Marvin Hamlisch wrote the musical that saved Broadway.
The year was 1973, and Hamlisch, New York-born, Juilliard-trained, was out in Hollywood, collecting Oscars. He won three for movies that came out that year: Best Song (“The Way We Were”), Best Score (“The Way We Were”) Best Musical Adaptation (“The Sting”).
And then he got a call from an old New York friend, the choreographer Michael Bennett.
Bennett was putting together a musical, as yet untitled, about Broadway “gypsies” — chorus kids. There was no script, just some vague ideas about what it’s like to dedicate your life to dancing, anonymously, behind the star in a Broadway musical. Bennett was creating the show down at the Public Theater. He wanted Hamlisch to write the music. The pay was $100 a week.
For a kid who grew up attending Broadway musicals every week — whose first job was as the rehearsal pianist for Jule Styne’s “Funny Girl” — the lure of writing a musical was irresistible. Hamlisch was making a fortune in Hollywood, but he said yes to the $100-a-week gig.
His agent, Alan Carr, nearly killed him.
But as Hamlisch said to reporter Kenneth Turan in “Free All,” an oral history of the Public Theater, “Michael Bennett is a powerful force. As long as he’s looking at you and saying it’s going somewhere, it’s going somewhere.”
Bob Avian, who worked closely with Bennett on the show, said yesterday, “Marvin’s blind faith in Michael’s talent made him come back East.”
By now, the show had a title — “A Chorus Line.”
Hamlisch went to work with lyricist Ed Kleban.
Kleban had pages and pages of interviews with Broadway dancers. He sifted through them looking for a word or a phrase on which to hang a lyric. He found one: “Everything is beautiful at the ballet.” Hamlisch, as facile as ever, wrote a catchy tune, but Kleban told him to slow it down, make it delicate.
The result was the haunting “At the Ballet,” which Hamlisch always said was the heart of “A Chorus Line.”
“When Marvin played the song for us, Michael cried,” Avian recalled. “He said, ‘That’s it. That’s what I want the score to sound like.’ ”
Hamlisch knocked out a batch of songs, blending jazz, ballet, rock, pop and old-fashioned Broadway. He wrote a ballad everybody thought was too syrupy. Bennett wanted to cut it, but Hamlisch knew a hit tune when he wrote one and wouldn’t let it go.
“What I Did For Love” would go on to be recorded by Aretha Franklin, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey and, most recently, Lea Michele.
“A Chorus Line” opened at the Public on April 15, 1975, and quickly transfered to the Shubert Theatre. Broadway was falling apart back then. Most of the theaters were dark, Times Square was packed with hustlers and peep shows, the city was veering toward insolvency. The year before “A Chorus Line” opened, Broadway attendance dipped to a near all-time low of 6.6 million. The year after it opened, attendance shot up to 8.8 million.
“A Chorus Line” became the centerpiece of a promotional spot for New York City. The commercial opened with dancers from the show in their gold lamé top hats and tails singing “I Love New York.”
A city that was unraveling suddenly had something glamorous to brag about — the hottest stage musical in the history of show business.
Hamlisch wrote music for other shows — “They’re Playing Our Song,” “The Goodbye Girl,” “Sweet Smell of Success” — but none had the impact of “A Chorus Line.”
It was, as his song “One” goes, a “singular sensation” that saved the Great White Way — and, in some ways, New York City itself.