Collaborators who didn't get along — Page 2

backwoodsbarbie said: "Did Michael Bennett have issues with the creative team on Company and/or Dream Girls? I feel like I remember hearing that."

I think the Bennett's relationship with Hal Prince, Sondheim and Furth was fairly harmonious. FOLLIES, however, brought tension between Bennett and Prince over Bennett's dislike of Jim Goldman's book. (IMHO, Bennett was wrong, and a little too shallow-- or maybe just too young-- to understand how brilliant that book is.)

I've always held the theory that Bennett chose collaborators who were just starting out and waiting for a break (Ed Kleban, the authors of DREAMGIRLS) or truly second-rate (the book writers of CHORUS LINE, Marvin Hamlisch, the people who wrote BALLROOM) because he could manipulate them in ways he couldn't established people or people of higher caliber. He respected Prince, and especially Sondheim, but he couldn't control them.

The story goes that he wanted Sondheim to write the score for SCANDAL (which of course he abandoned) but didn't even ask him because he would have been devastated if he declined. He really respected him that much. Michael was part of the reason "The Shuberts" put on SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, by the way.

HamilHansen said: "Jerome Robbins vs Zero Mostel and Pretty Much Everyone Else inFiddler On The Roof"

There may have been tension but Robbins was famous for being the only director who could actually get a performance out of Zero. I worked on the pre-Broadway tour of the 1976 revival and performances were running in excess of 3 hours while Mostel revisited every piece of schtick he had learned in vaudeville.

Despite having run for many months, the entire production shut down for two weeks so Robbins could get Zero back in line. I'm sorry I wasn't in NYC to see the result, because Zero in Miami Beach was tedious with a capital "t". Yeah, he got cheap laughs, but only at the expense of every moving moment in the show.

poisonivy2 said: "jv92 said: "Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch

I don’t think they “didn’t get along”, but there were always unspoken and eventually unresolved tensions between Rodgers and Hammerstein."

Rogers and Hart actually didn't get along. George Balanchine worked with Rogers and Hart and for the rest of his life spoke glowingly about Hart but never mentioned Rogers...."

I know Rodgers was widely blamed for not doing more to help Hart during the latter's great decline and death in the early 1940s. But if they had not been friends in the first place, why would Rodgers have been accused of neglect?

(Myself, I can understand that the disciplined and prolific Rodgers, whatever his failings, eventually ran out of compassion for Hart's disappearances, delays and drunken sprees. It happens even between the best of friends, even between family members.)

Updated On: 1/10/20 at 08:33 PM

David10086 said: "Andrew Lloyd Webber and every leading actress in 'Sunset Boulevard'."

Huh? Only LuPone and Dunaway had issues with ALW. No one else did.

BrodyFosse123 said: "David10086 said: "Andrew Lloyd Webber and every leading actress in 'Sunset Boulevard'."

Huh? Only LuPone and Dunaway had issues with ALW. No one else did."

And, um, eventually Tim Rice.

Phantom of London said: "Did I read once that the legendary Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein didn’t get on. In fact they couldn’t write in the same room together?"

They could definitely write together if the need arose - Hammerstein just spent the majority of his time on his families rural estate, so for convenience he would write lyrics out there and then bring them to Rodgers. Their writing habits were not a product of emotional discord, but of two professionals working on their own time before uniting back together.

They got on as much as you could expect any successful coworkers - while they weren't best friends, they didn't squabble anymore than the average peer. It is important to remember that Oklahoma started as an intellectual exercise for the two of them following their separation from their previous writing partners, and when it exploded in popularity, they decided to continue working together. They had immense respect for each others talents, and from what we know of their private writings, for each other as people. They just left their working relationship at the "office" and kept their personal lives mostly seperate, when they weren't actively writing together.

poisonivy2 said: "Also Lin Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr."

evidence?

jv92 said: "I've always held the theory that Bennett chose collaborators who were just starting out and waiting for a break (Ed Kleban, the authors of DREAMGIRLS) or truly second-rate (the book writers of CHORUS LINE, Marvin Hamlisch, the people who wrote BALLROOM) because he could manipulate them in ways he couldn't established people or people of higher caliber. He respected Prince, and especially Sondheim, but he couldn't control them."


You could argue that Sondheim was the same way with his bookwriters after 1969. He has enormous respect for them, but George Furth, Hugh Wheeler, John Weidman, and James Lapine had not had major success in the theatre prior to collaborating with Sondheim. James Goldman (Lion In Winter) is the outlier.

And who could blame Sondheim? He had obviously been burned by collaborating with hotheads like Robbins and Bernstein and Laurents and Rodgers. When your chief collaborator is Hal Prince, an equally-esteemed bookwriter might have made the work less productive. There can only be one true "muscle" on each show.

Updated On: 1/11/20 at 11:21 PM

jimmycurry01 said: "poisonivy2 said: "Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane in Angels in America."

I want to hear the stories behind so many of these.

What tensions were there between Garfield and Lane?"

First I've ever heard of this.



BrodyFosse123 said: "David10086 said: "Andrew Lloyd Webber and every leading actress in 'Sunset Boulevard'."

Huh? Only LuPone and Dunaway had issues with ALW. No one else did.

Diahann Carroll does not paint a pretty picture of working with him in her autobiography.



Two obvious additions: Alec Baldwin and Jan Maxwell, and Jessica Lange and Dallas Roberts. Jan quit the Roundabout's revival of Entertaining Mr. Sloane because she did not want to continue working with Baldwin, and Roberts was fired shortly before the opening of the Leveaux revival of The Glass Menagerie supposedly because of Lange.

Updated On: 1/12/20 at 04:36 AM

Ooh, I have a PalJoey story related to the Laurents/Mendes feud. He's posted it here a couple times, and I'll probably mangle the retelling, but it's worth it for the laughs and sheer bitchiness on display.

Picture it: New York, spring 2003. Bernie's about to open in the Mendes Gypsy. Arthur was initially very supportive; it was his idea to cast her after seeing her triumphant Carnegie Hall concert. During previews, however, he decided that the production was becoming quite a mess, and he turned on it, as only Arthur could.

Despite the simply awful things Arthur was saying about Sam all over town, including calling him "an untalented fraud," Sam still wanted to please Arthur and regain his approval, and he made several attempts, only to be shut down each time. Nothing could ever change Arthur's mind once he'd made it up about someone or something. (Granted, he'd later admit that Bernadette, and her co-stars Tammy Blanchard and John Dossett, did great work, but great work in a shit production is damning with faint praise, especially if it came from Arthur.)

This is the story of one of Sam's attempts to curry Arthur's favor. One night, Sam called Arthur after a performance to tell him how well it was going and how much better Bernadette was getting each night. The conversation dragged on endlessly as Arthur shot down every good point Sam thought he was making, and needled him with perorations -- albeit thoughtful and articulate ones, if you buy Arthur’s later assertion that much of Mainly on Directing had its basis in his notes for Sam -- about what needed to be done.

Finally, near defeat, Sam made a fatal mistake: grasping for any potential life raft, he said, "Well, the strippers went over well." Sam was, of course, referring to “You Gotta Get a Gimmick." Well, rumor had it Arthur rolled his eyes so far back into his head that they were stuck for a while. After a beat, he responded: "Sam, anyone can make that number work. You could cast Saddam Hussein and his two sons as those three strippers and it would still bring down the house. Good. Night." (Followed, of course, by a dramatic slamming of the phone into its cradle.)

David10086 said: "BrodyFosse123 said: "David10086 said: "Andrew Lloyd Webber and every leading actress in 'Sunset Boulevard'."

Huh? Only LuPone and Dunaway had issues with ALW. No one else did."

And Diahann Carroll - she writes all about it in her last memoir 'The Legs are the Last to Go'

And Glenn Close - she threatened to walk off the show at the end of April, 1995 because of all the drama he caused when she was on vacation in March, 1995."

That may all well be at that time for Glenn but she sang (in full Norma garb) at his Royal Hall birthday celebration, revisited the role for the recent concert-style revival and continues to sing his praises today.