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Writer Goldman turned out no less than 13 drafts for his new producer. The story began to take on dimension and life when Prince suggested that the title be changed. "Before, the play was full of action," Prince recalls. "The new script was as close to plotless as you can get." So plotless, in fact, that roles were inserted when socko auditions were delivered by Actresses Ethel Shutta and Fifi d'Orsay—who premiered in 1925 with Gallagher and Shean in the Greenwich Village Follies. They were found subjects as, in a way, was Yvonne De Carlo, who seemed wrong for the role of Phyllis but fit perfectly the rebuilt part of Carlotta, the mantrap. Prince also was the man who finally decided that Alexis Smith as Phyllis would lend the show a permanent radiance that does not acknowledge the movement of the clock.
At that point Prince had acquired the show's two greatest assets, disparate but complementary: Smith and Sondheim, the star of another era and the lyricist of today; the enduring actress and the volatile writer; the svelte woman and the stylish wordman.
Alexis Smith is the living, dancing refutation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's axiom that there are no second acts in American lives. At 49 she is in the best second act of her life. Her blue-green eyes catch the light and the audience's rapt attention; her body seems beyond the aspiration of girls half her age. She is simultaneously a source of awe, envy and consolation. Middle-aged men see her as carnality enshrined: the girl who stayed as young in life as in memory. Their wives think, if she can do it, I can do it. Just a few weeks of dieting and a little exercise . . .
And intelligence. And unbeatable, unbeatable cool. And a celluloid background that started unreeling 30 years ago. A graduate of the starlet's academy, Hollywood High, she won her first lead in the war film Dive Bomber, but failed to land either Co-Star Errol Flynn or Fred MacMurray; both loved flying more. Late Show buffs can catch her around, but not quite in, movie musicals. She was Mrs. Cole Porter in Night and Day and George Gershwin's gal in Rhapsody in Blue. Customarily, though, she was Warner Brothers' snow queen, a frosty beauty about as seducible as the Statue of Liberty.
Made for the Role
In 1944 Alexis married Craig Stevens; as her career faded at the box office, his bloomed in the Nielsens. Craig's urbane TV detective series, Peter Gunn, lasted three years, and the show is still rerunning; neither of them needs to work. Still, Alexis was never successfully cast as Mrs. Front Porch. She dabbled in summer stock, took lessons in French, Italian, dancing, yoga, singing, speed reading. "Once I studied to get a realtor's license," she recalls. "If things didn't go well, I thought I could sell real estate." With legs like that? No way. Last year she began taking singing and dancing lessons in Hollywood. She needed them. The first time she auditioned for Follies, she was less than impressive. After her instruction, she auditioned again. Said Prince: "She's made for the role."