We Need a Little Jerry Herman

In an appreciation of Broadway songwriter Jerry Herman, who died this week at 88, NPR's All Things Considered ended with a clip from the co-writer of his autobiography. She said that what annoyed Jerry Herman most was others' assumption that his optimistic show tunes were just a put-on. She said he absolutely loved life, and those lyrics were heartfelt.

[Photo: Angela Lansbury, the original MAME, with company, singing "It's Today!"]

NPR's critic Bob Mondello focused on something he called the "Jerry Herman Pulse." In every Herman score, there'd be a number that started small and slow, with a pulse in the bass, that would build to a company number with everyone singing and dancing. He said that Jerry Herman

owned... the cheer-up anthem that reminded audiences that for life to be OK, you just need a little Christmas in Mame or to put a little more mascara on in La Cage [aux Folles] or to tap your troubles away in Mack And Mabel....And again and again, as that heartbeat in the bassline came in, Broadway audiences reveled in what was always the overriding message in a Jerry Herman show - that, yes, life can come at you hard, but hold your head high. Face the future. March to that pulse because when others see your confidence, they will line up in support, filling the stage, arms in the air, singing to beat the band.

Herman's music was all I knew of Broadway during the first twelve years of my life. When I became an afficianado of Stephen Sondheim, I still appreciated Herman's effortless-seeming rhymes over buoyant oom-pah accompaniments, such as "We Need a Little Christmas":

Haul out the holly,
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again
Fill up the stocking
I may be rushing things but
Deck the halls again
For we need a little Christmas...

Puns ("haul" and "holly") and rhymes, opposites ("Put up" and "fall"): these seem natural, no effort required. Jerry Herman paired phrases in significant ways that balanced and just seemed right. Auntie Mame, feeling rejected by her grown up nephew, sings what all parents must think now and then...

Did he need a stronger hand?
Did he need a lighter touch?
Was I soft, or was I tough?
Did I give enough?
Did I give too much? (Herman, "If He Walked Into My Life")

I saw him just once, on TV during the 1983 Tony Awards broadcast. His score for the gay-themed show La Cage aux Folles, with book by Arthur Laurents, was up against Stephen Sondheim's score for Sunday in the Park with George, book by James Lapine. My mentor Frank Boggs had seen both and had written to me that Sunday was a work of art, while La Cage was something done "with crayons." Herman, accepting the award, said something that I and others took as an attack on Sondheim:

This award forever shatters a myth about the musical theater. There's been a rumor around for a couple of years that the simple, hummable show tune was no longer welcome on Broadway. Well, it's alive and well at the Palace

[Photo: Jerry Herman accepting his Tony.]

Years later, in an online interview at Broadway.com in 2004, Herman walked it back:

Only a small group of "showbiz gossips" have constantly tried to create a feud between Mr. Sondheim and myself. I am as much of a Sondheim fan as you and everybody else in the world, and I believe that my comments upon winning the Tony for La Cage clearly came from my delight with the show business community's endorsement of the simple melodic show tune which had been criticized by a few hard-nosed critics as being old fashioned…I was simply saying "thank you for letting me be what I am."

Appreciations of Herman today have focused on the positive songs and on his raising vast sums to support those who, like him, were HIV-positive.


My own personal connections are to that song "We Need a Little Christmas," something I sang with Frank Boggs's chorale, and a ballad that I learned from Barbara Cook's comeback album, from Mack and Mabel, a song I've sung at my piano. I don't have to make-believe the feelings; they're baked in:

Time heals everything,
Tuesday, Thursday,
Time heals everything,
April, August,
If I'm patient, the break will mend,
And one fine morning, the hurt will end,

So make the moments fly,
Autumn, winter,
I'll forget you by
next year, some year.
Though it's hell that I'm going through, I know
Some Tuesday, Thursday,
April, August,
Autumn, Winter,
Next year, some year--
Time heals everything,
Time heals everything,
But loving you.

Jumping from days to months to seasons to years -- Herman grows his number in a way that seems natural, effortless, real: I can love that.


I also loved to play and sing "I Don't Want to Know" from one of his flops, Dear World (1968). A waltz with some dissonant chords, the lyrics say that if life is no longer lovely, "then I don't want to know." Written for an elderly woman in a small French town, nostalgic for a way of life that's passed, it could also have been Jerry Herman, whose great successes of the early 1960s were already looking dated.


Kindness, gentleness, craftsmanship, optimism: These are qualities of Jerry Herman that we all need. Rest in Peace.