During that period when Tom and I were writing the book, I couldn’t wait to meet him at noon each day at Madame Romaine de Lyon’s restaurant on Sixty-first Street. Who was Madame Romaine de Lyon? She was the best omelet maker in the world. Her omelets were always perfect—slightly browned on the outside and soft and runny in the middle (as the French say baveuse). Her menu was a thin book of one hundred omelets. Our favorite was jambon, tomate, et fromage (ham, tomato, and cheese) and once in a while we’d ask her to throw in some truffles.
That reminds me of a great joke Carl Reiner made on eating truffles in a French restaurant. He said to the waiter in perfect French: “Mes compliments au cochon qui a trouvé ces truffles.” (My compliments to the pig who found these truffles!) So every day, Tom and I would meet there at noon and sit in a quiet corner. We’d order our Madame Romaine omelets—one each. Because Madame Romaine said, “You can split a steak. But never split an omelet—it doesn’t work.”
So we’d eat our omelets, we’d drink our coffee, and we’d write our musical. We finished working each day either at Tom’s place or mine. Looking back at those Madame Romaine days, I can honestly say they were some of the best times of my life. It was nice being back in New York, the town I grew up in. My biggest journey in those early days was going across the Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn to New York. We Brooklynites never called it Manhattan; we always called it New York. It was vital, throbbing, and always exciting. The great pulse of the city to me was always Broadway, and now I was finally writing my big Broadway show.
So our audience had met Max, and now they needed to meet his future partner, Leo Bloom. In less than a week, I wrote a song that totally explains who Leo Bloom is and what makes him tick. It’s called “I Wanna Be a Producer.”
LEO BLOOM:
I wanna be a producer
With a hit show on Broadway
I wanna be a producer
Lunch at Sardi’s every day
I wanna be a producer
Sport a top hat and a cane
I wanna be a producer
And drive those chorus girls insane!
I thought that song was finished until I met Glen Kelly. Mike Ockrent suggested that we hire Glen Kelly, who did such a great job for him on Crazy for You, to do our musical arrangements. Glen Kelly was invaluable in fashioning the score. With his skillful talent he takes a song and turns it into an event. From a lead sheet on a piano to a full-blown musical arrangement. Glen took my song “I Wanna Be a Producer” and wrote a terrific intro to it that sets the mood perfectly. We see Bloom in the middle of a bevy of accountants in the accounting office of Whitehall and Marks. They all begin to sing:
ACCOUNTANTS:
Unhappy…unhappy…very unhappy
Unhappy…unhappy…
Very very very very very
Very very unhappy
It was a marvelous setting for Leo to begin his soul-searching song.
LEO BLOOM:
I spend my life accounting
With figures and such
ACCOUNTANTS:
Unhappy…
LEO BLOOM:
To what is my life amounting?
It figures, not much.
ACCOUNTANTS:
Unhappy…
LEO BLOOM:
I have a secret desire
Hiding deep in my soul
It sets my heart afire
To see me in this role
It then segues into the main chorus of “I Wanna Be a Producer.” So you don’t know what’s missing until it’s there. And then you realize it was missing all along. That’s the genius of Glen Kelly. He knows what’s missing and how to fill it.
By the way, another person needs credit for helping me with the lyrics of that song: my old friend Ronny Graham. When I said to him, “Ronny, I’m stuck. I can’t find anything that rhymes with ‘figures and such.’?”
Ronny brilliantly said, “How about: ‘It figures, not much.’?”
God bless Ronny Graham!
There were other important roles in fashioning the music of our musical. There was Patrick Brady, who not only did our vocal arrangements, but also later became our masterful conductor. Then we got Doug Besterman, who is in my opinion the best orchestrator on Broadway. The first time I heard the full orchestra playing my score I broke into tears.
* * *
—
The development of our book and the songs I was writing were going along at a good pace when heartbreaking disaster struck. Tragically, our director, Mike Ockrent, who we had grown to love and respect, had developed leukemia. He was managing it well with treatment and still working, but unfortunately in December of 1999 it took a turn for the worse and he tragically passed away at the age of fifty-three. We were all shattered by his death, but Stro was absolutely devastated. They had just gotten married in 1996, and now, only three years later, he was gone. We did our best to console her, but let me tell you, it was a very rough time in all of our lives.
David Geffen came up with some good suggestions as to who could take over the reins of the show and continue to direct it, but Tom and I had a better idea. The answer of who should take over directing the show was right under our noses: the supremely gifted Susan Stroman. In addition to being an award-winning choreographer, Stro had just staged her first big show as a director at Lincoln Center. It was called Contact. Tom and I had of course been there on opening night and we were both really impressed by her work. She would go on to get a Tony nomination for Best Director and then the show went on to win the Tony for Best Musical. We knew nobody else could complete the job of directing The Producers as well as Stro.
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.