As Producing Artistic Director of Musicals Tonight, Mel Miller began his endeavor with no experience, managing to build an enthusiastic subscription audience for 100 shows over 20 years. He learned by doing and now, “retired” (always with an eye to new projects), is a fount of both solid how-to-go-about-it information and colorful anecdotes.
Many of us traveled from location to location in order to see revivals of shows originally mounted from 1905 to the 1970s, most of which were otherwise unavailable. Some had scores or books that needed fleshing out. To say Mel knows his way around The Library of Congress and artist estates is putting it mildly.
Today’s Let It Ride is the first in a free lecture series at St. Agnes Library. As a Bronx teenager, Mel came across the 1961 musical by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans in a bargain bin at Sam Goody’s during early forays into musical theater. He didn’t attend a Broadway show until he was 22. Orchestra seats to Fiddler on the Roof were $15. Though a burgeoning uber-fan, Mel had pragmatically gone into the field of marketing rather than theater.
Based on 1935’s successful Three Men and a Horse, revived in 1961 as Let It Ride, the show became Mel’s initial producing venture thirty plus years after his serendipitous discovery. After losing initial investment to a personable grifter, “I realized I needed a collaborator – someone smart I could trust and found one in Tom Mills.” (Mills was then assistant to five Tony-Award-winning Joe Stein, as well as being a teacher and director at AMDA – American Academy of Dramatic Arts.)
“Did I have a performance license, a theater, performance dates, an Actors’ Equity agreement?” The answer was no. Mel tells us the plot of the musical and reads selected lyrics – well, I might add. “Now let me tell you a few things I learned about producing…”
Apparently Evans and Livingston were so thrilled at the proposed revival of “their neglected baby,” they not only gave the aspiring impresario rights, but sent performance material (including songs that had been cut), an extremely unusual response. Perhaps it was a kind of pay-it-forward. The composer and lyricist had graduated from college with accounting degrees, but pursued songwriting, placing work in several popular revues.
Olson & Johnson (Ole Olson and Chic Johnson), who utilized the young men’s work in a couple of revues, not only suggested they go to Hollywood, but handed over the keys to a Rolls Royce and gas money so that the collaborators could drive out west. Evans and Livingston went on to earn several Oscars for writing “Buttons and Bows,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Que Sera, Sera.”
Mel then takes us through casting and auditions, both in terms of Actors’ Equity specifics and thespians. Mark Hartman came on as music director. We hear about procedure, craft, and clever work-around of a politically incorrect number. As he learned from them, the producer watched performers learn from each other. He still believes in the basic “goodness” of theater people.
Next, he addresses rehearsals – the care and feeding of actors only earning a shoestring fee of $100 per production. (Even George Irving was willing to accept the small remuneration.)
Musicals Tonight rented a 99 seat theater at The Lamb’s Club on West 44th Street. Mel regales us with a bit of colorful club history. As the building had been sold to Church of the Nazarene, officials insisted on examining the libretto “To check for blasphemous content.” A soup kitchen was housed in the basement. “Smells wafted up.” Let It Ride opened June 11, 1998 giving Mel Miller a new vocation. Anecdotes follow.
The lecturer then opens the floor to questions. The hour was illuminating and entertaining. Mel is charming and knowledgeable.
In 2004, The Village Voice awarded Musicals Tonight an Obie – a designation established in order to publicly acknowledge and encourage the growing Off-Broadway theater movement. The citation said, in part, “These days, if a musical written before Oklahoma! is produced at all, it is usually radically rewritten, with new songs, new orchestrations, new characters, and new plots. This company has been unique in New York for its very elaborate and skilled staged-readings of early musicals in their original forms.”
Poster and Voice photo courtesy of Mel Miller. Event photos by Alix Cohen.
Setting the Stage with Mel (Miller) FREE
St. Agnes Library
444 Amsterdam Avenue, between 81 and 82 Streets
3rd floor 4:00 PM
Learn all about theater history, production, and artistry from an impresario and fan! Whether you are a lifelong theater lover, aspiring performer, or curious newcomer, this is your chance to get insider knowledge and deepen your appreciation for the magic of musicals. All sessions revolve around a musical Mel produced with entertaining tangents.
Session 2: Friday June, 27: Watch Your Step (1914) Irving Berlin’s first musical starring Vernon and Irene Castle
Session 3: Friday July, 11: Lady Be Good (1924) George Gershwin’s “first” starring Fred and Adele Astaire
Session 4: Friday July, 25 Paris (1928) Cole Porter’s first hit
Session 5: Friday August, 8: Which Would You Revive? Mel Miller presents three musicals he considered reviving
