Free On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide by Ethan Mordden Page B

rather, he navigates around loyalty and talent. So Sondheim took the credit without the bank, and thus gave up ninety-five years’ (under the pre-1978 copyright law and the so-called “Sonny Bono amendment”) worth of extra revenue.
    Strange to say, Sondheim looks back on this first set of Sondheim lyrics to be heard on Broadway with rue. He likes “Something’s Coming” because its images reflect the interests of a teenager. He likes the “Jet Song” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” the latter of which Robbins set on its feet in three hours—“one of the most brilliantly inventive [stagings] in one number I’ve ever seen.”
    Sondheim said this at a Dramatists Guild panel some thirty years later, when he noted that the “more contemplative lyrics” now struck him as self-conscious and even pretentious, as though he were dictating to characters rather than letting them express themselves. “Very ‘written’ ” is how he put it. He felt this in particular about “I Feel Pretty,” because the emphasis on rhyme must suggest sophistication, and Maria, who sings it, is a very sheltered young woman. I think something’s wrong here. Everyone responds to rhyme, if only the “Roses are red, violets are blue” sort, and much of “I Feel Pretty” deals in obvious matches, like “pretty” and “witty.” Other lines perfectly capture a young girl jumping for joy—“Such a pretty me,” for instance.
    Then, too, that number always goes over wonderfully. If there were a discord between who Maria is and what Sondheim gave her to sing, the audience would be confused and resistant. Sondheim even said that, after run-throughs before the tryout, he changed the lyrics, the better to respect character. But his collaborators preferred the first version, and it stayed in.
    Jerome Robbins hated the number. He left it to the assistant choreographer, Peter Gennaro, to stage. * According to Carol Lawrence, Gennaro allowed her to make up her own idea of an “I Feel Pretty” dance, sporting a mantilla, faking a bullfight, then flopping on the bed for the blackout. Oscar Hammerstein particularly loved the number—did he ever tell Sondheim that the lyrics weren’t apt?—and later congratulated Robbins on its spontaneity, never dreaming that Robbins had nothing to do with it. Robbins took credit for it all the same.
    As so often with breakaway projects, West Side Story had trouble getting its capitalization. As Bernstein put it at that Guild panel, “There was tremendous animosity to the whole idea.” The production was about to go into rehearsal when its co-producer (and primary money-raiser) Cheryl Crawford abruptly pulled out on spurious grounds. “Cheryl,” said Laurents, “you are an immoral woman.” But this does show how strange West Side Story appeared to the “angels” (as they used to be called: those who backed Broadway productions), because Crawford in fact liked taking chances on unusual material. Amazingly, Columbia Records, Bernstein’s own label, is supposed, at first, to have passed on making the cast album.
    What? This after the firm’s President and artistic guru, Goddard Lieberson, had just masterminded Columbia’s financing of My Fair Lady , the most profitable musical (and biggest-selling LP) of its era? One year later, Lieberson, with all his power, wouldn’t record Bernstein’s Broadway show? With that score—which Lieberson must have heard? This is unbelievable; indeed, Columbia did in fact tape the West Side Story score in the end.
    The show opened on September 26, 1957, at the Winter Garden Theatre after very successful tryouts in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. It was an electric event, the first big show of the season. Angry Young Man John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger ; Lena Horne; Helen Hayes and Richard Burton in Jean Anouilh; Noël Coward; Julie Harris; William Inge; and The Music Man were all to come, but only later in the year, and West Side Story won mostly raves. The