Powerful playwright passes

AP

George Furth (left) and composer Stephen Sondheim, who collaborated on the Tony Award-winning musical 'Company,' are shown in New York in 1981.

A powerful light went out on Broadway on Aug. 11 when playwright George Furth, who won a Tony Award for the book of the musical "Company," died at 75 in a Santa Monica, Calif., hospital.

Although often overshadowed by his musical partner, Stephen Sondheim, George was viewed by many as changing the concept of the musical comedy. With his acerbic wit and sharp observations, he dared to point out that things don't always turn out for the best, but that you still can have one hell of a time anyway.

When it both wowed and shocked Broadway in 1970, "Company" copped seven Tony Awards, including a Tony for George for Best Book of a Musical. The libretto tells of Bobby, a bachelor about to celebrate his 35th birthday who is urged by five couples to get married as they have done. It poses the stark question: "But are they happy?"

With a successful return to Broadway in 2007, the musical also won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. In this unusual staging, the actors also were required to play musical instruments on stage.

When George died, although we were in Los Angeles, where we usually visited with him, we weren't aware of his death until the morning of Aug. 12. We were about to catch a plane back to Charleston, ending a two-week vacation with friends Bill Carrick and Beegie Truesdale, native South Carolinians who now live in the Hollywood Hills. At 7 a.m., Beegie received an e-mail that George had died, and she and I immediately tore into the Los Angeles Times to find the obituary. I then dashed downstairs to tell my husband, Franklin, the sad news.

After meeting George in 1993, Franklin arranged for him to come to the College of Charleston's theater department to direct the one-man show "Fixin' to Die," about the life of the late South Carolinian Lee Atwater and the impact he exerted on Republican political campaign methods before he died of a brain tumor at 40.

"Fixin' To Die" was performed at the 1994 Piccolo Spoleto Festival and went on to successful runs in Washington, D.C., and off-Broadway in New York.

On the morning we stood outside waiting for our ride to the airport, we recalled how, for more than a week, we each had tried to get in touch with George. Getting no replies from e-mails or phone calls, we had concluded he had, at the last minute, decided to go to Europe. We later learned from George's manager that he had been admitted to the hospital with a lung infection the previous week, but didn't want anyone to know he was sick.

In the summer of 1970, long before we met George, we saw "Company," which is set in the sophisticated milieu of late 1960s New York, a place undergoing a sea change that would affect the entire nation. Even though I was very young, it was not only Sondheim's songs, such as "Ladies Who Lunch," belted out by the inimitable Elaine Stritch, but also George's amazingly perceptive book that changed my view of the relationships between husbands, wives and their friends.

Last week, my feeling was verified by Charleston resident and arts supporter Mallory Factor, a voting member of the Tony Awards Administration overseen by the American Theatre Wing.

Factor said, " 'Company' forever changed the way the Broadway musical is viewed, and it broke new ground, as it dared, with its acerbic brilliance, to show relationships as they really are. I think it may be my favorite musical."

George also collaborated with Sondheim on other works such as "Merrily We Roll Along," and he wrote the book for John Kander and Fred Ebb's musical, "The Act," a 1977 Broadway vehicle for Liza Minnelli. But in Hollywood, he was widely known as a character actor who was hilarious in such roles as the banker in the movie "Shampoo" who turns down Warren Beatty's hairdresser character when he is desperate to get a loan. "George was not only a great comedian, but his intelligence was of inestimable value to me in the work I've done," Beatty told The New York Times. "I've never known anybody with more genuine friendships."

Perhaps George's most memorable film role was in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," in which he played a loyal railway employee who allows himself to be blown up not once, but twice, by Paul Newman's Butch Cassidy. Often a guest actor on television shows, George appeared on "Murphy Brown," "All in the Family," "L.A. Law," and "The Nanny," among many others.

Although a continent apart, we kept up with George, and a script of his most recent play, which he had sent for Franklin to read and evaluate, lies on our kitchen shelf.

We laugh when we recall George's many peculiarities and unique takes on life.

Five years ago, when he had just turned 70, we went to a church with George in L.A. Afterward, while at brunch at the Polo Lounge, he said, "I wish I had died yesterday when I was 69 because then people would have said, 'Oh, what a shame, he was so young!' But now they will simply say, 'Well, he had a good life.' "

We once stayed in George's Malibu Beach condo, which was decorated totally in white. He forbade us to wear our shoes while in the condo, so we had to leave them at the door. When Franklin spilled a drop of Coke on the white carpet, he spent two hours scrubbing it so George would never know.

Last Sunday, a memorial service was held for George at his lovely but unpretentious two-bedroom penthouse condo in Beverly Hills. Eight years ago, George decided to move from his large Hollywood Hills home to a smaller place, and when he proudly took us to see it, I was overwhelmed by the wraparound garden terrace with spectacular views.

It was here that about 250 of his friends gathered last Sunday to remember the man who not only changed the face of the Broadway musical, but who, with his disarming wit and incredible insight, could not only charm the birds out of the trees, but also charm actors into time-bending roles.

George embodied what the late Broadway director Lloyd Richards once said: "Theater is a dangerous place. You just might find an idea there."

Reach Dottie Ashley at 937-5704 or dashley@postand courier.com.