Tuesday, May 5, 2020

This Day in Musical History (Verdon Steals Fans’ Hearts in ‘Damn Yankees’)


May 5, 1955-- Damn Yankees, a saucy musical comedy twist on the old Faust legend set in the world of professional baseball, triumphed in its premiere at the 46th Street Theatre, in its first of 1,019 performances.

The second major hit of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler, it would also be the songwriting team’s last, as Ross died of tuberculosis two months after the opening. But the production marked the start of a longstanding professional and personal relationship between choreographer Bob Fosse and his muse, actress-dancer Gwen Verdon.

No account of the success of this Tony-winning musical should overlook George Abbott, its director and co-writer of its “book.” But the ones who gave the show its verve and playfulness—not to mention the scenes that everyone remembers—were Fosse and Verdon. Paradoxically, those qualities emerged from an agonizing, guilt-ridden extramarital affair that began during rehearsals.

A year ago, I watched, every chance I could, almost every episode of the FX biodrama, Fosse/Verdon, starring Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams. One of its highlights was the couple’s backstage romance—which took on even more torment than normal as they realized that Fosse’s wife at the time, Joan McCracken, was seriously ill with diabetes. 

The 28-year-old Fosse was ready to try anything in his numbers—including rock ‘n’ roll (an idea that the 68-year-old Abbott quickly squashed). This show was Fosse’s first attempt to try out the sexy style that would become his hallmark through the rest of his career.

In Lola, the seductive aide to “Mr. Applegate” (the Devil), Verdon—who had already won a Tony for Can Can—found a role commensurate with her vivacity and talent. It almost didn’t happen: Abbott and producer Hal Prince had enraged Fosse by deciding in the show’s New Haven tryout to yank a number they thought didn’t work. (It didn’t help matters that the choreographer had a part for himself in that song.) Then Adler salvaged the tune—and, quite possibly, Fosse’s future—by telling Abbott and Prince that he could rework it as the comic mambo “Who’s Got the Pain?” 

For all his well-deserved future reputation as a director who took sexual advantage of his power, Fosse could be a diffident performer himself onstage. But in Verdon, he found someone to whom he could transmit his innate showmanship—and someone who could add her own touches to each move that also enhanced the character. 

Thus, in what became the most indelible song in the show, “Whatever Lola Wants,” Fosse introduced into this tango some touches of a striptease considered risqué at the time (and which were largely trimmed in the film adaptation, to appease Hollywood’s censorship office, three years later)—while Verdon enhanced the comic aspects of her character.

Verdon would always credit Fosse with contributing materially to her career. But, as Fosse/Verdon made clear, she gave as much as—perhaps more than—she got. When Verdon left the Broadway stage after Chicago in the mid-‘70s, according to author Kevin Winkler, “some part of Fosse left with her. A winking humor, a sense of warmth and vulnerability would be missing from his future work.”

But that was all in the future when Damn Yankees took Broadway by storm. In one stroke, Verdon had established herself as the archetypal musical comedy “triple threat” who could act, sing, and dance equally well. Audiences would forever agree with the lyrics she sang in “Lola”: “You're no exception to the rule/I'm irresistible, you fool.”

(The image accompanying this post is from the film version of Damn Yankees. Tab Hunter took over the role played on Broadway by Stephen Douglass. As for Verdon--well, who in their right mind would even think of replacing the redheaded wonder?)

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