- Performances: 1,019
- Open / Close: May 5, 1955 – October 12, 1957
- Tony Awards: Seven wins out of 10 nominations, including Best Musical; trophies for both Fosse and Verdon; and a Best Stage Technician Tony for the all-but-forgotten Harry Green!
- Fun Fact: This is one of only two shows on this list to win a Tony Award for Best Stage Technician. The award was only presented between 1948 and 1963.
Podcast
Long-time theater veteran and a two-time star in productions of “Damn Yankees,” Dawn Westbrook, relates her experiences in bringing “Lola” to life.
There are a million ways to talk about “Damn Yankees,” so I’ll start off simple: with an uplifting earworm like “(You Gotta Have) Heart” on its song list, how could it fail?
Of all the attempts to tell sports stories on stage — and there have been plenty — “Damn Yankees” is arguably the most successful. It’s high-profile revivals, long-standing reputation as a regional favorite and enduring legacy as the first time Fosse and Verdon worked together have all kept “Damn Yankees” in the popular imagination much longer than many other ’50s-era musicals.
- Fun Fact #2: The show’s original logo featured Gwen Verdon in a baseball uniform. Realizing that sex sells, producers switched to Verdon’s arms-akimbo, striptease-tights pose (even reissuing the cast album with the new photo) and one of the most iconic theater images was born.
The show’s appeal starts with a story that indulges heavy-duty wish-fulfillment fantasies for both men and women, which is perhaps why it contradicts the conventional wisdom that sports musicals don’t work. An aging baseball fan makes a deal with the devil to be transformed into a 20-something superstar, leading his favorite team to an amazing series of victories. How many men over 30 would want to both a) turn the clock back and b) become the best at whatever they enjoyed doing as a kid? Answer: all of them.
However, after our protagonist Joe Hardy accepts the deal, he both a) spurns the advances of a devilish seductress and b) ends up missing his wife (the “old girl”) and returns to her in the end. What stereotypical housewife of the day wouldn’t swoon at such an honorable fella?
- Fun Fact #3: Joe Hardy is apparently the favorite role, or at least among the favorite roles, of Richmond artistic director / set designer / maker of stage magic extraordinaire Tom Width, according to Richmond magazine. Maybe part of the fun was playing opposite another local fave, Dawn Westbrook?
The show’s plot provides the backdrop for some inspired songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, “Heart” most of all, but also the vampy “Whatever Lola Wants” and the call-and-response hoedown “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal MO.” The latter serves as an excuse for the extended dance break that highlights Bob Fosse’s choreography and makes a modern fan nostalgic for when theaters could afford a whole baseball team worth of players/dancers.
- Fun Fact #4: The phrase “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets” is thought to have been inspired by Lola Montez, a dancer from Ireland who reportedly had affairs with several high-profile European artists in the mid-19th century and became the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
As I move through this series of long-running shows, certain names and connections keep recurring. I was surprised that George Abbott co-wrote the book and directed this production; he would go on to direct #118 “Never Too Late” seven years later and was clearly losing his touch by then. More relevant at the time: nearly the entire creative team behind “Damn Yankees” already had a big hit in “The Pajama Game” playing on Broadway as they were developing the new show. It would end up being the last Adler/Ross collaboration as Jerry Ross would die of lung disease 6 months after “Yankees” opened on Broadway; he was only 29 years old.
There will be plenty of opportunities to talk about Bob Fosse as I work through this list and it’s kind of a hoot to see him (uncredited) as Verdon’s dance partner in the completely superfluous routine “Who’s Got the Pain.”
But “Damn Yankees” is all about Verdon. Lola is one of those essentially supporting characters who ends up making a bigger impact than any of the leads. Though Ray Walston as “Mr. Applegate” is fabulous, it’s Verdon who not only provides the lynchpin to the plot but also gives the most memorable performance.
- Fun Fact #4: Adler and Ross were so taken with Verdon after she was cast as Lola that they quickly wrote the song “A Little Brains, A Little Talent” and added it to the show to give her more stage time.
While dance routines may have moved to more hip-thrusty, booty-shaking swaggering to present sexiness, Verdon is plenty sultry as she unexpectedly starts undressing in the Senators’ locker room. She’s also just a little bit gangly and not quite model-perfect beautiful so that her transition to reformed seductress near the end of the show doesn’t totally ring false.
Here’s Jane Krakowski (#116 – Grand Hotel)
assuming the classic Verdon pose in the 1994 revival.
The style of the movie version — very much a 50s-era thing — makes much of the character interaction seem overblown or cartoonish when watched today but, as a piece for the stage, this is a show with great bones, as they say: excellent songs, well-constructed scenes, and enough substance to allow a good director to create wonderful stage pictures and a talented cast to have a ball. Only some of the classically gendered beats (sorry, still having a hard time with “old girl”) knock this down from an A in my estimation.
Final Grade: A-.
PS: Enjoy your opportunity to compare and contrast the “Shoeless Joe” routines from the movie and the 1994 revival.