Come Hear the Music Play: Memories of My Twenty Years as Agent for John Kander

By Richard Seff

DEAR JOHN; I WROTE THIS ARTICLE FIVE YEARS AGO AS YOU APPROACHED YOUR 90TH BIRTHDAY, BUT I DIDN’T KNOW WHERE TO PLACE IT, SO I PUT IT AWAY IN MY ‘UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS FILE’. I CAME ACROSS IT RECENTLY, AND I ENJOYED RELIVING ITS HAPPENINGS SO MUCH THAT I DECIDED IT WOULD BE A SWELL WAY TO SAY ‘CONGRATULATIONS” NOW, AS YOU APPROACH #95. IT COVERS YOUR 40 YEAR COLLABORATION WITH FRED, AND IT BROUGHT BACK TO ME MANY HAPPY MEMORIES OF THE TWENTY YEARS OF THEM WHEN I REPRESENTED YOU BOTH. AS TRAVEL MATES WE SHARED SOME VERY SPECIAL TIMES AS WELL. SO HERE IT IS, WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION AS A BIRTHDAY GIFT FROM ONE OF OF YOUR FIRST FANS.
R.S..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664199026

Richard Seff

RICHARD SEFF has spent his entire working life in show business as actor, playwright, librettist, agent, investor, memoirist and now novelist. He joined Actor's Equity in 1946 and his last engagement onstage was in 2008. He took a 22 year leave of absence from the stage after a long run on Broadway in the prize winning "Darkness At Noon." During those 22 years he represented artists in the musical theatre, including Chita Rivera, Robert Goulet, Julie Andrews, Ron Field, Linda Lavin, John Kander and Fred Ebb. At the height of his agency career, he left that field to return to the stage. In the decades since, he has appeared in some 25 plays, for one of which ("Angels Fall") he won the Carbonell Award in 1982 for Best Supporting Actor in a play. He's been in 7 feature films and over 50 television series, soap operas, TV films and mini-series. He is the author of "Paris Is Out!" a comedy which brightened Broadway in 1970 for 104 performances. The musical "Shine!" for which he wrote the book, was a triple prize winner in the 2010 NYMF Festival of New Musicals, and has been published by Samuel French and recorded by Original Cast Records. His memoir, "Supporting Player," published in 2004 is still selling as a vivid visit to the Golden Age of Broadway. But in the beginning, in the halcyon days of 1949, he was sustained by the then-flourishing field of radio, so come join him as he conjures up Alice and Harold, a young couple, newly arrived in the Big Apple with high hopes, as they discover each other, and together enter the revolving doors of the mighty United Radio Society (URSo) in search of fulfillment and an honest dollar. Whether or not you recall the pull of those voices emanating from Philcos across the land, you'll have a wild ride, for distance has lent enchantment to this very Disneyish dinosaur called Radio.

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Copyright © 2021 by Richard Seff.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 09/29/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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CONTENTS

Overture

Prologue

The House Lights Dim

The Curtain Rises

Intermission

Act Two

Act Three

Finale. ‘To Be Continued’

OVERTURE

John Kander and Fred Ebb have written some fifteen musicals for Broadway as well as an Industrial Show for General Electric, and their musical material was staged in revue form off-Broadway by others twice. Three of their fifteen Broadway properties were completed and produced after Ebb’s death in 2004, and one (based on Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of our Teeth) expired during a tryout tour in stock in 1999.

Kander and Ebb hold the record as the longest running composer/lyricist collaboration in musical theatre history. In theater they worked together for 40 years, beginning in 1964 and continuing until Ebb’s death in 2004. At the time of Ebb’s death, their three almost completed musicals, Curtains, The Scottsboro Boys and The Visit, were completed by Kander and the occasional added lyricist, and all three shows found homes on Broadway.

PROLOGUE

Both men were writing songs for the musical theatre long before they became collaborators. Now, to honor John Kander’s imminent 90th birthday on March 18th, I’d like to share with you some of the personal memories of my long association behind the scenes with them, before they began to write together, even before they met.

Our business relationship began during my 20-year career as a musical theatre agent during which I represented them. For almost ten of those years, from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, they worked alone and with other writing partners.

Kander, an Oberlin graduate, completed his formal training with postgraduate work at Columbia University. Done with that, he made his living accompanying singers at auditions, conducting (Conversation Piece by Noël Coward), and arranging dance music for other composers (Irma La Douce, Gypsy). But Broadway was the goal.

Without obtaining rights to the source material, he and two collaborators (James and William Goldman) did an