Writer of Cabaret
Born: December 11, 1919;
Died: September 28, 2018
JOE Masteroff, who has died 98, was the Tony Award-winning writer of the musicals She Loves Me and Cabaret, which became a 1972 film starring Liza Minnelli. He was never prolific but made a profound mark on the theatre with two shows seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum - one considered by many to be the most charming musical ever written and the other a ferociously dark musical about the rise of the Nazis.
The Philadelphia-born Masteroff hoped as a young man to write plays and after serving in the Second World War took a course for play-writing.
He had not found much success until his 1959 comedy play The Warm Peninsula made it to Broadway starring Julie Harris.
"One day my agent called and said, 'Joe, I've got wonderful news. Julie Harris wants to do your play'. I said, 'Which play?' He told me and said, 'Not only that, she wants to tour for a year throughout the United States and then bring it to New York'. That day my life changed."
The show only managed 86 Broadway performances but got Masteroff noticed. He was asked to write the book for She Loves Me with songs by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. It was produced by the legendary Hal Prince.
She Loves Me, a case of mistaken identity set in a 1930s European perfumery, was nominated for five Tonys in 1964 and the 1993 Broadway revival won the Olivier Award for best musical revival.
A 2016 Tony-nominated revival on Broadway starred Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski and Zachary Levi.
The story has been adapted into the films The Shop Around the Corner with James Stewart and You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks.
It was Hal Prince who next asked him to write the libretto for a musical that took a look at a seamy slice of life in Germany just before the Nazi takeover.
Masteroff compressed Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and John van Druten's play I Am a Camera. The songs were provided by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb.
The show is set in 1920s Berlin where a sleazy nightclub becomes a metaphor for a world slowly going mad and drifting toward world war.
In the show, cabaret numbers are interspersed with two love stories - one between free spirit Sally Bowles and an American writer named Cliff Bradshaw and a second between a German landlady and her Jewish tenant.
It debuted in Boston in 1966 and was a sensation - audiences were not used to going to shows that mixed call girl characters and Nazis, lasciviousness, alcoholism and abortions.
"I always thought that this show was very iffy. We had done so many things that nobody in their right mind would have done. That it worked was a pleasant surprise," Masteroff said in 2015.
The original production - starring Jill Haworth as Sally, Bert Convy as Clifford and Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies - was one of the most influential musicals of the 1960s. It won the best musical Tony in 1967.
It was one of the first of the so-called "concept" musicals, in which book, music, lyrics, scenery, costumes and lighting worked together to get across the show's idea.
A Broadway Cabaret revival by director Sam Mendes and choreographer Rob Marshall starring Alan Cumming won the best revival Tony in 1998 and it was revived again in 2014 with Cumming aboard and actresses including Michelle Williams, Emma Stone and Sienna Miller playing Sally.
Masteroff only helped write one other adaptation to make it to Broadway - 70, Girls, 70 in 1971, which lasted only 35 performances.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here