And the Show Did Go On

By JAY COCKS

42ND STREET Directed and Choreographed by Gower Champion Songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin

Hear that particular, percussive sound as the curtains fall away, showing dozens of chorus dancers tapping like delirious bobbins. To generations of Broadway audiences, this single sensation is an express ticket to some giddy paradise. In that tradition, and for that audience, 42nd Street is a musical made in heaven. For theatergoers outside the tradition, skeptical of it, the show will look like a high-stepping exercise in runaway nostalgia.

The grand, silly movie original 42nd Street that Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley whipped up for Warner Bros. in 1933 was shorter, sharper and funnier than this elaboration, which includes several more numbers and, if possible, even less plot. The Warren-Dubin songs like Go into Your Dance, Shuffle off to Buffalo and About a Quarter to Nine are jazzy bits of innocent syncopation. There is now a good deal of narrative and emotional weight on these tunes, which are graceful little paper boats never made for such heavy cargo. The book, which the program accurately calls "lead-ins and crossovers," is credited to Michael Stewart (Hello, Dolly!) and Mark Bramble (Barnum), a couple of pros who do well all that is required of them: get the tunes on and get 'em off with a couple of jokes.

Everyone knows this plot, even if he has never seen 42nd Street in any form: how the little girl from the sticks goes on for a disabled star, saves a big musical, finds love and becomes a star herself. The little girl, this time around, is a whirligig newcomer named Wanda Richert; the laid-up star is Tammy Grimes, who puts over a song like a hybrid of Bea Lillie and Sergeant Bilko; and the hardbitten, long-suffering director is Jerry Orbach, who brings not only freshness but some unexpected bite into the show's title tune.

The familiarity and the recycled dizziness do not really matter. For the lover of Broadway musicals, these qualities become virtues, like maps of a long-traveled route; without them, you might never be lost, but your security and sense of order would be at risk, and you would never enjoy the trip.

42nd Street will be remembered as the last work of Gower Champion, 59, an encapsulation of much that he did best. As a director, he had a jet pilot's sense of speed and angle of ascent. Fond memories of his Bye Bye Birdie offer abundant evidence of that. His choreography could turn from the gliding thunder of tap to the vaulting grace of a waltz without missing a step. The vitality of such 42nd Street numbers as The Shadow Waltz--done just with work lights--Lullaby of Broadway and We're in the Money ensures that this show will not be a Champion memorial but, fittingly, an ongoing tribute.

Producer David Merrick waited until the cast of 42nd Street had grinned, waved and danced through almost a dozen curtain calls on opening night at the Winter Garden Theater before coming onstage and making an announcement to them and to the audience: "This is tragic. Gower Champion died this afternoon."

The cast, who knew that their director was ailing and hospitalized, had little idea of the severity of his sickness. The news that Champion was dead poleaxed them. Wanda Richert wept in Merrick's arms, and, after a moment of stunned silence. Jerry Orbach called backstage to the house manager, "Bring it in, bring it in."

Orbach was talking about the curtain. For anyone unfamiliar with theater idiom, however, other nightmarish alternatives presented themselves. The moment was that terrible, that ghoulish and--it must be said--that calculated. Merrick's decision to reveal the director's death as a grotesque curtain speech resulted in the kind of attention and publicity that a more private notice--say, after the final curtain to cast, crew and friends, or at the scheduled opening-night party--would never have attracted.

The dignity that may have been missing at this moment was evident in the last months of Champion's life. He had been suffering from a rare malignancy of the blood, Waldenstroem's macroglobulinemia, for some time. Dr. Lilian Reich of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said that Champion first showed signs of the disease ten years ago, but that it was not diagnosed until four years later. Throughout the long rehearsal and preview period Champion scheduled his treatments so they would not conflict with his work. Says Dr. Reich: "It was clear that he put the show first."

Like most Merrick productions, 42nd Street dragged a long train of rumor and gossip. There were postponements of the opening, which the producer characteristically explained to the press in a manner that only deepened the mystery: "The Great Man way up there has said that this show is very important for people all around the world to see. He will give the word when he feels the show is ready. I am waiting for the courier to arrive." There was also much talk about friction between Merrick and Champion. Yet one first-nighter said, "People around the show wanted Merrick to replace Champion. They felt, without knowing how sick he really was, that Gower was just not up to it. But Merrick stuck by him."

It was a partnership of long standing and great mutual success. Champion, born in Geneva, Ill., had played supper clubs when he was just out of high school, danced with his first wife Marge through a succession of movie musicals (Show Boat, Jupiter's Darling). Although he won his first Tony Award in 1949, Champion made his big smash as a director with Bye Bye Birdie (1960). Subsequently he did much of his most successful work on Merrick productions (Carnival!, I Do, I Do) and in 1964 gave the producer his biggest hit, Hello, Dolly!, one of the most spectacular theatrical bonanzas of all time. In return, Merrick's patronage gave Champion the chance to surpass his achievements as a dancer and a film director.

At the opening-night party, the mood was subdued. But after a time, a certain kind of Broadway tradition, of which Gower Champion was a proud part, took hold. Some of the party goers got up and gave him a tribute he would surely have approved. They danced.

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