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In early 1960, following a performance of his revue Parade at the Players Theatre in Greenwich Village, 28-year-old Jerry Herman — the future composer-lyricist of Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles — was playing exit music on the piano (yes, he was his own band) when he was approached by a well-dressed man bearing a business card. The stranger, Gerard Oestreicher, was looking for a songwriter for a musical he wanted to produce on Broadway. Forty-eight years later, in April 2008, in anticipation of DRG Records' re-release of the original cast album of Milk and Honey — the musical that came of that meeting — Herman reflected on the creation of his first Broadway show, which marked his graduation from topical revuer to musical dramatist. And Broadway legend.

This conversation between Herman and Playbill.com managing editor Kenneth Jones first appeared in the liner notes of DRG's 2008 reissue of the original cast album.

You were playing piano at the Players Theatre when the stranger — producer Gerard Oestreicher — approached you?
Jerry Herman: It was so out of a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movie, somebody coming up to a piano-player and saying, "I'm going to be doing a musical on Broadway next year and I'd like to talk to you…" I didn't really take it seriously, I thought this is some strange guy. But he handed me his card, and called the next day and made an appointment and I went. And he was for real. He was a major real-estate person. [Oestreicher later owned Broadway's Uris Theatre, now called the Gershwin.]

He wanted to produce a show about the young nation of Israel, which was just 12 years old at the time.
JH: He said, "Do you know anything about Israeli music?" And I said, "Oh, yes, I know everything about it," and of course I knew nothing about it. [Laughs.] But I told him I came from a Jewish home. I frankly really went into this blindfolded — I had no idea what music sounded like in Israel, or anything about Israel. He sent me with a book writer [Don Appell], who I had never met, into Israel and we were really wined and dined by the Israeli government because they wanted good publicity about the new country.

You and Don Appell had your first conversation about the plot of the show on the airplane overseas, right?
JH: On the airplane! There were a couple of ladies on the airplane, traveling together, and laughing and very joyous. Don said to me, "What about a group of widows going to Israel to look for men?" I loved the idea and we started talking and a vague plot was launched on the plane. It came out of the moment.

When we got there everybody said "Shalom!" to us — when we arrived, "Shalom!"; when we left, "Shalom!"; and "Shalom!" when we got up in the morning. So I said, "Well, here's a great idea for a song."

Did you know immediately that it might be the opening number?
JH: No…I just knew that there was a wonderful song about using that word. It became a very, very integral part of the show and the way [the main characters] met. [The show] wasn't even going to be called Milk and Honey at the beginning, it was going to be called Shalom.

The trip to Israel was vital to the writing process?
JH: It was a great, joyous occasion: going there and being treated so royally and seeing green popping up all over this barren land. It was very inspiring.

	Cover art for Milk and Honey.

Did Oestreicher want the show to be all optimism, a love-letter to Israel?
JH: He wanted a musical, basically a musical comedy, but I said to Don, "Everything about this place is not perfect." I had already written the song called "Milk and Honey" as a kind of an anthem, and I said, "I can't just present this song because it's going to look like we were hired by the government to do a commercial for them. I have to have another point of view." And I wrote the counterpoint after I wrote the first song — "the honey's kind of bitter and the milk's a little sour..." That made it real for me. It was sung by an Israeli [character, played by Juki Arkin]: He wasn't completely satisfied with everything that was going on over there. That took the curse off trying to make it a love letter.

In Robert Weede's song, "Like a Young Man," he sings that "with the power of a boy" he would "guard the border if I have to" and "in the blaze of the sun I can handle a gun like a toy." It puts the story is a real place, with stakes.
JH: Yes, yes. I now look back at the work I did in Milk and Honey. I was 28 or 29. I am amazed that I was able to write "Let's Not Waste a Moment" and "Like a Young Man" and get into the head of people who were much older than my parents. That's amazing to me now. It wasn't then because it was my job. When I look at it now [in 2008, at age 76] that stuff moves me. That's the thing about Milk and Honey that I am most proud of: That I was able to do that, really not knowing what it felt like [to be past age middle-age]. "Let's Not Waste a Moment" is what I would have written right now at the age I am: You say, "Oh, look, another moment's gone…"

I now understand the lyrics that I wrote years ago. At this moment in my life, they have come to mean something very special to me because I am that character.

There is a grown-up sound to the score. You wouldn't guess it's by the same composer who wrote satiric revue songs for I Feel Wonderful, Nightcap and Parade, your Off-Broadway revues.
JH: I had the freedom of doing anything I wanted to do — experimenting. The songs started coming out semi-classical in many ways, and that's what led us to using two opera stars [Robert Weede and Mimi Benzell]. I had started to write and I had written very rangy songs that really required a powerful voice. That's where [the idea of casting] Robert Weede came from.

How did you and Don Appell come up with the leading lady characters of the plot — Yiddish theatre star Molly Picon as feisty widow Mrs. Weiss and Mimi Benzell as the yearning widow Ruth?
JH: We discussed "types." When we started to talk about the group of widows, I said, "One should be a really hefty woman…and a little skinny one, who was sort of the meek one…and then Molly, the ring-leader." I remember saying to Don, "We should have a really beautiful dark-haired woman who would remind me of my mother." She was called Ruth after my mother, who was a beautiful dark-haired, very American woman. Then the "types" formed a story of romance between a married man [Weede] and a widow [Benzell] who was traveling with these women to forget the sadness of having lost her husband.