Remembering Jill Haworth

I have to say a few words about British actress Jill Haworth, who died Monday in Manhattan at age 65.

The New York Times obituary noted that she was the original Sally Bowles in Cabaret, which I didn't realize until I watched the PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical. I knew her as Karen Hansen from the 1960 movie Exodus, based on the Leon Uris novel about the birth of Israel. (That's her with costars Eva Marie Saint and Paul Newman.)

In fact, I was surprised when Haworth's name came up in the documentary and wondered if it was even the same person but it was, her blond hair covered by a dark wig. To me, Sally Bowles was Liza Minnelli from the movie. It never occurred to me that someone else originated the role on Broadway.

It's interesting that Haworth's two biggest performances serve as historical bookends - a bohemian nightclub singer in Germany as the Nazis are rising to power and a young Jewish girl trying to build a new life after World War II.

I watched Exodus more than once before visiting Israel for the first time in 1995. That was a time in my life when I pretty much ate, slept and breathed anything to do with the place, which culminated in my moving to Tel Aviv for a year. Today, it's hard to believe I was so obsessed.

I realize the movie is long and overly sentimental but Haworth was so sweet and self-assured. My Israeli tour guide dismissed Exodus with some embarrassment, saying of Paul Newman's character, nobody could be that perfect.

I still find the film incredibly moving, especially when the refugees are being held on Cyprus and later, on board the Exdous, desperate to break the British blockade of Palestine. In his review for the Times, Bosley Crowther called Haworth's performance "fresh and deeply poignant."

The Times obituary says information about her family and survivors wasn't available. But she leaves a performance that has stayed with me.

When Exodus became Ari

It's the greatest feeling when someone comes across an old blog post in which you've asked a question - and answers it!

Yesterday I received a nice although, sadly, anonymous comment on a blog post I wrote about a musical based on the Leon Uris novel Exodus, titled Ari. The show opened on Broadway in January 1971 and closed a couple weeks later.

Uris adapted his 1958 bestseller for the stage and wrote the lyrics. I mentioned that I hadn't been able to find out anything about Walt Smith, who composed the music. Well, a reader filled me in.

"The man who composed the music for Ari, Walt Smith, is a jazz pianist currently living on the Western Slope of Colorado. He has received some national acclaim as a fine live jazz performer."

Smith and Uris were close friends and Ari was apparently the only musical theatre project he worked on. I did a little Googling and came up with an interview in which Smith briefly mentions the musical.

“In those days it was called ‘Ari’ — you didn’t call a musical by the same name as the novel.”

Wow, times have changed.

Today, everyone connected with the show wants to make sure you know their musical came from the novel or, more likely, the movie. So Ragtime the book is Ragtime the musical. They didn't change it to Coalhouse. (Good move!)

Sometimes the name change is an improvement: Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway in 1943, was based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs.

My friend Kevin, the Theatre Aficionado at Large, told me about the short-lived 1966 Broadway musical A Time for Singing, based on the novel How Green Was My Valley. In my humble opinion, that name change was not an improvement.

Exodus - the musical

Thanks to Kevin at Theatre Aficionado at Large I've been browsing through a very cool collection of poster art from Broadway musicals.

I found one for the very short-lived musical Ari, based on the bestselling novel Exodus, by Leon Uris, about the founding of the State of Israel. (The Playbill is from eBay.)

I never knew there was a musical version of Exodus until I read Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, by Ted Chapin, who mentions it briefly. With Passover starting tonight, what better show to write about!

Uris adapted his 1958 novel for the stage and wrote the lyrics. The music was composed by Walt Smith, about whom I haven't been able to find anything. Perhaps this was his first and only foray into musical theatre.

The musical takes place in Cyprus in 1947, so apparently it only covers the first part of the book, when Jewish refugees are trying to break the British blockade and reach Palestine.

In the show's cast were David Cryer as the handsome and fearless sabra Ari Ben Canaan, and Constance Towers as his love interest, the American Kitty Fremont.

(Their roles were played by Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint in the 1960 movie version of Exodus. Too bad they couldn't have gotten Jill Haworth, who was a young Jewish refugee in the movie and grew up to be Broadway's original Sally Bowles in Cabaret.)

After a tryout in Washington, D.C., Broadway previews began on Jan. 6, 1971, at the gorgeous Mark Hellinger Theatre, now the Times Square Church, which, thanks to Kevin, I had the great fortune to tour last fall. Ari opened on Jan. 15 and closed on Jan. 30.

Some musicals were just not meant to be, I guess.

This is hard to believe but the show's producers, Leonard Goldberg and Ken Gaston, had even worse luck with their next Broadway musical, Heathen!, set in Hawaii in 1819 and 1972. After six previews at the Billy Rose Theatre, the show opened - and closed - on May 21, 1972.

Now that there's a native of the Aloha State in the White House, maybe it's time for a revival!

Paul Newman: 1925-2008

I've seen lots of Paul Newman movies over the years, but the one that sticks with me the most is 1960's Exodus, which is hokey and overlong and overwrought. But I must have watched it at least a half-dozen times in the months leading up to my first trip to Israel, in August 1995.

I can just picture Newman's Ari Ben-Canaan - tanned, confident and forceful - telling Eva Marie Saint's Kitty Fremont why the boatload of desperate Jewish refugees simply could not give themselves up to the British authorities. Even if, as my Israeli tour guide later told us, the portrait was "a little embarrassing, no one can be that good," it was still a pretty thrilling performance.

I'd read that Newman was seriously ill but the announcement of his death at age 83 still came as a shock. Of course, in addition to his acting, was also famous and beloved for his philanthropic works, most notably, for the Hole in the Wall camps for children fighting cancer and other diseases.

Dalia Lithwick, an editor at Slate.com, worked as a counselor at one of the camps for several years and she's written a very moving tribute to this extraordinary man who loved to visit with the kids and take them fishing. Here's part of what she says:

"Each summer of the four I spent at Newman's flagship Connecticut camp was a living lesson in how one man can change everything. Terrified parents would deliver their wan, weary kid at the start of the session with warnings and cautions and lists of things not to be attempted."

"They'd return 10 days later to find the same kid, tanned and bruisey, halfway up a tree or canon-balling into the deep end of the pool. Their wigs or prosthetic arms—props of years spent trying to fit in—were forgotten in the duffel under the bed. Shame, stigma, fear, worry, all vaporized by a few days of being ordinary."

"In an era in which nearly everyone feels entitled to celebrity and fortune, Newman was always suspicious of both. He used his fame to give away his fortune, and he did that from some unspoken Zen-like conviction that neither had ever really belonged to him in the first place."