YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON BROADWAY!
A Raisin in the Sun and Other Theatrical Improbabilities
By Philip Rose
Limelight Editions. 303 pp. $25
When Philip Rose launched his first Broadway production in 1959, content was king. Sure, stars and sets and the all-important "buzz" were necessary ingredients, but the play was the thing that made those box-office cash registers ring. Aside from a prodigious wad of money, a knack for recognizing good content was just about all it took to mount a successful staging. Big-name producers simply plucked a jewel from a pile of scripts and brought it to Broadway. They did it, Rose reminds us in his new autobiography, "without an interminable succession of readings or showcases, and without the help of a single dramaturg" or script doctor.
Tennessee Williams's "Sweet Bird of Youth," Eugene O'Neill's "A Touch of the Poet," and William Faulkner's "Requiem for a Nun" all played on Broadway during the year of Rose's debut. Too much of a gentleman to state it directly, he implies that such productions were a tad superior to much of what passes for Broadway fare these days. A few praiseworthy offerings are occasionally available to challenge such a notion. Usually, however, they are outnumbered by syrupy concoctions devoid of either memorable dialogue or irresistible tunes -- and stuffed to the rafters with a blend of bombast and spectacle tailor-made for tourists and suckers. (Remember "Seussical"?) Rose doesn't say all that, mind you, but he doesn't exactly discourage the comparison either.
When Rose made his entrance, the Great White Way was lily-white. The play he staged changed all that. Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" was such a novelty that the New Yorker's laudatory review quaintly called it "the first Broadway production of a work by a colored authoress." Directed by African American Lloyd Richards (another Broadway first), "Raisin" went on to win the New York Drama Critics award for best play of the year.
Rose eventually achieved other Broadway successes, including "Shenandoah," for which he won a Tony Award, and "Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?" which featured an intense young performer named Al Pacino. "Raisin," however, remains the high point of his long career, and it is the subject to which he repeatedly returns throughout his genial memoir.
Rose was born in 1921, the fourth child in a poor Jewish family living on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He grew up to become a successful music publisher and a regular in the city's progressive political circles. In the mid-1950s, Hansberry, a close friend, showed him several pages of a play she was working on about a poor Chicago family. The two shepherded it to Broadway, where, with Sidney Poitier as its star, it became a sensation. Rose wryly recalls that he managed the long trip from Hansberry's living room to the Barrymore Theatre despite having "absolutely no producing credentials, apparent or otherwise."
Rose's account of his learn-as-you-go approach to theater production is fascinating, albeit rendered in workmanlike prose. His self-deprecating humor leavens most of the sluggish passages as he recalls his frequent stumbles, false leads and disappointments. Seekers of backstage gossip will enjoy foraging for Rose's anecdotes about Poitier, Paul Robeson, Lena Horne and other celebrities. He settles a few scores, too, taking care to expose the warts of such rivals as producer David Susskind and Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry's troubled husband. (Hansberry died of cancer in 1965 at age 34. She was estranged from Rose at the time -- a situation he blames on Nemiroff, who died in 1991.)
During the 40-plus years since the premiere of "Raisin," the play slid in public regard from its exalted status as a groundbreaking drama to a seemingly outdated oddity ripe for parody (ably lampooned by George C. Wolfe in 1986 as "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play") -- only to rise again as a beloved cultural keepsake. At the same time, Hansberry has ascended from "colored authoress" to revered icon and source of inspiration for a new generation of black female playwrights. Rose takes pride in having recognized Hansberry's talent early. He writes, "she was brilliant, perceptive, incredibly articulate, well informed in the literature of theatre, and certainly freely expressive of her very strong opinions."
No slouch himself in the perception department, Rose had uncanny instincts and was often way ahead of the curve. He created a ruckus in 1964 when he cast the gifted black actress Diana Sands opposite Alan Alda in "The Owl and the Pussycat," declining to request rewrites that would have made Sands's racial identity a part of the play. Nowadays this is called nontraditional or colorblind casting, but in 1964 it was, in a fellow producer's summation, a case of Rose having "lost his mind." It still is not a widespread practice, although it seldom raises eyebrows as it once did. Colorblind casting has its critics -- August Wilson has called it an "aberrant idea" -- yet one could make the argument, and Rose does, that he and Sands helped pave the way for today's black stage stars.
In his loyal, self-effacing way, Rose would likely attribute their prominence on Broadway to Lorraine Hansberry, whose creativity inspired in him a compelling vision of the future. Escorting her to a party following the premiere of "Raisin" in March 1959, Rose realized that the theater world had changed forever in the space of a single performance, that "some things and some feelings might never be the same." As his charming book makes clear, Rose's instincts were, as usual, right on the mark.
