Joshua Logan, proper, in rehearsal. (Courtesy of Dick Mueller)
Within the bygone heyday of dinner theatres, one draw was the prospect to see each new skills and fading stars in an intimate, inexpensive expertise. Some fortunate Omaha audiences within the late Seventies and early ’80s acquired the prospect to witness the twilight of a theatre god when Dick Mueller, founding chief on the Omaha Firehouse Dinner Theatre, acquired the legendary Joshua Logan to direct reveals there not simply as soon as however 4 occasions.
Mueller, an Omaha native, got here “to theatre by way of the backdoor of nightclubs,” beginning out in an all-male vocal group, then appearing in summer time inventory, finding out in New York, and honing his chops in Midwest theatres. Entrepreneurially minded, he began the Firehouse Dinner Theatre, an Fairness home, in 1972, and enterprise boomed.
Touchdown Logan, greatest recognized for co-writing and directing such Broadway and Hollywood titles as Mister Roberts and South Pacific, was a one thing of coup. In a latest interview, Mueller known as Logan, who helmed a complete of 29 Broadway reveals and 11 movies, “the Hal Prince of his day,” through the so-called Golden Age of Broadway.
By the Seventies, although, Logan’s aesthetic appeared passé to tastemakers within the age of Fosse and Sondheim. (He additionally struggled with bipolar dysfunction.) His final Broadway credit got here in 1979, as producer of Larry Cohen’s Trick, and 1980, as director or Horowitz and Mrs. Washington. Neither fared nicely. So Logan more and more went to the place he felt valued, instructing at Florida Atlantic College and directing on the Firehouse.
Mueller stated he by no means acquired the sense that Logan was slumming or caught up to now. As an alternative, he thinks Logan noticed working on the Firehouse, far faraway from the nationwide highlight, not as a comedown however as an opportunity to maintain his craft sharp. Logan’s Broadway aspirations by no means died, as he campaigned for a revival of a 1916 farce known as Nothing However the Reality, inviting New York influencers and buyers to see its Firehouse mounting in Omaha. He was additionally creating a Broadway-bound musical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn, earlier than an identical mission, Huge River, beat him to the punch.
It was the Firehouse’s status as a house for brand spanking new work that drew Logan, Mueller recalled.
“Phrase acquired round about this little place in Omaha prepared to do unique materials,” stated Mueller. “It was uncommon for a dinner theatre to do world premiere productions of unique materials. In 1975 alone, we produced two world premiere productions of Leland Ball reveals, Crimson Dawg and Battle Hymn.”
An agent was the preliminary matchmaker. When Mueller heard that Logan was remodeling Cherry, a musical adaptation of 1 his nice directing triumphs, Bus Cease, he traveled to the South to see a workshop Logan was directing with a summer time theatre group. It was not love at first sight.
“I wasn’t blown away,” Mueller stated. When Logan requested him afterward what he thought, he recalled, “I hemmed and hawed. Sensing my reticence, he put his hand on my knee and stated, ‘Dick, don’t ever do a play except you’re in love with it.’ He let me off the hook so gracefully.”
So Cherry didn’t mild up the Firehouse, however just a few years later, in 1978, Logan got here to direct Nothing However the Reality, which he was briefly connected to revive on Broadway (although that manufacturing by no means occurred). “It was nice and an enormous success” on the Firehouse, Mueller stated, and it led to “10 years of a ravishing relationship.”
There was one memorable bump at first. At a press convention with Logan at Omaha’s gilded downtown Brandeis Division Retailer, the place Logan’s memoir Film Stars, Actual Folks, and Me was being promoted, the primary query got here from a reporter who bluntly requested, “Mr. Logan, how come you’re in Omaha—are you all washed up in New York?” After a collective gasp and a clumsy silence, Logan held his poise and signed copies of the e book.
“I used to be so embarrassed and brought aback that that insult fell on my watch,” Mueller stated. “That stated extra about that reporter than it did about Josh Logan. However he was a Southern gentleman, able to dealing with the second.”
With the success of Nothing However the Reality and their friendship cemented, Logan returned to direct Charley’s Aunt, the comedy that had helped make his identify on Broadway in 1940. That was adopted by An Night with Josh Logan in 1982, and a retooling of the identical present known as I Keep in mind It Properly, in 1984. For this private revue of reminiscences, anecdotes, and milestones, Logan was joined onstage by his spouse, Nedda, and their daughter, Harrigan, each of whom had been performers.
“They introduced their very own piano participant and used our set for They’re Enjoying Our Music,” stated Mueller, who satisfied Nebraska Academic Tv (now Nebraska Public Media) to doc the present. He stated he lent his solely copy of the tape to the New York Theatre Guild when that group staged a memorial service for Logan, who died in 1988 at age 79. After protracted negotiations for the video’s return from the New York Public Library, in whose Logan assortment it ended up, Mueller managed to reacquire it.
“It’s a beneficial artifact of Josh recounting his personal life and profession,” stated Mueller. “The attractive set appears improbable within the video. Josh owned the viewers.”
(Name it coincidence or synchronicity, however the man who produced the video, Marshall Jamison, was within the unique Broadway solid of Mister Roberts and assistant-directed Picnic, each beneath Logan’s path.)
What was it prefer to work with this Broadway legend? Removed from intimidating, Mueller stated that Logan “was simply an previous shoe that cherished working within the theatre—he was everyone’s favourite grandfather. He would go to sleep in rehearsals typically, however what he got here up with was all the time sensible and every thing he touched turned to gold, so who cared? He was lovely to work with. He cherished working right here, and wrote a stunning open letter to Omaha we displayed within the foyer.”
The dapper Logan directed sporting a sport coat and bow tie, and charmed gamers and patrons alike. He struck up an prompt rapport with Omaha stage legend Rudyard Norton, a good friend and colleague of Henry Fonda’s. Solely as soon as did Mueller glimpse one other facet of the well-known director.
“In costume rehearsals I believed he was unnecessarily exhausting on the pianist, whom he almost delivered to tears,” Mueller stated. “That’s the one time I noticed even a smidgen of him being tough. He was a sweetheart.”
Logan’s spouse, Nedda, was his companion and champion. “They had been nice collectively,” Mueller stated. Her father, Ed Harrigan, was a stage impresario who’d been the inspiration for the George M. Cohan tune “Harrigan.”
This shut working relationship impressed Logan to suggest a dream Firehouse mission.
“He steered doing Paul Osborn’s On Borrowed Time, which he had completed on Broadway,” Mueller stated. “He wished to play Gramps, with my son Adam taking part in the little boy. And for the satan half, he stated, ‘Possibly I can get Hank and Jim to come back and alternate within the function,’” referring to a minimum of Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. To Mueller’s remorse, he demurred on Logan’s supply, partially, he stated, as a result of he was “involved about him having the ability to do, a lot much less survive, eight reveals per week. Wanting again, even when he had died onstage, what an effective way to go—doing precisely what he wished to do.”
When Logan did finally die, in 1988, it was, serendipitously, across the similar time as Mueller’s personal father handed.
“I used to be in a run of Music Man when my father died, and the day he died I went on with the present,” Mueller stated. “I bear in mind standing on the bar afterward, saying, ‘Wow, what a day this has been,’ when someone stated, ‘Josh Logan died at the moment.’ Not a very good day.”
Nonetheless, Mueller stated, “I’m proud to say we had been good pals. What a expertise. What a life well-lived. It was a privilege realizing and dealing with him.”
Leo Adam Biga (he/him) is an Omaha-based freelance author and the writer of the 2016 e book Alexander Payne: His Journey in Movie.
Associated
