Word: hammersteins
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...Oriental spell extends beyond Miyoshi and Pat. Wilbur, the stern-eyed stage-door guard, feels that the Oriental chorus girls are politer and less brassy than the usual types; the director and the choreographer feel that the whole cast is more disciplined and quicker to learn. Says Oscar Hammerstein: "It's a strange flavor they have. They don't fawn, they don't scrape, they listen carefully. I don't think they're any more intelligent than other people, but I think the intelligence is less obscured by neuroticism." Translates Dick Rodgers: "We have...
...East-West love feast that surrounds Flower Drum Song is no accident, for Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves have reached an almost Oriental serenity in an otherwise hectic and often squalid business. As much as any of their Chinese characters, R. & H. have family feeling. Since they have a permanent production outfit (unlike most other theater men, who fold up after each show), they have given employment to generations of performers. Example: one of Flower Drum's brightest young dancers, Patrick Adiarte, 15, started at eight as one of the younger children in The King and I, kept on playing...
...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...
...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 among spectators. "What I like about R. & H.," says General Stage Manager Jimmy Hammerstein, Oscar's No. 2 son, "is that they're conditioned to what works. If it works, they keep it in; if it doesn't, they scrap it. They listen with real objective ears...
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...