Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr (24 page)

Maury Yeston, a professor of music at Yale, had written incidental music for Tune’s off Broadway production of Caryl Churchill’s comedy
Cloud Nine,
and he was also “in talks” to adapt Federico Fellini’s autobiographical film
8½
for Broadway, again with Tune. When Tune mentioned the
La Cage aux folles
project to Yeston, he cautioned him that Marvin Hamlisch, Cy Coleman, and Jerry Herman were already circling to be the tuner’s composer.

Herman, especially, had his cheerleaders.

Producer Martin Richards (
Sweeney Todd, Chicago
) also wanted to turn
La Cage aux folles
into a stage musical. “I saw the movie one afternoon with a bunch of ladies who carried their shopping bags into the movie theater,” he says. “They loved it. I flipped out over it.” When he checked on the stage rights, he found they were held by Allan Carr. “He was a genius with press and publicity, so far ahead of his time in so many ways. I suggested Jerry Herman to Allan,” Richards says.

Richards and Allan were not strangers. They’d already joined forces to try to bring
Chicago
to the screen, and regarding that movie project, Allan promised
“a celebrity in every cell.” On
La Cage,
his brain blossomed forth with even more ideas.

An occasional resident of the UN Plaza Hotel, Allan invited Richards to his East Side pied-à-terre to discuss
La Cage aux folles
and possibly have him come aboard as a coproducer. Over the phone, Allan told Richards that “Jerry Herman is perfect!” Richards thought he’d sweeten the meeting by bringing a potential book writer, James Kirkwood, who had done similar duties on
A Chorus Line
. Allan was in a typically festive mood that day, serving champagne, strawberries, and heavy cream. “And he wore a little nightgown down to his rear end,” Richards recalls. Allan couldn’t contain his excitement at meeting Kirkwood, and he launched into fond recollections of managing Marvin Hamlisch and saving
A Chorus Line
from the ego of Michael Bennett. Finally, he got right to it.

“So, Marty?” he asked. “Can you get Jerry Herman to write a couple of songs to show us how he’d handle this material?”

Richards smiled. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then Richards departed the UN Plaza Hotel, realizing that Allan didn’t know the ways of Broadway. Seasoned talent like Jerry Herman wrote
nada
on spec.

Herman always considered
La Cage aux folles
the show he most wanted to write. “It’s hard finding source material. I knew in my heart that I knew how to do this material,” says the composer of
Mame
and
Hello, Dolly!
“But I just wrote it off as the show that got away.”

Unlike Herman, Yeston had no such qualms about putting his talent and reputation on the line. “Look, give me a chance,” Yeston told Allan. “Let me write something on spec. I’ll write six songs.”

Allan never balked at getting something for nothing, so he handed Yeston the musical’s book, titled
The Queen and I
by Jay Presson Allen, who’d written the play
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
and the
Cabaret
screenplay. “Call me when you’ve written your six songs,” he added.

Yeston promised he’d have them in two weeks, and he set to work. “Mike Nichols, Allan Carr, Jay Presson Allen. It was overwhelming for me. I had nothing to lose,” he says.

Yeston liked that Jay Presson Allen had Americanized the material by switching the
La Cage aux folles
locale from Saint-Tropez to New Orleans. Yeston knew that jazz milieu, and the first song he wrote was “The Queen of Basin Street,” about the female impersonator Zaza, the show’s lead character.

Nichols loved the song, and so did Allan. “
That
will be the title of the show.
The Queen of Basin Street
!” Allan announced. He had his composer. Who cared
that few people knew of Maury Yeston? “He’s got talent!” Allan said. “Tie him to the sofa!”

Instead, Yeston took a leave of absence without pay from Yale after his agent, the legendary Flora Roberts, won him an advance of $10,000 to write
The Queen of Basin Street
score. “It was a thrilling, heady experience,” Yeston recalls. “At that point,” he adds ruefully.

Indeed, problems were already brewing in the august law offices of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Breglio, head of the firm’s theater department, quickly discovered that negotiating the contracts for creative talent of the caliber of Mike Nichols, Jay Presson Allen, and Tommy Tune was not easy, and as their deals grew richer and richer, Allan only grew poorer and poorer as a producer. Breglio soon found himself in an awkward position. Despite the star power of the show’s creative triumvirate, the lawyer “simply couldn’t recommend” the package’s economics to Allan.

While Roberts repped Yeston, the remainder of Allan’s creative team—Nichols, Tune, and Allen—shared just one agent: Sam Cohn. ICM’s mighty agent lunched daily at the Russian Tea Room and never returned phone calls or wore a tie—all of which made him the most powerful, as well as elusive, agent on the East Coast.

When Breglio told Allan he couldn’t make financial sense of the
Queen of Basin Street
creative package, Allan didn’t waste a breath. “OK, I’m flying in to deal with Cohn,” he said. Allan got on the next airplane to New York City, but prior to meeting with Cohn, he called a powwow in his new apartment. Now that he was a Broadway producer, Allan decided it was time to move out of the UN Plaza Hotel and into the penthouse at the St. Moritz, once the living space of the most famed and feared columnist in America, the red-baiting Walter Winchell. The St. Moritz penthouse is a historic triplex that, in addition to its view of Central Park from three terraces, offers its residents a sauna and a greenhouse in the sky. Even the most sophisticated New Yorkers were impressed by the space, and many of them didn’t notice, at first glance, that Allan had decorated the art deco apartment in a very California style, with lots of matching, oversized pale furniture.

Sitting atop the St. Moritz, Allan welcomed Jay Presson Allen, Maury Yeston, and the composer’s agent, Flora Roberts, to his new apartment, which he’d already dubbed Viewhaven in honor of his other “havens” around the world. He avoided the fact that, in this case, he rented and did not own.

Jay Presson Allen came ready for a fight that day. She began by saying that she loved Yeston’s music for
Cloud Nine,
the show Tommy Tune had directed at the tiny Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street in the West Village. Niceties out of the way, she then leveled her sights at
The Queen of Basin Street
. “This show has too many directors,” she said. “Fire Mike Nichols and replace him with Tommy Tune.” Instead of registering dismay or even surprise, Allan’s eyes grew big. “Fire Mike Nichols?” he asked.

Yeston blurted out, “Nobody fires Mike Nichols!”

Allan’s eyes more than glistened behind his tinted aviator glasses. “Fire Mike Nichols? I’ll be a legend!” he whispered in his best Norma Desmond impersonation.

“Don’t break this team up,” Yeston begged.

Jay Presson Allen ignored the Broadway novice. “It could work,” she said.

The next day, wearing a sports coat and tie, Allan walked into the offices of ICM on West 57th Street. He brought Breglio with him. No longer the flamboyant party-giver, Allan presented himself as “the hardened businessman,” according to the lawyer. There was no stroking of Cohn’s massive ego as Allan took him to the mat.

“Sam, it’s too much,” he began. “I love them. Mike, Tommy, and Jay. But they are too famous and they are too rich for me. I can’t afford it. I’m going elsewhere.”

Allan left Cohn speechless. It was over. Finished. Allan had done what he always wanted and turned himself into a legend. What Cohn must have been thinking is what everyone else in the New York theater world would soon be shouting in Shubert Alley: “No one fires Mike Nichols!”

Chaos among the original team ensued. “It was a big uproar. Everybody got mad at one another,” said Jay Presson Allen. “Mike and I still don’t speak.” (That is, until the writer died in 2006.) But somehow she remained sanguine regarding her onetime theater producer. “Any production is a series of disasters,” she offered. “If you’re going to do that kind of work, it is wonderful to have someone who can deal with it humorously, and Allan Carr could see the humor in almost anything. Allan was honest, and did pretty much what he said he was going to do.” Except for firing practically everybody on the original team.

For a moment, rumors circulated that Allan would increase Tune’s responsibilities on the project, keeping him on as choreographer
and
making him director.
Cloud Nine
had opened to rave reviews and great box office, and on
Broadway his little musical-that-could,
A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine,
also scored.

But Tune could never bring himself to pick up the directorial pieces—or continue as choreographer. As Tune told Yeston, “My friendship with Mike is more important and takes precedence.”

Jay Presson Allen recalled the situation, “Tommy was very nervous about it and correctly so.” She and Yeston, however, found themselves in different boats since they had essentially completed their respective work on book and score. Allen, a famous writer, could proceed to one of the many other projects that she currently juggled. Yeston, on the other hand, had no other project—or source of income.

Allan remained jubilant regardless of a creative team that now numbered only one: Yeston. With casual fanfare, he insisted that the composer meet him for lunch at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. It didn’t matter that Yeston remained on the East Coast, leaving him no choice but to fly west to salvage his career and finances. There on Nob Hill, Allan laid it out for his composer. “You’ll write the score and the book, and I’ve just hired this great new director, Michael Smuin.”

Smuin?

“He’s got a big hit on Broadway with
Sophisticated Ladies
,” continued Allan, referring to the Duke Ellington revue. Blithely, he changed the subject: “Now, I want you to be my date tonight. I want you to go to Finocchio’s. It’s a great drag club. It’s research!” The switch from Mike Nichols to Michael Smuin left Yeston stricken. He couldn’t hide his disappointment. “What’s the matter with you?” Allan asked, oblivious of his composer’s concerns.

Yeston tried to explain. “I can’t help it. I have a nine-year-old son, I’m a professor. I left my job with no pay. And I thought we were doing this show.”

Without saying a word, Allan reached into his pocket to pull out a checkbook and began writing. “Use this if you need it,” Allan said, handing his cash-strapped composer the check. It was made out to “Maury Yeston” for $150,000.

Yeston didn’t know what to say, but he knew enough to be cautious. “Remember, these were the cocaine years,” he says of Allan’s magnanimous checkbook maneuver. “It was the quintessential Allan Carr gesture. It was the flamboyance of the gesture. In that gesture, he showed both the extraordinary generosity of the man, his desire to be loved, and, at the same time, the narcissism of it.” In essence, Allan was telling his impoverished songwriter, “Look at me! I can write a check for $150,000!”

That evening, Allan held court at Finocchio’s as he introduced Yeston to the world of drag theater. “
This
”—he waved—“is what our show is all about!” Allan soaked it up. He drank champagne. He signed autographs. He basked in being the most famous person on the premises. This was his milieu, gay San Francisco, and, in Allan’s opinion, Yeston merely had to fill in a few missing pieces and
The Queen of Basin Street
would mint money on Broadway. Allan knew it to be true.

When the Finocchio emcee took the stage, he coughed loudly into a handkerchief. “Tonight I have a frog in my throat,” he began. “Last night, it was a prince.” It was the cue for the entrance of the show girls, all of whom were boys but one.

“That’s what I want in our musical,” Allan whispered to his bewildered professor-friend. “One girl, the rest are guys. You won’t be able to tell. All the chorus girls in our show will be boys—except for one. And she will keep the audience guessing.” As far as Allan was concerned, he’d just found the key to unlock the success of his
La Cage aux folles
.

More research meetings with Allan ensued over the following weeks, whether the city was New York, San Francisco, or Honolulu. Then, just as suddenly as they began, the itinerant tête-à-têtes stopped and Yeston couldn’t get his producer on the phone.

In the end, Allan needed to break with Yeston, too. The composer had worked closely with Jay Presson Allen, and many of his songs were intrinsically bound to her words in situation and dialogue. To use those songs in a new book written by a different writer risked exposing the project to copyright infringement. What portended an even greater obstacle to Yeston’s continued participation was Allan’s having purchased the stage rights to only the play
La Cage aux folles.
Unbeknownst to either Yeston or Jay Presson Allen was that Allan had failed to also secure the rights to the movie
La Cage aux folles
.

While the writing duo changed the locale of the story, they “borrowed whole scenes from the movie that never appeared in the play,” says Yeston. And in a turn of fate worthy of the Greek gods, those very precious movie rights were now no longer available at any price since they’d been purchased, ironically, by Mike Nichols, who would later fashion the French movie into his own Hollywood movie comedy
The Birdcage,
starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams as the two lovers, and set in Miami’s South Beach. Describing Nichols’s one-upmanship, Yeston says, “The best way to achieve revenge is just to wait.”

And there were other reasons that Maury Yeston couldn’t get Allan Carr on the phone. Allan’s
Grease
agreement with Paramount required that he begin production on the sequel within three years of the original movie. A $5-million check from Paramount depended on Allan’s quick segue from
The Queen of Basin Street
to
Grease 2
.