`City of Angels,” Larry Gelbart`s sexy and maniacally funny musical comedy send-up of Hollywood, Philip Marlowe detective novels and everything America held dear in the late 1940s, has become the hottest ticket on Broadway.
But on opening night, as far as star Gregg Edelman was concerned, the show had about as much potential impact on the American stage as one of the Waa-Mu productions he used to do as a day-student from Skokie at Northwestern University.
For one thing, there was his voice. It didn`t belong to him. It belonged to the flu he had been battling during rehearsals. All the big-time critics were sitting out in front, and when Edelman began his first big number, well. . . .
”I have this real high note that I hold,” he said, over a beer in a Broadway area bistro a few weeks later. ”I went to sing it, and it was like a Tarzan call . . . totally out of control. I went, `My gosh, what`s happening?` And at the end of the show, I had no voice. I kept going from near no voice to none all night.”
Unlike the much ballyhooed, $7 million ”Annie II,” which died a megabomb in Washington before it could even get to Broadway, ”Angels” had sneaked into New York with no out-of-town tryout and no advance publicity. And unlike another disaster, the $8 million ”Legs Diamond,” which was kept on the boards for a couple of months because of $5 million in unsuspecting advance ticket purchases, ”Angels” had an advance sale of zero. On top of everything else, Edelman`s understudy wasn`t ready.
But at the opening night cast party, as in cliche show biz movies, someone brought in the reviews and-happy ending!-or more accurately, happy beginning! The notices were terrific, even for Tarzan. The ticket sales the next day reached $300,000. By the end of the week, when Edelman had his voice back, they totaled more than $1 million. The sleeper had become a smash hit.
Edelman`s career has been like that. From playing ”L`il Abner” with foam rubber muscles at Niles North High School, to doing Waa-Mu shows, to getting cast in a Chicago company of ”Camelot” when he was still in college, to starring in a revival of ”Anything Goes” in its last four months on Broadway, nothing has held him back.
At 31, he`s a good-natured, hometown kind of guy-in some ways making you think of what ageless comic book hero Archie might have become if allowed to grow up.
In ”City of Angels,” he plays Stine, a best-selling mystery writer of the `40s whose alter-ego fictional detective Stone is as hard-boiled, smart-mouthed and secretly soft-hearted as these characters come.
Stone, played with wonderful toughness by James Naughton, is ever ready to take on the world with bare knuckles, even though the world spends much of the time beating him up, or breaking his heart. Stine is a gentler, more cerebral fellow, who journeys to Hollywood on a script-writing deal to bring his hot novel ”City of Angels” to the screen. He battles to keep his integrity, in terms of fidelity to both his book and his wife back in New York.
In delightfully zany ways, he loses on both counts.
The magic of ”Angels” is that it has two plots, spun out on stage almost simultaneously, as Stone solves his murky mystery and Stine struggles with Hollywood greed, lust and egomania.
In many scenes, sets representing Stone`s world and Stine`s are juxtaposed. At times, one set will come rushing out of another. At one point, Stone and Stine become one, joining together for their show-stopping duet,
”You`re Nothing Without Me.”
Gelbart, who authored ”A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”
as well as television`s long-running ”M+A+S+H,” had an earlier outing on Broadway this season with the Washington satire ”Mastergate.” It was less than a stupendous success.
”Angels” has songs that are memorable, as well as pungent comedy. The music is as sad and smoky as a saxophone on a summer night.
This also is one of the sexiest shows on Broadway in years-and not just because of a nude scene that had Henry Kissinger, in the audience, craning his neck to see more. Not simply racy, it`s as seductive and sensual as, well, the mysterious woman who begins so many detective novels.
Edelman said he always likes to look for aspects of himself in characters in getting under way in a role, and that was easy to do with Stine.
”I`m finding that a lot of him is me. I think a lot about things, and so does he. He can be sort of pushed around and manipulated. I can get into that trap myself.”
Edelman started life in something of a corner. His parents were separated when he was born and divorced soon after. His mother, Shirle, worked as a fashion model and in department stores to bring up him and his brother, Guy
(now 35 and a doctor living in Glenview), and put them through college.
”We always lived in apartments,” Edelman said. ”In some of them, she slept in the living room.”
His mother placed a lot of emphasis on culture, and frequently took her sons to the theater and ballet.
His father-”let`s not talk about him”-made a more indirect contribution. He left Edelman`s older brother the complete works of the acting scholar Stanislavsky. Because they were a fatherly gift and because he liked to emulate his brother-”he`s a very smart man”-Edelman read them all.
”It stuck,” he said.
The hook set especially when he did ”L`il Abner” at Niles North (his co-star, Nancy Gran, just won an Emmy for her work in the soap opera ”Santa Barbara”), and he became a drama major when he got to Northwestern. There, he lived at home with his family in Skokie-”I was like a poor relation at school”-instead of in a fraternity house, as he would have liked.
His performances in the Waa-Mu show and other productions pleased his teachers enough to let him take time from classes in his senior year to attend auditions in the area. One of these landed him a role in ”Camelot” at the Lincolnshire Theatre while he was still a senior. He has been a regularly employed actor ever since.
”I`ve done mostly musicals,” he said, citing credits that have included ”Cats,” the role of Cliff Bradshaw in the revival of ”Cabaret,” an Off-Broadway revival of ”She Loves Me” and even a season in New York`s satirical revue ”Forbidden Broadway,” which makes fun of the kind of hits that ”City of Angels” so quickly became.
”It was the only time I`ve been fired as an actor,” he said. ”My contract was coming up and about three weeks before, they told me they weren`t going to renew it. I was so happy. I went around telling everybody, `Guess what? I got fired! Let me buy you a drink!”`
A week afterward, he got another job in a revival of the musical
”Fiorello!”
Edelman lives amidst hordes of other actors, employed and otherwise, on New York`s Upper West Side. His girlfriend, Colleen Dodson, is an actress who grew up near him in Evanston but whom he didn`t meet until recently.
One of Dodson`s teachers was the respected University of Illinois professor Edward K-Martin.
”I was out in California doing `Cabaret,”` Edelman said. ”Colleen told me about him. I was sort of floundering in the role. She said, `He`s vicious. He`ll cut right to the heart of the matter. But if you can stand that honesty, he`s brilliant, and will help you.`
”And so I had him see the show. At the end of the performance, he had this sort of half smile on his face. He wanted to be polite, because my girlfriend knew him. And he said, `Well, you`re not very good. And I think I can help you, if you do exactly as I say.”`
They worked that night and the next morning and the following night.
”In 24 hours, my performance completely turned around,” Edelman said.
”It was one of the most exciting periods of creativity I ever had.”
K-Martin, who became a close friend, recently died. As noted in the
”City of Angels” program, Edelman dedicated his performance as Stine to him.
