All American

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. Background Adams and Strouse, following the success of Bye Bye Birdie (1960), and Brooks, then a relatively unknown television comedy writer with limited experience writing for the stage (he had written revue sketches and the book for the short-lived 1957 musical Shinbone Alley), created an old-fashioned musical reminiscent of such lighthearted fare as Good News. The show was beset with problems from the start. Brooks never completed the second act, leaving the task to Joshua 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. Theatre writer Ken Mandelbaum noted that Brooks used his experience working on the show as a basis for his 1968 movie The Producers, in which an out-of-luck producer intentionally mounts a musical flop.