20 Questions with…Arthur Whitelaw

The New Players’ Theatre in Villiers Street has just reopened with the 21st anniversary West End production of Snoopy – The Musical, which is directed by legendary Broadway director and producer Arthur Whitelaw – who conceived, co-wrote, produced and directed the original production.

Whitelaw began his career 50 years ago working his way up through the ranks from an apprentice, child actor, press
agent, writer, director and producer to television executive.

Whitelaw’s first producing venture in the New York theatre was the hit revival of
Best Foot Forward, which introduced Liza Minnelli and Christopher Walken to
the stage. Other original New York productions include: You’re a Good Man,
Charlie Brown, Butterflies Are Free, Minnie’s Boys, Strider, The Taffetas, Snoopy and Sweet
Sue, starring Mary Tyler Moore and Lynn Redgrave.

In the West End, Whitelaw has previously presented ten productions, including
Hildegarde at the Arts, Charlie Brown at the Fortune,
Butterflies Are Free at the Apollo and Snoopy at the Duchess. His numerous UK television specials include Separate Tables,
which starred Alan Bates, Julie Christie and Claire Bloom and was directed by John
Schlesinger.

In film, Whitelaw was vice president of Apjac International at Twentieth
Century Fox, and as head of Drama for HBO he originated a theatre series, that included the TV versions of Camelot starring Richard Harris, Barefoot in the Park, Plaza Suite, Sherlock Holmes, Vanities, The Rainmaker and Wait Until Dark. His productions have been nominated for or won every major industry award including Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, Aces, Obies, Edgars and Drama Desks.

Following Snoopy – The Musical, Whitelaw will embark on his latest project, a new 500-seat theatre that will be part of the new Performing Arts complex in Miami, where, under his non-profit
American Musical Theatre Group, he will produce and develop new musicals.

Date & place of birth
Born in New York City on 7 March 1940.

Lives now in..
I now live in Coral Gables, Florida, which is about ten minutes west of
South Beach. I moved there ten years ago for the weather – and some friends who
were anxious to get me down there.

First big break
The first musical I produced, a revival of Best Foot Forward in 1963,
with a cast that included Liza Minnelli and Christopher Walken. It was Liza’s first stage role – she turned 16 during the run of it. I was the same age
then as the producers who are producing this revival of Snoopy are now –
21. It was done at a little theatre on the east side of New York, on 73rd
Street, called Stage 73. It was an old Czechoslovakian beer hall, and it
then became the Manhattan Theatre Club, before they moved to City Center. It
got good reviews and played a year there, and as a result, everyone then
took me seriously. It opened all the doors. I had been an actor, a press
agent and an apprentice starting when I was 13. You had to be 16 to be an apprentice, but they saw a kid with passion and they took advantage of that.

Career highlights

Certainly the shows I helped to create – You’re a Good Man, Charlie
Brown, Snoopy, which I not only produced originally but also
co-wrote with Shultz and directed, and The Tafettas, which has never
been done here as yet but has been done all over the world and maybe we’ll
get to do if this is a success! But there are so many other highlights, my
goodness! They include Butterflies Are Free, Strider, a
national tour of Neil Simon‘s The Gingerbread Lady with Nancy Kelly,
and my first show in London, An Evening with Hildegarde, at the Arts
Theatre in 1964. She’s still alive – she’s 97 – and very much with it. She
appeared about seven years ago in New York at the Russian Tea Room before it
closed. She’s a wonderful lady.

A musical called 70, Girls, 70 wasn’t a hit but was one of my favourite things I ever was involved in. It was
just wonderful to be a producer on that show. The average age of the cast
was 70.3 years old and I was 30 at the time, so it was like being surrounded
by your grandmothers and grandfathers. But one terrible thing happened:
David Burns, one of the actors in it, collapsed on stage during a
performance, and died in my arms in the wings of the Forrest Theatre in
Philadelphia. He was one of the funniest men I ever knew in my life, and he
was doing a scene in the second act where they all have to act old because
the police are coming. I used to love to watch that scene. I ran in to
watch it from the back of the theatre, and saw him fall behind a sofa
on stage and throw his hand up. I went running down the aisle and through the
pass door. The stagehands were dragging him off stage, though the audience
didn’t know what happened. They didn’t realise it wasn’t part of the show.

What has been your worst theatrical experience?


A musical I did in London called Blockheads about Laurel and Hardy.
I wrote, produced and directed it, and I shouldn’t have done all three
things. It was a terrible experience; the only terrible experience I’ve ever
had in all the years I’ve been in the theatre! I just couldn’t wait to close
it.

Favourite actors/actresses
Amongst the people I’ve worked with, Gloria Swanson, Frank Langella, Robert
Morley, Trevor Howard, Alan Bates, Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Liza Minnelli,
her sister Lorna Luft, Chris Walken, Chita Rivera, Bille Burke, Basil
Rathbone, Mary Tyler Moore, Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave – two giant actresses
and adorable people – the list goes on and on. They’re favourites because
they’re decent people to know. They are people who were my idols. Of those
I’ve never worked with, there’s an old cliché about not meeting your idols
because they don’t live up to your expectations. But one who lived up to and
beyond my expectations was Fred Astaire. He was once of the nicest,
funniest, loveliest people. I just adored him.

Which other directors do you most admire?

Milton Katselas who did Butterflies Are Free and who is a wonderful movie
director and also acting coach. And Joe Hardy, who did the original You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, is a wonderful, wonderful director. Of
those I’ve not worked with, I’m a great admirer of Lloyd Richards, who
did many of the original August Wilson productions; and I think young Joe
Mantello is top-rate. And certainly Gower Champion, Bob
Fosse and Michael Bennett – giants of the musical theatre and no one has ever
replaced them or probably will replace them. Amazingly, they’re all gone –
they were all so young when they died. They understood musical theatre.
Hal Prince also has to be on the list – I adore him as a person, and we’ve
worked together twice. One of my earliest jobs on Broadway was being the
associate producer of Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes musical that
Hal directed. And then we did a terrible play, Some of My Best
Friends. We got such terrible reviews, but it was one of the funniest
scripts I’d read – and it played two weeks.

Favourite playwrights

I have to mention Leonard Gershe, who wrote Butterflies Are Free – he was
adorable to work with. AR Gurney, known as Pete Gurney, I did Sweet Sue
with, and he was just wonderful. Neil Simon, I’ve done a lot of plays of his
for television and The Gingerbread Lady on stage. Noel Coward, whom I knew
but never worked with. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, both giants of
the stage. Of the younger writers, I love Richard Greenberg, who wrote the terrific Take Me Out; and Yasmina Reza, who wrote Art. Of musical writers, John Kander and Fred Ebb are at the very top of the list, and they
are as human beings as well. They’re the most decent people I’ve ever known,
and Freddie is my closest friend in the world, and in fact I stay with him
when I go to New York, because I’ve sold my house there. I also love Cy
Coleman, Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin, all of whom I knew and to some
degree worked with; the Gershwins, though I never knew George, but Ira and
Frankie and the kids were like a separate family to me.

You’ve worked in every facet of the entertainment industry, from
actor, press agent, writer, director & producer to TV executive. Which of all these jobs do you prefer?
I’ve enjoyed them all. I love producing, because I love being in the back, knowing I helped put all those pieces together. But I also love
writing, because I love to create. And I love directing, being in charge of
putting it all together and helping to make it work, and not stepping back,
as you do as a producer sometimes, but getting down and dirty and working to
create something. I’m a very strange guy – I’ve got two sides. One is all
business, and one is all creative. It’s worked for me. There are not a lot
of producers who can do that. Hal Prince is another. But we’re dinosaurs.
There are very few people who are like that now. It used to be the norm.

From a producing point of view, surely there’s more money in
TV. Why do you continue to produce theatre?


I don’t think that’s true! If you have a hit, you make much more in theatre
than you do on television, unless you get a hit series. If you do just
one-offs in television, you get a fee – and most of the time you don’t own
the project, and ownership is what it’s all about. If you have the
copyright, you have the royalties! That goes into your estate, and keeps
going and going and going. It’s very nice in this third act of my life to
have that! I have ownership in the shows I helped to create – Charlie
Brown, Snoopy, The Tafettas, and I get money from the
movie of Butterflies Are Free which we did, but the stage rights are
no longer mine.

What would you advise the government to secure the future of British – or American – theatre?
Support. The first thing the government does when they want to save money is
cut the arts budget. That’s like a bad producer, where the first thing
he cuts is his advertising budget. How can you get people into the theatre
if you don’t advertise? It’s the same thing with the arts budget: if you don’t have culture, you don’t have a society of any kind.

You’re about to launch a new
500-seat theatre as part of the new performing arts complex in
Miami. Why did you want to do this?
First, I live there, it’s a wonderful place and the arts are really beginning
to burgeon. We’re part of a complex being built for the Florida Grand Opera,
one of the major opera companies in the world. But, secondly, I’ve been asked
to do this, and it was an offer I just couldn’t refuse, because it’ll give
me a chance to work with all my Broadway friends and London friends to help
create new musicals. I’m going to do only that. I’m not going to do revivals
of any of my shows or anyone else’s. I just really want to do what I’ve done
all my life, which is to help create something new and, without the
spotlight of New York, give people the chance to do a proper production in a
proper theatre with a proper stage – to do a Broadway production at a
fraction of the cost, to try things out, like we used to. In New York, we used to go out of
town with shows, but that’s become economically prohibitive. In Miami, here we’ll
be able to do that. We’ve got wonderful critics in Florida, and musicals
have to be tried out in front of an audience, and a paying one – you pay
your way in, you have an opinion. And the critics have to tell you if you’re
good or bad, and if you have enough people saying one thing, you start to
listen. I’m going to be the artistic director, but we’ll only have the
theatre for about three months of the year. The rest of the time it’ll be rented to other
outside productions, and also used primarily for the opera to stage young
opera productions.

What do you see as the key differences between theatre in the US versus the UK?

Working in London is the biggest treat always in my life, because the people
here are so serious about what they do. It’s not about money, it’s about art
and creation. There’s a certain passion that all of you have about the
theatre, that I grew up with as a child and saw in New York at that
point, but it’s gone out of style there – it’s now become Big Business.
Unfortunately, a lot of corporations have taken over, with young executives,
who really don’t have a background in theatre, making bad decisions. That’s why the flops are so horrendously expensive and why the ticket prices have
gotten to be so outrageous. If you can write a cheque, you can now be a
producer, and that’s not the way it was or the way it should be. There
should be a test to get into that guild, like any other guild, but there isn’t. The only test is how much money you have in the bank! And many of these new producers
are like bulls in china shops – they break everything and then they leave the
theatre, but all the damage is left behind. I’ve seen it over and over
again. The people who really matter in the theatre, and who’ve had long, long
careers like mine, are people who have passion and who care and are
sensitive to other people they’re working with. They know how to get a
writer to write, and a director to direct.

I’ve got to tell you, these boys (Stuart Piper and Stephen Carlile), who are
producing Snoopy – The Musical, are like that, even though they’re so young. I don’t know where it comes from, but they really have it. They’re absolutely amazing. They’re the kind of people who should be producing.

If you hadn’t become involved in entertainment, what
would
you have done professionally?

I love science, and was interested in medicine for about ten minutes. Or
maybe law – it’s sort of like the theatre!

You’ve directed both straight plays & musicals in your long career. Which
do you prefer? What are the different skills needed for each?

I prefer musicals, because they’re much more challenging. I think it’s a miracle when
a musical comes together. That’s why I want to do them. All those divergent
parts, all those different people who contribute to the whole of it, all
have to be on the same wavelength, and to get them on that wavelength is
incredible. When that happens, you have a hit.

What’s the last thing you saw on stage that you really enjoyed?

The current Tony-winning Best Musical, Avenue Q. I think it’s a lot
like Snoopy and Charlie Brown, in fact, because it’s very,
very simple, and it works on your emotions. It’s just so clever,
wonderfully done, and I love the chaps who produced it.

Favourite book
Moss Hart’s Act One. It’s about something that I love, and it’s so
dear, his experiences started me going. I was 16 when I read it, and I
thought, “I want to live there, I want to have that life”, and I do.

Favourite holiday destinations
Tuscany and the south of France. I love the lighting in both places. The
way the sun sets and comes up is so beautiful. The houses in Florence,
those red rooftops – my God! I also love the Cotswolds. I’ve been so many
times, and it’s all so beautiful, always.

Why did you want to direct Snoopy – The Musical again?
The boys asked me to. They did a production last year,
which evidently was wonderful, but they weren’t supposed to get the rights
to it. My agent – who has been my agent for 47 or 48 years and my friend
since I was 15, Louis Aborn at Tams-Whitmark, the largest agency in the world for
musicals – called me and told me he had some news I wouldn’t be
very happy about: Snoopy had opened at the Jermyn Street Theatre in
London. His representative in London didn’t realise I had approval. They
sent me the reviews, and I was a bit mollified because they were so good.
Reading them, I realised they obviously knew what they were doing, because
they didn’t present it as a children’s show – which it’s not, but so many
people do it that way and lose a whole aspect of it and a huge audience they could have
had. I came to London for a week, and I arranged to meet them for lunch.
They said it was a very important anniversary for the show. I said, “what
anniversary?” They said it was 21 years since it opened in London. And I
said, “How old are you?” They said 21! I said, “Thank you!” They said they’d
really like to do it again but at a bigger venue. I told them that, when I
was their age, I wanted to do a revival of a show that had played 20 years
before, called Best Foot Forward, and Louis was the agent on that as
well, and I had to get the rights from George Abbot. George was exactly
the same age then as I am now, and he and I had lunch just as I was doing with the boys, and I’d told him exactly what they’d just said to me. He said yes back then, so I said yes to them, too! Then they called and asked me to direct it, I
said I’d be delighted, and here we are!

The show re-opens the New Players Theatre. What do you think of it?


It’s a sweet little theatre! I remember seeing Divorce Me, Darling,
many years ago, the sequel to The Boy Friend that had also played
here originally, so I had that in my head. It’s a charming space, and I
hope the show’s going to be a hit for their sake as well.

Why do you think this musical – originally produced in 1983 – will
appeal to a 21st-century audience?

Snoopy is an old-fashioned, feelgood show that appeals to the basic emotions of almost anybody. I’ve seen it all over the world in every
language you can think of. I saw it in Japan a few years
ago, in a revival as this is – I’ve lived long enough to see my
things revived in foreign languages! – and the Japanese are not very
demonstrative, but they certainly were for that!

What’s your favourite number from Snoopy – The Musical?
The closing, “Just One Person”, always brings a tear to my eye. The lyrics
are wonderful. It says everything that the show is about, which is to open
your heart and take a chance. That represents me and everything I believe
in.

What are your plans for the future?

I’ve got the theatre in Miami to open, and I’d love them to do The
Tafettas here. It’s played all over the world, but it’s not been seen in
London yet. It’s a small musical that I did off-Broadway about 12 years
ago that ran a year there, and there are probably now 10 or 15 companies
playing it simultaneously as we speak. It has popular Fifties songs, and
tells the story of a group called The Tafettas, who are a prototype of the
Maguire Sisters.

– Arthur Whitelaw was speaking to Mark Shenton

Snoopy – The Musical reopened the New Players’ Theatre on 21 July 2004 (previews from 14 July).