 Press Room:
A Day in Hollywood /
A Night in the Ukraine
About the authors of
A Day in Hollywood ...
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A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine is
an unusual artistic concoction. It is essentially a musical theater "double
feature" which in turn owes its lineage to a triple - or perhaps
quadruple - collaboration of creative forces.
The foremost collaborator to the project was book and
lyrics writer Dick Vosburgh. Born in New Jersey in 1929, Vosburgh
moved to Washington, D.C., when his father, a reporter, was offered a job
with National Geographic magazine. Early in his boyhood, he developed
a love of movies, a passion which he credited to his mother, an avid
moviegoer who adored musicals and melodramas.
He started out writing plays for local radio stations
in his teens, and by the age of 15 was writing a regular series entitled
"Youth Drama Workshop," in which he also acted. In 1948, he persuaded his
father to send him to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,
where he won the Comedy Acting Prize. While still at the college, he began
contributing lyrics and sketches for popular West End revues.
Vosburgh began 1953 in a momentous fashion, marrying
his academy sweetheart Beryl Roque in January; followed that up by getting
hired to write his first radio show; and closed out the year with an
appearance as an American P.O.W. in a London production of the hit play
Stalag 17. He then shifted into the world of television and wrote witty
material and song parodies for a wide range of British comedians, including
David Frost, Ronnie Corbett, and John Cleese. He also wrote gags for such
American luminaries as Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Carol Channing and Peggy Lee.
In the late 1970s, his passion for movies inspired him
to begin assembling an idea for a theatrical salute to the classic 1930s
movie musicals and comedies upon which he grew up. However, he lacked a key
element - a composer. Luckily, he also needed a performer who could play
the piano onstage, and while interviewing a prospective actor for this
specialized role, he outlined the show and mentioned his pressing need for a
songsmith. The actor was entranced with Vosburgh's vision of a merry mix of
Hollywood's Golden Age and Marx Brothers madness and let it slip that he
also happened to "write tunes."
Now we meet our second collaborative force:
composer/actor Frank Lazarus, who would not only write the majority
of the original score for what became A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the
Ukraine but who also played the Chico Marx-inspired character Carlo in
every phase of the production, from the fringe in Hampstead, where it
debuted; to London, where it transferred in 1979 for an award-winning
engagement; to Broadway, where it garnered critical praise and two Tony
awards in 1980 and celebrated a two-year run.
Vosburgh and Lazarus later collaborated on the musical
The Snark and How to Hunt It, as well as material for the British
radio series Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel, also based on the Marx
Brothers. They starred in a two-man revue entitled The World Is My Ulcer
and also performed a musical tribute to Moss Hart entitled Prince of
Broadway. Lazarus has also had a fairly lengthy career as an actor, with
appearances in films (including a tiny part in 1978's Superman as a
startled jet pilot), on TV, and in one-man shows, for the most part in his
native England.
Vosburgh had other musical hits with other composer
partners, including a 1982 adaptation of The Front Page entitled
Windy City (with Tony Macauley) and 1999's A Saint She Ain't
(with Denis King), another satire on Hollywood, which featured an Abbott &
Costello-style sketch that critics said was even funnier than the comedy
team it saluted.
Recently the BBC commissioned Vosburgh to adapt A
Night in the Ukraine for radio, to be broadcast this Christmas with a
new song by Vosburgh and Lazarus. However, Vosburgh died unexpectedly in
London on April 18, 2007.
 That's
the two major legs in this four-handed affair. But the score would be
further enhanced by two other "contributors." Composer Jerry Herman
-- of Hello Dolly, Mame, and La Cage Aux Folles fame -
was called upon to write three songs for A Day in Hollywood. They
included "Just Go to the Movies," "The Best in the World," and the witty
Jeanette MacDonald operetta parody "Nelson." And finally, in a tip of the
hat to the genre the show salutes, the first act features a lengthy
midsection devoted to the prolific composer of popular movie music
Richard A. Whiting. Almost a show within a show, the medley includes
songs such as ''Too Marvelous for Words,'' ''Ain't We Got Fun,'' ''Japanese
Sandman,'' ''Beyond the Blue Horizon,'' and "On the Good Ship Lollipop."
Whiting began his career as a staff writer for various music publishers and
ended up moving to Hollywood, where he wrote a number of film scores. He
also wrote popular music, collaborating with such lyricists as Ray Egan,
Johnny Mercer, Gus Kahn, and Sidney Clare, producing a substantial number of
hits. The father of singer Margaret Whiting, he died of a heart attack at
the height of his powers at age 46. He was inducted into the Songwriters'
Hall of Fame in 1970.
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