Entertainment

‘Midnight in the Garden’ of musicals

The Mercer Williams House is to Savannah what Broadway is to New York — one of the city’s premier tourist attractions.

For it was in this house, one night in 1981, that an antiques dealer named Jim Williams shot and killed his assistant, Danny Hansford.

The shooting — and Williams’ acquittal on the grounds of self-defense — were the subjects of John Berendt’s 1994 best seller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and the 1997 film starring Kevin Spacey as Williams.

The book’s popularity helped turn Savannah into a booming tourist town, with hordes flocking to Mrs. Wilkes’ for her famous fried chicken, snapping pictures of the Bird Girl statue in Bonaventure Cemetery (the statue was on the cover of the book) and of course, touring the Mercer Williams house, which is owned by Williams’ sister.

And now “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is coming to Broadway, where it will be produced by Anne Hamburger, founder of the acclaimed off-Broadway theater company En Garde Arts.

Hamburger has hired Southern playwright Alfred Uhry (“Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Last Night of Ballyhoo”) to turn Berendt’s book into a stage musical.

Uhry has just about completed a first draft.

The musical numbers — and this is an inspired touch — will be plucked from the songbook of Savannah native Johnny Mercer.

I wanna be around to pick up the pieces when somebody shoots you dead!

The Mercer Williams House, located at 429 Bull St., was built for Mercer’s great-grandfather, Gen. Hugh Weedon Mercer.

It later became a temple for the Shriners but was abandoned in the 1960s when Savannah fell on hard times.

Jim Williams snapped it up for a song in 1969 and hosted lavish parties there throughout the ’70s, including his celebrated Christmas galas.

(You know there’s going to be a Christmas party scene in the musical, with somebody at the piano at the end of the night singing “One for My Baby.”)

Hansford — high school dropout, juvenile delinquent, part-time hustler (triple threat!) — became Williams’ assistant and, according to Berendt, his lover.

Hansford snorted coke, drank vodka by the bottle and was prone to violent outbursts.

After one of those outbursts, Williams shot him in the study. Berendt implies the killing was the result of a lovers’ quarrel; Williams stuck to his story of self-defense throughout his four trials.

I was in Savannah a couple of years ago to attend the excellent Savannah Music Festival, which runs every April. Naturally, I fell under the spell of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and made a pilgrimage to the Mercer Williams House.

What a kick!

It’s chockablock with Williams’ antiques, including, aptly, a couple of very valuable 18th-century cockfighting chairs.

The guides are a bit snooty, but knowledgeable, pointing out this Restoration canopied bed and that Louis something-or-other table setting.

After 45 minutes of “Antiques Roadshow,” you arrive at the scene of the crime, instantly recognizable because it was used in Clint Eastwood’s 1997 movie.

“This is the study,” says the guide. Pause. “This is where the incident took place. And over here is a cabinet made by Thomas Chippendale in 1798.”

Uhry and Hamburger had a private tour of the house last week.

Their guide, Hamburger says, elaborated on “the incident” by adding: “It was an act of self-defense.”

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is “a great example of the underbelly of America,” says Hamburger. “There are the things that all of us do on the surface — and then there are the things we do underneath.”

Or, as Johnny Mercer once put it, “When we played our charade . . . ”