Even though it was only a few months after Mike’s passing, Tom and I went to her and said, “We want you to continue Mike’s work and direct the show.”
She turned us down; she said she just wasn’t up to it.
Undaunted, Tom and I went to her apartment every day and we’d sit with her. Finally, one day I grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “You just can’t cry all day. Cry in the morning before you come to the rehearsal hall. Do your work. Then go home and cry at night. But in between you are going to take over and direct The Producers. It’s not only good for us, and good for the show, but it’s good for you.”
She couldn’t answer. The next day, we got a call. Stro said, “Okay. I finished crying in the morning. I’m ready.”
She came in, directed The Producers, and then went home to cry again. And she bravely did that every day until the job was done.
We started having weekend bagel meetings. We’d all meet at Stro’s penthouse, and she’d order in from Zabar’s on Broadway. There were bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon, tuna salad, egg salad, and green and black olives. All topped off beautifully with Zabar’s great coffee. I was in charge of the bagels. They liked the way I cut them into three thin slices instead of two thick ones and toasted them to perfection. We’d eat our bagels and drink our coffee and then Glen Kelly would sit at the piano and we’d work on the show. We would change and edit and revise, and once in a while I’d introduce a new idea for a song that I wanted to get everybody’s agreement on. Those were wonderful fun-filled hardworking sessions that really polished the show into a gem.
For instance, in one of our early sessions Glen said, “Mel, you’ve written a wonderful song called ‘We Can Do It’ but it needs a beginning, a verse. Something that introduces it.”
Left to right: Stro, Glen, me, and Tom at one of our bagels-and-coffee weekend creative sessions.
So for our next session I came back with a new intro for the song; it went like this:
MAX BIALYSTOCK:
What did Lewis say to Clark when everything looked bleak?
What did Sir Edmund say to Tenzing as they struggled toward Everest’s peak?
What did Washington say to his troops as they crossed the Delaware?
I’m sure you’re well aware!
LEO BLOOM:
What’d they say?
Max then launches into the song:
MAX BIALYSTOCK:
We can do it, We can do it
We can do it, me and you
We can do it, We can do it
We can make our dreams come true
Everything you’ve ever wanted, is just waiting to be had
Beautiful girls wearing nothing but pearls
Caressing you, undressing you, and driving you mad
We can do it, We can do it
This is not the time to shirk!
We can do it, You won’t rue it
Say goodbye to petty clerk
Hi, Producer
Yes, Producer!
I mean you, sir, go berserk!
We can do it, We can do it
And I know it’s gonna work!
The song was uplifting and exciting and it moved the story forward. By the way, I got a wonderful compliment on one of those lyrics from one of the greatest Broadway lyricists of all time: Stephen Sondheim. He said, “Mel, I really enjoyed your rhyming ‘Delaware’ with ‘well aware.’？”
The next big step was casting, but Tom, Stro, and I had decided way in advance that there was only one person who could fill Zero Mostel’s shoes on Broadway…
Nathan Lane was at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in 1998. When he came down to go swimming, there were only two other people in the pool: Anne and me.
He said, “Hi, kids.”
Talk about things being meant to be! After the three of us chatted, Anne went up to our room and I immediately talked to Nathan about playing the Zero Mostel role of Max Bialystock on Broadway. It turns out that The Producers was one of his favorite movies, and the idea of playing Max Bialystock really appealed to him. Just like with me offering Gene Wilder the role of Leo Bloom for the movie, a couple of years after that first lucky conversation with me offering Nathan the role of Max Bialystock, we were in rehearsals with Nathan Lane in the lead.
* * *
—
We had scheduled a backers’ audition reading for April 9. The backers’ audition is where you play a staged piano reading of the show in order to get the money people interested in investing in it. We went full steam like a runaway train developing the script right up until April 9. Everything was going well and then a week before we were hit with bad news.
David Geffen had to bow out as our producer. I think he must have been much too busy running his new film company, DreamWorks. But I shall be forever grateful to him for being the spark that ignited the whole show.