Down Memory Lane to Broadway

Thirty-one years ago, filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker was approached about doing a documentary series on the recording sessions of various Broadway musical cast albums. He liked the idea and proceeded to cover “Company.”

Plans to shoot the rest of the series never materialized. But the one he got provides amazing insight into Stephen Sondheim’s landmark musical about a self-centered 35-year-old bachelor named Bobby and his friends.

Now “Original Cast Album--Company” is available on DVD (Docurama, $30), featuring the hourlong documentary, biographies, an extra song (“Have I Got a Girl for You”), a photo gallery from the original show and new commentary from Pennebaker, “Company” director Hal Prince and actress Elaine Stritch, who starred in the production with Dean Jones, Charles Kimbrough, Barbara Barrie, Donna McKechnie and Susan Browning.

With music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Furth, “Company” broke away from traditional musical plotting to present Bobby’s life in a series of vignettes.

Eight days after “Company” opened on Broadway to great notices, cast members went into the recording studio to do the album. Following their every move was Pennebaker and his crew, who used three hand-held cameras to capture the proceedings and record interviews with the stars, Sondheim, Prince and record producer Thomas Z. Shepard.

The highlight of the documentary is Stritch’s arduous recording of her show-stopping number, “The Ladies Who Lunch.” After straining through several takes, an exasperated Stritch is sent home by Sondheim and Prince. Three days later, Pennebaker captures her return to the studio, where she records the song perfectly.

Stritch received a Tony nomination for best actress for her role as Joanne in “Company.” A veteran of film and television, she was most recently seen in the feature films “Small Time Crooks” and “Autumn in New York.” Now 75, the actress talked about “Original Cast Album--Company” on the phone from her home in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Question: What was it like for you to watch and comment on the documentary 31 years after it was shot?

Answer: It’s such a brilliant documentary. This is the whole saga of musical comedy that people know very little about. They know from the time the curtain goes up--they know the glitz and the glitter. But there is a lot of drama behind the drama.

The thing that interested me was [that] a few people said to me way back when we did that documentary that they had a feeling it was all planned.

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Q: When you say “all planned,” are you referring to your difficulties in recording “The Ladies Who Lunch”?

A: Yes. A lot of people said, “That was damn clever!” Clever? I have never spent a night like that ever, and I hope I never will again. I know I never will again. When I look at the film, I realize so much about myself. Struggle gives you a gift because it tells you so much about yourself. I learned so much about how to behave in the future from watching that thing. It was all based on fear.

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Q: Were you fearful because your song was the last to be recorded at the session and you put too much pressure on yourself?

A: No. I begged to go on last for this reason: I didn’t want to hang up the company. I knew I was going to have trouble putting it on the record--singing it with the emotion that I wanted. People can’t see you and appreciate what you are doing acting-wise; you have to get that all in your voice. I felt I would feel more comfortable alone with Steve and Hal and everybody rather than to have the company sitting around waiting for Elaine to do her song--the black sheep in the company.

I was beat and I didn’t realize it, because the adrenaline was flowing, but my voice was tired. I would have been all right if I hadn’t been so anxious to do it right. Everybody knows about that pressure. It was interesting how human failure turns out to be a hit. A lot of people think it was because of me it became such a famous documentary.

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Q: You always come across as so fearless on stage.

A: I walk out on stage and they think I can run for president. Nobody realizes I have a facade that is eight inches thick. I have to survive. If I showed the fear I actually have deep inside of me, then I couldn’t get arrested. It would be selfish to show it because you upset everybody around you. In a way, [having a facade] is like you are encouraging other people not to be fearful by pretending you are OK.

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Q: It must have been devastating for you when Sondheim and Prince sent you home after you tried to record the song.

A: When they sent me home, that was the hardest time. They could have cut that song from the album and it would have been a shame for me. But they didn’t. I have the consummate artist in Stephen Sondheim to thank for that, because he knew he wanted that song of his on the album. He loved the way I sang it. But boy, is he a hard taskmaster. You get it right or else. I don’t blame him. He is a perfectionist--which is dangerous, of course--but it takes one to know one: So am I. I knew I didn’t get it right. I was overplaying all over the place and overly dramatic. It was so overbearing. I was yelling at myself in the control room.

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Q: Unlike all the other female performers who are dressed to the nines for the recording, you are so unpretentious in your shirt and hat. Were you all aware of the cameras during the session?

A: I didn’t look like I was going to the ball when I went to the recording session. It never occurred to me to have my hair and makeup done. It was a recording. When I got to the studio and saw everybody else looking like they were going to Le Cirque for lunch. . . . Apparently, they told us they were doing a documentary, but when you are hellbent on doing an album of “Company,” you are not thinking of a documentary.

I had spent the night [before the recording session] with a friend of mine--no romance, just a close friend--because he lived nearer to the recording studio. So I grabbed his fishing hat and he gave me the shirt.

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Q: I saw “Company” on Broadway and it was so different from the average musical comedy of the time. It was so much more adult and the characters were not very sympathetic, which was a very brave choice.

A: The characters in “Company” were all selfish. Everybody was looking out for themselves, and it came through in the performances and in the feelings backstage. It was not a clubby company.

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Q: Why?

A: I think it had to do a lot with the coldness of “Company,” and it worked. It worked, believe me, big time. People were either having romances or weren’t speaking. It was one of the two.

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Q: What are you working on these days?

A: I am working on my own show.

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Q: A one-woman show.

A: Yes, but I hate calling it that. I call it a show with one woman. But it is high time [I do one]. I am trying to get several decades into 90 minutes, let’s put it that way.