NEW YORK, June 17 -- Mary Rodgers and her mattress are bouncing back to Broadway four decades after 'Once Upon a Mattress' made Carol Burnett a star, and no one is more thrilled than the composer. As the daughter of all-time great theatrical composer, Richard Rodgers, Mary Rodgers has carved out a career in spite of critics who found her talent less overwhelming than her father's. She has even been called a 'one-show composer,' and 'Once Upon a Mattress' was that show. It was originally created by Rodgers with lyricist Marshall Barer as a droll one-act musical based on Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Princess and the Pea' for performance at an adult summer camp. Then 'Once Upon a Mattress' was expanded into a full evening's entertainment and had its premiere in 1959 at the downtown Phoenix Theater. The scatterbrain comic performance of Burnett in the role of Princess Winnifred helped make the show a smash success, and its title didn't hurt either, since, as Rodgers recalls, 'People thought it must be a dirty show.' It was transferred uptown to Broadway's Alvin Theater where it enjoyed 460 performances. 'Once Upon a Mattress' was nominated for a 1960 best musical Tony Award along with 'The Sound of Music,' by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and 'Fiorello!' by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. It lost to 'The Sound of Music' and 'Fiorello!,' a rare tie win in the history of the Tonys. But Rodgers recalls that she was neither surprised nor disappointed.
'I don't think either my father or I thought I'd ever be nominated for anything,' the 65-year-old composer, author and editor recalled. 'So just being nominated was the exciting part for me.' 'Once Upon a Mattress' will be revived on Broadway this fall under the direction of Gerald Gutierrez, who won a 1996 Tony Award for his direction of Edward Albee's 'A Delicate Balance.' Taking the Winnifred role will be Sarah Jessica Parker, a hot film actress who prefers the stage and is currently co-starring in 'How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying' on Broadway. Parker will have to contend with the memory of Burnett as Winnifred singing the outrageously funny, 'The Swamps of Home,' but Rodgers said she was sure the young star will make the role her own. 'She's attractive, vulnerable and willing to be a nut,' Rodgers said. 'And don't forget, the role was written with Nancy Walker, not Burnett in mind. Nancy was an established comic star and George Abbott, the original director of 'Once Upon a Mattress,' said he didn't want to work with a star, so we got an unknown who didn't remain an unknown very long.' Rodgers had one other musical on Broadway, a flop titled 'Hot Spot' about the Peace Corps that barely lasted a month in 1963. There were other shows written for other venues, including a musical version of 'Pinocchio' created for Bil(cq) Baird Marionettes, and a Mary Martin Easter TV special for children. The composer turned to production of CBS's telecasts of the New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts, and to writing a string of books and a monthly opinion column for McCall's magazine in the 1970s titled 'Two Minds' with her mother, Dorothy Rodgers. She has one screeplay, 'Freaky Friday' to her credit. Rodgers occasionally contributes songs to shows and has an evening of her music coming up in September at the glamorous Rainbow & Stars cabaret in Rockefeller Center. Called 'Three of Hearts,' it will be performed by Broadway musical star Faith Prince, Mark Waldrop and Jason Workman. The show had a successful tryout earlier this year at Eighty- Eights, a Greenwich Village cabaret. 'They asked me for some music and I just gave them boxes and boxes of yellowed manuscripts,' Rodgers said. 'I started composing when I was 17, so I have a lot. I told them, 'You pick,' and they did.' Rodgers also played a key role in bringing the current revival of 'The King and I,' an Australian production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, to Broadway, where it won the Tony Award for best revival and brought a best actress in a musical Tony to Donna Murphy for her performance as Anna. Rodgers also helped recruit Murphy for the Broadway cast. She also is proud that her son, Adam Guettel, one of her five children, is carrying on the family tradition in the theater. He co- authored with Tina Landau the recent Off-Broadway musical, 'Floyd Collins,' which had a modest run at the Playwrights Horizons theater. The original cast album of the show will be released by Nonesuch Records this summer.
