Back in the days of half-hour radio shows and early TV, there was Queen for a Day. It had nothing to do with Broadway musicals, but I DID think of it the other day when I learned that a Broadway musical had been a Director for a Day.

He was someone who’d never directed on Broadway, had never appeared there, but was a saxophonist by trade. Ah, you’re saying, he was a pit musician who offered a few good suggestions, was given the job of helming a show, and then made one or two stupid suggestions and was fired. Or maybe he made more good suggestions, but the management was too stupid to follow them. No. The saxophonist of whom I’m speaking was actually a world-renowned one in the world of jazz.

This information came to me in a circuitous way. It all started when Hugh Fordin, the president of DRG Records, asked me to write liner notes for his upcoming re-release of To Broadway with Love.

You’re pardoned if you don’t know what that is. It wasn’t a Broadway musical, or even an off-Broadway musical. Well, one could say it was off-Broadway in a manner of speaking, for it was ensconced way-y-y off-Broadway: In Flushing Meadows, Queens, in April, 1964, when the grounds were very busy with the World’s Fair. Someone thought that the Fair should have – and I am quoting now – “the musical show of the century.”

Sad to say, To Broadway with Love didn’t measure up to its ad line. (What show could?) As Columbia Records’ original cast album shows, it was a nice revue of ol’ Broadway songs, from Cohan to Rodgers, with six new songs. Five were by no less than Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, which they wrote between She Loves Me, which had closed in January, and Fiddler on the Roof, which would open in September. The other song, “The 88 Rag,” had music by Colin Romoff, the wonderful musical director of Kwamina who was once married to Judy Tyler, who had quite a life by the time she was 22: She had been in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (Pipe Dream), had become the darling of Baby Boomers by playing Princesssummerfallwinterspring on Howdy Doody, and had co-starred with Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock. Then she died in a car accident.

Romoff’s lyricist on “The 88 Rag” was Martin Charnin. But here’s the thing: Three of Bock and Harnick’s songs involved imagining what musicals would be produced in upcoming seasons, and one ditty was the title song of a projected musical about Mata Hari. A little more than three years after To Broadway with Love opened and quickly closed, Charnin had a musical about Mata Hari open in Washington and close even more quickly.

Bock and Harnick’s “Mata Hari Mine” was sheer parody, even referring anachronistically to the game show “What’s My Line? Charnin’s musical was instead a sincere and lofty anti-war effort. Still, one can’t help wondering if the seed of a Mata Hari musical was planted in Charnin’s head as a result of hearing Bock and Harnick’s song.

So I called Charnin and asked him. He insisted he hadn’t, and didn't begin work on his Mata Hari in 1966. But when I asked how he got involved with To Broadway with Love, that put me on the road to learning about the Saxophonist Director. Said Charnin, “I think Tec got me involved with To Broadway with Love.”

Tec – pronounced Teak – was the chummy nickname for director Morton DaCosta, adapted from his real name, Morton Tecosky. In a span of only 35 months in the ‘50s, DaCosta had staged four hits, each more potent than the one that preceded it: Plain and Fancy, No Time for Sargeants, Auntie Mame, and The Music Man.

Then came the flops: The first was Saragota, a musical with a score by the usually brilliant Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, who did far from their best work. Next was The Wall, an adaptation of a John Hersey novel about a Warsaw ghetto during Nazi occupation. Okay, but a serious play like that would have a hard time attracting the public under any circumstances.

In 1963, DaCosta signed on to do Hot Spot, a musical about the then-very-topical Peace Corps, in which Sally Hopwinder (no less than Judy Holliday) tried to do some good in the mythical land of D’hum. Hot Spot had a book by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, the librettists of record of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, though most everyone connected with the production will tell you that Abe Burrows considerably rewrote their work. Hot Spot’s music was by Mary Rodgers, whose father had just won a Tony for writing music and lyrics (Richard Rodgers; No Strings) and whose son would do the same (Adam Guettel; The Light in the Piazza). Mary was no slouch, for she’d written the delightful music for Once upon a Mattress.

Charnin was Hot Spot’s lyricist, but, as I told him, I was surprised that DaCosta would seek him out to write a song for To Broadway with Love, for hadn’t the director been fired from Hot Spot? And that’s when Charnin told me about “the six directors that Hot Spot had.

“I was even directing for a while,” he said. “But “Richard Quine came in.” Quine did have some experience directing Broadway properties: The Solid Gold Cadillac; Bell, Book, and Candle; and The World of Suzie Wong – but only in that he directed their later screen transformations. His Broadway experience was solely as an actor: In a small role in the short-running Very Warm for May in 1939, and in the straight play My Sister Eileen, originating the role of Frank Lippencott, the drug store employee who takes a shine to the younger Miss Sherwood. To be fair, Quine did direct the 1955 film musical of My Sister Eileen (which, as every true musical enthusiast can tell you, has nothing to do with Wonderful Town). So that, apparently, allowed him enough leverage to come in and direct Hot Spot – at least for a while.

“Then,” said Charnin, “Bobby Fryer took over.” Robert Fryer was a producer who had, in the past hired DaCosta with good results (Auntie Mame) and bad (Saratoga), and had engaged him again for Hot Spot. Then Fryer fired him. But Fryer had never officially directed on Broadway. So Herbert Ross came in, too.

That’s five; who was the sixth? Those people who always seem to know who’s-going-with-whom may have already put the pieces together: For a long time, Judy Holliday was romantically involved with saxophonist legend Gerry Mulligan. (Apparently Mulligan had a thing for women who won Tonys and Oscars; after he finished his relationship with Holliday, he moved over to Sandy Dennis.)

Said Charnin, “I’ll never forget being in the Majestic during a rehearsal, where Tec was directing, and Gerry was in the house. Ted told Judy to move in a certain way, and she looked right through him and looked to see what Gerry was thinking. Gerry shook his head no, and Judy said, no, she wouldn’t do as he asked. Before all was said and done, Gerry was our new director and Tec was literally taken out on a stretcher.”

By the way, much of this trouble was happening right here in Little Old New York. Hot Spot was one of the first musicals to preview now and forever, constantly postponing its opening date. Meanwhile, as all fans of Sondheim can tell you, while he was working on Anyone Can Whistle, he took time out to write a song for Hot Spot that’s been recorded here and there: “Don’t Laugh.”  (As my buddy Fred Aronowitz reminded me, the song appears on the new Stephen Sondheim -- The Story So Far album.)

Finally Fryer said the hell with it and let critics in on April 19, 1963. Steven Suskin’s invaluable Opening Nights on Broadway tallies one mixed notice, three unfavorables, and three pans. Among the quotations he selects: “It isn’t any good” (Kerr, Herald-Tribune), “Smother(s) the prodigious and ebullient Miss Holliday” (McClain, Journal-American), and “new depths of grim” (Nadel, World-Telegram and Sun).

By the way, in the end, who got credit for directing?

Nobody. Nobody at all. No one got credit for choreography, either, though Herbert Ross was the one who eventually did or supervised both. He just didn’t want his name on the thing. He’d choreographed seven flops in a row (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Three Wishes for Jamie, House of Flowers, The Body Beautiful, The Gay Life, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and Tovarich), and didn’t need to add another to his resume. Little did he know that four more were coming: Anyone Can Whistle, Kelly, Do I Hear a Waltz? and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. That’s when Ross started making plans for Hollywood, and his real success began. And Gerry Mulligan had nothing to do with it.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com