As I've written here before, the best night I've ever spent in a theater was down at the Ahmanson in L.A. and it was October 14, 1971. It was the second night of a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers.
The wonderful Broadway show — book by Bert Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, songs by Stephen Sondheim — ran on Broadway 1962-1964. It was originally written with Silvers more-or-less in mind but he passed on it, opting instead to star in Do-Re-Mi on the Great White Way. Given that Do-Re-Mi was a decent-sized triumph and that Forum went through extensive outta-town rewrites and almost closed for good in Washington, that was probably a wise decision on Phil's part. Forum did, of course, soldier on to become a smash hit with Zero Mostel in the part that Silvers had turned down…and Silvers wound up in the movie version, though playing a supporting role.
In early '71, Silvers was not working. He'd had an emotional collapse…kind of a nervous breakdown, he called it. He was living in a nursing facility when he got the call.
The Ahmanson had a four-play subscription season that fall. Tickets had been sold for four plays and suddenly, the first play had to be replaced due to some legal snag. The folks who had to do the replacing didn't see any other current production anywhere that they could import to fill those weeks so something would have to be concocted almost from scratch. There wasn't time to mount a brand-new play with untested material so, they figured, it pretty much had to be a revival. On top of that, to appease subscribers, it would have to be a revival of great importance with one or more great big stars.
An agent — and I'm not sure it was even Silvers' agent — had a suggestion: Why not revive Forum with the man who was originally going to play Pseudolus playing Pseudolus? That alone gave it importance and one big star. Silvers' presence attracted others, including Nancy Walker to play Domina, Larry Blyden as Hysterium, Lew Parker (Marlo Thomas's father on That Girl) and Carl Ballantine as Marcus Lycus. Ann Jillian was one of the courtesans. So was one of Broadway's great dancers, Charlene Ryan, who is now married to the eminent cartoonist, Sergio Aragonés. Co-author Shevelove directed and Mr. Sondheim wrote some new songs for it.
It sounded like a great show. It also sounded like great therapy for Mr. Silvers — something that might lift him out of his depression and all-consuming anxiety. That was as much the goal of All Concerned as putting on a great show.
Opening night (10/13/71) was flawed. Silvers went blank on his opening lines and some others. Props were in the wrong place. Scenery malfunctioned. The audience sorta/kinda liked it but not enough. The second night was perfect. I was there the second night…second row center. I was sitting close enough to get a few drops of Bilko Perspiration on me and to see that Silvers' glasses had no glass in them. He'd had cataract surgery, no longer needed specs and now wore empty frames so as to look more like Phil Silvers.
We had these wealthy friends, the Zukors. They were big donors to the Ahmanson so they got great seats — six of them. Two Zukors couldn't go that evening so my father and I were invited to take their place. I can't begin to tell you how wonderful that show was. Phil Silvers got a laugh on every single line. And when someone else was talking, he got a laugh reacting to what they were saying. The songs were beautiful. The women were beautiful. The sheer volume of laughter in the Ahmanson was beautiful. It also helped for me that I was then unfamiliar with the show. I'd seen and not absorbed much of the movie…and the movie's fine in its own way if you never saw a good production of the play. If you have, then you're conscious of how much it was diminished on screen. (Gelbart attended the opening and remarked it "was like being hit by a truck that backed up and ran you over again." For a good history of the show, read this.)
I wasn't the only one who loved it that second night at the Ahmanson and others that followed. Word of mouth trumped opening night reviews and the show began to sell out. I tried to get tix to go back but by the time I called, all that were available were the last three rows way on one side. Having been spoiled by those great seats, I decided not to sully my memory of that show by seeing it from afar and I passed. Two days later, I came to my senses and called to purchase bad seats…and they were all gone. If it had been an open-ended engagement, it would have been there a long, long time…but this was a subscription series. Another show was lined up to follow so as popular as it was, Forum had to stop.
It was Larry Blyden who said, "This production is too good to close" and he went out and raised the moola to take it to Broadway…but not immediately. They parked it at the McVicker's in Chicago for a few weeks to break in new cast members (Ms. Walker and a few others didn't go with it) and to wait for The Rothschilds to close so they could have its theater, the Lunt-Fontanne. Early in '72, it did and they moved in…and that alone was remarkable.
Great shows open all over this country and someone says, "Hey, we oughta take this to New York." I'm going to guess that a good 90% of those that make a real effort to make that journey never get there. It would not surprise me if the number was over 99%. And to go from opening night in the point of origin to a previously-unplanned opening night on Broadway in less than six months? Maybe one or two other shows have managed it but not many. Not many at all.
They were supposed to play two weeks of previews there then open but the producers were running out of money. They couldn't afford to wait two weeks for the expected great reviews to bring a stampede to the box office so they cut it back to three previews and opened 3/30/72 instead of ten days later. They got the reviews, they got the stampede…and they got something else. The cut-off date for the Tony Awards that year was April 1. That wasn't why they opened early but it had the happy result of making their show eligible for the Tony Awards that year instead of the following year. Just a few weeks later on April 23, Forum won three: One for Shevelove, one for Blyden, one for Silvers.
Silvers was ecstatic. He got up that year at the ceremony, forgot he was on live TV and went on and on about Forum and about Larry Blyden dragging the show against all odds to Broadway. He was very funny and while he may have ticked off the producers of the telecast, he delighted the producers of his own show, one of whom was Blyden. It made for a great, long infomercial for their production and brought another, larger stampede to the box office.
A great triumph? The end of Silvers' depression? For a time, yes. Then in August came tragedy. He had a stroke.
The understudy (an unknown) played to mostly-empty houses while the producers scrambled to find another comedy superstar to step into the role. Several biggies wanted to do it but none could get free from other commitments in time. The best anyone could come up with was Tom Poston, who learned the part in a hurry but failed to attract theatergoers. The show closed.
Silvers recovered somewhat from his stroke. He was never quite the same again but by January of '74, he was the same enough to go to England (where Sgt. Bilko reruns were still huge) and do a limited run of Forum over there. Which brings us to our video clip. It's an interview he gave then on the set of what I believe was the last time he trod the boards. I lunched with him a few years later and his speech was thicker and he was having trouble walking. I said something about how I wished I'd gone to New York to see him there. He thought I was referring to London and said (approximately), "I'm glad you didn't. It was a personal triumph that I was able to get through it at all but that was about it." He told me that when I saw that second night at the Ahmanson, I saw him and that show at its absolute best. I find that very easy to believe…
