Furthian Epigrams

Furthian Epigrams is a blog dedicated to collecting everything ever written about late playwright and actor George Furth. He was the librettist of Company (1970) & the musical adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along (1981), as well as The Act (1977), and wrote a handful of straight plays.

This blog has been running since September 7th 2020!

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A series of discovery

Over the past almost two years my focus has been on a project not about George Furth, but about Michael Bennett. I still can't yet get into much detail about what this project is, but a side quest came out of this work that was related to the topic of this blog: how was choreographer and director Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line) involved with George Furth's show The Act.

I've known for some time that Bennett was briefly involved with the show, but mostly from less than trustworthy sources and without much detail. Bennett was at one point the hottest director on Broadway, and of course anything with Liza Minnelli involved always equals plenty of poor quality, gossip-y nonsense that I had to sort through. So I decided to try to get as direct as I could get.

What's The Act?

First off, let me give you some context if you're not familiar with The Act (actually "The Act"). The Act is a show with a book by George Furth, and music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb. It originally premiered on Broadway in 1977, to fan excitement and critical failure, starring Liza Minnelli and directed by Martin Scorsese. Yes, that one! It's his (so far, I guess) first and only stage musical. Gower Champion was brought in towards the Broadway opening to fix entrances and try to make the show stand on Its feet, because, well, Scorsese didn't know what he was doing.

While there are about, say, 125 gay men on the Internet who will proclaim the show's brilliance, all because of their Queen Ms. Minnelli, the critical reviews were largely and extremely negative, and you could probably argue that it ruined George Furth's budding career as a librettist, especially as he was coming off so hot post Company and Twigs.

The show follows a nightclub act of a burnt out former movie star Mike Craig, and her relationship with her ex-husband, her musician friend, and (in the Broadway version:) her step daughter Molly. Later revisions of the script, those being the only ones that were ever published, changed things around.

Early On (1973-1976)

(Note: The Act's earlier titles include In Person and Shine It On)

In a description of the development of The Act, relating to a lawsuit around the show, Furth describes early development of The Act, first mentioning Marvin Hamlisch playing some of the score for Liza Minnelli in early 1973, followed by multiple meetings with Michael Bennett throughout October and November 1973, until he abandoned the project on November 4th. He mentions Bennett briefly agreed to the project as long as he received the "conceived by" credit, but then dropped it again.

It then seems that Hamlisch abandoned the project as well, around September 1975.

The first stuff from the moment, dated March 16th 1974, was a massive letter from George Furth to Michael Bennett, from Michael Bennett's papers at Yale. Now, it's way too long for me to post here, but here's a summary of what's relevant to this story:

1. Furth at this point had already been working on what became The Act for quite a while.

2. Furth wanted to pitch it to Bennett, and had been in touch with Bob Avian (Avian was Bennett's right hand man) attempting to send the show as it was to Bennett. Furth writes, "I hope you decide to do it, Michael. No one could do it better."

3. Furth expresses excitement about working with Marvin Hamlisch, but also expresses worry about being able to "hold onto" him.

4. Debbie Reynolds is name dropped as a potential star. Though Furth also appears to apologize about her behavior on her behalf to Bennett, which.... I really wish I knew what happened there!

Next, we go to Furth's records at the NYPL, here we find a letter from Michael Bennett, dated July 9th 1975, in it Bennett writes:

Dear George, I read the script and honestly feel that no matter how much you rewrite it Mary Martin is totally wrong for this. The woman has got to sing great, and I don't think that she is at that point in her life. Cloris Leachman is more suitable I think. Bobby and I have discussed it and I don't think that at this point we are interested in doing it....we love you, and keep plugging away. Love, Michael

Next, we find yet another long letter from Furth to Bennett in 1976, once again from the Michael Bennett papers at Yale. This letter is largely focused on apologizing to Bennett for any hurt feelings over the show not ending up his way.

The other thing I wanted to say it's something I always thought was really understood but now it's time to say it. It has to do with the whole notion of my objecting to your having "concept" credit. It really was an idea Marvin and I had discussed prior to your coming up with it. At the time all I had were lyrics sung by one singer and the only concepts open to us were a concert, an act or a recording session. If you remember before you told me the idea I told you it was probably a concert...and you said "close". And when Marvin called me from London that night to ask what the concept was I explained to him that although it was something we had thought of and not done that with you handling it it was something we could do.

Bennett's Visit (1977)

Post A Chorus Line, a show which notably got its title from the original title of Furth's play Twigs, and was composed by Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Bennett was asked to come in to help fix the struggling The Act while it was in previews in California.

Some sources claim this was George Furth's doing, others claim it was the producers who asked him. What I do know is that Bennett, alongside Ron Field, gave them a lot of notes! 5 pages of notes! They're labeled as "Michael Bennett's Notes on Shine It On" from July 20th 1977.

Most descriptions of Bennett's visits to The Act, like those in Kander and Ebb's book Colored Lights, say that Bennett was clearly high and that his notes were nonsense. The notes present in George Furth's records at the NYPL, were to me, rather reasonable, with a few exceptions. Furth writes at the top of the paper:

Note session... Pleaded to get these things acknowledged or in... Scorsese said he had his own thinking on all this and dismissed all Michael and Ron said.

Highlights in Bennett's notes include:

6. "After a while the audience stops trying to understand because they're not involved in the story"

17. She should go from 16 to 40. Change lights to change her age. Change hairdo - go to another color if necessary so it is not just Liza. She should be 40 years old at the top of the show

26. Need a stronger reason for her abortion. a) Bravery to have an abortion at 25 is my opinion. b) But have if for your first straight role and I'll be rooting for you to have an abortion.

60. Use Marvin Hamlish who only thinks he's worth anything for his talent or for amusement

63. "I need a job" is out of Chorus Line. Drop it.

64. Don't make Ted gay

Finally, returning to the Michael Bennett papers at Yale, the head of the Shubert organization, Bernard Jacobs, wrote Michael Bennett a thank you letter, dated November 11th, 1977:

Dear Michael: Your wonderful opening night message for the premiere of "THE ACT" meant more to me than anything I received from anyone. Survival is, indeed, the name of the game, but there's another name that can mean even more, and that's friendship and love.

Gee, I wonder what that opening night message was!

Conclusions

Ultimately, digging through all this stuff has been interesting, rewarding, and slightly agonizing. As I continue to research, I'm hoping I'll stumble upon more stuff that answers some of the gaps that still remain.

The majority of documents within the folder relating to The Act in Furth's records at the NYPL are reviews. There is seriously like an inch or two high stack of clippings of reviews, from the Chicago tryouts, the California tryouts, and the Broadway run. The vast majority of these reviews are extremely negative towards Furth, and numerous amounts of them compare the show to... A Chorus Line! So many, in fact, that we had to stop taking photos of them as there were quite literally too many. I'd never even thought of that comparison until I looked through all these, and now I can't unsee it.

Since Merrily opened on Broadway this blogs follower count has really shot up which is pretty crazy. It makes me feel a bit weird that I'm not particularly active here lol. George Furth summer is real, to me!!

Don't worry this isn't a "I'm archiving this blog" post. I actually would like to be more active here, as I am still sourcing weird Furth stuff, though my main focus right now is on Company, Twigs, and Precious Sons, fully because those are what interest me the most in this particular moment. My dear friends can probably tell you how utterly annoying I am about this 24/7.

If I was being smart about it I would post about merrily but whatever, who needs followers! That being said, Hi new merrily fans! Glad you are here. Consider checking out my merrily we roll along tag and feel free to send me things about the current production if you'd like, I'm not particularly engaged in it (sigh!)

This blog started out as just a way for me to share somethings I find interesting but now I see things I've grabbed here being used by other people on the Internet which is pretty crazy. I need to go back and fix the sourcing for some of my earlier posts -_-

I've been freelancing to pay rent and developing my own work as a writer which takes precedent to making weird posts about Furth's body of work. I'll get back to it eventually! It's very dear to me.

There's also that the Internet Archive, which is the only way I can effectively source a lot of my 1-3 sentence references to Furth (often in obscure, out of print, biographies and memoirs) is being targeted by Publishers (and let's be clear here, very short sighted Authors!) leading to 500,000 books being removed from their controlled digital library. If you can, consider supporting the Internet Archive's fight.