'King' history proves theater is small world

By Kyle Lawson
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 1, 1998

Joan Marcus Hayley Mills (center) plays the role of Anna in The King and I, a Tony Award-winning musical revival that opens Jan. 6 at Gammage Auditorium.

Which came first? Gertrude Lawrence or Irene Dunne, Rodgers and Hammerstein or Bernard Herrmann? Anna and the King of Siam or The King and I?

And who cares, you well may ask, but I assure you, in the musical comedy world, these are questions right up there with the one about the chicken and the egg.

At issue is who deserves credit for the original idea behind The King and I, the Tony Award-winning musical revival that opens Jan. 6 at Gammage Auditorium.

Simple, you might think. Precedence is due Margaret Landon, who wrote the best-selling Anna and the King of Siam in the 1940s. Except she took her inspiration from the diaries of Anna Leonowens, an English governess to the Siamese court in the mid-1860s.

And except that most reference books credit the idea to the first woman to play the "I," actress Gertrude Lawrence, who supposedly conceived of the musical and took it to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Except (and aren't you tired of that word by now?), in reality, she took it to Cole Porter, who didn't quite see it as being up his lyrical alley.

You can tell this is going to get complicated.

Perhaps it's time for some chronological order.

First there was Leonowens and Landon. Then came Talbot Jennings, an Idaho cowboy who acquired polish at Harvard and Yale Drama School and Hollywood credits that included Mutiny on the Bounty, The Good Earth, Marie Antoinette, Northwest Passage and Across the Wide Missouri.

And there was Sally Benson, who wrote the screenplays for Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and Elvis Presley's Viva Las Vegas but is most famous for penning the stories on which MGM based its classic Judy Garland musical, Meet Me in St. Louis.

It was 1946 and Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox, needed a project for Irene Dunne, whose career was on the downswing. Two back-to-back Dunne hits, A Guy Named Joe (later the basis of Steven Spielberg's Always) and The White Cliffs of Dover had been followed by resounding flops, Together Again and Over 21.

'THE KING AND I' WHAT: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Tony Award-winning musical, starring Hayley Mills and Vee Talmadge. WHEN: Jan. 6- 11. Performance times vary. WHERE: Gammage Auditorium, Mill Avenue and Apache Boulevard, Tempe. TICKETS: $33-$47. 1-602-965-3434.

There was some talk of a musical. Dunne had exhibited a fine soprano in High, Wide and Handsome, Roberta and the '36 Show Boat (still considered the finest film version of that Jerome Kern classic). Zanuck asked Jennings and Benson to come up with a script that would allow songs to be interpolated.

They did, but for various reasons, the idea was canned. (But not in all quarters. In its review of the picture, the New York Times wrote that the greatest fault of Anna and the King of Siam was that it played "like a musical, but without the music.")

The score was assigned to Bernard Herrmann, then just another studio cog but later a cult favorite for his Hitchcock scores (particularly North by Northwest). John Cromwell (Of Human Bondage, The Prisoner of Zenda) was assigned to direct.

Zanuck assembled an eclectic cast: Rex Harrison as the king, Linda Darnell as the slave girl Tuptim, the Oscar-winning Gale Sondergaard as the king's chief wife and Lee J. Cobb as the Kralahome.

Wartime restrictions forced the studio to film in black and white instead of the anticipated Technicolor, but the film (available on video and laser disc) still did well at the box office and with the Oscar voters: Arthur Miller earned an Academy Award for his cinematography and nominations went to Jennings, Benson, Herrmann and Sondergaard.

Now, we come to Gertrude Lawrence, one of the luminaries of the English and American stage (and subject of Julie Andrews' greatest film flop, Star!). Although the reference books never refer to Zanuck's film, Lawrence must have seen it, especially since she numbered Harrison among her greatest friends. (Something that could not be said of Dunne. Lawrence had never liked the American actress and it is said the only reason she agreed to do Lady in the Dark, the Gershwin-Weill musical that became her greatest American hit, was that she heard director Moss Hart wanted to sign Dunne for the part.)

Wherever her inspiration lay, Lawrence was determined to turn the story into a musical, and she appealed to Porter. When he declined, she approached Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, who were looking for a project with commercial potential after two less-than-successful follow-ups (Pipe Dream and Me and Juliet) to Oklahoma! and Carousel.

The rest, as they say, is royalty checks in the millions.

Except for one more ironic happenstance.

Most film critics in 1946 considered Harrison to be miscast as the king. In 1951, even the New York Times was suggesting he would be perfect in the role, even though it was common knowledge he couldn't sing (an irrelevance, as he later proved in another musical, My Fair Lady). Lawrence campaigned hard for him, but Yul Brynner came along. You know how that one turned out.

The King and I premiered on March 29, 1951. Lawrence was still playing Anna when she died in September 1952.

The revival coming to Gammage opened at Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre in April 1996. It won four Tony Awards, including best musical revival; four Drama Desk Awards and three Outer Critics Circle Awards.

Lou Diamond Phillips and Donna Murphy were cast in the roles of the king and Anna, which will be played by Vee Talmadge and Hayley Mills in Tempe. The choreography is by Jerome Robbins (who did the dances in 1951) and Lar Lubovitch, one of the better regarded modern choreographers.

This story wouldn't be complete without one last bit of evidence to prove what a small world it is in theater. One of Mills' recent successes was a revival of Noel Coward's Fallen Angels. His inspiration for the 1925 comedy? His beloved Gertie.

Life doesn't come full circle in theater. It never stops spinning long enough for that.