Yale University Press is publishing “Kander and Ebb” by James Leve on March 10 as part of its “Yale Broadway Masters Series.” Since two of the song-writing duo’s shows — “Chicago” and “Cabaret” — were made into landmark movies, the book will be of equal interest to theater and film fans.
Leve does a fine job of mixing a scholarly approach to the music of John Kander and Fred Ebb along with a breezy, gossipy take on the stories behind the creation of their many musicals.
In the cases of “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” Leve takes us through the staging of the original productions and then the hugely successful Broadway revivals of the 1990s (the “Chicago” revival is still running 12 years after it opened!).
The author shows us how each of the musicals became movies — in the case of “Chicago” (right) a rocky journey of almost 30 years.
The author reminds us that the many “flops” by Kander and Ebb — “70, Girls, 70” and “Steel Pier,” among them — contain some of the best songs the duo ever wrote.
Fred Ebb died in 2005, but a show he worked on with Kander, “Curtains,” opened on Broadway in 2007 and there are two other major Kander and Ebb musicals still awaiting their New York debuts — “The Visit” and “All About Us.”
The source material for those two shows illustrates the great range of stories Kander and Ebb worked on during their five decades of collaboration. “The Visit” is based on the grim 1956 Frederich Durenmatt drama that served as the final showcase for Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. “All About Us” is a musicalization of Thornton Wilder’s screwball classic “The Skin of Our Teeth.”
Leve is remarkably clear-eyed when it comes to some of the more hysterical aspects of Broadway, especially the place of Liza Minnelli within the world of Kander and Ebb.
The duo gave the star her Broadway breakthrough role, the 1965 box-office failure, “Flora, the Red Menace,” which earned Minnelli a Tony and the lifelong friendship and show-writing services of Fred Ebb.
It was Ebb who more or less created the star’s concert “personality” through the special marerial he wrote — new songs with Kander such as “Ring Them Bells” and between-songs patter crafted by Ebb.
Kander and Ebb put Minnelli on the top of the show business heap in 1972 with a virtually unprecedented one-two punch. First, the film version of “Cabaret” opened in late spring to great notices and strong box-office. Then, less than six months later, the filmed-stage-show “Liza with a ‘Z’” caused a sensation when it was aired on television (Liza and her director Bob Fosse won Oscars and Emmys for their multi-media triumph).
Here’s Leve on the Minnelli-Ebb partnership:
“(They) were each other’s greatest fan, fueling each other’s self-delusions and fulfilling each other’s insatiable need for approbation…Minnelli has proudly acknowledged that she was a figment of Fred Ebb’s imagination. There is more than a grain of truth to this statement, as Ebb helped Minnelli to invent her ‘glam’ persona, the occasional mid- or post-song giggle, the confessional tone when talking to her audience.”
Kander & Ebb and Minnelli ran aground in the 1970s and 1980s when two of their shows together — “The Act” and “The Rink” — closed early due to a mixture of mediocre reviews and the star’s widely publicized substance abuse problems.
