Broadway's Jerry Herman Dead At 88
Very sad news: Broadway composer Jerry Herman is dead at 88. The composer of “Hello,. Dolly!”, “Mane” , “L:a Cage Aux Faux,” “Dear World,” “Milk and Honey,” “The Grand Tour,” and other shows died of pulmonary complications in his Miami home where he had been living with his partner, real estate broker Terry Marler.
He had a special relationship with Goodspeed Musicals where”Dolly,” “Mame” and “La Cage Aux Folles” were revived and “with a reimaged “Dear World” was presented at its Norma TTerris Theatre in Chester.
I interviewed the composer several times over the years. Here are a few of those stories.
From 2000
By FRANK RIZZO
It almost sounds like a Jerry Herman musical.
A popular, charismatic, can-do hero tries something new and different but is rejected by those around him. But through perseverance, faith and near-tragic turns, the hero has one more chance at redemption -- and at a hit.
This is the scenario not of Herman's musical "Dear World" but of that 1969 show's failure and its revised revival, which opens tonight at Goodspeed-at-Chester/The Norma Terris Theatre.
"It's called a second chance," said the spry 67-year-old Broadway composer recently from Goodspeed, where the show, which stars Sally Ann Howes as Countess Aurelia, was in rehearsal. The musical is based on Jean Giraudoux's 1948 French play about a Parisian eccentric who embraces romance and humanity and battles the greed of capitalists.
Herman knows the material well. He had his first stage role as the deaf mute in a college production of the play. But it wasn't until the mega-successes of "Hello, Dolly!" and "Mame" that Herman felt he could spend some of the critical collateral earned by the two hits. "I thought, 'OK, I've done the expected musical comedies. Now it's time to do something unusual."'
He took his idea to transform the delicate fable to Alexander H. Cohen, who liked to think of himself as a commercial producer of class shows with the idea to transform the Giraudoux fable into a musical. "It just sang to me," said Herman. "That's what I need to write a score, and that's really why I haven't written more in my life. It's hard to find something that just sings all over the place. I remember seeing the film 'La Cage Aux Folles,' and after the movie I went right to a phone booth and called my best friend, Sheila Mack, and told her I found my new musical. The movie sang to me, and I just knew how to write that show. That's what I need with a show. I just can't manufacture that kind of enthusiasm."
Cohen, who died last year, was enthusiastic too, but in a different way and with other ideas. Herman says he was considering a small off-Broadway theater for what he envisioned as an intimate, ethereal, lyrical show, "with perhaps musicians playing concertinas strolling from the street into the theater." Cohen, however, wanted a typical Jerry Herman show with lots of brass, pizazz and glitz. Herman quickly began to feel the show was getting away from him, a feeling confirmed when the production went for its out-of-town tryout in Boston.