Word: flower
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...Wang Chi-yang, Flower Drum Song's venerable elder, likes the feel of money and distrusts outside financial institutions, so do Rodgers and Hammerstein. Where other producers more often than not must hunt down angels, R. & H. have the problem of fighting off outside investors, mostly use their own capital or that of family members and close friends. And they go about their business with Confucian calm; voices are virtually never raised at an R. & H. rehearsal, except in song...
Saving Grace. Their determined serenity is sometimes derided; says Cole Porter: "I could spot Dick's songs anywhere. There is a certain holiness about them." But with serenity goes an unfailing professional competence. In Flower Drum-Song they do not shrink from such corn as a hula-hooping little girl and that ancient scene about the Chinese maiden who does not understand Western kissing; but there is always a saving grace of humor or taste, or at least professionalism. As their own producers, they ruthlessly cut their favorite songs or scenes if they detect that alarming rustle of inattention...
...During Flower Drum's Boston tryout, when Nightclub Comic Larry Storch did not work out in the role of Sammy Fong, he was quickly replaced by a more experienced stage veteran, Larry Blyden. A sentimental song was cut, and Blyden's part was beefed up; Hammerstein spent two days writing the lyrics of a new song, and Rodgers retired to the Shubert Theater ladies' room (which during rehearsals was equipped with a piano) and wrote the music in less than six hours. (His record: South Pacific's Bali Ha'i, which he wrote in five...
...there is anything about the R. & H. paternalism that the Flower Drum cast dislikes, it is the installation of closed-circuit TV in the St. James Theater, where the show has settled down for its New York run. Not that anyone objects to the stage manager keeping track of the action. But Hammerstein has ordered a cable run to his town house so that he too can monitor the show. Says Larry Blyden: "It's like Big Brother looking over your shoulder. It gives me the willies...
...Rashomon, Kataki, Cry for Happy and The Cool Mikado are all on the way to town. The World of Suzie Wong is pulling in crowds right across the street from Flower Drum...