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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now, the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the second of a three-part tribute to musical theater legend Lehman Engel. Engel was Broadway's true jack-of-all-trades, composer, conductor, author, teacher. Tony Award-winning Engel is perhaps best known for founding and leading the BMI Musical Theater Workshop. This tribute originally aired in 1982.

[0:40] Florence Roem: Here's Florence Roem once again at the Lehman Engel tribute. Eileen Hurley, another of Lehman's children, has asked me to be her surrogate and to read this. Lehman took me along and led me gently through my very first musical Take Me Along. When I was nervous, which was eight times a week, I looked down in the orchestra pit and his warm, beaming smile gave me courage. I loved him from that first day and I always will.

[1:14] ♪ Musical number: "I Get Embarrassed" — performed by Eileen Hurley and Jackie Gleason ♪

[4:42] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to Anything Goes with a tribute to Lehman Engel. It's always been a great pleasure to work with big people because they have never acted like big people. They've always said, Maestro, how would you like me to do this? It's only the little people that one has trouble with, and that's probably due to their own insecurity.

[5:09] Paul Lazarus: But one of the little people that I had to do with, the very first song she ever sang in a Broadway show, or any place outside of a village nightclub, was a young lady with torn stockings and a not very nice dress and hair that was put up with pieces of hay, or at least it looked that way. It was Barbara Streisand in her very first show, I Can Get It For You Wholesale. She had one song to sing, and I remember the director was the playwright Arthur Lawrence, and he worked very hard with her. Herbie Ross, who is now not only a choreographer but a successful movie director, was the choreographer for that.

[5:53] Paul Lazarus: And we worked so hard with her on her one song. She was so undisciplined, and it took her a long time to understand that what we were directing meant that she should do it that way at every performance, not just to please us at one rehearsal, but all the time it had to be done that way. But she finally acceded, she comprehended it at length. And on opening night to hear that girl, who didn't appear to have any beauty at all, but did have a magical voice and personality, stopped the show cold, cold, cold.

[6:33] ♪ Musical number: "Miss Marmelstein" — performed by Barbara Streisand ♪

[9:40] Florence Roem: This is Florence Roem at the tribute to Mr. Engel at the Schubert Theatre. I'm also surrogate for the Japanese branch of Lehman's family. He came with us to Tokyo to rehearse and conduct the musical version of Gone with the Wind, which was called Scarlett.

[10:12] Paul Lazarus: In Japan, it was called Scarlet, those flowers over there, and this letter comes from an illustrious Japanese actress, Testo Kurianagi, who was in the cast. Lehman, she writes, all cast and staff in Scarlet sending their tears. What a sad feeling that we read your obituary column in Japanese newspapers. I couldn't believe it. When we worked together in Scarlet, most of all cast didn't speak English, but your smile, your hands, your eyes told us many things. Even your yawn did good communications. And we loved your voice, sweet and husky like a baby. When I was in New York this August, I talked to you in Florida. I asked you to give me some recipes you told me about, and you said, yes Testo, next time.

I hope you believed in next time. Tiro Tamiya, who played Ashley and young boy dancer, passed away after the show. They will be waiting for you. You've been busy and rushing around all the time even in Japan, so this time you sit down and talk to them. Even they don't speak English, but I know you can speak to them in some special heaven language. You remember in Japan when we finished work, we say to each other, means sorry to put you tired. Dearest Layman, and sayonara from my heart, Tesco.

[13:25] ♪ Musical number: "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin’ Soon to New York" — performed by Lehman Engel ♪

[13:55] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to a tribute to Lehman Engel. I'm your host, Paul Lazarus. After World War II, Lehman and Goddard Lieberson launched a series of studio recordings of show music. Their Porgy and Bess was for 20 years the most complete recording of that opera. The recording of Pal Joey led to the 1952 revival, which established that show as the masterwork that it is. One of the really nicest things in my whole life as far as recordings are concerned was the long, long series that I did for Columbia with Goddard Lieberson, who I would say we are the first friends each other had in New York. After the war, when I came back, that was the Civil War. I know the war very well. Goddard decided that we ought to do a lot of shows that had not been recorded as show albums because the recordings were not done in those days. So we did so many Rodgers and Hart shows and Gershwin shows that had never happened. And these, I must say, were seasons of unmitigated joy.

[15:17] ♪ Musical number: "We Belong to You" — performed by Lehman Engel ♪

[17:04] Paul Lazarus: I do think, to quote a sonnet by the late E.E. Cummings, which I love, begins, since feeling is first, who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you. I think that since musical theater by its nature is a lyric theater, that music must be, is lyrical, that lyrics are lyrical in both senses of the word, that a writer of a successful show must make, not have as a result, but must force the audience to care about the characters, about the situations. Now if the audience is made to care, then I think the characters in a musical, contrary to the characters in a play, which may be philosophical and argumentative, must be not stereotypes, but prototypes. The girl next door, your sister, the boy who hangs around the corner pool room, all sorts of people that we know, and we take them at their face value when they are introduced to us, and we don't expect them to change, but we do care about their problems.

And it seems to me that in a musical where the length of the libretto is roughly half of the printed words in the corresponding play, in order to allow time, of course, for music and dancing and so on, that it's very important to define at the outset, this lady is the heroine, this gentleman is the protagonist or antagonist, and immediately we meet them, there is a schism which we recognize between them, and we spend all evening trying to resolve that schism.

[19:23] ♪ Musical number: "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" — performed by Lehman Engel ♪

[20:24] ♪ Musical number: "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" — performed by an unknown artist ♪

[23:04] ♪ Musical number: "Where is the Tribe for Me?" — performed by Nancy Douceau ♪

[27:44] Paul Lazarus: Lehman Engel is best known for his work in the musical theater, but he also edited seven volumes of Renaissance music and conducted symphonies and choruses, notably the famed Magical Singers under the auspices of the WPA.

[28:00] ♪ Musical number: "Sister Awake" — performed by an unknown artist ♪