Howard Pollack - The Ballad of John Latouche: An American Lyricists Life and Work

Researching Latouches life and work presented some distinct challenges. To date, not much has been published about the lyricist, notwithstanding the many brief discussions in memoirs and biographies, and passing references in music and theater studies. The modest Latouche papers at Columbia University, although housing an important, if incomplete, series of diaries, contain little in the way of manuscripts and correspondence. And by the time research for this book began, most of the lyricists friends and associates were no longer alive.

Fortunately, the papers of, among others, George Balanchine, Leonard Bernstein, Margaret Freeman Cabell, Andr Cauvin, Maya Deren, David Diamond, Coleman Dowell, Vernon Duke, Duke Ellington, Kenward Elmslie, Lehman Engel, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Stanton Griffis, Lillian Hellman, Libby Holman, Frederick Kiesler, Leo Lerman, Sam Locke, Eleonora von Mendelssohn, David Merrick, Marta Mierendorff, Douglas Moore, Jerome Moross, Michael Myerberg, Alois M. Nagler, Ruth Page, Dawn Powell, John Powell, Earl Robinson, Lynn Root, Virgil Thomson, Dale Wasserman, Kurt Weill, Ruth Yorck, and most prodigiously, Latouches agent, Lucy Kroll, filled in many gaps, as did the general collections of the Library of Congress (including recordings held in its Recorded Sound Research Center), New York Public Library (including an important cache of materials that made their way to the library courtesy of Gore Vidal), the National Archives, the FBI, Karamu House, and other institutions.

In addition, I had the good fortune to be able to interview such surviving friends and associates as John Ashbery, Kaye Ballard, Shannon Bolin, Kenward Elmslie, Leyna Gabriele, Ellsworth Kelly, Miles Kreuger, Gerrit Lansing, Norman Lloyd, Robert Miles, Nora Lourie Percival, Willis Pyle, Charlotte Rae, Ned Rorem, Mildred Smith, Harrison Starr, Jerry Stiller, and Susanna Moross Tarjan, as well as some family or family friends, including Libby Green, Burford Latouche Jr., Harold Newman, Vivian Rowsey, and Rose Manning Seigel (with representatives of Latouches estate kindly permitting me to quote from his unpublished work).

The many librarians and archivists who assisted me on this project included, to name only a few, Richard Boursy and Elizabeth Frengel (Yale University); George Boziwick, Jeremy Megraw, and Doug Reside (New York Public Library); Anne Causey (University of Virginia); Lynda Claassen (University of California, San Diego); Helen Freeman (Sawyer Free Library); Mark Horowitz and David Sager (Library of Congress); Jennifer Lee (Columbia University); Jill Meissner (Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation); Suzanne Robinson (University of Melbourne); and Ulrich Weber (Swiss National Library). Several of my friends and colleagues provided indispensable aid by researching and photographing archival materials, especially Paul Covey, John Grimmett, Jennifer Kobuskie, and Alex Lawler, but also Grace Edgar, John Gabriel, Johanna Groh, Cory Meals, James Park, Samuel Parler, Anne Searcy, and Alex Winkler. Additional assistance came from, among many others, Edgar Alanis, Dorothy Baker, John Baxindine, Jill Bays-Purtill, Thomas Blubacher, Robert Carsen, Marie Carter, Steven Cassedy, Lucy Dabney, Gordon Davidson, Christina Davis, John Dawson, Shelia Demetriadis, Ellen Donaldson, John Franceschina, Olivia Gay, Hughes Griffis, Eugene Hayworth, Craig Holmes, Michael Holmes, Michael H. Hutchins, David Kanzeg, Nathan Kernan, Marjan Kiepura, Julia Kleinheider, Jane Knox, John Mauceri, Gerald Max, Anne Melville, Catherine Minucci, Darby Moore, Larry Moore, John Moriarty, James OLeary, Ron Padgett, Tim Page, Rebecca Paller, Maurice Peress, David Perkins, Kenneth Ponche, Kevin Prufer, Phillip Ramey, Tony Root, Max Schmid, Kevin Shannon, Mary Skinner, Stephen Sondheim, Charles Turner, Martha Wasserman, Richard Wilbur, and Gayle Wohlken.

A few debts warrant special acknowledgment. Erik Haagensen, who had conducted enormous research on Latouche in preparation for the 2000 off-Broadway revue about the lyricist, Taking a Chance on Love, and his husband, Joseph McConnell, offered extraordinary assistance, including providing me with a wealth of unpublished songs, lyric sheets, scripts, and letters. Furthermore, Haagensen helpfully reviewed this book while still in manuscript, as did Alan Gomberg, Harlan James, Benjamin Sears, and Tony Sessions.

Another windfall came in the form of a rough draft of Andrew Drummonds unpublished monograph on Latouche dating from the 1970s, which the authors widow Maria generously gave me along with accompanying notes and papers. As part of his research, Drummond, a theater professor at New Yorks Kingsborough Community College, had spoken with numerous people about the lyricist, even traveling abroad to interview writer Paul Bowles, film director Andr Cauvin, and cabaret singer Spivy LeVoe; his manuscript, as much an omnibus as a biography, not only reported on these conversations but preserved materials, including letters and lyrics, that do not seem to have survived otherwise.

Meanwhile, Alex Lawler, who had assisted me on my previous book, stayed close at hand during this entire project; his extraordinary resourcefulness and unflagging enthusiasm proved a steady boon. And as the book went into production, Thomas Finnegan and Ken Hassman provided the expert copyediting and indexing, respectively.