The Muny Saga: 1960-1969

The souvenir program cover from The Muny’s world premiere of the stage version of
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS.

Clang, clang, clang went the trolley – twice a night, for eleven nights. True,
in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis Judy Garland only sings “The
Trolley Song” once. But this tuneful compendium of clangs, dings, zings, chugs,
bumps and thumps had become such a classic that when John Kennedy and his team
mounted a stage adaptation as the first Muny production of the new decade, they
reprised the song. Audiences couldn’t get enough of Esther Smith and her trolley.
Meet Me in St. Louis was such a natural fit with the outdoor stage, the only lingering
question was: Why did it take till 1960?

This nostalgic evening of high-starched collars and high-topped shoes felt
personal. Yes, in November 1944 the world premiere of the eagerly-anticipated mov-
ie also was held, to borrow a phrase from Esther, “right here in St. Louis.” But the
Muny world stage premiere occurred right here in Forest Park, directly adjacent to
the same hallowed ground where for seven months in 1904 the Louisiana Purchase
Expedition dazzled more than 20 million visitors.

Kennedy and his crew knew how to dazzle, too. “And they did it with a flour-
ish and a flair for showmanship seldom equaled, never excelled in the entire history
of the Muny,” extolled St. Louis Globe-Democrat theater reviewer Herbert L. Monk.
Both before and after the performance, intrepid musicians who had rowed over
to the Nathan Frank bandstand in Pagoda Lake serenaded the crowd with vintage
tunes. Attendees were given balloons and souvenir fans commemorating the World’s
Fair. During the Fair sequence, fireworks were set off at four different locales around
the theater’s perimeter, providing audiences with an immersive pyrotechnic expe-
rience. On opening night, author Sally Benson and composers Hugh Martin and
Ralph Blane arrived at the Muny in a horse-drawn cab like the one that carried the
Smith family to Forest Park onscreen.

“It would all have done credit to a circus,” reviewer Monk continued, “indeed,

Native St. Louisan and Muny favorite Mary Wickes.

was not unlike one.” Such praise must have warmed the heart of Muny manager Bev
Kelley. Circus sawdust lined his veins.

The appealing cast featured “pretty, perky” Peggy King, late of TV’s George
Gobel Show, as Esther and popular Muny alum Virginia Gibson as older sister Rose.
Mary Wickes played Katie, the irascible family cook. Wickes’ dressing room was
dominated by a large trunk, upon which the initials A. L. were monogramed. There-
by hangs a tale:

Back in 1931, the Municipal Opera acting ensemble included Archie Leach,
a 27-year-old charmer from Bristol, England, by way of New York. An established
ritual among new Muny actors was to make a pilgrimage down to Washington Ave-
nue to purchase an elaborate wardrobe trunk (Leach’s sported a special compartment
for a silk top hat) from the renowned Herkert & Meisel Trunk Company, “Largest
Baggage Manufacturer in the West.” At season’s end Archie had to rush back to New
York for a Broadway show. Perhaps hoping that he would return to the Muny next
summer – for he had reveled in the experience – Leach left his trunk in the care of
Clifford Newdahl, an actor in the company.

Newdahl befriended Mary Wickenhauser, a recent Washington University
graduate who aspired to become an actress. The trunk was stored in the attic at the
Pershing Avenue home of Mary’s parents. After Newdahl died at a young age, Mary
(now Wickes) took possession of the trunk that technically belonged to Leach (now
Grant, as in Cary). Grant, alas, never returned to the Muny. But even if he had,
it’s unlikely that he could have retrieved what was rightfully his. Wickes loved that
trunk. “You could drop it from a twentieth floor window and it would be fine,”
she bragged. For several decades she lugged it to theater dressing rooms through-
out America. Every time the trunk returned to Forest Park, it was as if it had come
home; as if, ever so briefly, a part of A. L. was vicariously restored to his former hap-

From the world premiere of the Fran and Rocco Landesman’s MOLLY DARLING.

py surroundings.

***

With St. Louis so focused on the June 9 premiere of Meet Me in St. Louis,
newspaper readers could be excused for overlooking a brief story relegated to page
17 in that evening’s Post-Dispatch. The article reported on a talk given at McDonnell
Aircraft Company by Kurt Stehling, a scientist with the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, to the local chapter of the American Rocket Society. Stehling
predicted that within 10 years a man would land on the moon – but the NASA sci-
entist could not foresee whether that man would be an American or a Russian.

***

The Muny got back into the world premiere business in a big way in the
1960s. Seven shows were heralded either as world premieres, world stage premieres,
world outdoor stage premieres or even “first time anywhere.” But beginning with
Meet Me in St. Louis, all seven were cut from the same cloth: They were untested of-
ferings seen first by audiences right here in Forest Park. Five of the seven were adap-
tations of motion pictures; two were original.

Molly Darling in 1962 attempted to replicate that wholesome era depicted in
Meet Me in St. Louis. Set in 1899, scenes played out in such locales as Forest Park
and the Mississippi River levee under Eads Bridge. Colorful costumes veritably
“popped” against Paul C. McGuire’s striking black and white sets, which were de-
signed in the manner of period pen-and-ink drawings.

If Molly Darling owed a debt to Meet Me in St. Louis, I Dream of Jeanie in
1963 was beholden to Show Boat. The idea originated with former manager Paul

The Muny’s world premiere production of Michael Todd’s AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS.

Beisman, who suggested to Post-Dispatch reviewer Myles Standish that the Muny
would welcome a show that celebrated the enduring music of Stephen Foster.
Standish took the bait. His fictional plot accompanied Foster on a song-filled steam-
boat journey from Memphis to New Orleans.

Calamity Jane in 1961 was an adaptation of the spunky 1953 Warner Bros.
musical. Tony Award-winning actress Edie Adams played the brash title role charac-
ter created onscreen by Doris Day. Calamity Jane introduced audiences to the new
16-1/2 ton steel “booms” that moved scenery electronically from the offstage wings
to center stage. As conceived by art director McGuire and designed by Sverdrup &
Parcel and Associates, the two 72-foot towers were intended to shave several minutes
off each production.

The booms – indeed, all the Muny’s vast resources – were put to the test
during the world stage premiere of the 1962 season opener, Around the World in 80
Days. Based on the much-ballyhooed movie that won five Academy Awards, the
production featured a gondola balloon that rose – if not over the Pyrenees – at least
into the night sky. In the India sequence, a 6,100-pound pachyderm named Tina
lumbered across the stage. (As insurance against Tina’s diva temperament, an under-
study named Margaret was chained to a stake outside the backstage entrance.) When
a Pacific Ocean steamer ran short of fuel, the intricate vessel designed by McGuire
came apart in 100 separate pieces that could be stuffed into the furnace. Suave star
Cyril Ritchard proclaimed this the “most stupendous” show in which he had ever
appeared.

Critics concurred. Myles Standish observed in the Post-Dispatch that the
“spectacular” musical was “probably the biggest and most opulent production in the
44-year history of the theater.” Standish suggested that designer McGuire “should
have been taking bows with the cast at the end.” Margaret J. Brink added in the

Richard R. Berger, who served as The Muny’s managing director from 1937 through 1943.

Globe-Democrat, “One wonders how the lavish production could be staged except in
an open air theater of vast proportions.”

One also might ask how Around the World could be staged without the experi-
ence and acumen of productions manager John Kennedy, who in 1962 was serving
his 19th year at the helm.

Kennedy was fourth-generation theater. His great-grandfather ran a company
of traveling players in Ireland. His grandmother, who emigrated to America in 1865,
acted with John Barrymore and Edwin Booth. Young Jack, who was born in 1898,
began to tour with his family at six months. In his teens he sang in such Romberg
operettas as The Student Prince. He then stage-managed on Broadway for Irving Ber-
lin and Kaufman and Hart. In 1942 productions manager Richard Berger brought
Kennedy to St. Louis to direct. During the next two summers he staged 22 shows,
including the premiere of The Wizard of Oz. Berger moved on to Hollywood after
the ’43 season, and Kennedy moved up. According to Myles Standish, when John
Kennedy became productions manager, “That began the modern era at the opera.”

The ink had not yet dried on his new Muny contract when Broadway impre-
sario Michael Todd hired Kennedy to direct Mexican Hayride, the latest Cole Porter
musical. In spring 1944, Kennedy returned to produce his first Muny season buoyed
by the confidence that comes from having a hit show running on Broadway. The
following winter Todd hired Kennedy for Sigmund Romberg’s Up in Central Park,
an even greater success.

The Forest Park stage never intimidated Kennedy. Nor was he daunted by an
84-night season that lasted from Memorial Day to Labor Day. He always sought
a special touch that would be unique to the Muny, like using the Adams Six Pony
Hitch of matched dappled Shetlands to pull the coach in Cinderella. Or having the

Rosalind Nadell, Walter Cassel, and Irene Jordan, in The Muny’s MADAME BUTTERFLY, 1960.

St. Louis Hawks basketball team play an impromptu ten-minute game in Wish You
Were Here. Or flying a real helicopter over the stage in Superman. Or borrowing a
steam towboat chime whistle from the Missouri Historical Society to add authentic-
ity to Show Boat. When that whistle let loose with its shrill, piercing shriek, everyone
for miles around knew that the Cotton Blossom was back in Forest Park.

Tall and lean, Kennedy emanated an aura of authority. He rarely raised his
voice, but if he did, you did not want to be the object of his ire. During the off-sea-
son, young people from the Muny choruses passing through New York were always
welcome to use the Kennedys’ guest room. John and his wife, actress Mary Steven-
son, lived at the Lincoln Center Towers, a convenient locale from which Kennedy
could indulge his favorite passion: He attended every production at the Metropolitan
Opera.

In 1953 he persuaded Beisman (who persuaded the board of directors) to
schedule Bizet’s Carmen at the opera-deprived Muny Opera. With Metropolitan Op-
era contralto (and St. Louis-reared) Jean Madeira in the title role, the English-sung
opera was a surprise hit, the third best-attended of the summer’s 11 offerings. Kenne-
dy repeated Carmen in 1959 and staged Puccini’s Madam Butterfly in 1960.

Madam Butterfly was followed by the revival of an obscure musical titled
Knights of Song. The production revealed much about the kind of man Kennedy was.

To back up: In March 1938, Oscar Hammerstein saw Knights of Song, a new
show at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. The “knights” were those Victori-
an-era purveyors of comic opera, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. This story of
their strained collaboration provided ample opportunity to perform their most
memorable songs. Hammerstein and former Muny productions manager Laurence
Schwab promptly obtained the rights, re-cast with professionals – Nigel Bruce, best

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

known as Dr. Watson in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, played Gilbert
– and persuaded the Muny to add their Broadway-bound show to its schedule. The
“professional world premiere” in August 1938 was cheered by local audiences and
critics alike. “It is destined to be one of the popular successes of the season,” wrote
Charles C. Clayton in the Globe-Democrat, “[and] appears ready for its New York
appearance.”

But destiny can be cruel. Two months later Knights of Song opened on Broad-
way, closed after 16 performances and was promptly forgotten.

In 1954 Kennedy re-introduced Gilbert and Sullivan to Forest Park after a
17-year absence. The Mikado starred that supreme Gilbert and Sullivan interpreter,
Martyn Green, who soon became a Muny favorite. In November 1959 Green’s left
leg was crushed in an elevator accident in a Manhattan parking garage. The leg had
to be amputated below the knee.

As Green lay in his hospital bed, fearful that he might never act again, Ken-
nedy appeared at his bedside and extended an invitation to return to St. Louis. “He
gave me a tremendous lift,” Green said. Kennedy knew precisely the proper showcase
for Green: Knights of Song. Nine months later, as William Gilbert, Green cavorted
through a “greatest hits” inventory of Gilbert and Sullivan standards. “The Munici-
pal Opera is fortunate indeed to have on its stage this valiant man and accomplished
artist,” Margaret J. Brink wrote in the Globe-Democrat. “Martyn Green’s eloquent
performance was incomparable.” A reinvigorated Martyn Green continued to thrive
onstage for the next 15 years.

Meanwhile, in the 1950s Broadway producer Michael Todd extended his reach
to Hollywood. He premiered Around the World in 80 Days in the winter of 1956,
married Elizabeth Taylor in February 1957 and in March picked up the Academy

Discussing the world Premiere of AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, from left:
John Kennedy, F. Beverly Kelley, Michael Todd, Jr. and orchestrator Phil Lang.

Award for Best Picture. Twelve months later Todd was killed when his plane, Lucky
Liz, crashed in New Mexico. Mike Todd, Jr. became the sparkplug behind the mov-
ie’s musical adaptation. He turned to John Kennedy, who had directed his father’s
two longest-running Broadway musicals. Kennedy, knowing that he would need an
enlarged budget for such an extravagant undertaking, turned to Muny manager F.
Beverly Kelley.

***

Of course Kelley found the money. He was still relatively new as the manag-
er, but already he knew that one of the Muny’s foremost purposes was to champion
king-size productions. Kelley himself had an even more specific purpose: He was
there to “right” the ship.

Since the summer of 1952, which played to more than 723,000 people,
Muny attendance had shown a steady decline. You could blame it on the heat, the
rain, competition from TV. There was always plenty of blame to go around, but Kel-
ley was not hired to play the blame game. “To just sit back and mumble, ‘Municipal
Opera…Alone in Its Greatness,’ won’t do,” he said soon after he arrived. “That way
lies stagnation.” Kelley had come to St. Louis to get bodies in the seats, and that’s
what he did. His first season in 1959 played to 649,000 people. Five summers later
the Muny played to nearly 792,000, the largest total since 1950.

It helped that Kelley believed in the product. He once quoted Mark Twain to
the guarantors, confidently assuring them that he approached the new season “with
the calm courage of a Christian holding four aces.” Kelley held three aces: producer
Kennedy, scenic designer McGuire and musical director Edwin McArthur.

He was especially proud of their work on the Muny’s first West Side Story in

The Muny’s first production of WEST SIDE STORY, 1963.

1963. That electrifying 1957 musical had never played any St. Louis theater. After
the movie won 10 Academy Awards, Kelley persuaded the board that it was foolish
to continue ignoring West Side Story. John Kennedy assembled a cast of experienced
dancers from the Broadway production, the national tour and the movie. Then Kel-
ley found extra money so that the dance-heavy musical could rehearse for two weeks
rather than the usual one.

Tony Mordente directed, choreographed and repeated the role of Action,
which he also played onscreen. Mordente vowed to replicate the original Jerome
Robbins choreography as closely as possible. “West Side Story was built for an inti-
mate theater,” he qualified. “The Muny is a long way from being intimate. However,
for the first time I’m working with a set designer who understands the show.” West
Side Story became a new Muny staple.

At the same time, some of the older chestnuts continued to drop. In 1960
the Muny staged its seventh and final Robin Hood, which was its first offering back
in 1919. “We went into Sherwood Forest once too often and did not get out of the
woods,” Kelley acknowledged with a genial smile.

Sigmund Romberg’s The New Moon sailed its final voyage in the 1960s. Fare-
well to all those “stout-hearted men” who instilled Opera audiences with courage
during the uncertain nights early in World War II.

Kelley imported the Muny’s first “package” show. Mexican Holidays in 1962
was a spectacular evening of folk dances from the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
But because these were such prolific years in New York, Munygoers mostly enjoyed
a steady diet of Broadway hits: Bye Bye Birdie with Gretchen Wyler, Li’l Abner with
Virginia Gibson as Daisy Mae, The Unsinkable Molly Brown with Dolores Gray.
Edwin McArthur, who as a child piano prodigy had played at one of Mrs. Brown’s

Norwood Smith and Jacquelyn McDeever in The Muny’s 1962 production of THE MUSIC MAN.

Denver soirees, deemed Gray to be “perfect” for the role.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying had a local connection: The
Pulitzer Prize-winning musical is based on the best-selling book by St.Louisan Shep-
erd Mead. Len Gochman, the Muny’s first J. Pierrepont Finch, had been Robert
Morse’s Broadway understudy. He then starred in the role for more than a year in
Australia. Gochman specialized in looping “voice-overs” for television commercials –
an endeavor so lucrative that he turned down offers to repeat his acclaimed Finch at
summer theaters in Kansas City, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Milwaukee.

So why St. Louis? “I’ve been hearing about the Muny Opera for years,” the
New Yorker explained. “When I played Australia, one of the cast and a good friend
was Edwin Steffe, who worked here for years and years. He never stopped talking
about the Muny. He even carried pictures of the Muny! So the only place I wanted
to play How to Succeed was here. I lose money every day I’m away from New York,
but I just have this thing about the Muny.”

The effervescent debut of The Music Man in 1962 was one of the decade’s hap-
piest highlights. The Muny boasted that theirs was the largest Music Man ever put
on any stage. “239 people,” Bev Kelley lamented as he perused the bills, “maybe 200
too many.” On the other hand, he was quick to agree that the 1964 season, which
opened with the two-week debut of Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady and closed
with the three-week debut of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (seen
by more than 201,000), was a theater manager’s dream.

***

Esther, Tootie and the entire Smith family were back. The 1965 season
opened with a two-week return of Meet Me in St. Louis. On opening night a gen-

William “Willie” Zalken

tleman from Belleville was plucked from the crowd and informed that he was the
30,000,000th person to attend the Muny. (His wife was given an orchid corsage.)
The start of the 47th consecutive season, right here in Forest Park, felt status quo.

And then, midway through the second week, Bev Kelley was gone.

In hindsight, perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps Kelley was intended to be a
transitional figure, a temporary caretaker who could steer an objective new course.
Perhaps after six seasons his work was done. Thirty-year Muny veteran William Zalk-
en, who had been director of advertising and public relations since 1935, was named
acting general manager; in September the Municipal Theatre Association made the
job permanent.

***

Back in June 1950, when the Gateway Arch was still a pipe dream, Pres-
ident Harry Truman was persuaded to come to the St. Louis riverfront to dedicate
the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. That evening, the Municipal Opera was
presenting its first production of Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon.

Nearly a decade later, in June 1959 Mayor Raymond Tucker used a stainless
steel shovel to finally break ground for the Arch. That evening, the Opera was staging
its third and final production of Song of Norway.

Construction began on an August evening in 1961 as families were descending
on Forest Park for the Muny’s first staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
Although the Arch officially “topped out” in October 1965, for most St. Louisans
the Arch did not become a reality until they could ride to the top. On July 24, 1967,
when the tram’s north leg opened, a new phrase entered the St. Louis lexicon: “the

Rudolf Nuryev, appearing with The Royal Ballet, 1967.

top of the Arch.” That same night saw the opening of the Muny’s first Funny Girl.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was in rehearsals.

Peering west through the Arch’s tiny seven by 27-inch windows, maybe you
couldn’t see forever, but on a clear day you could see for 30 miles. And on an espe-
cially clear night you could see the illumination from stage lights that shone in For-
est Park. For nearly a half-century the city had been defined by the Symphony, the
Cardinals and the Muny. Now that definition expanded to include a genius exercise
in basic geometry that soared into the sky.

***
It was a summer for soaring. In a triumphant Muny first, William Zalken
brought the British Royal Ballet of London to town. They performed two nights
each of Swan Lake, Giselle and Romeo and Juliet. The company’s two magnetic super-
stars, Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn, who danced three of the six per-
formances, created a sensation. In summing up the heady week, Frank Peters (who
would soon win a Pulitzer Prize for his music criticism) wrote in the Post-Dispatch,
“There were the bugs and the humidity….But there was also an awareness of how
relaxed and comfortable the audience was, and how good the dancers looked under
the trees with a breeze rippling their costumes.” Maybe every generation has to redis-
cover the Muny, and maybe the ethereal Nureyev, Fonteyn and company helped to
make that happen all over again.

But behind the scenes, there were undercurrents of discontent. During that
same 1967 summer, Kennedy produced the recent Broadway musical, It’s a Bird…It’s
a Plane…It’s Superman. “We brought Bob Holiday, who played Superman on Broad-
way, to repeat the title role,” Kennedy recalled. “But some board members wanted to
know why I didn’t get Burt Reynolds. That summer we also did the Muny’s first Fun-
ny Girl. We had Marilyn Michaels, who played Fanny Brice in the national company.

Arno Selco as Prince Chululongkorn, and Ann Blyth as Mrs. Anna, in The Muny’s 1967
production of THE KING AND I.

But there were those on the board who wanted to know why we didn’t have Barbra
Streisand.

“The week after the Royal Ballet, we did On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
We signed a bona fide film star, Van Johnson, for $10,000. He got a chance to do
a movie, but his contract had a pay-off clause, so no loss. Then I signed Richard
Chamberlain, a TV superstar, for $10,000. He got a mini-series in London. So I
signed Stephen Douglass, a longtime Muny favorite, for $1,000. It was as if we
showed a profit of $19,000 before we even opened.”

The ’67 season ended with the Muny’s fourth King and I, starring Ann Blyth
and Pernell Roberts. Myles Standish praised the show as “superb, the best of the
season… everything was close to flawless.” On the Saturday afternoon before the
closing Sunday night performance, Kennedy attended a meeting in Zalken’s office to
discuss his contract renewal for 1968. Instead he signed an agreement of severance.

“Looking back on it,” Kennedy said years later, “I realize that the board of
directors was perfectly within its rights. There was no behind-the-scenes political
intrigue. But they wanted to try the star system. I’d been there 24 years and was
thinking of leaving in a year or so, anyway. It was the abruptness of the dismissal
which disturbed me. I would like to have stayed for one more season, which not only
would have been my 25th year as productions director, but also was the Muny’s 50th
anniversary. But those St. Louis memories are the happiest of my life.”

So many memories! On this great stage John Kennedy produced and/or direct-
ed 276 productions of 147 different musicals. No other director in America could
approach that record. Nor, in Kennedy’s opinion, could any other outdoor theater
approach the Muny. “No theater in America can stage the closing scenes of South
Pacific as well the Muny can,” he claimed. Among his more recent shows, “Camelot

Ethel Merman, in The Muny’s 1968 production of CALL ME MADAM.

with Pernell Roberts was a great satisfaction. 110 in the Shade with Gretchen Wyler
was better than the Broadway production. And of course, nobody can touch Dolores
Gray in Can-Can. I’ve always thought she was one of the great musical comedy per-
formers of our day.”

Goodbye, Mr. Kennedy. You had an amazing run.

Kennedy was succeeded by Glenn Jordan, who proceeded to clean house. Mu-
sical director Edwin McArthur was released in December. Stage director Dan Eckley,
who had been with the Muny for 18 years, was let go. The choreographers were out.
Johnny Peters, for a dozen years the general stage manager, was gone. Scenic designer
Paul C. McGuire’s contract had another year. He was dropped after the 1968 season.
The Muny was starting over.

***

To prepare for the gala 50th anniversary season, all 12,000 seats were re-
placed; after 19 years, they had taken a lot of wear. (Seating capacity was reduced by
about 500.) The revolving stage was rebuilt. Wooden benches in front of the theater
were replaced with limestone.

Among the season highlights, John Raitt repeated his 1954 Broadway role
in The Pajama Game and Ethel Merman reprised her 1950 performance in Call Me
Madam. Merman and co-stars Russell Nype and Richard Eastham, who also had
performed the show on Broadway, were reunited with their original musical director,
Jay Blackton. He had not stood in the Muny orchestra pit since 1942, the year Oscar
Hammerstein stole him away to conduct Oklahoma! Merman at the Muny was as if
to the manor born. As Myles Standish noted in his review, she “exploded all over the

The program cover from The Muny’s historic presentation of Pearl Bailey and Cab Callo-
way in HELLO, DOLLY!

huge Forest Park stage, and the audience loved her.”

How do you follow Ethel Merman? With theater history.

The day after the next week’s opening night, an editorial in the Post-Dispatch
enthused, “The event which took place at the Municipal Opera Monday night was
too overwhelming to be a stage show and too stunning to be classed as mere enter-
tainment. We can only describe it as a unique natural cataclysm…a once-in-a-life-
time phenomenon, like Halley’s Comet.”

Who was the object of all this hyperbole? The inimitable Pearl Bailey, who
strode into town in the guise of that other life-force, Dolly Levi, in Hello, Dolly! For
the first time ever, a hit musical interrupted its successful Broadway run to spend a
week in Forest Park. This unprecedented event was made possible by Dolly producer
David Merrick, a savvy former St. Louisan who understood that when something
happens for the first time in the history of the Broadway theater, that historic some-
thing is likely to be accompanied by lots of publicity.

The combination of the Muny and Pearlie Mae (as her friends called her – and
by the end of the first week in August 1968, she had made nearly 70,000 new friends
in St. Louis) was a match made in theater heaven. “I’ve seen a show or two in my
time,” Bob Goddard wrote in the Globe-Democrat, “but never have I been witness
to such instant rapport with an audience as Miss Bailey struck up the moment she
flashed onstage…. When she gets around to the actual ‘Hello, Dolly’ number in the
second act – well, sir, just call it Pandemonium.” With a capital “P” and that stands
for Pearl.

***
If the hypothetical question once was, “Who do we bring next week?,”

Ozzie and Harriet Nelson made the cover of the Post-Dispatch Pictures magazine, in
character for the world premiere stage production of STATE FAIR.

after a season of Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman and John Raitt, a more pertinent query
was: Who do we bring next summer?

You bring Richard Rodgers.

The 1969 season opened with the world stage premiere of an adaptation of the
1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein movie State Fair.

When Oscar Hammerstein succumbed to stomach cancer in August 1960, the
storied collaboration was over. But to fill a craving that would not be denied, their
1957 television special Cinderella was adapted to the stage and now so too was State
Fair, their only film score.

State Fair, which starred beloved television icons Ozzie and Harriet Nelson,
was choreographed by little-known yet standout 30-year-old Tommy Tune. (Anyone
who’s 6’6” tends to stand out.) In the years to come, he would return to the Muny.
But State Fair would be 66-year-old Richard Rodgers’ swan song visit. He played the
piano for the guarantors and attended the final rehearsals. On opening night he ap-
peared onstage to a standing ovation. Without Oscar towering beside him, Rodgers
seemed somehow incomplete. He would live another decade and compose the scores
for three more musicals. Only one of the three, Two by Two, would reach Forest
Park.

The 1960s was a decade of extraordinary and even cataclysmic events:
political assassinations ... escalating war in Southeast Asia ... the “British invasion”
led by the Beatles, which in turn re-invented the wheel of popular music. Yet in
Forest Park Rodgers and Hammerstein remained a constant in a changing world.
Throughout the decade their Muny productions continued to break box-office re-
cords. In 1966, the Muny’s fourth Oklahoma! played to 82,157 people – a statistic

Patricia Wise, in a costume test for The Muny’s 1969 SNOW WHITE, Disney’s world
premiere of a stage version of an animated film.

only 1,390 short of the one-week record set by The Desert Song in 1950. In 1969,
the opening night of the Muny’s fourth South Pacific drew a larger crowd than did
the much-heralded return of Nureyev & Fonteyn the week before. It was as if, when
performed under a starry sky in Forest Park, Rodgers and Hammerstein were forever.

***

There were two world premieres in 1969. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
closed the decade and marked the official introduction of Disney to the Muny. Dis-
ney’s first full-length cartoon was now the first Disney cartoon to be adapted to the
stage. Jay Blackton was back as the composer, orchestrator and musical director. Walt
had died in 1966. The Disney studio was represented at the premiere by, among oth-
ers, his older brother Roy, who confirmed that a second Disneyland, “a mammoth
creation in the wilds of central Florida,” would be completed within two years.

The summer of ’69 enjoyed many highlights. In addition to Rodgers and
Nureyev and Fonteyn and Dopey and Sneezy and Grumpy, the sensual Gretchen
Wyler undulated her way around Robert Horton in Kismet, Ray Walston repeated
his Broadway performance as Mr. Applegate in Damn Yankees and his movie Luther
Billis in South Pacific. Giorgio Tozzi sang the title role in The Most Happy Fella. The
show was “nothing less than brilliant,” Myles Standish wrote. “Tozzi is probably the
greatest basso ever to sing on the Forest Park stage, and that is saying a lot.”

Even as Tozzi was singing his heart out at the Muny, across the river in Ed-
wardsville, Illinois, rock icon Janis Joplin was spilling her guts out at the Mississippi
River Festival. Organized by the St. Louis Symphony and Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Edwardsville, the festival opened in June 1969. The aim was to provide the
symphony with a summer home. Classical music would alternate with rock, pop and
folk. In addition to Joplin, that first summer lineup included Joni Mitchell, Richie

The opening scene of The Muny’s 1969 production of MAME.

Havens and Joan Baez. During the next decade the success of the Mississippi River
Festival would steer the Muny into new directions.

But then, it was as if the entire world was being steered into new directions
– and one of those directions was up. At 3:17 p.m. on the afternoon of July 27,
1969 – nine years after a NASA scientist had predicted to a St. Louis audience that
a man would land on the moon within a decade – Apollo 11 set down on the Sea of
Tranquility. Nearly ten hours later, at 9:56 p.m., the whole world watched as Neil
Armstrong took one small step for man. You wanted to be in front of a television
set that night to witness the miracle of technology. Only 700 people showed up for
the Tchaikovsky program at the Mississippi River Festival. Yet, astonishingly, 8,000
people attended the Muny for the final performance of Mame.

Midway through Act One, in Vera Charles’ song “The Man in the Moon,”
actress Sheila Smith amended the last lyric. Instead of singing “The man in the moon
is a miss,” Smith belted, “The man ON the moon is a MAN!”

The audience erupted with cheering and applause. Once again – as at other
indelible historic occasions – after Charles Lindbergh returned from having flown
the Atlantic, when the Second World War came to a long-prayed-for end – the Mu-
nicipal Theater served as the cathartic Great Unifier. When the world was shaped by
profound events, right here in Forest Park was an embracing place to be.

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