Jerry Herman

Now, fellas, the whole world says that he's the one.

Well, I'm not sure Jerry Herman knew that his title song to Hello Dolly would be pressed into service in the 1964 presidential election.

But yes, it was.

That was Ed Ames.

And the producers were no exception, although Mel Brooks did think it was going to be impossible, which is strange.

He, I think very interestingly, he went to Jerry Herman in sort of like the late 90s to say, hey, do you want to write the music and lyrics for this? And I'll sort of do the book.

Jerry Herman is like, Mel, you write songs for your movies.

You wrote already Springtime for Hitler once.

You wrote The Inquisition for History of the World Part One.

Then it became a very successful film in French.

And then in 1983, it became a Broadway musical by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein.

And that Broadway musical was done earlier this year at the Châtelet in Paris, very successful, and is now being brought back to a venue called La Seine Musicale starting October 30th for a couple of weeks.

And I just think it's hilarious that the French, 40 years after this show's Broadway premiere, are embracing a musical based on their own source.

So written by Andy Samberg, but not that one.

And Jerry Herman, who died three years before it was made.

Oh, that's

because of the lyric.

Like, haul out the hollies, the lyric from Mame.

And Jerry Herman wrote Mame, the musical.

IMDB is like giving him full credit.

Oh, yeah, no, that's...

The idea of doing another artist series is fun, but I couldn't really think of the artist that I wanted to do.

We could do like a Jerry Herman, I suppose we could do sort of a whole renewal of the Sondheim series, bring on new guests and do a whole new diving into all of those shows.

Or we could, you know, make it a vote for the listeners.

But I think that's going to be a deep dive series in the future.

Now, it's of course based on the 1967 movie with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

For the stage, Mel Brooks met with Jerry Herman, asking him to write the music.

However, Jerry Herman turned it down, saying that Mel Brooks was capable of writing it himself, and Jerry Herman was correct.

[laughs] Mel Brooks is definitely capable of writing this music, which I think's amazing that he was just like, "Oh, I don't have any confidence in writing this score," and then manages to write-

And they're all incredible