Pat O'Neill wrote to say, "It's probably worth mentioning that [Phil] Silvers did finally wind up in A Funny Thing…, if only in the film version." He wound up in the stage version, too. In 1971, a few years after the dreadful movie adaptation in which he played Marcus Lycus, Silvers starred as Pseudolus in a Los Angeles revival that I often cite as the best evening I ever spent in a theater.
It was a great production. Co-author Burt Shevelove directed, and Stephen Sondheim wrote two new songs — one for Nancy Walker who played Domina. Also in the cast were Lew Parker (who you probably remember as Marlo Thomas's father on That Girl), Larry Blyden, Carl Ballantine and others of that expertise. One of the courtesans was Ann Jillian. Another was a magnificent Broadway dancer named Charlene Ryan who is now married to some guy who draws for MAD Magazine. (In the above photo, Charlene's the one on the far left. Ann Jillian is not in the photo, which is from the later New York engagement.)
I was not present for opening night when many things went wrong. Forum begins with Pseudolus announcing, "Playgoers, I bid you welcome! The theater is a temple and we are here to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy." Silvers entered, the audience burst into wild, unexpected applause and his mind went blank. He stood there fumbling for the line until finally, months later, he somehow came out with, "The theater is a church?"
In the rear of the Ahmanson Theater that night were co-authors Shevelove and Gelbart. One of them turned to the other and said, "If a nice Jewish boy like Phil Silvers can't remember the word 'temple,' we're in for a long evening." Later, there were other blunders: Missed entrances, absent props, etc. The reviews suggested it might be a decent show if you saw it in a high school auditorium.
I saw it the second night…from second row center. My family was far from wealthy but we had some friends who were there, and they often gave us tickets they'd paid for and didn't want to use. (I saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — also with Phil Silvers and also wildly influential on me — from other seats they chose not to occupy.) Everything went right and in later years, when non-theatergoing friends of mine wondered what the appeal was, I wished I could have dragged them down to that show and especially those seats. I never laughed so much in my life. The women were gorgeous, the songs were great, the women were gorgeous. Yes, I know I mentioned that twice.
The show was so good that they couldn't let it close after that limited engagement. Larry Blyden, who played Hysterium, found investors and the production headed for Broadway, stopping off for a month or so in Chicago on the way.
Opening in New York gave Silvers several moments of personal triumph and tragedy. It was his "comeback" triumph after several years of emotional problems and severe depressions that had curtailed his performing and even sent him for a time to a sanitarium. In fact, one of the main reasons the show got done in L.A. was that several of his friends and agents thought work would be the perfect therapy for their pal. On Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, Silvers got rave reviews and a Tony award he later called one of the high points of his career. It looked like the show was settled in for a long, profitable run…and then Phil had a stroke, not big enough to kill him but enough to take him out of Forum.
The producers scrambled to find a replacement star but the one they got — Tom Poston — didn't draw ticket buyers the way Silvers had, and the production closed after 156 performances total. When I had lunch with Silvers a few years later, he kept making the point over and over again that the stroke, which caused the investors to lose all they'd put into the show, was not his fault. I doubt anyone had ever said it was but he was very defensive on the point. The production had been very important to him, and I think the reason he agreed at all to meet with me was because I'd seen it and loved it and he wanted to hear someone tell him that.
When I get a chance one of these days, I'll write a piece here about why I think the movie version of Forum was such a disaster. (One in a long list: When you start by throwing out most of a Sondheim score, someone doesn't know what they're doing.) But since Pat gave me a reason to mention the Phil Silvers stage revival, I thought I'd grab the opportunity. I doubt more than one or two of you saw it, and of course you can never see it. But I hope you've seen or will someday see a show that stays with you as long as that production has stayed with me.