The Muny Saga: 1990-1999

1990 1999

A FAMILY AF FAIR

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The terse announcement received scant attention. One month into the new
decade, on the last day of January 1990, on page four of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
under the heading: IN BRIEF REGION the third item in the column, titled “Muny
Gets New Executive Producer,” was the epitome of brief. Four meager sentences
stated that Paul Blake, “a producer-director of touring and stock shows for the last
three seasons and formerly artistic director of the Theatre Festival of Santa Barbara,
Calif.,” had been appointed to succeed Edward Greenberg as executive producer of
the Muny.

So, without fanfare or expectation, began a dramatic re-set in Forest Park.

With only one exception, during the last half-century all other Muny execu-
tive producers and production managers had served on staff for several years before
ascending to the top job. The new executive producer was an unknown quantity. But
if Blake was a stranger to the Muny, at least he knew something of St. Louis. Nearly
three decades earlier, when Blake was still a theater novice, he had come to town in
the guise of an old actor.

In March 1963, 22-year-old Blake was cast as the Old Actor in the St. Louis
premiere of the off-Broadway hit, The Fantasticks, the fanciful musical that had been
playing for nearly three years in Greenwich Village. The Fantasticks was the inaugu-
ral attraction at the Gateway Theatre, a new resident company that performed in the
former Gourmet Room on the lower level of the Park Plaza Hotel. The Fantasticks
ran for six weeks. “It was my first professional work,” Blake recalled decades later,
“and I got my Equity card through it.”

After the musical closed, Blake moved back to New York, and the Gateway
Theater soon moved to Gaslight Square, where it continued to produce plays for sev-
eral seasons. In 1969 Blake returned to St. Louis. Peter Sargent brought him to Web-

Tommy Tune and Ann Reinking, in a publicity shot for BYE BYE BIRDIE, 1990.
From The Muny Archive

ster College to teach at the fledgling Conservatory of Theatre Arts. “It was a great
year,” Blake later recalled. “There was a chance to do some directing, and the city
was so warm and open.” He spent the next five years in San Francisco at the Ameri-
can Conservatory Theater, then moved to Los Angeles, where eventually he began to
produce. Now, in 1990, Blake was back in St. Louis.

The new executive producer wasted no time in making his presence felt. Prior
to the first Muny auditions in March, a notation on the audition notice read, “Please
note that a policy of non-traditional casting (the casting of ethnic minorities or fe-
male actors in roles where race, ethnicity or sex is not germane) will be observed.” At
the start of his second summer, Monday night performances began to be signed. The
practice of interpreting shows for the hearing impaired continues to this day.

His debut season began with two tours: the Muny’s fourth West Side Story
and its second Jesus Christ Superstar. Blake’s first real test as executive producer came
with the third show, a Bye Bye Birdie that he assembled from scratch. For the male
lead, Blake cast former St. Louisan Bert Convy in what would be his Muny debut.
Thanks to his Emmy Award-winning turns as the host of various TV game shows,
Convy was a well-known celebrity, but he also flexed theater chops, having been
featured in the original Broadway casts of such musicals as Fiddler on the Roof and
Cabaret.

Alas, that spring Convy had to bow out due to an illness from which he never
recovered. In one of those “reach for the moon” moments, Blake offered Convy’s role
to Tommy Tune. Two decades earlier a little-known Tune was introduced to Forest
Park when he choreographed and acted in the world premiere of Rodgers and Ham-
merstein’s State Fair. Since then Tune had become a Broadway dynamo, winning
seven Tony Awards in four different categories: leading actor, supporting actor, cho-
reographer and director. Much to everyone’s delight, Tommy Tune accepted Blake’s

Denny Reagan
Photo by Jim Herren

invitation.

“I love it out here,” Tune enthused during rehearsal. “This is what theater is
all about. In New York there are so many other pressures that you forget the joy of
theater, which is the reason we’re in it.” Bye Bye Birdie was a joyous undertaking.
Tune and co-star Ann Reinking led a buoyant ensemble that included 60 teen-agers.
“If the style – and substance – of Bye Bye Birdie is an example of what Paul Blake is
bringing to the Muny,” reviewer Joe Pollack extolled in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
“happy days are here again!”

Blake’s next production, Cinderella on Ice, put a new spin – not to mention
spirals, crossovers and Axel jumps – on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
Olympic gold medalist Robin Cousins played the Prince. In order to make way for a
skating rink, Blake relegated the chorus to the wings and dispatched the orchestra to
the offstage prop room. His efforts were rewarded when Cinderella on Ice became
the best-attended show of the summer.

The new executive producer was on a roll.

***

Now add another component to the mix. After 17 seasons at the helm, in
September 1991, 71-year-old Edwin R. “Bill” Culver resigned as Muny president
and chief executive officer. He was succeeded by 39-year-old Dennis M. Reagan.

Reagan’s story is pure Horatio Alger. He started at the Muny as a “picker,”
collecting trash after performances during the Golden Anniversary season in 1968.
“It was just a neighborhood thing,” Reagan explains. “A friend of mine was on the
picking crew. So I came out and helped part-time with his section.” Two summers

Ann Miller appeared twice at The Muny, first in her ill-fated appearance in ANYTHING GOES
(1972), and again in SUGAR BABIES, 1984. From The Muny Archive.

later Reagan was running the picking crew. Then he moved into the office as a go-
fer, willing to do the most menial chores. If a closet needed cleaning, he cleaned it.
If marketing director Jerry Berger needed to get a story to the newspapers, Reagan
drove it downtown. He learned how to manage the payroll, worked evenings as stage
doorman and as a dresser. On that hot August night in 1972 when Ann Miller was
struck by the scenery boom, Reagan was dressing co-star Pat Paulsen. One Christmas
Day when the security guard did not show up, Reagan sacrificed his family holiday
to sit alone in the shack by the backstage gate and “watch the Muny.”

In January 1975, after he graduated from the University of Missouri-St. Louis,
Reagan took a position as a purchasing agent for a local manufacturing company
while continuing to work part-time in Forest Park. But 18 months later when the
Muny sought to lure him back full-time, Reagan leapt at the opportunity. “I missed
it,” he says. “To be at the Muny was to be involved with something incredibly spe-
cial.” In 1977 he was promoted to assistant general manager: “That was the job I
had aspired to. I used to think that if I could reach that level, I would have arrived.”
Fourteen years later he became the Muny’s new president and chief executive officer.

In less than two years – 21 months, to be precise – the 73-year-old Muny had
been entrusted to a new generation of leadership. Executive producer Paul Blake and
president and CEO Denny Reagan made for an odd couple: After having spent more
than half his life working in Forest Park, Reagan knew all the rules. As a newcomer,
Blake was eager to make his own rules. Out of this schism a re-invigorated Muny
was forged.

Reagan and Blake were in accord that the Muny’s future – indeed, its very
existence – was contingent on an ability to reclaim the past. They needed to return
to staging the kind of theater that could not be seen anywhere else in America. For-
tuitously, the Muny’s preoccupation as a presenter of indoor touring shows ended

A vintage B52 Bomber “buzzed” The Muny audience for the 1997 productions of
SOUTH PACIFIC.. Photo by Jim Herren.

in 1992 when the Fox Theater declined to renew its winter lease. Now Reagan and
Blake could channel all the Muny’s vast energies into putting a home-grown product
onto the mighty Forest Park stage.

“If you’re presenting tours, you’re at their mercy,” Reagan asserts. “But if we’re
producing our own shows, we can control the calendar. We can do the musicals we
want, when we want to do them, at the scale we want to do them.” (In most pro-
ductions of South Pacific, the audience learns through dialogue that Lt. Joe Cable
has just arrived on the island by plane. When, as the first production under the joint
stewardship of Paul Blake and Denny Reagan, South Pacific opened the 1992 Muny
season, a World War II B-25 Mitchell Bomber flew over the Municipal Theater
during an a capella rendition of the National Anthem by the Ambassadors of Har-
mony. No indoor South Pacific ever performed at that scale.)

And, Reagan might have added, the Muny could do musicals “with the actors
we want to do them.” Before Blake signed on as executive producer, he echoed the
admonition of former manager Paul Beisman by reminding the Municipal Theatre
Association board of directors that when a theater insists on casting stars, “it’s a diffi-
cult habit to break.” Blake preferred to emulate the approach of former productions
manager John Kennedy and assemble a loose resident company of gifted musical
theater performers loyal to the Muny.

South Pacific introduced Munygoers to two key players in Blake’s new floating
ensemble. Leslie Denniston made her debut as Nellie Forbush. During the next two
decades, the gracious Denniston would appear 18 times. Nat Chandler portrayed Lt.
Cable. Chandler would make eight appearances throughout the decade.

From the outset, Blake sought to strike a balance between welcoming home
seasoned favorites and introducing fresh faces. In Cinderella on Ice, former Muny

Gretchen Wyler, as the indomitable Dolly Levi, 1997. Photo by Jim Herren.

favorite Gretchen Wyler returned to Forest Park after a 21-year absence to ooze
delicious evil as the Wicked Stepmother. That same summer, for Lerner and Loewe’s
Brigadoon Blake teamed the returning Victoria Mallory with Muny first-timer Joel
Higgins. Mallory was the young Broadway veteran of such Stephen Sondheim mu-
sicals as Follies and A Little Night Music. Higgins, a graduate of Parkway High
School, used to sit in the free seats. More recently he spent four seasons on television
starring in Silver Spoons. The match worked, so the following summer Mallory and
Higgins were paired in Kiss Me, Kate. Next up, Magnolia Hawks and GayIord Rav-
enal in Show Boat, then Sister Sarah Brown and Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls.

Yet another face, fresh to Forest Park: In 1993 Donna Murphy played the
ill-fated Nancy in Oliver! Ten months later Murphy won the first of her Tony Awards
for her role as the doomed Fosca in the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical,
Passion.

But home-town talent and Muny veterans prevailed. In 1991 Tony Parise, a
St. Louisan who first danced on the Muny stage nearly two decades earlier in Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, returned to direct 42nd Street. Ingenue Peggy Sawyer
was played by Jeanna Schweppe, who first appeared on the Muny stage in 1976 in
Oliver! (Another local boy, Vincent Price, helmed that production as the cheerfully
villainous Fagin.) Gretchen Wyler starred as the bold and brassy Dorothy Brock. Lee
Roy Reams was back for the first time in 14 years as Billy Lawler, the role he created
on Broadway. “The Muny has done four productions of 42nd Street,” Joe Pollack
reported in the Post-Dispatch, “and this one was far and away the best.”

Six summers later, in 1997, Gretchen Wyler closed out her illustrious career
(which began in Forest Park in the early 1950s) as Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello,
Dolly! For her retirement from theater, Wyler was surrounded by Muny family: Jone-
al Joplin was Horace Vandergelder, the young lovers were played by Victoria Mallory

Mother and daughter Muny alumnae, Emily Loesser and Jo Sullivan. From The Muny Archive.

and Lewis Cleale.

The Wizard of Oz in 1992 was an even more literal family affair. To back up
a bit: In 1951 the third Muny staging of The Wizard of Oz featured 19-year-old Jo
Sullivan as Dorothy. In his Post-Dispatch review, Myles Standish wrote that Sulli-
van “was as cute as a dozen buttons.” Eight years later Sullivan married the gifted
Broadway composer Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed without Really
Trying). Now, in 1992, their daughter Emily Loesser made her Forest Park debut as
the Muny’s eighth Dorothy. Like mother, like daughter: Post-Dispatch reviewer Joe
Pollack wrote that Loesser “was as cute as a button and twice as bright.”

For those viewers who preferred a little cackle with their cuteness, the produc-
tion provided another delectable treat: Phyllis Diller made her Muny debut as the
Wicked Witch. The presence of the former housewife from Webster Groves (Diller
lived there from 1960-1965) made The Wizard of Oz the best-attended musical of
the summer – despite the fact that opening night was rained out! Only six perfor-
mances, and The Wizard of Oz still played to more people than did the musicals that
performed seven times. Diller exuded exuberance, both onstage and off. She arrived
at one press event riding on the back of a Harley. Three summers later she returned
as the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (no ice this time). Once again she drew huge
crowds, and Cinderella racked up the largest attendance of 1995. Decades later,
Diller told a reporter that her “fondest memories” of St. Louis were her two Muny
appearances in that “lovely park.”

Emily Loesser returned for two productions in 1993. She flew through the
title role in Peter Pan and closed the season as Laurey in Oklahoma! Loesser’s Laurey
was romanced by Nat Chandler’s Curly, while Jeff McCarthy (in his Muny debut)
brought menace to Jud Fry. Native Oklahoman Lara Teeter made his second Muny
appearance as high-stepping Will Parker.

Gemze deLappe appeared as a featured dancer in The Muny’s CALL ME MADAM (1954). She
returned to choreograph 16 productions between 1993 and 2009. From The Muny Archive

Sometimes performances are halted due to rain; rehearsals can be cancelled for
the same reason. Teeter retains a rare memory of an outdoor Oklahoma! rehears-
al that was curtailed by inclement weather. Nevertheless, choreographer Gemze de
Lappe continued to dance. For decades, the astonishing de Lappe had been a ver-
itable muse to choreographer Agnes de Mille. Now, a half-century after de Mille
dazzled the theater world with her striking use of movement in Oklahoma!, Teeter
watched in wonder as Gemze de Lappe performed all the roles in Laurey’s dream
ballet. “I stood in the rain,” Teeter said, “watching this beautiful woman dance that
glorious choreography. What a treasured moment.”

Blake loved to recreate incandescent Broadway musical moments on the Muny
stage. In 1991 he imported Onna White, who choreographed Jerry Herman’s Mame
on Broadway, to choreograph and direct Mame in a production that introduced
soon-to-be favorite Georgia Engel as the hapless Agnes Gooch. The following sum-
mer Joel Grey co-directed and reprised his Broadway triumph as George M. Cohan
in George M! In 1994 Albert Marre, the original director of Man of La Mancha,
repeated that task in a production starring the sturdy John Cullum. Larry Fuller, a
native of Rolla, who choreographed the original London and Broadway versions of
Evita, directed and choreographed Evita in Forest Park.

But no director or choreographer was more revered by Blake than Gemze de
Lappe. If she was here often, choreographing yet another Oklahoma! or The King
and I (she was the original masked villain King Simon of Legree in Jerome Robbins’
Act Two ballet “The Small House of Uncle Thomas”), this was because Rodgers and
Hammerstein continued to hold a special claim on Forest Park. After a record 15
Muny productions in the 1960s, audiences eagerly attended nine Rodgers and Ham-
merstein musicals in the 1970s and nine in the 1980s. Now, in the 1990s, the Rea-
gan-Blake regime staged yet another nine productions by the cherished team.

Ken Page returned to his hometown in 1994 to recreate his original Broadway performance in
AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’. Photo by Jim Herren

Good things were happening in Forest Park. Thanks to Nellie Forbush and
Emile de Becque and Laurey and Curly – not to mention some added help from
Eliza Doolittle, Dolly Levi, Danny Zuko and Tevye – on the eve of opening night in
1994 (The King and I with Leslie Denniston as Mrs. Anna and Robert Westenberg
as the King of Siam), Reagan announced that season subscriptions were at “all-time
record.” At the end of that same summer, Reagan confirmed that the Muny had en-
joyed the best nightly attendance since 1970.

The King and I was followed by Ain’t Misbehavin’, which gave Blake an excuse
to invite Ken Page back to town. Page had not appeared on the Muny stage for two
decades. He’d been off in New York acting in hit musicals like The Wiz, Guys and
Dolls, Cats and Ain’t Misbehavin’, a high-octane revue built around the music of
Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller. By now, Page had performed the show hundreds of
times on Broadway and off – sometimes way off, like in Paris. Would he want to do
the show yet again? (One never knows, do one, unless one asks.) Blake asked, and
Page allowed as how there’s always something to be said for showing the home-town
folks what you’ve been up to while you were away. When Blake asked who should
direct the production, Page requested choreographer Arthur Faria, who had been the
driving force behind the original revue. Faria was promptly hired, and Muny audi-
ences were treated to an Ain’t Misbehavin’ closely based on the original.

Back in 1974 while in the Muny singing chorus, Page enjoyed the thrill of be-
ing on the same stage with superstar Gene Kelly in Take Me Along. Years later, when
they met as peers, Kelly told Ken, “There’s nothing more charming than a big guy
who can move well.” Now Ken Page was the Muny headliner, struttin’ his stuff with
aplomb. As Patricia Corrigan wrote in the Post-Dispatch, “If you haven’t heard Page’s
‘Honeysuckle Rose,’ you know nothing of hothouse flowers.” Among Munygoers
there was a general concensus that in the future Ken Page should not stay away for so
long.

Joseph Cusanelli. From The Muny Archive

***

In early 1919, when an outdoor theater in Forest Park was but a fanciful
idea that needed to be sold to Mayor Henry Kiel, Max Koenigsberg (whose idea the
theater was) and comrade-in-fancy Arthur Siegel pitched the mayor a bevy of what
they hoped would be persuasive selling points: The fresh air in Forest Park would
provide a welcome change from the “smoke nuisance” that blighted downtown; such
an ambitious theater would reflect great glory on the city. Then there was this: Local
performers would not have to leave town to practice their trade.

From the very outset, the Municipal Opera did indeed provide performers –
especially young singers (many of whom did not know they were singers until the
Opera opened shop) – with incomparable training and experience. Throughout the
1920s, when the Municipal Opera’s ascending reputation was based on its 90-voice
singing chorus, most of those voices were local. In time, chorus-heavy operettas were
replaced by sleeker musical comedies. But if fewer choristers were needed, by then
there was a new need for area actors to fill out the Muny casts.

Actors like St. Louis born-and-bred Joe Cusanelli, who in the two decades
between 1943 and 1964 learned his craft in Forest Park. In March 1968 Muny-
trained Cusanelli became only the seventh actor to play Fiddler on the Roof ’s Tevye
on Broadway when he subbed for ailing Harry Goz, who – small world – spent the
summers of 1956-1958 singing at the Muny.

Actors like Jack Murdock, who played more than 30 roles between 1962-
1967. In 1963 Murdock set the town abuzz when, as the comic support in Briga-
doon, he committed an act of sheer larceny by ever-so-wryly stealing the evening
from television star Robert Horton. Two summers later Murdock was Merlyn in the
Muny’s first Camelot.

James Paul. From The Muny Archive

Actors like James Paul, who was born in Minnesota but spent his adult years
acting in St. Louis. Paul died in 1988 after having performed in 66 Muny produc-
tions over a span of 25 years. Among those roles, James Paul was the Muny’s third
Merlyn. Seven years later, in 1995, at the end of the week-long run of the Muny’s
sixth Camelot, Joneal Joplin (who – more small world – was playing Merlyn) presid-
ed over the dedication of a plaque on the concourse wall near the east entrance.

It is a simple plaque that reads:

JAMES PAUL
Actor

66 Muny Shows: 1964-1988
A True Gentleman of the Theatre

By honoring James Paul, the plaque also honors all those gentlemen and ladies
of the theater – Laura Ackermann, James Anthony, Michele Burdette-Elmore, John
Contini, Kari Ely, Gary Glasgow, Joneal Joplin, Jane and Rich Pisarkiewicz, Zoe
Vonder Haar, to name but a few, for it is a long, long list – without whom the Muny
could not exist, but who also, as actors plying their trade in St. Louis, are living
exemplars of why this unique theater received the imprimatur of Mayor Henry Kiel.
The Muny has afforded generations of local actors the opportunity to hone their
craft without having to leave town. If they do choose to go elsewhere, they go well-
trained.

***

Throughout the 1990s, Blake and Reagan pursued self-sufficiency. While
the productions during the first six seasons were mostly locally-produced, each of
those seasons contained at least one touring package: Hello, Dolly! with Madeline

Jerry Gallagher (Left) as Big Jule, and Bruce Adler (Right) as Nathan Detroit, in The Muny’s 2004
production of GUYS AND DOLLS. Photo by Jim Herren.

Kahn; two editions of The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, one featuring Sarah
Brightman. So there was a communal surge of accomplishment when in 1996 – for
the first time in a quarter-century – once again the entire Muny season was local-
ly-produced.

Among the highlights, Jesus Christ Superstar introduced Eric Kunze in the ti-
tle role. Kunze would go on to make a dozen Muny appearances. Christopher Sieber,
who portrayed Judas, would return to the Muny often in the 1990s before regaling
Broadway audiences as Sir Galahad in Spamalot and as pint-size Lord Farquaad in
Shrek The Musical. Christina Saffran had not appeared on the Muny stage since
1976 when, in 1995, Blake invited her to co-star with Lara Teeter in Singin’ in the
Rain. Now, one summer later, she was back as Mary Magdalene.

For the Muny’s sixth Guys and Dolls, Bruce Adler returned to the Muny for
the first time since 1984 to play Nathan Detroit. Adler continued to make Forest
Park his summer address for the next 11 years.

No wonder actors and directors loved coming to the Muny. Every visit was like
Old Home Week, an occasion for reunion. With as many as three shows in various
stages of rehearsal and performance at the same time, actors never knew who they
might encounter backstage.

Because the onstage product was rebounding, and because the original
Muny brand was so successfully being restored, it was time to look to the future. In
1996 Reagan initiated an ambitious-yet-urgent program to rebuild the infrastruc-
ture. “We’ve been putting Band-Aids on the theater for years,” he said. One board
member was blunter: “Even the concrete was crumbling.”

But Reagan’s ambitions exceeded concrete. If the infrastructure was to be

Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) backstage with his granddaughter Kaelin Sullivan during rehears-
als for THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1997. Photo by Jim Herren.

be upgraded, this was the ideal time to make the 78-year-old Muny relevant. Work-
ing in tandem with Paraquad Partners, which advises area organizations about
accessibility for those with disabilities, Reagan’s four-year plan included changes to
access ramps and a new design that would allow more disabled and non-disabled
family members to sit together. Muny personnel received in-depth training about
disability issues.

Because plans for the intended improvements extended far into the future, in
1996 Reagan negotiated the Muny’s lease with the city of St. Louis. “Because we are
in Forest Park,” he explains, “obviously our structure sits on city property. Through-
out its history the Muny operated on short-term permits with the city. Two years,
five years. I was able to negotiate a 35-year lease that assured the Muny’s existence
through 2030.” Reagan then supervised $25 million worth of long-overdue improve-
ments.

***

And so the decade drew to a close with a sense of rejuvenation and with
an emphasis on family, in all its various guises. In five of the decade’s ten years, the
annual “family” show was the summer’s most popular offering (Cinderella on Ice in
1990, Cinderella again in 1995, Peter Pan in 1998 and The Wizard of Oz in 1992
and 1997). Just as the 1992 Wizard had a wild drawing card in Phyllis Diller, the
1997 version was equally special. The Wizard was played by Bob Keeshan, beloved
by countless youngsters as television’s Captain Kangaroo. Although Keeshan only
rarely played roles other than the Captain, Blake offered him the opportunity to
share the Muny stage with his nine-year-old granddaughter, who lived in St. Louis
County. Thus, The Wizard of Oz became yet another Muny family affair. “Bob Kee-
shan was so perfect, he didn’t have to act,” said Ken Page, who played the Cowardly
Lion. “Captain Kangaroo was the Wizard.”

Emily Loesser and Eric Kunze, in the 1999 production of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS.
Photo by Jim Herren

The final musical of the decade was, aptly enough, the fifth staging of Meet
Me in St. Louis. During the Muny’s first 81 years, if any musical “spoke” to St. Louis
audiences, it was this adaptation of the classic 1944 MGM movie. In the 39 years
since its world stage premiere as the opening production of the 1960 Muny season,
the show had been tinkered with, though perhaps not improved. A Broadway version
in 1989 ran for ten months. Despite the casting of St. Louis-born George Hearn as
the head of the Smith clan, that Broadway staging did not evince an affinity for St.
Louis.

But in Forest Park Meet Me in St. Louis felt like a communal experience.
Paul Blake’s 1999 edition was infused with love of family. Emily Loesser was Esther
Smith. Loesser’s real-life mother, Jo Sullivan, portrayed her mother, and Loesser’s
real-life husband, Don Stephenson, played her brother. Muny favorite Eric Kunze
was the boy next door, and Georgia Engel ably filled Mary Wickes’ shoes as Katie,
the irascible maid. (Eighty-five year-old Wickes died in 1995.) The evening was
choreographed by the luminous Gemze de Lappe. The actors were even gifted with
a visit from Hugh Martin, who composed the indelible “Trolley Song,” “The Boy
Next Door” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Once again, audiences
responded. Meet Me in St. Louis was the second-most popular show of the summer,
eked out only by the rowdy teens at Rydell High School who populate Grease.

As 1999 drew to a close, the world was anticipating – some were even fearing
– the arrival of the millennium on December 31, 1999. Perhaps the first of many
renditions of “Auld Lang Syne” that year was sung, as it always is, four months ahead
of New Year’s Eve. After Meet Me in St. Louis played its final performance on Sun-
day evening, August 15, the Smith family onstage joined with the Muny family in
the amphitheater to ask if old acquaintance should be forgot.



On this particular night, the answer was self-evident. How could anyone for-
get this institution that had become a part of the city’s very fiber? One had but to
gaze at the night sky to know that the Muny was like nothing else under the moon.
One had but to scan the amphitheater where nearly 10,000 people were standing as
one to know that the bond between theater and community was too deep, the roots
too entrenched, to be forgotten. The re-invigorated 81-year-old Muny was eager to
greet the future, ready to welcome a new season, a new decade, a new century.

###