Caught the NJN preview on Sunday...an excellent documenturary , I highly reccommend it!

The Jerry Herman story, from child to composer, "Words and Music by Jerry Herman' can be seen tonight at 9:30 on WHYY-TV12 and NJN, the New Jersey public broadcasting network.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008
By CHARLES PAOLINO
Gannett New Jersey

"Given the choice," said Jerry Herman, "I would rather go to a theater and see a beautiful woman in a beautiful gown than to see a man in a brown suit."

The occasion for this remark was a telephone conversation about "Words and Music by Jerry Herman," a documentary that will premiere tonight on WHYY TV12 and NJN.

The remark flowed from the fact that Herman was the composer and lyricist for two enduring musicals -- "Hello, Dolly!" (1964) and "Mame" (1966) -- with iconic female leads.

"It's just not the same experience," Herman said, continuing the comparison between the gown and the brown suit. "I don't know if that sounds peculiarly misguided on my part, but it's absolutely true. I think a larger-than-life female on stage is much more exciting to see, and even vocally." Vintage footage

"Hello, Dolly!" and "Mame," including vintage footage with performers such as Angela Lansbury, Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey, are important subjects in the documentary by filmmaker Amber Edwards. It's a 90-minute program that reconstructs the process through which these and other works evolved as Herman grew from a child into a respected figure in American theater.

The program does not focus only on Herman's legendary successes; it also reflects on his less successful efforts, including "Dear World" and "The Grand Tour."

Edwards takes the story from the top, literally driving Herman to his childhood home in Jersey City, Hudson County, and filming him as he emerges tentatively from the car and describes the memories this place evokes in him.

"I didn't want to go," Herman recalled. "Amber talked me into getting into that car and going back to a place I hadn't been to in decades. It was a very emotional time for me. I worried about how it would come out on film. But when I saw it I got a lump in my throat again." Parents behind him

The emotion was inspired by the fact Herman had a happy childhood with parents Harry and Ruth, whom he loved and respected and who were instrumental in the start of his career.

His mother, who would die of cancer at age 44, arranged for her 17-year-old son to audition his songs for Frank Loesser in 1953; Loesser listened and concluded that Herman had a future in the musical theater.

Channing says in the documentary that Herman was writing "for his mother" when he wrote for characters such as Dolly and Mame.

"That might be true," Herman said, "but it wasn't anything that I realized at the time. You use your life experience to write anything. I didn't knowingly say, "Well, my mother was like Auntie Mame,' but I got a lot of ideas from things that I saw her do and say." Insights offered

Channing is part of a roster of theatrical personalities who appear in the documentary, giving their insights concerning Herman, the shows he wrote and the epoch in which he worked.

These interviews include Arthur Laurents (who wrote the book for "Mame" Lansbury), Marge Champion, Phyllis Newman, Leslie Uggams and Michael Feinstein, who accompanies his remarks with some piano playing and vocals.

One of the actors who figures prominently in the program is Charles Nelson Reilly (Cornelius Hackl in the original cast of "Hello, Dolly!"), who died in May. Reilly's remarks are delivered with the flair and humor that were his trademarks. Describing an encounter with Herman in a supermarket aisle, Reilly said: "So he went his way, jams and jellies, and I went my way, pharmaceuticals."

"Having him as a friend," Herman said, "was such a treat because he'd constantly make you laugh. He didn't even have to work at it. It was just the way he expressed himself. I miss him so much because he was unique. There was only one person like that I've ever known." George Hearn speaks

Also providing substantial remarks in the documentary is George Hearn, who starred in the original production of Herman's last hit, "La Cage aux Folles."

Hearn talks about his misgivings about taking on the role of a transvestite. In a way, his reluctance was symbolic of the risk Herman was taking in 1983 by mounting a show about what was still a taboo subject in many circles.

The show was a success and Herman explained why.

"That show has done a great deal of good for the whole perception of gays," he said, "because it was done as an entertainment. As I said in the documentary, if it had been a militant approach it probably would have run a month or two instead of five years."

That show appeared at the emergence of the AIDS epidemic and the disease ravaged the cast; half the original company didn't complete the run. And Jerry Herman, having lost his partner, Mark Finklestein, to the infection, was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1985, though improved treatment has spared his life. Virtually unique

If Herman had written either words or music for the hit shows that carry his name, he would have made a permanent mark on the theater. But, as the title of the documentary emphasizes, he is virtually unique in that he wrote both lyrics and scores.

"I wish I could tell you why it happened that way," Herman said, "but I began writing both and I never stopped. It's that simple. I guess it was an innate ability in me that I could write an inter-rhymed, complicated lyric like "Gooch's Song" ("Mame") and a simple love song like "It Only Takes a Moment" ("Hello, Dolly!") and that both of those seemed equal in my head."

Words and music come to him simultaneously, Herman said. "I think only maybe once or twice have I written a melody and then put words to it and I can't even think what that was."

These songs gave Herman a reputation for wanting to uplift people with his work that's mentioned more than once in the documentary.

"I would say that's a true statement," Herman acknowledged. "I'm thrilled when I stand anonymously in the back of the theater and people don't know who I am and they come out with smiles on their faces and are singing or humming. That gives me more satisfaction than anything in this business, even more than a good review. That's what I do it for."

Jerry Herman is 76 now, but, he said, "I'm still playing daddy to my shows. I'm going to Texas to work with Leslie Uggams, who's doing "Hello, Dolly!' at the Theater Under the Stars, and I'm going to London to see a new version of "La Cage.'

"I keep after "the kids,' as I call them," he said.

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Applause for Jerry Herman

By David Patrick Stearns
Philadelphia Inquirer Music Critic

Typically, when public television salutes a Broadway figure, it's somebody serious - Stephen Sondheim, in other words. But while Sondheim's mass-murder musical Sweeney Todd currently has multiplexes awash in blood, WHYY TV12 offers a New Year's Day bonbon - a fun, seriously watchable documentary tribute to the man who wrote Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles.

Titled Words and Music by Jerry Herman, the Amber Edwards film (produced by NJN, the New Jersey Network, not usually a source of PBS documentaries) follows its now 76-year-old subject from his Jersey City beginnings to the ultimate Broadway dream, writing hits for the grandest personalities in showbiz. And though it doesn't go as deep as you might want, the 90-minute film, airing from 9:30 to 11 p.m., is, if nothing else, a great excuse for showing rare archival footage of historically important productions and interviewing Herman's contemporaries while they're still able to be their often-outrageous selves.

Carol Channing is almost professorial in her intelligent discussion of Herman's characters, while composer Charles Strouse (who was asked to doctor the ailing Hello, Dolly! on its pre-Broadway tour), reveals that the three primary drives among men are sex, food and "rewriting somebody else's musical." Though the ever-amiable Herman claims his music is strictly plot- and character-driven, the delightfully silly Charles Nelson Reilly tattles on him by revealing that parts of Mame are recycled from an early revue. Not that Herman loses any artistic credibility: Michael Feinstein sits at the piano dissecting Herman's miracles of scintillation and ability to make character points with barely perceptible shifts into minor keys.

Much of the archival footage seems to have come from anonymous fans with home movie cameras in the front mezzanine, synchronized with music from the original cast albums. And what fascinating glimpses they are. But there's also more legit footage, Mary Martin performing Dolly for Vietnam troops, for example, suggesting that she perhaps ties with Pearl Bailey as the best Dolly of all. The primary frustration that goes with this genre of television documentaries - cutting off performances you want to see more of - is at a minimum. The two victims, though, are big ones - Leslie Uggams giving what could be a definitive reading of Herman's best song, "Time Heals Everything," and Jason Graae (one of the youngest faces on screen) delivering a climactic moment from The Grand Tour, a Herman failure that had a rehabilitative production at Burbank's Colony Theater.

Ah yes, the flops. To its credit, the film doesn't whitewash them. Odd as it seems from somebody with an unceasing melodic touch, Herman has had almost as many flops as hits, some containing his best music. Explanations come from Herman as well as theater historians who don't have to be so politic: Music and book are at war with each other in Mack and Mabel; Dear World, a musicalization of The Madwoman of Chaillot, was a bad idea; and The Grand Tour suffered from having the shots called by its star, Joel Grey.

Curiously absent is any mention of Herman's more recent efforts. He admits to retiring from Broadway after 1983's La Cage aux Folles because he was HIV positive - he feared he might not live to bring a new show to fruition - but he has written two scores since his health stabilized in the mid-1990s, Mrs. Santa Claus for TV and Miss Spectacular for the stage. Though both scores have his trademark tunes and boffo energy, they show Herman on autopilot, reactivating a bag of tricks more than telling a story. They're almost like imitation Herman, though they do show, by comparison, how wonderful his earlier stuff is. Like Offenbach and Johann Strauss before him, Herman proves the paradox: Featherweight music can be the most substantial, if only because it carries its message so succinctly.

Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.