Customer Reviews

We Danced All Night: My Life Behind the Scenes With Alan Jay Lerner

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first started this book I expected a more 'dishy' memoir - after all, the author spent 14 years as Lerner's secretary, and yet while she is there through the creation of 'My Fair Lady,''Gigi,' and 'Camelot' she really doesn't say much about the productions in any depth. It was as though she wrote the memoir over a long weekend. Your first interpratation of the title is a reworded song from 'My Fair Lady' about the great time she had.

The title refers to the three years of hell she endured after 'Camelot,' when Lerner severed his partnership with Lowe and went on to create 'On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.' On his fourth marriage (he had 8 in all) and at the height of his creative powers Lerner introduces the author to 'Dr. Max' and suddenly three trips a day to get 'vitamin' shots become the norm ~ days on end without sleep trying to write a show that doesn't work. "We Danced All Night" becomes a chronicle of bad judgements, genius gone bad, a show out of control, and a tale of unbounded loyalty that leads to a parting of the ways when the author is placed in detoxification by the strength and love of her husband. Pretty heady stuff from such a placid beginning!

Doris Shapiro's tough, hard-hitting memoir is an essential piece of theatre history, documenting the frantic, fraught development of several famous musicals, but especially Lerner & Lane's troubled ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER.

Anyone who wonders why that show is so uneven, despite its superb score, will find the answer here: Lerner, the author, the show's stars, and what seems like half the celebrities of the 1960s, from JFK and Jackie to Anthony Quinn and Eddie Fisher, were strung out on Dr. Max Jacobsen's miracle "vitamin shots" whose main ingredient was Methedrine (called "speed" then, nicknamed "crystal", "glass", or "Tina" by today's addicts.)

In the sixties, as now, speed was popular with high achievers, bringing them boundless alertness and energy for work and play, along with attractive weight loss, even though it would end up devastating most of their lives, careers, and relationships.

Shapiro spares no one, especially herself, in what is the best description of stimulant addiction I've seen. It's all here: the initial exhilaration -- you feel unbelievably smart, motivated, energetic, and productive. Depression and fears are banished. You're bursting wtih courage and confidence, sure you've found the key to the universe until lack of sleep and food begin to wear down the body and mind.

Then come the mood swings, the subtly growing delusions, paranoia, jitters, confusion, disorganization, procrastination, detachment from reality ... and finally a crack-up, from which Shapiro was luckily extricated by her heroic husband Bert.

The book ends on an unnecessarily downbeat note, as she lists the deaths of her principal figures, but overall it's a hopeful story of how a highly intelligent, educated woman declined into drug addiction and finally, improbably, escaped it, saving her marriage and her life.

It's a book that took a lot of courage to write -- and to publish (wasn't Morrow afraid of law suits from the celebrity junkies she names?) For lovers of musical theatre, or students of drug addiction, this is an essential volume.