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SOMEHOW, SOMEDAY, SOMEWHERE

West Side Story holds a special place in the American musical theater canon in that it’s recognized by critics as one of the supreme achievements of the form and it’s also wildly popular with the general public — something that can only truly be said of a handful of shows. Moreover, WSS may be counted with Damn Yankees, Guys and Dolls, and a precious few other musicals of the Golden Age as beloved by people who don’t usually like musicals. (Several more such shows have appeared in recent years, but most of them aren’t “musicals” in the sense that I use the term.)

When it opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957, WSS received mixed reviews and disturbed many audience members with its tragic tale of gang violence and star-crossed love. But the beauty of such Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim songs as “Tonight,” “Maria,” and “Somewhere” could not be denied, and the brilliance of Jerome Robbins’ choreography was recognized from the beginning. There were productions of the show in London and elsewhere in Europe, some of them in opera houses. The 1961 film version won a whopping 10 Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and firmly established West Side Story as a masterpiece.

The show was presented in 1964 at City Center, and in 1968 at the New York State Theater under the aegis of the Music Theater of Lincoln Center. But, to date, the only Broadway revival ran for just 333 performances in 1980. While that’s not a terrible tally, it is quite low if you consider West Side Story‘s amazing level of brand recognition. I’m sure the production would have run much longer if it hadn’t been miscast and misdirected, and I’m very surprised that there are no definite plans to bring the show back to the Broadway boards anytime soon. This is particularly disappointing since, about two years ago, there was talk of a revival that would have opened in 2007 — West Side‘s 50th anniversary year.

Why didn’t that revival happen? “At one point, we did have the rights,” says Kevin McCollum, who had been trying to put together a revival with his producing partner, Jeffrey Seller. “We love the show — we think it’s one of the most important musicals ever written — but the project just didn’t work out in terms of the timing and how everyone wanted to go about it. As a producer, you want to put together the whole creative team for a show. The first thing you do is find a director who shares your vision; Jerry Mitchell is someone we wanted to work with, and we had ideas for the other members of the team. We wanted to bring in some new, creative people, but the various authors and their estates weren’t on the same page as we were. Revivals come with baggage. We tried to get everyone to agree with the direction we wanted to take, but that didn’t happen, so we gave the rights back.

“Revivals now cost as much as new musicals,” adds McCollum. “That’s the reality. You have to look at the risk versus the potential rewards; the fact that a particular show is brilliant isn’t enough. Also, spending $10 million on a new show and getting all the subsidiary rights that go along with it is very different from spending the same amount on a revival and getting no subsidiary rights at all.” (He’s referring to rights for recordings, film remakes, etc.)

There isn’t unanimous agreement that a Broadway revival of WSS would be a slam-dunk. One theater industry person with whom I spoke pointed not only to the relatively short run of the 1980 revival but also to a mid-’80s production — starring Rex Smith! — that played at the Kennedy Center and was supposed to come to Broadway but never made it. Still, I can’t help thinking that a well produced, well cast, and well directed West Side Story could be the Broadway goldmine of the 2000s.

For what it’s worth, Arthur Laurents — who wrote the superb book for WSS — told me in a recent phone conversation that “there is going to be a Broadway revival, but it won’t be for the 50th anniversary.” He declined to provide any further details of the project, saying only that “there’s an entirely new idea of how to do the show — and I will not tell you what that is.” So, will we see a revival of West Side Story sometime within the next few years? Could be. Who knows?

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NATALIE WOOD, IF SHE COULD

Sooner or late, the truth will out! When Marni Nixon was hired to sing for Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn in the movie versions of (respectively) The King and I, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady, attempts were made to keep her work secret. Nixon received no on-screen credit for any of these films, nor was her name to be found anywhere in the liner notes on the soundtrack albums.

But that was then, this is now. DVD packages of the flicks in question include interviews with “The Ghostess with the Mostest,” as she came to be known for “ghosting” the stars’ singing voices; current CD editions of the soundtrack recordings give Nixon full credit for her contributions; and there are plenty of juicy inside stories about her dubbing adventures in I Could Have Sung All Night, the lady’s memoir, due from Billboard Books in September.

Nixon has had quite a career aside from all that dubbing activity, having worked with everyone from Igor Stravinsky to Arthur Godfrey to Liberace, but she realizes that her legacy is her singing on the soundtracks of those three enormously popular films. According to her book, the West Side Story dubbing process was particularly dicey because the powers that be outright lied to Natalie Wood, who played Maria; they praised her own pre-recordings of the songs and insisted that they would be used in the final version of the film but, in fact, the decision was made to use Nixon’s voice for every note of Maria’s music.

When I spoke with Nixon earlier this week about the WSS experience, she said she was so focused on matching Wood’s lip movements, phrasing, etc. during the dubbing sessions that there was little room for her to offer her own interpretations of the songs. “Bernstein wasn’t around at all,” she told me. “I never saw him on the set. I worked with Bobby Tucker, who was the vocal coach, and with [associate producer] Saul Chaplin. Bobby was sort of the mouthpiece for Natalie, because he had coached her when she made her pre-recordings. I had no preconceived notions as to how I would approach the songs, which I think was good for the dubbing process.” As it happens, Nixon is soon to record a new CD with her son, Andrew Gold, that will include some songs from West Side Story “done with new arrangements and new slants.”

Nixon would love to see WSS back on Broadway, and she has definite ideas about how it should be done. “The main thing I would hope for in a revival is that the show would be presented almost exactly as it was,” she says. “I really believe that a lot of shows don’t need to be updated, and I don’t like the fact that there has been an attrition in the number of people in the cast and the orchestra when shows are revived. I just played the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music at the Hollywood Bowl, with John Mauceri conducting the original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett, and it was wonderful. The orchestral colors are so beautiful, so subtle. West Side Story needs the same treatment. I know producers feel they have to cut corners, but I think that show should be categorized as a cultural landmark and preserved in its original form. Of course, I don’t mean that it should be done as a museum piece; any revival should have all the force and power of the original.”

Editor’s Note: Marni Nixon will participate in a free book signing/discussion/singing event at 2pm on Sunday, September 10 at the Drama Book Shop in New York City (250 West 44th Street).