I've received two dozen e-mails about the Superman Broadway show and only 23 of them have reminded or asked me about the TV version that ran on ABC in 1975 as a late night special. ABC was then airing this odd anthology series opposite Johnny Carson called ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. One week a month, it was The Dick Cavett Show. One week a month, it was Jack Paar Tonite, featuring Mr. Paar's ill-considered return to the talk show business. And the other weeks, it was odd specials and pilots and shows that made you scratch your head and wonder what, if anything, was on someone's mind.
Their version of It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman! featured David Wilson as Superman/Clark Kent, Lesley Warren as Lois Lane, Kenneth Mars as Max Mencken (the Jack Cassidy role), David Wayne as the mad scientist, Loretta Swit as the lady who got to sing, "You've Got Possibilities" and Allen Ludden, the host of Password, as Perry White. A gent named Romeo Muller, who otherwise wrote most of the Rankin-Bass TV specials, adapted the script and made it campier and more politically correct. (The Flying Lings, who were crooked Chinese stereotype bad guys in the original became Mafioso types with Al Molinaro playing their leader.) Videotapes of this one are making the rounds but trust me. You don't want to see it.
Now, then. I asked if anyone could name a successful Broadway musical where all the protagonists are pretty much unchanged at the end. Brad Walker thought of one — You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown — so it's possible. It's just not likely. Brad also wrote the following to me…
I never saw it on stage but I did get the Original Cast album out of the library. The standout number, as you say, is "You've Got Possibilities" sung by the pre-Alice Linda Lavin. But I do have affection for "We Don't Matter At All," if only because I've come across the attitude so often: "Baby, you and I / We're just about as special / As a walnut or a fly / We don't matter at all." Existential angst has never been so bouncy.
One song that never made it into the album was, "Everything's Easy When You Know How." The gossip columnist and the mad scientist recruit a team of Chinese acrobats as henchmen. The acrobats are anxious to get back at Superman because no one will pay to watch acrobats fly when they can see Superman fly for nothing. (I'd move to Gotham.) Judging by their few lines in other numbers, the Chinese acrobats are severely stereotyped which accounts for their number being cut. When the show was broadcast on TV the acrobats were replaced by mafiosi, including Al Molinaro. I met Mr. Molinaro not long after that and he expressed surprise at the non-Midas touch of the Birdie creators.
Speaking of the TV show…they upped the camp value, took out Lois's spunk, replaced the gossip columnist with an ex-jock sportwriter (not Steve Lombard, but might as well have been) — none of which helped. The only addition I liked was when Superman is at his lowest, he gets his faith rekindled by a couple of youngsters named Jerry and Joe.
A few years ago, they released a new album with previously cut songs, like the dreary "A Woman Alone" (which was replaced by the more hopeful "What I've Always Wanted"), And then there was "Dot Dot Dot," a faux Winchell column set to music. Cassidy's character, Max Mencken, is a pencil-thin caricature of Winchell. "Dot Dot Dot" was dropped in tryouts, I imagine, because it skewed the proceedings even more Max-ward. I wish they had left in "Didjuhseeit?", a paean to fanboys: "Didjuhseeit? / Didjuhseeit? / Boy, he really is the Man of Steel! / Didjuhseeit? / Didjuhseeit? / Now I can tell that he really is for real!"
I heard from a couple of folks who saw the show on Broadway and enjoyed it. Here's a message from Steve Winer…
I saw the original show too, and I remember having a great time. Then again, I was twelve and probably one of a handful of audience members with an equal interest in comic books and musicals.
Don't underestimate the power of that original cast. Linda Lavin, young and fresh off The Mad Show, was charming and funny, and Jack Cassidy was, as always, a scene stealer in the best sense of the term.
I do remember finding the villain story a bit lame, but on the whole it was a fun show that might just have fallen in a strange crack between possible audiences — too hip for kids, not hip enough for adults. Then again, people are still performing it and talking about it forty years later, and that's not a bad legacy for a flop.
No, not bad at all. And I'm sure Jack Cassidy was wonderful in it. He was a terrific performer in everything he did, even if he was completely out of his mind. It's sad that he was never in a really big hit because he sure deserved one.
Lastly: I mentioned that Lee Adams and Charles Strouse had also done the songs for Annie. I was half right. Strouse did the music but the lyrics were by Martin Charnin. Sorry.