Lee Remick Singing Stephen Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle” (Photoessay, Video Without Commercial Interruption)

 

Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon in The Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
 

The Broadway poster 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

It is not well-known, outside of fans of Stephen Sondheim, that Lee Remick starred in the biggest flop of the former’s Broadway career. In 1964, Anyone Can Whistle opened on April 4 and closed on April 11, after a mere 12 previews and nine performances.

Like millions of other red-blooded American boys of all ages, I had a huge crush on Lee Remick during the 1960s. She played very feminine, winsome, beautiful women.
 

"Stephen Sondheim toasts Lee Remick at the Anyone Can Whistle premiere afterparty"
 

Twenty-odd years ago, I spent hours in a lower Manhattan used book store reading several chapters of a Sondheim biography, whose author maintained that in contrast to the characters Remick played in her heyday, she didn’t have a feminine bone in her body, and was quite the clumsy oaf. More controversially and fascinatingly, the author contended that Lee Remick was the love of Stephen Sondheim’s. Not in a “very dear friend sense,” but just what it sounded like.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘Sondheim is and always was, as queer as a three-dollar bill.’

The biographer didn’t say that the two had so much as shared a romantic kiss, let alone made love, but eros is much richer than what homosexualists and their sympathizers have imposed on public opinion. Circa 1964, Sondheim and Remick reportedly considered marriage.

Circa 1960, Sondheim and Mary Rodgers, the composer’s daughter who would herself compose musicals (including one with Sondheim), considered marriage, but that was a more one-sided matter. Mary Rodgers had been madly in love with Sondheim for years, but he felt more the love of a friend towards her.

In college, I once had a fling with a lesbian, and when I was teaching college in New Jersey, an older (not-anti-man) feminist colleague, who would now be in her early seventies, saw me walking and talking with a 20-something openly lesbian philosophy student of mine that I’d befriended, and was convinced that the girl was crazy about me.

Sondheim is still around, at 84, but has been washed up for roughly 20 years. He had a hell of a run, though much of it was devoted to nihilism.

Lee Remick, unfortunately, succumbed to kidney and liver cancer on July 2, 1991.

Seven months ago, Frank D wrote at youtube,

At Ms. Remick's funeral, her family, Sondheim, and Jack Lemmon (her co-star from the Days of Wine and Roses film back in 1962) sang this song. RIP.

 

CD cover 

 

Anyone Can Whistle
Uploaded on Mar 30, 2010 by ZachAndJenFTW.
Title Song from Anyone Can Whistle
 


 

Anyone Can Whistle
Words & Music by Stephen Sondheim

Anyone can whistle, that's what they say, easy,
Anyone can whistle, any old day, easy,
It's all so simple, relax, let go, let fly,
Please, someone tell me why can't I?

I can dance a Tango, I can read Greek, easy,
I can slay a dragon, any old week, easy,
What's hard is simple, what's natural comes hard,
Maybe you could show me, how to let go,
Lower my guard, learn to be free,
Maybe if you whistle, whistle for me?

What's hard is simple, what's natural comes hard,
Maybe you could show me, how to let go,
Lower my guard, learn to be free,
Maybe if you whistle, whistle for me?
 

Thanks to Metrolyrics.