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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