OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1927
I like the octagram.” Dick Rodgers stood behind Kay at an upright piano in a Brooklyn warehouse. “Who doesn’t like octagrams, Busby? But where’s the beat?”
Light filtered through slit windows set high in brick walls above piles of crates, catching dust motes in its path. Fifteen women in rehearsal tights, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-three, held hands awaiting instructions. Some were prettier than others but all possessed long legs, trim figures, and pert busts. The choreographer, Busby Berkeley, rubbed his cheek in thought.
“Okay, Constance, Bill, you’re in front. Look at me.” He stepped, twirled, and jumped. They mimicked him. “Everyone else, push it back a little and open it up.”
For two weeks Rodgers had been quarreling with Berkeley about the choreographer’s new-dance concept. Berkeley visualized dancers as groups forming geometrical patterns: stars, circles rotating within circles, oscillating waves. Rodgers insisted that the sense of individual body motion not be lost. However, neither Berkeley nor Rodgers was the director. The actual director was wrapping another show. The purpose of this rehearsal was to learn the music and sketch out possible dance patterns to present to the director.
“Let’s pick it up five bars before the intro. One, two, three, four,” Rodgers counted.
Kay played again. The dancers crossed their feet and stretched their arms. Bill Gaxton and Connie Carpenter, the stars, sang. Busby Berkeley clapped and called out the beats.
“No, no,” Rodgers waved. He pointed to the score on Kay’s piano. “I’m very sorry. Those two eighth notes.” He reached down with a pencil. “They should be tied. The second beat in measure thirty-two, accented. Once again, five before the verse.”
And so it continued through the afternoon. Repetitive, chilly, excruciating—and Kay savored every moment. For the first time in years, she was working. For the first time in her life, her job lasted more than a few hours.
She worked as rehearsal pianist for Dick Rodgers every day and most nights until the November opening of A Connecticut Yankee at the Vanderbilt Theatre. She observed Rodgers rewriting, discarding, and replacing songs. She sat with her arms folded on the closed piano keyboard lid watching the book writer, the choreographer, and the director debate, compromise, and argue more. She absorbed the ambience and learned how the mechanism of a show slowly aligned.
She lunched with zesty flappers and with her fellow Institute graduate, the composer. Unlike George Gershwin, Dick Rodgers was a son of privilege. Prior to attending the Institute of Musical Art, now known as the Juilliard School of Music, he had attended Columbia University. For him, songwriting was a task to be performed methodically, according to a timetable. He glanced at his wristwatch every ten minutes and expected his coworkers to do the same. He dined on roast beef, peas, and mashed potatoes. He slicked back his dark hair as George did. Younger than George, and less experienced in the entertainment business, he dressed more conservatively. He would never think of wearing a sweater rather than a jacket, as George sometimes did. Kay thought Rodgers lacked George’s spontaneity, vivacity, curiosity, and charm. But there was no denying his talent or ambition.
In contrast, his lyricist Lorenz Hart was witty, often drunk, anything but punctilious. The two men balanced each other like the Greek Gods Apollo and Dionysus. On one occasion, George joined them for dinner. “Isn’t Kay the best, guys?”
Rodgers glanced at his watch, pushed his tray aside, and said, “better be heading back.” He rose and walked away.
“He’s thrilled with you, Kay,” George assured her as they strolled back to the stage.
“Hard to tell, though,” said Kay.
George chuckled.
Larry Hart chimed in. “You know how to tell Dick likes you? He hasn’t fired you.”
During a break, Kay spoke with Hart, who was eating a donut and sipping coffee while looking over hand-scrawled lyrics. A kind, rumpled man seven years Rodgers’ senior at thirty-two, Larry struck her as the wisest and most cynical artist associated with the production.
“Larry, I’ve been working on some tunes and I think they’re jim-dandy. But publisher after publisher turns me down. Do you have advice for an earnest ingénue?” She smiled ingratiatingly.
“An earnest ingénue, eh?” said Larry looking up from his notes. “Yeah, I have advice. Don’t try to make sense of it. It’s a roll of the dice. And then another. And another. Life is a casino.” He placed his hand on her shoulder and looked her squarely in the eyes. “That’s the advice I’d offer a stranger. But someone I cared about, like a niece or a nonchalant chorus girl? I’d say, why trouble your pretty head? You’re better off learning shorthand.”
Dress rehearsals started at 8:00 p.m. and lasted well into the night. Kay slept much of the day. As opening night neared, frayed nerves yielded to temper tantrums. Broadway was a pressure cooker. In show business, success bred success but one failure engendered others too, leading to career extinction. The egos of leading men and women were as fragile as their reputations. So were those of the creative team, including the songwriters. And although only the most celebrated actors and actresses felt entitled to vent their anxieties, the future of every other individual involved was also at stake. A hit show would glow on the curriculum vitae of the lighting supervisor as well as the gofer, even if the lighting had been uneven. A dud, no matter how impressive the lighting, and employment would be harder to come across next time.
Dick Rodgers insisted that everyone connected with the production attend the final dress rehearsal, with full orchestra. Additional handpicked guests, friends and critics, filled the theater. Kay heard flutes and violins sound the notes she had been playing all these weeks.
George leaned toward Kay. “You feel that buzz? It’s not just what’s happening on stage. It’s not just the audience either. It’s the whole damn room. The walls, the ceiling. That’s how you know you’ve got a hit.”
At intermission, he made introductions. “Kay Swift and Paul James, the songwriters,” he said to the singer Libby Holman and Libby’s lover the DuPont heiress Louisa d’Andelot Carpenter. Tall and shapely, Libby Holman held herself like a diva. “Libby blew in from Cincinnati like a heat wave,” said George. “This broad was born to be a star. All she needs is smart, new material.”
Kay took George’s cue. “I may have some of that!”
“Can I hear it?” asked Libby.
“I certainly hope you can,” said Kay.
“How do you know she’s going to be a star?” Kay asked as George escorted her back into the theater.
“I feel her hunger. Don’t you?”
“So many singers and dancers are hungry—”
“Not like that.”
After the final curtain fell and they spilled into the street, Kay turned to look at the marquee. A laborer on a ladder applied the last letters. “Rodgers and Hart,” it proclaimed: “A Connecticut Yankee.” Pride swelled in her heart. No matter how modest her part, she had contributed to a production that would inspire laughter and song throughout New York, perhaps the world.