New Line of Work for ‘Good and Evil’

Lots of books have been made into movies. How many have been made into jazz concerts?

“George Wein told me this is a first,” reports John Berendt, author of the best-selling “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” reached by phone in New York last week.

Wein is producing the concert version of Berendt’s book, which features music by Johnny Mercer. Wein also produces the Newport Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and more than 1,000 other jazz events each year.

An eight-city “Midnight” tour opened Friday at the Kennedy Center in Washington and winds up Sunday at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater. Saturday it stops at the Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, where it is being presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

Berendt will serve as host for the show, narrating several passages from the book. One describes his first encounter with a seductively beautiful showgirl whose full legal name is The Lady Chablis:

“What was your name before that?” I asked.

“Frank,” she said.

The excerpt is underscored by Mercer’s “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.”

At that point, The Lady Chablis herself vamps onto the stage. She is one of scores of real-life characters from Savannah, Ga., on whom the nonfiction book is based.

The show consists of 17 excerpts and 22 Mercer songs. Another character from the book--76-year-old Emma Kelly, whom Mercer has dubbed the Lady of 6,000 Songs--performs a mini-medley. Singer and Mercer-protege Margaret Whiting also is featured, as are singers Julius LaRosa and Cynthia Scott, guitarist John Pizzarelli, cornetist Warren Vache and saxophonist Joe Temperly. Actress-singer Claiborne Cary shares the narrator’s role.

Why Mercer? For starters, much of the book--including a murder, for which a defendant was tried four times--takes place at Mercer House, built by Johnny’s grandfather and one of Savannah’s more beautiful properties.

But that’s just for starters, says Jack Wrangler, the show’s creator and director (and Whiting’s husband) on the phone from his home in New York.

“The man wrote 1,400 songs, all birthed by Savannah and Mercer’s sense of innocence--’Days of Wine and Roses,’ ‘When the World Was Young’--this sense of wanting to go back. In Savannah you always could [go back], and Mercer always did, every year,” explained Wrangler, who was born in Los Angeles.

“But many other Mercer songs are so passionate--he knew the undercurrent that seethed in Savannah,” Wrangler continued. “His impish lyrics reflect the eccentricities of Savannah people. Somebody like John Berendt is smart enough to see it all and combine it so deliciously with this murder. . . . It just fits Johnny Mercer to a T.”

When Berendt, an Esquire columnist and former editor of New York Magazine, discovered that the cost of a weekend in Savannah including air fare was less than dinner and drinks in New York, he began to go there for a change of scene. He eventually made it his second home, staying “long enough to become more than a tourist if not quite a full-fledged resident.”

He “inquired, observed and poked around” wherever his curiosity led him--and took notes. Eight years of poking around resulted in a book that was on the bestseller list for more than two years, with a million copies in print. Since publication of the book--known in Savannah simply as “the book”--the city’s tourism has increased 46% and any number of spinoff enterprises (including the Savannah Map of Good & Evil) have been launched. The cemetery statue featured on the book’s cover has been removed for safekeeping.

Would Berendt have found a story wherever he went? “It was a stroke of luck,” Berendt answered. “I hope it’s the kind of lightning that does strike twice.”

One strike is carrying “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” along to an obvious conclusion: a movie. Clint Eastwood will direct. Berendt was asked to write the script but declined. “I worked seven years on the book; I’m ready to move on,” he said. “I have my fingers crossed for the movie to capture the spirit of the book. . . . Clint Eastwood directing is a good sign.

“There are 100 characters in my book, major and minor, and you can get no more than 15 of them in a movie. How to represent this extremely complex book will require some tough decisions I’m glad I don’t have to make.”

Wrangler made similar decisions in creating the concert version.

“It was a balancing act,” he said. “I could do a whole show around Joe Odom and other characters that are not in it at all. A [recluse] has a vial that could poison the entire water system of Savannah, and I wasn’t able to use that character.

“I had to put it together such that if one had not read the book, one could understand what was going on. I had to use the thread of the murder itself.”

If that eliminated most of the deliciously eccentric characters--save Emma Kelly and The Lady Chablis-- choosing Mercer tunes proved easier.

“I tried to use songs that would ironically complement a passage, make sense in a left-handed way,” Wrangler explained. “When we learn about this very frightening psychotic hustler and his treatment of people, including the girl he smacks when he finds out after two hours of knowing her that she won’t marry him, we do ‘Blues in the Night’ and ‘I Wanna Be Around.’

“He belts her. For her to turn around and sing ‘Blues in the Night’ is not a far throw. When he sings ‘I wanna be around to pick up the pieces,’ it captures the book’s dark humor. That ‘Twin Peaks’ humor, that was Johnny too. Sometimes it’s used to heighten a dramatic moment--to give you a laugh but also be pretty scary.”

Parental discretion is advised.

“It’s wall-to-wall Mercer,” Wrangler said. “But let’s not bring the 3-year-olds. We’re dealing with adult themes. A sensational murder case, a psychotic hustler, a drag queen. . . . It ain’t Mary Poppins.”

(The concert in Fullerton is being dedicated to Jean Tandowsky, director of public relations for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County until she retired in 1992. Tandowsky, who died Oct. 27 at the age of 89, and Mercer, who died in Los Angeles in 1976, were friends and neighbors on Lido Isle in the 1960s.)

* “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” a concert based on the book by John Berendt, featuring readings by Berendt and music by Johnny Mercer, takes place Saturday at the Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman, Fullerton. Presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. 8 p.m. $10-$35. (714) 870-5618 or (714) 553-2422. Also at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater on Sunday.