The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center

For all the fans of Kate the Great, here is some fun news: The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center is being established in Old Saybrook, near at her family home in Fenwick. I received a comment from Ann, who runs the blog documenting the progress of the theatre arts center, which is currently under construction and poised to open in the summer of 2009, informing me about this wonderful project. The non-profit theatre organization is going to take residence in a historic theatre on Main Street in the Town of Old Saybrook, with funds provided the town and private donations raised by trustees of the organization. “The Kate” as the theatre has already been affectionately monikered, will feature a 250 seat theatre as well as a museum devoted to the iconic actress.

Hepburn, one of the last true stars of the Hollywood Golden Age, died in 2003 at the age of 96, leaving behind a considerable legacy on stage, on television and most notably on film. Her relationship with Spencer Tracy has taken on an iconically romantic status of its own. She alone holds the record for most Oscar wins by an actor with four statuettes (for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond), though the always practical Kate never really cared for awards or the fuss of celebrity. Kate also treaded the boards in the The Lake (prompting that oft-quoted zinger by Dorothy Parker), The Philadelphia Story, Coco, A Matter of Gravity and The West Side Waltz (the latter opposite Dorothy Loudon, what a night that must have been), earning two Tony nominations along the way.

Hepburn is one of my all-time favorite actresses. With her distinctive looks, voice and independent personality she defied what was expected of a movie star, one of the reasons why she remained a movie star for sixty years (unlike her contemporaries, like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis who found themselves reduced to camp roles in lower quality films). She won her last Oscar as leading actress in 1982, just before she turned 75; and she would continue to work steadily throughout the 1980s, ultimately retiring in poorer health after a brief cameo in 1994’s Love Affair. Her film roles were very diverse, from literary heroines to historical figures to screwball comedy heiress to witty, urbane society women, to vulnerable “spinsters”, etc.

It should be noted that she had some of her greatest successes (and a couple of failures along the way) working in film adaptations of plays. Starting with her 1932 debut in A Bill of Divorcement, she also brought stage characters to the screen in Morning Glory, Spitfire, Quality Street, Stage Door, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story (inspired by and written for her by Philip Barry; one of the best things that ever happened in her career), Without Love, State of the Union, Summertime (David Lean’s Technicolor valentine to Venice in an adaptation of Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo), The Rainmaker, Desk Set, Suddenly Last Summer, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (one of her finest hours as an actress), The Lion in Winter (my personal favorite?), The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Trojan Women, A Delicate Balance, The Glass Menagerie (for TV), The Corn is Green (also for TV), and On Golden Pond. That’s not even taking into consideration those roles written expressly for her: Bringing Up Baby, Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, The African Queen, etc. Speaking of The African Queen… this classic has yet to be released on DVD in the United States… someone is clearly sleeping on the job here! So to whomever owns the rights: restore it, reissue it and give it the superlative DVD treatment it deserves.

Now as an added treat, here is Kate’s one and only appearance on the Academy Awards. Under an incredible veil of secrecy, Hepburn showed up (in a black Mao pantsuit and garden clogs, at that) to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to her friend and colleague, Lawrence Weingarten at the 46th annual ceremony in 1974. The audience reaction she receives after a gracious introduction by the one and only David Niven (remember when Hollywood gave us such class acts?) is one of those for the ages – and so is her quip…

She was a star. One of the best we’ve ever had. Now… who’s up for a road trip to Old Saybrook this summer…?

The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center

For all the fans of Kate the Great, here is some fun news: The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center is being established in Old Saybrook, near at her family home in Fenwick. I received a comment from Ann, who runs the blog documenting the progress of the theatre arts center, which is currently under construction and poised to open in the summer of 2009, informing me about this wonderful project. The non-profit theatre organization is going to take residence in a historic theatre on Main Street in the Town of Old Saybrook, with funds provided the town and private donations raised by trustees of the organization. “The Kate” as the theatre has already been affectionately monikered, will feature a 250 seat theatre as well as a museum devoted to the iconic actress.

Hepburn, one of the last true stars of the Hollywood Golden Age, died in 2003 at the age of 96, leaving behind a considerable legacy on stage, on television and most notably on film. Her relationship with Spencer Tracy has taken on an iconically romantic status of its own. She alone holds the record for most Oscar wins by an actor with four statuettes (for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond), though the always practical Kate never really cared for awards or the fuss of celebrity. Kate also treaded the boards in the The Lake (prompting that oft-quoted zinger by Dorothy Parker), The Philadelphia Story, Coco, A Matter of Gravity and The West Side Waltz (the latter opposite Dorothy Loudon, what a night that must have been), earning two Tony nominations along the way.

Hepburn is one of my all-time favorite actresses. With her distinctive looks, voice and independent personality she defied what was expected of a movie star, one of the reasons why she remained a movie star for sixty years (unlike her contemporaries, like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis who found themselves reduced to camp roles in lower quality films). She won her last Oscar as leading actress in 1982, just before she turned 75; and she would continue to work steadily throughout the 1980s, ultimately retiring in poorer health after a brief cameo in 1994’s Love Affair. Her film roles were very diverse, from literary heroines to historical figures to screwball comedy heiress to witty, urbane society women, to vulnerable “spinsters”, etc.

It should be noted that she had some of her greatest successes (and a couple of failures along the way) working in film adaptations of plays. Starting with her 1932 debut in A Bill of Divorcement, she also brought stage characters to the screen in Morning Glory, Spitfire, Quality Street, Stage Door, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story (inspired by and written for her by Philip Barry; one of the best things that ever happened in her career), Without Love, State of the Union, Summertime (David Lean’s Technicolor valentine to Venice in an adaptation of Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo), The Rainmaker, Desk Set, Suddenly Last Summer, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (one of her finest hours as an actress), The Lion in Winter (my personal favorite?), The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Trojan Women, A Delicate Balance, The Glass Menagerie (for TV), The Corn is Green (also for TV), and On Golden Pond. That’s not even taking into consideration those roles written expressly for her: Bringing Up Baby, Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, The African Queen, etc. Speaking of The African Queen… this classic has yet to be released on DVD in the United States… someone is clearly sleeping on the job here! So to whomever owns the rights: restore it, reissue it and give it the superlative DVD treatment it deserves.

Now as an added treat, here is Kate’s one and only appearance on the Academy Awards. Under an incredible veil of secrecy, Hepburn showed up (in a black Mao pantsuit and garden clogs, at that) to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to her friend and colleague, Lawrence Weingarten at the 46th annual ceremony in 1974. The audience reaction she receives after a gracious introduction by the one and only David Niven (remember when Hollywood gave us such class acts?) is one of those for the ages – and so is her quip…

She was a star. One of the best we’ve ever had. Now… who’s up for a road trip to Old Saybrook this summer…?

Another "Coco" article…

Again from the San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com):

‘Coco’s’ music of chance
Edward Guthmann
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Resurrecting “Coco” from the dead required ingenuity and detective work. According to Greg MacKellan, 42nd Street Moon’s co-artistic director, the show was never registered with Samuel French, Inc., or any other company that licenses performing rights for plays and musicals.
“We had to go to (lyricist) Alan Jay Lerner’s attorney to acquire the rights,” says MacKellan. Lerner died in 1986. “Unfortunately, no orchestrations existed and no piano score. There were a few songs published as sheet music, but they didn’t always match the routines in the show. There’s also some music in the show that’s not on the cast album.”

Luckily, the late Hershy Kay, orchestrator for the 1969 Katharine Hepburn production, had bequeathed a lot of piano vocal material to the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University. Michael Horsley, 42nd Street Moon’s musical director, patched it all together, in some cases transcribing melodies and orchestrations from the “Coco” CD when he couldn’t find them in Kay’s papers.

“Fortunately,” MacKellan says, “the script was complete. We were also able to get the stage manager’s script from Lerner’s attorney.”

MacKellan says he always wanted Andrea Marcovicci to play Coco. She’d started her cabaret career at the Plush Room in the mid-’80s, played several starring roles at American Conservatory Theater in the early ’90s and headed the 42nd Street Moon production of “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” in 1999.

When Hepburn sang the score, it was in the talk-singing idiom that Rex Harrison used in “My Fair Lady.” “We’re bringing the music back to the musical,” Marcovicci, 59, said at a recent “Coco” rehearsal. “No offense to Madame Hepburn, (but) there were very few of the melodies that she was able to actually deliver.”

Chanel’s emotional palette will also change in this production, Marcovicci promises. “From what I’m gathering of the Hepburn performance, she felt the defiance in the character. But the character is rich with pain, loss, ambivalence, joy, flirtatiousness, need, love. Every emotion under the sun. And defiance.”

Marcovicci had hoped to wear vintage Chanel onstage, but the Chanel organization declined to loan any clothes for this production. Instead, she says, “I am wearing vintage pieces from my own collection (including Givenchy, Valentino). And I’m wearing very serious pieces of costume jewelry from the ’30s through the ’50s.”

"Coco" receiving San Francisco revival

From the San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com):

‘Coco’ lives on (without Kate)
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Katharine Hepburn had no delusions about her singing voice. When she starred in “Coco,” her first and only Broadway musical, the actress was characteristically blunt about her performance. “I sound like Donald Duck,” she said when she heard the cast album.

That’s the way Rene Auberjonois, Hepburn’s co-star in the 1969 musical about French fashion designer Coco Chanel, remembers it. “Singing was not her strong suit,” he said in a recent phone interview. “She loved challenges and she trained very hard. But she couldn’t really do it.”

The critics agreed and yet, because of Hepburn’s star power the show became a media event and played to full houses. When Hepburn left the show in summer of 1970, however, and French actress Danielle Darrieux stepped in, “Coco” quickly closed. Apart from a summer stock tour in the early ’70s with Ginger Rogers, “Coco” has never been revived and is remembered, if at all, as miscalculated and overblown.

That didn’t stop Greg MacKellan, co-artistic director of 42nd Street Moon, a San Francisco stage company that specializes in obscure or little-seen musicals. Convinced that the show’s merits had been buried under Hepburn’s force of personality – “She was a great Hepburn, but not the ideal person to play Coco Chanel” – MacKellan set out to exhume “Coco” from its long interment.

MacKellan felt there was “a lovely score” by Andre Previn that had been scaled back to accommodate Hepburn’s musical limitations; in some cases, the melodies were dropped altogether. He also believed that the lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner (“My Fair Lady”), which situates Chanel in 1953 and 1954, when at 71 she attempts a comeback, were undervalued.

The 42nd Street Moon production, directed by Mark D. Kaufmann and starring Andrea Marcovicci as Chanel, opens Saturday at the Eureka Theatre for a two-week run. It’s a different species altogether from the unwieldy leviathan that starred Hepburn. Whereas the Broadway company had 40 performers, including a singing chorus separate from a dancing chorus, MacKellan’s “Coco” utilizes 15 cast members. Compared to the Broadway original, which cost $900,000, a Broadway record for its time, this incarnation is an intimate chamber piece. A piano is the only accompaniment, and the performers sing without mikes.

In retrospect, it’s stupefying that anyone envisioned Hepburn in a Broadway musical. Listening to the cast album is painful: In order to be heard above the orchestra, Hepburn bleats and shouts and Donald Ducks her way through the songs, obliterating any nuance or trace of pathos.

But Kate isn’t totally to blame. “Andre Previn was very, very upset about the way it was being recorded and by how much was being left out of the recording,” remembers Auberjonois. “At the time, you could only get a certain amount onto an LP record. In fact, they ended up compressing some of it so that we’re all singing faster than we sang in real life.”

If Hepburn’s musical abilities were deficient – nonexistent, really – her personal style was also a bad fit for her icon-of-glamour character. With her tomboy’s stride and her penchant for baggy gabardine trousers, sandals and high-necked shirts, Hepburn was anything but a fashion plate. “What I dread is dressing up,” she told Newsweek prior to the show’s opening. “I feel like Martha Washington.”

In retrospect, Kate-does-Coco makes as much sense as Courtney Love in a revival of “Hello, Dolly!” “When they told Coco Chanel that Hepburn was going to play her, she was thrilled,” MacKellan says, “because she thought they were talking about Audrey Hepburn. When she learned that it was Kate Hepburn she actually got very upset and refused to do any more for the show.”

It was Lerner who believed Hepburn was a plausible choice for “Coco,” and saw in her a defiance and originality that matched Chanel’s. “He and Hepburn were very friendly,” MacKellan says, “and they’d have parties and he’d convince her to sing a little. He’d say, ‘You should do a musical.’ And Hepburn would say, ‘If you ever get the right part, maybe I’ll consider it.’ “

During the ’50s and ’60s, a lot of non-singing actors and actresses were stretching their theatrical limbs in musicals. Vivien Leigh starred in “Tovarich,” Robert Ryan did Irving Berlin’s “Mr. President” and Anthony Perkins warbled in the short-lived “Greenwillow.” Rex Harrison had an enormous success in “My Fair Lady,” largely because he didn’t sing the role of Henry Higgins, but rather talk-sang it.

“Coco” rehearsals were embattled from the get-go, says Auberjonois. The British director, Michael Benthall, “was a friend of Kate’s but he was past his prime and really way over his head. The show was really directed by Michael Bennett, the choreographer.

Auberjonois played Sebastian Baye, a flamboyant costume designer and Coco’s nemesis. During rehearsals, he says, “Whenever I would do something outlandish or think up a piece of business, (Benthall) would say, ‘No no no, dear boy. You can’t do that.’ And Kate would say, ‘What are you talking about? He’s the only amusing thing in the show!’

“Kate would protect me and I give her full credit for allowing the role to become something that could be nominated for a Tony award.” In fact, Auberjonois won the award as featured actor in a musical, and was launched on a still-active career. He played in the Broadway musicals “Big River” and “City of Angels” and the TV series “Benson,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Boston Legal.”

Hepburn never bullied her fellow actors, Auberjonois says, “but she was a terrible bully to the producers and to (costume designer) Cecil Beaton. If you read his autobiography, it’s devastating what he says about Hepburn. They had a real hate on for each other.” In his posthumously published diaries, Beaton called Hepburn an “untamed dog,” an “egomaniac” and “the most bossy of schoolteachers.”

Often, Hepburn gave Auberjonois a lift in her chauffeur-driven car, since he lived close to her East 49th Street house. “She would always make me come in and sit downstairs with her in the kitchen while she ate dinner after the show, and I would have ice cream with her. She was terrific. She was very kind to me.

“It was great to work with her. She set up this thing with me that whoever made a mistake or flubbed a line owed the other person $10. She would come stomping up the stairs to my dressing room with her hair rolled up in little pieces of newspaper and say, ‘Rene! Rene!’ She would come into my dressing room and pound the table and put a $10 bill down.

“Of course I needed the money and she didn’t,” Auberjonois says. “So I never made a mistake. It might have been her way of giving me a tip.”

Coco:

Previews Thursday and Friday. Opens Saturday and runs through May 11. Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St. $22-$38. (415) 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org.

The guilty pleasures of 1970

Katharine Hepburn in Coco. It’s not an exceptional musical, but it features an amusing score (Andre Previn & Alan Jay Lerner did the honors). Hepburn is, well, I don’t have to tell you how unqualified she was to headline a musical… but there is something about her star quality and the fun in Previn’s score that just makes for an entertaining listen. The book by Lerner is rather irritating, with all the filmed sequences that presented a flashback into Coco’s youth. Then again, when one thinks of Chanel, one would hardly think of Kate. Legendary is the Tony performance which, tasteless laugh track aside, presents a 15 minute sequence from the show’s finale, including one of the legendary fashion promenades staged by Michael Bennett. It remains the longest performance piece in Tony history. Unfortunately, the recording quality of the cast album is as incredibly poor; even in a CD transfer it doesn’t sound like a 1970 stereo effort, but closer to the primitive 40s mono recordings. Perhaps it could use a remaster, but then again, only the curios and the true fans of those involved would be interested. (For comparison’s sake, Rex Harrison sounds like Venetian glass. Hepburn sounds like she swallowed some…) But I can’t not listen, not enjoy the personality and presence of such a star taking on such a daunting task. Critical misgivings not withstanding, audiences came out in droves and the show shuttered two months after she left, though the more character appropriate Danielle Darrieux had taken over in the title role. David Holliday is in fine voice (check out the OLC of Sail Away for more of that glorious tenor); Gale Dixon is a pallid ingenue whose presence, voice and acting ability are so lacking you wonder why she was cast in the first place and secondly, you wonder why Coco would become so invested in her life. Rene Auberjonois won a Tony as the campy rival (with the over-the-top exercise in schadenfreude, “Fiasco” as well as stereotypical scenery-chomping) and George Rose and Jon Cypher also offered support. Kate was fearless and one of a kind, regardless of the medium. I find it endlessly amusing how the Tony race was between her and her non-singing friend Lauren Bacall who was croaking her way (with maybe a slightly better idea of pitch) through the campier mediocrity Applause. (Third nominee Dilys Watling from the four performance debacle Georgy stood absolutely no chance).

Which brings me to my next guilty pleasure: the TV telecast of Applause with Lauren Bacall. The musical, an adaptation of the film All About Eve (and the original story “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr) opened in NY in 1970, ran for 895 performances and won a slew of Tony’s in a considerably weak year. The show shortly thereafter made its way to London with Bacall and original NY Eve Penny Fuller, with Larry Hagman (who is pretty good) in the role originated by Len Cariou. It was this production that was filmed (on a soundstage) in an abridged form for telecast in 1973. Now the score to Applause has two kinds of numbers the brilliantly awful and the awfully brilliant, more of the former than latter, truth be told – “One Halloween,” the pastiche “Who’s That Girl?” and the title song are the winners (Strouse and Adams have done worse… Bring Back Birdie anyone?) Anyway, from an opening voice over, Bacall gives her all in one of the worst performances of a musical I’ve ever seen. The audience is immediately subjected to the revolutionary scene (at the time) where Margo Channing skips the opening night party to go to a gay bar. Segueing into her first character song, it quickly becomes one of the unintentionally funny moments ever created for a musical. First of all, the caricatures abound from wall to wall. Then to make matters worse, Bacall cannot dance to save her life and it shows. She gets tossed in the air by a large group of screaming queens extolling “Margo!” repeatedly with all their heart. Her performance stays at that high level and is a marvel for sheer presence, if little else. (I would have loved to have seen how Broadway replacement, Anne Baxter, fared in the role.)

Penny Fuller; however, delivers a nuanced and compelling portrait of the conniving Eve Harrington. Her musical selections are few and far between, but when she sings, you pay attention. Most notably, the ferocious explosion that is “One Hallowe’en” late in the second act. Applause may be the worst score of a Best Musical Tony winner, but that doesn’t stop it from being fun (if not always for the right reasons). There are clips on youtube and I believe the tape is in archives somewhere, should your curiosity bring you to want to see it. You’ll laugh a lot, I promise. And marvel at Ms. Penny Fuller. However, for the real thing, I refer you to the brilliant and highly rewatchable original film, whose dialogue is as sharp and compelling as ever, especially with its terse deliveries by Bette Davis, Baxter, Celeste Holm and George Sanders, not to mention the always-reliable Thelma Ritter. One of the largest problems of the stage musical is the loss of the latter two characters; the sardonic columnist Addison de Witt was replaced by the less interesting Howard Benedict, a producer with sights on Eve. Also in a ploy to modernize the story, the dresser Birdie became the dresser Duane, who memorably mentioned having a date as an excuse for not clubbing with Margo. Bacall shocked the blue-hairs in the audience with the deathless “Bring him along!”

So I enjoy them both in spite of myself. Sue me.