Ephemera (3) Hal Prince wriggles out ....

I said, in my last episode of Ephemera, that, even in my day, there were some very unpleasant and unethical people involved in showbusiness, and it was our sorry lot, alas, in the 1970s and 1980s (etc), to get involved with a few of them ...

When I say 'in showbusiness', the two particular cases I'm thinking of were rather 'wanna-be in showbusiness (without sufficient knowledge/ability)' gentlemen, both from the world of the legal system, both from the shores of the United States of America, and both got their just desserts, but only after costing other people, real theatre people, a lot of pain, time, trouble and, of course, money.

Mr Fred G Moritt (1905-1995) is one. He would I am sure have been aghast to have been addressed as such. He was JUDGE Moritt. Or 'the Honourable Fred G Moritt'. What does one do to become an Honourable in America? Anyway, this fellow had dramatic ambitions, and when he completed the 112-page script, lyrics and music to a version of The Barretts of Wimpole Street, he sent it, personally, to Hal Prince. On Civil Court of the City of New York notepaper. Well, what does a young director-producer do? It's like a British writer getting a submission from a member of Parliament or the Royal family! Mr Prince made the mistake of replying politely, and agreeing to hear the score. Four months later, he succeeded in extricating himself. I have both letters in my ephemera, decorated with Sir Judge's furious, heavily-underlined comments ...

The story of the fate of Moritt's The Third Kiss has been told before. Notably, by me. How the rights' holders gave the project to a young London producer to manage, how the producer immediately saw that the piece was utterly unstageworthy and hired an experienced director, who hired a skilful librettist and a first-rate composer, and, among them, they turned out, on the same storyline, what is probably the greatest English operetta of the twentieth century: Robert and Elizabeth.

Moritt was ropable. He printed off copies of his unused script, tacked reproductions of Prince's gentlemanly, evasive letters to the front and sent them out to producing managers and playreaders. And somehow, one arrived on my desk ... letters and all .. so, as was my job, I read it ...

Oh dear. Oh very dear. Unproduceable is putting it mildly. I don't remember if there was a tape with it. I don't think so. But it was my invariable unsolicited-musical-reading rule not to listen to a tape unless I had found that the accompanying book had merit. And merit was the last thing The Third Kiss had. More stilted than blue cheese. This script would have gone on the fire years ago, but I had a wee inkling ... and I was right.

One can't blame even a Judge ('... and a bad judge, too') for writing a bad musical. One can't even blame him for using his position to advance his, ultimately dashed, ambitions. But one can certainly blame him for his behaviour, following the West End triumph of Robert and Elizabeth, and the subsequent rush for productions outside Britain. Notably, in America. Or not in America. Once again, using his legal power and threats of court action, supported by libels and lies, he prevented the piece being staged in New York. 

Chicago and Maine cocked a snook at him, and the skies didn't fall. But a first-class production was stymied. And, little by little, American producers tired of being told that it was risky proposition. Who needs that sort of trouble, on top of all the usual troubles involved in a production?

Meanwhile, the authors -- notably librettist Ronald Millar -- invested time and money in trying to challenge the situtation, but finally gave up. As a long letter in my file, from Millar to his New York lawyer, sighs 'what chance have we got in the New York courts against Moritt and his pals'.

But the story has a fairly happy ending. In 1982, the Paper Mill Playhouse applied to produce Robert and Elizabeth. Sir Judge leaped into envious action, waving his usual threats, but this time Millar, somewhat risen in the world in the twenty intervening years (Sir Ronald Millar), decided to go into combat on away-ground. Victoriously. And the Judge, all bluster and no balls, was sunk. 30 October 1982, Robert and Elizabeth opened at the Playhouse with Mark Jacoby and Leigh Beery featured ...

And I could throw away The Third Kiss. Or give it away, as I had my original version of Sail Away. But somehow I didn't. It's still here, today. And everybody is dead ... 

Hopefully, the show is not. As a splendid revival at the Chichester Festival, starring Mark Wynter and Gaynor Miles, showed, it is (especially when shorn of the fashionable large dances and choruses of the 1960s), very, very much alive. Even today, in the era of jukebox musicals and fairytale spectaculars, there exist places, particularly in America, where real, singers' musicals  survive ... 

Oh dear, if every piece of ephemera in this box sends me off into memories of this length ...

PS Yes, to those who said 'who was the other'? Name Maurice or Moritz Rosenfeld (I'm NOT Jewish!) or Rosenfield. It's another long and dirty story. And yes, I was there. I don't have many documents (I threw them, I seem to remember, disgustedly, out) ... anyway, he and, probably nominally, his wife Lois (known in our office as 'Madame with the concrete hair') were involved in Harold Fielding's bringing of Singin' in the Rain to the world's stage. All I need say is that he broke every agreement possible, in the pursuit of dollars,  and -- haha! -- lost them when the rewritten (and horribly cast) version bombed so hugely in America that he had to refinance to show to keep up 'face'. Sadly, against all legal agreements, MTI is still licensing the 'version' that failed on Broadway to companies outside America. If I were younger, and even though Harold and Maisie are dead (as well as the Rosenf(i)elds), and Tommy Steele is rich enough not to worry about the royalties he has been robbed of for his excellent libretto, I'd love to challenge them ... but alas, I haven't the document (which I saw) in my possession .. Mr Lewenstein?

PPS look what I found!  A photo of the day the contracts for Singin' in the Rain were signed. Who knew that the little legal worm could wriggle so deviously, who knew there was a siletto hidden in that concrete hair-do? I guess that there are many showbiz stories of the kind, but this happens to be one in which Ian and I were involved, and of which I have first-hand knowledge.

Well, my scanner insists on reproducing this photo with a dark veil over it ... maybe my scanner knows even more than I do.

Addendum: I have donated my script of The Third Kiss (and the copies of Mr Prince's letters) to an American foundation, whence it is, eventually, when catalogued, destined for the to-be-enormous musical-theatre archive at the University of California. So Judge Freddie will be enshrined in all his inglory in a real, theatrical collection!