Howard
Pollack The Ballad of John Latouche: An
American Lyricist’s Life and Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)
Pollack’s
wonderful new biography of lyricist/poet John Latouche is, at times,
frustratingly academic in its often-overbearing detail of somewhat
insignificant facts and is not the most gloriously written book one has
read—but it is so utterly fascinating and revealing that one can forgive most
of its flaws.
First of all, a man who was fairly close
friends with most of the major composers of the day, including Aaron Copland,
Leonard Bernstein, Vernon Duke, Virgil Thompson, Marc Blitzstein, Duke
Ellington, Jerome Moross, Ned Rorem, Harold Arlen, Douglas Moore, John Cage,
and so many more; who was a confidente to writers spanning from James Branch
Cabell and Tennessee Williams (he introduced the playwright to his to his longtime
companion) to Gore Vidal, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Frank O’Hara, Jane
and Paul Bowles, W. H. Auden—he even briefly shared the famous Brooklyn house where the Bowles’ and
Auden lived—William S. Burroughs, John Ashbery, and E. E. Cummings, artists and
gallerists such as Larry Rivers and John Bernard Myers, and who was the
companion of poet Kenward Elmslie for the last five years of his life; and who simultaneously was great friends with numerous
New York social figures—all of whom, except for a very few, thought him witty, entertaining,
and utterly fascinating, even if— they nearly all agreed—he could be completely
demanding and self-centric, is simply someone worth documenting.
Besides all that, Latouche worked with
numerous Europeans, helping or attempting to introduce American audiences to
figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, Bertolt Brecht, and numerous lesser
figures. You might describe him as simply a seminal figure in the brilliant
1950s artistic, very gay New York world. And Pollack’s significant biography
reveals aspects of US cultural history, bringing to the forefront what might
otherwise have simply been forgotten. If nothing else, Latouche was a
connecting link in the American cultural scene between European traditions, a
new attempt to interconnect dance, music, and theater, and the so-called
underground gay cabaret New York work that infused new life in the US theater
scene throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.
More importantly, however, is the fact
that the Richmond, Virginia-born writer also contributed significant lyrics to
numerous musicals, operas, and other performative pieces, challenging the
notions of Broadway musicals and operatic conventions in a way that was quite
often frustrating yet totally liberating to his collaborators.
Besides his
remarkable literary salons, his lyrical compositions for the underground New
York cabaret performers, and his tossed-off poetic contributions, Latouche had
a rather remarkable theatrical career, including the lyrics for Vernon Duke’s and
Lyn Root’s all-black musical (and later film, directed by Vincente Minelli) Cabin in the Sky (with Ethel Waters,
Todd Duncan, Rex Ingram, J. Rosamond Johnson, Katherine Dunham and her
dancers); Banjo Eyes, also composed
by Vernon Duke, as a vehicle for Eddie Cantor; The Lady
Comes Across, music again by Vernon Duke, with book by Dawn Powell,
choreography by George Balanchine, with Misha Auer, Gower Champion, and Eugenia
Delarova, among many other notable dancers; a musical celebrating the Polish
war efforts, Polonaise, with music by
Chopin and directed by Stella Adler; Beggar’s
Holiday, yet another version of The
Beggar’s Opera, this with music by Duke Ellington, with an interracial
cast; the well-received Ballet Ballads,
with music by Jerome Moross and choreography by Hanya Holm, including 3 of the
4 verbally composed ballets by Latouche: Willie
the Weeper, Riding Hood Revisted,
and the notable The Eccentricities of
Davy Crockett, all of which the singers both danced and sang; the
award-winning The Golden Apple (again
with music by Jerome Moross, and starring Kaye Ballard and Stephen Douglas,
which won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best Musical of 1954); The Vamp (with James Mundy and starring
Carol Channing); the successful American opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe, composed by Douglas Moore; as, finally, the
lyrics to, at least the first act, for Leonard Bernstein’s and Lillian
Hellman’s musical Candide—all before
he died in 1956 at the young age of 42! These contributions all from a man who
himself thought he was perhaps “lazy” and “desultory,” and who was, in fact, an
extreme alcoholic, and who most friends would have described as a person who
really was more of a raconteur than a creator. Most of these works, accept The Ballad of Baby Doe, alas were also
Broadway failures, why most Americans have never even heard of his name! How do you begin explaining such a remarkable
life? Pollack had clearly a large task in undertaking this biography
Perhaps the only thing you can do is
return to the lyrics, which my friend Kenward Elmslie asked me to do time
again. I wish I’d known of Elmslie’s relationship with Latouche—with my love of
all things theater, I did, in fact, know a little (very little I now perceive)
of Latouche—and, of course, I wish I had then read more about the lyricist: I’d
have immediately done a book! We can never truly forgive ourselves for youthful
ignorance.
But I will take a few of the lyrics to
try to redeem myself. Latouche, as Pollack makes quite clear, often with
excellent poetic analysis, was truly a brilliant lyricist. Let’s begin with his
early lyric from Cabin in the Sky, a
song sung by the always remarkable singer/actor Ethel Waters (a song performed
by nearly every major singer including Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Ella
Fitzgerald and numerous others), and which might almost characterize Latouche’s
life, who fell in love again and again—a true romantic of the old Southern
tradition:
Here I
go again
I hear
those trumpets blow again
All
aglow again
Taking a
chance on love
Here I
slide again
About to
take that ride again
Starry
eyed again
Taking a
chance on love
I
thought that cards were a frame-up
I never
would try
But Now
I'm taking the game up
And the
ace of hearts is high
Things
are mending now
I see a
rainbow blending now
We'll
have a happy ending now
Taking a
chance on love
Here I
slip again
About to
take that tip again
Got my
grip again
Taking a
chance on love
Now I
prove again
That I
can make life move again
In the
grove again
Taking a
chance on love
I walk
around with a horseshoe
In
clover I lie
And
brother rabbit of course you
Better
kiss your foot good-bye
On the
ball again
I'm
riding for a fall again
I'm
gonna give my all again
Taking a
chance on love
This combination of Cole Porter and the
great American romantic tradition is so remarkable that I think I hardly need
delineate the line by line transitions. But it is important to note, that
despite the repeat again and again of precisely that word, Latouche uses inner
rhyme such as, in the fist stanza, “blow”/”aglow”/ “slide”/ “ride”/ “eyed”/
“tired”/ “mending” / “blending,” etc. But it is his metaphors about luck and
change that truly stand out in his clever lyrics—the horseshoe, clover, and the
rabbit who she even warns ahead of time—that demonstrates her leap into the
impossible world of love that is so totally engaging that we share her leap
into that new world with joy and pleasure. As many critics have noted, Latouche
is a kind of later-day Lorenz Hart, and not just because both were gay, but
because of how they used basically gay situations to express heterosexual
relationships. One only need compare Latouche’s highly clever lyrics with
Hart’s beautiful ballad, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” to recognize
their similarities.
Seen a
lot
I mean a lot
But now
I'm like sweet seventeen a lot
Bewitched,
bothered and bewildered am I
I'll
sing to him
Each
spring to him
And
worship the trousers that cling to him
Bewitched,
bothered and bewildered am I
It’s clear just from the lyrics that the
poet took chances far too often but did finally find love. And it’s painful to comprehend
the difficult transition, just as it is for even the breezy renditions sung by
Waters and Fitzgerald. But for me, Judy Garland’s and Barbara Streisand’s slower
versions really capture the nature of Latouche’s happy/rather frightening
possibilities of new love. Isn’t that what love is all about, wonderfully
possible but terribly frightening in the same very moment, which is what his
lyrics truly express?
Or, consider his wonderful song “Lazy
Afternoon” from The Golden Apple,
where, basically that young Helen seduces Paris:
It's a
lazy afternoon
And the
beetle bugs are zooming
And the
tulip trees are blooming
And
there's not another human in view,
But us
two
It's a
lazy afternoon
And the
farmer leaves his reaping
In the
meadow cows are sleeping
And the
speckled trout stop leaping up stream
As we
dream
A fat
pink cloud hangs over the hill
Unfolding
like a rose
If you
hold my hand and sit real still,
You can
hear the grass as it grows
It's a
hazy afternoon
And I
know a place that's quiet, except for daisies running riot
And
there's no one passing by it to see
Come
spend this lazy afternoon with me
This is
basically Jerome Moross’ song, with its it curling in melody, undulating into
completely sleepy rhythms that simultaneously seduce the figures into a sexual
drowsiness; but it’s Latouche’s wonderful lyrics that reconfirm that, with the
“zooming” / “blooming” end rhymes surprising us with how the “view” suddenly
zooms in the “us two,” seducing the couple to sit “real still” to hear the
grass grow and the “daisies running riot.” The “reaping”/ “sleeping”/ is
suddenly cut by the “leaping” by the interruption of “up stream,” a place
distant from this “hazy afternoon.” And even the daisies’ “riot,” is cut short
by the fact that “no one passing by it to see.” The central focus of this
lovely, falling melody is, finally, the “me,” Helen who is singing it. Song
lyrics don’t usually have such marvelous subtlety. But Latouche always gave
them his whole, which makes a basically end-rhyme lyric something more
important that what it first seems.
Even more profound, in many respects are
Latouche’s lyrics, highly romantic again, and even suggesting fellow Virginian
Edgar Allen Poe, for The Ballad of Baby
Doe, these from the opening stanzas of the Moore operatic work “The Willow
Song.”
Ah!
Willow, where
we met together
Willow,
when our love was new
Willow,
if he once
should
be returning
Pray
tell him I am weeping too.
So far
from each other
While
the days pass
In their
emptiness away.
Oh my
love, must it be forever
Never
once again
To meet
as on that day?
And
never rediscover
The way
of telling
The way
of knowing
All our
hearts would say.
Gone are
the ways of pleasure
Gone are
the friends I had of yore
Only the
recollection fatal
Of the
word that was spoken:
Nevermore.
Here Latouche delays the rhymes, “day” /
“say,” “yore” / “nevermore,” while even holding other end rhymes into other
stanzas such as “together” / “forever” / “Never” and postponing the other
off-rhyme “pleasure.” Everything in this lyric is delayed, attenuated as the couple’s
love has been, pushed into a realm that neither of them can any longer
comprehend. Rhyme itself is used as a strange device of delay, “away” / “day” /
“say.” As Moore’s music arches into high soprano arias, Latouche’s language
keeps her weeping down to earth, delayed, and, just perhaps, a bit too knowing
and rehearsed, subtly suggesting that the loving Baby Doe is just a bit more
knowledgeable about her power over the wealthy Horace than we might suspect.
Yet, she remains a kind of innocent here, trying to “rediscover” what “All our
hearts would say.” In short, Latouche makes this aria one in which Baby Doe is
both wise and innocent, a woman on the make who is, nonetheless very much in
love. That balance in a single two stanzas is what I might describe as pure
genius.
I have to admit, finally, by the time I
finished Howard Pollack’s long (565 pages, with notes) volume, I had too fallen
in love with John Latouche. Wish I’d known him, and I also wish my friend
Kenward had told me more about him. But even friends don’t always truly
communicate their deepest feelings, do they?
Los Angeles, February 17,
2018
