October 20, 2009
 

CHAPLIN: A Memory As Entertainment

"How fast can you write a show?" he bluntly asked after shaking my hand. "When do you need it?"  Lee and I said in chorus without thinking. The question came from producer Don Gregory on a hot summer Manhattan day as we stood in the doorway of a plush suite in the Waldorf Towers. So began the longest hurry-up-and-wait musical ever conceived.

On my way to that first meeting, I kept wondering what kind of morons were making a musical about a man who was famous for being silent.

As the story goes, Broadway producer Don Gregory and the inimitable [insert other adjectives here] Anthony Newley had decided to collaborate on a musical about Charlie Chaplin; Newley was to write and direct the show. Soon, ego loomed and Newley decided to star as Chaplin as well. Don wisely nixed that notion and a war of musicals commenced. Newley stormed off to create his own vehicle featuring an age appropriate Chaplin, and Gregory hired Emmy award winner Ernest Kinoy to create a script about a young Charlie. Lee and I came to Don's attention since we did indeed write quickly and were represented by Kinoy's agency, William Morris. It didn't hurt that Rodgers & Hammerstein had just brought us into the family (a first at the time) with a publishing deal, and "Shine" was getting a lot of the ever-desired "buzz." 

Ernest quickly began explaining details of plot and whimsy that would guide the concept, how specific film moments would be subtly pre-referenced in biography (Dixie-boy Anderson had never seen a Chaplin film in its entirety), adding hints of psychology and mentioning authentic period songs that might help us, and revealing the stunning commedia connection. Don interrupted, "I want a tune like 'Smile'," turning to glare in my direction. "When can I hear it?" My thoughts were fixed on the fact there wasn't any food in these swanky digs. I thought we were going to have lunch. I told them I'd take a walk and come back in an hour with the tune.

From where that damn tune came, I don't know. Maybe it was hunger. But somewhere along Lexington Avenue I found it. Something Ernest said -- a simple melody that a mother could hum to a sleepy child, a concertina could breath in and out on a lonely street, and a searching man could never get out of his head.
A big order.

Don loved it (still does) and we were hired and the best of times and the worst of times where ahead of us. Years later, Chaplin's daughter saw the show and admired it a lot. At dinner, I nervously asked specifically about the tune; would her daddy approve? She smiled and whispered, "He would recognize it."

"Chaplin" is a beautiful but admittedly challenging musical and, as I discovered in late 2007, perhaps better understood by the Europeans where Charlie is still revered and his films enjoyed. Yet the show is written by Americans, years before the now familiar Cirque de Soleil productions and it remains a fascinating evening of biography, theater, music and comedic history. I'm proud to be a part and of the simple recurring tune that laces it all together and ties it in a bow. Act One opens with Charlie merely whistling it as street musicians play, and the show concludes on a choral reprise during the grand transformation to "the tramp" in the final moments. But my Southern roots long for a Nashville version, a country ballad with a familiar accent, but Chaplinesque nonetheless ... someone who is lost, who has lost and keeps sadness at bay with a never-ending childhood game of "Pretend" ... a song my mother might have sung to me as a child some long ago Louisiana night.

© Roger Anderson and Lee Goldsmith  e-mail racomp@aol.com for more information.