All That Chat - re: "Elegance" and "Motherhood"

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re: "Elegance" and "Motherhood"

Posted by:	AlanScott 01:26 am EDT 08/12/14
In reply to:	re: "Elegance" and "Motherhood" - WaymanWong 09:53 pm EDT 08/11/14

Who knows what really went on in Merrick's mind? Pretty much all accounts seem to agree that he was particularly capricious and confrontational on Hello, Dolly! (though probably more than on some other shows). Merrick seems to have liked to try to intimidate people, perhaps because he thought he could get better work from them that way or perhaps because he just liked to prove that he was boss. Or sometimes he probably just lost confidence people. He seems to have lost confidence in people very easily. One thing that a couple of the books say is that Merrill already had a 1 percent royalty for having given advice early on. Herman was certainly not happy when Merrill showed up. He may have actually tried to stand his ground, but when you're out of town and the show's in some trouble and you're under stress, you may agree to things just to try to keep the peace to some degree. Supposedly Merrick threatened to completely replace Herman's score, and Herman did respond that Merrick could not do that under the contract he had. Anyway, it seems that "Motherhood" and "Elegance" did not replace lesser Herman songs but musicalized moments or ideas that had not been musicalized originally. And the following season, of course, Herman came in to write a couple of songs for Ben Franklin in Paris.

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