Cook chats with Lansbury at the reception after the screening.
"When they passed out talent, he stood in line twice," Carol Channing says of Herman in the documentary. She also says her title song as Dolly is "the greatest production number in the history of the theater."
Herman told museum members about the search for someone to play Mame. "Every woman in the musical theater who was breathing came and auditioned for it. There were some wonderful ladies, very talented, and nobody hit us in the heart." It was his idea to pursue Angela Lansbury, since he remembered her "absolutely astounding me with that voice" in Anyone Can Whistle. The producers were not so enthusiastic; one of them, Herman said, told him: "That's the woman who plays everybody's mother." But when Lansbury came to Herman's home to audition, "I opened the door and there stood this stunning lady in a mink coat…. I knew at that second, before we even started to talk, that I had found her."
Asked if he's going to write another show, Herman said, "I would love to, but I don't know…I feel too old." Then he revealed: "I'm working on the kids of mine that didn't become the world travelers. I'm working very hard on Mack & Mabel, and I'm going to try Dear World with a new book. I can spend my time very well making those kids healthy."
Lansbury with Cosmo queen Helen Gurley Brown, whose husband, David, produced Showtune.
Lansbury poses with Don Pippin, musical director of Mame, Dear World, Mack & Mabel and La Cage, who appears in the documentary.
Edwards and Herman during the Q&A.
"I did not write 'I Am What I Am' to make a political statement," Herman says in the film. "I was doing my job as a musical playwright." George Hearn (above, as Albin/Zaza) says La Cage "was more than a play; it was a social moment in America." In the doc, following a clip of him singing "I Am What I Am," Hearn reflects on the song's—and the show's—impact. "Theater can do things that you can't legislate, or preach, or make laws about," he says tearfully. "The theater can do this thing of getting into your heart."
Where would the American musical theater be without these three?!
They're all music makers: Barbara Cook, Jerry Herman, Don Pippin, Angela Lansbury.
Hearn photo by Martha Swope. All other color photos by Adrienne Onofri.
