Damn Yankees.Indd
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SPOTLIGHT ON THEATER NOTES PRODUCED BY THE PERFORMANCE PLUS PROGRAM ™, KENNEDY CENTER EDUCATION DEPARTMENT Despite the Senators’ new winning streak, Joe is miserable. He WORDS AND MUSIC BY RICHARD ADLER AND JERRY ROSS returns to his old home on the pretext of renting a room from Meg and her sister. And when even Lola fails to distract Joe, Applegate launches a smear campaign against Joe—suggesting that his real identity is that of a corrupt ballplayer, Shifty McCoy. Just two days before the end of the season, CTWashington I I: is leading the league. If they can win Damn Yankees takes place over one baseball season during the 1950s. AA one more game, they will clinch the pennant one full day before Applegate’s contract runs out, and Joe On a summer evening in a comfortable Washington, can escape with his soul intact. During the chaos of a hospital CTD.C. I: suburb, baseball widow Meg Boyd prepares to turn in benefit show organized by Meg’s sister, Applegate coerces Gloria AA for the night as her husband Joe, a middle-aged real estate Thorpe into triggering a hearing concerning Joe’s identity. At salesman, stays glued to the television watching the the benefit, Lola performs a show-stopping mambo. Washington Senators do what they do best—lose. THE STORY The next day, Joe tells Applegate and Lola that he intends not “One long-ball hitter, that’s what we need. I’d sell my soul only to testify, but also to play as much of the game as for one long-ball hitter.” No sooner does 2ND BASE-1958 possible before exercising his escape clause. Fuming, Joe makes this reckless remark than The musical goes to Hollywood: Applegate plans his revenge. After the THE STORY Abbott and Stanley Donen direct the mysterious Mr. Applegate appears. Verdon, Walston, and Tab Hunter as hearing takes place, a furious “Handy with fire,”THE Applegate STORY Joe Hardy. Choreo-grapher Bob Applegate sends Joe into Limbo. Fosse makes a dynamic offers to turn Joe appearance in the number But, with Lola’s help, Joe rallies while into a 22-year-old "Who's Got the Pain?" Applegate’s attention is elsewhere. slugger in exchange While Joe plays desperately for for his soul. Joe agrees the Senators, Applegate begins under the condition that, to foil Joe’s final attempt at bat should he choose to return to as the moment of reckoning his wife, he has an escape arrives. Just as he is to lose clause which can be exercised his soul, Joe Hardy throws before the final game of the ON THE down his bat and is trans- season. He has just enough PITCHER'S MOUND-1955 formed into Joe Boyd. time to leave Meg a goodbye Douglass Wallop writes the best-selling book The Year Taking a final swing at a note before Applegate trans- the Yankees Lost the pitch, Joe sends the ball forms him into young Joe Pennant. over the wall and clinches Hardy. 3RD BASE-1993 1ST BASE-1955 Jack O'Brien stages a revised Directed by George Abbott, the pennant for the version of Damn Yankees at the and starring Gwen Verdon and Senators. In the Senators dugout, Old Globe Theater in San Diego, Ray Walston, Damn Yankees opens manager Benny Van aided by George Abbott. Victor on Broadway and runs for 1,019 Back in the suburbs, a Buren exhorts his team Garber and Bebe Neuwirth star performances. It wins eight as Applegate and Lola. Tony Awards, including wiser Joe reunites with to make up in enthusiasm Best Musical. Meg. Applegate makes a what they lack in skill. final effort to lure Joe back to Applegate arrives with Joe Hardy, who damnation with the promise of the World soon astonishes the skeptical team with his prowess. The HOME PLATE-1995 Series to come. But Joe, safe in his wife’s arms, is now newest Senator becomes an instant sports superstar and After the show has played on Broadway for nearly a impervious to temptation. media magnet, with the help of sportswriter Gloria Thorpe. year, Jerry Lewis takes over Applegate, worried that Joe will not toe the line, sends his the role of Applegate in late seductive assistant Lola to keep an eye on Joe. February. 1995. 2 3 THECREATORS scaled @ 130% OF DAMN YANKESS scaled @ GEORGE 130%ABBOTT: ...WITH A Dean of Broadway LITTLE HELP Showmen DAMN YANKEE Co-author of the book for FROM FAOUSTF S Damn Yankees, the late George DOUGLASS WALLOP Douglass Wallop’s novel and the Abbott remains a Broadway legend. Co-Author musical it inspired are modern retell- He served as playwright, director, play Wallop was the 17th child named ings of a story that has compelled doctor, or actor for 125 productions, John Douglass Wallop from an old including Room Service, Three Men Western civilization for nearly five Eastern Shore family. His love of on a Horse, Pal Joey, The Pajama centuries. The character of Faust, a baseball began at the age of 5, when Game, Best Foot Forward, A Funny scholar who sells his soul to the devil his father took him to a Senators Thing Happened on the Way to the game. Wallop was a newspaper in exchange for magic powers, has Forum, Call Me Madam, Brother Rat, reporter and the author of 13 novels. been given life by everyone from On the Town, Wonderful Town, He died in 1985. Christopher Marlowe to Goethe to Where’s Charley?, Coquette, and The Boys from Syracuse. Abbott made his Dudley Moore (in Stanley Donen’s Broadway debut as an actor in 1913, RICHARD ADLER Bedazzled). The real-life origin of the made his directing and writing debut Co-Composer and Lyricist Faust legend is no less compelling. 12 years later, and scored his first big Adler has composed music, both pop Contemporaries claim that one Georg hit in 1926 with the melodrama and classical, for every entertainment Faust studied magic at Cracow Broadway. In his last two decades, medium: theater, film, television, University in Poland Abbott directed revivals of his own commercials and the ballet. shows, including 1987’s Broadway. In addition to Damn (yes, it was an accredited Among Abbott’s many awards are six Yankees, his works include subject) and went on to Tonys (including one for lifetime The Pajama Game, Off Key, become an instructor at achievement) and the 1959 Pulitzer Wilderness Suite, The Lady the University of Erfurt. Prize for directing and co-authoring Remembers (commissioned In 1513, he made news Fiorello! In 1985, the Society of to celebrate the Statue of by reportedly conjuring Directors and Choreographers estab- Liberty’s centennial), Eight lished a “Mr. Abbott” Award in his by Adler, and the jazz ballet Homeric heroes before honor. Abbott died on January 31, Chicago. His awards include his students as they 1995, at the age of 107. two Tonys, an additional studied the Iliad. In Tony nomination, four Leipzig, he was known Pulitzer Prize nominations, for his unique interpre- and an Emmy. Adler was elected to the tation of “one for the road,” by head- Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984. “Your paycheck.” ing home from taverns on flying wine A LITTLE BRAINS—A LITTLE TALENT casks. He was said to foretell the George Abbott, in response to a query JERRY ROSS future accurately and took pleasure Co-Composer and Lyricist WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE LATTA! photo: Fred Fehl from Damn Yankees actor Stephen in manipulating the outcome of bat- ”Fred [Fehl’s] picture made a difference. There was an earlier studio photograph someone else took of Gwen Ross wrote more than 250 popular [Verdon] in a baseball uniform and cap, looking over her shoulder with a glove and a ball in her hand. We used it on posters Douglas regarding his motivation in a songs before his career was cut short tles. But he must have kept his bar- and in all our ads, but the show wasn’t moving; they weren’t selling any tickets at the box office. And we decided that baseball by his death at age 29. He was award- gain with the devil: In 1540, his was an anathema as musical comedy material. So we junked the original photograph and put in this one, from ‘Whatever Lola certain scene, during the rehearsals ed two Tonys, a Drama Critics Award, corpse was found face down—a clear Wants,’ and the show took off. We always thought the ad did it. The ad plus word-of-mouth. and the Donaldson. In 1981, he was for the 1955 production. indication, it was believed, of his You see, the problem was Damn Yankees meant Civil War to people, and then the baseball picture meant baseball. And posthumously inducted into the infernal dealings. neither thing interested anyone. Fred’s picture showed people what the show was like and they came to see it.“ Songwriters Hall of Fame. Harold Prince, On Broadway, text by William Stott with Jane Stott, photographs by Fred Fehl (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978). 4 5 “Six Months Out of Every Year” “Goodbye, Old Girl” HE Yankees, fresh from a triumphant series in “Heart” Chicago, were in the city of Cleveland that night, “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo” ““TT while the Washington Senators were in Detroit, engag- ing the Tigers in a game of little meaning except to the most “A Little Brains, A Little Talent” grimly devoted followers of the two teams; and these, as the years passed, “A Man Doesn’t Know” were becoming fewer. The Tigers were currently the fifth-place team; the “Whatever Lola Wants” Senators were in sixth and moving toward seventh, their customary “Who’s Got the Pain When They Do the THE STORY habitat, with all the singleness of purpose of a homing pigeon.” Mambo?” Douglass Wallop, Chapter One, “The Game” The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant “Near to You” You did not need to be a sports fan in the 1950s to know the old saying “Washington—first in war, first in peace, “Those Were the Good Old Days” and last in the American League.” When Douglass “Two Lost Souls” Wallop’s Faustian novel first appeared in 1955, the “A Man Doesn’t Know” (Reprise) beleaguered Senators were underdogs par excellence.