Muny Through The Years

For all practical purposes, the roots of the Muny saga were planted in 1913 with the formation of the St. Louis Pageant Drama Association. Comprised of prestigious civic leaders like John Gundlach and Luther Ely Smith, whose combined vision and unflagging energy would lead to the building of the Gateway Arch on the Mississippi Riverfront, the Pageant Drama Association came into being for one purpose – to host a massive celebration of the city’s 150th birthday.

It was not yet noon, but already Henry Kiel could predict that tonight would be an ideal Halloween. As St. Louis’ 53-year-old mayor strode from City Hall to the American Hotel at 619 Market Street on this final Friday in October 1924, he noted that the comfortable temperature was in the mid-60s; the sky, cloudless. Six years as president of the Municipal Theatre Association had transformed Kiel into an adept prognosticator of weather. He felt confident that rain would not deter the children of St. Louis as they set about tonight’s trick-or-treating. But long before the costumed kids began their revels, Kiel was about to unveil a trick – or at least a surprise – of his own.

Clearly, something had to be done – and it had to be done quickly – if the Municipal Opera, which had thrived during the 1920s, was to weather the stark economic Depression that had a stranglehold on the new decade. Henry Kiel, president of the Municipal Theatre Association, could seek counsel from any of the dozens of civic leaders who comprised his board of directors. Instead he had a private meeting with David Russell, who had been the Municipal Opera’s soft-spoken yet shrewd business manager since its inception.

Beginning in the late 1930s, war news became inescapable. Nazi Germany invaded Poland, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, ocean shipping lanes throughout the world were preyed upon by German U-boats. Here at home, President Franklin Roosevelt vowed to keep America out of the war even as he sought to nudge the polarized nation away from neutrality. Kiel’s Municipal Theatre Association was not immune to current events. The association felt a need to acknowledge the strained times, but in a manner that would reaffirm rather than provoke. Thus in June 1940, for the first time in its 22-year history, the Municipal Opera presented a non-musical.

Oh, what a beautiful evenin’. Monday, August 14, 1950, marked the dawn of a new era in Forest Park: the Rodgers and Hammerstein era. Like those French Foreign Legionnaires and Royal Canadian Mounties who ride to the rescue at the end of antiquated operettas, so did Broadway’s golden boys appear in the nick of time to rejuvenate Muny programming. For the sad truth was that as the Opera entered its fourth decade, many of the old standbys had lost their luster.

Clang, clang, clang went the trolley – twice a night, for eleven nights. True, in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis Judy Garland only sings “The Trolley Song” once. But this tuneful compendium of clangs, dings, zings, chugs, bumps and thumps had become such a classic that when John Kennedy and his team mounted a stage adaptation as the first Muny production of the new decade, they reprised the song.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” In a theater seating nearly 12,000, chances are better than fair that the answer to this urgent question will be yes. And indeed, on Monday evening, August 14, 1972, at least 15 doctors were “in the house” at the Muny’s opening-night performance of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes.

The new decade arrived, accompanied by a profound loss. On the final day of 1979, the world learned that Richard Rodgers had died at age 77. At his funeral on January 2, a eulogist suggested, “Through his songs, Richard Rodgers has probably given more pleasure to more people than anyone else in the 20th century. His melodies are truly the heritage of the world.” No one in St. Louis – the city that staged more Richard Rodgers productions than any other – would have disagreed.

The terse announcement received scant attention. One month into the new decade, on the last day of January 1990, on page four of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, under the heading: IN BRIEF REGION the third item in the column, titled “Muny Gets New Executive Producer,” was the epitome of brief. Four meager sentences stated that Paul Blake, “a producer-director of touring and stock shows for the last three seasons and formerly artistic director of the Theatre Festival of Santa Barbara, Calif.,” had been appointed to succeed Edward Greenberg as executive producer of the Muny.

It was a slow death. Everything that could be done was done, but in the end disease and age claimed their victim. Back in July 1946 – the same week that baritone Edward Roecker was belting his way through East Wind, an exotic Sigmund Romberg-Oscar Hammerstein operetta set in Saigon – City Forester E. R. Olmstead disclosed that one of the two tall, stately burr oaks that frame the Municipal Opera stage was sickly. Olmstead projected that the tree might survive another 15 seasons, but he made no guarantee. In a Herculean effort, the City Forestry Division managed to keep the oak alive into the 21st century. Finally in 2002 it had to be taken down. A portion of the doomed oak’s timber was refashioned into a large conference table for the Muny office.