Let’s have some more fun today with those letters to Arthur Laurents that Stephen Sondheim doesn’t want you to see.
Laurents, you’ll recall, left his papers to the Library of Congress. But when Sondheim learned his letters were in the cache, they were quickly — and somewhat mysteriously — pulled from Laurents’ file.
But not before I got my hands on copies. I can’t quote Sondheim directly or he’ll turn me into one of Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies. But I can paraphrase.
In a March 7, 1968, letter, Sondheim said he just finished the final draft of their new show. He was disappointed that David Merrick wasn’t interested in producing it, but confident they’d get the money elsewhere.
He then reported on “Here’s Where I Belong,” a musical based on John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” that closed in one night. Sondheim shrewdly noted that he and Laurents were having a destructive influence on new musicals. Every song in “Here’s Where I Belong,” he wrote, was modeled on something from either “West Side Story” or “Gypsy” — but without charm or genuine human emotion.
Sondheim did like the Broadway revival of O’Neill’s “More Stately Mansions” starring Laurents’ friend Ingrid Bergman, whom Sondheim calls Ingmar. He thought Colleen Dewhurst turned in a nimble performance.
He was less complimentary about her husband, George C. Scott, who had just opened in Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite.” He thought Scott was bombastic. As for the play, he thought it was better than “The Odd Couple,” but still television writing.
He also had choice words for director Mike Nichols, saying he did a good, straightforward job with the first play in “Plaza Suite,” but hammed it up with the others.
No matter. The box office was humming because, Sondheim noted, Nichols was the most popular, if superficial, director of the ’60s.
Sondheim weighed in on a couple of movies as well. He enjoyed the campy “No Way to Treat a Lady,” in which George Segal gave what Sondheim called the only decent performance of his career.
The gossipy letter was brief, because Sondheim had to dress for bridge at producer Leland Hayward and wife Pamela’s apartment. Pamela, who later became Mrs. Averell Harriman, was famous for her affairs with powerful men, including Prince Aly Khan.
Sondheim called her The Hooker.