Remembering Harvey Schmidt: Composer of "The Fantasticks"

Harvey Schmidt of the composing team Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt died Wednesday at his longtime home in Tomball, Texas. He was 88. The duo created the longest-running musical in history, “The Fantasticks,” which ran 42 years Off Broadway and was revived Off Broadway from July 2006 to June 2017. The duo also composed the Broadway musicals “110 in the Shade,” “I Do, I Do” and “Celebration,” and Off Broadway’s “Road Side.”

Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1998. The composers have stars in the Lortel Theatre Off-Broadway Walk of Fame.
A memorial in New York is being planned.

Remembering Harvey Schmidt – and Tom Jones, who recently turned 90

“The Fantasticks,” the world’s longest-running musical, is a show that all but the most hardened souls love. The story is schmaltzy – the ageless one about boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl fall out of love, boy and girl fall back in love. For over six decades, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musical enthralled millions across the U.S. and in over 80 countries. It is also one of the world’s most-honored musicals with awards upon awards, including on home turf, the Obie and in a rare recognition of an Off Broadway show, a 1992 Special Tony Award.
In its initial Off Broadway run, “the little musical that endured,” as it came to be called, racked up a record-shattering 17,162 performances (May 1960 – January, 2002).
Songs “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” “They Were You,” “I Can See It” and especially “Try to Remember” have become theater and pop standards now known to generations. All these years later, as Jones once put it, “They still have the magical ability to soar.”
Their cleverly-rhyming, opening number sung by Jerry Orbach in “The Fantasticks,” “Try to Remember,” has been recorded by hundreds including Ed Ames, Harry Belafonte, Perry Como, Placido Domingo, Eddie Fisher, Kingston Trio, Gladys Knight, Liza Minnelli, Roy Orbinson, Patti Page and Barbra Streisand, and among many others, Andy Williams.
Ironically, considering the legend that’s grown up around the show, it almost didn’t happen.

Flashback to August, 1959

Tom Jones, Harvey Schmidt and Charles Word Baker (1923-1995; who went on to become a Broadway stage manager, do some “doctoring” on 1982’s cult hit “Pump Boys and Dinettes” and a veteran stage/TV director) met as students at the University of Texas, where Jones and Schmidt were at work on a “unique new entertainment” for its time.
A professor introduced Jones to Edmond Rostand’s 1890 play “Les Romaneques,” a story of two fathers – next door neighbors – who concoct a feud to fool their romance-obsessed son and daughter into falling in love.
“It had a profound effect on me,” Jones said, “but I didn’t think of it as a source of a musical. In fact, I’d never seen a musical, except in the movies. We did hundreds of plays in college, but not one musical. It was later in graduate school, when I met Harvey and Word, that I began to discover musical theater.”
On their move to New York while writing special material for revues, the duo decided to write a “fun musical.” “I don’t remember who suggested the Rostand piece,” Jones said, “but we all agreed. Then Harvey and I got drafted.”
When they returned to civilian life, the duo continued working on their show, which championed such new ideas as an open stage. After another three years, they were about to throw in the towel when Baker suggested trying it out in summer stock.
“The Fantasticks,” as they titled it, a one-act blithe spirit of a musical about love in all its gorgeous simplicity and heartbreaking complexities would be on a triple bill in New York in Barnard College’s summer festival. Taking the plot a bit further, Jones added the fathers arranging a fake abduction of the girl, Luisa, so that the boy, Matt, could gallop heroically to her rescue. Regarding the title, Jones said, “The fathers refer to Luisa and Matt as being ‘fantastic.’ I added the ‘k’ to make it sound more mysterious.”
Its early inception was written in verse. At Bernard, they operated “on a less-than-shoestring budget. Schmidt, an accomplished illustrator, designed and executed the costumes in bare bones fashion. “Still, they had color and sparkle,” Schmidt said. The “orchestra” was Schmidt playing piano. In a stroke of later genius, he added a harpist to accompany the songs (for most later productions, that was the instrumentation).
It was Jones’ job to get producers uptown to see the show. Rehearsals ran smoothly until the dress rehearsal. Susan Watson, playing Luisa, was recovering from a fall from the ladder that was the show’s only scenery – except for the strolling players’ trunk – and strained her vocal chords. She could hardly manage a whisper. The choreographer stepped in to Watson’s dances, and Schmidt sang her songs. It was some performance.
“We didn’t know what else could go wrong,” Jones said.
In one of those rare show business stories that change lives forever, a fledging producer, Lore Noto, accepted the invite. “Afterward, he told us that he thought the show would be perfect for the booming world of off-beat Off-Broadway,” Schmidt said. 
“Like all producers,” Schmidt said, “he had some suggestions. They were minor. One was that the show be expanded to two acts. We couldn’t help but love Lore when he told us that he’d produce the show only if we had total creative control.”
Jones and Schmidt were so broke, they held auditions in their Upper West Side apartment. “We couldn’t afford a casting director,” Jones said. “Hopefuls were lined up out the door and down four flights of stairs. I don’t remember how Jerry [Orbach] heard about the show, but he came and sang and read. He was sensational.”
Then and there, the composers and Baker decided he’d be the perfect El Gallo and they went to tell him; but Orbach, late for another audition, had left to grab the subway. Schmidt said, “We ran down the stairs, past the other waiting actors and caught him at the corner.” As fate would have it, Orbach scored at the next audition and was offered a role in a new Broadway show. “At five times the salary Lore could pay,” Schmidt said.
But later stating he just had “this gut feeling about the musical,” Orbach chose “The Fantasticks.” The show he was up for closed out of town.
The other members of the original cast were: Thomas Bruce, actually Jones, as Henry and George Curley as Mortimer – the “strolling players;” Rita Gardner (the short-lived 1963 “Pal Joey” revival and a noted Broadway stand-by; later, “The Wedding Singer”) as Luisa; William Larsen as Hucklebee (the girl’s father); Kenneth Nelson (later of “Boys in the Band” fame) as Matt; Richard Stauffer as the Mute; and Hugh Thomas as Bellomy. Jay Hampton had the role of the Handyman, which was eventually dispensed with.
The performance space at the 150-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich was only a little larger than a throw rug. The bare-bones set consisted of a piano at center, multi-colored streamers, a wooden “wall,” a bench, the strolling players’ trunk and a cardboard moon hung on a pole. From inception, Jones and Schmidt thought their creation would be the perfect show for what was shaping up to be a unique decade. Maybe they were a bit ahead of their time.
“Way ahead of our time,” Jones said. “Our opening was punctuated not only by the snores of sleeping audience members, but also by such comments as ‘I don’t understand it!’ and ‘What the hell was that?’ And then came the reviews.”
“They weren’t money notices,” Schmidt said.
Jones said they weren’t that bad. For the most part, they were. So much so that he spent the better part of the wee hours with an escape to Central Park, drinking heavily and throwing up.
Then, as now, hopes were high for an excellent notice from the all-important “Times” reviewer, then the much-respected Brooks Atkinson, known to love innovative theater. He wrote: “Two acts are one too many to sustain the delightful tone of the first. [It’s] the sort of thing that loses magic the longer it endures.”
The days after the opening were rocky. “The Fantasticks” appeared doomed.
However, even critics, puzzled by the musical, praised the cast and Baker’s staging.
“We were up and running,” Schmidt said, “but it was far from ‘Hurrah.’ We couldn’t even fill 150 seats. We bled for nine weeks. It was a miracle Lore didn’t close the show.”
Jones said, “It was amazing that we had a second night, much less that we were able to run that first week with hardly any audience. What had we done wrong? What had we done right? Of the handful of people involved, no two of us remember it quite the same. That goes for Harvey and I, and we were there and have been answering questions about it for over 50 years.”
Even at then-Off Broadway prices of $2.95, $3.95 and $4.95, Gardner said, “Audiences were sparse. Sometimes, we played to 10 and 20 people. It got so bad that Lore suspended performances and took the show to East Hampton. We generated enough word of mouth there to assure some kind of life back on Sullivan Street.”
Thanks to excellent outer critics’ reviews and word of mouth from the hipsters who loved the show and, most importantly, the gradual exposure songs from the show received on TV, “The Fantasticks” went on to have quite a life. Indeed, by its third year it was an established hit with avid fans returning again and again. It remained a must-see for years, was declared “a sleeper success” by “Time” and proved very popular during the height of the Asian tourist invasion.
Noto’s 50 original investors received a 35 percent return on their $16,500 total investment. One investor only put in cash because he was guilt-ridden for sleeping through the dress rehearsal. A profitable snooze.
Schmidt later said part of the show’s success was due to “the story being universal. It radiates a timeless sweetness and sunniness.”
As a result of his fantastic reviews, Orbach was Broadway bound in 1961 as the lead in David Merrick’s production of Bob Merrill and Michael Stewart’s “Carnival,” directed and choreographed by Gower Champion.
In 1986, “The Fantasticks” almost closed when Noto became ill. “When the closing notice was placed in the ‘Times,’ there were protests,” Schmidt said. “Calls and letters poured in from around the world. We were saved when Lore’s friend Don Thompson stepped in to take over until he recovered. Within a week, performances were sold out.”
In addition to setting a world record in New York, “The Fantasticks” gave performances at the White House. According to Jones, the show was been seen by 10 presidents. It also established record runs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver and many other cities. It played in London and was translated into over 20 languages.
Four years after closing, Jones directed the 2006 revival (and often stepped into the cast, again, as Henry). It starred Santino Fontana, Sara Jean Ford and, as El Gallo, Burke Moses. “Except for a bit of political correctness to address some controversy over the usage of the word ‘rape,’ not much attempt was made to change the show,” Jones said. “It was pretty much as it was when running Off Broadway for 42 years. The songs still had the magical ability to soar.”

Ellis Nassour is an Ole Miss alum and noted arts journalist and author who recently donated an ever-growing exhibition of performing arts history to the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the best-selling Patsy Cline biography, Honky Tonk Angel, as well as the hit musical revue, Always, Patsy Cline. He can be reached at ENassour@aol.com.