One Brief Shining Moment

When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical... But I'm so ashamed of myself -- all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy. At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: "Don't let it be forgot, That once there was a spot, For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."
--Jackie Kennedy, Life Magazine, December 6, 1963.

When Theodore White's "Epilogue" containing these words from the First Lady, widowed one week before, appeared on newstands, the national tour of Camelot, the Lerner and Loewe musical, was appearing at the Chicago Opera House. Later, Lerner recalled the performance after the article was published, "When [Louis Hayward, as King Arthur] came to those lines, there was a sudden wail from the audience. It was not a muffled sob; it was a loud, almost primitive cry of pain. The play stopped, and for almost five minutes, everyone in the the theatre - on the stage, in the wings, in the pit and in the audience -- wept without restraint. Then the play continued. Camelot had suddenly become the symbol of those thousand days when people the world over saw a bright new light of hope shining from the White House.... God knows, I would have preferred that history had not become my collaborator." (Lerner, 252).

In 1980, in his review of a revival of the musical, Frank Rich wrote, "When confronting the show today, it is all but impossible to forget that it was a favorite of John F. Kennedy's. [These] associations can give it an unearned, if still affecting, poignancy..." (Qtd in Suskin: v2, 132). In later years, many would question the "Camelot myth" that surrounded the JFK presidency following the assassination, and some wondered if the story had not been a figment of the grieving First Lady's imagination. Nevertheless, at a time when the country was in a state of national mourning, a great symbol may have been just what was needed, and Camelot fit the bill.

Today, thirty years after Frank Rich's review quoted above, we are perhaps so far removed from the Kennedy assassination, that Camelot will never affect us the way it did that audience in 1963. Nevertheless, we are a nation in peril, and both of the current presidential candidates for the Democratic Party have connections with the Kennedys. A photograph of Bill Clinton meeting JFK was frequently published in the 90s, and connections were often drawn between the Clintons and the Kennedys. Recently, Barack Obama has been been likened to JFK and in fact, the term "Camelot" has been used much in the media concerning Obama. Caroline and Ted Kennedy made a direct connection between Obama and JFK when they endorsed his campaign; headlines read, "Obama Knighted by Camelot." Perhaps our nation's mutual hope for relief and return to good times will affect audiences seeing the musical Camelot today. The show continues to be popular with audiences, and only in the past few weeks completed a sixteen-month national tour, and this coming weekend, a concert production with the New York Philharmonic starring Marin Mazzie, Gabriel Byrne, and Nathan Gunn will be appearing at Avery Fisher Hall. The May 8th performance will be broadcast live on many PBS stations as part of the "Live From Lincoln Center" series. (Check your local listings).



But has Camelot ever worked? If it didn't, you'd never know it from the terrific Original Broadway Cast Recording. The original production played on Broadway for over two years and launched a highly successful national tour. The original London production played for fifteen months, and the show received a lavish film treatment. It has achieved classic status and has been constantly revived in stock and regional companies including a notable revival at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse in 2003 starring Brent Barrett. It has toured the country several times with three more stops on Broadway. In addition to Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and newcomer Robert Goulet, the original Broadway leads, Kathryn Grayson, who had been a successor to Andrews on Broadway, starred in the first national tour for over a year, and the show later toured as a vehicle for such stars as Rock Hudson and most recently Michael York and Lou Diamond Phillips.

Nevertheless, despite the show's popularity, it has never been a critical favorite. The opening night reviews in 1960 were mixed. John Chapman wrote a rave for the Daily News, but Walter Kerr, in the Herald Tribune, who thought the show started out promisingly, wrote, "With no truly affecting legend of love to go on, the balance of the evening is filled with wayward gestures," and in the Times, Howard Taubman, who also thought at first, "The inspired creators of My Fair Lady appear to have passed another miracle" was ultimately let down, finding, "Unfortunately, Camelot is weighed down by the burden of its book... Were it not for the personal communication of Miss Andrews and Mr. Burton, Guenevere and Arthur would not be very engaging. " The final tally of reviews was one rave, one favorable, two unfavorable, and three pans. (All qtd in Suskin: v1, 122-125).

When Richard Burton returned to the role of Arthur for the tour which stopped on Broadway in the summer of 1980 (with a young Christine Ebersole as his Guenevere), Clive Barnes led the critics in citing problems with the show. "The real problem about Camelot is that it is not, never was, nor never will be, a particularly good musical." Barnes also felt that Burton seemed "little more than a burnt-out dummy." (In the Times, Frank Rich raved over Burton, though he shared other reservations about the show with the other critics). It was reviewed with even less enthusiasm when the same production returned to Broadway the following year starring Richard Harris (who had replaced an ailing Burton on the road). (Suskin, v2.) Camelot's final visit to Broadway was in 1993 as a stop on yet another tour, this time with Robert Goulet having moved up from his original role of Lancelot to star as Arthur; the production was dubbed "Cam-e-Lounge" by industry insiders and The New York Times, noting the show had "an enchanting score and a ponderous book" found the production "heavy as a rock pile. " (The production played for over two years on the road, nevertheless).

The 1967 film adaptation had the disadvantage of opening at a time when lavish screen musicals were regularly bombing at the box office. Pauline Kael, dubbed it "one of Hollywood's colossal financial disasters," while noting that it had "good bits tucked in among the elaborate mistakes." In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther discussed the many problems inherent in the material saying, "[W]hat it basically needed in its transfer to the screen was a drenching in cinema magic to remove all the dull and pretentious patches of realism and romantic cliché that kept it from sparkling in the theater. And that's what we all hoped it would have. Well, it hasn't, alas."


Camelot was to be Lerner and Loewe's first new musical on Broadway since My Fair Lady, which had become one of the biggest hits Broadway had ever seen. They had continued their winning streak in Hollywood, with Gigi, an original film musical which had won nine Oscars and was a box office smash. When it was announced that My Fair Lady's Julie Andrews, Robert Coote, director Moss Hart and other members of the MFL team would all reunite with Lerner and Loewe for their new musical which would also star Richard Burton, interest was so intense that it quickly built the largest advance ticket sale in Broadway history. Expectations were extremely high. But Camelot's trouble began early.

In his memoir, The Street Where I Live, Lerner reports that his partner, Frederick Loewe, was not enthusiastic about the project from the start, and had to be convinced to work on it; Camelot would ultimately become the least happy of their collaborations. Problems arose as soon as the company went to Toronto where the new musical was to begin tryouts. The O'Keefe Center was new and there were many technical kinks to be worked out while attempting to mount the new production. Lerner had found cutting down TH White's multi-novel saga, The Once and Future King, to a two hour and forty-minute musical a daunting challenge. When the show began tryouts in Toronto, it was approximately four hours long, and a great deal of pruning, re-writing, and re-thinking was needed. Work on the project was stalled when Lerner, suffering from an ulcer, was hospitalized. Just as he was being released, Moss Hart suffered a heart attack. Hart's condition was very serious and he would ultimately remain in the Toronto hospital long after Camelot had moved on in its tryout period and ultimately to Broadway. With their director felled, Lerner took over the direction himself, though Loewe was insistent that a new director be brought in. Lerner remained hopeful that Hart would recover in time to save the show, and only half-heartedly attempted to find a new director. In the meantime, he continued with re-writes while directing rehearsals himself. The process continued throughout the tryout period. Hart did not recover in time and no new director was brought in, so when the show finally opened in New York, though it had been trimmed, it was still running too long, and many of the perceived problems with the show, particularly in the second act, had not been solved.

Thanks to its huge advance, Camelot played its first three months without running out of audiences, even though ticket sales were scarce after the lackluster reviews. The show got a new lease on life, however, when Moss Hart, having finally recovered, asked his collaborators to try again to fix the show, even though it was already running. The cast rehearsed the new changes during the day while performing the show at night, as though they were back in tryouts. Two songs were cut, revisions were made, and the running time was brought down. Just as the changes were ready to be put into the show, the show got a major boost when Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday night variety show was the most popular on television, devoted an entire broadcast to a celebration of the works of Lerner & Loewe in honor of the fifth anniversary of My Fair Lady on Broadway. Burton, Andrews, and Goulet, all appeared and in addition to performing songs and sequences from Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, and My Fair Lady, the final portion of the telecast was devoted to Camelot. A total of four songs from the show were heard, including the title song and "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" The next day, Camelot's ticket sales finally took off, and the show became a hit.

In the following years, the show was seen across the country and in several international productions. There would be more tinkering with each new production, however. "Take Me to the Fair," one of the songs dropped from the show in Hart's post-opening revision, had been included on the original cast recording and was reinstated for the London production. When the film was made, the song was again included and Lerner, who penned his own screenplay, attempted once again to fix the problem with the disjointed tone of the two acts. He incorporated a flashback device so that the story started with Arthur on the battlefield where he is found at the end of the show, with the hope that this would help the audience know what they were in for. This idea had been considered and rejected for Broadway because the opening of the show was working well and Lerner had been hesitant to change it. However, one of the recurring criticisms the show had received was that there was a breach of tone between the two halves.

After Arthur and Guenevere's charming first encounter which included three excellent, light songs in a row, the show quickly became political and heavier. Julie Andrews said in a 1989 interview, "I think audiences got very angry because the first half of the show promised so much whimsy and charm and [in] the second half they were rather surprised when it took such a turn." (Broadway: A History of the Musical, Part 4) . The flashback device, though it failed to help make the film of Camelot a critical or box office success, was incorporated into the show for the Burton/Harris revival in 1980 and has become a regular feature in revivals. The use of the flashback may also have been deemed useful since revivals regularly cast older actors as Arthur. Burton was only 35 when he originated the role, but subsequent Arthurs have tended to be over 50. When Michael York took on the part in 2007, he was 65. Gabriel Byrne turns 58 this month.

Given the common perception that Camelot is and always will be a flawed show with a classic score, perhaps a concert reading is its best possible form. When Gabriel Byrne, Marin Mazzie, and Nathan Gunn join forces with the New York Philharmonic this weekend, we can hope that Camelot will overcome its flaws and work its magic once again and perhaps we can also hope that we ourselves may some day soon experience a future such as the one Alan Jay Lerner saw in Arthur's dream for a round table democracy. Perhaps we are nearing our own "One brief shining moment."