The Actors Fund presents the 14th annual Tony Awards Party on Sun., June 13. Cocktails and Silent Auction begin at 3:30 pm; dinner and live broadcast begin at 5 pm. Skirball Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles 90049. Limited tickets at $225 each can be purchased by calling The Actors Fund at 323.933.9266 ext. 58 or at www.actorsfund.org. (Further information listed following this article.)

Three is Jerry Herman’s lucky number.

He the only composer/lyricist to have three shows play concurrently on Broadway as well as the only one for decades to have three runs of more than 1500 consecutive performances until Stephen Schwartz caught up in 2007. Theatrical juggernauts Hello, Dolly! and Mame anchor both lists with Dear World briefly making it a menage a trois in 1969 and La Cage Aux Folles adding another pair of legs to the duos long distance team 14 years later.

Now the second Broadway revival of the show that made “I Am What I Am” a national gay anthem, starring Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge this time around as St. Tropez nightclub owner Georges and his drag queen partner Albin, is poised to put Herman in the history books again as the first composer/lyricist to win three Tony Awards for the same musical. This production has already garnered four Outer Critics Circle Awards, three Drama Desk Awards and a Drama League Award for Best Musical Revival. No one is more surprised than the 78-year-old legend himself.

“I thought, I can’t expect any more from La Cage,” he acknowledges one morning in his Beverly Hills living room  “It gave me my third show that ran over 1500 performances.  It gave me two Tony Awards. And it gave me a new bunch of songs people are singing at bar mitzvahs and weddings and god knows where else. What more can there be, you know? I thought that it had given me its all.”

Nominated for 11 Tony Awards, this third outing is not your father’s La Cage. Before crossing the pond to 48^th Street, London’s Terry Johnson-helmed Menier Chocolate Factory production tossed out the high glam glitz of the 1983 original and stripped it down to its shabby drag club roots. Six Cagelles and the principal actors perform for an audience seated in a small theatre set up like a real club. It won 2009 Olivier Awards for Best Musical Revival and Best Actor in a Musical for star Douglas Hodge. When producers Sonia Friedman and David Babani approached Herman two years prior with Johnson’s fresh conceit, he realized they had uncovered a new way to expand the life of the show.

Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge Photo by Joan Marcus

“They didn’t want me to change anything,” he explains. “They didn’t want Harvey to change any dialogue. They just wanted our blessing to do it in this very scaled-down fashion so the audience actually feels like they’re coming into a little club and having that experience of being part of the show. Harvey and I were thrilled because we recognized how life-giving that was to our baby. There would now be new ways and new places to do it.

“Let’s face it, the original La Cage was expensive. I mean the Cagelles’ costumes used every sequin and bead in New York! They were magnificent but it was known as an expensive, heavy musical. And I loved every minute of it.”

Herman credits the London team with birthing the new La Cage concept completely on their own sans his input, which he admits was a new experience for him.

“The three of them were very instrumental in how this was done. They did it. I wasn’t there. And I’m a very hands-on guy I have to admit. Maybe too much sometimes. I supervised the two returns of Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! and I always have my hand in a Mack & Mabel production somewhere because I’m trying to get that into the perfect place. But I had nothing to do with it! So it was a real eye opener because neither Harvey or I were there to say ‘you can’t do that to this.’ We just let them go.”

While some health issues prevented Herman from seeing the London production, he attended opening night at the Longacre Theatre and saw how letting go transformed his show.

“Oddly enough my initial reaction was, this enhances my work more than the original,” he admits. “It is so much more moving and so much funnier because there’s nothing in the way. I didn’t realize that until I saw it. Not only is it a wonderful new way to do the show but now it directs more focus to the important things I was writing about.  There’s a song in La Cage called ‘Look Over There’ where George scolds his son and says, ‘How can you forget about this man who brought you love and brought us all this joy and say he’s not welcome at your wedding?’ This production made that stronger. When Kelsey sings that song, he takes the kid by the back of his jacket or shirt and forces him to take, not an actual look, but an inward look at the man who did all this for him. It’s so much more powerful than it was originally. That’s what I’m thrilled about. That Harvey’s work and my work is stronger. And we didn’t change a thing.”

What did change in the ensuing 27 years since the show’s first 1983 mounting was public attitude towards sexual identity. New drugs helped stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic. Gay and lesbian characters now enjoy prominent storylines in television and on film. Gender bending performers like Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert top the music and style charts. Being metrosexual, having a bromance or kissing your gal pal are now mainstream magazine topics. Drag is viewed by a younger generation of out men as a relic of an era when gay life was more closeted.  According to Herman, the new grittier La Cage taps into the modern zeitgeist in a way he could never have imagined.

“I have a word for it. Raw. It’s right out there in front of you. I’m not trying to denigrate the first production in any way.  I want you to know that. I am so grateful to Arthur Laurents for what he did on that and to all the people who put it together with me because we created a statement at a difficult time. AIDS was just scaring everybody. I love that production and I always will. This is something totally different, which I didn’t expect. It has just been an extraordinary year for me because of all this.”

Searching for Mame & Dolly

A visit with Jerry Herman is like catching up with a beloved raconteur uncle whose champagne fountain of Broadway stories captivates you with their eyewitness-to-history immediacy. He is a gracious host who greets you in the marble floored foyer of his one floor Beverly Hills apartment with partner Terry Marler at his side, then asks what drink the house man can bring you before offering your choice of seats in a well appointed living room accented by a large red curled piece of wall art and a black grand piano.

Using La Cage as an example, Herman underscores why a good pairing is crucial to a show’s success.

“Douglas and Kelsey together are an exquisite pair. First of all they like each other as people and it shows. You can’t hide that on a stage. I once had a male/female couple who hated each other off-stage and tried to hide it. And I’m going to tell you the truth. It didn’t work. I’m looking for the right two stars for a Mack & Mabel now.”

A team that worked like gangbusters was Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur in Mame but Herman didn’t know it for sure until the out of town tryout in Philadelphia.

Jerry Herman

“A show is a living thing, specially one that’s in rehearsal and going through changes. You never know. You always think you have something wonderful because it’s your baby. I worked sometimes for two years on a score before I actually got it into rehearsal. And still you never know what you have until that first audience. We were in love with Mame and with Angela and Bea. What a combination! What a happy time it was. Fifteen minutes after the curtain went up in Philadelphia, I knew I had an enormous hit. I didn’t have to wait until the curtain call. I knew they were in love with Angela and Bea and little Frankie Michaels and the story and the songs. They went crazy in that audience. It’s then that you really know what you have. And it’s tough to be greeted by less than that, which has happened to me.”

According to Herman Mame was a gift in every department as was turning Angela Lansbury into a Broadway star. His current challenge is finding an established star rather than anointing a new one for a possible revival. Producers don’t want to back an unknown in the current economic climate and the talent pool of triple threats has diminished over time.

“If you have any idea who could do that today, please pass it on to me,” he says sincerely. “You have to put a star into a show like Mame today. And who do we have? You know we don’t train people like that anymore. We’re also considering a new Dolly. After the La Cage madness cools down, we will do one of them but we have to find that lady first.” That lady needs to be a 40 something or older actress with an established track record who’s a triple threat who can sell tickets and attract backers. And that’s not all on Herman’s wish list.

“Between Dolly and Mame, the more difficult one is Mame because she literally has to be a lady. She can’t be a clown. I did a film of Mame with a great clown, the most wonderful funny lady but she was not Mame. Mame is an elegant woman who lives on Beekman Place and who doesn’t think she’s funny. She has to sing because she’s naked out there with ‘If He Walked Into My Life’ and the opening number. I mean she’s got to have pipes. She’s got to dance and she’s got to be a very believable heartfelt actress. And she’s got to look great in a magnificent Bob Mackie wardrobe. She’s got to be able to do all that. I don’t know where you’ll find her.”

Not that Herman hasn’t tried. “I promise you I spend hours of my time looking through magazines, looking through books, watching movies to see if there’s somebody I’ve passed by who’s still with us who can do it. I’d rather just give people the original album with Angela and say ‘this is Mame’ than to have a half-baked version of it, you know?”

Interest in a new Hello, Dolly! came after a new generation re-discovered the film via movie clips utilized in Pixar’s animated 2008 blockbuster WALL-E. A scene showing Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew singing “It Only Takes a Moment” and holding hands form the basis for a robot’s understanding of love. Herman admits he had no idea what Pixar had in mind when he gave them the rights to use the footage.

“I have to tell you WALL-E affected me so deeply because I didn’t know. I signed a piece of paper that allowed Pixar to use pieces of two songs from Hello, Dolly! I said how wonderful you know, it’s Pixar. They’re not going to do anything to hurt those songs. And that’s all I knew. I had no idea the whole idea of learning about love and learning about happiness actually came from that brilliant idea of an old tape. I give them such credit. But I didn’t know when I went to the theatre. You should have seen me in there. First of all when it started with ‘out there, there’s a world outside of Yonkers’ I went oh god, they’re using it in the beginning of the show! But when it ended with ‘and that is all that love’s about,’ I was in tears.”

Herman credits Pixar with making those two songs familiar to a new generation. “There are kids who know the songs now and me. So you know, my life has been so extraordinary. How you ever imagine as a kid who wanted to be a songwriter that it would turn out to be this? You don’t dare dream that you know. But it’s things like WALL-E that came at me unexpectedly that have made my life even more wonderful and richer.”

So if a show like La Cage with its glamorous showgirls can be re-imagined in an intimate space, how would he feel about large cast productions like Hello, Dolly! and Mame making the same transition if asked?

“I would not say no after the La Cage experience,” he states. “Because if you had asked me three or four years ago would I like to see La Cage scaled down to that I probably would have said no thinking about the gorgeous Arthur Laurents production. But I would no longer say no to anything because I want people to hear my songs. If they hear them played with a 30-piece orchestra, I’ll be ecstatic. If they hear them played by an eight-piece orchestra in New York, I’m just as happy because they’re getting the melody and the lyrics just as clearly. So there’s a whole difference in my thinking. I have to grow a little, too.”

He does admit, given current Broadway ticket prices, audiences expect to get some bang for their musical buck in terms of elaborate sets and large scale production numbers, which are the central attractions of both Dolly and Mame.

“Mame comes with glamour and it comes with Beekman Place. I don’t know if I would like to see it as a small musical. I do think honestly that Dolly is strongest with a chorus singing ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’ and 14 waiters singing ‘Hello, Dolly!’ But can it be scaled down? Yes, it can be because like La Cage it’s about people. It’s about Dolly Levi and Horace Vandergelder. Cornelius Hackl and Irene Molloy. Barnaby Tucker and Minnie Fay. That’s what it’s about. So I would never say no anymore!” he laughs.

A Veteran of Two Broadways

Herman is one of the last composer/lyricists to have had a foot both in the golden era of Broadway musicals led by Cole Porter to Rodgers & Hammerstein melodies that influenced popular culture and the new Sondheim-helmed epoch of mathematical complexity and socio-political statement.

Angela Lansbury, Jerry Herman and Carol Channing

“I got into the business still in time to have songs of mine played on the radio,” he admits. “One threw the Beatles off the Billboard chart! ["Hello, Dolly!" sung by Louis Armstrong reached the number one spot in 1964 ending the Beatles streak of three number one hits in a row.] “Then to witness the great change in Broadway. I mean the great Sondheim came along and changed things. He writes beautiful melody. Nobody really gives him enough credit for that. But I was there writing pop songs that could be done by Eydie Gorme. So I had the best of both Broadways.”

The ability to sing or write pure melody lines has become undervalued in a Simon Cowell led world. American Idol’s influence on a new generation of singers and its blatant demeaning of traditional Broadway style interpretation has many concerned for the art form’s future. Herman thinks one shouldn’t have to be chosen over another.

“I don’t feel you have to lose a way of making music to gain a new way,” he emphasizes. “That’s what people don’t understand. You don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater to go new places. The healthiest Broadway for me is when Next to Normal is playing across the street from Hello, Dolly! which is playing around the corner from A Little Night Music, playing two blocks away from a jukebox musical like Mama Mia. They all have their place. Even a Gilbert and Sullivan. You don’t have to throw one out to make room for the others. People don’t understand that.”

A Great Ride

Herman walks down the hall to his office. Behind the desk is a nearly full-sized oil painting of him seated in a chair, handsomely clad in a Mad Men era suit when he was among Broadway’s youngest and brightest.

Jerry Herman

“I love it even now,” he admits looking at the portrait by Roger Robles. “You still want to look like that. Sometimes it’s hard for me because they would start an encore with ‘the new young composer’ and all of a sudden to be the oldest! But I have to tell you there is absolutely no way I can wrap my brain around the fact I’m approaching my 79th birthday. I can’t do it! I know I’ve lived through all of this wonderment. But I can’t imagine it because there’s nothing in me that feels like that. I know I don’t look like that cute kid anymore but I don’t feel like a man of that age or behave like one!

He gives a good deal of the credit to his partner of 12 years, Palm Springs real estate broker Terry Marler. “I have a guy in my life who is youthful and full of vigor and we go to South Beach and we walk along the ocean. We go to movies. We go to Broadway together. We have the most beautiful life. And neither of us, well he’s 15 years younger than I am to begin with, but neither of us feel like we’re anywhere near those numbers!” he laughs. “Maybe when the actual 80 comes, I’ll have to sit down with myself and say, ‘You know, it’s embarrassing Jerry not to realize where you are on the ladder! But right now I haven’t gotten there yet.”

As for his life at this vantage point, poised for a possible record breaking Tony win for La Cage on June 13, Herman takes a page from his childhood days. “It’s been the most thrilling ride anybody could ever have. I used to go on the Cyclone in Coney Island with my father who was a rollercoaster nut. I would scream my head off and my mother would stand down there and think we were both crazy. She would not get on it no matter what we tried to do. But this has been like that ride. And it’s not stopping.”

The 14th Annual Tony Awards Party, hosted by Tommy Tune, will feature the Julie Harris Award to be presented by Annette Bening to Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell in recognition of not only his theatrical accomplishments but also his leadership as Chairman of the Board of The Actors Fund. Jerry Herman was recognized with this award two years ago. The gala is produced and written by Marc Cherry and David Rambo with the only live feed in California of the Tony Awards broadcast from New York.