The Muny Saga: 1970-1979

Ann Miller starred as Reno Sweeney in The Muny’s 1972 production of ANYTHING GOES
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Is there a doctor in the house?” In a theater seating nearly 12,000, chances
are better than fair that the answer to this urgent question will be yes. And indeed,
on Monday evening, August 14, 1972, at least 15 doctors were “in the house” at the
Muny’s opening-night performance of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes.

Although Porter’s buoyant 1934 musical comedy about a ship of likeable fools
on an Atlantic Ocean crossing contains a cargo-load of still-popular melodies, the
current production emphasized dance over song. Male lead Billy Crocker was played
by Michael Callan, the original Riff in West Side Story. No stranger to Forest Park,
18 years earlier as Mickey Calin, he spent the summer of ’54 in the dancing ensem-
ble. Reno Sweeney, initially a singing role first trumpeted by Ethel Merman, now
starred Ann Miller, who speed tapped her way through the 1940s and ’50s in such
fondly remembered MGM musicals as Easter Parade and Kiss Me, Kate.

There was a reason for this shift in emphasis from song to dance. One year
earlier, a toe-tapping revival of No, No, Nanette, a relic from the 1920s, was an
unexpected Broadway smash. Now producers raced to repeat the blithe formula that
had set New York on its ear. Anything Goes was among the first of the Nanette wan-
nabes. Its summer tour (the show made port in Forest Park between engagements in
Dallas and Toledo) hoped to sail on to the Great White Way. Just as No, No, Na-
nette found a portal to the past by resurrecting the long-abandoned career of former
Warner Bros. ingénue Ruby Keeler, so too was an audience’s fond recall of Ann Mill-
er the key to any success that Anything Goes might enjoy.

Opening night began well. Late in Act One, Miller and Callan had fun with
“Friendship,” an effervescent Porter standard borrowed from DuBarry Was a Lady.
After the duet Miller exited stage left. As she did, the star was grazed by one of the
scenery-changing steel booms as it glided onto the stage. Callan, who followed Mill-
er into the wings, was the first to discover her on the ground, dazed and bruised.

Pat St. James made news when she stepped in for the injured Ann Miller.
From. St. Louis Post Dispatch

Even out in the house he could be heard calling, “Hold it, hold it!”

When stage lights failed to rise on the next scene, the orchestra continued to
repeat “Friendship.” Then a 15-minute intermission was announced over the in-
tercom. No sooner had the house lights come on than assistant manager Edward
Steinhauer appeared onstage to call out the infamous query: Is there a doctor in the
house? From the assembled multitude (8,927 that night), 15 civic-spirited physicians
– pediatricians, obstetricians, a cardiologist – responded to Steinhauer’s plea. Now
revived, Miller insisted on continuing. The show must go on, and all that. But her
hastily-assembled medical team, after diagnosing a mild brain concussion and loss of
equilibrium, advised that she should submit to tests and observation.

As Miller resisted and the doctors insisted, the 15-minute intermission ex-
tended to 45. At which point she reluctantly consented and the performance was
promptly cancelled. Ann Miller was taken to Deaconess Hospital.

For Muny executive producer Edward Greenberg, it was crunch time. If Mill-
er could not return to Anything Goes, he would have to find a replacement – fast.
Greenberg already had his eye on Pat St. James. Under less fraught circumstances,
the 23-year-old Webster College senior would not be anyone’s first choice to re-
place an actress more than twice her age. But options were few, and he knew that St.
James, now in her second season in the chorus, was reliable; she had understudied
for him before. She was even understudying in Anything Goes, though a role closer
to her age.

Greenberg was a Muny veteran. In the late 1950s he had directed more than
30 productions for John Kennedy (among them, Roberta with Bob Hope), then
returned last year when Kennedy’s replacement, Glenn Jordan, resigned after three
summers to run the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. Kennedy and Jordan shared the

The reviews were raves, when Pat St. James (RIGHT, WITH WHITE BOA) proved her mettle in
taking over the lead over night in ANYTHING GOES. Courtesy of the Nance St. James Collection

same title: productions director. Greenberg had a new title, executive producer, but
the task was the same: (star or no star) to put the best possible product on the stage.

Tuesday morning he approached St. James as she arrived to rehearse next
week’s show, The Student Prince. “He asked me if I knew any of Reno’s lines,” St.
James recounted. “I told him I knew a few. He advised me to look at them some
more, because I might be playing the role.” By 2:30 pm. Greenberg’s worst-case
scenario had been realized. Miller was out for the week. (She would remain in the
hospital for 23 nights.) The executive producer informed St. James that she had been
chosen: “He told me that if I didn’t play Reno, he’d have to cancel the show.” No
pressure there, right? “The major worry wasn’t that she’d blow a line or two,” Green-
berg said. “There was an experienced cast to help her. Our biggest worry was that she
might get lost in some of Cole Porter’s rather complex lyrics. But she wasn’t afraid,
and that was good.”

The Tuesday night show started seven minutes late, which only served to whet
audience anticipation. After St. James’ first duet with Callan, “You’re the Top,” fer-
vent applause engulfed the stage. Callan broke from character to give his new co-star
an encouraging hug. From there, the evening soared. “It was one of the most exciting
nights in theater I’ve ever seen,” enthused Anything Goes co-star, the usually dead-
pan comic Pat Paulsen. “Nobody in the cast could believe what she was doing.” St.
James shared their disbelief. “I remembered watching Liza Minnelli headline at the
Muny two weeks earlier in the same spot where I was now standing,” St. James said.
“There she was, and suddenly here I was, seeing and feeling the same things she had
seen and felt.”

And so, “the week Ann Miller got hit by a boom” joined the treasured annals
of Muny lore. Part of the appeal of St. James-to-the-rescue stemmed from the fact
that she was not the assigned understudy. This college kid took center stage cold.

Native St. Louisan and Muny favorite, Ken Page.
From The Muny Archive

Even as she sang some lyrics from cue cards, Pat St. James exuded a breezy assurance
that felt younger than springtime.

Throughout the Muny’s century-long history, a steady flow of young, would-
be performers like Pat St. James – Virginia Mayo and Gretchen Wyler, to name two
– have felt the magnetic pull of this great stage. Long before coloratura Erie Mills
sang leading roles in the world’s great opera houses, the native of Granite City ap-
peared at the Muny. When she was a youngster in the 1960s, Mills was one of the
kids in Gypsy; in 1966 she danced in the Muny’s only Nutcracker. In 1970 she grad-
uated to the adult singing chorus, where she remained for six summers.

“That was a very valuable time,” she says. “They had a tight rehearsal sched-
ule. If the director said, ‘Now go into the waltz,’ you were expected to do it, not
take time out for a waltz lesson.” One of Mills’ most cherished memories was The
King and I in 1971. Operatic diva Roberta Peters starred as Mrs. Anna: “I remem-
ber how nervous she was on opening night. She had never spoken dialogue before.
She’d always done opera, and of course in opera you don’t talk. I would always take
photos of everyone backstage. I would put the photos in albums, which I still have.
A few years later I made an album for Roberta Peters. She was touring with the Met,
in Cleveland, in Don Giovanni. I went backstage and presented her with this album.
She was so thrilled with it that later on she even sent me a wedding gift. We became
very close.”

In 1973 Erie Mills performed the role of Chava, one of Tevye’s daughters, in
Fiddler on the Roof. The Fiddler chorus included a young singer named Ken Page,
who was appearing in his second Forest Park production. “I fell in love with musicals
from the Muny free seats,” Ken recalls. “The first of those musicals was Oklahoma!
I was only 12, but the moment Robert Horton entered singing ‘O, What a Beau-
tiful Mornin’ ’ on horseback, I was hooked. Never having seen Oklahoma! before,

Ken Page recreated his original Broadway performance as Old Deuteronomy at The Muny in 2004.
Photo by Jim Herren

it would not have occurred to me that the live horse was unique to the Muny. But
in that instant, I became aware that there was this astonishing world called theater.
Because of the sheer size of the Muny, it was a huge world, so I knew there had to be
a place in it for me.”

Page twice auditioned for the singing chorus; twice his voice cracked. Then in
1973 19-year-old Kenneth Page (the longer first name sounded more mature) was se-
lected by Ed Greenberg and musical director Donald Chan. Welcome to the Muny!
“They took a group photo,” Page says. “We came out on the stage and they put us
on the Meet Me in St. Louis trolley. I can still remember standing there staring out
at the amphitheater, and looking all the way up to the free seats, thinking, I made
it. You do the audition, you get chosen. But you still don’t get the real experience
until you’re actually standing on the stage. Then they told me that in South Pacific I
would be playing Stewpot. So in my very first show, I had lines! What a wonderful
way to start.”

More than 40 years and 30 roles later – twice as Old Deuteronomy, the part
Page created on Broadway in Cats; once as Ken, the role that was built around him
for Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Page is “still thrilled” every time he returns. “That was a long
time ago, 1973,” he muses. “Today if someone were to ask, what does the Muny
mean to me?, the answer would be very simple: Everything. It’s my theatrical home.
When I was young, I made a point to watch all the older, more experienced perform-
ers. Now that I’m older myself, I find it fascinating to watch the young people. I see
them beginning that same journey I took to become whatever it is that they’re going
to be.”

Page moved on to New York after the 1974 season. By the summer of ’76,
when former St. Louisan Vincent Price returned to play Fagin in Oliver!, Page was
knocking Broadway for a loop as Nicely Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls. But

Bowing at RIGHT, future Broadway producer Phillip Rose, in The Muny’s 1945
production of MADAME POMPADOUR. From The Muny Archive

there were always new youngsters to fill the stage. One such lad, 11-year-old Alex
Winter, found that playing a workhouse orphan (“food, glorious food”) was, to put
it mildly, an excellent adventure, one that he has never forgotten. Thirteen years later
Winter had another blast when he starred as Bill in the adventure comedy, Bill and
Ted’s Excellent Adventure (and then its sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey).

If most young performers’ excellent journeys eventually lead away from per-
forming careers, the Muny nevertheless remains an indelible first exposure to pro-
fessionalism and discipline. Consider Howard Morgens. Back in 1928, 17-year-old
Morgens ushered at the Opera. When his big brother Warren was selected for the
singing ensemble, the next summer Howard tried out too. To his surprise, he was
chosen. “It was just something to do,” Morgens admitted, “but it was fun.” In 1933
he found a more permanent job at Procter & Gamble. In May 1974, even as Ken
Page, now in his sophomore summer, was preparing to rehearse with Gene Kelly
in Take Me Along, former Muny chorister Howard Morgens retired as Procter &
Gamble’s president and chief executive officer. During his 17 years at the helm, P&G
revenues increased from $1.1 billion to $4.9 billion. Through Morgens’ discipline,
the company’s profits rose from $67 million to $316 million. Not bad for a former
singing usher.

In 1945 a 23-year-old baritone named Philip Rose landed a spot in the Opera
singing ensemble. One month into the 12-week season, Rose was offered a lucrative
contract at a Boston burlesque house. When he sought his release, Muny musical
conductor Edwin McArthur refused to allow Rose to leave. “You have an important
career ahead of you,” McArthur said. “Don’t throw it away on burlesque.”

McArthur was prescient, but Rose’s important career was not as a baritone.
Jump ahead 14 years. Although he had never produced a play before, in March 1959
Rose made theater history by producing Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun,

William “Willy” Zalken, Muny General Manager.
From The Muny Archive

the first Broadway play by an African-American female.

Rose continued to produce, including the musical hits Purlie and Shenandoah.
In July 1970, while Purlie was selling out on Broadway, featured actress Ruth Gillette
made her ninth Muny appearance in 22 years, this time as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!
“It’s great to be back,” the actress said. “I play Dallas, Kansas City, the other summer
theaters, but there’s no place quite like this. These fresh, young people are marvelous.
In New York you work with gypsies, not old in years but in experience, and they’ve
lost that quality. Here, so many are in it for the first time. A lot of the singers are
from colleges, and they’re awfully sweet kids. This is one thing about the Muny that I
hope never changes.”

***

Some change is inevitable; some is personal. Through the years, a few tem-
porary caretakers, charged with the theater’s well-being, have been allowed to share
something of themselves with Muny audiences. Opera-loving John Kennedy re-
stored grand opera to the Muny stage. Circus-loving Bev Kelley saw elephants trod
the stage. William Zalken, Kelley’s successor, had a soft spot for classical music and
dance. Hence, between 1967-1978, approximately 500,000 Munygoers partook of
classical
dance.

Born and raised in St. Joseph, Mo., Zalken was a product of print journalism.
After graduating from the University of Missouri, he gravitated to St. Louis. After
five years on the Post-Dispatch news staff, in 1935 he did double duty as publicist
for both the Municipal Opera and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. In 1942 he
became the Symphony manager.

In 1944 he hired Leonard Bernstein and Andre Kostelanetz as Symphony

The Bolshoi Ballet was one of many dance spectacles presented by The Muny throughout the 1970s.
From The Muny Archive

guest conductors. St. Louis audiences were especially taken with 25-year-old Bern-
stein, so Zalken brought him back in ’45. Now fast-forward three decades to 1976.
The New York Philharmonic presented two pre-season concerts at the Muny. The
first was conducted by Leonard Bernstein; the second by Andre Kostelanetz. And
where was Bernstein on night two, while Kostelanetz was conducting? Aboard a
houseboat on the Mississippi River. He spent the day swimming in the Big Muddy
and, like a child, wallowed in mud from head to toe. When it was time to return to
civilization, the world-renowned maestro behaved with the innocence of a Candide.
“I can’t go back,” he pleaded. “I just got here. I want to stay on the river forever.”

Willie Zalken exuded the innocence of a hyper-active Candide. He cut a col-
orful figure as he whirled around St. Louis, usually slightly late, his curly brown hair
unkempt, fast-talking out of the side of his mouth that was not chewing on a cigar.
“I’m a grown man,” he complained. “I don’t know why people call me Willie.” “Be-
cause they like you,” his wife replied.

After 30 years running Muny publicity, in 1965 Willie Zalken took over as
manager. Perhaps because Zalken had to give up his symphony job, he began to
bring serious music to Forest Park. He cemented a relationship with impresario
Sol Hurok, which led to the 1967 debut of the prestigious Royal Ballet of London,
showcasing Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. The Royal Ballet returned
two summers later, again headlining Fonteyn and Nureyev.

As the direct result of Zalken’s influence, eight of the ten 1970s summers
featured a week of dance: two visits by the Bolshoi Ballet (one with Alexander Go-
dunov), two by the Moiseyev Dance Company; the Stuttgart Ballet, the high-flying
Ukranian Dance Company, the Russian Festival of Music, the Dutch National Ballet
featuring Nureyev.
Thanks, Willie.

Lauren Bacall in APPLAUSE, 1971.
From The Muny Archive

***

When Zalken was asked in 1972 why the outdoor theater had never staged A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, he revealed that Zero Mostel
turned down a whopping $30,000 a week to repeat his role as Pseudolus in a three-
week tour to St. Louis, Atlanta and Indianapolis. In a moment of candor, Zalken
added, “We wouldn’t do the show without a big star” – a 180-degree turnabout from
the Muny of a decade earlier, when the show was the star.

For nearly 40 years the Municipal Opera avoided the star system, resisted
rewarding actors with billing above the title of the show. But by the 1970s, when
Ann Miller was star-struck, the Muny itself was star-stuck. Its very future relied on
the availability of stars.

They came in various shapes and sizes. For starters, there were the cachet
theater stars. Throughout the 1970s the Muny continued to persuade hit musicals to
shutter on Broadway and partake of a week-long frolic in Forest Park. There was
Promises, Promises with Jerry Orbach repeating his Tony Award-winning perfor-
mance, Applause with Lauren Bacall fresh from her Tony win, Seesaw with Tommy
Tune strutting his Tony stuff. In 1972 the now-iconic Stephen Sondheim-James
Goldman musical Follies ended its 15-month Broadway engagement on a Saturday
night and opened in Forest Park on Monday. En route to an extended run in Los
Angeles, Follies sported all its original leads: Alexis Smith, Gene Nelson, Dorothy
Collins, John McMartin, Yvonne De Carlo. Five summers later, Kander and Ebb’s
Chicago traveled to St. Louis the day after it closed on Broadway. Again, Jerry Or-
bach.

Although No, No, Nanette said no, no, to the Muny, some nostalgic Nanette
clones said yes. Debbie Reynolds brought Irene to St. Louis. When the rains came,

The inimitablel Angela Lansbury, in the 1974 production of GYPSY.

From The Muny Archive

Reynolds, whose greatest movie success was Singin’ in the Rain, broke from charac-
ter to serenade the drenched audience with the film’s title song. The Andrews Sisters
trouped out from New York with Over Here! The aging boogie-woogie singers were
supported by an array of young comers: Marilu Henner, John Travolta, Treat Wil-
liams and Samuel E. Wright, who would voice the character of Sebastian in Disney’s
The Little Mermaid.

Although these unique transfers were prized events, here was the new reality:
The once-deep Broadway well had dried up. Rodgers and Hammerstein were no
more; Lerner and Loewe had dissolved their partnership. The 1970s saw seasons
when the Tony Awards nominating committee could not fill a slate of four nomi-
nees. Some of the most influential new musicals – Hair and A Chorus Line, among
them – were not deemed Muny-suitable. Where was the Muny to find new product?
Serendipitously, star-studded revivals of past musical successes began to cross the
hinterlands, sometimes touring for a year before finally arriving in New York. With a
seating capacity of nearly 12,000, the Muny made for a lucrative stop.

During the 1970s, frequent tour-ist Carol Channing visited Forest Park twice:
in 1973 in Lorelei – and again four years later in Hello, Dolly! Angela Lansbury
came to town as Mama Rose in Gypsy, and Yul Brynner returned to his signature
role in The King and I. Zero Mostel finally showed up in a Broadway-bound revival
of Fiddler on the Roof. He was happy to reminisce about having spent his honey-
moon in St. Louis in 1944 while headlining at the Chase Club: “It was not one of
the places where I earned the reputation for being highly paid.”

The 1973 pre-Broadway tour of Gigi starred, among others, Maria Karnilova,
who was a premiere danseuse on this stage in the 1950s, long before she was trusted
with dialogue and won a Tony Award as Tevye’s long-suffering wife Golde in Fiddler
on the Roof, and former St. Louisan Agnes Moorehead, who regarded the Municipal

Robert Preston as Mack and Bernadette Peters as Mabel, in the 1974 production of

Jerry Herman’s tribute to the silent film era.From The Muny Archive

Theater as her “theatrical birthplace.” Another of the Gigi stars was not so sentimen-
tal. Alfred Drake, the original Curley in Oklahoma!, likened singing on a humid
night in Forest Park to “singing in mud.”

The next summer, the Broadway tryout of Mack and Mabel, starring Robert
Preston and Bernadette Peters, was directed and choreographed by Gower Cham-
pion. As he stood on the stage and watched the set go up, Champion recalled hav-
ing danced here in 1947 with his favorite partner, Marjorie Bell. Back then he was
Christopher Gower. Four months later he and Bell would marry and change their
names to Marge and Gower Champion.

Occasionally these musical tryouts exuded a sense of event. If, for instance,
in August 1976 you saw Patti LuPone (still three years away from Evita) take cen-
ter stage to chirp her way through Stephen Schwartz’s “Meadowlark” in The Baker’s
Wife, you knew you were witnessing something rare. As Joe Pollack wrote in the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, “Miss LuPone[‘s] portrayal marks her as the finest young talent
to touch the Forest Park stage in recent years.” When the ill-fated Baker’s Wife ex-
pired two months later in Washington, D.C., it somehow made Muny-going all the
more special. Once again Forest Park audiences were among the chosen few, privi-
leged to experience a choice theater moment denied to Broadway.

Pollack succeeded Post-Dispatch theater reviewer Myles Standish, who retired
at the end of 1974. Standish covered the Muny beat for nearly three decades. He
filed his first Muny review – The Merry Widow with former St. Louisan Marion Bell
– in July 1946. Eight months later, Bell captivated Broadway as Fiona in Lerner and
Loewe’s Brigadoon. By the 1970s Standish had observed the shifting Muny policy.
In a 1971 review of a summer package of Cabaret starring original Emcee Joel Grey,
Standish praised the “brilliant” production, but also warned, “The opera has had
[pre-packaged] shows so often this season that it is in danger of losing its identity.”

Tony Randall as Harold Hill, in The Muny’s 1974 production of THE MUSIC MAN.

From The Muny Archive

Perhaps. Or perhaps Muny management was simply acknowledging that
compelling changes in the marketplace had forced an evolving identity.

Here was another major change, one that had nothing to do with Broadway:
Stars began to tire of learning roles that they would only perform seven times (fewer,
if it rained). Stars have mortgages, too. It made more financial sense to Joel Grey in
Cabaret or to Gene Kelly in Take Me Along to tour all summer in the same show.
Do audiences really care where Angela Lansbury rehearsed? On the other hand,
when those same stars arrived in Forest Park on Monday morning, weary after a
week-long engagement in Indianapolis or Atlanta, just in time for a four-hour or-
chestra rehearsal prior to another Monday night opening, sometimes they didn’t
bother to learn about moving steel booms.

On the other other hand, summer tours often were assembled by top talent.
The celebrated director-choreographer Michael Kidd staged a summer package of
Bells are Ringing with Florence Henderson and Dean Jones. Michael Bennett did
the same for West Side Story. Morton Da Costa, who in 1952 and ’53 directed 22
musicals in Forest Park before directing The Music Man on Broadway in 1957,
dusted off his expertise to oversee a 1978 summer tour of The Music Man with Tony
Randall.

When the Muny realized that summer packages were the order of the evening,
it became obvious that – with a backstage lot rivaling those in Hollywood and more
than a half-century of theater producing experience – there was no reason to sit back
and wait for the telephone to ring. If packages made financial sense, what was to pre-
vent the Muny from sending out its own summer tours? So, beginning with a travel-
ing Carousel in July 1975 – Ed Ames played Billy Bigelow – the Muny went into the
packaging trade.

Red Skelton on the Muny stage again. Mr. Skelton appeared in the 1938 GENTLEMEN UN-

AFRAID, and returned in 1984 with his one-man show. From The Muny Archive

***

Back on August 16, 1971, the same night that Joel Grey opened in Cabaret
and Myles Standish worried that the Muny might be losing its identity, across the
river at the Mississippi River Festival, The Who played to a giant crowd of 32,123.
(The Beatles at Busch Stadium only played to 25,000.) The three-year-old Festival
on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville also was changing its
identity. Conceived as a summer home for the St. Louis Symphony, due to a bud-
get squeeze, the university withdrew its financial support. The Festival’s very future
looked precarious – until The Who appeared. Revenue from that one night guaran-
teed a 1972 season. Now symphony concerts were eclipsed by rock acts; more than
20,000 fans showed up to hear the Marshall Tucker Band; another 20,000 for the
Eagles.

It had not been forgotten by Muny management that back in 1968, during
that celebrated week when Pearl Bailey conquered Forest Park, her six-night run of
Hello, Dolly! was followed by a Sunday night performance with Herb Alpert and the
Tijuana Brass. Here was the kicker: Although Pearl Bailey made Muny history, more
fans (11,832) turned out for Herb Alpert than for any of the six nights of Dolly! The
Muny chose to follow the Mississippi River Festival model. Thus, throughout the
1970s, the Muny identity was expanded to include a touch of Las Vegas.

Red Skelton got things rolling in 1970. He first appeared here in 1938, in the
world premiere of Gentlemen Unafraid, a new operetta by Jerome Kern and Oscar
Hammerstein II. Throughout the 1950s Muny manager Paul Beisman sought to lure
the comic back to town, but now that Skelton had a persona, he no longer wanted
to play a character. Instead he returned for one night in June 1970 with a master
clown’s grab-bag of pantomimes and sketches. Skelton was followed by composer-en-
tertainer Burt Bacharach, who was followed by pop singer Engelbert Humperdinck.

A publicity shot for Sonny and Cher, and their 1972 concert.

From The Muny Archive

An eclectic mix in 1971 included Glen Campbell, Diahann Carroll (her front
act was John Denver), Jim Nabors, Jimmy Durante and Robert Goulet. Nabors
returned in 1972, as did Pearl Bailey, who was back in Forest Park for the third time.
In ’71 she made a repeat visit in a summer tour of Hello, Dolly! The 1972 season
opened with Carpenters. (Two summers earlier, as the warm-up act for Burt Bacha-
rach, Richard and Karen were The Carpenters). Sonny and Cher were booked for
a Friday and Saturday night in mid-July. An 11 p.m. performance had to be added
on Friday night to accommodate the demand. According to Dick Richmond in the
Post-Dispatch, their front-act, comedian David Brenner, “was funny once he got past
the bathroom jokes.” Mitzi Gaynor, whose Las Vegas nightclub act played for a full
week in 1975, also included her share of double entendres, explaining, “A little trash
never hurt anyone.” Maybe this too was part of what Myles Standish meant when he
warned of the Muny’s loss of identity.

***

After 10 seasons as Muny general manager, Willie Zalken retired on Janu-
ary 1, 1975. For the first time, the Municipal Theatre Association board of directors
chose one of its own to run the operation. Zalken was replaced by Edwin R. (“Bill”)
Culver III, who had served on the Muny board for more than 30 years.

Born and raised in St. Louis, he attended John Burroughs and the Culver
Military Academy, which was founded by his great-grandfather. Twenty-two-year-
old Culver was a senior at Cornell when America entered World War II. Because of
his ROTC training at the Academy, Culver joined the war as a second lieutenant.
In North Africa he served as an aide to Major General Harold Bull. When Gener-
al Dwight Eisenhower transferred from command of the Mediterranean Theater of
Operations to take charge of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary

Edwin R. (Bill) Culver, Muny General Manager.

From The Muny Archive

Force) and plan the invasion of Europe, he took General Bull with him.

General Bull took Lieutenant Culver with him.

In fall 1943 now-Captain Culver was rewarded with a rare assignment. He
became one of two American liaisons to Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery,
commander of British ground forces – and perhaps the single greatest thorn in Ei-
senhower’s side. Eisenhower charitably described Montgomery as “a good man to
serve under, a difficult man to serve with, and an impossible man to serve over.” In
less charitable moments, Eisenhower characterized Montgomery as “a psychopath.”
Culver’s assessment was more circumspect. “Monty was a legend to his soldiers in
the ranks,” he said, “but the higher up you went in his command, the less favored he
was. When you reached the British officers directly below him, he could be extremely
difficult.”

Culver mostly spent the war years as a witness: “It was a remarkable period
of my life. I was allowed to be in a very small room while some of the greatest deci-
sions of World War II were being made. At 5 a.m. in the morning I watched General
Eisenhower listen to everyone’s advice on whether or not to delay the D-Day inva-
sion from June 5 to the 6th, because of the weather – and then I saw him make that
momentous decision.

“I got to know General Eisenhower, and especially his chief of staff, ‘Beetle’
Smith, pretty well. They had to make incredibly difficult decisions, and they needed
the most reliable information possible. What most impressed me about them was
their total lack of ego. Montgomery, on the other hand, was a complete egocentric.
The only guy who ever came anywhere near matching Montgomery’s ego was Gener-
al [George] Patton. To watch those two vying with each other was quite a show.”

Edward Greenberg, Muny Executive Producer and Director.

From The Muny Archive

In May 1945, as the war in Europe neared its end, Major Culver and a Brit-
ish officer were flown behind German lines to escort Nazi General Alfred Jodl to
SHAEF Headquarters in Reims, France, to sign the surrender treaty. Private citizen
Culver returned home in September 1945. He was elected to the Municipal Theatre
Association Board of Directors in 1954 and became the association’s 11th president
in 1967. Effective January 1975, he was the Muny’s fifth general manager.

Although Culver had been around the Muny for decades, this was a new expe-
rience. His life had not prepared him for a career in the theater –yet in a way it had.
Now Culver was commander-in-chief, and he functioned as he had observed Gener-
als Eisenhower and Beetle Smith behave. “When I run into problems,” Culver told a
reporter, “and I will, I won’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call for whatever help
I need. I won’t hesitate to say, ‘Look, I don’t know how to handle this thing. I don’t
know what we’re going to do about it.’” Mostly he called Ed Greenberg and Robert
Hyland, general manager of radio station KMOX, who had been president of the
board of directors from 1969-1973.

There were the occasional problems, to be sure. Take Kismet, for instance.
Hyland had put the Muny in touch with William Conrad, star of the long-running
CBS-TV detective series Cannon. Conrad, who was gifted with a robust baritone
singing voice, wanted to tackle The Most Happy Fella. (“Here at the Muny, we
would never say we want to do The Most Happy Fella,” Culver explained. “We al-
most always select the star before the show.”) Alas, Conrad could not wedge The
Most Happy Fella into his schedule. But at Culver’s urging, Greenberg kept talking
to him, and in 1977 Conrad said he’d like to play Hajj, the poet-beggar, in Kismet.
Conrad could only free up three weeks. Hence, Culver scheduled a week of rehearsal
followed by a week each in St. Louis and Kansas City. Greenberg signed Muny favor-
ite Hans Conreid to co-star.

Len Cariou, in The Muny’s 1977 production of KISMET.

From The Muny Archive

In late May Conrad suddenly pulled out, and then Conreid also cancelled.
What do you do now? “Improvisation,” Greenberg answered. Through sheer legerde-
main, he managed to replace William Conrad with Len Cariou (still two years away
from Sweeney Todd). George Rose, who had just won the Tony Award as Alfred P.
Doolittle in My Fair Lady, took over for Hans Conreid. So things worked out pretty
well. In the Post-Dispatch, Joe Pollack wrote that Kismet “showed that the Opera
really can do a show all by itself, and do it well.” But producers grow gray hair from
such experiences.

As the decade drew to a close, Culver appraised the enduring institution over
which he presided. At the end of 61 seasons, attendance was closing in on 40 mil-
lion. For every locally-produced Kismet or Oklahoma! – which even in its sixth in-
carnation was the best-attended production of 1978 – the Muny was importing four
package shows. At the end of the ’78 season Culver told Joe Pollack, “Chances of our
being a full-time production company are slim.”

A more intriguing option would be to transform the Muny into a year-round
operation. But where to present shows indoors? Culver considered Kiel Opera House
and the American Theater. Then there was this: In March 1978 the Fox Theater on
Grand Boulevard closed and was sitting vacant. If – and it was a huge if – the Fox
could be restored to its former glory, maybe that former movie palace would serve
the Muny’s
needs.

Too soon to tell.

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