Joe Sent Me ... Again
from 365ink Magazine
by Tim Brechlin

"For the price of a ticket
if you're in the know,
you just knock three times
and ask for Joe."

Believe it or not, there was a time, many moons ago, when even Dubuque was free of alcoholic concoctions, and it occurred even a few years before federal Prohibition began. Dubuque without booze ... who'd have thunk it? Well, I guess no one really did thunk it, since there were of course speakeasies and the like for people to consume that sinful liquid. It was a pretty interesting time, actually, with gangsters, outlaws, bootleggers and the like. So interesting, in fact, that back in 1978, Paul Hemmer and Don and Lauretta Stribling got together and wrote a musical about it, called Joe Sent Me. What's the deal, you ask? It's coming back.

Joe Sent Me, an original musical comedy, will be playing at the Grand Opera House from March 1 - 11, and it promises to be a great time, if the reactions from the original show are any indication. ("Bright, brassy, tuneful" was the headline on the Des Moines Register for the premiere of the show. It was kind of a big deal.)

The genesis of the show dates back to the 70s, when that crazy radio mogul Paul Hemmer had already written a couple of musicals, Get the Lead Out and Dr. Gray Matter's Dilemma, the latter being a kids' show. Then he received some new inspiration ... or more specifically,
a directive.

"Wayne Norman had been doing a lot of research into the Prohibition era of the area," says Hemmer, "and he called me one afternoon and said, 'Paul, you should write a musical about Prohibition-era Dubuque, with some gangsters, and it should be about a speakeasy, and you should call it Joe Sent Me. "I thought for a few moments and I just said, 'Okay.' And that's really how the whole thing started."

Hemmer got together with area theater deities Don and Lauretta Stribling, and they began doing research into what was going on around here back in Prohibition. They spoke to actual bootleggers and some older musicians who had been around back then, and decided based on their findings to make the front of their speakeasy a movie theater. "Everything in this show is based in some measure on reality," says Hemmer. The show ultimately evolved to revolve around an undercover FBI agent, trying to bust this particular speakeasy, with the owner trying to sell it off. Add in a healthy dose of gangsters, beautiful women and booze, and you've got fun.

This was back in the summer of 1978. The show was cast and it was a huge hit. It was submitted to a Southern California theatre competition and it played in Los Angeles in 1979. "That was really cool," says Hemmer. "How many times can you say that a play conceived in Dubuque, Iowa, is actually staged in Los Angeles?"

"Long before the autumn and long before the snow, I loved that girl, just a dream ago."

Years went by, and everyone went back to doing their usual stuff (which, for Paul Hemmer, usually means umpteen different things at once). In 1979, Hemmer joined forces with 365ink contributor Gary Olsen for the Key City Comedy Company, a Saturday Night Live-esque comedy show at Five Flags which ran for 2 1/2 years. Then, two years ago, the Dubuque Arts Council held a retrospective of various projects that had been done over the past years ... including Joe Sent Me. Hemmer went back to his material and put together a small revue of the show, and as he puts it, "It took about 30 seconds for all of us to say, 'Why don't we do this again?'" And so they did.

Hemmer went about getting the band back together, so to speak, calling up Don and Lauretta Stribling to get together and freshen up the musical, and afterwards, he approached the Grand Opera House with the idea of hosting the musical, an idea that the Grand eagerly embraced. And then came the task of putting it all together.

Hemmer re-visited the score, changed a few things here and there, wrote some new songs and dropped some old ones, and put together a 9-piece orchestra: Three saxophones, three brass and three rhythm players. And the original scene drops were painted by the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and the theatre was only too happy to provide them for the revival ... except for one of them, "At the Bijou Picture Show." The Goodman didn't have it.

"We got really worried for a while," says Hemmer. "But a few of us had some memories of 'At the Bijou' hanging over at Five Flags, so we called them up, and there it was! It's great to be able to have everything from the original production here for the new one." The musical has a healthy blend of styles, with a lot of color and a lot of humor. What else would you expect from a musical with songs like "A Broad and a Fraud" and "Mr. C," the story of Al Capone? "C's sentimental, that's for sure. Just ask Bugs Moran. C sent a message on Valentine's Day that's known throughout the land. Bugs didn't take delivery. Seven other fellas did. Line up and reach your hands to the ceiling: C sends his greetings!"

"I believe that in a musical, the songs are there to either drive the plot or further develop the characters," says Hemmer, espousing a belief that this writer agrees with. (You hear that, Andrew Lloyd Webber?) "And as a result, with a show like this, you're going to have a wide variety of styles of songs." These include such spectacles as the Gin Mill Jamboree, a Charleston-style number with costumes designed by Barak Stribling (son of Don and Lauretta), a New York-based designer who's also worked on such projects as Starship Troopers, Almost Famous, American Gangster and Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom. "That's a number that you have to see to believe it," muses Hemmer. Other highlights include "Attitude," the end of Act 1 that Hemmer describes as "just a ridiculous amount of fun. "and "River Town," "a love note to Dubuque that sums up what everyone loves about this city." Other odes to Dubuque within the show include set pieces that are blow-ups of era postcards, featuring areas like Main Street and Union Park (the latter of which opens up Act 2, at a picnic), and the headquarters of the gangsters being at the Tick-Tock in East Dubuque.

The cast comprises old and new faces from around the area, including Bob Burke, a Sageville principal, and one of those old faces is one of the great little stories of this production. In 1978, a young 19-year-old woman by the name of Judy Clark played Flo, one of the main roles in the cast. In 2007, a woman by the name of Judy Nemmers is playing Flo. Judy Nemmers is Judy Clark, just slightly more married and less young (but just slightly!). "I auditioned back in 1978 for this show after a friend of mine suggested that I do it, and it was a blast, it was one of the best experiences of my life," says Nemmers, a Wahlert grad who went on to get a master's degree in social work from the University of Iowa and then moved to Des Moines, where she had little involvement in the community theatre scene. "It's really not there in Des Moines," she says. Booyah, Dubuque!

After marrying her husband, Joe, who hails from Bellevue, the couple moved back to the area in March of 2006 to be closer to family. She appeared in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, a play that was staged at the Grand at the end of last year. "Then, out of the blue, Paul Hemmer called me, and he saaid to me. 'Judy, we've had some ideas, we're doing Joe Sent Me again, we've freshened it up and revised it, and you absolutely have to play Flo again.' I didn't really have a choice!" she laughs.

But this time, she made it a family affair. Her husband is in the cast as a gangster ("He hasn't been on stage in years, and now here he is singing and dancing with a tommy gun." Nemmers says with delight), the couple's 10-year-old daughter, Sarah, is a young townsperson, and Judy's 80-year-young father is playing Mr. C. And they're all loving it. "It's a big commitment," says Judy, "but it's worth every minute of it. It's proven to me that you really can go back home." "River town, river town, it's the only life for me; You can have your big towns with skyscraper gowns, but I'll be happy living in a River Town." That seems to be a recurring theme with the participants in the production of Joe Sent Me. "It's really just a fun show and it's been a great experience to put it all together for the second time around," says Hemmer. "I'm delighted with the cast, I've had so much fun writing new songs, Don and Lauretta have had a blast going back to the book of the show and addressing things that worked in the first place, but work so much better now."

And there's one little secret that Hemmer would only hint towards on the phone ... and believe me, getting it out of him was like pulling teeth, which is very odd for a man as loquacious as Paul Hemmer. In the original production, during the show there was a 10-minute short film that was projected onto the screen, with the camera going into different rooms in a hotel and discovering a dead body in every room. The hook? Every single body was that of a famous Dubuquer. Hemmer promises that this gimmick has been revisited for the 2007 revival, with the help of Gary Olsen (who also designed the logo for the show), but he refuses to reveal in what fashion. "It'll be amusing, it'll be humorous, it'll be surprising," Hemmer says, "and in that way, it'll be like the rest of the show, and by that I mean it's a lot of fun with a lot of smiles."

"It delivers, and then some." "Jazzy music, happy dancing feet, handsome guys and girls you want to meet: it's the place you ought to be. Knock three times - say 'Joe Sent Me.'"