A forum on 'Forum': At Bergen County Players, actor Jack Gilford is recalled by his son

Not everyone who rides to the rescue is a hero.

Consider Jerome Robbins — who is widely credited with saving the classic Broadway show "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" out of town. He is also widely described by show people, including Joe Gilford, as a four-star S. O. B.

"Jerry Robbins was a genius," Gilford said. "He was a piece of [crap], but he was a genius."

It was Gilford's father, beloved actor-comedian Jack Gilford, who created the role of Hysterium in the original 1962 production of "Forum." As such, he was at the receiving end of both Robbins' genius and his perfidy.

A "Forum" revival is currently being staged by Bergen County Players in Oradell (the production, directed by Ray Yucis, runs through Oct. 19); at the Sunday Oct. 13 performance, Joe Gilford will do a live audience talkback.

"Jerry did come in and fix the show," Gilford said. "He was called in when they were doing the out-of-town tryouts in Washington, at the National Theater."

The audience responds

Those early audiences didn't know what to make of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" — the first important show for which Stephen Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics.

Derived from the comedies of the Roman writer Plautus (c. 254 – 184 BC), "Forum" was a high-concept piece.

It had a point to make. All of today's comedy schtick, "Forum" argues, actually has its roots in ancient theater. All the romantic mixups, mistaken identities, chases, pratfalls, schemes and subterfuges go back — literally — to the Year One. The title makes the connection explicit: "A funny thing happened on the way to the theater..." was, in 1962, a standup comedy cliché. To drive the idea further home, the original plan was to have Phil Silvers, then famous as TV's conniving Sgt. Bilko, play the lead role of the devious slave Pseudolus.

"He was the one they offered it to originally," Gilford said. "But he didn't want to be away from home. Also, they wouldn't let him wear his glasses."

In the end, Zero Mostel got the role (Steve Bell plays it at BCP), with Gilford as his sidekick, the hysterical slave Hysterium (played at BCP by Brad Forenza). But despite the boisterous book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (who later created TV's "M*A*S*H"), and expert direction from Broadway veteran George Abbott, the show wasn't working. Audiences out of town just didn't get it.

So choreographer-director Jerome Robbins, famous for "The King and I," "West Side Story," and "Gypsy," was brought in to troubleshoot. And that, as they say in "West Side Story," is when the spit hit the fan.

"Jack and Zero planned to quit the show," Gilford said. "Zero says, 'I'm not working with that [expletive]. And Jack says,' I can't, I can't. . .' "

A messy back-story

It wasn't merely that Robbins had the reputation of a tyrant and slave-driver. These three — Mostel, Gilford and Robbins — had a history.

In 1953, Robbins had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and had "named names" of suspected communists. Among them was Madeline Lee Gilford, actress, dancer, and the wife of Jack Gilford.

"Jerry named my mother," Gilford said. "They had been really good friends in their early years. She was a really good dancer and child actress. My mother taught Jerry how to do the Lindy, and other popular dances he didn't know as a youth. He was a ballet dancer, he didn't know how to do that stuff."

In fairness, Robbins was under special pressure. He was gay, and would have been exposed — ruined — if he had not cooperated with the committee. And he tried to keep the betrayals to a minimum. "He did name my mother, as well as 7 other people," Gilford said. "His list was short. And intimate. And really [expletive]."

Other turncoats, meanwhile, named Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford. The ugly episode was the basis for an off-Broadway play Joe Gilford (who teaches screenwriting at NYU and Montclair State) has written about the witch-hunt era: "Finks."

"My father actually didn't get a chance to testify," Gilford said. "He was called into the room, and I don't think he ever sat down. He started yelling at them and staging a protest, and they just removed him from the room. It might have been the shortest testimony on record."

Many unhappy returns

Work dried up for all of them. It was a wilderness period that no one could forget, or forgive. So when Robbins, like a bad penny, turned up once again in 1962, they were — understandably — not pleased. It was Mrs. Mostel and Mrs. Gilford who ultimately brought the two disgruntled actors to the table.

"My mother says, 'It's a J-O-B,' " Gilford said. "'A Broadway show directed by George Abbott!' And Kate Mostel says to Zero, 'We of the left do not blacklist.' And they both got back to work. Gnashing their teeth the whole time."

In the end, there was a payoff. Robbins, the expert play doctor, instantly diagnosed the problem with "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." It was getting off on the wrong foot.

"The opening of the show had been a sweet little soft shoe called 'Love is in the Air,' " Gilford said. "When Jerry came in, he changed the whole thing."

The song, Robbins realized, wasn't setting the show up properly. Audiences didn't know what to expect. What was needed was an opening number that prepared them for hijinks and hilarity, that gave them permission to laugh. And so, at Robbins' insistence, they came up with a new opener: "Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone — a comedy tonight!" It did the trick.

"It was one proportionately small thing, but it turned it into a hit," Gilford said. "It ran for over two years, and my father stayed with it the whole time, I think."

Riding the wave

Gilford and Mostel later reprised their roles in a pixilated 1966 movie version, director by Richard Lester ("A Hard Day's Night") but no one was particularly happy with the results. "It was misdirected," Gilford said. "And Richard Lester admitted that to my father years later when they met at some event. He apologized to my father. 'I was young, I was famous, they let me do anything I wanted.' But everyone hated the movie who liked the musical."

Oddly, Mostel went on to collaborate with Robbins once again, on an even bigger hit: "Fiddler on the Roof" (1964). But the bad blood remained.

"Robbins was not allowed to address Zero directly," Gilford said. "Zero did not address Jerry directly. He had to talk to him through the stage manager. As my mother also said, 'You don't have to forgive him, you just have to work with him.' But they were still able to get the greatest hit in musical history."

For his part, Jack Gilford, despite his McCarthy misadventures, landed on his feet. In addition to "Forum," the actor —who died in 1990 — appeared in, among other things, Broadway's "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1955), "Romanoff and Juliet" (1957), the original 1959 production of "Once Upon a Mattress" (his son has yet to see the current Broadway revival). Filmgoers know him from "Save the Tiger (1973) for which he got an Oscar nod, "Cocoon" (1985), and other movies.

Baby Boomers, meanwhile, will always cherish one of Gilford's most memorable gigs: as the silent pitchman for Cracker Jack, in a series of TV commercials that ran for 12 years. "Whadda you want when you gotta eat something, and it's got to be sweet and it's got to be a lot, and you got to have it now?" ran the jingle.

Those commercials got Joe, and his siblings Sam and Lisa, through college. Disappointingly, free product was not part of the contract.

"We never got free Cracker Jack," Gilford said. "Just because you do a car commercial, do you get a car? It doesn't work that way. They pay you for the commercial. That's enough. Anyway, you don't want them to think they can pay you in food."

Go...

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," presented by Bergen County Players, through Oct. 19 at the Little Firehouse Theatre, 298 Kinderkamack Road, Oradell. $32. (201) 261-4200 or bcplayers.org

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: A forum on 'Forum': At Bergen County Players, actor Jack Gilford is recalled by his son