Word: bernstein
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Lerner sent an outline of his idea to Bernstein. Their only previous collaboration, in 1957, had been on a new Harvard hymn, but Bernstein agreed to write the 1600 score. After five weeks of rehearsal in New York, the show opened in Philadelphia to devastating reviews and the play doctoring began immediately. Jerome Robbins and Mike Nichols traveled to Philadelphia and quickly fled. Director Corsaro left "by mutual agreement" with the company. Bernstein reportedly wanted to deal himself out too, but was persuaded to stay...
...When I came in," Moses told TIME's Edward Tivnan, "my feeling was that Lerner and Bernstein had three years or so to bring out their product. The result was Philadelphia. I had no sympathy for what didn't work. Whatever I thought was too long, too laborious, too repetitive, not theatrical enough, I cut." Lerner, Bernstein and even the producers were barred from some rehearsals. Moses complained about "superficiality" in the book; Lerner, having begun the project in outrage over Nixon Administration excesses, found himself holed up in the Watergate Hotel rewriting far into the night...
...astonishes the survivors. Says Ramin: "We would attend these meetings with Lenny and Lerner in the same room. It was marvelous to see these minds meet, so brilliant. We'd leave thinking that everything was fabulous." There were many versions of why all efforts to fix 1600 failed: Bernstein's score was more like an opera than a musical comedy; the show was racist; the chorus couldn't act; Corsaro botched the staging; the producers, not having put up the original money, didn't exert enough control; and so on. But almost everyone agreed that...
...book might have been less ponderous, Moses believes, had not both Lerner and Bernstein been involved. Says he: "It was like two great men meeting who decided to make a very important statement that had been on their minds about this country. Maybe if they had been younger [both are 57], more sparks would have been flying-and also more innocence. They wanted to do a sort of para-Broadway musical, but they were pulled down from their Olympian Heights by the demands of the audience for illusion, for magic, for mystery...
...theater, a stage version of Gigi and Lolita, My Love, were flops and that two previous shows, Coco and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, were coolly received by the critics. In fact, Lerner's last clear-cut hit was Camelot in 1960, while Bernstein had not written for Broadway since West Side Story...