A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Printer

Since Stanislavsky wrote My Life in Art, all sorts of do-or-Dionysians from Tyrone Guthrie to Moss Hart have felt compelled to follow suit. The results are seldom so immortal. Last week George Abbott, the tall, tough and still active bald eagle of Broadway, published Mister Abbott, an account of his own life--all 76 years of it. Since he has been director, producer, writer, actor or plastic surgeon for 103 Broadway shows of all types except the intellectual--Twentieth Century, Room Service, Pal Joey, High Button Shoes, Where's Charley?, Call Me Madam, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Wonderful Town, Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Fiorello!, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Never Too Late--it might have been expected that his book would contain a profusion of insights and smoky anecdotes.

Abbott doesn't write. He meanders. And much of his space is devoted to an elaborate chronicle of the abrasions of his second marriage, which ended with a divorce. Nonetheless, he knows Broadway--and the functional peculiarities of its people--as well as any man alive, and every now and then his words harden into nuggets worth noticing:

> "The method actor is a frequent culprit--he has worked so hard for inner feeling that he forgets to bring it out into the light where we can get a look at it. He has struggled successfully at such difficult tasks as pretending that he is a tree in full bloom, but he has never learned to say a final t."

> "Well, I think the critics are people like the rest of us--with the same anxieties, loyalties, prejudices, headaches and ambitions. Disappointed playwrights, some people call them. Is that bad? I don't think so. It only means that a love for the theater has been turned into another channel. The critics have great power, it is true, and they can destroy a play. But in my opinion the plays they destroy usually deserve it; in fact, I believe that there is more justice in accusing them of being soft than in accusing them of being destructive."

> "One day in Boston I told Irving Berlin that I admired a melody he had used in the release (the middle part) of a certain song. 'Oh, yes,' he said. 'I've used that a lot of times.' When I asked him what he meant, he answered in that high voice of his, 'Every composer's only got five or six tunes.' I don't quite understand this because it seems to me --and to most music lovers--that Irving Berlin has a thousand tunes, but he obviously meant what he said."

> "All authors are neurotic. I'll go even further: everybody in the creative side of the theater is neurotic. The reason is obvious. A child who has a happy, carefree, extroverted childhood does not turn his thoughts inward, does not stimulate his imagination with another world in order to escape from this one. It is the boy or girl with troubles who is thrown back upon himself, who lives in a fantasy world, who develops an ability and talent for the make-believe."

> "Generally speaking, success brings out the actors' worst qualities and failure their best."

> "The repertory theater gives the actor a chance to play many kinds of parts. Because it has developed many fine actors, it is held in esteem, but actually it cannot compete artistically with the commercial play in which the actors are picked for their particular skills in the parts needed. In plain words, typecasting is the best way to cast a play."

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