The first preview in Washington, D.C., has become legendary. It was performed before the Women's National Democratic Club (including Lynda Byrd Johnson, eldest daughter of President Johnson).
The curtain rose at 9 and the performance ran until after midnight. Among other mishaps, scenery fell apart, dancers slipped and accidentally tripped each other up, costumes became loose, the audience kept laughing in parts that were supposed to be serious, and star Marisa Mell, playing the legendary spy, was accidentally spotlit while nearly nude during a costume change. At the end of the evening, after Mell was executed by the firing squad, she was seen breathing heavily as she lay "dead" on the stage and at one moment she scratched her forehead, which reportedly brought down the house. There was no curtain call that night.
The next day a Washington gossip column ran a story with the headline "Mata Hari Hilarious."
The production had scheduled a Broadway opening for January 13, 1968 at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway. After the D.C. run, the tryout was scheduled to continue at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia, running there December 20 – January 6. On Wednesday, November 22, it was reported that producer David Merrick would close the show at the end of D.C. run, at which point changes might be made and a Broadway run might be rescheduled. On November 24, it was reported in the New York Times that the day after the announcement that the show would shut down for reworking, a spokesman for Merrick said that it would open on schedule at the Alvin on January 13. No explanation was given for the abrupt reversal, and it was reported that Merrick refused to answer questions.
Director Vincente Minnelli, however, did speak to the press. He was quoted thus: "Audiences have found it difficult to accept a serious story of Mata Hari, and that is being remedied. Drastic plot alterations have been made and await Mr. Merrick's approval before insertion."
On December 1, a new report in the Times stated that the show would simply close a week early in D.C. (closing on December 9 rather than the originally scheduled December 16) and it would not continue, at least not under Merrick's auspices. Merrick was quoted: "The Washington notices were poor. In my opinion, the show was a complete failure. And that's the end of it." It was also reported that he added that he wanted to give the authors a chance to perhaps find producers willing to take over the production.
The article went on to report that Jerome Coopersmith, author of the show's book, had said that he and his collaborators had rejected Merrick's suggestion that the title character be altered into "a female James Bond along farcical lines." (That is the Times's paraphrase of what Coopersmith said.) He said that they had been told that audiences would not take the show or its antiwar theme seriously. "This is refuted by audiences," Coopersmith said, "which are gripped by the serious play in its present form even though we have not been allowed to improve it."
This may have been partly a reference to something reported in William Goldman's book The Season (in the chapter titled "The Muscle"). Goldman reported that the authors approached Merrick several times equesting that director Vincente Minnelli be fired, but Merrick refused, even though (according to Goldman) Minnelli was at more or less a complete loss as to even the basics of staging a Broadway musical. (Minnelli had not directed anything on Broadway since 1939's Very Warm for May.)
In The Season, William Goldman wrote that Vincente Minnelli's direction sucked all of the passion out of the material. What was supposed to be a serious anti-war show in which the central relationship was a passionate l'amour fou was being played, in Goldman's words, "as if it were a Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald movie."
In addition to Minnelli's incompetence, another problem may have been that leading lady Marisa Mell, although beautiful (when you could see her face under the enormous hats that costume designer Irene Sharaff put on her), was not much of a stage actress.
Minnelli perhaps was somewhat aware of his inadequacies as a stage director. At a post-mortem following a preview, someone suggested sending out for coffee. Minnelli quipped, "I'll go."
Goldman also reported that when he attended the show, it seemed clear that the show had potential and perhaps if it had been directed by someone else, it would have at least had a chance.
Perhaps needless to say, the show lost its complete investment, even though no one seemed to know exactly how much that was. It was reported as being somewhere between $500,000 and $800,000. If it was the latter, that would probably have been a record-breaking figure at the time. RCA records had put up most of the production cost
RCA had invested in all three musicals David Merrick produced that season, in exchange for the cast-recording rights.. All failed at the box office, although the other two — The Happy Time and How Now Dow Jones — did at least open on Broadway and managed respectable though not long runs. RCA did produce cast recordings for those shows, but the company probably lost a great deal of money by investing Merrick's musicals that season.
