Quote of the Day (Rupert Holmes, on ‘Sweetening’ in the TV and Recording Businesses)

“ ‘Sweetening’ …is a term I first heard Carol Burnett use. I happened to be on the set of her show…and [she] was all worried about a sketch they were doing. And she said to her producer, ‘Yeah, no, I know, in the sweetening it’ll be OK.’ And I thought, ‘I wonder what that is.’ And then I learned quickly that was the term for adding a lot of canned laughter, and choosing your shots very carefully, and cutting away sometimes when something fell flat. And it all looked great. It was falling flat in the studio but once you saw it on the screen, it was all touched up and dressed. And in the recording business they say, ‘I think it needs sweetening,’ and what they mean is, ‘We gotta add strings and maybe some brass and maybe some synthesizer.’ In other words, the record sounds OK but it really could use a string section. That’s sweetening."— British-born American composer, singer-songwriter, dramatist and author Rupert Holmes, quoted by Andrew F. Gulli, “Interview: Rupert Holmes,” The Strand Magazine, Issue LXXIII (2024)

Quote of the Day (Mary Rodgers, on Carol Burnett in ‘Once Upon a Mattress’)

“She showed up at [lyricist] Marshall [Barer’s] within the hour, looking terrific: long-legged, great figure, huge smile, flawless skin, glorious red hair. She sang and, as I’ve said many times, could have been heard in Brooklyn. But it wasn't just the volume that made her voice incredible — and in fact her range wasn’t that enormous. It was her flexibility. She could break suddenly from melody into her hilarious hog-calling hoots which didn't have any particular note in them but suggested immense fun and eagerness and strength and health. For me there was no question that she was exactly right, but that there was one problem: She was too attractive. Our Princess was supposed to look like a bedraggled blob. ‘What's the ugliest, most repulsive piece of wardrobe in your closet?’ we asked. Carol said she had a really icky, olive brown suit that didn't fit very well. We told her to show up at 10 o’clock on Friday morning at the Phoenix Theatre—and wear that suit.”— American composer, screenwriter, and novelist Mary Rodgers (1931-2014) and Jesse Green, Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (2022)

This week, the musical revival Once Upon a Mattress transferred from a run at New York City Center Encores to Broadway’s Hudson Theatre, with Tony winner Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone.

I don’t want to take anything away from Ms. Sutton; she’s not one of the current queens of musical comedy for nothing. (I myself can attest to her skill, having seen her in Anything Goes and Violet.)

Even so, she’s going to have a tough time making anyone forget the woman who originated the role, Carol Burnett (pictured here with her then-costar,  Joe Bova).

When it opened Off-Broadway at the Phoenix Theatre in May 1959, Once Upon a Mattress was, for Ms. Burnett, what Funny Girl proved to be Barbra Streisand: a career-maker for a young singer-actress with such comic, vocal, and physical resources that any successors would inevitably suffer by comparison.

Anyone playing the princess (a comic version of the title character of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea”) would have to be, Ms. Rodgers noted, “a real clown with a great voice, someone with a human personality but immediately likable”—and Sarah Jessica Parker, she explained, only had the likability part when she appeared in the 1996 revival.

In a CBS' "Sunday Morning" segment this past weekend, Ms. Sutton paid suitable homage to Ms. Burnett, as she should. But I couldn't help thinking, after seeing old clips of Ms. Burnett, that Ms. Sutton, 23 years older than the Broadway and TV legend was when she first tackled the role, is going to have to find a far different route into it.

By the way, you really ought to read Shy (the title, fans of Once Upon a Mattress knows, derives from a highlight of the musical). Besides this great description of Ms. Burnett, the chapter on Ms. Rodgers’ most successful work gives the kind of juicy backstage gossip and drama that Broadway fans will love, including how director George Abbott preferred creating a new star (Ms. Burnett) to using an established one (Nancy Walker).

There’s similar great (and often hilarious) stuff on Stephen Sondheim, Judy Holliday, Woody Allen, Hal Prince, and, of course, the father who cast such a large, intimidating shadow over her life, Richard Rodgers.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ In Which a Certain Classic Movie Is Sent Up)

“I saw it in the window and I just couldn't resist it!" —“Starlet O'Hara” (played by Carol Burnett), wearing a “dress” she created from pulling down a drape, in “Went With the Wind” (a Gone With the Wind parody), in The Carol Burnett Show, Season 10, Episode 8, original air date November 13, 1976, written by Rick Hawkins and Liz Sage, directed by Dave Powers

Quote of the Day (Carol Burnett, on Giving Birth)

"Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head." – Comedienne Carol Burnett, “Timeless Laughs With Carol Burnett,” Reader’s Digest, October 2012

(The accompanying White House photo by Paul Morse shows Carol Burnett receiving the Presidential Media of Freedom, November 9, 2005)

Joke of the Day (Carol Burnett, on What Kind of Teeth She Has)

"I don't have false teeth. Do you think I'd buy teeth like these?"—Comedienne Carol Burnett, “Timeless Laughs With Carol Burnett,” Reader’s Digest, October 2012

(The accompanying White House photo by Paul Morse shows Carol Burnett receiving the Presidential Media of Freedom, November 9, 2005. Personally, I don't think the teeth are that bad!)

TV Quote of the Day (Amy Poehler, on DiCaprio and Burnett)

“Let’s all calm down about Leonardo DiCaprio and how hard it was to shoot The Revenant. So you slept in a horse and ate bison liver, big whoop. Carol [Burnett] would have slept in that horse, worn it, done a song and a dance, and made a much funnier face after eating something very disgusting.”—Amy Poehler at the SAG Awards, quoted in Joanna Robinson, “Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Poke Fun at Leonardo DiCaprio While Honoring Carol Burnett,” www.vanityfair.com, January 30, 2016

TV Quote of the Day (Carol Burnett, on Adolescence)

“Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.”—Comedienne Carol Burnett, appearing on the NBC talk show Donahue, October 16, 1986

(The accompanying White House photo by Paul Morse shows Carol Burnett receiving the Presidential Media of Freedom, November 9, 2005)

This Day in Pop Music History (“Mama Cass” Elliott Dies, Urban Legend is Born)

July 29, 1974—Her plus-size figure inspired considerable jokes at her expense, not to mention loneliness. 

But the London death at age 32 of singer Cass Elliott—better known as “Mama Cass”—only multiplied the stories in the cruelest—and most inaccurate—manner possible: by inspiring the persistent, and dead wrong, urban legend that she choked to death on a ham sandwich.

As a youngster, I recall vividly, a skit on The Carol Burnett Show had Elliott, a sometime guest, being complimented on her healthy, cavity-free teeth. How did she manage this? “I brush 16 times a day,” she answered. “Once after every meal.”

I can’t tell you why I remember that bit of comedy so well after all these years but forget the songs she sang that hour—the reason why Burnett had her appear in the first place. 

Elliott’s marvelous contralto, I'm sure, was in evidence that night, just as it had been when she formed not just an indelible, but a central, part of The Mamas and the Papas.

I was only well into my thirties before I became aware that the group that performed “California Dreamin’,” “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “I Saw Her Again Last Night,” and other hits was a kind of forerunner of Fleetwood Mac, another group that spun irresistible pop gold with a heady mix of deft studio work and expertly arranged vocals before coming undone (or, in the case of the Seventies supergroup, nearly so) by rampaging egos, a manic principal male songwriter, intragroup romantic entanglements, and enough drugs to service a nationwide pharmacy chain.

Instead, what stuck with me immediately as a preteen about the Sixties group were their gorgeous harmonies, pouring out of transistor radios, inspiring some of the earliest joyful memories in the soundtrack of my life. 

Among their hits: “Creeque Alley,” a witty account of how they coalesced in the folk-rock scene of the time, featuring a refrain that must have been hard for Elliott to listen to: “And no one's gettin' fat except Mama Cass.”

She may have been a good sport about such jokes at her expense, but it all had to hurt. Elliott was certainly desperate to lose weight: She would go as high as 294 before starting crash diets. One weekend of diuretic treatment in a hospital would result in a fast loss of 20 pounds.

But it was never enough. She wanted one of the “Papas” in the group, Denny Doherty, but—much to his late-in-life regret—the weight of his dear friend put him off.

His choice for a lover ended up being far more conventional, if understandable: picture-perfect fellow group member Michelle Phillips. “You can have any man in the world,” Elliott told the blonde beauty. “Why take the man I love?”

Elliott could wisecrack with the best of them about her romantic life: “It’s easy to find boyfriends. I buy them a motorcycle, a leather suit, and put them in acting school.” The truth was nastier: she did have lovers, remembered musician Denny Bruce, but they were “basically there for her drugs.”

After “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” her big solo hit, Elliott’s career advanced only fitfully. Her death occurred as it was on the upswing again, two nights after the conclusion of a two-week, sold-out engagement at London’s Palladium.

The manner of Elliott’s death was not the only urban legend that the rock era has given rise to (Ricky Nelson’s death in a plane crash, allegedly caused by the singer’s freebasing of cocaine, is particularly notorious). 

Nor was the ham sandwich the only surmised cause of death (this being the era of counterculture paranoia, assassination by the CIA was sometimes mentioned, along with rumors of drugs and a pregnancy courtesy of John Lennon).

But the ham sandwich rumor was the hardest to dislodge because of Elliott’s struggles with the weight scale, and because it sprang to life through premature speculation by her own doctor. (He told the press that he had seen a sandwich by her bedside.)

But guess what? Not only were no traces of a sandwich ever found in her throat when the coroner examined the body, but the sandwich lay untouched. 

Elliott had died of a heart attack, with her circulatory system undoubtedly strained to the breaking point not just by her size but by her back-and-forth weight shifts. But she was not the active participant in her own death that the rumor implied.

All of this obscures a fact associated with her death that is demonstrably true: it occurred in the same Mayfair flat of singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson where The Who’s drummer Keith Moon died four years later.

Nilsson, who had been in the habit of renting the apartment out to friends during the six months of the year when he couldn’t be in town, was understandably shaken by the second death in four years there. Moon’s bandmate Pete Townshend bought it so Nilsson wouldn’t have to step foot in it again. 

A quarter century later, asked what he would say to Moon if he ever encountered him in the afterlife, Townsend responded: “You owe me five thousand pounds back rent.”