Vocal Rest and Restaging: Gems from Singer Mary Martin's Bio

I'm reading (skimming) a biography of Mary Martin by Ronald L. Davis. Hers is a voice I have always loved, thanks to my mother's tradition when we were growing up of putting on the soundtrack of "South Pacific" and singing along as we cleaned the house. "It Never Entered My Mind" (not from "South Pacific") and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" are two songs no one does better.

Apparently, Martin was fairly happily married to an alcoholic who nonetheless was her total champion and managed every aspect of her life so that she could concentrate on her stage performances. She also left her young son, the Dallas TV miniseries actor Larry Hagman, in the care of her mother while she went to Hollywood and then New York in her early 20s (she had had him in her first, brief marriage). Hagman held this against her for many years, but they did become close later in life.

Three interesting tidbits thus far: First, while she was performing five or more nights a week on stage, she would spend her weekends in utter silence. She avoided interviews or parties completely so that she could rest her voice by not speaking. I wonder, as a singer who knows the toll talking (especially talking loudly in a club!) takes on the performing voice, how many singers still follow this advice.

Also, her voice was naturally a soprano, but got lower over the years (as many popular singers' voices do, mine included). She went through several extensive periods of study in which she remodeled her voice, and learned to insist on performing no fewer than four songs in an audition: High soprano, blues, rhythm and a naughty/sweet character piece like "The Weekend of a Private Secretary" (which led, after an audition with a bed-ridden Cole Porter, to "My Heart Belongs to Daddy").

Finally, I was interested in how the 1949 hit musical "South Pacific" evolved onstage. On opening night...

[Ezio] Pinza scored such an enormous hit with "Some Enchanted Evening" that the show couldn't continue for several minutes. To everyone's surprise, neither "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" nor "A Wonderful Guy," both in the same scene, went well for Mary. ... Rodgers and Hammerstein were so distressed by the failure of their songs that they avoided looking at [director Joshua] Logan. "I felt like an amateur," the director said. He had instructed Mary to rub her head with soap and water just as she started the refrain of "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair." But what he hadn't anticipated was that thhe audience would be so shocked by the physical act of Mary's washing her hair onstage with real water that they didn't hear the song. When the number finished, there wasn't a handclap. The solution proved simple enough. Mary sang the song first and then went into the shower and began lathering her head. "During the loud music that had been composed for the dance," Logan said, "Mary washed her hair and romped about, flinging soap and suds." Once that change was made, the number ended to a roar of applause. Later her costume for the scene was sprayed with Scotch Guard so that Mary could finish the act in dry clothes.

Similarly, "A Wonderful Guy" only became a showstopper after the staging was revised. Initially, there was "cornball," embarrassing clowning with all the nurses/dancers on the beach. Instead, Mary began singing the song as a soliloquy with slight lyric changes by Hammerstein, and the number became the peak of the show. But there was lots more work to do:

To the director's surprise, Mary seemed unperturbed by the failure of her two big numbers on opening night in New Haven. "Maybe it was the way I did them," she said. "I'll get applause tonight. Don't worry." But it took several days of feverish work to get the staging right. The company was still rehearsing every morning, and the writers were making changes after most performances. "We just worked like fiends," Mary remembered. Playwright Emlyn Williams was on hand in the Taft Hotel to confer with the collaborators, and eventually forty-five minutes were taken out of the show -- two songs and words here and there.

These are valuable reminders of the sacrifice (Martin complained of no social life due to the constant imposition of vocal rest) and disciplined work behind great performances. As Yeats put it, "A line will take us hours maybe; yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught."