REHEARSALS FOR The Boy Friend were held at a theater on 46th Street, a block or so from the Piccadilly Hotel. Vida Hope, our director, was a loving den mother, theatrical and fun. She was a buxom woman and had a slight speech impediment. Our choreographer, John Heawood, was lively, very skinny, and very gay. Since they both had staged The Boy Friend in London, it wasn’t so much a question of finding the nature of the show as it was putting it back together again.
Dilys Laye immediately found a wonderful character reading for her role as Dulcie. She knew just how to raise a shoulder, assume a stance, or bat her eyes. She had a husky voice, which she used to marvelous effect. Annie Wakefield was the young soubrette Madcap Maisie, Millicent Martin played Nancy, and Stella Claire played both Fay and Lolita, the voluptuous tango dancer. John Hewer played Tony Brockhurst, the boy friend.
There were perhaps nine English members of the company; the rest of the cast were American Equity performers. Everybody seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Everyone knew how to pose, how to be camp; everyone, that is, except me. I kept thinking “How do they know? I’ve never done anything like this; I’ve never lived in the twenties. How is it they grasp the style so easily?”
One morning, not long after rehearsals began, I was looking up the airshaft outside my hotel window, checking the weather, and I saw that it was raining. It made me feel much more at home and was certainly welcome, for New York had been unbearably hot and humid. I left for work, and as I walked down the street, I noticed that a lot of signs were swinging and canopies were straining at their bindings. The wind was certainly strong.
As I rounded the corner of Eighth Avenue and 45th Street, I had to hold onto a lamppost to keep my balance. I turned the next corner and a blast of rain lashed my face and drenched my clothing. I staggered up to the theater stage door, heaved it open, and stumbled inside. The place was empty, except for the doorman, who was in his cubicle.
“Where is everybody?” I asked him breathlessly.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Well, aren’t we rehearsing this morning?”
“Honey,” he replied, “that’s Hurricane Hazel out there!”
CY FEUER ATTENDED rehearsals almost every day. He had boundless energy and was the complete opposite of his business partner, Ernest Martin, who was dark-haired, very quiet, and a little dour.
I was still having difficulties with my character, Polly Browne, trying to discover who she was, and what I was supposed to be doing. I watched everybody else and tried to emulate them. I didn’t know how to research a role, had no idea how to “break down” a script. Vida wasn’t much help because she was so busy with the entire production. We were not going out of town for a tryout run, but were to open cold on Broadway since the show was already a known quantity. With so little time to prepare, every day, every moment of rehearsal mattered.
There were rumors that all was not well between Cy, Vida, and Sandy Wilson. Cy felt that although The Boy Friend had been a big hit in London, it now lacked the punch that was required for a Broadway audience. Sandy objected. He was the author, and felt that the style of the show had proven itself already. He was against any changes, and resented Cy’s interference.
The day came when, to our dismay and horror, news flew around the company that Sandy and Vida had been dismissed and were actually barred from entering the theater. Cy was to take over the show. Something had obviously happened after hours, of which we were all unaware, and the company was anxious.
Cy came in like a drill sergeant. The first thing he did was to coach the girls. A lot of their dialogue was spoken in unison. When they cried, “Oh, do tell us about him, Polly!” for example, he energized it and made them say it with precision timing. Wherever the play was soft or vague, Cy tightened it, making it sharp and clean.
Truthfully, Cy’s phenomenal energy was exactly what was needed. I don’t think anybody, not even Vida or Sandy, had grasped the standard expected for a Broadway show. The English production had been a delicate piece of lace. Our production became crisp, full of liveliness and giddy fun.
We soon understood that this was not the first production Cy had taken over. But it seemed that whatever he touched, he turned to gold.
We moved into our own theater, the Royale, for dress rehearsals. We had a sizeable orchestra, bigger than the London production, with soprano saxes, a tuba, “wac-a-doo” trumpets, and a banjo. The orchestrations and the musicians were dynamite.
We played two weeks of previews, and I continued to feel that I was the only one who still needed to get my act together. Oddly, there were performances when I received wonderful laughs from the audience, and others when there was no reaction at all. I couldn’t figure it out. I tried different things each night. In hindsight I was probably working so hard for a gag that it became the kiss of death; when I was just being real and innocent, people seemed to love it. But I didn’t have the experience to grasp that.
The last preview of all was my worst performance, and I knew that I was drowning. The following morning, Cy Feuer collared me at rehearsals and said, “Come with me.”
He took me out to the long, dark alley where the Golden, the Royale, and the Majestic stage doors converge. We sat on the fire escape steps.
The first thing he said to me was “You know you were terrible last night.”
“I know!” I replied with equal candor. “I just don’t understand what’s wrong.”
“Here’s what you are going to do,” Cy said. “I want you to play Polly Browne as truthfully as you possibly can. I want you to forget every funny, campy thing the others are doing and I want you to play her straight—right down the middle. When you lose your boy friend, I want your heart to break. Play the role sincerely; believe it with every fiber of your being. If you do as I say, you may stand a chance of being quite a success tonight.”
I realized that Cy was giving me the answers I had been looking for, that he was throwing me the rope I needed. I grasped it with both hands, and with sudden clarity everything fell into place. Thank God for his guidance. That night I played Polly Browne as I believe she is meant to be played: an innocent, vulnerable little rich girl who wants nothing more than to be loved for herself.
It was September 30, 1954, the eve of my nineteenth birthday, and I will always remember that performance. The orchestra was superb, the company was superb, and every laugh I hoped to get came my way. The reception at the end was unbelievable. The audience rose to their feet as one, stomping and cheering. People danced the Charleston down the aisles as they exited the theater.
The crush backstage was tremendous, noisy, and enthusiastic. I tried to get through to my mum in England on the stage door telephone.
“Mum, it’s over!” I shouted into the mouthpiece, a finger in my other ear. “We seem to be fine.” But she could barely hear me.
Bill Birney, one of the authors of Mountain Fire, had asked to take me out for supper, and not knowing the traditions of a Broadway opening, I accepted. Everyone else repaired to Sardi’s to await the reviews, and I went off with Bill to the Ambassador restaurant and had a staid and elegant meal. Eventually we headed for Sardi’s, and the maître d’ informed us that the company was gathered in an upstairs room. People were waving newspapers or poring over the reviews. Dilys received wonderful notices and, miraculously, so did I. The Boy Friend was a smash hit.
Ten days after we opened, I arrived at the theater and glanced up at the marquee. To my surprise it read: “The Boy Friend—with Julie Andrews.”