This is how composer Cy Coleman died the night of Nov. 18, 2004, according to his widow, Shelby Coleman:
After seeing the Broadway opening of the play “Democracy,” he and Shelby attended the party at Tavern on the Green. Coleman felt ill. They left the party early by taxi. On the way to New York Hospital, “I remember telling him, `I love you,'” Shelby says now, speaking by phone from her apartment, with their 4-year-old daughter nearby. He said he loved her too.
The cab pulled up to the emergency room entrance, Cy and Shelby got out, walked in, and then, she says, “He just reached his arm up, up to the ceiling, his hand open –and that was it.
“That was Cy. He did it in the most elegant way you can imagine anyone ever going. He died like he lived, brilliantly.”
When the composer of hit after hit and Broadway show after Broadway show died at age 75, work on the revival of the 1966 musical “Sweet Charity” was well under way. The score by Coleman and lyricist Dorothy Fields was being augmented by “A Good Impression” (to be sung by Oscar, played by Chicago-bred Denis O’Hare) and, replacing “I Love to Cry at Weddings,” a song called “If There Were More People,” a Coleman/Fields tune cut from an unproduced Eleanor Roosevelt musical.
But “Sweet Charity,” the original, also had in its pocket big, fat, adorable standards such as “Hey Big Spender” and “Baby, Dream Your Dream” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now.” Shelby Coleman, now the executor of her late husband’s estate, likes “Baby, Dream Your Dream” the best. “What a melody,” she says.
She says that Cy “wanted to bring to this revival all that he learned after `Sweet Charity.’
He and [librettist] Neil Simon and [director] Walter Bobbie worked out a lot of new ideas, a new beginning, a new ending. It’s sad,” she says, with a quick intake of breath. Sad that the composer isn’t here to see the revisions and results through. Sad that he is not here.
“He was really enthusiastic about Christina,” she says, changing conversational keys, referring to the revival’s headliner, Christina Applegate. A year ago the composer put Applegate through a lot of singing auditions before signing off on the casting. According to Shelby Coleman, it was the same thing years earlier with Glenn Close, when Close auditioned for the female lead in “Barnum.” It took her months to get that job.
“Cy had a lot of patience with actresses,” Shelby says. “And he knew that Christina could do this part.”
Three months after Coleman’s death, Lily — Cy and Shelby’s 4-year-old — is holding up well, according to her mother.
“They were very close. He played music for her all the time,” she says. “It’s a very happy thing this show is coming back. It’s evidence that Cy’s work is bigger than life, or death. It’s great for Lily. She’ll be able to go to the show and see what her dad did.”
One last anecdote, and it’s funny. “Cy always liked having a show running on Broadway,” Shelby says. His reason was practical. “During his last musical, `The Life,’ he told me: “I love it. I love having a show on Broadway. And you know the best thing? The best thing about having a show running on Broadway is having a place to pee in Times Square.”
After its Feb. 24-March 13 engagement at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre, “Sweet Charity” plays Boston March 18-27. It then moves to New York’s Hirschfeld Theatre, where it begins previews April 4 and opens April 21.
