musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber: The Phantom of the Opera.

Now, this sitcom that Maury is talking about has to make a heap of money if it makes more than Cats. But Max is right to have his “artistic integrity” (no matter how quickly he abandons it).

The cliché about Stephen Sondheim has always been that he doesn’t write hummable songs. But come now, is Lloyd-Webber any better? Fast—do you recall any song from Cats besides “Memory”or, for that matter, any song from Phantom besides “Music of the Night”?

No. What you do remember about those shows is the stagecraft: the chandeliers and boat in Phantom, those feline costumes in Cats. (A number of years ago, on the Fourth of July, a cast member--or former cast member--was the hit of this local American parade by promenading all the way down in his costume from this British-originating show.)

Aside from all the money coming into him hand over fist (which should be enough by itself), I can think of one other reason why Lloyd-Webber would love Cats: he didn’t have a collaborator or performer to tangle with. T.S. Eliot, whose Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats gave Lloyd- Webber the plot (or what there was of it) for the show, had been dead 16 years before it showed up at the West End.

Thus, he didn't have to deal with the likes of lyricist Tim Rice--who, whatever he did, got the entertainment knight so ticked off at him that the two didn't work together for another 34 years, until their recently announced adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. (Why they would invite comparisons to a movie musical with more memorable songs in two hours than they have written in their entire careers is beyond me.)

And none of the performers appearing in the show at that time had the megawattage of Patti Lupone, who made Lloyd-Webber pay dearly (enough so she could buy a swimming pool, no less!) for his lily-livered decision to sack her from Sunset Boulevard before it reached Broadway.

In case you can’t tell, I’m not a fan of Lloyd-Webber. But what do I know? I’m not the one with gazillion bucks.