A
It’s a musical
about a feuding divorced couple, based on a Shakespeare play about a knock
down, drag out courtship, written by a married couple that, you guessed it,
were notorious for their back stage rumbles. Is it any wonder most Broadway
insiders fully expected Kiss Me Kate
to kiss the
Yet, the
skirmishes that surrounded the development of this 1948 masterpiece from the
Golden Age of American Musicals actually proved more inspirational than
detrimental to what would eventually be regarded as Cole Porter’s comeback
musical.
What
skirmishes, you ask? They are innumerable.
The Fight that Inspires the Play
Some would
argue that marriage and theatre are a better combination for a Molotov cocktail
than a dry martini. But for actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne the
combination, by all appearances, proved inspirational. Not only were they two
of the leading actors of their generation, but they were so committed to
working together that they actually had a clause included in their Theatre
Guild contract guaranteeing that they would never work on plays separately.
Unlike most couples working in entertainment today, Lunt and Fontanne actually
lived up to their commitment, performing in hundreds of productions together
before their joint retirement in 1962.
Yet, was their
marriage truly as idyllic as the press made it out to be?
Aspiring
producer Saint Subber found out the answer while stage-managing a touring
production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in the early 1940’s.
He would later claim that it was while watching Lunt and Fontanne’s fierce
offstage arguments—arguments that apparently rivaled the violent tirades taking
place on stage between Katharine and Petruchio—that inspired him to develop a
play within a play about feuding actors performing The Taming of the Shrew.
Yet, the idea
of doing a musical version of a Shakespearian comedy proved no easy sell to
Broadway financiers. By the late 1940’s, several attempts had already been
attempted to put Shakespeare to music with mixed results. The first was Rodgers
and Hart’s The Boys of Syracuse (1938),
which offered audiences a fairly intact version of Comedy of Errors done in contemporary dialogue. The following year
brought Swinging on a Dream, which
set A Midsummer’s Night Dream in 19th
Century
Subber
fortunately found a partner in Broadway set designer Lemuel Ayers during a
chance encounter at a party. Ayers loved the idea so much that he immediately
recruited his friends Sam and Bella Spewack to write the book for the show. The
Spewacks proved a perfect choice. Former newspaper correspondents, they had
turned to play and screen writing upon their return to the States and had
developed a reputation as first rate comedy writers with their own fiery backstage
relationship.
Fighting for the Composer
It was Bella
Spewack who insisted Cole Porter do the music for Kiss Me Kate. Yet, this too proved a difficult sell. Today Cole
Porter is considered one of the greatest composers in musical theatre, so many
often forget that even a master like Porter suffered through artistic slumps.
In 1937, Porter’s
legs were crushed in a riding accident which left him in a state of chronic
pain and depression. Although he managed to write several hits show like Leave it to Me (1938) and Mexican Hayride (1944) in between over
30 surgeries on his legs and several electroshock treatments to cure his depression,
many critics felt Porter’s music had lost its magic. By the late 1940’s, the composer
of such American Musical masterworks as Anything
Goes (1934) and Red, Hot and Blue (1936)
was widely considered to be a “has-been”.
Nevertheless,
the Spewacks insisted Porter was the perfect composer for the musical. They had
worked with him on Leave it to Me
(1938), and Bella in particular was so enamored with the gallant composer that
she gave Subber the ultimate ultimatum: either there will be a Spewack-Porter Kiss Me Kate or no Kiss Me Kate at all.
Her steadfast
loyalty paid off. With Kiss Me Kate,
Porter reasserted himself as a master of the musical comedy with songs like Brush up Your Shakespeare and Wunderbar. It became his biggest hit,
and was the only one of his shows to run over 1,000 performances on Broadway.
Dan Tarker
Literary
Associate