The Tom O’Horgan Centennial

Born 100 years ago today, the great stage director Tom O’Horgan (1924-2009).

Few who emerged from what used to be called Off-Off Broadway flew higher than this man, though his work is better known than he is. Sam Shepard,Bette Midler, Al Pacino, Harvey Fierstein, sure, but not many more than that. For a brief time he was among these in the upper echelon of celebrity, but in the end, to blast into hyperspace, you need to go Hollywood, and that seems like something he was disinclined and unprepared to do. And of course, he was a director and musician, not (primarily) an actor. At any rate, I’m positive O’Horgan was one of the first Off-Off artists I was ever aware of, if only by encountering the name on old record album covers.

Tom O’Horgan was a child of Chicago, where his father, a sometime actor who owned a small newspaper, introduced him to the magic of theatre. But he loved music just as well, singing in choruses and mastering about a dozen instruments by the time he graduated from DePaul. From there, he went on to study with Viola Spolin and Paul Sills at Second City. When he moved to New York, he initially performed an act where he improvised patter while playing the harp — man, oh man, is that a very late 50s-early 60s sounding act!

By 1963 O’Horgan was directing and creating music for experimental theatre productions at exciting new venues like Caffe Cino and La MaMa. One of the first of these was a production of Jean Genet’sThe Maids, with men in all the roles as Genet had originally stipulated. He directed upwards of 50 plays at La Mama, leading a series of acting workshops with its founder Ellen Stewart that stressed music and movement over the more prevalent search for “truth” embodied by The Method. Playwrights he directed during these early years included Sam Shepard, Megan Terry, Leonard Melfi, Jean-Claude Van Italie, Lanford Wilson, et al.

The turning point came with his production of Rochelle Owens‘ play Futz! about a hillbilly who marries a pig. It opened at La MaMa in early ’67, went to Edinburgh, moved up to Off-Broadway at the Lortel, and was finally made into a film by O’Horgan in 1969, featuring Seth Allen, Frederic Forest, and Sally Kirkland. Today, Futz! is a bit of a footnote (a futznote!) but for the fact that two of the people who saw it were James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who hired O’Horgan to direct the rock musical they were developing — Hair. From here, he (obviously) rode the crest of the wave that took him well into the next decade. Hair was THE show of its time, and O’Horgan’s techniques suited the material perfectly. His direction was easily as important to the show’s success as the writing and music (which he had a hand in, as well.) The show went from La MaMa to the Public and then, in 1968, to Broadway where it ran for over four years. (See my post on the show, which comes close to being my favorite musical, here).

That one show would be enough for a lifetime, but then he went on to direct the original Broadway productions of Lenny (1971-72) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971-73). As I wrote in this post, Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar are two of my top 10 seminal musicals! But we’re still not done. While those three shows were playing on Broadway simultaneously, O’Horgan added a fourth, Inner City: A Street Cantata (1971-72), based on Eve Merriam’s book The Inner City Mother Goose, which contained satirical “ghetto” takes on nursery rhymes. FOUR shows on Broadway at the same time! I’m not sure it’s possible for a stage director to fly any higher than that. And in the midst of all that, he had composed the music for the Paul Mazurski film Alex in Wonderland (1970)!

Unfortunately the next O’Horgan-Ragni-Galt MacDermott collaboration, Dude (1972), flopped. By all accounts, it was a big experimental mess. The team would have done well to develop it quietly for a while downtown, or out of town, and then bring it to the big time if and when it was ready. This is what too much success does! There is no such thing as a guaranteed hit. But 1974 was also a significant year for O’Horgan, an imperfect one, but memorable. He directed the screen version of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros with Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Karen Black AND mounted an Off-Broadway stage adaptation of the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Here we have reached the outer limits of O’Horgan’s expansion in popular culture. Having directed movies of his own, it must have been painful to see all the screen versions of all of his major stage productions adapted into films by others: Jesus Christ Superstar (1973, Norman Jewison), Lenny (1974, Bob Fosse), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978, Michael Schultz), and Hair (1979, Milos Forman).

O’Horgan continued directing theatre on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off, and regionally into the 1990s, by which time he was in his 70s. But over his last several decades, his delight was hosting parties, theatrical events, readings, and jam sessions at his huge loft on Broadway and 13th Street, just North of NYU, just South of Union Square. This wasn’t just a post-hippie freak scene. Celebrities like Leonard Bernstein, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Mr. Rogers (!) came to check it out. “Mr. Rogers?!” you’re wondering. Visiting a guy whose plays were full of nudity and profanity and drugs? Well, O’Horgan’s love for music-making was child-like. His massive loft was full of musical instruments which he encouraged his guests to play. That would appeal very much to Fred Rogers.

I was startled to learn just now that O’Horgan received one of the very first New York Innovative Theater Awards (now known as the New York Independent Theater Awards), presented to him by Ben Vereen at a ceremony in 2006. Reading this, I was like, “How did I not know about this? How was I not THERE?” But then I remembered that that was right around the time my first book No Applause came out. I had other things going on. But when O’Horgan passed in 2009, I happened to be working at Theater for the New City, and I assure you there was no missing the tragic news in that downtown theatre bastion.

I wish I’d gotten to meet him. Instead, I’m a degree removed a thousand times over! Wherever he is now, I hope they let him bring his harp.

Rutgers holds The Tom O’Horgan Papers. Access them here.