All American (musical)

All American
Original Broadway Cast Recording
Music	Charles Strouse
Lyrics	Lee Adams
Book	Mel Brooks
Basis	Robert Lewis Taylor's novel Professor Fodorski
Productions	1962 Broadway

All American is a musical with a book by Mel Brooks, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. Based on the Robert Lewis Taylor 1950 novel Professor Fodorski, it is set on the campus of the fictional Southern Baptist Institute of Technology: the worlds of science and sports collide when the principles of engineering are applied to football strategies, and football strategies are used to teach the principles of engineering. The techniques of a Hungarian immigrant, Professor Fodorski, prove to be successful, resulting in a winning team, and he finds himself the target of a Madison Avenue ad man who wants to exploit his new-found fame.

The Broadway production, in 1962, starred Ray Bolger. It drew mostly unfavorable reviews and ran for 80 performances, though the song "Once Upon a Time" became popular.

Adams and Strouse, following the success of Bye Bye Birdie (1960), and Brooks, then a relatively unknown television comedy writer with no experience writing for the stage, created an old-fashioned musical reminiscent of such lighthearted fare as Good News, albeit one with a gay subtext enhanced by director Joshua Logan, who filled the stage with his trademark beefcake scenes featuring flexing muscular men stripped to the waist. The show was beset with problems from the start. Brooks never completed the second act, leaving the task to Logan, a noted script doctor whose comedic sensibilities were incompatible with those of Brooks, and the difference in writing styles was obvious. Additionally, Logan's emerging bipolar disorder was beginning to affect his work. Once Ray Bolger agreed to play Fodorski, the script was tailored to showcase his talents, but turning the musical into a star vehicle for a performer who was no longer an audience favorite ultimately proved to be a mistake.