‘Bye Bye Birdie’ Spreads Its Wings on ABC

“Bye Bye Birdie ,”

ABC’s got you now.

The folks at the Capital Cities network are putting on a happy face this week. In fact, ABC is turning back the clock Sunday to a much more innocent time with its new three-hour version of the classic 1960 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, “Bye Bye Birdie.”

“Seinfeld’s” Jason Alexander, Vanessa Williams, Tyne Daly, George Wendt and Chynna Phillips star in the cheery musical satire about the craziness that ensues when America’s teen singing idol Conrad Birdie (newcomer Marc Kudisch) is drafted, a la Elvis Presley, into the Army.

To save himself from financial doom, Birdie’s manager Albert (Alexander) and his girlfriend assistant Rosie (Williams) come up with the perfect publicity stunt: Birdie will give one last kiss to a fan (Phillips) on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

The score includes the peppy “Put On a Happy Face,” “Kids,” “The Telephone Hour” and “Honestly Sincere.”

The original composer and lyricist, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, have penned two new songs for this production. The director is Tony Award-winner Gene Saks (“The Odd Couple,” “Mame”), who staged the 1991 theatrical revival. Robert Halmi Sr., who produced the acclaimed CBS version of “Gypsy” with Bette Midler, is the executive producer.

Adams and Strouse are thrilled with ABC’s new version, especially because they are not fans of the popular 1963 film that starred Dick Van Dyke (reprising his Tony-winning performance as Albert), Janet Leigh, Ann-Margret and Bobby Rydell. Though the Broadway show was more of an ensemble piece, the movie was turned into a showcase for then-rising star Ann-Margret.

“We hate the movie,” Adams says emphatically. “It has nothing to do with the show. The show is so different. You sell your show to the movies and they make their movie. The stage show is better, and I think the TV show mirrors the stage production.”

Included in the new TV version is the catchy theme song Strouse and Adams wrote for the feature. “In those days you had to have a title song,” Adams says. “We wrote one we loved and they didn’t like it because they wanted Ann-Margret to sing it. Finally, we wrote what you know as the title song. Frankly, I didn’t like it very much. It’s what they wanted. We did it. We got the money and went home.”

Revisiting “Birdie” was great fun for the team who also won Tonys for 1970’s “Applause.” “I just love composing,” Strouse says. “I did it with great joy. I loved the cast. Hopefully, Vanessa Williams might have a crack at recording it commercially. And to write for a guy like Jason

The duo always thought Albert’s nagging mother, played by Daly, needed a solo musical number. So they composed “A Mother Doesn’t Matter Anymore” for the actress. “Kay Medford, who originated the part, couldn’t sing a note,” Adams says. “So we could not write a song for her.”

Gene Saks, Adams adds, wanted to strengthen the Albert-and-Rosie love story, so they wrote “Settle Down” for Williams. “She’s such a super singer,” Adams says. “That seemed to fit in a place that used to be a dance moment. It seemed to work for her and she does it so well.”

Alexander also performs “Take a Giant Step,” which Strouse and Adams wrote for Tommy Tune for the recent revival. “Jason insisted on ‘Giant Step,’ ” Adams says. “He does it great.”

Adams also altered some of the lyrics to Williams’ big number, “Spanish Rose,” because he felt some references were dated. “I updated that and then we wrote some new reprises. We really got into this television production. Here is a show that’s 35 years old and you get a chance to do more work on it. It’s very weird. We had a chance to, we think, improve it. I think we did.”

Williams had just completed her role on Broadway in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” when she was cast as Rosie. (In an ironic twist, Chita Rivera was the original Rosie in Broadway’s “Birdie” and Williams replaced Rivera on Broadway in “Kiss.”)

Although Williams was familiar with the feature film version, she had never seen “Birdie” live. “When I got the script and the original cast album, Rosie had a lot more songs and, obviously, it was a tremendous dancing role,” she says. “I was looking forward to a lot of her numbers.”

Initially, she says, there was some trepidation about her performing “Spanish Rose” “because we were wondering whether people of the Spanish community would say, ‘Why didn’t they get an Hispanic?’ Gene Saks, Robert Halmi and Charles Strouse had just come to see me on Broadway and they said, ‘We know you can do the job. We know you can be fabulous. We are not going to give it a consideration.’ ”

“I thought it was sheer nonsense,” Saks says. “There are many Hispanics who are of African origin. The ‘Spanish Rose’ number was never one of my favorites. I know it was originally written for Chita Rivera. But as things often turn out, I think it turned out to be her best number.”

Saks insisted on having Ann Reinking, who played Rosie in the revival, choreograph the TV movie. “She actually helped out on some of the choreography on stage,” he says. “I saw that she was very talented in that way, as well as a wonderful dancer. She had a real sense of staging and so I was determined to get her going. Nobody wants to take a chance on anybody. I am glad that I did because I think she did a wonderful job.”

“Bye Bye Birdie” was filmed last summer in Vancouver; Saks completed it in 33 days. “I tell you I didn’t mind it,” he says. “It’s strenuous, but I found the short shooting schedule somehow energizing. There was something very, very youthful about it. It was full of energy and energy is such a big part of any musical. I think it served us well.”

As for Alexander, “Seinfeld” fans may be surprised to see “Seinfeld’s” neurotic George as a romantic song-and-dance man. But before hitting it big on the NBC sitcom, Alexander was a well-respected Broadway musical-comedy star who won the 1989 Tony for “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.”

“He is the sweetest guy,” Williams says of her co-star. “Not only is he talented, he is so charming.”

“He can do almost anything,” Saks explains. “He read for me [in the mid-’80s] for one of the Neil Simon plays. I think it was ‘Biloxi Blues’ and he wasn’t really right for the part. I never rejected him again. The next thing we did was ‘Broadway Bound’ and he played the older brother. So when this came along, I thought he was a wonderful idea for that.”

“Birdie,” Alexander says, “took me back to my roots ... it was great fun.”

In high school, Alexander played the role of Kim’s perplexed father, the part Wendt (“Cheers”) plays in the ABC movie. “That is usually the role people would think of me for,” Alexander says, laughing. “When you think Dick Van Dyke, you don’t automatically jump to Jason Alexander. I don’t know why they thought of me. I’m awfully glad they did. It was very flattering.”

Unlike the rest of the cast, Alexander had no rehearsal time before filming began because he was busy shooting a film, “Dunston Checks In.” The day after he finished “Dunston,” Alexander boarded a plane to Vancouver to report for “Birdie.”

In fact, he learned the dance steps for his show-stopping “Put On a Happy Face” number the day he shot the sequence. “I had about three hours while we were shooting other stuff,” he recalls. “We would take some time and go learn some dances.

“People think I am a better dancer than I actually am,” Alexander says. “What I am is a fearless dancer. I always kind of throw myself into it and if it looks really terrible, someone will stop me before I embarrass myself. I kind of embrace things pretty quickly. Ann was great. She never gave me anything to do that wouldn’t kind of look good.”

But concessions have to be made in order to shoot a big musical on a TV schedule, Alexander says. “You can’t shoot musicals the way MGM did. Every now and then you can become creative and wonderful. It’s great. What you work for is to get the spirit of the thing and to do it very efficiently and make it look fun and capture the style. It’s very tricky.”

Those involved with “Birdie” believe TV audiences are craving old-fashioned musicals. Says Adams: “I do some seminars at NYU on musical theater and the college students, when they really are into this, they start hearing the fun and the melodies of the old musicals.

“They are used to rock, and this is a whole different kind of writing. A whole different kind of experience. The Andrew Lloyd Webber shows are spectaculars. The older musical-comedies have their own style.”

In fact, Adams says proudly: “ ‘Birdie’ is the No. 1 high school musical. It’s interesting that since Presley died and became mythic, ‘Birdie’ has been done more and more. What they are doing now in a lot of schools is that the teachers play the grown-ups and the kids play the kids. The house comes down. It’s foolproof.”

Alexander agrees. “This kind of stuff, unless it is god-awful--and I certainly don’t think that’s true of this production--is such crowd-pleasing material,” he says. “I do think there’s a huge audience for it, which is proven by the success with both children and adults of the Disney animated stuff, which really are just book musicals. My son sat last night--and he’s 3 1/2--and watched ‘The Sound of Music.’ We had to tear him away from the screen. This stuff is all classic entertainment.”

“Bye Bye Birdie” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on ABC.