The Way Things Are: I Can Get It For You Wholesale
Set in Manhattan's Seventh Avenue garment district in the late '30s, I Can Get It For You Wholesale traces the rise of Harry Bogen from a strike-breaking shipping clerk to the corrupt head of a dress firm. On the way, Harry lies to and exploits his mother and girlfriend, uses company funds to pay for gifts for a glamorous actress-whore, and sells his friends and partners down the river. An amoral, ruthless young man who doesn't care about stepping on people if it means his own advancement, Harry was first unleashed on the public in Jerome Weidman's 1937 novel I Can Get It For You Wholesale.
Weidman was inspired to create his stinging tale while working as an assistant CPA. One afternoon on the job, he was witness to a bankruptcy hearing involving a twenty-five-year-old man accused of embezzling funds from his business and using the money to buy gifts for an actress. The question of how this all happened fascinated Weidman, provoking him to write "the story of Harry Bogen, a boy who went wrong because there was nothing in the observable world around him to prove that the values by which that world functioned were wrong."
Shortly after the novel was published, it was announced that Jed Harris would produce Weidman's non-musical stage adaptation of the book, but that never came to pass. Weidman wrote a sequel to the novel the following year, entitled What's In It For Me?, featuring many of the same characters. In 1951, the first novel was turned into a film, also entitled I Can Get It For You Wholesale, adapted by Vera Caspary, with a screenplay by Abraham Polonsky and direction by Michael Gordon. But Weidman's story was almost unrecognizable in the film: Harry Bogen became Harriet Boyd, an ambitious, gentile model, played by Susan Hayward. While Harriet has some of Harry's ruthlessness, she ultimately settles for love and salesman Dan Dailey.
A musical version of Wholesale was first announced in 1955. Weidman was to adapt his novel, with Burton Lane composing the score and with Pal Joeys Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly sought for the lead. One year later, it was announced that the musical was without a composer, but that Carolyn Leigh had written a set of lyrics to accompany Weidman's book.
In 1959, Weidman found himself the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his first produced libretto, co-written with George Abbott, for the hit Broadway musical Fiorello! One year later, Weidman and Abbott collaborated on the unsuccessful musical Tenderloin. Around this time, producer David Merrick approached Weidman and suggested he team up with composer-lyricist Harold Rome to musicalize National Velvet. Rome's first big success had been Pins and Needles, which opened the same year the Wholesale novel appeared and also concerned New York's garment industry. Merrick had produced Rome's two most recent musicals, Fanny in 1954 and Destry Rides Again in 1959.
Weidman and Rome agreed that musicalizing Wholesale was a more exciting prospect than National Velvet, and Merrick agreed to produce the show. Merrick hired Arthur Laurents, author of the books for West Side Story and Gypsy, to direct his first musical, and Herbert Ross to choreograph. Two months before the musical began its tryout, its title was changed from What's In It For Me? which remained as the title of one of the songs to I Can Get It For You Wholesale.
The musical boasted an unusual company of players. As Harry's mother, Lillian Roth, who had not appeared on Broadway since Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolics of 1928, made a comeback, her career having been halted by the alcoholism she had recounted in her best-selling autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow. Playing Harry's betrayed partner was Harold Lang, who had been seen on Broadway in such shows as Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'!, Kiss Me, Kate, Make a Wish, and Pal Joey, and who was returning after an absence of a few years to take a serious acting part.
Harry's other partner, Meyer, was played by Ken LeRoy, who had created the role of Bernardo in West Side Story, and Meyer's wife was played by Bambi Linn, who had taken dance parts in the original productions of Oklahoma! and Carousel. Marilyn Cooper, who had already worked with Laurents in West Side Story and Gypsy, played Harry's girlfriend Ruthie, the only serious romantic lead the usually comic Cooper created on Broadway. For the part of the actress who barters her apartment key for a diamond bracelet, Sheree North, who had won attention dancing in the musical Hazel Flagg almost a decade earlier, returned to Broadway from TV and films.
For the central role of Harry, Merrick hired Elliott Gould, who had been playing a small role in Merrick's Irma La Douce. Wholesale introduced Gould to the woman who would soon become his wife, another principal player in Wholesale whose Playbill bio stated that she was "born in Zanzibar, reared in Aruba, and educated at Erasmus Hall High School." This was nineteen-year-old Barbra Streisand, who made an enormous amount out of the relatively small role of harried secretary Miss Marmelstein. Streisand, who doubled after performances of Wholesale singing at Greenwich Village's Bon Soir nightclub, won raves for her Wholesale performance. Goddard Lieberson, who produced the Wholesale cast album for Columbia Records, signed her to a contract, and her first solo album was released two months after Wholesale closed.
Wholesale was greeted with mixed reviews in Philadelphia and Boston. During the Philadelphia engagement, Merrick considered replacing Gould, inviting Steve Lawrence and Mickey Calin to see the show. Wholesale opened at New York's Shubert Theatre on March 22, 1962, and again the reaction was divided: Two critics raved, one was mixed, and four found the hero and his story unpleasant. In the Herald Tribune, Walter Kerr wrote, "It is unbelievable how much that is touching can come from a show that is essentially tough," and went on to call the songs "quite possibly Rome's best...a score that speaks the language of its people with bite, backtalk, and sassy eloquence."
Lillian Roth was elevated to above-the-title billing. Streisand received the show's only Tony nomination she lost to Phyllis Newman in Subways Are for Sleeping. Wholesale moved from the Shubert to the Broadway Theatre on October 1 to make way at the Shubert for Merrick's importation of the British hit Stop the World-I Want to Get Off. Wholesale played to dwindling audiences for 300 performances, closing on December 8 at a loss of $140,000 on its capitalization of $275,000. Larry Kert, who had joined the Broadway production as understudy to Gould, headed the brief, post-Broadway road tour. Fox took an option on the film rights to the musical, but no movie was ever made.
In March, 1991, New York's American Jewish Theatre presented an overdue revival, directed by Richard Sabellico, who will be directing York Theatre's Mufti presentation next week. The cast of ten included Carolee Carmello, Vicki Lewis, Evan Pappas, Alix Korey, and Patti Karr. The well-received production featured a revised, tougher ending, in which Harry no longer saves Meyer from a jail sentence.
Looking over the material of Wholesale, one notes that Weidman did a skillful job of transforming an ugly novel into a palatable stage libretto. Harry narrates the novel, and his stream of nasty cynicism is loathsome. In the novel, Harry despises his Jewishness and considers everyone except Ruthie a jerk to be manipulated. While the musical's book uses the characters and plot outline of the novel, it does not place the audience inside Harry's mind, so he's easier to take, and the other characters are more sympathetic when not seen through Harry's eyes only. If Weidman didn't make Harry any less a crook and a heel in the musical, the hero and his story are less horrifying on stage, so the show was strong but not unpleasant. Weidman also managed to deploy no less than nine principal characters, all of whom are integral to the central action; there are no subplots.
Rome's score is altogether superb, featuring lovely ballads like "Who Knows?" and "Have I Told You Lately?," strong character material like "The Way Things Are" and "A Funny Thing Happened," effective sentimental numbers like "A Gift Today," and driving ensembles like "What Are They Doing to Us Now?" and "The Sound of Money." All of the songs were wrapped in Jewish harmonies evocative of the milieu and the period, and enhanced by Sid Ramin's superb orchestrations. The score is extremely well captured on Columbia's vivid cast recording.
But it's not difficult to understand why Wholesale failed to make it into the hit category. Many simply couldn't accept such a corrupt hero. Matters may not have been helped by the fact that playing two blocks away from Wholesale was a musical that featured a far more adorable killer as its hero. This was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which arrived five months before Wholesale. How to Succeed's hero stepped on as many people as Harry did, but How to Succeed was a comic fable, its J. Pierrepont Finch a cuddly betrayer. Harry Bogen and his surroundings were real, and audiences were less willing to confront Wholesale's unflinching portrayal of Harry's little world of "men and ulcers on parade."
But if Wholesale has gone down in history as the show that introduced Streisand to the world, that shouldn't detract from the fact that it was a daring and distinctive musical. Wholesale refused to whitewash or soften its central character, and it paid a price for that refusal. But it stands as a singularly uncompromising work.