Ethan Mordden Anything Goes A History of American Musical Theatre Oxford University Press 2013 PDF
Ethan Mordden Anything Goes A History of American Musical Theatre Oxford University Press 2013 PDF
Ethan Mordden Anything Goes A History of American Musical Theatre Oxford University Press 2013 PDF
1
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It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
Portions of the material on The Wizard of Oz first appeared in The Baum Bugle, Volume 28,
Number 3; the Gypsy discography was used, in somewhat different form, in my blog,
Cultural Advantages. All illustrations courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection,
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and
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CON T E N T S
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
To my faithful agent and friend, Joe Spieler; to Jon Cronwell and Ken
Mandelbaum for giving me access to arcane research material; to Anne
Kaufman; to Ian Marshall Fisher and Tom Vallance for helping me get close
to Mexican Hayride and The Day Before Spring; to wise Geoffrey Block; at Ox-
ford, to my old pal Joellyn Ausanka and my sterling editor, Norm Hirschy.
( vii )
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I N T R OD UCT ION
( ix )
(x) Introduction
Amys secret admirer, Tony, who is not the shy young man she has imag-
ined but a much older specimen, ebullient and generous at Tempo di Taren-
tella but, we sadly realize, too unattractive physically for a love plot.
Thus, three songs into the narrative, we are caught up in a worrisome
conflict, not least because Amy and Tony have been musically presented to
us as appealing personalities. The next number, Standing on the Corner,
brings out the musical-comedy Loesser and introduces Cleos incipient
mate, Herman. Saturday, he sings, disarmingly, and Im so broke: so he
and his buddies hang out and cruise instead of dating. The number is al-
most pure pop, easy listening in its close-harmony quartetbut Hermans
solo sections give us, once again, a character in the tune as well as in the
words: affable and eternally optimistic, a soft target for the others to pick
on. As two girls pass by, Herman and Clem pointedly look them over, and
Clem then tells Herman, Yours was awful!
A plot point: Amy has sent Tony her picture, and he must send his in
return. She wont like what she sees, he fears, and now Loesser sings his
fifth principal to usJoe, Tonys foreman, a friendly hunk with, neverthe-
less, something cold and possibly brutal, as Loesser warns in the stage
directions, behind the smile in his eyes. Tony is going to send Amy Joes
picture, turning his courtship into a fraudbut we dont know that yet. All
Loesser gives us is Joey, Joey, Joey, Joes own particular Wanting Song,
scored with slithery, unstable harp and celesta runs. The music is sensitive
yet dominating: beautiful and disturbing, like Joe himself. And so Loesser
concludes his chain of establishing numbers. Now we know everyone in the
story, what he or she needs or is capable of.
This is what the American musical had been working up to for some one
hundred years, and all its artistry dwells in the historians key buzz term in-
tegrated: the union of story and score. Once a mere collection of songs and
now a pride of fully developed numbers supported by incidental music, intros
and development sections, and musical scenes mixed of speech and song, the
score not only tells but probes the story, above all unveiling its characters. As
well see, there were integrated American shows around the turn of the twen-
tieth centuryRobin Hood, El Capitan, The Prince of Pilsen, The Red Mill. Yet
the business model continued to tolerate specialty material to spotlight per-
formers and extramural interpolations to humiliate the evenings designated
authors. Even Show Boat, more or less officially Americas first great musical,
in 1927, includes specialties and interpolations. Still, when Show Boat was in-
tegrated it was very integrated, and the practice of integration was already
catching on. The Student Prince and The Desert Song, directly preceding Show
Boat, are absolutely integrated shows ... in their scores. For the historian rec-
ognizes other aspects of integrationof dance as a thematic and psychological
Introduction (xi)
I should mention as well the unique figure of the gay mentor, who in my
case were former chorus boys and stage managers who carried with them a
treasury of anecdotes and recollections and were glad of a new audience for
them. My descriptions of shows that precede my own theatregoing owe ev-
erything to them, for, make no mistake, the chorus people have a larger
perspective on a show than the leading players do, distracted as they are by
the demands of their parts. And no one knows a show like its stage manager.
Elaine Steinbeck, for example, had a story about Oklahoma! Eventually
John Steinbecks wife, she was in 1943 Elaine Anderson, one of Oklahoma!s
stage managers; the story finds her at a Saturday rehearsal when, for the
first time, director Rouben Mamoulian and choreographer Agnes de Mille
decided to put Act One together. In those days, musicals were cast with
separate singing and dancing choruses, to be combined on stage to appear
more or less versatile, though in fact the singers sang (and moved a little)
and the dancers danced (and lip-synched or so). They rehearsed separately,
the singers and principals with the director and the dancers with the cho-
reographer, each squad unaware of what the other squad would be doing.
Of course, at some point early on, the two halves of the production
would be brought together, and this was the day. Keep in mind that, while
Oklahoma! proved to be a unique and influential piece after it opened, at
this point the cast thought of it simply as an unusual show (because of its
frontier setting and dialect) with wonderful songs. De Milles dancers
scarcely even knew what the plot was about.
So, when Will Parker followed the Kansas City vocal by showing off the
new two-stepthe waltz is through, he announces. Ketch on to it?
and the watching cowboys joined in, the cast saw something more than a
dance. Oklahoma! looks in on a community in transition, its tribal folkways
to be suppressed in favor of statehood and membership in an ethnically
diverse nation. The Oklahomans world will change, and Kansas City il-
lustrates this as much in dance as in song.
A bit later came the heroines feminist anthem, Many a New Day, and
its follow-up dance, a mixture of caprice and tenderness, expressing in
movement what lyrics and music cannot. As Mamoulian and de Mille ran
the rehearsal, Elaine noticed how astonished the performers had become.
What marvelous experiment had they fallen into? Oklahoma! was more
than unusual: enlightening. Even at this early stage, in a bare room to an
upright piano, it was unmistakable that Oklahoma! was going to make fab-
ulous theatrical history.
Hammerstein was in the country that weekend, but Rodgers was in
town, at home, and Elaine ran to a telephone, rang him up, and said, You
better get down here quick.
w
PA R T ON E
Source Material
T he first musical was The Beggars Opera, produced in the theatre at Lin-
colns Inn Fields in London, in 1728. To give the work modern billing,
its book and lyrics were by John Gay and its music was by Johann Christian
Pepusch. Or, more precisely, either Gay or Pepusch selected sixty-nine pop-
ular airs of the day and Gay fitted to them new words to express his charac-
ters thoughts, to develop atmosphere, or even to advance plot action.
Perhaps because the script continuously slips in and out of mostly very
short vocals, Gay at first wanted the actors to sing without accompani-
ment, but in the end Pepusch gave them instrumental backing, becoming
the first orchestrator in the musicals history.
Or was The Beggars Opera the very first? It was certainly the first lasting
success in its form, ballad opera. There had been light musical-theatre
pieces before 1728, but not till ballad opera can we speak of works like unto
what we think of as a musical: an enacted story bearing some relationship
with our daily life and lifted by songs that belong to the story.
Gays intention was to satirize the Italian opera that had monopolized
the interest of Londons trend setters. This mode of the moment, the
opera seria of the migr George Frideric Handel, treated the amorous
and political intrigues of nobles in exotic places: crusaders, sorceresses,
the high hats of Greek mythology. John Gays opera reversed the terms.
In place of heroes: criminals. In place of arias in Italian: ditties in Eng-
lish. Opera seria delighted in the rivalry of princes: Gays protagonist is
Macheath, a bandit, and his rival is the underworld boss Peachum (a pun
on Peach em, meaning Turn the felons in for the forty-pounds-a-head
reward).
()
() The First Age
Riffraff! Opera seria featured triangle love plots, again among the courtly;
Gay offered Peachums daughter, Polly, and the daughter of the keeper of
Newgate Prison, Lucy Lockitboth wives of Macheath, who has at least six
that we know of. To the tune of Oh, London Is a Fine Town, Gay wrote
Our Polly Is a Sad Slut!, and, when the two women meet in confrontation,
Good-morrow, gossip Joan turns into Pollys Why how now, Madam
Flirt, to which Lucy replies, Why, how now, saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is
Tipsy! Theatre historian Simon Trussler likens The Beggars Opera to a
print by Hogarth: so rich in incident, interpolation, and low-life impro-
priety as to upset conventional expectations of dramatic art, but . . .
thought-provoking in its simultaneous likeness and unlikeness to life.
Above all, The Beggars Opera is a remarkably consistent work; as well
see, many musicals before, say, the 1890s were if anything superb in their
lack of consistency, especially in America. Minutes before The Beggars Op-
eras final curtain, with Macheath about to be hanged, two members of the
company come forth to debate this dire conclusion in a piece determined to
be popular:
* Thus the name of the French National Theatre, the Comdiie-Franaise, not a
house of comedy per se. This usage applies to Romance languages in general. In Italian,
the chief of a theatre troupe is the capocomico, and Dantes Divina Commedia is not a
jokebook, but a poetic drama about the afterlife.
The famous difference between the twothat opra has recitative (in effect, sung
dialogue) and opra comique speech between the numbersis a generic technicality of
no importance. Opra had the more glamorous voices, with characters drawn from the
leadership class, striving for glory. Opra comique, for less imposing voices, dealt with
middle-class or peasant characters striving for love. Thus, Gounods Faust, originally
an opra comique (1859), was revised as a grand opera (1869)for a number of reasons
but, really, because its subject, drawn from one of Western Civilizations most exalted
classics, was too vast for the smaller form.
S O U R C E M AT E R I A L
not to interfere even as he tapped his watch (though he did blow her a kiss
when it was over). Or: Act Three couldnt begin till a frog, sitting in a stage
box, signaled Minkowski to get going.
All this creates a marvelous show without the slightest editing of what
Rameau wrote. Still, it derives from Pellys imaginative responses to the
music and not from the music itself. Plate as written is droll, just as The
Beggars Opera is scathing in the thrust-and-parry style of Restoration
comedy and Gilbert and Sullivan is occasionally biting but more often sim-
ply whimsical.
But Offenbach is zany: in his music. For the first time, the uproarious
and sexy and even transgressive attitudes that identify the musical
throughout its various ages move into the voices and pityodeling, crazy
wrong notes, tone-deaf bands, vocal evocations of a train trip, a blizzard,
kissing. Any composer would call up a military march when warriors tread
the stage; Offenbach was the first to concoct goofy ones.
Above all, it was Offenbach who instituted pastiche composition and the
quoting of other composers as essential to the very sound of a musical. He
loved Spanish characters, because Spaniards sing boleros, and of course
Germans supply the yodeling. If no Germans are handy, anyone can yodel,
as the tenor Paris does in La Belle Hlne (1864), to evoke a Bacchic air as he
abducts Helen. In Offenbachs upside-down world, the two leads in Orphe
et Euridice (1858) torture each other sadomasochistically. They gleefully re-
veal adulterous liaisonsand, boy, does she hate his music. Mercy! she
cries, when he launches his latest concertoand, he gloats, It lasts an
hour and a quarter. And he proceeds to fiddle it: a sugary, droopy thing,
pretty if you like to hear salon music and grotesque if youd rather die
which, of course, Euridice eventually does.
Thus Offenbach overturns the rules for decorum and beauty in art and
for, above all, a reverence for the classics. No more nectar! the gods cry in
the same work, during a Mt. Olympus uprising. This regime is boring!
When Jupiters thunder fails to faze them, he asks, What about morality?
Morality? From him? One by one, Diana, Venus, and Cupid review his
erotic capers in music that has the uncanny sound of children blackmailing
a grownup. With its mincing little steps and hip-swivelling after-phrase, it
is infantile yet knowing, the wagging finger of your comeuppance. There
simply hadnt been music like this before.
Now, isnt this Simon Trusslers aforementioned simultaneous likeness
and unlikeness to life? Its the transformation of believable human behav-
ior into exaggeration and fantasy. And that will prove to be the sine qua
non of the American musical in its Golden AgeOf Thee I Sing, Du Barry
Was a Lady, On the Town, Finians Rainbow, Guys and Dolls, Hello, Dolly!..
() The First Age
of the unique inventions but also the exhibition piece in how the popular
lyric stagethe musicalis infinitely protean, inspiring its practitioners to
effect genre breakouts. They expand their musical structures, twist the fun
show into the serious show without losing the fun, reinvent the purpose of
the musical: Show Boat, Cabaret, Follies. And note that all three of these para-
digmatic classics deal heavily in pastiche or quotation, from Show Boats black
spiritual through Cabarets suggestion without imitation of Weimar Berlin
to Follies retrospective of the Songs They Dont Write Any More.
Call it the audacity of talent. When Gilbert and Sullivan and Offenbach
simultaneously take hold of American stages in the back third of the nine-
teenth century, their influence on the musical becomes, quite simply,
tremendous. We know this because it was only after exposure to the Euro-
pean musical that the American form began to favor full-length story
scores: the very basis of the musical as we know it today.
Before the European invasion, the American musical comprised primi-
tive forms enjoying relatively little artistic developmentthe minstrel
show, for instance, dominant in the nineteenth centurys middle third and
moribund in most theatre capitals by the 1890s (though minstrel troupes
toured successfully into the early 1900s). George M. Cohan twice tried to
revive the form on Broadway, in 1908 and 1909. Both tries failedyet Zieg-
feld Follies of 1919 featured a star-filled tab minstrel show for its first-act fi-
nale that proved the highlight of everyones favorite Follies, and the trope of
actors made up in blackface, hymning the supposed joys of plantation life,
sneaked into Hollywood musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. The stage, too,
has never quite given it up: in the finale of Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerners
Love Life, in Charlemagnes war council in Pippin, even providing the staging
concept for the recent Kander and Ebb show The Scottsboro Boys.
These sometimes scathing resuscitations use minstrelsy intellectually; in
the 1800s, it was simply a way of creating musicals without full-scale stories.
These were variety shows, made of songs, dances, and jokes united by subject
matterblack life and love in the southlandand performed by not only
whites but (till the 1870s) by men only. Thomas D. Rice is credited with the
inspiration for the iconic black character in a song-and-dance medium. Yet it
was Dan Emmett, the composer of the first more-or-less hit songs in this
field (including Blue Tail Fly and the very anthem of minstrelsy, Dixie)
who directed in 1843 the first quartet billed as the Virginia Minstrels: the
first minstrel show. If Rice was father of the American minstrel, says histo-
rian Julian Mates, then Emmett was father of the American minstrel show.
The quartet expanded, and the burnt cork makeup and outlandish cos-
tuming of colorful finery or tailcoats with shirt collars hitting the ears
became essential. From a single act, the minstrel show grew to three. The
S O U R C E M AT E R I A L
First Part, as it was called, remained the key event: a semi-circle of men
backing up, at center stage, the Interlocutor and, at the sides, the two end-
men. These were Mr. Bones (playing two semi-attached bone-like sub-
stances producing a castanet crackle) and Mr. Tambo (on the tambourine).
Gentlemen, cried the Interlocutor at the start, be seated! He then an-
nounced the numbers and worked the jokes with the endmen, all in stage-
southern dialect, repeating the set-up lines so the public wouldnt miss the
punchline. The jokes were traditional, often virtually pointless. On an early
Victor 78 treating a miniature First Part, Mr. Tambo tells of an uncle so
mean he wont feed his chickens.
Wont feed the chickens? the Interlocutor repeats.
Yes, and one poor hen was reduced to eating sawdust and shavings at the
saw mill.
Sawdust and shavings? the Interlocutor cries, because apparently the
audience hasnt yet turned on their hearing aids.
Yes, and then she laid a dozen eggs. And when they hatched, Eleven of
them had wooden legs and the other was a woodchuck!
Which is immediately followed by hideous yawk-yawk laughter from ev-
eryone on stage and percussive punctuation from the Messrs. Tambo and
Bones.
The Second Part, known as the olio, was a variety show made of any-
thing from song and dance spots to crazy novelty acts by the entertain-
ment industrys outliersplaying tunes on glassware filled with contrasting
levels of water, say, or barnyard imitations. One thing the public could
count on was the stump speech, modeled on the politicians pompous
rhetoric but filled with doubletalk, allusions to everything from the Bible
to the latest scandal, and aimless fill-in phrases such as due to de obvi-
mous fact dat, which merrily led from one topic to another without a blip
of continuity. Usually given by one of the endmen, says minstrelsy histo-
rian Robert C. Toll, the stump speech was a discourse as much on the infi-
nite possibilities for malaprops [sic] as the chosen subject. These flights of
eloquent gibberish were rendered with acrobatic flash, often culminating
in the speakers crashing off the podium to the floor. Toll pinpoints a mod-
ern practitioner of this lost art in the actor and recurring Johnny Carson
television talk-show guest Professor Irwin Corey, so a few of my readers
may actually have seen the very last of the stump speakers, albeit without
the blackface makeup and fake southern dialect.
The Third Part brought forth a playlet supporting more song spots, re-
served in particular for the Old Favorites, perhaps My Dusky Rose, a
ballad fit for close harmony; a sentimental piece such as Stephen Fosters
Old Folks At Home; or a fast choral number like Climb Up, Ye Chillun,
( ) The First Age
Climb. Sometimes the Third Part offered a spoof of some literary or dra-
matic work (especially Uncle Toms Cabin), anticipating the form of bur-
lesque, which itself led (under the tutelage of Gilbert and Sullivan and
Offenbach) to American musical comedy. This places minstrelsys Third
Part as one of the musicals founding outfits.
Thus, an entertainment machine was run on just a few moving parts,
and as time went on, rival companies outdid one another, particularly in
size. John H. Haverly, the manager who dominated the minstrel scene in
the 1880s with over a dozen different troupes touring the nation, intro-
duced the monster minstrel show in Haverlys Mastodon Minstrels. Here
was where a deathless show-biz advertising idiom was introduced, in
Haverlys 40, Count Em, 40!: the number of his stars.
The minstrel show was the backbone of American popular entertain-
ment for over half a century, says Julian Mates. Further, it was at first the
only American form that really was a musicalthat is, it blended singing
and acting into a relatively unified whole. As to its influence, it is very
likely that it was the minstrel show that first disseminated ragtimein the
late 1880s and 1890swhen ragtime could otherwise be heard only in
saloons and dives.
Were there American story musicals in these very early years? Histo-
rians cite a surprising number of them, such as The Archers (1776), on the
William Tell saga; or The Seven Sisters (1860). The former intrigues for its
timely revolutionary subject, as the Swiss Tell defies the Austrian Gesler
with Colonial fireand its librettist-lyricist,* William Dunlap, was a pro-
lific playwright and the first major historian of the American stage. But The
Archers music, by Benjamin Carr, is almost entirely lost; its difficult to as-
sess the work. As for The Seven Sisters, it is not clear whether it even had a
score beyond dance music and choruses.
At that, most of the shows named as musicals in the mid-nineteenth
century were really plays with a smattering of song and dance. Virtually
* The word libretto is ambiguous; does it denote only the book or the book and
the lyrics together? Originally, the libretto was the verbal content of an opera. By
extension, it meant, as in Websters Third International Dictionary, the text of a work
of musical theaterin other words, the book and lyrics together. Some users make
a distinction: the libretto, to them, is dialogue only. Taking My Fair Ladys Wouldnt
It Be Loverly? as an example, the refrains spoken cue line, Whereya bound for this
spring, Eliza? Biarritz?, is part of the libretto, and its sung reply, All I want is a room
somewhere, is part of something else. This seems to me awkward and diffuse, but it
has long since become standard usage: the libretto is the book of a musical, to be con-
sidered separately from the lyrics of a musical. Thus, Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote all of
My Fair Ladys words, is not the shows librettist but its librettist-lyricist. While were at
it, the score refers to the music and lyrics together, not the music alone.
S O U R C E M AT E R I A L
which one locale more or less dissolved into another before ones eyes),
only cost $55,000 altogether.* A colossus in every way, the show lasted over
five hours on opening night, September 12, 1866, and ran for 474 perfor-
mances, which had never happened before. Broadway had not yet become
the absolute focus of American theatre, and long runs were generated over
the course of a multi-city tour, not in a single venue. To keep a theatre with
a seating capacity of 1,762 open with a single work for, in this case, sixteen
months was unheard of, especially as The Black Crook was really one more
entry in the now longish line of phantasmal plays-with-ballet. However,
Wheatley, Jarrett, and Palmer did innovate, in three ways: their show was
indeed quite a spectacle; their show had popular elements that suggest a
primeval form of musical comedy; and their show was sexy.
It was those ballet girls. All one saw, really, was the outline of their legs in
flesh-colored tights under their skirts. Still, in 1866, thatll do it. Nothing in
any other Christian country, or in modern times, has approached the inde-
cent and demoralizing exhibition at Wheatleys theatre, the New York Her-
ald thundered. There [were] similar places and scenes in Pompeii just as that
city was buried beneath the eruption of Vesuvius.
So everybody immediately bought tickets. In fact, Joseph Whitton be-
lieves that the Heralds publisher, James Gordon Bennett, was deliberately
provoking guilty-pleasure ticket buying to thank Wheatley for having
taken Bennetts side in his feud with P. T. Barnum. Whether thats true or
not, The Black Crook did become a hit at least partly through notoriety, en-
livening many a Sunday sermon and becoming the topic that, to the ladies
delighted alarm, could scarcely be broached in mixed company. Indeed, this
bashing of The Black Crook by censors and soul savers marks it as roguish,
rebellious, and culturally subversivethe very qualities that the American
musical was to seize as its own, as well presently see.
Interestingly, Whitton does not mention the burning of the Academy of
Music, the event that forced the merging of the ballet-and-acting troupe
with The Black Crook in the first place. Still, Jarrett and Palmer had to have
had a contract with the Academy, because they could not possibly have
gone to the trouble of contracting talent in four European countries and
hauling them back to America without having secured a place to play in
when they returned. They obviously didnt have one with Niblos Garden
till they proposed partnering up with Wheatleyso it must have been with
the Academy, the only other New York theatre with a stage large enough to
suit their ambitions. The probable timeline supports this speculation, for
* For some reason, the press reported the capitalization as $50,000, and the figure
has dogged the annals ever since. Whitton insists it was the higher number.
( ) The First Age
in order to pack in the ocean voyage to Europe, visit four cities, take in the
shows to audition the talent, and then shepherd the new company back
across the sea, Jarrett and Palmer must have been gone a good three
monthsbefore which they would have signed their contract with the
Academy of Music and during the first weeks of which the Academy suf-
fered its conflagration.
But what of The Black Crook itself? Why isnt it a musical even when it
anticipates aspects of the musical? For one thing, it had very few vocal
numbers, at least in 1866. But, remember, Jarrett and Palmer had sought
out not only dancers but specialists of the light musical stage, for instance
the aforementioned Millie Cavendish, who played the heroines servant,
Carline. This part, of the genre known to British play production as the
Singing Chambermaid, could be counted on for a merry song regardless of
the plot particulars. Indeed, amid all the dastardly intrigue of The Black
Crooks several bad guys and the ethereal wonders of the fairy kingdom,
Carline (and her vis--vis, Greppo, lackey of the black crook himself,
Hertzog) supplied a saucy undertone.
Certainly, Barras script needed it, as witness the posturing diction. The
setting is the Hartz Mountains in 1600, and we begin outside Dame Barbaras
cottage. Rodolphe enters, claps his hands three times, and the lovers meet:
Rodolphe, a painter, has been trying to raise money by selling his art, but
has had no luck.
CARLINE: But come, while Mina is making ready, lets rehearse our
Festival Dance.
Its as good a reason as any. Carlines activity sheet includes also making
fun of Barbara:
S O U R C E M AT E R I A L
Then he looks at the hand he is holding. Hmm. That doesnt seem ladylike,
does it? Von Puffengruntzs gaze slowly travels up the arm till he spies
Dragonfins face, panics, and races offall in mime. Barbara, mouing and
preening beside Dragonfin, has no idea what has happened:
It may well be that Millie Cavendishs song and the comedy spots were
The Black Crooks secret weaponsthe folderol that helped some of the
public get through the hours of ballet, no to mention Barras Sturm und
( ) The First Age
Drang dialogue. Trash, the critics called it. Rubbish. The plot was as
coarse and rowdy as a Spielberg dinosaur. Nevertheless, the show was the
biggest hit in theatre history; and such a precedent demands a follow-up.
Not a sequel, but a second experiment of comparable naturea Carousel
(after Oklahoma!), a Camelot (after My Fair Lady).
So Jarrett and Palmer put on a second Black Crook at Niblos Garden in
1868 as The White Fawn, with a script by James Mortimer. In this fairy
burlesque spectacular extravaganza, King Dingdong imprisons his daugh-
ter, Princess Graceful, in a tower from which she escapes into the arms of
Prince Leander (a trouser role, in the style of the day, played by Lucy
Egerton). The Black Crooks satanic intrigue was set aside for the purer at-
mosphere of Storybookland, yet the same combination of melodrama,
ballet, and elaborate decor ruled the stage. This time, however, there were
more than just a few songs, including early examples of what would prove
one of the musicals most useful expedients, the establishing number.
Think of Why Cant the English?, I Put My Hand In, The Worst Pies in
London. The White Fawn offered the analogous, if risibly obvious, Im
King Dingdong and Prince Leander Is My Name.*
Lasting 176 performances, The White Fawn was a smash hit, hut no
phenomenon. Nor did the title itself develop any reverberation. Among
melodrama-dance spectacles, it was The Black Crook that the public de-
manded, in revival tours that kept beefing up the vocal menu to compete
with the full-fledged musicals of the 1880s and 1890s. In the end, The Black
Crook became the summoning title for the era, just as, later, My Fair Lady
would; the defining work of the time, event theatre, the piece that play-
goers had to collect and others at least know about.
Then, too, coming right after the end of the Civil War, The Black Crook
stood at the entrance to the new economic and social epoch in American
life, the day of robber barons and railroad wealth and upward mobility
within both the middle and fashionable classes. The show thus marks the
start of the musicals First Age, from 1866 to 1899, when primitive genres
were elaborated or retired and when European imports dazzled the public
with their integration of song and story. This is where the saga really begins.
* Offenbach and Gilbert and Sullivan are filled with establishing numbers. Think of
Im Called Little Buttercup or, in its own strange way, the song of the mechanical doll
in The Tales of Hoffmann, which is not only her establishing song but virtually her entire
part. However, at the time of The White Fawn, Offenbach was only just being heard in
America, and Gilbert and Sullivan hadnt even met. An outstanding precedent for the
establishing number can be found in Mozarts Die Zauberflte (The Magic Flute), in
Papagenos entrance number, a virtual calling card: The bird catcher am I ...
w
CHAPTER
( )
( ) The First Age
Western art, Greek and Roman names for the gods were carelessly inter-
mingled; characters included Bacchus and Ganymede but also Jupiter
(Zeus). Generally, in burlesque, the fun centered on modernizing ancient
times or exotic places with the peeves and delights of the publics daily life.
This gave an original flavor to the scripts, and each season brought novel
topics to reference. The scores, however, were the usual grab bag of pre-
existing music, sometimes tricked out with new lyrics. Raids on the classics
were popular as well: Ixion! included an orchestral medley from Verdis Il
Trovatore, just fifteen years old at the time.
Thompson enjoyed a long career, and in due course her offerings grew
musically more expansive. Robinson Crusoe (1877), with Thompson again in
the name role, contained numbers listed in the program as Concerted
Piece, Quartette la Marionette, and Grand Ensemble. But the comedy,
as before, was slick and daring for the day. In 1869, a Chicago newspaper
editor accused Thompson of using the stage for the exhibition of coarse
women and the use of disreputable language unrelieved by any wit or hu-
mor, and Thompson retaliated by horsewhipping him outside his house.
Burlesque historian Robert C. Allen calls Thompson the figurative mother
of Sophie Tucker and Mae Westthat is, of independent women who
tested the legal limits of bourgeois protocols about gender. From Ixion [sic]
on, says Allen, burlesque implicitly raised troubling questions about how
a woman should be allowed to act on stage ... and about the relationship
of women onstage to women in the outside, real world.
Not all burlesques were subversive. Most simply threw everything they had
at a designated target as a schoolboy heaves a snowball at a bankers top hat.
In 1844, Michael William Balfes opera The Bohemian Girl played the Park The-
atre; a year later came The Bohea Mans Girlthe burlesque, of course. Virtu-
ally all theatregoers had seen tragedian Edwin Forrests perennial vehicle
Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags (1829); now they could enjoy Met-A-
Mora; or, The Last of the Pollywogs (1848). Longfellow and Shakespeare took
their turns, in Hiawatha; or, Ardent Spirits and Laughing Waters (1856), which
drew largely on Italian opera for its music; and Shylock: A Jerusalem Hearty
Joke (1853). In an 1857 revision, Shylock; or, The Merchant of Venice Preserved,
the score borrowed the big tune from Aubers opra comique Fra Diavolo,
known in its English translation as On Yonder Rock Reclining. Here its first
line was In yonder house is dining ... There were even topical burlesques, as
in King Cotton; or, The Exiled Prince (1862), a new, national, quizzical, local,
farcical, musical, dramatical burlesque extravaganza in one act, nine scenes,
suitable to the times. The characters ran from Jefferson Davis the First, King
of Cotton, to Ponce de Leon, the scene was laid in Secessia, and the numbers
included a chorus of Federals, Oh, Jeff Davis, Have We Caught You!
T H E A G E OF B U R L E S Q U E
through an entire refrain on little more than four chords. Yet some of Evan-
gelines song titles suggest a story score, especially the ensembles and, ob-
viously, Evangelines very apropos Where Art Thou Now, My Beloved?,
sung during her African visit.
We should note as well Im in Lofe Mit a Shveet Leedle Girl, the
German-dialect song of one Captain Dietrich, a Dutch mercenary in the
British ranks, who shows no mercy, being a mercy-nary cuss. Hes a minor
character, but its a major point: the musical in general was to stereotype
Europeans as stock figuresespecially as immigrants in Americaplaying
on their accents and malapropisms for humor. In Evangelines day, they
were Scandinavians and Germans. (Dutch is simply a corruption of
deutsch [German]). Later, Irish, Italian, black, and Jewish stereotypes
emerged. Although the intention was to create fun at a minority groups
expense, the long-range effect was, paradoxically, to socialize and assimi-
late alien peoples through familiarity. Stereotyping precedes sensitive por-
trayal, which engenders equality and a share of political power. Writing in
a totally different context, H. G. Wells called this let[ting] daylight into the
temples. Bizarre as it may sound, such sophisticated works as Fiddler on
the Roof and Parade are founded on the cultural penetration of the Dutch-
comic team of Weber and Fields, who will be along shortly.
Unlike the musicals other founding titles, Evangeline played only one
long run in New York, lasting half a year on a visit in 1885. This show was a
national favorite. But another such broke The Black Crooks record and then,
in revival, enjoyed another gigantic run, yet faded away so completely that,
unlike Evangeline and even The Black Crook, it left absolutely nothing be-
hind. We can call it the most obscure smash hit in the musicals history:
Humpty Dumpty (1868).
The main reason is that its genre died out very, very suddenly just when
Evangeline was enjoying a vogue and The Black Crook was still doggedly
touring. Humpty Dumpty was a pantomime, an irritatingly confusing term
whose history starts in Italian commedia dellarte, moves to France and
thence to England, where pantomime is still an annual Christmastime event.
However, modern pantomime resembles nineteenth-century pantomime in
only the storybook subjects and the eclectic music using pre-existing mate-
rials. From ancient burlesque, it adopts the Principal Boy and the Drag Dame
we met up with in Evangelines Gabriel and Catherine. Otherwise, todays
English pantomimes are unique only for their traditional audience participa-
tion, especially in warning actors when something dangerous threatens
(such as a spider coming down behind an innocent) and arguing with, for
instance, Cinderellas step-sisters, who insist, Oh, yes, it is to the publics
shouted Oh, no, it isnt! till the step-sisters throw a picturesque tantrum.
T H E A G E OF B U R L E S Q U E
Humpty Dumpty was nothing like that, but its difficult to say exactly
what it was. An episodic mixture of fantasy and the everyday and filled with
exhibition sequences from roller skating and circus acts to ballet and an
exploding steamboat, the show centered on the reportedly matchless
abilities of its star, George L. Fox. His title role had nothing to do with sit-
ting on a wall and all the kings horses; the scenes took place in a Vale of
Fertility and The Retreat of the Silver Sprites but also Humptys Gro-
cery and Lunch Room Down Town. As always in old pantomime, the
show started like other musicals, then underwent a magical bit in which a
fairy transformed the leads into commedia figures who played the rest of
their parts in dumb show (except when they sang). Hernandez Foster, The
Black Crooks silent comic monster Dragonfin, would have been right at
home in Humpty Dumpty.
Virtually all show biz at this time was a performers medium, but panto-
mime was especially so. One might even call it George L. Foxs medium,
because, after dementia drove him from the stage, pantomime instantly
collapsed. The Humpty of the first national tour, Tony Denier, kept the
show going here and there. Still, without Foxs drawing power, there was no
reason to create any new works in this line.
Then, too, pantomime, like the ballet spectacles, was expensive to capi-
talize. Burlesque was tidier and thus attractive to managersand in the
1870s, farce offered the stingiest form of musical yet. Farce didnt even
need to produce a score: the manager hired a small company, each to con-
tribute his or her specialty, like a band of Millie Cavendishes. In her case, it
was You Naughty, Naughty Men dropping in on The Black Crook, but it
might be any song or two, a dance, an acrobatics display, a recitation. The
musical farce was a play containing a talent show.
Reciting was Nate Salsburys specialty, and Salsbury, as actor-manager
and playwright, is called the creator of the American farce musical. He pro-
vides us with another of our landmark titles, The Brook (1879), a single act
expanded to two in 1881 and a cheapskate managers dream of a show: just
two sets, no chorus, and five lead roles taken by, as historian Gerald Bord-
man puts it, shouters and buffoons. Billed as Salsburys Troubadors, they
did largely hold together as a unit through not only The Brooks years of
touring but on to Three of a Kind! (1883) and The Humming Bird (1887). Sals-
bury was in the shows, though as author he wrote only The Brook. Pic-nic
grounds for a dinner in the woods was the set description in the original
program: the party arrives, finds that all the food has been contaminated
during the trip, and opens a chest to discover not the hoped-for water-
melons but ... theatrical costumes! Well, on with the motley, and, after
performing, the party packs up and sets off for home.
( ) The First Age
the scene recalls a time when story ballads were still sungwhen heroines
like Magnolia Ravenal would appear in an evening gown with a feathered
fan to transform cabaret into the Story Hour.
A Trip To Chinatowns plot is almost painfully simple. The setting is San
Francisco. In Act One, some young people plan to attend a ball while ali-
biing to curmudgeonly Uncle Ben that theyre merely going to take in the
sights of Chinatown. Oh, its perfectly innocent. Mrs. Guyer, a widow (a
favorite character in musicals, always assumed to be ahead of the curve in
worldly matters) will chaperone. But Uncle Ben has designs on the widow.
Act Two is set in a chic restaurant, where Uncle Ben awaits the widow in
vain and does shtick comedy with an uncooperative waiter while, unbe-
known to him, the young people enjoy themselves in the next room. (No-
body gets to the ball, which, in any case, is raided by the police.) Uncle Bens
bill is a hundred dollars, but he has lost his wallet ... and here many a his-
torian chimes in with how much A Trip To Chinatown anticipates the Har-
monia Gardens restaurant scene in Hello, Dolly!. Indeed it does: the old
curmudgeon who has lost his money, the young people he knows but cant
see (and one of them, in both shows, is his niece), the widow. Even more
interesting is how much of the stock humor that the musical would still be
using well into the twentieth century was already in play in the 1890sthe
crazy names, for example, a notable feature some fifty years later in On the
Town, with its Lucy Schmeeler and Claire De Loon. The leader of China-
towns young crowd is Rashleigh Gay, his best friend is Wilder Daly, Uncle
Bens hypochondriac friend is Welland Strong, the waiter is Slavin Paine,
and of course Mrs. Guyer is so named because a widow knows how to guy
(fool) the men. (She also gets into male disguise at one point.)
Or take this exchange, whose play on the word taste is standard
musical-comedy fun even today. In the restaurant, the supposedly mori-
bund Welland Strong is asked to order for the young peoples party:
WELLAND: I fear the taste of a dying man may not exactly suit your
fancies.
WILDER: I dont know. I never tasted one.
Chinatowns core numbers (before the huge New York run and years of
touring added various interpolations), composed mainly by Percy Gaunt to
Hoyts lyrics, were wholly unintegrated. At regular intervals, someone
would simply cue up a song, as when, at the restaurant, Rashleighs girl
friend, Flirt, cries out, Say, everybody! Tony [Uncle Bens niece] knows the
song the orchestras playing. I want you all to listen. Or consider the ramp-
up to The Pretty Widow:
( ) The First Age
RASHLEIGH: The widows more fun than any girl I know. Say, Wilder, I
dont believe a woman is ever at her best till she becomes a
widow.
WILDER: The boys all seem to think shes in her prime, anyway. Thats
a great song Billy Barker wrote and dedicated to her.
Its a slim score, too, for the show had far more book than music. Even so,
A Trip To Chinatown counted hit tunes besides After the Ball. Reuben and
Cynthia and the clodhopping waltz (On) The Bowery, popular long after
their day, are ridiculously simplistic. But a minstrel number entirely by
Gaunt, Push Dem Clouds Awaya description of the heavenly life
bears a disarming naivet. The young people and Mrs. Guyer introduce it in
Act One:
Discussions of musical farce seek its truest source but also its expressive
summit in the work of Harrigan and Hart, though Edward Harrigan, the
actor-manager-playwright of the concern, generally termed each work as a
local comedy or local play. The local was not used lightly, for the series
of shows that Harrigan and his acting partner, Tony Hart, presented from
just before to just after the 1880s was obsessed with New York immigrant
life. Here was a counter to Dutch comedy in something larger: Irish stereo-
types at once broad and nuanced, for the fun of it, but also to taste of life as
lived. E. J. Kahn, Harrigan and Harts biographer, tells us that the company
would appear not in costumes but in clothes bought right off the backs of
Irish immigrants as they stepped out of Castle Garden, the immigration
processing station, and that the Garden itself was set on Harrigans stage
more than once. Good old Ned! the crowd would cry at a line that struck
them with the wonder of self-recognition. Some historians want to date
the founding of the American musical from Harrigan and Hart simply
T H E A G E OF B U R L E S Q U E
by turning back into marble. The score was the usual ragbag of old music
with new words, though Edward E. Rice did some fresh composing. William
F. Gill wrote the script in a breathless, anything-for-a-laugh style that at
times goes into free-associative gabble. Heres Adonis crazing around with
Rosetta, described in the program as The happy possessor of a clear con-
science and a soprano voice and played by Amelia Summerville, a specialist
in physically abundant young women:
Only Humpty Dumpty had so promoted the talents of its star, for Adonis
was devoted to the trim and handsome but endlessly sassy Dixeyand to
some twenty disguises that he slipped into and out of, to his imitations of
everyone from a Harrigan and Hart type to the English Shakespearean
Henry Irving, and not least to Dixeys kicky dancing. Dixey and his fellow
leads took the show to London, a most unusual event for an American mu-
sical, and the star seldom strayed from his signature role for the next
twenty years. On one of Dixeys last New York appearances, in 1884 at the
Casino, his famous fadeout curtain in which he reassumed his original
pose as the statue was followed by a unique exhibition by the bodybuilder
Sandow, a real-life Adonis. The young Florenz Ziegfeld was in the Casino
that night; noticing how animated the audience became as Sandow flexed,
preened, and went into his unique standing back-flip, Ziegfeld decided to
manage Sandow as a show-biz attraction. This eventually led Ziegfeld to
the aforementioned revival of A Parlor Match and, ultimately, to a pro-
ducing career in the musical outranking in influence that of all other non-
writers except Hal Prince.
Adonis marked the end of old-fashioned burlesque, which soon devolved
into a girls-and-comics revue format in rundown neighborhood venues
and, later, into the tawdry stripper shows that most Americans think of
when they hear the word burlesque. European comic opera was sweeping
the American musical stage, and now comes the first enduring American
comic opera, a potboiler for some fifty years and occasionally staged today,
T H E A G E OF B U R L E S Q U E
A s the First Age drew near its end, much of the generic jumble we have
been witness to was cleared away. That loony-kazoony genre known as
pantomime vanished, along with dancing plays like The Black Crook. Euro-
pean comic opera inspired a body of American comic opera, meanwhile
making the author team of composer and librettist-lyricist significant as
never before: because an intimate relationship between script and score
had become elemental in the making of musicals.
However, where in all this was musical comedy, comic operas vernac-
ular counterpart? It had arrived, quite suddenly, in the early 1880s, as a
spruced-up burlesque imitating Gilbert and Sullivan. Cinderella At School
(1881), written entirely by Wangs composer, then known as Henry Wool-
son Morse, and based on T. W. Robertsons play School, is the first work I
can trace to bill itself as a musical comedy, though the term did not catch
on till the early 1900s. From the opening chorus, Green Are the Waving
Branches, to the last solo, after a regatta, Columbia Won the Race Today,
Cinderella At School utilized a story score with some thirty numbers while
juggling two sweetheart couples and a bad guy, Dr. Syntax. The future
Adonis, Henry E. Dixey, played him during Cinderella At Schools second
season, when the role of the Schoolmistress was recast, in a touch of bur-
lesque, as a man in dragEvangelines George K. Fortescue. Yet another
important performer, De Wolf Hopper, who had played the title role in
Wang, played also the title role in a complete rewriting of the show as
Dr. Syntax (1894), when it was billed as a comic opera.
Thus, the very identity of what were becoming the two chief forms
musical comedy and comic operawas a slippery one. Was musical comedy
something like burlesque but further modernized? A lowdown comic
( )
( ) The First Age
CHORUS: Follow on! Follow on! When the light of faith you see.
VIOLET: But they never proceed to follow that light,
But always follow me!
If on sheer reputation alone, The Belle of New York is a landmark title. Its
authors, on the other hand, are known to archivists only: composer Gus-
tave Kerker and librettist C. M. S. McLellan, who worked at this time as
Hugh Morton. The pair wrote eight shows together around the turn of the
century, a typical Broadway collaboration in that Kerker came from Ger-
many and McLellan was British: this was the era of partnerships between
continental composers and English or American wordsmiths.
Another such duo was Gustav Luders (from Bremen) and Frank Pixley
(from Richfield, Ohio), who generally worked in established formats, from
AT T H E T U R N OF T H E C E N T U R Y
fantasy to the trope of the American getting into trouble in foreign parts. In
The Burgomaster (1900), Peter Stuyvesant (the ubiquitous Henry E. Dixey)
wakes up in modern-day New York. King Dodo (1902) revolves around an
elixir of youth. The Prince Of Pilsen (1903) tells of a Cincinnati brewer mis-
taken for a real prince who is courting the brewers daughter. Woodland
(1904) sounds unusual at first, for the entire cast is birds. But its the same
old plota prince loves a commoner and the king says noeven if the
royals are eagles and the sweetheart is a coloratura nightingale. Like Gus-
tave Kerker, Luders laid out his own orchestrations. But he lacked imagina-
tion; all his scores sound alike. Oddly, though they have the fully developed
musicality of comic opera, they were billed as musical comedies.
The Prince Of Pilsen was the outstanding Luders-Pixley hit, running 143
performances and, while touring, returning to New York once a year from
1904 to 1907. A beloved show, it fell right into grooves cut deep by others:
in a husband-hunting widow out of Gilbert and Sullivan, in a tenor prince
with cohort of carolling students, in its waltzing Message of the Violet, an
I love you song by other means. Above all, it had the brewer, a typical
Dutch comic with the fractured English, observing the native folkways and
getting his temperament ruffled. Efery man, he notes, of Europe in gen-
eral, mit nodings to do is a prince. Then, meeting an English lord on the
short side, the brewer declares, Ofer here nobody is a plain man. Even de
vaste material is labeled. The Prince of Pilsen was so rife with clich that it
was as if the public domain had written an operetta. Yet it held the stage till
the more ecstatic music of Romberg and Friml appeared, and remained a
title of some minor power till it finally disappeared in the 1950s.
Of the American composers of comic opera, Reginald De Koven was
never able to turn out another Robin Hood, though Rob Roy; or, The Thistle
and the Rose (1894), again in collaboration with Harry B. Smith, was a huge
hit in its day. Like Robin Hood, it had a famous part, the Mayor of Perth,
wholike the Sheriff of Nottinghamgot all the fun stuff. Still, Rob Roys
music, though seasoned with an appealing Scots flavor, failed to ingratiate
itself beyond its time. De Koven was prolific, giving Broadway twenty-four
scores (a few others did not come in), including a Robin Hood follow-up,
Maid Marian (1902), complete with Henry Clay Barnabee again as the Sher-
iff. And De Koven was part-manager, entering into a deal with the Shuberts
to raise up a classy line in comic opera at their brand-new Lyric Theatre on
Forty-Second Street. Further, De Koven was of tony family (from Chicago)
in a time when such things mattered. And we already know about his excur-
sions into grand opera. If anyone could lend American comic opera pres-
tige, De Koven was the man. Yet in the end, he enjoyed his little era and
then, but for Robin Hood, was gone.
( ) The First Age
John Philip Sousa illustrates the opposite paradigm, for the so-called
march king had terrible trouble maintaining a catalogue in comic opera.
With his work largely undervalued or unproduced, he had but one hitand
he still has it, as this work is received with thanks wherever comic operas
are still performed, from the Ohio Light Opera to Goodspeed Opera House:
El Capitan (1896). Playwright Charles Klein wrote the script and Thomas
Frost collaborated with Sousa on the lyrics, but the music really does sweep
all aside as Sousa fills the piece with crazy fun in an almost Offenbachian
way. De Kovens Robin Hood music summarizes story and characters gener-
ally; Sousa really digs into character, especially in his treatment of the lead
role, Don Medigua. One might call his the title part but for a technicality:
there is no title part, for El Capitan has been killed before the conductor
strikes up the overture.
Disguise and mistaken identity were the choice plot fillers of the age,
especially when narratives threatened to sag in the second act. But Don
Medigua pretends to be somebody else for virtually every minute of El Cap-
itan, right up to the last few moments before the finale. As the incipient
Viceroy of Peru, he decides to confuse an insurrection by posing as the
dreadand latemercenary called only El Capitan. The joke lies in the dif-
ference between the frantic, blustering Don Medigua and the ferocious
brigand his subjects believe him to be. It is not that Don Mediguas many
solos are particularly compelling, but that his music rounds out a figure
who, in his spoken lines, is a dull Ko-Ko in a suit of armor, Gilbert and Sul-
livan without the wit. Sousa excelled, too, in ensembles. The rebel heroine
Estrelda leads one, Onward! Patriotic Son!, that develops into a dashing
quodlibet, as she sings one strain, the chorus baritones sing another, the
sopranos imitate trumpets, and the tenors whistle, all at once.
El Capitan is easily the best American work we have met up with so far; it
also brings us back to De Wolf Hopper, the original Don Medigua and liter-
ally the biggest star of the age at six feet, three inches and two hundred
thirty pounds. A comic, Hopper nevertheless fielded a thundering basso
profundo to send every lyric to the top of the house. Hopper was useful in
everythingGilbert and Sullivan, European comic opera, Weber and Fields
burlesque (to be dealt with presently), variety bills at the vast Hippodrome.
He even took over the non-singing comic role of Lutz, the valet, in the orig-
inal production of The Student Prince. Hopper was Howja-Dhu (in the afore-
mentioned Hindoo comic opera The Begum; others were Klahm-Chowdee
and Myhnt Jhuleep), Wang, Mr. Pickwick, Iolanthes Lord Chancellor, the
Pied Piper. One would call him beloved but for his habit of treating his public
as a captive audience while he roared into Casey At the Bat at his curtain
call. True, its better than Mandy Patinkins singing forty hours of Yiddish
folk songs with the theatres door locked, to name another self-indulgent
AT T H E T U R N OF T H E C E N T U R Y
performer. But today Hopper is mainly known for having given his name to
six wives at a time when a single divorce was startling. One of the six, ne
Furry, became the Hollywood gossip queen Hedda Hopper.
By this timethe mid-1890sexotic-setting comic opera was a domi-
nant form, especially when an American could be dropped in among the na-
tives for ironic commentary comparing their folkways with ours, in the Prince
of Pilsen manner. Victor Herbert first won notice for a pair in this genre, The
Wizard of the Nile (1895) and The Idols Eye (1897), both with librettist-lyricist
Harry B. Smith and starring comedian Frank Daniels. Actually, Daniels
played a Persian in the first show, a fake wizard obsessed with parlor tricks
that usually dont work. He visits Egypt in time to save it from drought, un-
fortunately with an inundation: the second act is set on the roof of Ptolemys
palace, where everyone has gone to avoid drowning. Daniels character was
Kibosh (pronounced Kih-bosh), and Smith may have invented this once pop-
ular word, widely misspoken during World War I in a phrase promising to
put the ky-bosh on the Kaiser.* Also common was Kiboshs personal catch-
phrase, Am I a wiz?, with which small-town wags would drive their friends
crazy, and Daniels, along with an imaginative production full of scenic won-
ders from pyramid to crocodile, made The Wizard of the Nile a hit. There were
as well two very popular numbers, a waltz quintet, Star Light, Star Bright,
and Daniels tale of his love for a human contortionist, My Angeline.
After 105 performances at the Casino, The Wizard of the Nile went off on
a long tour; two years into it, Daniels asked Herbert and Smith for another
Wizard; they obliged with The Idols Eye, in which Daniels, now as an Ameri-
can, arrived by hot-air balloon in India. Here the gimmick was two rubies:
one makes everybody love you and the other makes everybody give you the
death penalty. Naturally, the gems keep getting mixed up; you never know
which one you have till its too late. Along with the Brahmins, Nautch Girls,
and occupying British inevitable in Broadways India, Smith gave Herbert a
crew of Westerners all set for pastiche numbers, including a Cuban com-
plete with operatic cadenza. Or why not a Kiss Duet, Pretty Isabella and
Her Umbrella?:
One reason the exotic show was so popular was the chance it gave
composers to create exotic music, and Herbert excelled in this as nobody
else. The Idols Eyes second act opens with a chorus-and-dance sequence
that rises to a passionate intensity almost comparable to parts of Porgy and
Bess. All the same, the show focused on Daniels amiable lampoon of tribal
formalities:
HIGH PRIESTESS: The Brahmins must be given a ruby for you to be set
free.
DANIELS: Anybody got a ruby hes not using?
Daniels even had a number referencing The Wizard of the Niles My Ange-
line, when he refuses to be tattooed for sacrifice:
The song is The Tattooed Man. It tells how Angeline fell for his illustra-
tions and gave him her savingsbut he ran off with the fat lady:
The number was so popular that Herbert and Smith gave Daniels a third
show in this series, The Tattooed Man (1907). All were billed as comic
operasthe classy title of the times.
But Herbert was unique in segregating the comic from the opera, tilting a
works musical style toward one or the other. In The Serenade (1897) and his
first lasting hit, The Fortune Teller (1898), Herbert emphasized the romantic.
In the Frank Daniels vehicles, he slipped in bits of musical slapstick, as when
the 4/4 verse of The Tattooed Man galumphs into 6/8 for the chorus.
No doubt, Herbert got more than a little help from Harry B. Smith, who
would be called the father of all librettist-lyricists but for historians
AT T H E T U R N OF T H E C E N T U R Y
Their biographer Felix Isman records a classic routine. Fields, tall and
thin, is the pack leader; Weber, short and rotund, is the eternal dupe. They
play as, respectively, Myer and Mike:
( ) The First Age
MIKE: I receivedidid a letter from mein goil, but I dont know how to
writteninin her back.
MYER: Writteninin her back? Such an edumuncation you got it? ...
How can you answer her ven you dont know how to write?
MIKE: Dot makes no nefer mind. She dont know how to read.
its a blatant echo, now of Harrigan and Hart, in its vapid salute to Sweet
Nellie Kelly and waltz-clog refrain. When important musicals get by with
such limp songs, we realize that the score as such has not truly become ele-
mental yetat least not in musical comedy.
One development of the time was nomenclatural. Extravaganza, which
formerly could denote anything from a vaudeville act to a Passion Play, had
finally settled on a specific format. This was the fairytale spectacle, a blend
of pantomime, burlesque, and musical comedy aimed at family audiences,
with wisenheimer jokes about modern mores and politics and, for the
kiddies, high jinks and slapstick. We have to sneak over into 1903, in the
Second Age, to sample two of the most outstanding examples of the form.
One was the biggest musical-comedy hit of its decade (that is, not counting
comic opera), and the other was the only extravaganza to survive, if mar-
ginally, to the present day: The Wizard of Oz and Babes In Toyland.
The Wizard, based of course on L. Frank Baums childrens tale, was from
the start Baums project. He wrote book and lyrics to Paul Tietjens music,
following his original storyline: Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman,
and the Lion (a pantomime animal, rather like Evangelines heifer) set off on
a quest that ends with Dorothys return to Kansas. However, Baum elimi-
nated the Wicked Witch of the West, so effective in driving the action in
the 1939 MGM movie adaptation, and the shows narrative thus lost its
bite. Still, the stagestruck Baum knew how musical-comedy books should
go. At one point, the Scarecrow takes a tumble:
Tietjens, however, was a dull composer and Baums lyrics were at times hor-
ribly lame:
For Im Dorothy,
Little Dorothy,
Whose home is the prairie wide;
And always Ill be Dorothy,
Whatever may betide.
This was an attractive package all the same, and manager Fred Hamlin
accepted it for his Grand Opera House in Chicago, passing the property
over to Julian Mitchell, the very first of the major director-choreographers.
Mitchell was to stage early Victor Herbert and late George M. Cohan, Weber
( ) The First Age
and Fields burlesques, Florenz Ziegfelds first Follies revues, and, lasting
into the mid-1920s, a black show, The Chocolate Dandies, andthis time
choreographing onlya Marilyn Miller vehicle, Sunny. It was Mitchell who
turned The Wizard of Oz from a pleasant little show into a high-powered
special event with magical effects, a large cast of principals new to Baum,
and so many interpolations, added in and replaced during the shows ten
years on stage, that The Wizard of Oz was a musical without a score. Show
Boat and Follies have collected alternate and extra songs over time through
revisions, but each has a core of essential numbersan Ol Man River or
Whos That Woman?without which they could not function. The Wiz-
ard has no equivalent, because Mitchell replaced most of the Tietjens-Baum
numbers with new ones by composer A. Baldwin Sloane working with two
different lyricists, and even then socked in specialty numbers by others.
Thus, to cover a scene change, the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman appeared,
without explanation of any kind, in nautical garb on a dinky little boat to
sing Theodore F. Morse and Vincent Bryans Hurrah For Baffins Bay:
The Bosun asked a Polar bear would she eat off his hand,
But Polar bears talk Polish and she did not understand;
She chased him up a mountain peak, she acted very tough
When she made him jump the precipice, he knew it was a bluff ...
Mitchells script changes crowded Baums original characters off the stage
for long periods, as a crew of eccentrics chased around in a plot to restore
King Pastoria to the throne of Oz.* Mitchells new characters included the
lady lunatic, Cynthia Cynch; the poet Sir Dashemoff Daily (a trouser role,
in the burlesque tradition); Sir Wiley Gyle; General Riskitt; and Tryxie Try-
fle. Mitchell added also a second mime animal, Dorothys new pet (replacing
the books Toto), Imogene the cow. This was not a frolicking two-man oper-
ation as in Evangeline, but rather a single acrobat doubled over in a cow suit,
rather like the one that Chad Kimball played in the 2002 revival of Stephen
Sondhems Into the Woods. As for Baums rather midwestern little Wizard,
Mitchell bent him into an ethnic caricature, Dutch during the Chicago run
(to please the sizable German-Scandinavian population), and then, for New
* It was news to Baum: authority figures in his Oz were women, fairies, witches, or
little girls who take trips to right wrongs. Ironically, two years later, when Baum wrote
the first Oz sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, he incorporated Pastoria in some passing
references. Then, twenty-one years after that, Ruth Plumly Thompson, the new Oz au-
thor after Baums death, thought back to the musicalfor many, a more vivid memory
than trivia in the booksand developed Pastoria as the hero of The Lost King Of Oz.
AT T H E T U R N OF T H E C E N T U R Y
York, an Irish rogue out of the Harrigan and Hart catalogue, with the dry
sarcasm that reflected the Gaelic tone of New York humor. Thus, when the
leads first met the Wizard:
Mitchells keenest coup was casting Fred Stone and Dave Montgomery as
the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman. Already bonded as a double act, the pair
had played Broadway in a Gustave KerkerEdna May musical, The Girl From
Up There (1901), though this time May was no belle of New York but a pi-
rates moll who had just been defrosted after five hundred years on ice at
the North Pole. Montgomery and Stone (in their chosen billing order) were
pirates, too, but the show gave them no career traction and they were soon
back in vaudeville. It was The Wizard that put them over as a box-office sell-
out attraction, from the flamboyant costuming to their remarkable plas-
tique, Stones weightless blundering next to Montgomerys metal solemnity.
Stones entrance was one of those memories that theatregoers would fondly
refer to long after: perched high over his cornfield, contorted and lifeless,
he convinced audiences that he was literally a stage dummy.
As Stone recalled it in his memoirs, on opening night in Chicago, Doro-
thy (Anna Laughlin) had to give so many encores of Carrie Barry (will you
be mine?) that when she finally got around to letting Stone down in the
( ) The First Age
following book scene, his limbs had gone to sleep and he flopped helplessly
about the stage. Thereafter, he apparently retained this business (the old
term for shtick) to suggest the movements of a creature with no center of
gravity, a true Baumian Scarecrow. Later, in the third act, Mitchell used an
old stage trick to simulate the putting together of the Scarecrows sundered
body parts. Stone was standing in a black box, his body hidden in black
masking. At a distance, in theatre lighting, he was invisible. Then, as each
body part was passed into the box, Stone removed the appropriate section
of the masking, making it look as if each limb were actually being reunited
with the rest of him. Let me have an arm next, he cried. I want to scratch
my nose.
All of thisMontgomery and Stone, the enjoyable cascade of specialty
numbers, and such visual spectacles as the opening tornado sequence or
the soothing of the dangerous Poppy Maidens under a blanket of snow
made The Wizard of Oz a smash. The shows historian, Mark Evan Swartz,
calls it one of the most profitable shows mounted in Chicago up to that
time, paying off by the seventh week of [the] run. Success on that level
changes industry practice: The Wizard offered tickets as much as a month in
advance. In a day when almost all theatregoing save family outings on
holidays was walk-in business, tickets were usually sold on the day of the
performance, mainly within two or three hours of curtain time. This is
where the concept of a publics being turned away at the box office comes
from: at some point in a hit shows afternoon, the Standing Room Only
sign went up, and when even standing room was sold out, would-be specta-
tors were thus turned away.
The Wizard of Oz opened in Chicago on June 16, 1902 (incidentally the
Bloomsday on which James Joyces Ulysses takes place). This was not the
start of a Broadway-bound tryout tour, as Chicago was a theatre capital in
its own right. Still, the piece was too big not to dare Americas theatrical
center, and after 125 performances in Chicago and a Midwestern tour, The
Wizard opened a new theatre on Broadway on January 21, 1903, the Majes-
tic. This was not the current Majestic, home of The Phantom Of the Opera,
but a now demolished building in Columbus Circle, a few steps southeast of
the main entrance of the Time-Warner Center.
In fact, this Majestic was not really a Broadway house, because Broad-
way ran more or less from the Weber & Fields Music Hall through Herald
Square up to Forty-Second Street. About the only way to get [to the Majes-
tic] was by four-wheeler, Stone recalled in his memoirs.
The New York critics, unlike those in Chicago, gave The Wizard of Oz very
mixed reviews. Alan Dale of the New York American liked the new theatre
but called the show absolutely inexplicable, citing evil comedians with
AT T H E T U R N OF T H E C E N T U R Y
infamous puns [and] jokes that Noah would have routed out of the Ark.
But the public loved it, and two road companies were assembled, one drawn
from the New York cast after it had played its 293 performances and the
other freshly assembled. Montgomery and Stone left the production after
four years, though they were so identified with it that Baums publishers,
Reilly & Britton, used a green-tinted photograph of the pair in their Oz
makeup on the endpapers of The Marvelous Land Of Ozgreen, of course,
being the color of Ozs capital, the Emerald City.
In one form or another, including a slightly cut-down version and taking
in return visits to both New York and Chicago, The Wizard of Oz played the
United States for seven years. Throughout that time, it kept losing and accu-
mulating numbersI Love You All the Time, Cant You See Im Lonely?,
The Tale of a Monkey (added for a replacement Cynthia, Allene Crater,
who became Mrs. Fred Stone), Little Nemo and His Bear (after Winsor
McCays visionary comic strip Little Nemo In Slumberland, with a piquant
whistling effect on the last line: Just Nemotootle ootleand his
bear. Chord !). Thus, The Wizard of Oz exaggerated a tendency to look upon
the music in musicals as not a fixed element of production but something
permanently unstable. The core numbers would provide some narrative
continuity, like The Wizards Poppy Song, an innocuous choral waltz. But
then, what difference did it make what Poppy Girls sing? It was the interpo-
lations that gave the show energy, as when Montgomery and Stones Baf-
fins Bay was dropped in favor of the comparably out-of-narrative Football,
the stars banging each other up acrobatically in gridiron togs.
Hamlin and Mitchell planned Babes in Toyland as a kind of replica of The
Wizard: starting with another disaster pantomime (here a shipwreck) that
leads to an adventure in a quaint and spectacular fairyland, with two guys
in animal suits (a spider and a bear, which get into mortal combat; the bear
wins), and even Bessie Wynn, The Wizards Dashemoff Daily, again in trou-
sers as Tom Tom, the Widow Pipers Son. For a fresh touch, celebrities from
childrens bedtime storiesthe males all young women in draghaunted
the stage, from Tommy Tucker to Red Riding Hood, and there was a good
deal less of the topical humor that dotted The Wizard. In a genre that typi-
cally set smart-alec commentary on current events into storybookland,
Babes In Toyland was unusually consistent in tone.
For instance, The Wizard of Oz really was a farce with a sudden blast of
guignol at the climax, when Pastoria takes everyone prisoner and brings on
a hooded executioner with an ax. But Babes in Toyland was a good-versus-
evil parable from beginning to end. The two babes, Alan (William Norris)
and Jane (Mabel Barrison, Tryxie Tryfle in The Wizards Chicago run), have
a greedy uncle who plans to force Contrary Mary into marriage and, worse,
( ) The First Age
murder his two wards for their inheritance. The uncle stalks them through-
out the action, joining forces with the Master Toymakernot the absent-
minded professor one might expect but Toylands dictator.
The greatest difference between The Wizard and Babes lies in the latters
authors, for Babes was the work of Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough
and if MacDonough was at best an acceptable wordsmith, Herbert was the
composer of the age and Babes one of his most popular scores. One still
hears the March of the Toys today, along with that autumnal hymn to lost
childhood, Toyland, whose dreamy refrain starts with a whisper of magic
on an unexpected sixth tone of the scale. While The Wizard ran on a fickle
miscellany of songs, Babesafter dropping and adding a few between Chi-
cago and New Yorkoffered a reasonably fixed set of numbers, and all by
Herbert and MacDonough.
Interestingly, very little in The Wizards score has anything to do with
Oz. Babes, however, sings of the lore and fears of children. Never Mind,
Bo-Peep, We Will Find Your Sheep gives Herbert a chance to introduce a
melody and then hand it to the chorus while the soprano sings a descant
over it, a regular feature of Herberts shows, widely imitated. In the Toy-
makers Workshop is a minuet scored for rattle, whistle, a dolls Mama!,
and various toy-animal eructations from crowing to mooing. Go To Sleep,
Slumber Deep, when Alan and Jane are lost in the Spiders Forest, treats
the little ones nighttime terror of the unknown: turn off the dark.
There were a few glitches, as when Contrary Mary got a solo with chorus,
Barney OFlynn, about her love for a lad from County Clare. And, she
adds, Tis the wild ones come from there. Thats good to know, but why is
a Mother Goose character in love with someone from the real world, other
than to give the Irish-born Herbert one of his countless pieces of Hibernian
pastiche? Then, too, bowing to a fashion of the day, the authors presented
William Norris with the thoroughly extraneous Song of the Poet, in which
he put Rock-a-Bye, Baby through transformations: as a Cockney maid
with spoken catchphrases, as a John Philip Sousa march, in a takeoff on the
Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor, and in ragtime, Tempo di Cakewalk. Babes
even had a number spoofing the latest diet craze, The Health Food Man.
Against all lamb and ham and jam his eloquence was tidal, we learn. And
He said dessert was sudden death and soup was suicidal. Alas, he dies of
starvation, though, in any case, the number was dropped before New York.
That it was written at all reminds us how slippery was extravaganzas sense
of setting, even in a piece as relatively coherent as this one.
Indeed, The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland arrived when the musical
was finally undergoing developments that would bring it into line with what
we of today think of as musicals. Comic opera would turn into the more
AT T H E T U R N OF T H E C E N T U R Y
I t is not too early in the musicals age to observe a major throughline: the
interdependence of the musicals two essential forms, the romantic and
the satiric. Or the one with musical ambitions and the one with a populist
agenda. Or the beautiful show and the crazy show. On one hand, you have
Camelot. On the other, you have The Producers. We can diagram the two
streams of development thus:
However, each era counts works that blend the two forms. Show Boat is
musically ambitious and treats serious themes, but its book, especially in
Act One, has a musical-comedy tone. Oklahoma! is a musical comedy under-
going psychoanalysis, with a grand patriotic theme beyond the scope of a
fun show. New Girl In Town is Eugene ONeill with pop tunes, Cabaret the
Nazi musical comedy. And Follies? Beautiful and crazy at once.
This ontological revolution has already begun in the first two decades of
the twentieth century: the Second Age, when forms were both consoli-
dating and evolving. Yes, this was happening in the First Age as wellbut
not so pointedly. Setting aside for the moment the variety show we call
revue, we see the musical tending to be either romantic or satiric even as
the two extremes borrow from each other so casually that at times it be-
comes difficult to tell comic opera from musical comedy. Well, there is one
way, though it vastly oversimplifies: if the composer went to a conservatory
( )
( ) The Second Age
history to that time, behind A Trip To Chinatown and Adonis but ahead even
of The Black Crook.*
Another show set in New York led on from comic opera to operetta even
more surely than Maytime, though it is now one of the great unsung scores,
Apple Blossoms (1919). Composed by two men, Fritz Kreisler and Victor Ja-
cobi, to the libretto of William LeBaron, Apple Blossoms blended a gala mu-
sicality into a very modern story. Nancy (Wilda Bennett) and Philip (opera
tenor John Charles Thomas) are forced to wed to please her uncle; outwardly
obedient, they agree to an open marriage. But their nuptial duet, You Are
Free, sounds cold only in its lyrics. After a conversational 4/4,the number
moves into waltz time on Love is just a game that two are playingstill
cynical, yes, but to passionately lyrical music. The very sound of it tells us
that these two worldly I-dont-cares are already hopelessly in love.
Co-composed shows were not uncommon at the time. Victor Herbert,
Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, Ir-
ving Berlin, and Jerome Kern are just some of the musicians who wrote half
a score at least once. But its a wonder that producer Charles Dillingham
was able to get not only the eminent Jacobi but Kreisler, the outstanding
violin virtuoso of the day. Their music blended beautifully, as the classical
Kreisler revealed a gift for snazzy syncopation in A Widow (that captures
the men) and A Girl, A Man, A Night, A Dance, while the more pop-
oriented Jacobi reveled in the charm song in Brothers, a how-to on
passing off a forbidden date as a family outing, Allegretto grazioso. The Apple
Blossoms score is also one of the first beautifully orchestrated musicals (pre-
sumably by Kreisler and Jacobi), so intricate that the Harms vocal score
* For many years, it was believed that a second company of Maytime played New
York simultaneously with the first. However, there was always something suspicious
about the tale, as no writer could name the performers in the second troupe. Besides,
after those crazy seasons of multiple stagings of HMS Pinafore and the like, when has
a Broadway show sprouted a second production during its original run? Why would
this have happened only once? And why Maytime and not an even bigger hitA Trip
To Chinatown, say, or, while were at it, Oklahoma! or My Fair Lady? In the latest updat-
ing of Gerald Bordmans American Musical Theatre, Richard C. Norton writes, Careful
research by Stanley Green has shown the story to have no basis in fact. As for how it
originated, I have a theory. The Shuberts moved Maytime three times during its origi-
nal run. The first time, they shunted it from the Shubert to the Forty-Fourth Street,
directly opposite. Someone must have passed by when the Forty-Fourth Streets mar-
quee announced Maytime but the Shuberts marquee had not yet been changed to her-
ald its next occupant (Augustus Thomas postCivil War melodrama The Copperhead,
starring Lionel Barrymore) and was still advertising Maytime. That someone might
have concluded that Maytime had thus reproduced like an amoeba. This mistake, which
eventually took in almost every writer (including, to his shame, your reporter), would
seem to have first gone into print on page 271 of David Ewens Complete Book of the
American Musical Theater, in 1958.
( ) The Second Age
troubled to indicate middle voices, high violin fill-in lines, and the like, an
unheard-of nicety till then. This was, in every way, a forward-looking show,
so much so that although it reserved two spots for a dance team having no
role in the script, this pair would take a main part in the evolutionary earth-
quake that would jump-start the Golden Age: Fred and Adele Astaire. Rom-
bergs Maytime had billed itself as a play with music, but Apple Blossoms
announced itself, unblushingly, as an operetta, the form that really didnt
exist till the 1920s of The Student Prince, Rose-Marie, and The New Moon.
The work that most influentially renovated comic opera was, with The
Wizard of Oz, one of the two biggest hits of the first decade of the twentieth
century, Franz Lehrs Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), seen on
Broadway at the New Amsterdam in 1907 for 416 performances, a huge stay
in a huge house. Ethel Jackson and Donald Brian played Hanna (glamorized
as Sonia) and Danilo, and it is these two roles, really, that fomented the
revolution. Comic-opera romantic leads were songbirds, like Robin Hood
and Maid Marian, but Sonia and Danilo were also comedians. They created
the musicals first interesting love plot, because Lehr gave them such per-
sonal vivacity that they united what had previously been two separate job
descriptions: being charming and being silly. The widow is capricious and
mocking, as in her establishing song, In Marsovia,* sung with a flock of
admiring fortune huntersfor what self-respecting musical would feature
a beautiful young widow without her own personal bank? The number is a
comparison of the widows simple country ways with the worldly Parisian
style. Men are all the same, I can see, she observes, you all beat your wives
I fancy. And yet the widow is also entranced by romantic notions, as in her
narrative of the enthralling witch of the wood, Vilja. Danilo is suave and
womanizing in Maxims, but vulnerable in his extended solo in the
second-act finale, There Were Once Two Princes Children. These two ex-
press their love in sarcasm, grumpy flirting, and even insultsat one point,
he virtually tells her to go to hell, a shocking violation of the cautions of the
age. This pair would be a handful even for a juggler, yet Lehr harmonizes
them perfectly in the famous Merry Widow Waltz that sneaks in early on
and then returns, a shimmering valentine, to tie up the plot.
* This was another imposition on the German text: the widows native land was
originally Pontevedro. The first English translation, used in both Great Britain and the
United States, had lyrics by Adrian Ross and an uncredited book. Richard C. Norton
notes that it is variously ascribed to Edward Morton or Basil Hood. That version was
the version for over two generations, and when other writers finally offered new Eng-
lish, Sonia and Marsovia vied with the original names or variants. Joan Sutherland
widowed as Anna from Pontevedria. The original text to Die Lustige Witwe, while were
crediting, was by Victor Lon and Leo Stein from a French play by one of Offenbachs
main collaborators, Henri Meilhac.
T H E W I T C H OF T H E W O O D A N D T H E B A M B O O T R E E
In short, The Merry Widow was a rebuke to comic opera for having left all
its fun to grotesques. The Widows most immediate effect lay in its innova-
tive merchandising, leading to the Merry Widow hat, the Merry Widow
corset, the Merry Widow cigar. It was a national craze. During the shows
post-Broadway tour, the Chicago Sunday American ran a cartoon on the
matter entitled When the Town Goes Crazy, exaggerating the Widow spi-
noffs: a prizefighter enduring the Merry Widow Jolt, a bar offering the
Merry Widow free lunch, even the Merry Widow peanut stand.
However, the shows long-range effect was to inspire more ambitious
characterization of the love plot in the Big Sing musicals (as opposed to
musical comedy). One senses the inspiration of Sonia and Danilo in the
many bickering sweethearts of twenties operetta, where the temperature
runs so high that lovers may be politically hostilenot simply quarrelsome
but representatives of dueling ideals.
Broadways producers suddenly took to patrolling European capitals in
search of the next Merry Widow, though they usually settled for German and
Austrian hits in their London versions. Thus, producer Charles Frohman
gave New York the British adaptation of Leo Falls Die Dollarprinzessin (The
Dollar Princess) in 1909, while trying to edge the piece into Merry Widow
territory. For one thing, his leading man was New Yorks Danilo, Donald
Brian, and Frohman interpolated numbers designed to beef up Falls music
with Lehresque interpolations. These included a march sextet by Jerome
Kern and the Widows translator, Adrian Ross, Red, White and Blue, whose
spirit echoed that of the Widows march septet, Women.
And The Dollar Princess was a hit. Still, nothing challenged the Widows
eminence as a romantic lark at once stimulated and soothed by music. There
were to be no other Widows, not even from Lehr. As Ive said, the 1920s was
operettas heydayyet Paganini and Der Zarewitsch, still among Lehrs most
popular scores, from 1925 and 1927, respectively, were not given here. Das
Land des Lchelns (The Land of Smiles), Lehrs second most successful piece,
with a Japanese background even more ceremonial than The Mikados, closed
twice on the road here till it finally turned up on Broadway in 1946 as Yours Is
My Heart. Even with the essential Lehr tenor, Richard Tauber, it limped
along for a month before giving up. But then, central-European operetta had
crashed because of anti-German sentiment during World War I. American
operetta might dare a German setting with success, as well see. But operetta
written by the enemy was more or less verboten and never really recovered.
Indeed, as an odd footnote to all of this, Charles Frohman went down on the
Lusitania, sunk by a German U-boat in 1915.
English musicals, on the other hand, were very much a part of American
theatregoing in the Second Age. Formally, they were all of a kind, billed as
( ) The Second Age
either musical comedy or musical play yet aiming at a kind of comic opera
interrupted by music-hall turns. Characters would use a few non sequitur cue
lines and a crowbar to insert a specialty number into the continuity, giving
the shows a Gilbert and Sullivan air cut with the latest in show-biz smarts.
Composers Sidney Jones, Lionel Monckton, Leslie Stuart, and Ivan Caryll led
this corner of the repertory, and they must be faulted for allowing the G & S
format to devolve. In place of Gilberts wit was a kind of functional clever-
ness, vitality without imagination, and Sullivans keen characterizations gave
way to all romantic leads sounding alike, all sidekicks sounding alike, and
all choruses sounding alike. Considerthose of you who know the Savoy
titleshow different Patiences twenty love-sick maidens sound from Rud-
digores chirping bridesmaids. Or think, in HMS Pinafore, of the sailors shyly
quizzical Gotcha! and the Captains answering hesitation that Sullivan slips
into his setting of What, never? and Well, hardly ever!
Its precision: and now it was over, replaced by, for example, The Inter-
fering Parrot, in Jones The Geisha (1896, U.K. and U.S.), one of those
self-contained story numbers, beginning, A parrot once resided in a pretty
gilded cage. Its pure vaudeville, with no connection to The Geishas convo-
luted plot concerning Brits in Japan. Stuarts Florodora (1899; 1900), on
romantic and business dealings surrounding a perfume made on a Philip-
pine island, has a few, too. Willie Was a Gay Boy, another story song, sung
by the sidekick, Angela (May Edouin in New York), includes a whistling
solo, first by Angela, then by an offstage tenor, and at last by the chorus, all
jammed up in the wings as the stage manager cued them in.
Story songs were handy because they could be plopped in just about any-
where. Monckton and Carylls jointly composed The Girls of Gottenberg
(1907; 1909) is notable for the only New York appearance by Londons big-
gest musical star, Moncktons wife, Gertie Millar, in her original role of
Mitzi, and for being based on a real-life incident. Londons musicals were
anything but realistic, being obsessed with the mating of shopgirls and
lords. However, in 1906 a Prussian shoemaker passed himself off as an
army captain and, given the German reverence for military uniforms, he
briefly took over the town of Kpenick. This is the plot of The Girls of
Gottenbergso how does the number Two Little Sausages fit into the
plot? Well, you know, Germans do like sausages. Monckton composed the
song, a coy duet in gavotte tempo, to his own lyrics:
the book, rhymed the lyrics, composed the music, capitalized and staged
the production, often starred in it, and stopped just short of running the
candy counter. He was genial with those he liked and scathing with those he
didnt, Irish-American in the most robust sensemerrily Irish and fiercely
Americanand an uncanny combination of underplaying and cavorting.
The Cohans we know from James Cagney (in Yankee Doodle Dandy) and Joel
Grey (in George M!) are incorrect. The real Cohan filled the playhouse with a
confidential delivery at times no louder than a stage whisper. He spoke
rather than shouted, much less sang, his numbers. He didnt bark at the
public: he drew them in with such controlling subtlety that, when he read
lines, the house got quiet enough to hear lint collecting in pants cuffs. His
stagings were showy; he wasnt. Rather, he was unpredictable. And it was
Cohan who initiated the revolution in American popular song that led to
Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, then to Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Vincent
Youmans, Rodgers and Hart, and all the others. New Yorks critics found
him irritating at first, then put up with him, and finally learned to appre-
ciate him, because, whatever one thought of his curious blend of urban con-
ceit and country corn, he was unique in a business that loves the unique
above all. Its not an overstatement to call George M. Cohan the soul of
musical comedy when it first took on its enduring form, right now, in the
early years of the Second Age.
True, Cohan worked partly in the spoken drama as well; he even reached
the American actors summit of playing Eugene ONeill (in his one comedy,
Ah, Wilderness!). But Cohan made his history in musical farce, even if by
1900 the notion of a spoken play with a few songs had become outmoded.
Cohan got one hit out of the genre: Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway
(1906) has only a handful of numbers, and the middle act (of three) has no
singing at all.
However, this was not enough musical for Cohan, who would never hoof
when he could prance or walk when he could strutand his musicals were
extensions of himself. Cohans shows were stuffed with song and dance
Cohanized, to use his own term. Unfortunately, he was basically writing
the same show over and over, because his themes were, really, nags. The
Cohan material is like a high school seniors yearbook blurb. Pet Peeve: the
affected, the pretentious, the disloyal, the opportunistic. Definitive Line:
When a fellows on the level with a girl thats on the square. Favorite
People: my mother, my father, and my sister. Most Admires: George
M. Cohan.
A Cohan show was fast and dancey, and so reveled in its musicalcomedy-
ness that characters sometimes commented on the action to the audience.
Of course, they were all plotted around Cohans obsessions. For instance,
T H E W I T C H OF T H E W O O D A N D T H E B A M B O O T R E E
the horizon. Johnny awaits a signal that the vindicating evidence has
been found, the firing of a rocket on board the ship. Leaning on a pier-
head, facing upstage, Johnny watches the boat steam from stage right
to the left, and, just as he and we begin to despair, the rocket goes off.
And Johnny brings down the act curtain with a last chorus of Give My
Regards To Broadway, calling out rather than singing the words, swag-
gering rather than dancing, the Cohan hero and the Cohan republic
bonded in a thrill of self-affirmation. When Cohan built his own the-
atre, at Broadway and Forty-Third Street, in 1911, he decorated the in-
terior with paintings showing great moments from his shows. There
was one over each of the three side boxes, left and right, and another
overlooked the street doors. But the one over the proscenium, right in
the center of George M. Cohans Theatre where everyone could see it,
preserved that vindicating act finale of Little Johnny Jones.
Starting in vaudeville as Master Georgie of The Four Cohans, George got
to Broadway at the age of twenty-two, in The Governors Son (1901), an ex-
pansion of one of the familys vaudeville sketches. Cohan naturally took his
family along with him, and there was a role for his then wife, Ethel Levey.
The run was typical: a mere 32 performances, though the piece came back
in 1906 for another two months. But that was New York, a tough stand;
Cohans key public lived in the provinces.
The roadthe old term for the various bookings in the life of a pro-
duction beyond its New York seasonwas still very active in the early
1900s, before movies, radio, and at last television contracted it. A show
might play Broadway for two or three months but last for years on tour.
Still, to a man like Cohan, at once sentimental and ambitious, the Road was
an adjunct to the part of show business that mattered, for the very word
Broadway was his own personal brag. To stroll through the theatre dis-
trict and accept the congratulations of the gang at Forty-Second Street
and to mingle with the old time throng, as he sings in Give My Regards
To Broadway, was to feel love from ones peers. Not from journalists and,
worse, intellectuals, but from show folk: real people.
In time, Cohans shows earned longer runs in New York. He was a Pres-
ence, and his song hits were big, virtually national anthems. To stabilize
the business side of his art, Cohan joined up with Sam H. Harris, one of
the smartest of the new breed of producer. Cohan & Harris became a
favored brand even before F. Ziegfeld, Jr., not for spectacle but for
showmanship. It was characteristic of Cohan to be not just partner but
best friends with Harris: everything was personal with Cohan. And in
1919, when Equity shut Broadway down in a strike for recognition and
T H E W I T C H OF T H E W O O D A N D T H E B A M B O O T R E E
Harris went, as Cohan saw it, soft on the union, Cohan broke up the
partnership.
Even Cohans plays were personal; thats why he was in them. Again, he
was the Yankee Doodle Dandy. He even took over Victor Moores role in
Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway, in a 1912 revival, because Cohan was Kid
Burns, too: and George Washington Jr. and The Man Who Owns Broadway
and The Yankee Prince, to cite other Cohan titles.
Cohan could get an entire show out of nothing more than Romeo and
Juliet and a spoof of Americans who flock to Europe because its rilly so
European, my dear. The Cohan & Harris Comedians in a Musical Frivolity
was the billing for The American Idea (1908), in which the Dutchman Bud-
meyer seeks a continental nobleman for his daughter and the Irishman Sul-
livan wants a princess for his son. (The kids love each other, but when did
fathers in search of high-hat Society, propriety care about something as
natural as love?) A sidekick playing Mr. Fix-it decides to get involved:
The Mysterious Man retains this omniscient voice to conclude the plot,
when the two kids end up together and the sidekick announces his own
marriage. Forbidding it, the Mysterious Man unmasks himself as
a Bumble-Bee (who proves faithless to his loving clover flower), even The
Tale of the Seashell.
Most popular of all was the rag number; musical comedy wasnt musical
comedy without one, though rags found their way into comic opera as well.
Madame Sherry (1910)so gently musicalized that its hit tune was a sweet
little Polka franaise Evry Little Movement (has a meaning all its own),
suffered a rag insert. Karl Hoschna and Otto Hauerbach wrote Madame
Sherry, but it was Phil Schwartz and Harold Atteridge who pepped the show
up with The Dublin Rag, with a bagpipes-like droning in the bass and the
inevitable mention of the Blarney Stone. Oh, oh, you cutey, the lyric ran,
you Irish beauty.
A longer-lasting genre was the comic noveltynot a character number
such as Kiss Me, Kates Always True To You in My Fashion, but a chance
frolic bobbing up out of nowhere, usually with a trick title made of cocka-
mamie logic. Try this taste of Who Paid the Rent For Mrs. Rip Van Winkle
(when Rip Van Winkle went away)?, from The Belle Of Bond Street (1914), a
revision of an English show, The Girl From Kays (1902; 1903):
The most useful of these song types was the New Dance Sensation, be-
cause it provisioned some smart exhibition hoofing or even the ensemble
dance riot that became de rigueur in the 1910s. By a wonderful irony, the
New Dance Sensation always promised to give instructions in how to per-
form the latest ballroom craze and then blithely said next to nothing about
the actual steps. Even the decryptors of Bletchley Park, who conquered the
German Enigma Code in World War II, would not have been able to crack
the secret message in, for example, The Broadway Glide, from Ziegfeld
Follies of 1912. Bert Grant and A. Seymour Brown wrote this tribute to the
swing and sway of Times Square:
Okay, lets all do it. Tell us how. And Brown proceeds to praise the dance
without describing it. You will want to take it up, take it up, take it up, he
crowsbut the execution remains an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
They were all like thatthe walk, the toddle, the hop. Rudolf Friml of-
fered The Dixiana Rise, Jerome Kern The Edinboro Wriggle. Even the
( ) The Second Age
staid Reginald De Koven got into the act. He may even have started it: The
Boulevard Glide, from The Beauty Spot (1909), could be the earliest ex-
ample of the form.
By far the most common of these genres was the so-called coon song
or, really, the whole range of stereotyped minority-group numbers, taking
in also Irish, Italian, Jewish, and German subjects. They were easy to write,
because they came with a prefabricated vocabularythe Swanee, the
shamrock, spaghett, Cohen owes me ninety-seven dollars, Herman and his
beer saloonand, like the pastiche numbers, they broke up the very limited
texture of Second Age composition with novel sounds. The Wizard of Oz of-
fered Daisy Donohue and Good Bye Fedora, but it was the coon song
that got into everything, with its quaint negro dialect and ragtime flour-
ishes. Were not surprised to find Ma Starlight Queen in The Rogers Bros.
in Harvard (1902), because like the others in the series it billed itself as a
vaudeville farce and thus served as a carry-all for every current in show
biz. But even comic opera made room for these southern-idyll numbers,
where they might have seemed like curiosities but for their go-everywhere
popularity. The Idols Eyea Victor Herbert title, rememberhad Talk
About Yo Luck, and the avian Woodland featured If You Love Me, Lindy,
albeit in a rather extravagated vocal arrangement.
These three titles were written by each shows authors, but very often the
genre numbers were the work of outside contributors. These of course were
the interpolations, routinely denounced by historians as an affront to inte-
gration. But the interpolation was likely to be the song hit that propelled a
show to success through sheer musical publicity. Producers and music pub-
lishers conspired to boost business in this way, for the piano and sheet-music
concerns stood among Americas most powerful interests. Until the accultur-
ation of radio in the 1920s, the only way most Americans could hear music
was by going to the theatre or making it themselves on the home keyboard.
So the piano, music sheets, and Broadway were in an essential alignment.
Further, the sheets themselves were a glory of the age, king-size at
eleven by fourteen inches and bearing attractive colored covers, an art in
themselves. And note that a singer who introduced a song would appear on
those covers, taking his star billing right into folks homes.
Thus, Broadways singing leads also supported the interpolation system.
But Victor Herbert went to war with itwith, really, Marie Cahill while she
was interpolating in It Happened in Nordland (1904). Herbert was in the pit
one night, proudly leading his orchestra in his music. And let it be said that
he troubled to compose, to Glen MacDonoughs lyrics, a specialty number
for Cahill, three strophes of sarcasm called Shes a Very Dear Friend Of
Mine. It showed off Cahills comic gifts, mocking a chum singing Carmens
T H E W I T C H OF T H E W O O D A N D T H E B A M B O O T R E E
* This was the old term for talent too rich for sweetheart roles. The nearest modern
parallel would be Barbra Streisand or Gilda Radner, performing Their Very Own Televi-
sion Special in their bedroom at the age of ten as they dreamed of changing the rules
for woman-lead show biz.
( ) The Second Age
on her face as she holds center stage of the art of musical comedy. Its a great
song and a great performance, and it tells us why interpolations were so
popular: the rest of a score might be workmanlike, but this was music.
Cahill and Ring could be seen as decendents of Lydia Thompson, but
she was a revolutionary while Cahill and Ring were mainstream. Theatre
audiences in Thompsons youth were predominantly male, enjoying an
atmosphere heedless of social and religious cautions. Cahill and Ring
played to gender-equal, middle-class family audiences. To put it another
way, Thompsons stage was primitive in every respect, back in the First
Age of Black Crooks and Humpty Dumptys; Cahill and Ring are modern
enough to have played, respectively, in shows by Cole Porter and the
Gershwins.
At the same time, the Second Age saw an expansion of the talent pool from
Lydia Thompsons day, in which immigrants or their children began to chal-
lenge the natives. Raymond Hitchcock and Fred Stone and David Montgom-
ery represented traditional theatre casting. Al Jolson represented the
newcomershe was actually born in Eastern Europeand along with his
coevals Fanny Brice and Eddie Cantor he often cast a more observant eye upon
American culture than Americans did: because the outsider has perspective.
Like Hitchcock and Montgomery and Stoneand George M. Cohan, for
that matterJolson played comic roles, where personality mattered more
than vocal tone. Of course, Jolson was a singer, touted by some as the voice
of the age. But his timbre was rough, even unattractive. Worse, he relent-
lessly added distracting extra words to kick a lyric along, and he so toyed
with note values that songs he introduced were not properly heard till
someone else got to them.
All the same, his delivery was intensely charismatic, with a hectoring
sell it to the last row in the balcony address that embraced the entire au-
ditorium. Even while singing, he danced, clapped his hands, and, famously,
knelt with arms wide and beseeching, crying, Mammy! Youve heard of
flop sweat. Jolson had hit sweat, tearing his ego apart before your eyes the
better to thrill you. Cheer him, and hed cry, You aint heard nothin yet!
as he ripped into the next one.
Playing in blackface as Gusa stable boy, servant, or simply a vagabond
wisenheimerJolson starred in The Whirl Of Society (1912), The Honey-
moon Express (1913), Dancing Around (1914), Sinbad (1918), and Big Boy
(1925), among other Winter Garden hits for the Shuberts. The black
makeup marks the influence of the minstrel revue (and the jokes were
corny, too). But these were, in fact, book musicals, in which a subservient
supporting cast sang the very derivative core numbers while Jolson reveled
in interpolations.
T H E W I T C H OF T H E W O O D A N D T H E B A M B O O T R E E
In Robinson Crusoe, Jr. (1916), Gus was a Long Island socialites chauffeur,
who joins his boss in a dream of surviving stranded on a desert island. The
shows composer was Sigmund Romberg, but Jolson didnt sing much Rom-
berg. Jolson sang specialties, throwing them in and out as he fancied: Yaaka
Hula Hickey Dula, Down Where the Swanee River Flows, Tillie Titwil-
low, Now Hes Got a Beautiful Girl (but hes worried to death all the time),
and Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night? The
last-named, a frantic one-step, epitomizes the insert number in its self-
sufficient, narrative-defying gaiety. To hear Jolsons 78 is to imagine him
prancing and whooping it up as he envisions the social opportunities:
Big as Jolson was, one star was bigger, on Broadway if not in Hollywood.
She, too, could sing and danceboth hoofing and ballet. And she could act.
Further, she was a looker, in the modest yet radiant girl-next-door mode,
with a fabled stage presence that lit up the house the second she entered:
Marilyn Miller. Raised in a vaudevillian family, Miller was just shy of fifteen
when she hit Broadway, in a Shubert revue. Florenz Ziegfeld stole her away
three years later for the Follies, then repositioned her as a heroine of story
shows. The first of these was the emblematic smash hit of the Second Age,
though it premiered at the start of the Third: Sally (1920).
Everything about this show was old, but everything else, so to say, was
new, for Ziegfeld was a revolutionary conservative. Miller wasnt Sallys
star, but rather its co-star, opposite comedian Leon Errol, as a waiter who
helps orphan Sally attain show-biz stardom and a Society scion in the love
plot. So it was the old story of the sweetheart and the clown, the very es-
sence of the musical. Before directors and choreographers, before even the
notion of a newly written score, there was Lydia Thompson and George
L. Fox. What Ziegfeld did was to bind their very different arts in a single
work, just as his Follies revues centered on showgirls and comics.
Sally was Ziegfelds first story musical bearing author credits we recog-
nize today: book by Guy Bolton, music by Jerome Kern (with a ballet by
Victor Herbert), lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse and B. G. De Sylva (among
others). It had originally been a small piececalled, in fact, The Little Thing.
Kern, Bolton, and Wodehouse had planned it as part of their series for the
Princess Theatre (a landmark genre we will get to presently). But Ziegfeld
never put on anything small. He saw the musical as something important
and demanding, glamorous above all. Small was real life; the musical was a
( ) The Second Age
fantasy. The leading lady must be not only a great entertainer but an ideal
of youthful beauty, and the leading man not a hunk but a comica great
one, with a distinctive style. It was a heterosexuals golden dream of art,
where the woman is his date and the man a harmless accessory instead of a
rival. And when Sally had concluded its 570 performances at the New Am-
sterdam and toured with its New York cast virtually intact for another year
and a half, it became synonymous with the term smash hit. What My Fair
Lady was in the 1950s, Sally was in the 1920s.
It was a great show, but not a great work. The score gives the heroine
three wonderful numbers: Wild Rose (a big scene, as she dances with a
line of tuxedoed men while disguised as a Russian femme fatale at a Society
party), Look For the Silver Lining (the Cinderella credo number), and
Whip-Poor-Will (a nostalgic duet with the Society boy). Yet the last two
had been written for another project, and the rest of Sallys score is third
division. The title number is an idiotic mess; when Warner Bros. filmed
Sally as Technicolor super-special, in 1929, with Miller opposite Joe
E. Brown, they slipped in a new title song, by studio writers, and its a vast
improvement.
If Hollywood journeymen can outrank Jerome Kern, the musicals great-
est composer in the period after Victor Herberts heyday, somethings
wrong. And what went wrong, really, was Ziegfeld. His focus was always on
the beauty of it all, not on composers. Ironically, Kerns greatest score
and, to that point, Broadways greatest musicalwas a Ziegfeld produc-
tion, Show Boat. It arrived a mere seven years after Sallybut by then
Ziegfeld realized that the theatregoing public had discovered a new essen-
tial in the making of musicals: a first-division score.
Still, where does composition end and producing begin? Who really
wrote Wild RoseKern and his lyricist, Clifford Grey, or Ziegfeld and his
notion that Marilyn must get an exhibition number with the chorus boys?
Look For the Silver Lining and Whip-Poor-Will were the beauty of Sally/
Marilyn; Wild Rose was her power: as the boys adore her and she basks in
and further provokes that adoration while leading them in the dance and
singing in her oddly rich soprano, top-heavy with extra tone on the notes
leading up to her trusty high F. Did Ziegfeld commission this galaat
times frenziedshowpiece, or did Kern and Grey come up with it on their
own? Was Sally written or Ziegfelded? Does Wild Rose sound like Sally or
does Marilyn sound like Wild Rose?
There is footage of Federico Fellini directing a scene of his Satyricon (1970)
involving a sexual get-to-know-you among Martin Potter, Hiram Keller, and
Hylette Adolphe, in which we see Fellini sculpting his art with commands and
gestures. Hiram, su, he urges, his hand bringing Keller up from a reclining
T H E W I T C H OF T H E W O O D A N D T H E B A M B O O T R E E
position, and Martin, giu, he coaxes, his hand now smoothing Potter down.
Shooting silent, as was standard in Italy at the time, Fellini can substantiate
his vision shot by shot, literally making the movieand thats how Ziegfeld
made his musicals.
Nevertheless, the composer and lyricist are about to take over the his-
tory, right in the middle of the era of Ziegfeld and Miller. But first, let us
backtrack to trace the rise of the important score and how it redesigned the
way a musical told its story.
w
CHAPTER
Victor Herbert
I f Harry B. Smith was more or less the dependable but uninspired lion
king of librettist-lyricists, Henry Blossom, nine years Smiths junior, was
the young tiger. Though Blossom tended to write for the more accom-
plished composers in comic opera, he had a musical-comedy mentality. The
aforementioned Yankee Consul that couldnt decide whether it was a Big
Sing show or a Zany Fun show was Blossoms, and on his eight collabora-
tions with Victor Herbert, Blossom often led his partner into the crazy
stuff.
Their most lasting hit, The Red Mill (1906), is in fact a musical comedy
containing a comic-opera love plot and a haunted mill complete with a
mezzo direly intoning The Legend Of the Mill in e minor, Molto misterioso.
The musical-comedy identification inheres particularly in the two leads, for
this was the follow-up title for Montgomery and Stone after The Wizard of
Oz. They played Americans stranded in a Dutch village, unable to leave till
they pay for their lodgings. Once again, it was the Americans in Exoti-
cland trope. Stone was Con Kidder and Montgomery Kid Conner, out
of the grotesque Oz look and free to extemporize in rehearsals till they ran
the action, though they actually had little to do with the plot per se, con-
cerned with young lovers, old lovers, and that looming, cursed mill.
Lets look at Act One, pausing, as we enter the Knickerbocker Theatre,
on Broadway and Thirty-Eighth (and long since demolished) to admire pro-
ducer Charles Dillinghams unique PR manifestation of a windmill with
moving arms, outlined in electric light. It was Broadways first mobile illu-
mination, and the talk it inspired supposedly contributed to the shows 274
performances.
( )
V I C T OR H E R B E R T
After the overture, the curtain rises on one of those opening choruses,
as Dutch boys paint and Dutch girls model for them. Various principals
then enjoy establishing numbers. The soubrette, Tina, sings with her girl
friends a quick march, Mignonette, in praise of the immense social suc-
cess of a bleached brunette with a figure that would make a saint for-
get. The number has nothing to do with the story, but hearing from the
soubrettesecondary to the heroine but a livelier personality, the fore-
runner of Ado Annie, Brigadoons Meg Brockie, and Kiss Me, Kates Lois
Laneis always fun.
Next come two authoritarians, the owner of the Red Mill Inn and the
towns Burgomaster. Theyre both fathers: respectively of Tina and of the
heroine, Gretchen. The plot thickens, for Gretchen loves a ship captain im-
probably named Doris (this is always changed in revivals), but her father
has implacably betrothed her to the district governor. Comic villains, the
pair nevertheless enjoy a swinging duet, You Never Can Tell About a
Woman, running through the stereotypical talking points of the day
shes unreasonable and emotional, yet rules the world:
The men may fancy still, that they have the strongest will
But the women have the strongest wont!
earnest, Henry Higgins is reclassifying Eliza, and two Mormon elders are
converting Uganda. Even when The Red Mill s sweethearts finally duet, in
The Isle of Our Dreams, the story is all but motionless, especially when, to
fill out the act, Herbert and Blossom contrive an offstage automobile colli-
sion between a Brit and his six daughters and a Frenchwoman and her six
sons. All of them enter for an ensemble, the madame storming at the En-
glishman in French till the twelve kids get friendly in a gavotte, When
Youre Pretty and the World Is Fair (Why be bothered by a thought or care!).
All told, the music is wonderful, and Montgomery and Stone, freed from
Ozs busy narrative, gad about playing sketch comedy and passing daffy
remarks about Dutch treats and arranged marriages. Later, in Act Two,
they will weight-train The Red Mills skinny plot by disguising themselves,
first as an Italian organ-grinder duo and then as Sherlock Holmes and
Dr. Watsonbut just now comes the first-act finale, wherein Stone pulls
off his second acrobatic stunt. To separate Gretchen and Doris, the Burgo-
master has locked her in the haunted mill. As night falls, Herbert reprises
snatches of the acts tunes while the audience enjoys the shows first helping
of genuine plot suspense. Surely someone is going to rescue Gretchen
and that would be Doris, right? After all, hes the hero. A flunkey guards the
mill door, but he finally falls asleep. Ha! Time for Doris to tiptoe in and ...
noGretchen appears at an upper window with a Big Ballad Coming Up
look on her face. The number is Moonbeams, one of Herberts loveliest
melodies, with a piquant little trick in the refrain: the jumpy sixteenth
notes Herbert often used as breathless little syncopations. Herberts biog-
rapher Neil Gould points out something extra special in the verse, a replica
of the accompaniment Schubert employs in Gretchen am Spinnrade, the
Spinning Song from Goethes Faust. Is this portrayal of the two Gretch-
ens, Gould asks, perhaps one of the great musical puns in the literature?
Now the townsfolk gather, demanding that Gretchen be released. How-
ever, no one but the audience knows that Stone has just pulled off his sec-
ond stunt: rescuing Gretchen by holding her in one arm, catching on to one
of the windmills moving wings with the other arm, and sailing to earth to
hide. (Doris is nowhere to be seen in all this; apparently hes a lover, not a
fighter.) Meanwhile, the Burgomaster has entered the mill, turns back, and
cries, Gone! The chorus echoes him, and the orchestra bangs out the mu-
sic of the Whistle It dance as the curtain falls on the only thirty seconds
of plot in the whole act.
Almost nothing happens in the second act as well, except the Governor
arrives to sing one of the shows outstanding numbers, Every Day Is
Ladies Day With Me. Montgomery and Stone get their big number, too, a
Bowery waltz called The Streets of New York, during which the pair put
V I C T OR H E R B E R T
on an informal boxing exhibition that Stone had worked out with ring
champ John L. Sullivan. Still, it is the Governor and the widow who enjoy
the scores most interesting number, Because Youre You. Its distinction is
a continuous filigree of interlocking lines, so that the last note of her first
line occurs on the first note of his.* Clearly, Governor and widow will form
a couple, so the authors simply declare Doris the heir to a fortune, the usual
musical-comedy solution to a courtship problem, and the curtain falls on
one of the busiest non-stories of all time.
Producer Dillingham billed The Red Mill as a musical comedy, and he
was right. Today, Victor Herbert is the CEO of operetta, but while he did
start off in comic opera, he worked in every available form (including re-
vue) from Babes in Toyland on. Further, his phenomenal national presence
as the man who spanned classical and popular musicwho else wrote for
both the Metropolitan Opera and Paul Whitemans band?credentialed
him to authenticate each of these forms through his unique approach to
them. His coeval D. W. Griffith was to American cinema as Victor Herbert
was to the musical: grammarian, innovator, and debate-club coach. He is
sometimes praised as having led the musicals transition from its European
roots to a more American sound, for instance in his many ragtime numbers.
The Red Mill has one, Good-a-Bye, John, for Montgomery and Stone
during their Italian sequence.
However, Herbert had been singing in his own style almost from the
beginning, with a heavy use of rubato and, again, that fastidious sprinkling
of sixteenth notes that is less European than Herbertian. More important,
he reshaped the very structure of American song, shortening the verse and
lengthening the chorus till his heirs, from Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern to
Rodgers and Hart and the Gershwins, had a more dramatically protean for-
mat to work with. Looking at it as Before and After, the Before was Yip-I-
Addy-I-Ay! and the After was My Heart Stood Still.
Herbert has been overpraised in one very limited way. Till the recent in-
terest in the orchestration of musicals, it was common knowledge that only
Victor Herbert and, later, Kurt Weill scored their shows. This is incorrect.
* The form became popular starting in the 1940s, a specialty of Frank Loesser in
particular, as in Baby, Its Cold Outside, Make a Miracle, Happy To Make Your Ac-
quaintance. (Loessers protgs Richard Adler and Jerry Ross tried it in The Pajama
Games Small Talk.) But Because Youre You, two generations earlier, might well be
the first of its genre.
This number has been dogged by a tale that it was actually written by others. How-
ever, it was published under Herberts name at a time when interpolations were invari-
ably brought out under their true authors byline. The notion that Herbert needed to
lift a tune instead of drawing from his bottomless well of melody is so absurd it does
not bear pursuing.
( ) The Second Age
Italian and composed in the soaring lines that would serve as the lingua
franca of twenties operetta, with its Indian Love Call and Softly, As in a
Morning Sunrise. Yet The Princess Pat makes do with a silly story about
an American (Eleanor Painter) who has married a prince and does a little
flirting now and then.
Indian Love Call and Softly belong to tales of murder and revolution,
respectively; their music soars because their narratives do. But Pats li-
brettist, the redoubtable Henry Blossom, gave Herbert a lot of Europe in
the storyline, for Pat is an Irish girl and her husband is Italianand Eu-
rope, to Herbert, meant lots of that extra music that could run away with
a show, turning a slightly romantic comedy into a romance. Herbert and
Blossom gave the shows jester, Al Shean, the prancing I Wish I Was an
Island in an Ocean of Girls, but that Neapolitan Love Song, starting as a
wheedling barcarolle and moving into a passionate tango in the chorus,
really sets the shows tone, for the evening was studded with grand ensem-
bles and high-flying vocal lines. Perhaps Herbert felt a tale of the idle rich
getting into idiotic mischief needed a musical buildup, strengthening his
characters with strong music.
Conversely, in Miss Dolly Dollars (1905), a musical comedy about an
American heiress adventuring in England and France, Herbert mixed just a
bit of high-end singing into a fun-filled, snazzy score. His heroine, Lulu
Glaser as Dorothy Gay, the daughter of a Condensed Soup magnate and
catnip to fortune hunters, was a less expansive singer than Eleanor Painter
in the first place. Still, the whole Dolly Dollars score is amusing rather than
lyrical, as when Dolly duets with a German Army officer who speaks no
English. Harry B. Smith gave them a bilingual lyric in which they converse
using those constipated sentences favored by phrase booksHas your
cousin the shoes of the sailor? and the like. And of course Herbert had to
include a ragtime number, American Music (Tis Better Than Old Parsifal
To Me), always a sign that the show in question waslike The Red Mill
essentially satiric rather than romantic.
In other words, Herbert towered over his coevals because he rational-
ized the helter-skelter musical. Even extravaganza, the most undisciplined
of the genres, seems almost Tolstoyan in its organization when Herbert
writes one. True, Babes in Toylands score gets a bit vaudevillian at times.
But now comes a Herbert extravaganza that enjoys almost absolute story
unity, Little Nemo (1908).
Remember that number in The Wizard of Oz, Little Nemo and His Bear,
on Winsor McCays comic-strip hero? Each night, the youngster would
dream that he was joining his beloved Princess in the kingdom of Slumber-
land, sometimes to attend wondrous balls but sometimes undergoing
( ) The Second Age
* Technically the St. Louis Municipal Theatre Association, an outdoor venue seating
ten thousand with an annual season devoted especially to operettas, including the less
famous ones.
V I C T OR H E R B E R T
belle! he announces, and Herbert follows her insecurity and his confi-
dence, jumping back and forth as, only now, she learns how their love will
affect her life. She fears it, and, suddenly sensitive to her view of things, he
asks what future she would wish for. Mind you, all this is sung, and now we
go into Tempo di Valse Lente, for her Id like to go to some land far away ...
Lo, she persuades him to see it her way, and now they join in the Cricket
on the Hearth music proper, playful but Molto moderato, capped by a pan-
tomimic dance. Its a remarkable scene, challenging genre while reinvent-
ing, perfecting genre. But Herbert never gets credit for this because he
appeared too early in the history. All the attention goes to Kern, Berlin, and
the other Golden Agers.
Except in this book. If anything, Herbert is the animating figure who
urged the Kerns and Berlins to launch their own reinventions, to turn
musical storytelling into something realistic, intricate, vivid. If Little
Nemo is Herbert in musical comedy and Sweethearts his matrix for
twenties operetta, his very little known The Madcap Duchess (1913) gives
us Herbert the master of dramatic techniqueunfortunately in a melod-
ically underperforming score. The scene is France in 1720, and the title
role is another of those tempestuous heroines, for Seraphina (Ann Swin-
burne) is less madcap than intrepida horsewoman, a mistress of sword-
play, and resourceful enough to join a commedia dellarte troupe to keep
things lively in the second act. The book and lyrics, by David Stevens and
Justin Huntly McCarthy, adhered to the Zounds! school, as Seraphina
impulsively tries to save a marquise from marriage to a prince and ends
up falling for him herself. Okay, we were expecting thatbut Herbert lav-
ished upon this tale a meticulous musical narration, filled with vocal acro-
batics, turns on a dime, and special effects tied to the physical action
onstage. Thus, the capocomico of the commedia players has an exhibition
number, That Is Art, in which he demonstrates how a true thespian
never really leaves the stage: life is a performance, as when he takes a
pinch of snuff and resists the urge to sneeze. Herbert seizes the moment:
in the music, you can hear the sneeze trying to burst forth and the actor
blithely shutting it down.
Literally no other Broadway composer in 1913 was capable of such niche
evocations, and The Madcap Duchess was replete with delicious touches. But
somehow Herbert failed to plumb his well of melody as he did in The Red
Mill and Sweethearts. Even The Madcap Duchess designated hit tune, Love
Is a Story Thats Old, plugged throughout the evening, is third division.
After damagingly respectful reviews, a decent run of 71 performances,
and the usual tour, The Madcap Duchess faded away while The Red Mills The
Streets of New York and Sweethearts clippety-clopping Jeannette and
( ) The Second Age
Her Little Wooden Shoes became wallpaper in the living room of popular
song. The two shows even enjoyed smash-hit revivals in the 1940s.
In the end, Herbert not only led American theatre music but defined it;
the very sound of the man was everywhere, from the opera house to the
summer park bandshell. Herbert was his generation: that was the problem.
As were about to see, it was the older generation. By Herberts death, in
1924, every single major voice of the Third Agethe Golden Age, from
about 1920 to about 1980had made it to Broadway. Their music did not
sweep Herbert away, noat least, not for two generations. Still, in the
1920s, everybody could be divided into two groups. One was hot. The other
was geeky. The geeky group believed in minding your parents, avoiding sex
before marriage, and listening to Victor Herbert.
People called the hot group jazz.
w
CHAPTER
( )
( ) The Second Age
introduced into popular songwriting, the use of major sevenths and ninths
in the vocal line and little fill-in figures in the accompaniment that extend
melody from the voice to the orchestra and back in tiny concertos. Other
writers made donations to the American Girl From UtahFlorrie the
Flapper, Gilbert the Filbert. And in At Our Tango Tea, by Worton David
and Bert Lee, Joseph Cawthorn got a droll patter number about the misad-
ventures overtaking games and party turns, the entire piece couched in not
tango tempo but quasi-religioso recitative. Nevertheless, the cognoscenti
heard the Kerns above all, and when the Victor Light Opera Company re-
leased its Girl From Utah medleythe standard recording platform for the
dissemination of theatre musicit was almost entirely devoted to the
Kern insert numbers.
The second epochal event of 1914 was Irving Berlins first Broadway
score, Watch Your Step. Bustling about the theatre world in his customary
way, Harry B. Smith collaborated on this one, too, his all but plotless book
relating the adventures of young people out to see the sights of New York
while two of them stand to inherit a fortune and the others try to keep
them from it. Producer Charles Dillingham gave the piece a lavish produc-
tion designed by artists of Vogue magazine, and dancethe latest fad in
American middle-class leisurefilled the stage. Those courtiers of the
ballroom Vernon and Irene Castle were in the cast, and in The Dancing
Teacher, Vernon confessed that he used to get around in crosstown trol-
leys with the plebes till he took up the status of leadership on the dance
floor. And Now I know how it feels to ride in automobiles, he crowed, for
Im a dancing teacher now!
Indeed, Watch Your Step anticipated the era of Agnes de Mille, Jerome
Robbins, and Bob Fosse: the show was obsessed with dance. The attorney
who announces the terms of the will is a tango lawyer, and his high-
fashion chambers are a law office de danse. Other numbers were Show
Us How To Do the Fox Trot, The Syncopated Walk, The Minstrel Parade,
and (Wont you play a) Simple Melody, not a dance number but a quodli-
bet whose strains oppose a soothing ballad to a snazzy rag. The two strains
are then sung simultaneously, in a form Irving Berlin virtually made his
own, but the point is that the gentle tune emphasizes by comparison the
ragged tuneirresistibly terpsichorean, less an invitation to the dance
than a command. As they put it in a coeval Kern number, Ive Got To
Dance: Get up and walk!
Our third innovative show of 1914 is, startling as this may sound, a
Victor Herbert title, The Only Girl, a musical farcical comedy. It was one
of Herberts biggest hits, but a Herbert hit was supposed to leave behind
a beloved score. Think of Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life, Im Falling In
( ) The Second Age
Love With Someone, Italian Street Song, Neath the Southern Moon,
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!, and Naughty Marietta, to cite a single shows
classic titles.
The Only Girl had but one hit, When Youre Away, and the rest of the
music was standard enjoyable Herbert, no more. It was not the score but
the concept of the show itself that made The Only Girl one of the most in-
fluential musicals of all time. Somehow, Herbert and his librettist, Henry
Blossom, came up with the idea of a play with songsmore precisely, a
musical that smashes the handbook. One, they used a small cast without
chorus, and, two, all the numbers leaped up out of the plot continuity with-
out a single diversion. The setting for all three acts was an apartment in
Manhattan, and there wasnt a trace of the legacy-with-a-catch or stolen-
jewels premise that powered up so many modern-dress shows. The Only
Girl even skipped the opening number, relying on a bit of teasy curtain
music, Allegretto scherzandoand there were no act finalettos. For perhaps
the first time, an entire score worked submissively within the storyline:
four bachelors swear to remain single, then three of them marry while the
fourth, a playwright, collaborates with a woman composer on a musical
very like The Only Girl. These last two intend to keep it platonic: Just two
machines and nothing more! they sing:
at an even smaller house, for the Princess held just 299 spectators. Histo-
rians invariably make an extended port of call of the Princess shows and
their small-scaled, lightly realistic contemporary pieces, usually based on
recently produced comedies and set in or around New York City. Much
credit is given to agent Elisabeth Marbury and the Princess managers,
F. Ray Comstock, William Elliott, and Morris Gest. But the Princess formula
used The Only Girl as its model, observing differences of emphasis, not of
kind: every single Princess title was an offshoot of Herbert and Blossoms
invention. But then, as Roseanne Barr puts it, Imitation is the sincerest
form of show business.
Exceptand its a vast exceptThe Only Girl offered more of that Old
Music of marches, 6/8 hippety-hop, and ballads for the parlor musicale,
while the Princess showcased the New Music. The series lasted from 1915
through 1919, when the last title, Zip! Goes a Million, closed in tryout. But
those five years produced the first set of revivable classics, in Very Good
Eddie (1915), Have A Heart (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917), Leave It To Jane (1917),
and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), all with music by Jerome Kern and book by
Guy Bolton and, starting with Have a Heart, book collaboration and all the
lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse. To some writers, the very sound of Kern,
Bolton, and Wodehouse is a summoning term for the true beginnings of
The Musical As We Know It. To them, everything before this trio is just so
much genealogy.
Yet if the Princess shows made a revolution, it was a daffy one, because
every storyline was contentless farce. In Leave It To Jane, the college vamp
beguiles a football ace into playing for the home team. Oh, Boy! and Oh,
Lady! Lady!! track the threatening of an engagement by eccentric inter-
lopers. Moreover, line by line the scripts arent especially funny, though
they do play well, moving faster than most musical-comedy books and ban-
ning the self-contained shtick scenes that infested star-comic shows. A typ-
ical moment, from Oh, Boy!, as a prospective mother-in-law grills her
daughters sweetheart:
Then, too, the song cues often have the air of a public announcement, as
when Oh, Boy!s girl of the Second Couple is about to breeze into her credo
of dating many men, each for his unique qualities, Rolled Into One:
JACKY: Give a man a smile and he thinks that hands him the right to
scowl at every other creature on your visiting list.
( ) The Second Age
refrain. Heres a sample of the first verse of Oh, Boy!s Words Are Not
Needed, as Lou Ellen explains to the chorus gentlemen how sweethearts
know theyre in love:
As the music was usually written first and the lyrics then tacked onto them,
the number was conceived around a bare premisewallflower dreams of
turning vamp, using Cleopatra as a reference pointand Egyptian ef-
fects in the accompaniment. Tiny fanfares launch verse and chorus, with
the squealy havoc we associate with prayer hands under a slithery chin
and the suggestion of drums being pounded. Then, after Wodehouse set
the music to words, so to say, the fantasy was complete: a girl of today
merges with Cleopatra, pastiche as characterization.
This sort of thing was utterly new to the musical, and Kern matched
Wodehouse with innovations of his own. One of Leave It To Janes ballads,
There It Is Again, centers on the heros romanticizing of a particular
melody, and Kern starts the A strains with that tune, no words. Yes, There
it is again, the hero cries in response. And the works hit title, The Sirens
Song, was originally a duet sung against the girls chorus imitating the
plinking of a banjo.
( ) The Second Age
The Princess was a music boxa zealous one, stacking its melodies.
Borodin and Tchaikofsky make guest appearances in Oh, Boy!s score, and
while Kern and Wodehouse created the obligatory college song for Leave It
To Jane, Good Old Atwater, Kern included a medley of real-life college
songs for atmosphereor, lets say, accuracy. Perhaps he was growing im-
patient with the flimsy realism of musicals in general and wanted to au-
thenticate them, substantiate them. Certainly, as were about to see, his
music became more expansive after this, as if to swell the frivolous story-
lines with a musical realism, haunting and emotional, humanism em-
bedded in not what the story did but how the characters might feel in an
important story.
Still, the Princess did run dramaturgical experiments as well. For in-
stance, Oh, Lady! Lady!!like The Only Girl before itraised its curtain on
a bit of music but no vocal of any kind. The Only Girl then programmed a
rousing number after the first book scene, The More I See of Others, Dear,
The Better I Like You. Sung by the vivacious actress character, Patsy,
marked Animato, and hustled along with rumbles and syncopations in the
accompaniment, it was designed to enthuse the public, sock its energy level
up to that of the actors.
Oh, Lady! Lady!!, however, followed its book scene with a gentle charm
song, Bill. It was a bold defiance of protocol and one of the best songs
anyone ever wrote: and it failed, because it baffled the audience. Sung by
the heroine, Mollie (Vivienne Segal), Bill catalogued the personal faults of
her boy friend in an amusing way. Whenever he dances, she tells us, his
partner takes chances. But shes to marry him that afternoon; its an odd
attitude for a bride, especially given that Bill was played by Carl Randall,
winning in every way but especially noted for his dancing. True, Wode-
house could simply have replaced the couplet; Oscar Hammerstein did ex-
actly that when the number was slipped into Show Boat, nine years later.
Still, the problem lay not in a stray line or two but in the very idea of the
song, so confessional, even disloyal. Anyway, in 1918, the First Number was
never a ballad. By the 1930s, audiences were more sophisticated, so Flying
High (1930) gives its heroine the winsome Ill Know Him before anything
else is sung; Anything Goes (1934) let Ethel Merman follow the overture
and the subsequent book scene with I Get a Kick Out Of You; and the first
song in Babes in Arms (1937) is Where or When, not only a ballad but one
of Rodgers and Harts most elusive conceptions, on dja vu. In 1918, how-
ever, inaugurating the musical program with a sweet number proved mys-
tifying, and even the stubborn Kern was forced to pull Bill from Oh, Lady!
Lady!! after it repeatedly died in tryouts.
THE NEW MUSIC
LOU ELLEN: I see, George, Ill have to be a little firm with you.
GEORGE: A little firm? Good! Lets incorporate right now.
(They kiss.)
A PASSING WAITER: Oh, boy!
EVERYONE ON STAGE: (One last chorus of Till the Clouds Roll By)
CURTAIN
Thus, the Princess could bring in an outside team for Go To It (1916), a flop
because of its subject, centered on a funeral. Alternatively, Bolton and
Wodehouse could be married to an outside composer, Louis Hirsch, for the
much merrier Oh, My Dear! (1918), in which the typical Princess screwballs
complicate the heretofore blameless life of a health-farm director.
Princess usage took hold elsewhere on Broadway. Going Up (1917) flour-
ished the Princess virtues in a piece about an aviation expert who cant
yet is forced topilot a plane. (Amusing to report, he was played by Frank
Craven, later the original Stage Manager in Our Town.) Irene (1919) bor-
rowed Going Ups heroine, Edith Day, for a Cinderella tale la Princess,
about an Irish lass from Manhattans Hells Kitchen who crashes Society
with two sidekicks and ends up taking the heir. Like Going Up, Irene was
drawn from a play, a Princess practice also dating back to The Only Girl: be-
cause then the new script could follow the old script and stay on plot track,
avoiding the tangent of the inserted vaudeville sketch, that curse of the
Musical Before Oklahoma!. Irenes book, by James Montgomery, came from
his play Irene ODare, which had closed in tryouts in 1916. So the heroines
name, carried over in the musical, characterizes her even before she ap-
pears on stage as one who darestakes chances, seizes opportunity. The
American musical dotes on achievers, especially when theyre young and
cute. And of course Irene was Irishnot because Irish characters gave
writers a stock of images and jokes to play with, but because the Irish were
engaged at the time in democratic scuffling with New Yorks Italian and
Jewish communities over the sharing of political power.
Irene was one of several shows to converse with the public on the ef-
fects of immigration, as various minority groups began to assert them-
selves in urban American culture. Harrigan and Hart did the surveying,
and George M. Cohan laid the paving stones. But only now, moving into
( ) The Second Age
the 1920s, was the way cleared for a multitude of first-generation Ameri-
cans to take stageas the stars of shows but also as the people the shows
were about.
Then, too, Irenes score, by Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy, was even
better integrated than most Princess scores. Tierney was no Kern, true. Still,
his and McCarthys intentions toward the plot were honorable, from the
gleefully scampering Were Getting Away With It to the gently ragging The
Last Part of Every Party. And the hit tune, Alice Blue Gown, was as Princess
as Bill or Till the Clouds Roll By: pure music on one very basic idea pulled
right out of the scriptI love my beau despite his faults; Ill stay till it stops
raining and by the way I like you; My one good dress was secondhand but my
joy in wearing it made it mine. The darkly exotic-looking Edith Day, a vibrant
soprano, became a major star in Irene, which broke the long-run record at
670 performances. It triumphed in London as well, and even returned to
Broadway (albeit in vast revision), with Debbie Reynolds, in 1973.
Musicals with one-word womans-name titles began to trend, and Mary
(1920), a more modest hit, was yet another of these New Musicals. This
time, the driver of the action was not the heroine (Janet Velie) but the hero
(Jack McGowan), who dreams of changing the world by building inexpen-
sive, pre-fabricated houses for working people. George M. Cohan produced,
directed, and Cohanized the piece, filling it with dance, though this, too,
was a Princess convention: Oh, Lady! Lady!! included a dance after virtually
every number except the love songs. Mary did make room for the New Dance
Sensation, the Tom Tom Toddle, which defied the Princess rules of engage-
ment. Kern must have thought they were silly, for his twelve twenties shows
in New York (there were three others in London), almost entirely ignored a
song genre that utterly colonized Broadway throughout the decade
Scandal Walk, Black Bottom, The Forty-Second Street Strut, The
Jijibo, The Monkey Doodle Doo, The Marathon Step, The Varsity Drag.
Princess influence was most concentrated in Kerns contribution, for
some of the most enduring composers of the day spoke of making repeated
visits to the Princess just to collect the music. True, we dont hear Kern in
Rodgers or Gershwin, two of his most ardent devotees; the impact was
more an inspiration than a matrix. Yet one composer did imitate Kern with
the humility of an acolyte: Louis Hirsch. Utterly forgot today, though, pro-
lific and successful, Hirsch was a Kern intimate but impressionable also in
general. Scarcely had the Metropolitan Opera premiered Richard Strauss
Der Rosenkavalier when Hirsch appropriated the wistfully edgy celesta
theme associated with its young lovers, slipping it into his Marie Odile, in
Ziegfeld Follies of 1915.
THE NEW MUSIC
Still, it was Kern whom Hirsch emulated, and Hirsch who, after Kern,
most popularized Princess style. Three of the shows cited directly above
the at-the-Princess Oh, My Dear!, along with Going Up and Marywere
composed by Hirsch, and many of his tunes are so like Kerns that their
mothers couldnt have told them apart. Oh, My Dear!s City Of Dreams
has the jingly Kern fill-in bits between the vocal phrases. The title song of
another Hirsch show, See-Saw (1919), has not only the fill-in bits but the
long melodic cell rising to a major seventh, so much a Kern invention, as
Ive said, that it could have been copyrighted.
Still, it was Hirschs The Rainbow Girl (1918), a smash hit, that most
surely emulated the Princess Kern, albeit in the huge New Amsterdam.
Based on Jerome K. Jeromes play The New Lady Bantock, The Rainbow Girl
retold that fantasy beloved of English musicals, wherein a musical-comedy
star weds a lord. Unfortunately, this musical-comedy star turns out to be
related to all the servants at her new husbands ancestral mansion. Ren-
nold Wolf wrote the book and lyrics, and he and Hirsch devised an unusual
way to start the action: in a theatres green room, as the heroine, unseen in
the wings, sings My Rainbow Girl on that theatres stage: a First Number
belonging, in effect, to another show.
The Rainbow Girls score as a whole was state of the art for 1918: ballads
for the heroine and her spouse, Lord Wetherell; Alimony Blues for the
lords sidekick, blues being a twenties buzz term in song titles; a jazz
rouser about the Bacchic intensity of the latest dance rhythms for the her-
oines sidekick, Mister Drummer!; duets for the usual Second Couple, Ill
Think of You (and maybe you will think of me) and Soon Well Be Seen
Upon the Screen; the lords fake flirtation number with the chorus girls,
In a Month or Two; and the elaborate scene finales, notably one in which
the heroines relations scold her in chorus. Youre awful in your ways,
Lady Wetherell, they sing, to a dancing one-step. In all, this is the form
that the Golden Age score would take (until Rodgers and Hammerstein
recentered the use of song to focus on character rather than blues, jazz,
and fake flirtations).
So the New Music was creating the New Musical even before the 1920s,
rationalizing it, clearing out debris. Once, authors sent a protagonist into
exotic geography filled with magic jewels, floods, comically hostile peoples.
Now they married you to a Fancy Dan whose butler is your uncle. More
important, the score grew more focused yet more varied, engaging with the
narrative even as it sought more expansive formatting. Kern led the way,
for instance in developing trio sections to break up the monotony of the
verse-chorus-second verse-chorus layout that had locked songs into
( ) The Second Age
stagnant repetition.* Kern also varied the structure of his numbers, cre-
ating flowing musical continuity rather than a chain of end-stopped songs.
True, these musical scenes had been long established in the finaletto used
at the end of all acts but the final one; the finaletto predates Gilbert and
Sullivan and Offenbach and was still in use everywhere in the West. But
Kern was innovative in employing the finalettos combination of song,
arioso (a more vocalized recitative), and underscored dialogue anywhere in
a shows running time. In Good Morning, Dearie (1921), Kern treated the
Boy Meets Girl as a tiny opera, as Boy (Oscar Shaw) courts Girl (Louise
Groody) with Rose-Marie, as she tries to wriggle out of his dangerous se-
duction in dialogue while the music plays underneath, tempting her,
touching her heart. Still she resists, snatching at a chaste topic: the inno-
cence of youth. Boy responds. A duet: Didnt You Believe (that the bears
would catch the naughty children?), recalling the credulous little era of the
tooth fairy and Santa Claus. A bouncy piece with a slight tug of wistfulness,
its designed to tame himbut instead the two bond; and Boy will Get Girl.
As the Princess shows bring us more or less within ten years of Kerns
monumental achievement, Show Boat (1927), historians look for the tran-
sitions that graduate Kern from Princess charm to Show Boat power. The
most frequently cited titles, both from 1924, are Sitting Pretty, in the Prin-
cess style, reunited with Bolton and Wodehouse; and Dear Sir (to a book by
Edgar Selwyn and lyrics by Howard Dietz). The pair flopped because of poor
casting; Dear Sirs three leads were, in fact, uncertain or terrible singers, an
odd occurrence for an experimental lyrical score.
However, another Kern show, overlooked by all, demonstrates his bur-
geoning powers, despite its antiquated genre. In the wake of their stupen-
dous success in The Wizard of Oz, Montgomery and Stone went into the
extravaganza business with producer Charles Dillingham, each new pro-
duction celebrated for a spectacular mounting, fresh-corn comedy, and
music by the brand names. Victor Herbert composed their Cinderella show,
The Lady Of the Slipper (1912). Ivan Caryll stepped in for an Aladdin piece,
Chin-Chin (1914), and, for Stone by himself after Montgomerys death, Jack
OLantern (1917) and Tip Top (1920). Note the gaps between the shows:
these were huge hits, with big runs in New York and lengthy tours. Caryll,
* Trio here refers not to music for three voices, but rather to the middle section of
the minuet (later scherzo) movement of the early symphony, which composers habitu-
ally scored for three instruments. The term trio was then used for any middle section.
For example, in Camelots I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight, the verse (I know
what my people ...) leads into the chorus (at the songs title words), but then veers
into a somewhat different area of discussion for the trio (You mean that a king who
fought a dragon ... ), thereby quickening the numbers dramatic pulse.
THE NEW MUSIC
however, was running out of punch, and Dillingham had become interested
in the New Music. Remember, it was he who produced Irving Berlins Watch
Your Step, the first of the New Musicals with its binge dancing, and Dilling-
ham had put on four Kern shows (including Good Morning, Dearie) when he
invited the composer to take on the Fred Stone franchise with The Stepping
Stones (1923), in which Stone would work with not only his wife (as always)
but his seventeen-year-old daughter, Dorothy. The subject was, very loosely,
Little Red Ridinghood.
This happened when Kern was, so to say, between lyricists: after
P. G. Wodehouse and before Oscar Hammerstein. Kerns collaborator in
this time for both book and lyrics was Anne Caldwell, possibly the most
underrated of all the musicals wordsmiths.* Together, Kern and Caldwell
gave Broadway a work as newly minted in its approach as it was ancient in
its genre. A fairy waves her wand, magical things happen ... yes, all that.
But this entry hit all the marks of a now musical, with ten setsfrom The
Sweet Shop and The Garden Of Roses to The Dolls Village and The
Palace of Prince Silvio. In essence, the plot found Otto De Wolfe (Oscar
Ragland) menacing Rougette Hood (Dorothy Stone) till Peter Plug (Fred
Stone) saves her for a happy ending with Prince Silvio (Roy Hoyer).
But the plot was always a shadowy element in extravaganza. This was
the genre of the sweetheart and the clown, of the set and costume de-
signers, andespecially now, in the 1920sthe songwriters. Build roads,
and folks buy cars. Erect a library, and everybody reads. Write great songs,
and theatregoers demand more of them. And as the Victor Herbert genera-
tion seems to be replaced by Kern, Berlin, Youmans, Gershwin, Cole Porter,
Rodgers and Hart, and De Sylva, Brown, and Henderson virtually over-
night (it actually took something like fifteen years), the public will start to
discriminate among great scores, good scores, and lesser scores.
The Stepping Stones is a great score, even though none of it is ever heard
today; the title itself means nothing even to most aficionados. Yet the work
is outstanding for its effortless narrative fidelity: the story lives in the mu-
sic and the music bears the wonder and silliness that storybook extrava-
ganza was made of. But more: for the first time in his career, Kern set out
to write more than just a brace of songs with a couple of musical scenes.
This score is rangy yet unified, with plenty of trio sections to let the action
* Caldwell at her best is deft and delightful, but her hit tunesKa-lu-a, I Know
That You Know (written with Vincent Youmans)faded early on, and none of her
shows achieved classic status. Then, too, it took one generation after Caldwell for the
veteran Dorothy Fields and the newcomer Betty Comden to promote the notion of
women writers in the musical who were as adept as men.
( ) The Second Age
breathe and some gala ensemble scenes. Back at the Princess, the chorus
did little more than egg events along every so often; in The Stepping Stones,
the singers and dancers helped create the atmosphere of a marvelous little
world in which even the villains are sort of cute.
Stone and his daughter did this most momentously in Raggedy Ann,
costumed as Johnny Gruelles beloved childrens book figures, but the cho-
rus got into the act as well, as when the Tiller Girls (synchronized dancers
antedating Radio City Music Halls Rockettes) appeared as wood nymphs
and, later, mystic hussars, or when Act One ended with Our Lovely Rose
and a medley of famous Rose Songs. (Echoing his friend Louis Hirsch, Kern
tucked a tiny quotation of the final duet from Der Rosenkavalier into the
verse of Our Lovely Rose.) Of course, the use of Ma Blushin Rosie and
such others in a piece set in fairyland could be thought disruptive. But
Kern obsessively interpolated pre-existing music into his scoresthose
college songs into Leave It To Jane, oldtime favorites as an overture to Sweet
Adeline. Then, too, keeping the contemporary and the faraway simulta-
neously in play was elemental in extravaganza, where castles and magic
shared the stage with jokes about Charlie Chaplin and the speakeasy. Simi-
larly, Raggedy Ann, for all its childlike quaintness, is contoured in rag, but
the main ballad, Once in a Blue Moon, has a Neverland feeling, tender
and a bit wounded, like a valentine you offer to a sweetheart youre unsure
of. Further, the extensive dance music is closely allied to the vocal pieces, as
variations on them or in wacky counter-melodies. When Fred and Dorothy
dueted on Wonderful Dad, a fox trot with syncopations and blue har-
mony, they followed their vocal with a dance to slithery strains suggestive
of a skeleton doing a cakewalk.*
Kern must have been unusually proud of The Stepping Stones, because it
was his only title between the Princess shows and Show Boat that he
brought out in a full American vocal score. Remember, Kern was not only
Max Dreyfus favorite composer: Kern was a partner in T. B. Harms, and
thus could publish his music any way he wanted to. Then, too, The Stepping
Stones got a beautiful production from Charles Dillingham, something to
rival even the great Ziegfeld, incidentally Dillinghams crony, sometime
* The dance arranger was one of the musicals secrets at this time. Victor Herbert
and a few others composed their own dances, but the musicians who arranged them
for other songwritersalong with various incidental bits as called fordid not get
billing till the mid-1940s, when the Big Ballet of the 1930s had become essential to the
prestige musical. We dont know who composed The Stepping Stones dances, but Kerns
hand is all over them, for instance in the transformation of another Fred and Dorothy
duet, Dear Little Peter Pan, into a one-step raveup long before the song itself is heard,
in the pantomimed prologue customary in extravaganza.
THE NEW MUSIC
business partner, and major irritation. To ice the cake, Dillingham gave
young Dorothy Stone the greatest coming-out party in history: Broadway
stardom. Out of town, she had had featured billing, below the title. But
audience response to her first scene at the New York premiere was so in-
tense that, while the show played on, Dillingham had his electrician put
Dorothys name in lights right next to her dads.
Well, that was the story that Dillingham sent out through the PR cir-
cuits, anyway. But the show was, unquestionably, one of the decades big-
gest in every sense. With tickets starting at a very high $5.50 top and going
up to $7.70 when it started selling out, The Stepping Stones ran 241 perfor-
mances, closed only by the second Equity Strike, in 1924. When it was set-
tled, Dillingham sent the company out for the tour, and they didnt return
for two years.
And just as Offenbach rose through opra bouffe to The Tales Of Hoffmann
a piece so abundantly creative that we still havent caught up with itKern
would leave Princess farce behind him. Once you exalt the musical power of a
light form, it will get serious, and the master of the music was now on his
way to Show Boat.
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CHAPTER
O f all the musicals forms no longer in operation, none has been quite
so eradicated as revue. Pantomime died out, true: but it had never
been an important form in the United States. Burlesque was subsumed by
musical comedy, so its spirit lives on, and fairy-tale extravaganza grew
closer and closer to musical comedy till the last big one, Simple Simon
(1930), Ziegfelds Ed Wynn romp with a Rodgers and Hart score, was essen-
tially a musical comedy with Rapunzel and Bo-Peep in it.
However, the revue was at one time as sovereign a genre as any other. It
had one outstanding decade, the 1920s, remained imposing in the 1930s
and 1940s, and became endangered in the 1950s, when television appropri-
ated revues mixed-grill format of song, dance, and sketch comedy. By the
1960s, variety revue was all but dead.
In America, the genre dates back to The Passing Show (1894), and, as the
word revue (spelled review at the time) suggests, the concept was a look
at events of the previous year. There were sequels, but revue as such was
not firmly established till Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. unveiled Follies of 1907, the
first in a line that would last almost annually through 1931. After Ziegfelds
death, in 1932, others took over the brand, the last so-called Follies playing
Broadway as late as 1957.
The earliest Follies were not typical Follies, because Ziegfeld didnt yet
know what he wanted from revue as a form. Eventually he hit upon an
extremely odd program to emphasize the musicals most ancient elements:
once again, the sweetheart and the clown. Thus, his showgirls were Ameri-
can beauties, whether wearing little more than lighting or costumed to the
nth as milkmaids, princesses, the contents of a salad, or as impressions of
classical melodies from Schubert to Massenet. But Ziegfelds comics were
( )
T H E VA R I E T Y S H O W
exotic: Irish and Jewish and working in unapologetic ethnic humor that
some of the public must have found baffling. Unprecedentedly, Ziegfeld
filled out his Follies lineup with Bert Williams, the first black to break out of
what was known as the black time and headline on the white time
and at the top at that: the Follies. The big time. Nor was Williams a Follies
novelty. Ziegfeld kept him on for eight editions and would have extended
the welcome but for Williams illness and untimely death.
Williams didnt headline in the Follies: nobody did. Ziegfelds plan was to
stuff his revue with stars and superb supporting talent while giving billing
to no one. The star was the Follies. The star was Ziegfeld. The star was, even,
the audience, smart and hip enough to attend: it was bragging by irony. The
Follies regulars included, besides Williams, Fanny Brice,* Eddie Cantor,
W. C. Fields, cowboy Will Rogers, Leon Errol (who played black-guy-out-
smarts-white-guy comedy with Williams), dancer Ann Pennington, talent-
less beauty Lillian Lorraine, singing act (Gus) Van and (Joe) Schenck, and a
host of lovelies as likely to be called Drucilla Strain or Gladys Glad as plain
old Marion Davies or even Betty Brown.
The notion of combining Nordic beauties with ethnic jesters was very,
very ahead of the curve. Yes, there is a bit of this in the Weber and Fields
burlesques, but only by happenstance. Ziegfeld made it a fetish. We can call
it bizarrebut all of the Follies was bizarre: sophisticated, worldly, exhibi-
tionistic, silly, crazy, cute, shocking. One thing the Follies never was: ordi-
nary. Two things the Follies often was: dazzling and classy. For example, the
gentleman in tails who sang the salutes to the girls on parade was John Steel,
a tenor who in timbre, diction, and phrasing sounded exactly like John Mc-
Cormack, arguably the most popular but also prestigious tenor after Enrico
Caruso. With his extraordinarily sweet sound, Steel lovingly presented the
girls while teaching the art of pear-shaped vowels. A Pretty Girl Is Like a
Melody begins, in the Steel version, I have an ear for myuzeeeek ... And
the Follies was cultural, a bourgeois notion of art but also, from something
like 1911the year in which Ziegfeld first put his name on his creation as the
Ziegfeld Folliesa way of defining oneself socially. To attend was to join the
eliteor so it appeared, for Ziegfeld was a master of PR technique and Follies
opening nights were the first in Broadway history to count as Celebrated
New York Events, with hyperbolic newspaper coverage, mounted police, and
surging crowds framing the arrival of the rank and fashion of the town.
* One sometimes sees Brices Christian name as Fannie. She herself started the
confusion, using both spellings interchangeably. As her biographer Barbara Grossman
tells us, Sometimes, both versions appeared in the course of one article or the same
playbill.
() The Second Age
Behind all the talent and expertise lay Ziegfelds ingenious publicity
machine. P. T. Barnum started but Ziegfeld perfected it: the art of getting
everyone to talk about you. The one thing that counts in America, Lady
Duff-Gordon observed in her memoirs, is self-advancenent of the most
blatant sort. Stillin that time, though not oursit only worked if you
were worth talking about, especially if you flattered the publics self-image
as tastemakers. To hear recordings of John Steel today is to visit a tinkly
puppet show of the nevermore. In his day, however, Steel was the classy
guy singing classy music while Ziegfelds elect descended the Ziegfeld stair-
case of Beauty Is Truth.
And yet Ziegfelds comics projected a truth as well, one of new art, immi-
grant art. When Fanny Brice offered Follies routines on first-generation
American girls befuddled by life beyond the ghetto (as in Becky Is Back in
the Ballet), she was giving good show bizbut she was also treating a so-
ciological issue. It was boutique art, yes, but it had resonance. Comparably,
Bert Williams theme song, Nobody (introduced in vaudeville, but sung
in a number of Follies editions), the lament of an eternal victim, could be
looked at as a position paper on racism. I aint never done nothin to no-
body, Williams explains. So why is everyone so down on him?
Ethnic integration is elemental in show business today; it was unheard
of when Ziegfeld launched the Follies. More than unheard of: impractical.
Forbidden by unwritten law. As the buddy of powerful millionaires like the
at the time New Yorkbased William Randolph Hearst, Ziegfeld could defy
orthodoxy. Still, his ecumenical appreciation of first-division talent was lit-
erally wonderful. Where did it come from? There had been a very few black
musicals before the Follies, but they were black musicals, produced in white
time venues yet separate from the rest of Broadway. Later, in the 1920s, an
entire cycle of black musicals emerged, most famously Noble Sissle and Eu-
bie Blakes Shuffle Along (1921); its sequel, Runnin Wild (1923), which in-
troduced an immortal New Dance Sensation in Charleston; and a revue,
Blackbirds of 1928, whose score (by white Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy
Fields) included another undying number in I Cant Give You Anything
But Love (baby). But it was Ziegfeld who integrated Broadway, when he
hired Bert Williams for Follies of 1910.
Its hard to see this as anything less than a political act, yet it also true
that Ziegfeld was especially attracted to versatile talent that, like Williams,
shone in music and comedy alike. One of the most influential aspects of the
Follies was the way it unified a series of unrelated sequences. The original
idea of reviewing the previous years fancies and scandals was dropped
early on; to bond his entertainment, Ziegfeld used Williams, Brice, Cantor,
and the others in various ways throughout the evening. Even Will Rogers,
() The Second Age
really known only for his ironic monologues on the days politics (delivered
in full cowboy regalia while performing rope tricks), took part in sketches
and sometimes even a musical number, seeming to wander in on the spur
of the moment.
That was another Follies qualitythe spontaneity. Ziegfelds people
were adept at improvisation, a lost art today. The last time I saw anything
substantial of the kind was in Bert Lahrs final musical, Foxy (1964), wherein
much of Lahrs role unfolded with an air of Let me try this and see how it
goes over. One gets this occasionally on Saturday Night Live, and at certain
moments in awards shows. Still, the freewheeling nature of the comedy in
musical comedy, free in the truest sense in the nineteenth century, when
audiences and actors found themselves locked in a fragile embrace, now
loving and now noisily vexed, enjoyed its last hurrah in the Follies.
Ziegfeld sometimes built this unpredictability into the script. At one
point in Follies of 1907right at the series startsomeone ran into the
auditorium during a takeoff on Salomes Dance of the Seven Veils shout-
ing that the cops were raiding the theatre. Sure enough, a squad of New
Yorks Finest came pouring down the aisle, only to leap onto the stage
and join Salome in a cancan: for the policemen were part of the show.
Then, too, the 1912 Follies began as audience members started arguing
about what sort of entertainment they hoped for; of course, these, too,
were cast members.
One element of Ziegfelds format became lodged in the revue gener-
ally, lasting as long as revue itself did: a big set piece for the first-act fi-
nale. In the 1919 Folliesoften cited as the best of the entire lineZiegfeld
had his four male singing leads offer a close-harmony medley of old
southland numbers in front of the traveler curtain. It was an odd quartet:
three of them were comic in spirit (Eddie Dowling, Van and Schenck)
while the other was that superhero of suave John Steel. Then the traveler
parted on a fabulous tiered set of pink, silver, and white, the company
attired to match in traditional minstrel-show grouping, with Eddie
Cantor and Bert Williams as Tambo and Bones and George LeMaire as the
Interlocutor. Each of the stars then took stage for a specialty. Van and
Schenck revived an old Irving Berlin number that had gone nowhere
under the title Sterling Silver Moon, capped by Marilyn Millers song-
and-dance rendition in her unique combination of midcult soprano and
playful tap. Now called Mandy, the song went Top 40 (so to say) and
even became the informal theme song of nearly every minstrel resuscita-
tion from then on.
As for the music of the Follies, the early scores were grab bags by all and
sundry. In the 1912 edition, however, composer Dave Stamper and lyricist
T H E VA R I E T Y S H O W
Gene Buck joined up to become the Follies house songwriters through the
very last entry that Ziegfeld produced, in 1931, one year before his death.
Mindful of the publics growing interest in being serenaded by the brand
names of the day, Ziegfeld took interpolations from Victor Herbert, Je-
rome Kern, Rudolf Friml, and Louis Hirsch, featuring Irving Berlin most
prominently, in 1919, 1920, and 1927. Nevertheless, it was Stamper and
Buck who articulated Follies song style, to be imitated by other Follies song-
writers. There was, first of all, what we might call the Roscoe Number
after the tenor of Stephen Sondheims Follies, who Brings on the Beautiful
Girls. In the later show, the subjects simply parade into view in party dress;
in Ziegfelds Follies, they were costumed to fit the theme of a song (another
of Ziegfelds many inventions). Thus, in 1915, Louis Hirsch, with Channing
Pollock and Rennold Wolf, came up with A Girl for Each Month in the
Year, so Ziegfelds harem could slither in, one by one, timed to the lyrics in
weather dress:
There were as well the au courant songs, spoofing events of cultural in-
terest. The Ballets Russes visits New York in 1916: and that years Follies
offers Nijinski, capping an extended ballet spoof with Fanny Brice once
again offering the viewpoint of a girl from the neighborhood exposed to
the exotic. Or, a year later, the English extravaganza Chu Chin Chow is about
to open when the Follies offers a preview in the ragtime craze-up (Beware
of) Chu-Chin-Chow. In 1920, Mary and Doug saluted Hollywoods favor-
ite marriage, of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and 1921 included a
goof on the trademark catchphrase of the tumultuous drag queen Bert
Savoy, You Must Come Over. Kern wrote it with B. G. De Sylva, and while
the number makes no attempt to reflect Savoys hissy brinkmanship, still,
You should never miss a chance like this, Girl tells Boy: For if youre
clever you can steal a kiss.
The Follies treated history, too. Prohibition got a major look in, in 1919,
with When the Moon Shines on the Moonshine, You Cannot Make Your
Shimmy Shake on Tea, and A Syncopated Cocktail. Even the opening of
the first transcontinental telephone hook-up inspired a number. The 1915
Follies Hello, Frisco! (I Called You Up To Say Hello), by Louis Hirsch and
Gene Buck, pictured a young man in New York trying to reach his girl in San
() The Second Age
* The first four Follies were billed by the noun and year only, as Follies of 1907, and so
on. As Ive said, not till 1911 did Ziegfeld attach his name to the title, asserting artistic
copyright in the Ziegfeld Folliesand only in 1912 did the shows move into a prosceni-
um house (almost invariably the New Amsterdam) instead of the more informal roof
theatres they started in.
T H E VA R I E T Y S H O W
In the end, Ziegfelds most influential coup was to reaffirm the growing
acceptance of Broadway as the pinnacle of American theatre. As late as the
turn of the century, the stage was truly a national construction. It was cen-
tered on Broadway, but there was much creative activity in other regions;
Chicago had almost as many theatres as New York. However, the expansion
of theatremore playhouses, new producers to fill them with software,
larger audiences attracted by the hooplain the 1910s and 1920s made
New York more than the center of activity: the source of it. The regions
grew ever more dependent on touring packages direct from Broadway,
and Ziegfeld, with his spectacular budgets and star-loaded Follies, arrived
at just the right time to position revue as, in effect, a Statement that only
Broadway could make. The Follies post-Broadway tour became an Experi-
ence to be collected, like the sight of the President as his train passed
through town, or being present at ones offsprings college graduation cere-
mony, accepting the familys first diploma. After the Follies, we can speak of
the concept of Big Broadway, in which imposing powers combine not just to
entertain but impress the public, urge on the art. The original Porgy and
Bess is an instance, as are Gertrude Lawrences unique turn in Lady in the
Dark, Rodgers and Hammersteins Oklahoma!-topping Carousel, My Fair
Lady, Hello, Dolly! ... shows, we might say, with a pack-leader mentality.
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was the inventor of not only revue as such but an idea
of show biz that had the brilliance of American know-how with the variety
of its emerging new ethnic subcultures that were to enrich the musical in
particular.
w
PA R T T H R E E
( )
( ) The Third Age
numbers? Are they friends of Bettys? What, all of them? And how did they
get into her apartment?
Veteran librettists used a work-around, constructing a dramatis per-
sonae in which almost everybody already knew everybody else. In Babes in
Toyland, Glen MacDonough filled the stage with the inhabitants of a
Mother Goose book, presumably a coterie of intimates. (If Tommy Tucker
doesnt know Miss Muffet, he doesnt know anyone.) The only outsiders
were the evil uncle and his henchmen and his niece and nephew, all of
whom quickly made themselves at home. Amusingly, the show began with
a surprise. Just as The Phantom of the Opera starts with not a burst of music
but a book scene, Babes in Toyland raised its curtain on a modest little set
whose action warned the audience of the uncles designs on the childrens
fortune. This then gave way to the spectacle everyone expected: Electric
Storm At Sea and Wreck of the Galleon. Thereafter, big scenes (Country
Fete in Contrary Marys Garden) alternated with scenes in one (such as
the aforementioned Garden Wall set with its I Cant Do the Sum number),
followed by another big scene (Spiders Forest).
Still, one set per act made everything easier, especially in three-act
pieces. The classic thus is No, No, Nanette (1925), with a score composed by
Vincent Youmans to the lyrics of Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach and a
book by Harbach and Frank Mandel. A farce about a Bible publisher who is
keeping three penniless young ladies in separate dens, No, No, Nanette
filled out the story with the publishers family, friends, and professional
associates, to facilitate comings and goingsand the chorus people were
all friends of the titular heroine. The question is: has the Bible man
engaged in holy work, after allbeen intimate with his charities, or is he
purely philanthropic? The show never tells, but a cut number, the gleeful
(Oh I wish that I could be a) Santa Claus, provides a clue: Santa Claus
was period slang for old lecher.*
Harbach, Caesar, and Mandel were all stalwarts of the era, Harbach
being especially notable as Oscar Hammersteins mentor. However, No, No,
Nanettes major name is composer Youmans. Extremely gifted but eventu-
ally sidelined by tuberculosis, Youmans enjoyed little more than a decade of
stage work, including two huge hits, Wildflower (1923) and Hit the Deck!
(1927). Still, No, No, Nanette remains one of the two or three essential
mapping around using scenes in one to facilitate the trip. Along the way
she meets cops with pink mustaches, a talking fish (with an English ac-
cent, no less), relatives turning up in odd identities (her aunt takes stage
in Havana as a kind of Texas Guinan, with a number drawn from speak-
easy proprietor Guinans famed book of personal idioms, Give This Little
Girl a Hand).
Peggy-Ann has become famous for its lack of convention, for instance
starting with some music from the pit as the curtain rose but then going
into an expository book scene before the chorus trooped on for the first
number, Hello. However, weve already seen Princess shows trying this
out. All the same, Rodgers and Hart were genuine innovators, deconstruct-
ing the score of Chee-Chee (1928), yet another show for Helen Ford, till it
had almost as many little bitty songlets running through it as The Beggars
Opera, or introducing rhythmic dialogue (in effect, lyrics spoken rather
than sung) in most of their Hollywood films. What made Peggy-Ann a hit,
at 333 performances, was its novelty, yes. But what made Rodgers and
Harts far less ambitious The Girl Friend (1926), A Connecticut Yankee (1927),
Present Arms (1928), and Heads Up! (1929) hits were the songs: The Blue
Room, Thou Swell, You Took Advantage of Me, A Ship Without a Sail.
It was slang and poetry, heart and jazz, and all of it wasthough the word
itself is tiredfresh.
Historians become obsessed with the notion that Jerome Kerns They
Didnt Believe Me turned the first page of the Golden Age Songbook. But
one could say as much for the moment in Rodgers and Harts small-scaled
benefit revue for the Theatre Guild, The Garrick Gaieties (1925), when Ster-
ling Holloway and June Cochrane launched into the refrain of the afore-
mentioned Manhattan. Word instantly went out, and the cognoscenti
flocked to the old Garrick on Herald Square to sample the Newer Music.
After struggling for five years to be heard, Rodgers and Hart were made.
Dick was focused and eager while Larry was always sneaking off to drink
and party: a bad marriage. But Rodgers couldnt divorce a wit as keen as
Harts. Only Cole Porter was as sharpand, as both Hart and Porter were
gay, their worldview commanded a rich perspective. Later, with Oscar Ham-
merstein, Rodgers would turn love songs into hymns: Boy meets Nun. With
Hart, Rodgers worked a worried and less stable idea of romance. To cite one
of Peggy-Anns numbers, Wheres That Rainbow (you hear about?).
In other words, the fresh-sounding score was now one of the musicals
essentials. Once, a shows authors wrote the core numbers while specialists
zoomed in to write the interpolations. Thats not a score: thats an open
house. Now, in the 1920s, the authors were the specialists, and they wrote
the whole score themselves.
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S M U S I C A L C O M E D Y
Thus, the new producing team of Alex A. Aarons and Vinton Freedley
based a series of musicals on the combination of, one, top stars, and, two,
a top score in ultra-contemporary sound. Aarons and Freedley produced
two shows with Rodgers and Hart, but their house songwriting team was
George and Ira Gershwin, primary symbols of the newer music. Lyricist Ira,
the older brother, was saucy and culturedbut all the major lyricists were
by now. It was really composer George who made the brand unique, for his
fidgety rhythmic pulse and harmonic mischief centered twenties jazz as a
component of Broadway style.
Famous for hogging the piano at show-biz partiesand dazzling every-
one with his explosive dexterityGershwin wrote the keyboard into his au-
tograph. His shows featured duo-pianists in the pit, giving his music a profile
to match the sexy trumpet and clarinet solos one heard in the recordings of
black bands, just then breaking wide in American culture. Consider: Victor
Herberts instrument was the cellowaves of tone, classical in usage, some-
thing beloved. The heroine of The Only GirlHerberts modern play with
songs that led to the Princess showsis not just a composer but a cellist,
and we hear her playing throughout the show, rich as cream. Gershwin
countered Herbert with jazz, sly as sex. Jazz was the age and the attitude; it
was how youth expressed Sex, drugs, rock and roll before Elvis came along.
Its notable that all the other major twenties composers emphasized the fox-
trotting two-step, in 4/4 time, while Gershwin held onto the outdated but
faster one-step, in 2/4 time. Musical comedy, he might have said, is motion.
Then, too, because George and Ira wrote so often for Aarons and Freed-
ley, Gershwin songs became associated with the racy, wacky, absolutely
twenties Aarons-Freedley worldview, with its fortune-hunting and rum-
running and mistaken identity. Its a zany worldalmost Offenbachian. Let
someone produce a pair of handcuffs and two foes will get locked up to-
gether for most of an act; or a taxi pulls up in Arizona and out steps a New
Yorker. (His fare is $742.30.)
Most twenties musical comedies are so forgot today that some smash
hitsGood Morning, Dearie; Tangerine; Queen Highare unknown even to
the buffs. Yet many Gershwin titles have ring: Lady, Be Good! (1924), Oh,
Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), Strike Up the Band (closed in tryout, 1927;
1930), Girl Crazy (1930), Of Thee I Sing (1931). The standards take in Fasci-
nating Rhythm, Someone To Watch Over Me, Embraceable You, and
even a cut number, The Man I Lovebut the scores were wholly melo-
dious entities, for Gershwin never ham-and-egged his way through a song.
As more and more shows experimented with those little scenes in one,
songwriters covered the set change with throwaway music, but not George.
Lady, Be Good!s first-act change moves from a street scene to a Society
( ) The Third Age
party, a soire being the best way to assemble the principals without insult-
ing plot realism. The street scene concerns the apartment eviction of Fred
and Adele Astaire, because the rent is a mere eighteen months overdue,
she notes. Fred will save them through marriage to the partys hostess,
though he loves another.
Now comes the transition, set outside the Society mansion. George revs
up audience anticipation with a dashing yet piquant ritornello, music the
orchestra repeats between the vocal sections, as the ensemble surges in to
cover the ruckus of stagehands behind the traveler with A Wonderful
Party. A bit of spoken material and some dancing shtick for the Astaires
will followbut the purpose of this interlude is to move from outside the
party to inside it, using a servant to usher in the guests. Sounds like our
entrance cue, the chorus exclaims, heading inside. Though A Wonderful
Party never caught on in the hit-tune mannerunpublished, it wasnt
even recorded till sixty-eight years laterit is delightful and smart and
keeps the shows energy level up between the first scene (the exposition)
and the party (the development and crisis).
The Princess-show alumnus Guy Bolton wrote the book to many an
Aarons-Freedley title, often with Fred Thompson, as here on Lady, Be
Good!. But Bolton did his best work with the other Princess wordsmith,
P. G. Wodehouse, on Oh, Kay!, as when Kay (Gertrude Lawrence) complains
to the comic (Victor Moore) that her sweetheart is marrying another of
those Society stuckups:
Still, in the end, the breakaway twenties librettist was, once again, Her-
bert Fields, a historical figure also as the son of Lew of Weber and Fields
and brother to playwrighting siblings, Joseph and Dorothy (who was also
one of the musical s best lyricists). Fields was especially adept at accommo-
dating the limitations of the not enough sets per act platform, and he had
a sharp sense of humor. Some critics found his jesting uncomfortably
bawdy. Fields book for the aforementioned Chee-Chee was not just an ex-
periment in how much leeway the dialogue can give the songs: it was also
the tale of a man fleeing his duties as the soon-to-be Grand Eunuch of
China.
As Ive said, Fields made his early history with Rodgers and Hart,
and very much in the Kern-Bolton-Wodehouse manner: a trio engaged si-
multaneously in developing continuity. I emphasize the closeness of their
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S M U S I C A L C O M E D Y
collaboration because, too often at this time, the songs and the script were
created at a remove from each other, the two separate forces working off a
plot outline. When at last music and dialogue were combined, they would
suffer misfit glitches: a number would disrupt a book scene, or characters
were given songs they didnt need.
This explains how Oscar Hammerstein emerged as the most influential
of the musicals wordsmiths: working on both book and lyrics, he could
monitor the consistency of the storytelling, effecting a rapprochement be-
tween what the plot was doing and what the music was saying. Harry
B. Smith was the musicals first important librettist-lyricist, but Hammer-
stein was its first great one.
More greatness: the 1920s is the first decade boasting performers we of
today have some knowledge of, through their films. Fred Astaire is most
pertinent here, though on Broadway he was thought the lesser half of a
double act with his sister, Adele. Her adorably squeaky soprano and nutso
expressions made her a delightfully off beat heroine, and the choreography
Fred laid out for them tended to the eccentric. In fact, their trademark
move was a goof, capping a dance by running as if joined at the hip in ever
widening circles till they reached the wings and vanished. They introduced
this maneuver in The Love Letter (1921), but they punched out into fame in
For Goodness Sake (1922) as the always useful Second Couple, playing a ro-
mance opposite each other in that innocent time. For Goodness Sake was a
typically empty-headed piece. Trouble beginsas TV Guide might phrase
itwhen a wife wrongly thinks her husband has cheated, and so on. But
there was something interesting about this show: it apparently marked an
attempt to fabricate a Gershwin musical. Alex Aarons produced it and Vin-
ton Freedley was in it. But more: even the music was Gershwin. For Good-
ness Sake was co-composed, by William Daly and Paul Lannin (to Arthur
Jacksons lyrics), and both Daly and Lannin were Gershwin intimates, as
orchestrators and conductors. Dalys two main numbers in For Goodness
Sake, Every Day and Oh Gee, Oh Gosh, are precise imitations of what
George was writing at the timeand George and Ira added two songs to
the score themselves. Then, too, a Daly-Lannin-Jackson number called
The Whichness of the Whatness (and the whereness of the who!) is so
loaded with Ira-like wordplay that one assumes he must have had a hand in
it. It was a typical Astaire duet, the songs kinky bliss finding reflection in
the immediately ensuing dance, topped of course by the runaround exit.
For Goodness Sake went to London renamed Stop Flirting, the first of
three Broadway shows the Astaires took to England. Its a measure of how
broad their appeal was, for few American stars dared the British public,
while the Astairesas they put it todaykilled. Their other two lend-lease
( ) The Third Age
titles were authentic Gershwin shows, Lady, Be Good! and Funny Face, and
now the Astaires were playing the leads and having their romances with
other characters. Lady and Funny Face were Aarons-Freedly productions, so
each was organized around these two sibling pairs, the Gershwins for music
and the Astaires for sport, as everyone else on stage took up whatever
space was left. The problem with this extremely popular recipe is that the
talent came before the story, creating superb yet contentless entertain-
ment. And that is why the Aarons-Freedley method became moribund in
the 1940s: after Cabin in the Sky, Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, and Oklahoma!,
a solid story became as essential as the stars and the score.
In the 1920s, however, the public took in their stars neat, unencum-
bered by verismo, thematic development, or character psychology. When
Florenz Ziegfeld planned an Ossa-on-Pelion show incorporating both Mar-
ilyn Miller and the Astaires, he started with not a narrative but opportu-
nities for his headliners. So Miller would be an orphan again and the
Astaires would be screwball Society wastrels. They could learn humility or
something, and Miller would play a Salvation Army lass, a real honey in
that military drag they wear. She was raised from a tot by Allied soldiers in
the Great War for that touch of hokum, and must now redeem a crass world
with her radiance, her tap solo, and her matchless smiles. Oh, wait . . .
Smiles is her name, and Smiles (1930) is the show!
Only something was missing: a story. No one, from Ziegfeld on down, had
any idea what exactly was going to happen, and Smiles ended as one of Zieg-
felds few disasters. Worse, he had neglected to include an element he thought
fundamental in musical comedy: a star comic. Theatre, to Ziegfeld, gave the
public what it couldnt get from real life: glamor, style, and, above all, fun.
It was an age of star comics, because musical comedys loose structure
lent them all the room their shtick comedy required. Joe Cook, for instance,
had his love of uniforms, his inevitable rambling monologue about the four
Hywoyans (Hawaiians), and his insanely detailed contraptions. In The Great
Clowns of Broadway, Stanley Green describes one for us, used in Rain or
Shine (1928): Joe pulled a lever which started a whirling buzzsaw which
goosed a man holding a soda-water siphon which squirted a man whose
gyrations turned a Ferris Wheel whose five passengers took turns bopping
[Cooks official stooge] Dave Chasen on the head with their violins. This
caused Chasen to hit a triangle to accompany Cooks trumpet rendition of
Three OClock in the Morning. Ed Wynn, who reveled in being known as
the perfect fool, introduced tidier contraptions, such as a device for eating
corn on the cob as one works a typewriter; he also liked to emcee revues so
he could wander on stage during the acts and kibitz. (Arent they won-
derful? he might ask of the audience, of a ballroom duo running through
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S M U S I C A L C O M E D Y
its act. If the public failed to respond, Wynn would say, No?, and, mock-
sternly, add, After Saturday, its back to Mr. Orpheum [head of the famous
vaudeville circuit] with them!) Jimmy Durantes kit included a rough New
York accent, an ideal delivery agent for his outbursts of paranoia. Every-
body wants ta get inta de act! hed cry, slamming his arms against his sides.
Or, of an impedient assistant: I dont know what Id do witout him, but Id
rather! Bobby Clark, with painted-on glasses and cigar, was the smutty
one, forever getting involved with chorus lovelies on very short acquain-
tance while making hubba-hubba faces at the house.
These were not comic performers of the kind we have now, such as Na-
than Lane or Danny Burstein, basically actors with a jesters gifts. Third Age
comics couldnt act in any real sense (though a very few of them eventually
took on the challenge in works from Aristophanes through Molire and
Restoration comedy to Samuel Beckett). Rather, they were professional
toons, improvisational rather than script-driven and autonymous rather
than members of an ensemble.
None of them could sing, but as long as they avoided operetta (which
didnt host star clowns in any case), that was never a problem. Songwriters
gave them musical chatter; Jimmy Durante even wrote his own. And Bert
Lahr had voice enough to spoof opera and the kitsch singer, with his metic-
ulous diction and clueless confidence in jejune material. Lahr could get so
much out of these mockups that he spawned a genre, which we might call
the Fatuous Losers Exhibition Piece, most famously delineated as If I
Were King of the Forest by Lahrs Lion in MGMs The Wizard of Oz.
It should be noted, though, that musical-comedy performers generally
were versed in the comic arts, because no matter how good the score, a
show had to kid around or it failed. For instance, in a college setting, a big,
angry football fullbackhis name is Beefcombs the campus on the hunt
for his treacherous girl friend, Babe:
This is from Good News! (1927), one of the decades biggest hits and one
of its non-operetta titles to live on as a classic. Released for stock and
( ) The Third Age
And the students major in school spirit and haze the freshmen.
With so little story, the authors filled the book with virtually self-contained
sketch comedy, as when Beef methodically dismantles Bobbys automobile,
or when Bobby pretends to be immune to Other Girls charms while trying
to scam a kiss off her. Set changes were executed with a traveler curtain and
music, a throwaway number such as On the Campus, because De Sylva,
Brown, and Henderson had a policy of rationing their inspiration. Melody
reigned in the romance, as in the Heroines Wanting Song, Just Imagine
(that he loves me dearly), or the big love number, The Best Things in Life
Are Free, or a sorority waltz, The Girl of the Pi Beta Phi. Not untypically
for the 1920s, there was only one character song, Babes Flaming Youth, a
dynamite number that has strangely disappeared from all of Good News!s
film and revival adaptations.
In fact, Good News! is not only a typical twenties musical comedy but a
strenuously conventional one: it does absolutely nothing original from
overture to finale. Betty Comden and Adolph Green used to perform an op-
eretta spoof, The Baroness Bazooka, that began with an opening chorus of
peasants gamboling on the green. It managed to be insipid and idiotic at
the same timebut so is Good News!s opening chorus, beginning Students
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S M U S I C A L C O M E D Y
are we of dear old Tait College. Act One ends with the customary reprise (of
Lucky in Love, another of the shows charting titles) and plot-suspense
curtain (Girl faints, Boy catches her, Other Girl fumes). And Act Two starts
with a were singing because Act Two always starts with singing number,
the Pi Beta Phi tune.
This is by-the-numbers writing. At another point, four students enter,
and one of them heaps scorn on booklearning. Why study history when
you can make it ... with a New Dance Sensation? Yes! And thats how The
Varsity Drag gets into Good News!: by contrivance, even trickery. Yet the
songs themselves were so engaging that the score in effect relates to
the book even when the book fails to relate to the score.
Thus musical comedy. But another form of twenties musical was inte-
grated almost as a rule, because, in this genre, the score controlled the nar-
rative. In musical comedy, the script told the story and the score enhanced
it in various ways. But in operetta, the music told the story and the script
went along for the ride.
w
CHAPTER
Y ou know youre at an operetta when the setting is Europe and the era
is historicalSigmund Rombergs Blossom Time (1921), for instance,
using the life and music of Franz Schubert. Or Rombergs The Student Prince
(1924), set in 1860, when young Karl Franz matriculates at Heidelberg and
loves a waitress. But he is royal, so alas my love we must part. Blossom Time
is stuffed with some of Schuberts loveliest melodies (including the famous
theme from the Unfinished Symphony, debauched as a sing-songy operetta
waltz). Still, it was The Student Prince that gave operetta its essential
toasting number, Drink, Drink, Drink.
Or you know youre at an operetta when, even in the New World, the
atmosphere is exotically ethnic, as in The New Moon (1928), set in and
around New Orleans at the time of the French Revolution, with a Romberg-
Hammerstein score. Rose-Marie (1924) is even more exotic, in a mixture of
strains from Indian and French to Canadian Mountie. Rose-Marie was co-
composed by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, to the lyrics (and book) of
Otto Harbach and Hammerstein againand they all felt they had created
such a unity of song and story that they declined to provide the usual com-
plete list of songs in the playbill. Nevertheless, the popular numbers were
easily extracted for recording and radio play, and while The New Moon gave
operetta its essential Marching Anthem, Stouthearted Men, Rose-Marie
produced the unrivaled Future Campy Romance Duet, Indian Love Call.
And of course you know youre at an operetta if all or most of the males
are in uniform, as in Rombergs My Maryland (1927), set during the Civil
War. A huge hit that broke a long-run record in Philadelphia on its tryout,
My Maryland is one of the has-been titles in this line, for hit twenties
operettas became classics almost as a rule, and with a score best described
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T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S OP E R E T TA
as incomparably adequate, My Maryland did not survive its day. It did have
a Stouthearted Men of its own, Your Land and My Land, which closes
with a clever pastiche twist on The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
But you really know youre at an operetta when only one or two charac-
ters in the entire cast ever do anything funny. Twenties operettas werent
musical comedies with grander music; twenties operettas were musical
playssome were literally billed as suchwith all the comedy compart-
mentalized in a subsidiary character or two. At that, the jokes were often so
feeble that the critics routinely complained about the jokers as if they had
written their own roles. Of Blossom Times William Danforth, lumbered
with old souse banter, the Telegraphs Alan Dale said, Let loose to do his
worst.
But the writers who could toss off real fun tended to work in musical
comedy. Operetta books were the province of more lavish personalities,
literary people. Harry B. Smiths memoirs recall the difficulties of Bernard
Gorcey when appearing in an operetta in which additional comedy was a
desideratum. During rehearsals, the librettist added in what he assured
Gorcey was a surefire jest: I come from a country where they get furs from
fir trees and eggs from eggplant.
This was when puns were starting to seem so nineteenth century, and
Gorcey didnt think the line would fly. The author insisted, and Gorcey
obediently gave it a shot at the first public performance.
Smith tells us there was a deadly silence. Then someone at the back of
the house let out a loud guffaw.
At intermission, the writer caught Gorcey backstage with I told you it
would be a laugh.
And Gorcey responded, Yes, I know, old boy. But you may not be here
every night.
Still, in the right handsHammersteins, for instancethe system
worked. In The Desert Song (1926), a Romberg show that Hammerstein co-
wrote with Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, the comic is Benjamin Kidd,
an English reporter more or less trapped in the Moroccan desert when the
French Foreign Legion is confronting an uprising of the local Rif (spelled
Riff in the show) tribe. Bennie, created by Eddie Buzzell, represents a
type very popular at the time, basically a gay heterosexual: of unclear appe-
tite, somewhat effeminate in demeanor, and leery of women though unof-
ficially engaged to his opposite, usually a secretary, nurse, or comparable
partner. The character was forever being bullied by bad guys and vamped by
exotics. Eddie Cantor made this the content of a star turn, but all the other
such specialists were supporting playersand, in operetta, they did
provide relief from the plots relentlessly lofty occasions.
( ) The Third Age
The Riffs dont like correspondents. They ask too many questions. But that
last correspondent they dealt with wont be asking any questions now:
Bennie had been horseback riding with his friend Pierre when Bennies
horse ran off with him:
BENNIE: You can imagine how I felt. (To Hassi) No. You couldnt imagine.
(To Sid) But you might imagine. (To Hassi) But you couldnt.
Hassi and Sid find this dork too pathetic to be worth killing. Hes such a
shrimp:
The Desert Song claims the most interesting story of all the famous oper-
ettas, for the Red Shadow and Pierre are the same person (Robert Halli-
day), absurdly mild-mannered with his fellow French but, masked, a
ruthless fighter for the Riffs. And he loves Margot (Vivienne Segal), but she
loves ... romance! Its the central conceit of operetta, of course, and she
defines it for us in her establishing number, called, with a certain logic,
Romance. It turns out to be many thingsa playboy, a flame, a prince
who tells a country maid, I love you. That last simile could be the motto
of all operetta, expressing its obsession with social msalliance, as with
the student prince and his waitress or The New Moons bondservant and
highborn lady.
One sometimes feels that Hammerstein made a pitch sheet for each work
before he started writing, concisely stating its theme like a Hollywood
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S OP E R E T TA
log line. For example, heres Hello, Dolly!: a life-loving matchmaker finds
a bride for a grouchy half-a-millionaire . . . herself. Thus, you know the
driveline of your material from the start. Operettas of course had love
plots. But too often they had no drivelineno content. The Desert Song
looks at what a woman wants her man to becompanion or hero? Lover or
tyrant? The lover, surelybut what if love is tyranny? Log line: Margot
longs for love ... until shes in it. Note that, in a different setting, Ham-
merstein would return to this in The King and I, in a vastly more fulfilled
considerationindeed, in one of the best books ever written for a musical.
Lets get closer to twenties operetta in one classic title, Rudolf Frimls
The Vagabond King (1925). Though more or less completely benched by now,
it was a viable property for over a generation, and was filmed more than
once.* It threw off several hit tunes, from the merrily ripsnorting Song of
the Vagabonds to the foxtrotting Only a Rose (I gi-i-ive you), and left so
potent an impression that the former numbers last line, And to hell with
Burgundy!, was spoofed in two fifties shows, Make a Wish and Once Upon a
Mattress. Amusingly, each uses Burgundy to mean something different
the wine, the province, and, in the original show, the duke by that name,
the villain of the piece.
Thats because The Vagabond King is set in fifteenth-century France,
when that Duke of Burgundy intended to take Paris and the French throne
for himself. The Vagabond Kings source was If I Were King (1901), a play by
Justin Huntly McCarthy (our Madcap Duchess collaborator, four chapters
ago) that E. H. Sothern made the centerpiece of his career for fifteen years.
Sothern played Franois Villon, a lusty knave, as legend tells, but of course
a poet as well. When Friml and his lyricist, Brian Hooker, gave Villon mu-
sic, they had something novel in the line of operetta heroes, for Villon first
appears as a shaggy, dirty street brawler, then gets into courtly raiment
* Rose-Marie and The Desert Song went Hollywood three times, though the formers
first outing, with Joan Crawford, was a silent, and the two remakes maintained only
a glancing acquaintance with the stage shows storyline. The New Moon, better known
for the Jeanette MacDonaldNelson Eddy remake, was first filmed with Grace Moore
and Lawrence Tibbett, but the plot appears to be drawn from a 1919 Norma Talmadge
silent, also called The New Moon. MacDonalds filmed operetta adaptationswhich in
fact began with a Vagabond King, in 1930demonstrate this musics staying power.
There were ten in ten years, and some of them reached back to Second Age titles,
albeit with, once again, plot replacements. Given Hollywoods conservatively commercial
business outlook, its worth noting that even after MacDonald and her various part-
ners moved on, Hollywood continued to pump from the operetta cistern, discovering
a new MacDonald in Kathryn Grayson, who starred (with the shyly mononymous
Oreste) in a Vagabond King remake as late as 1956. Finally, only one of Broadways
classic twenties operettas was never filmed at all: Blossom Time.
( ) The Third Age
when King Louis XI makes him King For a Day. At days end, if he has not
won the heart of Lady Katherine de Vaucelles, he dies.
Its a role for Douglas Fairbanks or for John Barrymore (who played
Villon in The Beloved Rogue, a silent clearly inspired by The Vagabond
King), but not, surely, for the typical wooden operetta baritone. Luckily,
the English migr Dennis King had revealed a solid voice as dashing Big
Jim in Rose-Marie, and Kings English training had equipped him with
Shakespearean enunciation, fencing skills, and a ton of swagger. King
was John Barrymore in the operetta versionbut operetta didnt really
deal in stars. Only in Europe did this form create headliners, from Richard
Tauber and Gitta Alpar to Evelyn Laye and Yvonne Printemps.
Anyway, poster billing didnt sell operetta. What sold it was the spectac-
ular visuals, the opera-trained voices, the huge choruses. And operetta did
have its Bennies. The Vagabond Kings comics were a Villon sidekick, Guy
Tabarie (Herbert Corthell), and a big fat pompous courtier, Oliver Le Dain
(Julian Winter). Tabarie calls Oliver Ollie and Oliver calls Tabarie Tab-
bie, and thats about as funny as they ever get. When Tabarie is shot by an
arrow in the backside, he cries, One of the William Tells got me. Oliver
asks, Where?, and Tabarie replies, A long way from the apple.
Yes, ha. But then, no one attended operetta for the comedy. Besides
Kings panache in switching from Villon the ruffian to Villon the prince-
ling, complete with Jekyll and Hyde makeover, there was the Friml mu-
sic. Operetta lyrics tended to the stodgy, but the melodies encompassed
a range unknown to musical comedy. True, Jerome Kern was just then
pursuing his expansion of the lyricism in the latter form. But the other
composers sought the enjoyable rather than the emotional. Nothing in
Lady, Be Good! or Good News!not even in the latters plaintive Just
Imaginecompares to the Big Sing that operetta raised as a rule, the
spell that it cast.
The Vagabond Kings variety of song types is truly variousa Drinking
Song (with a verse heard first in C Major, then c minor, the last chorus a
cappella); the dreamy, elaborate choral Nocturne next to the grisly
Scotch Archers Song, in celebration of hangings; or a Serenade for the
two cutups and the heroine, mock-amorous with vocal imitations of a
plucked lute, an Offenbachian touch in a score that otherwise has all the
caprice of Joan of Arc. The featured woman, a prostitute named Huguette,
so in love with Villon that she willingly dies protecting him from an as-
sailant, is introduced by Love For Sale, a mercurial piece, even a neurotic
one. Its tempo keeps changing as if torn between ballad and rouser, and its
orchestration is a no mans land, ruled by the harp and crowded by the
strings, with woodwinds scampering about between the vocal lines.
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S OP E R E T TA
King for a day! But Villon is noosed at the gibbet in Act Four when Lady
Katherine steps forward with I offer the hand that spares his life. In a
musical comedy, wed be at most five spoken lines from the finale. Oper-
ettas, however, often had too much to say, and its a good three minutes
before the company breaks into a last reprise of Only a Rose. True, a fox-
trot is an odd way to cap a costume piece. One half expects Fred and Adele
Astaire to tap inthough operetta favored ballet as a rule. The Vagabond
Kings big dance number is a tarantella, featuring Tarantella Girls armed
with tambourines.
The classic twenties operettas, from Blossom Time and The Student
Prince through Rose-Marie and The Desert Song to The New Moon, hold
the fringes of the repertory today. But Show Boata backstager about
the Cotton Blossoms floating show, its people, and what happens to
them in the outside worldis always with us. So, finally, you know
youre at an operetta when ... except Show Boat isnt really an operetta.
Its profusion of musical scenes; its generous-voiced First Couple singing
the ultra-passionate You Are Love waltz duet; its colossal folkish an-
them Ol Man River; its sheer scope, in a story taking in both north
and south and bridging some forty years, are all told too deep and wide
for musical comedy. Then, too, Show Boats action occurs in two spheres
of existence: the natural world of the Mississippi River and the artificial,
man-made world of American culture. The natural world protects and
comforts. The man-made world destabilizes. This is almost too deep and
wide for theatre, period.
Theres yet more in this almost insanely rich work: instead of the usual
configuration of one romantic couple and one comic couple, Show Boat
counts five extremely diverse couples:
Captain Andy (star comic Charles He runs the Cotton Blossom and she
Winninger) and his wife, Parthy busybodies around in a frustrated
Ann (Edna May Oliver, a specialist fascism. How I hate not to know
in sour beldame roles). things, she mutters.
Their daughter, Magnolia (soprano The romantic couple, she on the
Norma Terris) and Gaylord Ravenal strong and he the flighty side. A
(tenor Howard Marsh, though first in the musical: he abandons
revivals often cast a baritone). her and their daughter out of
shame that he cant support them.
Frank Schultz and Ellie May The fun couple, who do what the
Chipley (Sammy White and Eva lovers cant: bicker, utter sarcasms,
Puck, married vaudevillians). and dance.
( ) The Third Age
of ... well, you could call it the bustling anomie of American urban life or
simply Show Boats second act. Captain Andy is Show Boats philosopher-
king: the CEO of the art. Julie is Show Boats iconic martyr: the cry for help
in a world lacking in humanist compassion. But Ravenal, Hammerstein
thoughtat first, apparentlyis the intelligence and energy of the story.
Then Hammerstein realized that Ravenal was simply a handsome face in
Show Boats panorama. Hes a leisure-class charmer, a gambler by trade.
Such a man wouldnt remark upon symbolic concepts like the river and
time. Instead, Hammerstein found his spokesman in the Cotton Blossoms
deckhand, Joe, who is but lightly embedded in the plot action. Almost akin
to the interlocutor of minstrel-show days, Joe has perspective. He doesnt
understand timeno one doesbut he does understand place: the river
and its laws and people. Those who know how river life works, and who
strictly observe its conventions, live safely. Julie offends convention: by
being half-black and entering into marriage with a white man. So the place
has its treacherous side, its oppression. Yet it is comprehensible, and, for
those it favors, a safe place. It had been safe for Julie till some vicious mis-
creant right out of a show boat melodrama denounced her to the sheriff.
Again, life is fantasyand so Julie leaves the show boat, to her despair
and, we imagine, early death. As the river goes, so time goes: but time is the
rivers unpredictable counterpart, the dangerous place. Suddenly, now, in
1927, Guy Bolton and his stolen jewels seemed wildly irrelevant.
Show Boat opened up the musical as D. W. Griffiths Intolerance opened
up American moviemaking. The commanding presence of Ol Man River
by itself marks the score as a Big Sing beyond operettas scopeyet, at the
same time, almost all the principals play book comedy and participate in a
play-within-a-play spoof, The Parsons Bride. Such capers are the property of
pint-sized musical comedy. Most surprising, this very template of artistic
revolution blithely made room for specialty acts by some of its leads.
Sammy White got his dancing turn (as a scene-changer), Norma Terris did
her imitations, and Tess Gardella actually revived the coon song (in two
interpolations, May Irwins Bully Song and Coal Black Lady) till Kern
and Hammerstein wrote her a new number during the tryout, Hey, Feller!
This song could be said definitively to have terminated the old black
stereotyping with a full-blooded character number. But more: Hey, Feller!
moors the last scene in 1927, when the Flapper of Today throws aside Little
Miss Muffett flirt games and boldly chases men.
What about all the set changes necessary in this epic picaresque? Ham-
merstein was ingenious in balancing full-stage scenes with little scenes,
and Ziegfelds pet designer, Joseph Urban, kept the whole thing flowing,
albeit with a few stage waits while the orchestra played through a blackout
( ) The Third Age
or Jules Bledsoe crossed the stage with a reprise (with new lyrics) of
Ol Man River. Still, all that scenery reminds us that Show Boat doesnt
run out of story in Act Two, as many musicals do. (Thats why they call it
second-act trouble.) No, Show Boat has to update us on the tragedy of
Julie. Further, Ziegfeld apparently asked Kern and Hammerstein to include
a sequence set at the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893a sentimental touch.
His career began there, when he opened a cabaret to lure fairgoers away
from such spots as the Dahomey Village, which ended up in Show Boat as a
production number for the black ensemblea homage, at the same time,
to In Dahomey (1903), the first musical written and performed by blacks to
be seen on Broadway.
Show Boat is filled with homages, because it is more than storytelling
and storysinging. Like the first revues, Show Boat looks backnot at the
events of the year just past but at the history of American show biz. As
Hammerstein told the story, it was Kern who first saw Ferbers novel as a
musicalbut it was Hammerstein who had a thing about theatre. A number
of Hammerstein shows are backstagersSweet Adeline, Music in the Air,
Very Warm For May, Me and Juliet. Further, there are performance spots
in many of the others, including, with Richard Rodgers, South Pacific, The
King and I, Pipe Dream, and The Sound of Music.
Show Boat is more than a backstager, obviously. Still, it does take a look
at how theatre soothes and inspires us. Later, with Rodgers on Me and Juliet,
Hammerstein described the audience as a big black giant whose world-
view is improved by playgoing: You send him out a nicer giant than he
was when he came in.
Above all, there is Show Boats score, known for an unprecedented wealth
of melody. What todays listeners dont realize is how intensely the story
flows through the songs. We take this for granted now; it was innovative in
the 1920s. Most lyricists had a style all their own; Hammersteins style
changed from song to song, to suit his characters. Joe, in Ol Man River,
uses language in a wholly different way than does Ravenal in Till Good
Luck Comes My Way, or than Frank and Ellie in I Might Fall Back on You.
Then, too, Show Boat is the culmination of Kerns experiments in the
New Music. At times, it seems as if the orchestra will never stop reporting,
commenting, accompanying, as if all those couples and the river and
time thing were too rich a meal for fasting. The immobile old song struc-
ture of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus number dissolves as we listen; Julies
cabaret rehearsal song when she reappears in Act Two, Bill, stands out
because its in the old format, left over from Oh, Lady! Lady!!, as Ive said. So
when Magnolia and Ravenal first meet, their scene moves from one mu-
sical period to another like a movie camera: first in a close-up on the hero
T H E S T R U C T U R E OF T W E N T I E S OP E R E T TA
in a solo, Who Cares If My Boat Goes Upstream?, then to the meeting it-
self: a strangely emotional flirtation in the chorus of Make Believe, some
conversation on love and pretending in trio sections, and at last a reprise of
the chorus, love at first sight. Instead of halting the narrative, the number
becomes the narrative, absorbs and carries it along.
Ziegfeld billed Show Boat as his all American musical comedy: a na-
tional epic, with its contrasts of city and country, reality vs. playacting,
white and black, tradition and novelty, all designed to scroll down through
depictions of the ever-changing attitudes of popular art, from oldtime
melodrama to radio and the movies.* No musical before Show Boat un-
folded such a panorama, nor dared comment on it with such omniscient
perspective. In Friedrich Schillers terminology of naive and sentimen-
tal art, musicals before Show Boat were naive: free of perspective. Show
Boat is sentimental: observant. It sorts through what, in this life, is a vanity
and what is worthy, consistent, natural. As the river goes, so time goes.
* The radio is brought in in the penultimate scene, wherein Ravenal, about to reu-
nite with Magnolia after so many years, hears her singing in a broadcast. Then, in the
last scene, we learn that Frank and Ellie have finally become show-biz successesas
the parents of a kid movie star. Most revivals drop these developments, especially
Frank and Ellies reappearance at the end.
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C H A P T E R
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DA N C I N G I N T H E DA R K
Short, one of the professional geniuses of the day. Producer Sam H. Harris
put them all into the New Amsterdam. For some reason, the show ran only
165 performances. Still, it was one of the decades smartest attractions,
from the grande-dame dithering of Mary Boland to Shorts fabulous reali-
zation of Soft Lights and Sweet Music in front of a stageful of mirrors.
It was as well very up-to-date, not only in its subject matter but in its
writing. The Herbert Fields influence, ubiquitous by this time, gave the cast
a number of double meanings to toy with, and, in the name of the Higher
Earthiness, Hart included A Lady of the Evening (so billed in the pro-
gram) in the cast. (The 2007 Encores! concert revival, less delicately, called
her A Streetwalker.) Berlin gave her a twist in Torch Song: yes, she has
sold her body, but only to undergo the pain of love, to purify her art the
same as Helen Morgan.
But then the entire Face the Music score is twisted, as Berlin opens with
a merry-villager chorus detailing the treat of celebrity spotting in Lunch-
ing at the Automat; as the old-time Irish Number gets a brisk makeover in
The Police of New York; as the First Couple (operetta stalwart J. Harold
Murray and Arthur Schwartzs wife, Katherine Carrington) court to a lus-
ciously irrelevant tango, On a Roof in Manhattan. Its a mad lark of a score,
as when that Mirror Number startles on the refrains very first note, a tonic
flatted seventh.
The use of a municipal scandal in a musical comedy suggests that the
hard times of the Depression had politicized the form. In fact, while the
spoken stage reflected the social moment to a great degreeeven to the Group
Theatres creation of an influential acting technique (the so-called Method),
designed specifically for socially progressive dramathe musical sustained
its mission as an escapist lark. Chance political jokes proliferated, yes. But
there were no more than a handful of outspoken political shows.
For instance, Strike Up the Band brought together the Gershwins of
Lady, Be Good! and George S. Kaufman of The Cocoanuts in a biting look
at how the power class drags the nation into conflict. One character, a
Colonel Holmes, was clearly modeled on Woodrow Wilsons shadowy adviser
Colonel House, foreshadowing stage appearances in the 1930s by actors
representing Hoover, Roosevelt (and his cabinet), Neville Chamberlain,
Hitler, Stalin, and many other such. The action saw the United States go to
war against the Swiss over cheese, and while the 1927 production got great
notices in Philadelphia, the public didnt come, and, sensing a disaster, a
number of the leads simply walked out. The producer, Edgar Selwyn, had no
choice but to close for revisions: Morrie Ryskind rewrote Kaufmans book
and the Gershwins revised the score. Reaching Broadway in 1930, the new
version was a hit, leading some to deduce that it must have been 1927
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watered down. It wasnt. Ryskind did alter the action to frame the Swiss
war as a dream, yesbut the criticism of warmongering remains sharp.
MGM turned Dorothys Oz visit into a dream; it doesnt nullify the power
of the fantasy.
In fact, the 1927 show failed because Philadelphians didnt support
it. It had no headliners; the 1930 version starred Bobby Clark and Paul
McCullough, at their height as a sort of demented Montgomery and Stone.
Does a dream pacify the commentary if you portray industrialists and pol-
iticians putting on a war as if it were a show? We dont know what were
fighting for, the title song carols, but we didnt know the last time. That
line is in both 1927 and 1930, and it typifies Strike Up the Bands edgy
worldview. In 1930 Ryskind changed the casus belli from cheese to chocolate.
Is that supposed to be what saved the show?
The Gershwins, Kaufman, and Ryskind all came back for two more polit-
ical satires, Of Thee I Sing (1931) and Let Em Eat Cake (1933), the latter a
sequel in such studied recapitulation that it seemed like Of Thee I Sings
third act. First, John P. Wintergreen (William Gaxton) and his stumblebum
running mate, Alexander Throttlebottom (Victor Moore), gain the White
House on a campaign of love. Then, having lost the re-election, Wintergreen
and Throttlebottom head a revolution.
My readers may be aware of the Curse of the Sequel that created such
disasters as Bring Back Birdie (1981), Annie 2 (1990, closed in tryout), and
even a Phantom of the Opera 2, in London, actually titled Love Never Dies
(2010). It was Let Em Eat Cake that established the curse; after all, nine of
the Harrigan and Hart titles were in effect sequels to The Mulligan Guards
Picnic, and all were successful by the standards of the day. Let Em Eat Cake
tried out one novelty, building its score on a contrapuntal feeling. Scowl-
ing leftists sing Union Square; snoring oligarchs sing Union League.
And the shows one hit, Mine, is a quodlibet, though both melodies are
dreary. The show itself wasnt. Cruel and sour, it was a kind of Where do we
go after Of Thee I Sing? Why didnt they write sequels to Anything Goes,
Brigadoon, My Fair Lady? We know why: sequels dont work. Cakes second
act actually set poor Throttlebottom into a guillotine. True, he was re-
prieved, even promoted to president. But the show was irritating when it
wasnt regurgitating Of Thee I Sing, music and all.
Face the Music and these three Gershwin titles, early in the 1930s, sug-
gest an epoch resounding with the musicals version of punditryas when
Irving Berlin and Moss Hart tried revue, in As Thousands Cheer (1933). They
constructed the evening out of newspaper reports, even letting Ethel
Waters sing, in Supper Time, a widows lament to go with the headline un-
known negro lynched by frenzied mob. But, again, this was otherwise
DA N C I N G I N T H E DA R K
Going Up used the same trope thirteen years beforebut Going Up, one of
those Princess imitations, fielded a gentle hero. Lahr represented the arriving
generation of ethnic talent, making theatre out of the first-generation
Americans frantic revision of Old World coping skills for life in a New one.
Thus, Lahrs Flying High character, Rusty Krause, announces that he will
discover the North Pole. Thats been done? All right, the South Pole. That
one, too? Then the West Pole. A heckler calls out, There aint no West Pole.
Yeah, but you know why?:
LAHR: Because nobodys had the guts to go out and look for it!
One of the new thirties comics was known primarily as a singer, though
all her roles into the 1940s were written as a string of gags: Ethel Merman.
Arguably the greatest star the musical ever had, Merman certainly enjoyed
its most momentous debut, in the Gershwins Girl Crazy (1930). The shows
less than plot-synchronized score is all the same very tuneful, and Merman
had three numbers showing off her range, from the boozy jazz anthem
Sam and Delilah through the immediately following rave-up I Got Rhythm
to a second-act semi-torch spot, Boy! What Love Has Done To Me! Still in
her early twenties, Merman stunned first-nighters with the sheer flying
confidence of her talent; the critics reported numerous encores for I Got
Rhythm, though the unsigned Times review called Mermans vocal style
peculiar.
Merman had a role in the plot, playing Why, you comedy with her
inattentive husband (William Kent) and offering sympathy to the Boy (Al-
len Kearns) after the Girl (Ginger Rogers) humiliated him in the first-act
finale. Right from the start, Merman barked out her lines as if they were all
marked loud and funny, and her excellent diction and matchless vocal
power made her song spots unique. There was no one else like her, and ev-
eryone started to write her psychotronic personality into her roles.
Thus, when Cole Porter created the title song of Anything Goes (1934),
he gave Merman a verse jumping off a downward revelation of the notes in
the tonic minor on Times have cha-anged as a kind of musical pun on
who Merman was, which could be described as A Tough Lady With a Really
Big Dick.
Merman didnt play roles. She inspired them; created them. Cole Porter
loved her because show biz was supposed to be about the riffraff, and that
was his subject matter. Besides, she had the lung power and pronunciation
to send Porters lyrics right to the top of the Imperial Theatres balcony.
And Arthur Laurents hated her, because he knew that if he tried to abuse
her she would have cut his head off, and Laurents lived to abuse and abused
DA N C I N G I N T H E DA R K
to live. He loved to tell the world that Merman, in Gypsy, wasnt acting but
rather played her scenes by rote: count three, turn, shout. A bit of that is
true. During the Lincoln Center revival of Annie Get Your Gun, sensing by
peripheral vision that Jerry Orbach was interfering with her performance
of Doin What Comes Naturlly, Merman confronted him: What are
you doing while Im singing? Orbach said he wasnt doing anythingjust
reacting to what she was saying. Aha! Said Merman: Ill make a deal with
you. I wont react to you and you wont react to me!
So Merman was limited in the sense that acting was taking stage with-
out interference: they came to see me, not you. Some call it indicating;
Merman called it show business. You turn up every single night, you spit
your lines out, you justify the music. I call it professionalism. Most im-
portant, there was something sharp and springy in Mermans conversation
that book writers slipped into their scripts, for Merman and others, cre-
ating a Merman tintype as a musical-comedy heroine. Whether as a good-
time gal, an ambassadress, or as Dollyfor Jerry Herman planned the
Hello, Dolly! score for Mermanshe was the heroine who overturned the
Christie MacDonald and Marilyn Miller character. They were sweethearts.
Merman was a broad, capable of tenderness but ultimately self-willing and
independent.
Mermans liberated woman, Herbert Fields sexy scripts, and Cole Por-
ters seditiously erotic songs reveal a colorful and very nearly x-ratable
Broadway. Porters The New Yorkers (1930), to a Fields book, mixed blue
bloods with gangsters as if Society was now less exclusive than notorious.
As in Face the Music, a prostitute gets a numberbut Berlins was comic.
Porters was a howl of pain, so ahead of its time that, seventy years after,
when The Fine Young Cannibals rocked Love For Sale on a Porter anthology
CD, the song sounded as if it had just been written.
Porters next show, Gay Divorce (1932), was less raucous than The New
Yorkers, soothed by the English setting, mostly English characters, and the
democratic suave of Fred Astaire, working without his sister for the first
time and on the stage for the last. Yet an air of libertine recklessness per-
vades. Astaire played a novelist caught up in Claire Luces attempt to di-
vorce a stodgy husband through a fake adulterous act in a seaside hotel
fairly shaking with lust. There were no chorus men, only women, and one
sprightly beauty tells her chums that she checked the front-desk register to
find out who of the male guests is married:
This leads into Why Marry Them?, one of the many Porter numbers
written from a womans point of view in a way no other lyricist ever ap-
proaches. Its a satire, of course: As lovers they love you, as your husbands
they snore, the ladies explain. Claire Luces official co-respondent in her
adultery is one Tonetti (Erik Rhodes). Put on your blond wig, girls, one
of our chorus ladies cries, its an Italian! Latin was the new Dutch as a
comic stereotype: excitable, full of mispronunciations, and strangely incon-
clusive in seduction. Your wife is safe with Tonetti, his motto runs. He
prefers spaghetti. In fact, it is the unassuming Astaire who takes stage
as Great Lover, using Night and Day and its following dance duet as a
campaign so (shall we say) penetrating that for once boy really Gets girl.
Operetta, on the other hand, had no place for these sensual revolutions.
Operetta dwelled in the land of romance, an entire map away from Herbert
Fields or Cole Porters views on life as lived. Operetta was also the place
where most of the artistic experimenting went on. Jerome Kern, with Otto
Harbach on The Cat and the Fiddle (1931) and Oscar Hammerstein on Music
in the Air (1932), created two of the most integrated scores of all time, for
the former offers a score broken apart and then intricately interlocked with
the book and the latter is so overrun with music that it plays as one endless
musical scene.
Otherwise, the two shows dont have a lot in common. Both are set in
modern-day Europe and are in part backstagers. But The Cat and the Fiddle,
billed as a musical love story, is really a florid musical comedy, at once
lush and jiving, while Music in the Air, a musical adventure, is an operetta,
so fully composed that each scene is structured as a set pieceSonata,
Caprice, Humoresque, Rondo. To put it another way, Cat was scored (by
Robert Russell Bennett) for an unusually small pit of only six strings but a
wail of winds including three saxophones, three trumpets, three pianos,
and a percussion battery fit for Paul Whiteman. Bennett orchestrated also
Music in the Air for a big pit of some two dozen or so, mainly strings.
Each show treats a war between opposites, but very different wars.
Cats First Couple are composers, but she (Bettina Hall) writes hot and he
(Georges Metaxa) writes classy. Music in the Air opposes the theatre profes-
sional to the amateur in a shocking way, for, breaking the cardinal show-biz
rule that the heroine goes out there a youngster but comes back a star,
Musics heroine (Katherine Carrington) comes back a flop. She and her
boy friend (Walter Slezak, in his youthfully slim days) have traveled from
their village paradise to Munich to sell a song, for he, too, is a composer.
DA N C I N G I N T H E DA R K
The song is Ive Told Every Little Star, a superbly simple creation in both
words and music, suggesting a folk piece. Unfortunately, Kern and Ham-
merstein reprised it so insistently that the audience must have left not
merely humming the tune but singing it in sixteen-part harmony with so-
prano descants. But at least the audience heard the entire song: had it
turned up in The Cat and the Fiddle, they would have got its verse in one
scene, its first A strain in another, and the rest of it later on mixed in with
something else. Thats how Cats She Didnt Say Yes is performeda bit
there and a bit there, each bits lyrics reflecting the plot action.
Both shows were big hits, Cat at 395 performances and Music at 342,
extremely strong runs in the Depression. And both were filmed. Yet some-
how they never caught on as classics and are seldom seen. True, Cats book
is slow and dull, and its duel of pop and classical is very thirties. Its remi-
niscent of a Walt Disney Silly Symphony of 1935, Music Land, in which the
Land of Symphony faces the Isle of Jazz across the Sea of Discord. The Jazz
prince loves the Symphony princess, so war breaks out, brass cannonfire
against organ-pipe rockets. At the time, this was a national conversation:
sweet or hot? But its not vital after West Side Story and Eleanor Rigby, for
contemporary music can be sweet and hot.
Anyway, relatively few thirties musicals have become classics. Indeed,
two of the decades defining forms, the little revue and the big theme
revue, are virtually unrevivable if only because they were filled with refer-
ences to events and names of the day. Composer Arthur Schwartz and his
most constant lyricist, Howard Dietz, became prominent in the intimate
format: The Little Show (1929), The Second Little Show (1930), Threes a Crowd
(1930), Flying Colors (1932). (There was a Third Little Show, written by
others.) Intimate, at the time, was a euphemism for sophisticated, itself
a euphemism for many things, from worldly and tolerant to just plain
old sexual in all its variations. There were intimate talents, of esoteric
appeal, such as torch singer Libby Holman and dry comic Fred Allen. There
were intimate songs, such as The Little Shows I Guess Ill Have To Change
My Plan, the lament of a man whose love has married another. In the sec-
ond chorus, he decides to woo the lady anyway, which is worldly enough.
But the song really shatters the Commandments in the line Why did I buy
those blue pajamas before the big affair began?for the very mention of
bedroom wear was thought uncouth and dangerous. It conjured up visions
of, you know ... skin.
During their intimate period, Schwartz and Dietz crossed over into big
revue with one of the very best, The Band Wagon (1931), filling the New
Amsterdam with big talentthe Astaires, comic Frank Morgan (later the
title player in MGMs The Wizard of Oz), tart-tongued Helen Broderick, and
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strange artistic lesbian ballerina Tilly Losch. The Band Wagon had an inti-
mate side, thoughintimate in its erotic connotation. In Confession,
the chorus girls revealed their apparently sinless lifestyle. I never kissed a
man before, they explained, adding, before I knew his name. The Astaires
played wicked French tots in Hoops, spying on a grownup world popu-
lated exclusively by adulterers. And in a southern sketch called The Pride
of the Claghornes, daughter Breeze (Adele Astaire) was disinherited for
being a virgin. The proudest family in all the countryside! thunders her
daddy, the Colonel. And nowthis!
Many of the big revues were organized around a theme, like Irving Ber-
lins aforementioned newspaper of a musical, As Thousands Cheer. Schwartz
and Dietzs At Home Abroad (1935) took the form of a world cruise, and
while it offered Eleanor Powell for dancing and Ethel Waters for singing, it
gloried in its lead comic, Beatrice Lillie. Hard to cast in story shows, Lillie
was a great revue personality, versatile and magnetic, with a gift for playing
the maddest absurdity as if it were the very essence of logic. At Home
Abroad found her as a geisha girl, a Parisian Folies star, a Russian ballet
dancer who could not face the muzhik, and, most memorably, an English-
woman driving herself and three store clerks bonkers trying to order
two dozen double damask dinner napkins. Danner nipkins. Napper dinkips.
No, two nuzzen mouble dazek nanner dipniks!
Some writers enjoyed revues freedom, which allowed them to create
songs and sketches from scratch on any notion they fancied (as opposed to
working within a narrative structure). Schwartz and Dietz had such success
with The Band Wagons songs that they tried to write them all over again for
Flying Colors the following year. The Astaires tap-happy Sweet Music in-
spired Flying Colors A Shine on Your Shoes; I Love Louisa, with its Ger-
manized English, led to Mein Kleine Akrobat; Dancing in the Dark, The
Band Wagons haunting hit tune, introduced by the typical revue baritone
(John Barker) and then danced by Tilly Losch in a place made of mirrors
and trick lighting, showed up in Flying Colors as Alone Together, haunting
to a fault. Indeed, the two numbers so precisely shared a tone of worried
rhapsody that critic John Mason Brown dubbed the latter title Dancing in
the Schwartz.
One advantage of Big Revue was state-of-the-art designnot just the
pretty look associated with twenties operetta but technical experiments.
The Band Wagon, uniquely, set all its main numbers on Albert Johnsons
design platform of two revolving stages, one inside the other. Thus, I Love
Louisa was presented on a working carousel, and for Hoops the Astaires
gamboled around a central construction of greenery and executed their
runaround exit almost literally on the fly. Useful in set changes, the
DA N C I N G I N T H E DA R K
* The music bears the stamp of Rodgers style as later dances in his shows do not.
(The Carousel Waltz, an apparent exception, is a pantomime, not a dance.) We know
that Rodgers composed both of On Your Toes Big BalletsLa Princesse Zenobia along
with Slaughter on Tenth Avenueand I wondered if he wrote Peters Journey as
well. Rodgers and Hammerstein chief Ted Chapin confirmed that Peters Journey
was indeed the last ballet for a show that Rodgers himself composed.
( ) The Third Age
* The original BoltonWodehouse Anything Goes script has not survived, but Boltons
elaborate scenario, off of which the script was written, is still with us, mad bomber and
all. There is no shipwreck in it.
DA N C I N G I N T H E DA R K
removing the bomb subplot and, while they were at it, improving the script
in general.
However, a new irritating factoid now dogs Anything Goes: that Lindsay
and Crouse were hired to sharpen a dull script. This did not happen. Inter-
viewed by Miles Kreuger for the liner notes to John McGlinns restoration
of the original Anything Goes score, in 1989, Lindsay addressed this specifi-
cally: When the [finished Bolton-Wodehouse] script came from abroad,
and the Morro Castle went down ... and there was something in their book
that suggested that sort of thing at sea, we knew immediately the audience
would not rise to any gaiety after anything like that was mentioned. So the
book had to be changed.
Nowhere in the interview does Lindsay say anything about being asked
to rewrite a terrible bookthough the Bolton scenario indeed previews a
lifeless treatment. (Merman isnt even a revivalist in Boltons planbut
then why did Porter give her Blow, Gabriel, Blow?) Either Wodehouses
participation vastly improved upon Boltonor Lindsay and Crouse, while
writing the mad bomber out of the script, revised (and improved) the en-
tire document. However it happened, the Lindsay-Crouse text positioned
Anything Goes as the most traditional yet up-to-date of thirties shows, fast,
funny, and sophisticated, with a show-biz evangelist and a gangsterthe
pop-up celebs of the dayat its center. Then, too, in First Couple-Second
Couple style, Anything Goes would cast Bettina Hall as the sweetheart and
Ethel Merman as the seriocomic. Usage demands they run with separate
men, but Anything Goes finds Merman chasing Gaxton chasing Hall, on
a somewhat feminist slant. True, Hall got Gaxtonbut Merman got the
songs.
Most trendy of all was the shows view that celebrity creates morality,
when the entire ship revels in proximity to Gaxton, who they believe is a
notorious criminal. Its a Walter Winchell universe: fame is the first virtue.
Porter discusses this in the title songGoods bad today really means
Bads good. As Ive already said, Anything Goes starts with a book scene
before the First Number, but like virtually all thirties musicals it launched
its second act with an ensemble piece. This one is Public Enemy Number
Onea salute to Gaxton for his patronage, as the presence of a major
Wanted Man guarantees that the shipping line will now be crowded on
evry run.
This is more of the likeness and unlikeness to life that Simon Trussler
spoke of concerning The Beggars Opera: the musicals ability to explore real
social mores surrealistically. And its more of what Offenbach revealed to
us about the resources of a form half theatre and half music: the music
expands the theatre.
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Porters music does so especially well because his notes are as witty as
his words, and his games with rhythm and comparable devices provide an
air of delicious instability. The verse of Blow, Gabriel, Blow and the cho-
rus of Youre the Top both start with wordless flourishes from the or-
chestra, a genuine innovation, and the title song jumps with such a greed
for syncopation that it suggests hordes of faddists shoving each other
out of the way as they rush to defy behavioral norms. Is it a song or an
expos? But then we have the gently rocking intro to the verse of I Get
a Kick Out of You and its lullaby-like chorus, a melody sailing over its
accompanimentand note the five rhymes Porter gets into a single line
in Flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do.
In all, Anything Goes offered the 1930s a view of itself that runs right
through dialogue and score in one sweeping motion. When Cole Porter
writes a list song like Youre the TopYoure the nimble tread, one line
runs, of the feet of Fred Astairehe is breaking open the piata of buzz-
terms known to smart folks, from high art to drug-store paraphernalia;
and when he gives Merman a sinners-holiday hymn in the form of a Broad-
way rave-up combining heavenly rest with jazzy tooting, its because every-
thing in American life conduces to show business. Anything goes. Its a
snapshot of a society taken by its severest critic and biggest booster. Porter
wouldnt have been caught dead without his button-hole carnation, and his
shows are like that: absolutely necessary fluff.
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C H A P T E R
H ard Times are political times, and the Depression politicized the
spoken theatre. But there was art within the revolution, for along
with socially progressive plays came a newly naturalistic theory of acting
to develop the realism in those playsand this in turn influenced the
writing of drama. Here he comes now transitions, staircase entrances,
and thunderously operatic curtain lines became pass, the mummy dust
of ancient history.
Yet the musical remained largely escapist. As with Face the Music, shows
might indulge in social critique, but mainly for novelty. Thus, one of the
decades biggest hits, Id Rather Be Right (1937), offered George M. Cohan as
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, trying to balance the budget so Phil (Austin
Marshall) and Peggy (Joy Hodges) can get married. The support included
Roosevelts cabinet; the Supreme Court (all made up to look like the Chief
Justice, Charles Evans Hughes, an easy target because of his Victorian
facial hair), and even Sara Roosevelt, the Presidents mother. The work was
obviously political in nature, and there was plenty of remark on features of
the New Dealthe relief programs, the Courts resistance to legislation,
Roosevelts fireside chats for radio broadcast. Still, the show, glowingly
pro-Roosevelt, was far more a star vehicle than an exploration of the issues.
George S. Kaufman and Moss Harts book was extremely funny, and a
Cohan turn as F.D.R. was a producers dream.
The Boston tryout drew tremendous press, for Cohan hadnt appeared in
a musical since he had stopped writing them, nine years earlier. A wee bit
of bootleg footage survives, and in it one can see Cohan taking over a
crowded stage with the lunatic jig and giddy grin of the kind of star we
dont see any morea pixie from another world who does everything con
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( ) The Third Age
a Boulevard in Old New York. The mayor was played by Jack Whiting,
the amiable hero of countless musical comedies since the early 1920s,
variously a boxer, a Coast Guard lieutenant, a movie star, a theatrical
producer, a band leader: everyman. Now, as the mayor, he declared New
York a kingdom where the people wear the crownand that could be
a definition of the American musical.
Of the very few musicals that challenged the public with an edgy view of
the issues were two by the immigrant Kurt Weill, who arrived from Nazi
Germany in 1935 with his actress wife, Lotte Lenja (later Americanized to
Lenya). Distinguishing himself in work with Bertolt Brecht, especially on
Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera, 1928) and the opera Aufstieg
und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of Mahagonny City, 1930), both
critiques of capitalism, Weill would seem pre-set to compose political mu-
sicals. However, it was not Brechts radical politics that attracted Weill but
rather Brechts radical innovations as a playwright, for Weill disdained
business-as-usual librettists. He liked creating unique shows with writers
who didnt know the ropes.
Now, in America, Weill went right on collaborating with playwrights. He
had come to the United States as composer of a Biblical pageant, The Eter-
nal Road (1937), but while it was still in production Weill teamed up with
Paul Green for Johnny Johnson (1936). Here is a truly edgy piece: a nice
young guy enlists in World War I, loses his ideals in battlefield carnage, at-
tempts to stop the war by drugging the fat cats directing it, is hauled off to
the madhouse, and is last seen as a vagabond toymaker, selling not little
soldiers but the playthings of peace.
Johnny Johnson was supposedly the most common name among Amer-
ican recruits in the war, and Weill and Green meant their hero (Russell Col-
lins) as the most basic soul: gentle and sensitive, yet tough when provoked.
To emphasize his isolation as a genuine idealist in a cynical world, this Boy
does not get Girland virtually everyone he meets is an eccentric, from
Army captain to psychiatrist. Weill was working with the left-wing Group
Theatre, fascinated with not only socially progressive drama but also the
mechanics of theatre; unfortunately, the Group actors were not singers,
and the Groups director, Lee Strasberg, thought musicals were plays
irritated by an orchestra. Johnny Johnson failed, at 68 performances, and
revivals have not been able to reinstate the piece.
Even so, its final scene is one of the great conclusions in the musicals
history, desolated yet vital. After many years apart, Johnny meets up with
his former love, Minny Belle (Phoebe Brand). She now represents every-
thing that Johnny lost when he comprehended the war as not a correction
but a destruction. Had he respected Authority, he might have come home,
B L U E M O N DAY B L U E S
married, familied, and lived through the peace till the next war, when he in
his turn would urge young men to enlist. Johnnys rival in romance, the
local twerp, stayed out of the war and married Minny Belle. In effect, he has
taken Johnnys life. After a scene with Minny Belles young sonthe son
Johnny would have hadJohnny is alone, the only one in the show who
understands what has been happening. In an unpublished interview with
Rhoda Wynn, Green called Johnny defeated. Yet the shows final number,
Johnnys Song, in which he shares his understanding with the audience,
has a wistful lilt with a conversational swing in the bridge, and the last bars
before the curtain falls sound not defeated but decisive and hopeful. It is as
if Green wrote about the wreck of his hero but Weill scored it as that heros
triumph.
Weills next musical, Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), written with Maxwell
Anderson, boasts a solid Boy Gets Girl, and its superb score, much more
integrated than Johnny Johnsons, finds music in everything, from political
corruption (The One Indispensable Man) to syphilis (The Scars). The
setting is old Nieuw Amsterdam, and Pieter Stuyvesant (Walter Huston in
a gleeful star turn complete with an apparent pegleg) arrives to take over as
not just governor but despot:
at a time when between five and eight was the norm. Interestingly, another
Parade number, Life Could Be So Beautiful, anticipates todays economic
cross-section of the 1 percent versus the 99 percent: If just a few didnt
own everything, it laments, and the rest of us nothing at all.
One of Parades many contributors was Marc Blitzstein, who happened
to write all of the other dangerous thirties musicals. But his is still per-
formed today, The Cradle Will Rock (1937). Using stereotypes to analyze the
social blueprint of an imaginary American town in the throes of a labor
dispute, Cradle is extremely confrontational, and Blitzstein must have been
prepared for a failure-success, with blistering notices and a short run yet
great talkabout among theatre folk and the intelligentsia.
But something else happened. Thinking the piece incendiary in
flammable times, the federal governmentCradles producer through
one of F.D.R.s relief programsclosed the production before it could
open. Finding Maxine Elliotts Theatre padlocked, the Cradle company and
ticketholders marched all the way up Broadway from Thirty-Ninth Street to
the empty Venice Theatre, on Fifty-Ninth Street, in the most resolute as-
sertion of the show must go on ethic in thespian history. Banned from
the stage by their union, the actors performed in the auditorium while
Blitzstein, at an upright piano on stage, accompanied and narrated. It was
an opening night in the raw: no sets, no costumes, no orchestra players, no
ushers, no critics: just a play and its actors. The following year, Cradle went
for an open run in a different house, retaining the improvisational feeling
of that first performance, though now the actors were ranged in rows
upstage and came forth to play their parts at stage center. Revivals almost
always offer a simulacrum of this approach, though the show was in fact
meant to be seen like any other musical, with a dressed stage and an
orchestra.
Its an exciting tale, but theres good news and bad news. The good: Blitz-
stein was arguably the most acute character composer of the time, able to
limn an individual in a single number. Each of his characters sounds com-
pletely different from the others; and his characters sound like nobody
elses in the first place. Cradles Moll, a streetwalker, is given, in Nickel
Under the Foot, an establishing number that utterly reveals her to us in
the first A section: hardened by life in a rough world, with almost all the
wishfulness kicked out of her. But the bad news is that Blitzstein was no
melodist. Little in Cradle is enjoyable as musicand Blitzsteins second
show, No For an Answer (1941), on the growing defiance of mistreated
resort workers, is the same only more so: an extremely character-conscious
score of no aesthetic appeal whatsoever. For instance, Francie, a love
duet, gives Boy little more to sing than the title word and da da da while
B L U E M O N DAY B L U E S
Girl dialogues. Its a fascinating reinvention of genre, but not one most
people would want to hear twice.
At that, No For an Answer never got an open run. The Ancient Arabic
Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, an American version of the Free-
masons, built a moorish meeting hall on Manhattans Fifty-Fifth Street,
the Mecca Temple. When the Shriners (as they were generally known) lost
the building in the 1929 crash, the city took it over, hiring it out on four-
walls deals with an auditorium of folding chairs. It eventually became the
City Center of Music and Drama, today the home of Encores!, but in 1941
it hosted No For an Answer in three successive Sunday night airings. The
cast consisted largely of unknowns, among them Carol Channing, well
ahead of the daffy baby-doll basso she was to trademark in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes.
This takes us far from Broadway, where the opposite of Marc Blitzstein
was Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart, champs of melodic songwriting and
attached most often to big-budget productions with glossy casting. Porter
got the bigger stars: Sophie Tucker and Gaxton and Moore in Leave It To
Me! (1938), which featured Mary Martin, debuting with My Heart Belongs
To Daddy; Merman and Lahr in DuBarry Was a Lady (1939); Merman
alone, with a Time magazine cover, in Panama Hattie (1940). But Rodgers
and Hart got the bigger song hits: My Romance, Little Girl Blue,
Theres a Small Hotel, Johnny One Note, Where or When, The Lady Is
a Tramp, This Cant Be Love, and in the unique style of the Rodgers
Waltz, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and Falling in Love With
Love (is falling for make believe).*
Rodgers and Harts best score, to Pal Joey (1940), did not catch on at
first, thoughcontrary to legendthe show was a hit from the start (and,
twelve years later, a smash in revival). More important, Joeys seedy world
of third-rate showbiz grunts, adultery, and blackmail, drawn from John
OHaras New Yorker stories with a book by OHara himself, brought realis-
tic dialogue into the musical. It is not that pedestrian nightclub emcee Joey
(Gene Kelly) and his payer of the bills Vera (Vivienne Segal) broke new
character ground. They didbut the history was more truly made by the
casually blunt way in which they expressed themselves. Blow, Joey tells
Vera in their last scene together, after she cuts off his bank account;
men didnt address women that way in musicals. Pal Joeys score is less
* Ironically, the teams biggest hit isnt from anything. It started in Hollywood as
Oh Lord, Why Wont You Make Me a Star? and underwent a series of new lyrics till
MGMs music publisher, Jack Robbins, told them to make it simple. Like one of those
Moon Songs. And Hart changed the lyric one last time: to Blue Moon.
( ) The Third Age
threw all his money away on? Miss Georgia Brown. And what did Miss
Georgia Brown do with that money? Well, it seems she suddenly felt reli-
gion coming on and gave that money to the church. Hallelujah! For Little
Joe has done good in the world after all, and he and Petunia enter the
glorious kingdom.
Cabin was a kind of Gesamtkunstwerka piece in which all arts blend in
unity. Dance permeates the action; design matches the music. Experiment-
ing in the opposite direction, one can separate the artsand this brings us
to Lady in the Dark (1941), so not a musical that its script functions like
that of a straight play. Musical librettos of the time tended to fritter about
in search of comic business or cue in the next number. But Lady in the Dark
speaks in the single-minded throughline and roomy character development
of the legit dramatist. Nor does it have the musicals procession of
discrete song spots, from the First Number through the Wanting Song
to the Big Ballet and so on. Lady in the Dark has only one song ... and
three one-act operas: the heroines dreams, as her psychiatrist probes her
unconscious.
Thus, Lady in the Darks authorscomposer Kurt Weill, lyricist Ira
Gershwin, and librettist Moss Hartsegregated the musicals two basic
components, the book and the music, at a time when all the other first-
division authors were trying to unite them. Further, the show was a star
vehicle, conceived for Katharine Cornell but then, as Weills music pene-
trated Harts program, redesigned for Gertrude Lawrence, known as much
for actressy jobs in plays as for her verve in musical comedy. Her role in the
play Lady in the Dark, as a mannish magazine executive, does not align
with but counters her role in the musical Lady in the Dark, when she
imagines herself as glamorous: the toast of the town, a movie stars bride,
and the queen of the circus.
Thus the constituent parts of the musical are broken up to create a genre
claiming a single titlethis one. In a musical, the score runs through the
action. In this work, the book runs through the action, leaving the score in
a separate place, gazing upon the story rather than cooperating with it.
There are two unifying elements. One is the heroines dream melody,
My Ship, an objective-correlative for her mental crisis. The other is the
use of her real-life cohorts as figures in her dreams. One of the shows many
surprises in 1941 was their appearance in the first dream before the audi-
ence knew who they were in Lawrences magazine world. It was a way to
actuate the fantasya way for Moss Hart, an obsessive of the analysts
couch, to proselytize: your imagination explains your life. And so, in the
first dream, a marine marches into the nightclub where Lawrence is reign-
ing as New Yorks diva to paint her portrait for the next first-class stamp.
( ) The Third Age
But the picture reveals a monster, and the dream implodes in terror. (Now
for a staging trick: during the tumult, Lawrence slipped offstage, leaving a
double in her costume to distract the audience while Lawrence breathlessly
changed into street clothes to reappear seconds after the blackout, back in
the psychiatrists office as if she had never left it.) As the narration moves
on to the magazine suite, the marine now turns up in his real life as Law-
rences managing editor, a tough guy in a suit, and the only man who has
power over her. She doesnt know it yet; she thinks of him as irritating but
great at his job. After seeing what shes been dreaming, however, we know
more about their relationship than she does.
Ironically, Lady in the Dark is both a play with music and one of the
most musical plays ever put on: because, when the three main dreams were
in operation, they burst with soundnot just songs but orchestral narra-
tion and through-sung narrative. True, the old act finalettos that had only
recently died out often behaved that way. But they were constructed out of
stock practices and were not very kinetic dramatically. Lady in the Darks
first two dreams bounce surrealistically from place to place, constantly
veering into surprises, as when Liza buys her wedding ring and the jeweler
suddenly pulls a knife on her. (Of course its that managing editor again.)
The third dream is a combination of circus and trial: Liza is accused of the
crime of Ambivalence About Everything in Her Life. But this dream diag-
noses her problem, and the fourth, non-musical, dream reveals the cause:
bad parenting that left her feeling inferior. Moss Hart has the cure: Girl
Gets Boy, who turns out to be the managing editor, because hes the only
other character who can sing My Ship.
Partly because it was uniquely entertaining, partly because it dealt with
psychiatrytrendy but very mysterious at the timeand partly because it
gave the fascinating Gertrude Lawrence unlimited opportunity, Lady in the
Dark was one of the biggest hits the musical had known. It was exceedingly
well staged, too, using two adjacent revolving stages, each containing a
smaller revolve, to expedite set changes leading into and out of but also
during the dreams. Hassard Short, one of the go-to directors of the day, so
magisterial that he often supervised productions utilizing separate dia-
logue stagers and choreographers, got the signing credit, but this was Moss
Harts project from start to end, and the casting says Hart all over. He had
an acute sense of how theatre worksnot just writing and presenting
plays but whats really going on inside them. To put it another way, Hart
knew what life was like and whos in it. He clearly created the men in Lizas
world as iconic types that a woman who is confused and unhappyin the
dark, as the title tellsmight see as accoutrements in her attempt to com-
pensate for her failings by appearing successful in the creative life, the
B L U E M O N DAY B L U E S
social life, the romantic life. In 1941, sophisticates knew that the creative
life depended on the taste and smarts of gay men, and Lizas is the maga-
zines photographer, Russell Paxton (Danny Kaye, in the role that propelled
him to stardom, not least for the tongue-twisting Tchaikowsky). For
the social life, Liza takes a wealthy older lover, Kendall Nesbitt (greying,
patrician Bert Lytell), and for the romantic life there is the movie star
Randy Curtis (Victor Mature). Girls, hes God-like! Paxton shrieks. Hart
originally wanted Buster Crabbe for the part: Hollywoods Flash Gordon,
visually a Strongheart but, offscreen, frat-boy corny. Harts point is that
none of Lizas men is effective protection from her fears, and Hart would
have been fitting the performers to these important subsidiary roles to
project all the more interest onto the managing editor (Macdonald Carey).
Hart wanted to show us what Liza cannot see: that he is the only man in
her life after all.
Aside from its interest as drama, Lady in the Dark reminds us of the mu-
sicals Offenbachian ambition to reinvent the form with Extra Music. And
this takes us to the 1930s outstanding work of music theatrethough it,
too, is not a musical. Its an opera. When it premiered, in 1935, the WASP
establishment that ran American Music was hostile to it, for two genera-
tions of composers had tried and failed to produce the Great American
Opera. Their work was European in tone and classy as a rule, with, for in-
stance, a libretto by Edna St. Vincent Millay on a source in the fiction of
George du Maurier. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, manager of the Metropolitan
Opera, was keen on indigenous new work, but nothing took hold.
And then George Gershwin, with Du Bose Heyward and Ira Gershwin,
came forth with Porgy and Bess (1935), after Heywards 1927 play Porgy
(co-written with his wife, Dorothy), from Heywards novel. Porgy and Bess
became town tidings after the theatre worlds leadership class sat in on the
final rehearsalsand Kurt Weill, having just fled an increasingly Nazified
Europe, was there, utterly amazed that Americans were so open to minority
art. But remember, its a kingdom where the people wear the crown. Porgy
and Bess first public performance, at the start of the Boston tryout, was the
most electric in the history of Americas music theatre, with both music
and drama critics sitting in on this epochal event. The New York papers
sent both tiers as well to the Broadway premiere, and, as surely as courtiers
hate revolution, the music men scorned the work. The theatre men were
impressed but confused. Brooks Atkinson called it gloriousbut why
was there so much singing? An opera is ... what?
Commercially, Porgy and Bess was a failure. In every other respectthe
ones that matterit was a smash. Its 124 performances marked tremendous
public interest in an opera in the worst year of Depression theatregoing. The
( ) The Third Age
that had never before been even hinted at, except in Ol Man River. We
wonder what Gershwin might have given the stage after Porgy, for he
then went to Hollywood for movie work. In 1937, before he could return
to New York, he complained of headaches and dizziness, and began to
deteriorate physically. A spinal tap revealed a brain tumor, and within
twenty-four hours Gershwin was dead.
w
C H A P T E R
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adding overhead wires strung with baskets for the Farmer and the Cowman
picnic party.*
No, what made the R & H musicals great was their insistence on unique
characters whose interaction creates unique stories. Even that was not
new; its what attracted Kern and Hammerstein to Show Boat. But from
Lady, Be Good! onthat is, for about twenty years before Oklahoma!the
Aarons-Freedley program reigned: begin with interesting stars and an
appealing score, and when the plot thins have someone don a disguise.
R & H didnt cast stars till their fourth show; in any case, while the
Aarons-Freedley format essentially creates the same piece time after time,
the R & H titles are refreshingly inconsistent. We can infer a few guidelines
even so. Rule One: Develop each storys community background, its culture
and mores. Thus, Oklahoma! isnt just about the farmer and the cowman: it
is imbued with their attitudes and feelings, seeking to pacify their squab-
bles with a bond as a society so that their territory be fit to join the union.
Conversely, Carousel (1945) sees in its New England setting a place di-
vided into those with power and those without. Its not overtly expressed,
yet its ever present in the controlling force of policeman, mill owner, and
such, and Carousels hero, Billy Bigelow (John Raitt), exemplifies this as a
charismatic rascal who is splendid company as long as he doesnt feel
crowded by authority. Interweaving the separate yet connected love plots
of Billy and Julie (Jan Clayton) and the Second Couple, Carrie (Jean Dar-
ling) and Mr. Snow (Eric Mattson), R & H troubled to place them in a social
context, giving their neighbors June Is Bustin Out All Over; the sea
chanty Blow High, Blow Low; This Was a Real Nice Clambake; and a
hymn tune, Youll Never Walk Alone: all together, enough chorale for a
Passion.
Long after all this, Pippin (1972), with a medieval Frankish setting, a
Stephen Schwartz score, and an imaginative Bob Fosse staging, proposed a
hero with no ambition in life. Searching for meaning, he cried, I know this
is a musical comedy. But I want my life to mean something. Unfortunately
for Pippin, Roger O. Hirsons book gave him no substancewhich brings
us to R & H Rule Two: Write about people whose lives have meaning. Al-
legro (1947) was the teams first original; Oklahoma! and Carousel, produced
by the Theatre Guild, were drawn from Guild productions, Lynn Riggs
* Almost all the stage shots of the original Oklahoma! are black-and-whites, hiding
from us the extremely colorful clothes, favoring pastels even for the cowboys. Not till
2011, when the University of North Carolina School of the Arts staged a replica revival
of the original Oklahoma!, did we of today get a look at Curlys mango shirt and orange
tie, Ali Hakims loud checked suit, or Ado Annies orange-and-white layered skirt and
jacket combo, the white stippled with polka dots.
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
Green Grow the Lilacs and Ferenc Molnrs Liliom, respectively. Allegros pro-
tagonist, Joseph Taylor Jr., was a doctors son and a doctor himself, raised
in the person-scaled culture of small-town America, who sees his values
disintegrate as a big-city physician to rich idiots. A beautiful symmetry
connected his youthful innocence to his later rueful wisdom in a choral
number, One Foot, Other Foot: first sung when little Joey stood and
walked for the first time, it closed the story when he renounced empty
prosperity to return to village life.
Allegro was arguably the strangest musical to that point in Broadway
history. The title means lively, and R & H conceived it to be more or
less ceaselessly in motion, to reflect the discordant hubbub of modern
life. Accordingly, they promoted Oklahoma! and Carousels choreographer,
Agnes de Mille, to director-choreographer, to stage the show as if it were a
three-hour musical number, using back projections and small set pieces but
no full-scale scenery as such: a dancers space.
To keep the show tripping along, de Mille used dissolves as each scene
ended, bringing on the next team of players while the previous team moved
off. In a further decomposition of format, R & H wrote a score using its
own version of those small set pieces, some barely eight bars long, and the
normal-length songs were distributed among the many principals, so no
characternot even the protagonistwas able to offer himself to the
public with the eloquence of, for instance, Curlys Oh, What a Beautiful
Mornin and The Surrey With the Fringe on Top. Curlys sweetheart,
Laurey, got a mildly feminist rebel number in Many a New Day, but her
Allegro counterpart, Jenny Brinker, scarcely sang at alland, while were at
it, she tore up the sweetheart activity sheet to commit adultery. (Pal Joeys
Vera sleeps around, too, but Veras no sweetheart.)
Critics and public alike were enthralled, bemused, baffled, irritated. Was
Allegro a masterpiece (if a flawed one) or did its ambition outstrip its
power? One problem was the design. Jo Mielziner, who with Albert John-
son, Boris Aronson, and Oliver Smith comprised the musicals quartet of
Golden Age setmakers, semed unable to make the unique playing area in-
telligible. Steps cut into the flooring looked odd, the projections worked
only sometimes, and curtained openings in the wings for entrances and
exits suggested fitting rooms in Ladies Lingerie.
Still, Allegro was the first musical to align its staging with its theme.
Joseph Taylor wanted his life to mean something, and the Majestic The-
atres big stage teemed with the bustle of people eager to catch hold of
something, connect, achieve. From the moment the curtain rose on a
woman in bed and a robed chorus explaining that she has just given birth
to a boyour hero to bethe public knew it was in for something special
( ) The Third Age
in the opening number alone. It was, in fact, the musicals first attempt to
start with not fourth-wall realism but a collage of images, as that First
Number expanded to take in other principals and the townsfolk as well, in
a reality made of different locations collapsed into one.
This brings us to R & H Rule Three: Start uniquely. Oklahoma! started
with a tiny tone poem of dawn on a golden morning, with Aunt Eller churn-
ing butter in her front yard on an otherwise empty stage. After the music
died away, Curly was heard offstage launching Oh, What a Beautiful
Mornin a cappella, and a bit after the orchestra struck back up to accom-
pany him, he sauntered in. This was actually very much the way Green Grow
the Lilacs had begun, twelve years earlier (though in that production, which
interpolated folk songs, Curly sang Get Along, Little Dogies). Still, to most
of Oklahoma!s public, these first minutes of stage time were a surprise,
with neither the big choral opening nor the bustling book scene that virtually
all musicals got into when the curtain went up.
Carousels first minutes were shocking. Typically, a musical of the 1940s
began with a lengthy overture, played in semi-darkness. As it was ending
or, after it had ended, to curtain music, the house lights darkened all the
way, as if to usher the public into the ceremony of theatre, and the curtain
rose. All this emphasized the moment of contact between real life and fan-
tasy, with its made-up characters, its attitudes, symbols, and myth. But
Carousel had no overture. An odd, scratchy prelude suggested the winding
up of the mechanism of a merry-go-round, and, after about a minute of
music, the house began to dimway ahead of the usual time, startling the
audienceand the curtain then unexpectedly went up on the sight of a
carnival in full cry. There was no singing, no dialogue: the story began in
pantomime, and it really was Carousels story, as most of the major charac-
ters made their first appearance, the scene carefully staged to point out
crucial details of the exposition: Julie and Carrie are friends, and Billy is
the center of attention, especially Julies.
And the fourth R & H show, South Pacific (1949), another adaptation,
this time from war stories by James Michener, began with two Polynesian
children singing a simple French tune, Dites-moi. Actually, the kids are
half-Polynesian (which will be an important plot point later on), but before
the audience can digest the mystifying numberwho are these children
and what are they singing about?the shows stars suddenly walked on:
Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza.
This in itself was astonishing, as stars tended to get star entrances, usu-
ally heralded with a ramp-up. But R & H didnt write for stars even when
stars were cast in their shows, a direct contradiction of the Aarons-Freedley
mode, in which a stars persona created the script and score as if by
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
dictation. The Astaires, Gertrude Lawrence, and Bert Lahr werent just
performers: they were characters, part of the fabric of the composition,
even the reason that the composition existed. Without the availability of
the Astaires, there never would have been a Lady, Be Good!. But South Pacific
was going to be the next R & H show after Allegro, with or without Martin
and Pinza.
South Pacific offers another departure from convention: No choreogra-
phy. No dance, really, to speak of. The R & H revolution partook glutton-
ously of thirties dancethat blend of hoofing and ballet that was to
inform the work of all the great masters from Jerome Robbins to Gower
Champion. Then, too, South Pacific tested the R & H sense of community by
treating the divisive notion of racism, for Pinza, as a Frenchman, was the
father of the two children from the opening scene, which is why they are
but half Polynesian. Martin, a southern girl, from Little Rock, lives within
the unquestioned racism of her background. After so many musicals where
intermissions fell just after a risible sweethearts misunderstanding, it was
unsettling that South Pacifics first-act curtain fell when Martin, realizing
that Pinza has cohabited with an Asian, deserted him in fear and confu-
sion. Race becomes her crucible, her test, and we can rephrase Pippins line
as I want my show to mean something.
Of course, all of this dramatic bravado would be worthless without
first-division music and lyrics, and Rule Four is: Anchor the score with
character traction. The King and I (1951) exemplifies this above all in a
form R & H virtually made their own, the restless, searching monologue in
which a character lays bare his feelings to the public, most often struc-
tured as a collection of songlets while his focus shifts from topic to topic.
The outstanding such exhibit is Carousels Soliloquy, especially arresting
in its exploration of Billys attitudes and concerns in the very words he
would use to articulate them. Anticipating the birth of a son, he veers
from exuberance to anxiety to confidence. What will he become? What if
some boss daughteranother authority figure, Billys natural enemy
scoops him up into a loveless marriage? NoBilly can advise his boy on
the boxing-ring of romance. But while he gloats over his mastery of fa-
therhood, a terrible thought strikes him: what if he has a daughter in-
stead? After allin a superb Hammerstein insighta scapegrace like
Billy instinctively understands the difference between genders. You can
raise a boy rough, but a girl needs the tenderness that Billy doesnt pos-
sess. Yet as he tells us this, he sounds tender, feeling it more easily than he
can verbalize it.
One wonders what audiences in 1945, when Carousel was new to
them, were thinking as this masterpiece of poetic psychoanalysis unfolded.
( ) The Third Age
* Helene Hanff says that it was not Todd but a spy for Walter WinchellWinchells
Rose is how everyone referred to herand that her wording was No legs, no jokes,
no chance. The quotation has taken numerous forms over the years, though most
historians now favor Hanff s version.
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
and E. Y. Harburgs score included the defiant It Was Good Enough for
Grandma (but it aint good enough for us), followed by de Milles sororal
ballet of women wishing for more to do than housekeeping. But de Milles
overriding contribution to Bloomer Girl was the Civil War Ballet, about
not the military but worrying wives and as artistic as anything in Okla-
homa!. Further, Bloomer Girls protagonist was Celeste Holm, Oklahoma!s
Ado Annie, and there was a tiny set-piece musical version of Uncle Toms
Cabinjust what R & H might have done with a mid-nineteenth-century
setting, and exactly what they did do in The King and I, in an Asian-theatre
adaptation of Stowe, The Small House of Uncle Thomas.
The writing team most under the R & H spell was Frederick Loewe and
Alan Jay Lerner, who started with other partners, then hooked up for an
old-fashioned star-comic musical comedy, Whats Up? (1943), with Jimmy
Savo as a rajah getting into mischief in a girls school. As with so many
shows in the early 1940s, much of the mens chorus was in uniform, and
the women were used in quasi-burlesque style. It was as far from Oklahoma!
as one could get, though there was a Dream Ballet. And for their second
show, Lerner and Loewe tried something meaningful, with strong charac-
ters (and another Dream Ballet, by Anthony Tudor). There was even a fan-
tasy sequence in which Plato, Voltaire, and Freud (with a Jewish accent)
diagnosed the heroines problems. The surreal, remember, was an element
of R & H: Carousel, which concluded with Billys brief return from Up
There, had opened seven months earlier. This show was The Day Before
Spring (1945), which anticipated Follies in its look at a college reunion in
which Katherine (Irene Manning) and Alex (Bill Johnson) appear eager to
desert their spouses and rekindle their old spark. Alex admits it openly:
ALEX: I had to find out whether I was still in love with you or just in-
fatuated with a memory.
Such Follies-like insights about the tantalizing Road You Didnt Take haunt
the piece. As Alexs assistant tells Katherine, Romance is never what you
have. Its what you havent.
The Day Before Spring did not succeed, possibly because Lerners book
lacked humor: this was a time when every musical, whatever else it did, was
supposed to be funny. Then, too, hit tunes were key in attracting business;
people would hear a song they liked and ask, Whats that from?, because
the best tunes were show (or movie) tunes. The Day Before Springs score is
interesting, especially in the ballad You Havent Changed At All, actually
just one segment in an extended musical scene, as If I Loved You is in
Carousel. But nothing in the appealing but conventional slate of songs
( ) The Third Age
caught on even momentarily, for Loewe really was at his best only when a
specific place and time inspired his sense of musical imagery, from gold-
rushing California (Paint Your Wagon, 1951) to Arthurian myth (Camelot,
1960).
Or eighteenth-century Scotland, which provisioned Lerner and
Loewes work most fervently in the R & H stylecomplete with de Mille
choreographyBrigadoon (1947). This one is a complete fantasy: a Scots
village is protected from malign influences by appearing but once a century.
The catch is that if any villager leaves, the spell is broken, and Brigadoon
enters into endless nightand of course someone tries to do just that,
for a very suspenseful intermission curtain.
This brings up R & H Rule Seven, which Hammerstein himself gave voice
to on a number of occasions: The second act should last half as long as the
first with twice as much action. Indeed, not all that much occurs in Briga-
doons first act; its almost all exposition, except for the driveline of the First
Couples romance. Her Wanting Song, Waitin For My Dearie, reaches for
their first duet, The Heather on the Hill, and, a bit later, when he breaks
into Almost Like Being in Loves short verse and then starts the chorus
with What a day this has been, the tunes confident swing celebrates
Broadways mastery of American popular songthe era, we might say, of
Whats that from?
One reason is the sheer carefree wonder with which Lerner and Loewe
invest this extremely central up-tune version of a love song. The musical
always made romance seem so easy; prince meets waitress and its Deep in
My Heart, Dear. Or, at least, it is in The Student Prince. Yet by the mid-
1940s, everything in the musical is starting to become difficult. Someone
dies or is actually murdered in every R & H show from Oklahoma! through
The King and I, and in Brigadoon as well. A bit later, death becomes almost
prevalent. In Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
(1951), the hero dies. In Harold Romes Fanny (1954), the comic dies. No-
body dies in Bob Merrills New Girl in Town (1957), but the heroine is a
prostitute, and not in a coy, happy-go-lucky way: a woman from an abusive
background who has a problem dealing with men. Her bitter establishing
song, On the Farm, includes verbal pictures of a girl overpowered by rapa-
cious male relativesthe religious hypocrite Uncle Sven, and sessions in
the barn conducted by Uncle Jake: If ya squeal, ya get the rake.
So New Girl in Town was a serious showbut one created by musical-
comedy talents. George Abbott wrote the book and directed; Bob Merrill
created the score, his first after years of hammering out jingles such as
How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?; Bob Fosse choreographed;
and Gwen Verdon played the lead. Yet their source was Eugene ONeills
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
that hapless charmer, Johnny Nolan (Johnny Johnston), but its protago-
nist is Johnnys wife, Katie (Marcia Van Dyke): long-suffering yet strong
and proud. Katie loves Johnny because hes beautiful, and their daughter
(Nomi Mitty) loves him because hes wonderful. But he dies in both novel
and musical, because the R & H musical play encouraged progressive in-
quiry into the nature of society, and poverty breeds death. True, Brooklyn
was a George Abbott show, and Abbott liked the fun stuff. So, besides its
hero and protagonist, Brooklyn had a star, Shirley Booth, as Katies Aunt
Cissy. Booths daffy line delivery and kewpie-doll vocalism, combined with
a theatre-filling personal warmth, made her Brooklyns central character
even though she and her live-in (Nathaniel Frey) were technically the
Second Couple.
Still, the book, by Smith and Abbott, struggled to keep the novels hu-
manist issues in play; this was a much richer libretto than New Girl in
Towns. Though the work enjoyed only a passing success and is seldom re-
vived, it counts as one of the best scores of the time. Clearly, Schwartz and
Fields saw the R & H matrix as a challenge to rise to. Tender with the No-
lans and cheeky with Cissy, they found numbers as well for the street life of
the Williamsburg neighborhood, making this almost an inner-city Carousel.
Fields, heretofore an engaging talent, suddenly became a brilliant one. In
Love Is the Reason, Cissy outlines the dos and donts of cohabitation, and
a single lineIf you shut your big mouth when his relatives callcatches
the character, her ethnic culture, and a philosophy of life in a stroke.
Harold Rome was another songwriter who expanded his survey at this
time, and Fanny is more or less operatic. One odd aspect of the R & H era is
that while Rodgers himself preferred singers who could act to actors who
could sing, those under his influence continued to write for theatre voices,
not trained ones. Of New Girl in Towns four leads, only George Wallace had
a voice in any real sense, and the all but toneless Cameron Prudhomme
and Thelma Ritter had to carry four numbers.
But Fanny employed R & H casting, with one opera singer (Ezio Pinza)
and two superb Broadway singers for the sweethearts (Florence Hender-
son, William Tabbert). Even the comic, Walter Slezak, had enjoyed impor-
tant roles in operettas in the 1930s. This quartet had a lot to deal with, for
Fannys source, Marcel Pagnols thirties stage-and-film trilogyMarius,
Fanny, and Csaris stuffed with wanting. The concept of need, or hope, or
wish-fulfillment, is what drives the best musicals, why their characters
sing. Its so simple its absurd: a character requires something to complete
his or her existence, and, in confiding in us, draws us sympathetically into
his narrative. I Get a Kick Out of You. If Momma Was Married. The
Music and the Mirror. The Wizard and I. In Fanny, the Boy wants the sea,
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
the Girl wants the Boy, the comic wants a son, and Ezio Pinza wants every-
body to get along. If New Girl in Town has a pop score with some character
content, and if A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a very characterful pop score,
Fanny is somewhat beyond them, too pop for opera but too rich not to be.
Interestingly, Fanny set its dream sequence as not a dance but in a book-
and-music scene, during the Girls wedding to the comic after the Boy has
run off to sail the world. As the Girl dances lovelessly with her new hus-
band, their gay little waltz turns dissonant, the lights dim, the chorus
starts to wail, and, to a deceptively sweet reprise of the title tunethe
Boys love song to the Girlthe Boy himself appears to the Girl as every-
one else freezes. How could I ever have longed for the sea! he cries, as
they embrace. This is an early instance of what we will come to call Concept
Musical thinking, in which characters with psychological access to each
other can appear together on stage even when, in the story, they are actu-
ally miles aparteven, as here in Fanny, on other sides of the globe from
each other, or, as in Allegro, after one or more of them has died.
Another mark of the R & H effect is the proliferation of serious shows,
like this trio of New Girls haunted ex-prostitute, Brooklyns struggles of the
urban poor, the Boy who so obsessively sabotages Fannys Boy Gets Girl
protocol (even if he does, like Show Boats Ravenal, eventually return).
However, touches of the R & H aesthetic found their way even into musical
comedy. Meredith Willsons The Music Man (1957) is typical: a happy rather
than heavy piece on the theme of the con man redeemed by love. In the
title role, Robert Preston was an outstanding example of a fifties invention,
the Novelty Star: someone not associated with musicals (or with singing,
period) who could carry a show with a good-enough voice and dynamite
charisma. Rosalind Russell in Wonderful Town (1953), Tony Randall in Oh
Captain! (1958), Lucille Ball in Wildcat (1960), Julie Harris in Skyscraper
(1965), and Katharine Hepburn in Coco (1969) demonstrate that the musi-
cals cultural prestige now attracted even Hollywood folk or, in Harris case,
real actors. They also suggest that the musicals new essential of a big
storythe direct result of the book-rich R & H titlesneeded big acting
talents to support it.
Certainly, Prestons music man, Harold Hill, was not a specifically
singing, dancing, or comic triumph. Rather, Preston gave a bravura perfor-
mance in an all-around way that star roles of the old days never provi-
sioned. Setting The Music Man in his native Iowa gave Willson a chance to
detail the show in many particulars, so that Preston seemed an authentic
alien in an authentic Midwest, right down to a line about kids neglecting
their chores till they forget to prime the pump and folks are caught with
the cistern empty on a Saturday night.
( ) The Third Age
That lyric is from Trouble, Willsons styling of the con mans spiel in
a unique musical numberbut The Music Mans score is very unusual as
a whole. Piano Lesson unites a childs finger exercises with a conver-
sation between the heroine (Barbara Cook) and her mother (Pert Kelton).
Pickalittle slices the ladies gossip brigade into a quodlibet with a barber-
shop quartet. Seventy-Six Trombones and Goodnight, My Someonea
march and a waltzare the same melody in alternate conformations. Most
amusing is the Library Number, wherein Preston tries to break the ice with
Cook, the town librarian. Strictly business, she tells him he can select a
book and leave:
He proceeds with the song, which then erupts into a full-scale ballet in ar-
ranger Laurence Rosenthals ingenious variations on the main tune and its
insinuating rhythm. Choreographer Onna White gave the dance a cute
blackout cap when Cook tried to slap Preston and accidentally got one of
the kidsbut note that Cook and Preston took part in a ballet that, in the
1940s, would have been set exclusively for dancers. It wasnt Alfred Drake,
Joan Roberts, or Howard da Silva who appeared in Oklahoma!s Laurey
Makes Up Her Mind, but Marc Platt, Katharine Sergava, and George
Church dressed as Drake, Roberts, and Church. But by the 1950s, dance
was embedded too acutely into a shows dramatic continuity for these per-
sonnel substitutions. Even essentially non-dancing leads now had to act
their way through the most elaborate dances, even Dream Balletsas
Johnny Johnston did in A Tree Grows in Brooklyns Halloween sequence.
Clearly, R & H all but reinvented the musical. Oklahoma! and Carousel
werent more integrated than musicals had been: they were more influen-
tial. Yet many successful shows ignored some or all of the new handbook.
Cole Porters Mexican Hayride (1944) was strictly, merrily, even recklessly
pre-Oklahoma! in every way, a lavish fiesta of Girls and Gags. To start with,
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
there was no story, just a filmy premise concerning a crooked lottery and
centered on three Americans in Mexico: a con man (Bobby Clark), a woman
bullfighter (June Havoc, the real-life, grownup Baby June of Gypsy), and a
diplomat for Havocs love interest (Wilbur Evans). This was a book-heavy
show with a lot of dance but a short score (four numbers were cut in Boston
without replacement), and Porter came to feel that he had been robbed. All
the same, the show was a smash, partly because the producer, Michael
Todd, raised up an eye-filling production and also because the Herbert and
Dorothy Fields script was made almost entirely of comedy, sometimes
using out-of-story gags that no truly integrated musical would allow:
Clark, as always, gamed with the public, another R & H no-no. Read the
next joke carefully, for it hides a slippery pun:
CLARK (speaking to the lead soprano about her weight): You know,
I could get that off you.
SOPRANO: You mean diet?
CLARK: No, Im sure its the right color. (Turning to the audience, who
are slow to get the gag) I want a bigger response. Ill wait.
Unfortunately for Porter, most of the songs that remained after the
Boston housecleaning were third-rate. The aforementioned lead soprano,
Corinna Mura, had two sumptuous numbers in Porters Latin style, each
topped by a high C. (This must have been at Todds insistence, for Porter
couldnt stand operatic sopranos in musicals.) There was one hit, I Love
( ) The Third Age
Consider how much more an R & H Second Couple can contribute to the
action. Carousels Carrie and Mr. Snow may seem at first like the standard
comic duo, like Good News!s Babe and Bobby or Show Boats Ellie and Frank.
Bobby tells the football-team trainer that he takes a cold bath every
morning. When did that start? This morning. Bobbys entire role is like
that, as is Babes: being silly is how they live. And Carrie is the flighty sort,
though Mister Snow reveals a dearly romantic soul. Snow himself, though
amusingly awkward, is a bourgeois with intense upward-mobility ambi-
tions: the exact opposite of Julies anarchistic Billy. As Carousel proceeds,
we see how differently the lives of Julie and Carrie turn out, as most people
would view it, for Julie is a penniless widow and Carrie a bride of capi-
talism. Yet Julie has given and received love, while Carries emotional life
has been stifled by the pompous Snow.
Nevertheless, the public seemed to see R & H as strong in, above all,
their scores. So the excellence of Cole Porters Kate numbers set him up as
a, so to say, son of the revolution. Before Kate opened, Porters stock sold
so low that the show had to accept a booking at the New Century Theatre,
the former Jolsons Fifty-Ninth Street, much too far from the theatre dis-
tricts epicenter, on Forty-Fourth Street. Then reports from out of town
told the smart money that a heavy hit was coming in; and the reviews were
ecstatic. Kiss Me, Kate jump-started Porters career all over again, and he
was in superb form for the succeeding Out of This World (1950), another
musical-comedy operetta, and Can-Can (1953), pure musical comedy with a
hit-studded scoreI Love Paris; Its All Right With Me; Cest Mag-
nifique; Allez-vous-en; Come Along With Me, marked Tempo di Gavotte
but another of Porters erotically elusive merengues; the ultra-Porter salute
to liberty, Live and Let Live, an anthem urged on by brass fanfares; and
the richly ambivalent I Am in Love. Porter was back on top, even if Silk
Stockings (1955), based on the Ernst Lubitsch film Ninotchkathis time,
Garbo sings!marked a slight setback. Still, the show itself was a hit, com-
plete with its musical Garbo, the German actress Hildegarde Knef, whose
voice seemed to sound even lower than that of her vis--vis, Don Ameche.
For once, she was the muscle and he the romantic: in dueling solos, Porter
pitted her scientific dismissal of love (Its a Chemical Reaction, Thats All)
against his valentine (All of You).
Long thought too sophisticated for national popularity, Porter was by
now as commercial as R & H or Irving Berlin. So when television commis-
sioned original musicals to hype them as once-in-a-lifetime events, the first
was R & Hs Cinderella (1957), but the second was Porters Aladdin (1958).
In truth, there were countless television musicals, both originals and adap-
tations of BroadwayKiss Me, Kate, to name one, and starring Drake and
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
Morison. However, a new Cole Porter score was headline news (and of
course no one knew that, after finishing it, he would write nothing more till
his death, six years later). Unfortunately, Aladdin was not as impressive as
Cinderella. Locked into crowded little sets and cast largely from the B list,
the show lacked Cinderellas glamor, with Edith Adams living doll of a fairy
godmother and two of Broadways sharpest comics, Kaye Ballard and Alice
Ghostley, as the sisters. Cyril Ritchard played Aladdins villain with his
usual giggly preening, Sal Mineo and Anna Maria Alberghetti made pallid
lovers, and much of the rest was constructed of incompatible odds and
ends, though the use of a baby elephant was refreshing. This being live TV,
there was an amusing mishap when, at the end of No Wonder Taxes Are
High, Ritchard, hoist on some choristers, nearly took a tumble.
What matters here is how central Broadway and its music had become to
the culture at large. The musicals infrastructure included not only a major
profile on the home screen (taking in tastes of the latest hits on The Ed Sul-
livan Show and heavy plugs on everything from sitcoms to variety hours)
but that sine qua non of the middle-class household, the cast album. Today,
Broadway discs are niche commerce, but Columbias My Fair Lady was the
biggest-selling LP of the 1950s. Of course R & H would be asked to write
Cinderella: this was their age, and given their family show reputation, the
ideal project. But its interesting, even arresting, that Porter was chosen for
Aladdin, given his background in the other side of the musical, with lowlife
characters and erotic subtexts. Indeed, for Aladdin he was on his best be-
havior, so subdued that Ritchards list song, Come To the Supermarket (In
Old Peking), sounds like an expurgated version of itself.
Of other established songwriters, only one nourished a vision of music
theatre so individual that he was beyond the inspiration of R & H and their
musical play: Kurt Weill. He died young, in 1950, but two of his last works,
Street Scene (1947) and Love Life (1948), stand among the most influential
shows in history, the former for its opera-with-dialogue genre and the
latter for its story-with-analysis structure. Street Scene, from Elmer Rices
play of 1929, represents the musicals ability to transcend itself in number
structures too large and expressive to be thought of as songs. A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn, which like Street Scene treats New York working-class
life, has songs. Street Scene has musical scenes, encompassing the dreams
and despairs of people trapped in a narrow culture that gives them little
room for hope. All his life, Weill sought to bring the theatres edgy realism
into opera and operas intense vocalism to the theatreand he believed
that he did so most conclusively in Street Scene. Some of its score suggests
the attitudes typical of the forties musical playthe bluesy I Got a Marble
and a Star; the sex-hustling Wouldnt You Like To Be on Broadway; a
( ) The Third Age
mothers touching address of her young school-bound son (in their last mo-
ments together, as she will be murdered shortly thereafter); the sweet-
hearts Well Go Away Together. But some of the score clearly belongs
toas Weill termed itAn American Opera: Somehow I Never Could
Believe (Aria): Ice Cream Sextet; Therell Be Trouble (Trio). And one
title, The Woman Who Lived Up There, an elegy for the mother, stands
among the very best of the decade, mixed of song and speech, covering plot
action (a crowd gathers outside a brownstone as the mother is brought out
on a stretcher and her daughter tries to talk to her), and at last breaking
into a full-throated ensemble even as a police siren goes off: the noise of
the glowering city cutting into every event, every emotion.
Weill wrote Love Life with Alan Jay Lerner on a startling idea, even a
fantastical one. Like Kiss Me, Kate, Love Life contains two scoresone for
Sam (Ray Middleton) and Susan (Nanette Fabray) Cooper as they live age-
lessly from 1791 to 1948, and the other for a kind of vaudeville troupe that
pops up between the story scenes in commentative insert numbers. If
Allegro was the first Concept Musical, Love Lifethe secondwas the one
that anticipated the modern Concept shows with out-of-story numbers re-
marking on the action in the style later popularized by Cabaret. The story:
the Cooper marriage, established in Here Ill Stay (with you), gets into
community spirit (in Green-Up Time), weathers feminist ruction (Wom-
ens Club Blues), wobbles into divorce (Susans Is It Him Or Is It Me?),
then explodes in a minstrel show discussing possibilities for the Coopers
future. The vaudeville: the culture moves from the farm to industry (the
soft-shoeing Progress), hard times set in (Economics), feminism is
viewed more personally (a waltzing kids trio, Mothers Getting Nervous),
why is marriage so difficult (a hobos wondering Love Song)?, marriage
goes to court (a Big Ballet, Punch and Judy Get a Divorce).
Its a brilliant notion, as innovative as any show to this date. But Lerner
ran out of plot in Act Two, and the production did not clearly mark the bi-
zarre chronology for a baffled public. Then, too, the minstrel sequence feels
like the real-life self-defense of the eventually much-married Lerner. If
hes not perfect, Sam cries, sarcastically, fire him! If he has worries and
doesnt understand you every minute of the day, throw him out! He asks
the chorus women if any of them has found Mr. Right; they all say no.
Which is realer, marriage or divorce? And the interlocutor explains, Were
selling illusions.
A lavish staging at the University of Michigan, in 1987, used surtitles to
support the chronology, and made the vaudeville more readable with two
capocomicos, who led the acts with managerial flourish. It worked very well,
but that saggy second act has kept Love Life from reclaiming its historical
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
rights as a founding title of one of the musicals most theatrical genres. Still,
it is worth emphasizing that both Street Scene and Love Life owed nothing to
the R & H model.
Two other shows of the time were similarly independent. Finians
Rainbow (1947) was a traditional musical comedy with a fantasy plot,
Irish stereotype comedy, a couple of self-contained comic sketches, and very
pointed choreography (by Michael Kidd). Yet the piece was innovative as
well, in its multicultural look at southern sharecroppers oppressed by the
good old boy network. Weve seen plenty of black shows, and black per-
formers headlining in otherwise white showsand Duke Ellingtons Beg-
gars Holiday (1946), which opened just two weeks before Finians Rainbow,
offered mixed-race principals and even a miscegenative romance. But Fini-
ans Rainbows chorus was half-white and half-black in a physically inte-
grated ensemble, and this was unheard of at the time. The show was focused
on its principals, of course: sweethearts Sharon (Ella Logan) and Woody
(Donald Richards); Sharons Irish flahooley-filled father (Albert Sharpe),
who has stolen the leprechauns wish-granting pot of gold; a leprechaun
(David Wayne) chasing after the gold; and Woodys mute sister (Anita Alva-
rez), who communicates in angry, frustrated dance steps. Still, Finians li-
brettists, E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, appear to have conceived Finian to
address southern racism, along with American consumer capitalism, which
led to an astonishing first-act finale, That Great Come-and-Get-It Day,
which blends Porgy and Bess-like spiritual with the buy-now-pay-later ec-
stasy of folks who have just discovered the notion of credit. After the inter-
mission and a costume change, they reappear in iconic star outfits as love
goddess, big-game hunter, and the like for When the Idle Poor Become the
Idle Rich.
We should note Finians score in general. Composed with Harburg by
Burton Lane, it is one of the great ones, made of pure song. There are no
soliloquies, even a paucity of verses and trio sections. The Irish and black
themes control some of the numbers, but almost all of them sing very hap-
pily out of story context, as in the typical boy and girl have clicked spot,
If This Isnt Love, or the leprechauns When Im Not Near the Girl I Love,
his realization that he must finally have turned mortal because he feels
sexually promiscuous. Interestingly, Ella Logan, a swing singer, made
no attempt to harmonize her style with the straiter Broadway sound,
blithely singing across bar lines and around notes as if jamming in a cab-
aret. This absolutely defied the rules. When pop singers went Broadway
Gertrude Niesen in Follow the Girls (1944), for instancethey were expected
to adopt a more correct delivery. Yet Finians Rainbow is so bizarre that
Logan fit in as another charming oddity in the Harburgian universe.
( ) The Third Age
The other outstanding non-R & H musical comedy of the 1940s is Leon-
ard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and Jerome Robbins On
the Town (1944), a paradox of a piece with the flimsiest bit of storyline that
gradually multiplies its emotional insights till it seems as epic and moving
as Carousel or The King and I. On the Town bonds warring elements: the
songs are pop but the abundant dance music is classical, of the modern,
dissonant kindthat Prokofyef stuff, the shows director, George Ab-
bott, called it. And the script is wholly comic while the situation, really, is
sad: three sailors with twenty-four hours leave meet three girls, then ship
off to war.
How do these anatagonistic materials merge? For one thing, Adolph
Green, an opera buff, loved slipping allusions and even whole snatches of
opera into his shows, and some On the Town numbers have a spoof-opera
feeling, to connect with the dance music, especially when genuine singers
tackle them. The most obvious such is I Understand, almost Ridi, Pa-
gliaccio in tone. But the legit zinger is Carried Away, the confessions of a
pair of over-the-top personalities: opera characters, in short. As for the
heavy dance quotient, this is a carryover from the shows source, Bernstein
and Robbins ballet Fancy Free (which, interestingly, contains a vocal
number itself but does not in any way anticipate the musicals score and,
further, characterizes its three sailors as competitors rather than On the
Towns true-blue buddies). Robbins used On the Towns ballets to pursue
storytelling through means other than dialogue and song: to narrate
through dance. Yes, Oklahoma! did that in Laurey Makes Up Her Mind.
But Oklahoma!s other dances discuss changing times, womens sensitivity,
community spirit. On the Towns dances are locked into its plot continuity.
For instance, On the Town honors the clich of the sailor eager to get lucky,
but only two of its three seamen score in real life. The third connects with
his Dream Girl in a Dream Ballet, The Great Lover: when the work rips
away social protections to reveal its beating heart.
As for the script, it is not only genuinely funny but filled with coinci-
dences that would have shamed Guy Bolton. People turn up in the oddest
places, especially when the shows villain, Madame Dilly, has to serve as the
plots deus ex machina. A voice teacher, Maude P. Dilly is a heartless,
money-grubbing drunk, albeit an amusing one:
MADAME DILLY: Sex and art dont mix. If they did, Id have gone right
to the top.
Gabey (John Battles) is our hero, smitten with a photograph of Miss Turn-
stiles (Sono Osato). He and his two pals (Adolph Green, Cris Alexander)
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
break up to search for her, and Gabey succeeds. He and Miss Turnstiles
agree to meet later, but Madame Dilly wrecks it, even as Gabeys chums
have picked up their dates, an anthropologist (Betty Comden) and a cab
driver (Nancy Walker). Gabey is heartbroken.
The Boy Gets Girl, essential as far back as The Black Crook, is often just
another piece of furniture in the musicals living room. Yet one of On the
Towns paradoxes is that, suddenly, it really matters, amid the crazy fun,
that a young man in wartime service to his country Get the Girlthat he
fulfill the romantic idyll so basic to the musical. So On the Town really must
bring Gabey and Miss Turnstiles together, and the script simply plonks
Madame Dilly in front of Gabeyit doesnt matter howand she tells him
where to locate his ideal: Coney Island. With the twenty-four-hour leave all
but over, Gabey speeds off, his friends in pursuit.
What protects the shows silliness is the looming sadness in the happy
ending. Yes, Gabey gets Miss Turnstilesin his Dream Ballet and then, in
real time, for a moment only, as he and his friends must return to their
ship. Comden and Green were perhaps the daffiest of the musicals word-
smiths, not as witty as some yet with a love of the sublimely ridiculous that
made their work unique. Except for A Dolls Life (1982), an unappreciated
look at what happens after Ibsens A Dolls House, Comden and Green never
ventured out of the arena of the absurd, especially the subvenue of New
York eccentrics. Again with Bernstein on Wonderful Town (1953), they con-
jured up a place where the secret of success is to get in touch with ones
inner zany. One Hundred Easy Ways (to lose a man), Pass the Football,
Conversation Piece, Conga!, and Swing consider whether to conform
or rebel. The hit tune, Ohio, offers a trio section on the babbitry of
small-town life. The merry-villagers opening, Christopher Street, set in a
Manhattan villageGreenwichrepeatedly halts for tiny book scenes
introducing unorthodox town characters. And even the eleven oclock
number, The Wrong Note Rag, develops this. A Comden and Green per-
sonality is a wrong-note personality, like Judy Hollidays switchboard oper-
ator in Bells Are Ringing (1956), who does wrong when trying to do right,
getting involved with clients to solve their personal problems. Indeed,
Green himself was a cutup: late in life, Green was ailing and under care, and
one night his son, helping Green to bed, said, Take my handand Green
immediately started singing Borodin on the words Im a stranger in Sa-
markand.* Yet even within their devilry, Comden and Green could write as
* The joke turns on Kismets Stranger in Paradise. Note that Green, ever the crafts-
man, tidied up the rhyme scheme for a match with hand.
( ) The Third Age
sentimentally as any, and for On the Town they created the arrestingly
tender Some Other Time. A quartet for Gabeys two partners and their
girls, it reminds us that, for all the shows farcical picaresque, real feelings
are at stake as the sailors leave time counts down to zero.
One odd note: in the 1920s, the classic shows tend to be operettas. In
the 1930s, besides the obvious exception of Porgy and Bess, the classics tend
to be musical comediesOf Thee I Sing, Anything Goes, Babes in Arms, The
Boys From Syracuse. In the 1940s, both genres attain posterity, the musical
play (essentially operettas modernization) in the R & H atelier and musical
comedy in Annie Get Your Gun, Finians Rainbow, Kiss Me, Kate ... and On
the Town. It has been revived three times in New York; in Europe, it is
treated as a key American title. In 2005, the English National Opera staged
it in high style with a sharp cast led by the American Aaron Lazar as Gabey.
The director, Jude Kelly, emphasized the wartime background, for in-
stance in a newspaper kiosk advertising the headline three ships hit, 561
dead, and choreographer Stephen Mears sensualized the Lonely Town
dance, traditionally an expression of Gabeys longing but here a massing up
of civilian men hot to rendezvous with Miss Turnstiles, just as Gabey is.
The shows musical-comedy attitudes were solidly in place in Gabeys pals,
raucous Tim Howar and softy Adam Garcia, and their dates, an amusingly
grand Lucy Schaufer and the expertly comic Caroline OConnor. And the
music was very well sung, as befits an opera troupe. But the ENO produc-
tion was at its best in its wedding of the works halves of musical comedy
and balletits sex and art, so to say. One reason that On the Town has
become an evergreen classic is this tension of elements: a sensitive piece
hiding inside a hellzapoppin.
Of course, On the Town really is a farce. But the dances expand it into
musical-play power. When Gabey at last meets his idol in the aforemen-
tioned Dream Ballet, Bernstein brings together the leitmotifs associated
with Gabey and Miss Turnstiles, and European On the Towns often stage
this erotically, with a dream Gabey and his love nearly naked in passionate
embrace. The ENO, however, presented instead that singular fear of war-
time: the warrior who doesnt return. In this Great Lover, Aaron Lazar,
sleeping on the subway ride (realized as a construction girder), visualizes
his marriage to and fatherhood with Miss Turnstiles. He and other sailors
march off to war, Miss Turnstiles rocks her baby ... but then she dashes
through a column of sailors, looking for Gabey. She cant find him, and
we understand that he has been killed. As the ballet ends, Lazar awakens
and speeds off to find Miss Turnstilesnot for his devoutly wished-for
date but to reassure her that he is alive: a real-life person in a Dream Ballet
world.
T H E R O D G E R S A N D H A M M E R S T E I N H A N D B O OK
A fusion of the satiric and the romantic into one organic whole, On the
Town was the opposite of R & H, wherein the ingredients are homogenized.
In Comden and Greens world, two women office workers keep showing up,
discussing a problem boss, one incessantly asking, So what did he say?,
and the other insistently replying, So I said ... Its more of that New York
eccentricity; there are no eccentrics in R & H. Nor is any Prokofyef stuff, or
anything like the boogie-woogie brawl of the cab drivers I Can Cook, Too,
a list song of food-sex double meanings. (My seafoods the best in the
town.) The R & H shows are about art, but musical comedy, from its
burlesque days with Lydia Thompson, has always been about sex. On the
Town is the musical comedy in which sex and art mixed.
w
C H A P T E R
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S O M E T H I N G T O DA N C E A B O U T
playlets as well and Lahr had a musical solo, The Clown, a medley of party
turns on such as Rudolph Valentino and Queen Victoria (You must obey
my vhims!), tailored to his stars-in-eyes grandiosity, operatic vibrato, and
good old-fashioned paranoid hysteria.
Early revue doted on self-contained song spots. But by the 1930s the
numbers were often framed within sketches or dance scenes to give them
narrative power. So Grays Hold Me Tight found her as a coquette enter-
taining various suitors, and she sang If You Hadnt, But You Did after
shooting a treacherous boy friend. To close Act One, the two stars were in
matching loud checked outfits as vaudevillians saved from retirement by
Rudolf Bings new regime at the Metropolitan Opera House. Bing was fa-
mous for giving the old barn a taste of show biz with English-language
performances and a Fledermaus for which Danny Kaye was invited to play
Frosch, the comic jailer in Act Three, who repeatedly takes a fall down a
trick staircase. (Jack Gilford ultimately got the role.) The acts finale found
Lahr and Gray onstage as Siegfried and Brnnhilde in fractured German,
Lahr attacking the dragon with a seltzer bottle. The cleverest of the sketches
was Triangle, in which the stars and Elliott Reid tried an adultery sce-
nario in three stylesburlesque, T. S. Eliot (for pleasure, they read the fun
parts of Spenglers The Decline of the West), and Cole Porterian musical
comedy. However, the funniest of the sketches, Space Brigade, proposed
Lahr as Captain Universe in a takeoff on childrens television sci-fi shows
like Captain Video. On the planet Venus, Universe and his men encounter
aliens, and, fearing an attack, they defend themselves:
Thus, Two on the Aisle made the most of its stars fortes. Twos Company,
however, had first to establish exactly what a Bette Davis musical could
be; the notion itself is not unlike a Passion Play starring Ricky Gervais.
Then, too, Vernon Duke, though a brilliant composer with an outstand-
ingly resourceful harmonic palette, usually suffered abject failures. Three of
his shows had closed in tryout; two more were to do so. But if anyone could
figure out what Bette Davis music must sound like, it was Duke. Too of-
ten, when writing for a non-singer, a composer invests in ditties with a
three-note range, as Andr Previn did for Katharine Hepburn in Coco
(1969). Its star insurance, but it isnt music. Davis and Duke might have
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chosen that option, but, on the contrary, he gave her real music that she
could really navigate, and Davis, refusing to ham-and-egg her way through
the challenge of carrying a big musical, threw herself into the doings.
At least she was helped by an extremely solid group of young vocalists
Peter Kelley, Bill Callahan (who also danced, in the Harold Lang-Pal Joey
manner), Sue Hight, and especially Ellen Hanley, who had perhaps the
loveliest soprano on Broadway. The rousing opening, Theatre Is a Lady,
the carefree waltz Out of a Clear Blue Sky, and Hanley s Haunted Hot
Spot (the tale of a stripper caught between a drummer and a hot-dog pi-
anist) set Broadways revues apart from the ones on TV in the quality of
the writing and performing alike. And while a TV spot might follow a
torch vocal like Haunted Hot Spot with a dance interpretation of the
story told in the lyrics, only Twos Company could offer Nora Kayes stripper,
Callahans drummer, and Buzz Millers pianist, in choreography by Jerome
Robbins.
But the public came for Davisand it did come, for the show was still
doing terrific business after 90 performances, when Davis, as always when
on stage, suddenly developed a case of that rare medical complaint Shut up
Im quitting, and the production closed. Naturally, the New York smarty-
pants opinion was that Davis was hopelessly out of her league as a musical-
comedy star, but Davis scenes focused on her possibilities rather than on
her limitations. She was a hoot as Sadie Thompson in an overstated replica
of Jeanne Eagels Rain costume, from parasol to spats, and then went coun-
try with blackened teeth and Mammy Yokum pipe for Purple Rose, a
spoof of those Romeo-and-Juliet sagas of thwarted love in the hills. Against
an intricate arrangement filled with choral twangs and fiddly keening, Da-
vis held her ownbecause, again, Vernon Duke was musician enough to
invent a Davis style in song. She even performed an eleven oclock number,
Just Like a Man. True, its awfully talkybut it actually came from one
of Dukes out-of-town disasters, Sweet Bye and Bye, where it was sung by
Dolores Gray.
New Faces of 1952 played without headliners by its very mission state-
ment as the introduction of unknown talent, though in the long run Paul
Lynde, Eartha Kitt, Alice Ghostley, Ronny Graham, and the underused
Carol Lawrence all went on to stardom. The producer, Leonard Sillman, had
been thus introducing his unknowns since the 1930s and would go on
doing so through the 1960s, but this was the only New Faces edition to
leave a memory. The second reason was a very tuneful score, but the first
was a daffy attitude that ran through the evening, from a commre (Virginia
de Luce) whose theme song (He Takes Me Off His Income Tax) keeps get-
ting stopped by an offstage voice to a closing parody of Gian Carlo Menottis
S O M E T H I N G T O DA N C E A B O U T
or the Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo. dance in Damn Yankees (1955),
based on the tobacco-chewing strut of the classic baseball player, in which
bowed legs pump forward while the torso swings from side to side.
Long before, dance was either hoofing or ballet; now there were styles of
dance, as in Michael Kidds stomping country folk in Lil Abner (1956) or
Agnes de Milles period evocations in Goldilocks (1958), on the early silent-
film era. And when the best choreographers become directors, an entire
show could be defined in its staging as much as in its writing. Exhibit A is
Redhead (1959), a murder mystery set in Edwardian London but, mainly,
Bob Fosses valentine to Gwen Verdon. Constantly sending the sets into the
flies to clear the stage, Fosse created a show that was one big dance number
interrupted by book scenes. Or consider Joe Laytons staging of Richard
Rodgers No Strings (1962) as a fashion magazine layout come to life, with
haughty beauties posing en chic and lighting units turned this way and
thatbecause the heroine was a model. No Strings could be typed as Rod-
gers first show after Hammerstein, because he wrote his own lyrics; or one
of the first shows after Beggars Holiday to feature an interracial romance
(here between Richard Kiley and Diahann Carroll). However, in its day, No
Strings was above all a unique staging triumph.
This was as well the era in which the musical asserted an Offenbachian
right to expand the size and power of the score. Such espressivo had
long belonged to operetta, and sure enough, Robert Wright and George
Forrests Kismet (1953), a musical Arabian night using themesas we
knowfrom Alyeksandr Borodin, held to the exotic locale (in this case,
ancient Bagdad) and the legit voices that were always written into oper-
ettas activity sheet. However, another operetta, Sigmund Rombergs The
Girl in Pink Tights (1954), based on events leading up to the production
of The Black Crook, was at times close to opera in its vocal arrangements.
Kismets score presented a quartet, And This Is My Beloved, but Pink
Tights quartet, Youve Got To Be a Little Crazy (to want to produce a
play), is really a quartet, with contrapuntal part writing and block har-
mony calling for voices of opera weight. Further, the choral writing, gen-
erally intricate, seemed determined to end each number with vast chords
pushing the sopranos to a top C.
More important, certain titles were now, like Porgy and Bess and Street
Scene, moving into full-blown operatic territory, whether using pop forma-
tions, going quite classical, or fusing the two. The Golden Apple (1954), Je-
rome Moross and John Latouches through-sung updating of Homer, was
popular opera, a kind of spoof of musicals even as it went where no mu-
sical had ever gone before. Its an indescribable piece, idealistic yet mischie-
vous, irreverent yet still romantic: something that brilliant college kids
S O M E T H I N G T O DA N C E A B O U T
might have dreamed up for the annual show. Ulysses (Stephen Douglass) is
a hero of heroes and Penelope (Priscilla Gillette) a wife of wives, as in the
Greek textbut Helen (Kaye Ballard), originally a princess, is now the
neighborhood trollop, and Hector (Jack Whiting), the Trojan prince, has
become the corrupt mayor of nighttown, oozing with filthy charisma. After
the (Trojan) war, the Odyssey is enacted as a vaudeville of destruction in
which act after act employs tropes of modern lifespace exploration,
stock-market trading, and suchto kill off Ulysses comrades. To authenti-
cate the bill, Moross and Latouche wrote a parody of a famous Ziegfeld
Follies number, Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean, and the rest of the
olio similarly nodded at old song forms. Note, then, thatlike Show Boat
and Love Life (and, later, Follies)The Golden Apple used show biz as a met-
aphor for American life, as if a people so wrapped up in dreams of stardom
can be analyzed only through depictions drawn from the performing arts.
Frank Loessers music-rich The Most Happy Fella of course belongs in this
company, but Leonard Bernsteins Candide (1956) takes us into the classical
arenaand it was a book musical rather than an opera. Both these shows
were adaptations, though Loesser greatly simplified Sidney Howards play
They Knew What They Wanted to aim his music at the romantic triangle of
the older man, the younger man, and the girl. To fill the stage, Loesser sup-
ported them with the atmosphere of an Italian immigrants vineyard, a
kind of extended family made of the neighbors and all the neighbors
neighbors, as a Loesser lyric puts it. Candide used more of its source, Vol-
taires picaresque novelette, which piles atrocity upon enormity in scath-
ingly deadpan narrative tone as his people stagger through the Western
world, killing and dying and rising up again. Slaughter on the grand scale
becomes as central to Candide as candy in a childs daydreamthe thing
that makes life worth living, by Voltaires sarcastic analysis. Yet none of his
characters wishes for a way out. On the contrary, Voltaires idiot savant (in
the most literal sense), Dr. Pangloss, keeps telling them they live in utopia.
And they believe him, bcause theyre puppets, which made a musical
Candide quite a challenge for Bernstein, his librettist, Lillian Hellman, and
some five lyricists, mainly Richard Wilbur.
Loessers Happy Fella principals, on the other hand, are flesh-and-blood
characters, aching with longingwhich, as I said in my Introduction, made
them ideal for musicalization. The setting of the California wine country
also gave Loesser ideas to work with, allowing him to vary his musical
texturesItalian pastiche for Tony (the title part) and his workers; Top 40
for Herman, the easygoing ranchhand of the Second Couple; smoky sensu-
ality for Joe, Tonys foreman and the troublesome hunk who threatens the
stability of the First Couples intergenerational romance. Loessers casting,
( ) The Third Age
prospectors flocking to the site. Yet Paint Your Wagons second-act curtain
rose on the usual irrelevant rouser, Hand Me Down That Can O Beans.
Wonderful Town was a musical comedy and Paint Your Wagon a musical
play, so we are not surprised to find the latter more serious in tone, treating
the loneliness of the prospectors and including a kangaroo court culmi-
nating in a lynching. But serious themes were edging into musical comedy.
The Pajama Games hero, John Raitt, had a notable establishing song, A
New Town Is a Blue Town, that mixed self-belief and defiance so freely that
one suspects Frank Loesser, mentor (and publisher) of The Pajama Games
songwriters, Adler and Ross, might have had a hand in it. Another example:
the good-versus-evil ethos of Harold Romes western Destry Rides Again
(1959) led to a drastic first-act curtain when the pacifist hero (Andy Griffith)
gave a spectacular shooting display as the chorus intoned the dire Ballad
of the Gun.
For that matter, Do Re Mi (1960), another Styne-Comden-Green collab-
oration, came off as something of a serious musical comedy. Not a musical
play: a funny, crazy show that nevertheless dealt with the life of a loser.
Hubie Cram (Phil Silvers), only marginally law-abiding and always looking
for an angle, spent the show working a con in the jukebox business that
was to turn him into a biggie: intimate with celebs, sitting at ringside
tables, worshiped by the other losers. With Nancy Walker as Crams wife,
Do Re Mi had two star comics. Yet it cut the amusement with Walkers
nagging and Silvers unsavory business partnersnot the genial crooks
Jimmy Durante used to play, but genuine hoods. The shows last number,
Silvers All of My Life, was the opposite of an eleven oclock song, the
bitter, beaten epitaph of a living corpse. Meanwhile, the sweetheart couple,
a recording executive (John Reardon) and Crams folk-singer discovery
(Nancy Dussault), carried on as if in a standard make-happy show, he
shamelessly oversinging the ballads (including a hit, Make Someone
Happy) with his velvety opera baritone and she running through Cry Like
the Wind as a Broadway Joan Baez till she zoomed up to a climax on the B
and A just below the top C.
Styne and Comden and Green were known for, essentially, farces, so
Do Re Mi was an odd item. But then the 1950s was the first decade in
which highly original musicals became common. Three more titles from
1959 would have been all but impossible only ten years before: Once Upon
a Mattress, Fiorello!, and The Nervous Set. Mattress, which introduced a
second-generation composer in Richard Rodgers daughter Mary, revived
nineteenth-century burlesque if only in its plot premise, a spoof of The
Princess and the Pea. Given the medieval setting, the chorus women
were dressed from neck to toe, an amusing violation of the musicals
( ) The Third Age
formal etiquette, as burlesque and its pretties in tights were the reason
people of the 1870s spoke of the wicked stage, and the showgirl was
still a key element in musicals in the 1950s. Mattress was notable for
the zest and wit with which it addressed its subject, and for giving Carol
Burnett, as Winifred the Woebegone, her platform for stardom.
Biographical musicals have become common, but they were unusual in
the 1950s, so Fiorello! was outstanding enough to win the Pulitzer Prize.*
Incredibly, the director, George Abbott, found someone who resembled
New Yorks short, barrel-shaped reformist mayor, Tom Bosley, and the
Jerry BockSheldon Harnick score breached the gulf between then and
now with a bit of pastiche (in a demobilization march, Home Again; a
Bowery waltz, Politics and Poker; the ironic soft shoe Little Tin Box;
and Gentleman Jimmy, a charleston devoted to Fiorello La Guardias pre-
decessor, Jimmy Walker) but mainly in character songs of a sweet and
wistful nature. State of the art in its revolving-stage scene changes, Fiorello!
nevertheless maintained an air of the antique in its tonean authenticity,
perhaps. On the Side of the Angels was the ideal First Number, setting up
the shows placetime while describing its herowho played his role almost
entirely in book scenesin how his colleagues, and his beneficiaries, and
the world saw him. It was an odd way to write a musical, perhaps: but La
Guardia was an odd character.
The Nervous Set was the ultimate contemporary show. Jules Feiffer, the
Village Voice cartoonist associated with urban angst, drew the shows poster
art, which told everyone what to expect: a look at Manhattans maverick
community. Man, Were Beat was the First Number, and the Tommy
WolfFran Landesman score dipped here and there into riffs of modern
jazzthe pit was a quartet of piano, electric guitar, bass, and drums. Still,
most of the music wouldnt have been out of place in other shows, and the
lyrics only occasionally defied Broadway with downtown patter. New York
found two Villagers (Richard Hayes, Thomas [later Tom] Aldredge) ragging
on the citys phoneys and squares. Some of the public must have been
startled when The Waldorfs really draggy continued to But the Plazas
not so faggycertainly the first time the last word turned up in a musi-
cals lyric. It was all the more ironic in that the Plazas bar was a notorious
gay hunting ground at the time.
Star vehicles remained a staple, though the 1950s most unexpectedly
hosted three Big Broadway titles for black headliners, till then integrated
* Only two musicals preceded Fiorello! thus, Of Thee I Sing and South Pacific. In 1944,
the year the Prize went to Thornton Wilders absurdist play The Skin of Our Teeth, Okla-
homa! was given a special award by the Pulitzer committee.
S O M E T H I N G T O DA N C E A B O U T
mission. Yes, theyll reform their men, but not with religion: with the grail
of bourgeois regeneration, from golf to galoshes.
Along with the unique Runyon tinta, Guys and Dolls derives vitality from
Loessers use of classical touches in a score sung almost wholly by societys
outcasts. For his Broadway debut, Wheres Charley (1948), Loesser wrote
largely in the standard popular vein favored in Hollywood, where he had
worked, for the most part as lyricist only, for some ten years. Still, a few of
the Charley numbers were rooted in situation and character, as if Loesser
was venturing into genuine music theatre, and Guys and Dolls is shockingly
well integrated, its only pop tunes being the floor numbers at Adelaides
club, the Hot Box, A Bushel and a Peck and a striptease special that item-
izes the inventory as it loses it, Take Back Your Mink. As if working his
way into the downright operatic structures of his following show, The Most
Happy Fella, Loesser created for Guys and Dolls a musical oxymoron: his
pariahs sing recitative in place of the usual melodic verse, in Adelaides
Lament and the title number. Its the La Scala version. That Fugue for
Tinhorns is actually a simple canon, not a fuguebut the suggestion of
High Art in the shows first vocal sequence establishes the fantasy of an
outlaw crew that will charm rather than menace us.
Loesser went a step furthera step, one might say, closer to The Most
Happy Fellain Skys My Time of Day, in praise of the dark time: a couple
of deals before dawn. Its a one-of-a-kind solo, almost through-composed
(denoting unstructured music that glides along without repeating or devel-
oping its melodic cells), and it is Guys and Dolls most personal number,
even though it is followed by Ive Never Been in Love Before, obviously
personal in that it seals the Sky and Sarah romance with a vow. Neverthe-
less, My Time of Day is central, not only to Sky but to all his raffish co-
hort, as it uses the empty panorama of late-night Manhattan as a metaphor
for the liberty Sky lives in. It tells us why these gamblers have no use for
golf or galosheswhy your outlaw is their free soul.
And just as The King and Is Shall We Dance draws Anna and the King
close just before the eventthe punishment of Tuptimthat will destroy
their relationship, the My Time of Day/Ive Never Been in Love Before
scene occurs just before the police raid the mission crap game. This creates
a very believable Boy Loses Girl, with one of the musicals great first-act
curtain lines. It gave Burrows and the shows director, George S. Kaufman,
a lot of trouble. Kaufmans daughter, Anne, vividly recalls sitting in while
Burrows and her father tried to work through the scene, stalled as they
were at Skys asking the angry Sarah, What the hell kind of dame are you?
Anne said she thought the line incorrect for the character, and her iras-
cible father asked, in the sarcastic tone he usually saved for impedient
( ) The Third Age
different verse, to precede the refrain with images tied to the Ascot scene
(When she mentioned how her aunt bit off the spoon ...). Now the public
knew who Freddy was, and the house could luxuriate in the music as he
broke into the chorus with I have often walked down this street before ...
And the number of course became the shows biggest hit, On the Street
Where You Live.* The successful resolution of the Freddy ballad problem
drew a choice summation from Moss Hart, quoted by Lerner: Every show
makes you feel like an amateur.
Yet Hart was at his best directing the show, which became one of the
most memorable productions of its timea spectacle, to be sure, but also
because Hart made a fetish out of the casts body language. Scenes in-
volving the proletariat looked and moved differently from those for the
gentry: the knees up abandon of the chorus work in A Little Bit of Luck
compared dissonantly with the rigid comportment of the Ascot folk. Hart
was adept, too, at taming the irritable Harrison and privately coaching An-
drews, a former child singing prodigy and the heroine of Sandy Wilsons
The Boy Friend in its Broadway visit but still only twenty years old and in
difficulty as Eliza. Andrews struggle in evolving from the Cockney gutter-
snipe to the debutante may be why the role ended as one of the great voice
killers, because she was asked to work in warring vocal registers to portray
Elizas transformation by the very pitches she sings. Her first solos lie in
low keys, but the later ones veer into a ladylike soprano range, with I
Could Have Danced All Night and Show Me both ending on a top G. Then
Elizas last solo, Without You, moves her back into the lower range, per-
haps because she is finally confronting her abusive mentor and doesnt
need to play well-bred with him. Wrenching the voice from belt to soprano
and back eight times a week has created problems for more than one Eliza,
though Andrews played the show for two years in New York and another
sixteen months in London, both times in very big houses. Note, too, that
Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins are more of those powerful characters
that R & H made essential. Before Oklahoma!, few musicalseven Show
* One other My Fair Lady number fails also to match the pointed lyrics of the rest of
the score, Higgins Ive Grown Accustomed To Her Face. However, the chorus gives
way to a trio section on Higgins revenge fantasy that refits the solo to Higgins way of
speaking. Incidentally, the discarded Street Where You Live verse left an echo in the
score, for a bit of it (on the line This street is like a garden and her door a garden gate),
transformed into a sweeping romantic phrase, is heard in the underscoring when Eliza
returns briefly to Covent Garden and finds that she herself has been so transformed
that her old friends dont recognize her. Then, too, when the song was published as a
single sheet, the original verse came along, with the words slightly restyled for popular
performance.
S O M E T H I N G T O DA N C E A B O U T
Boatcould boast of such arresting leads (though Porgy and Bess, as always,
is an exception).
West Side Story (1957) rivals My Fair Lady as the title we paste onto the
concept of the Perfect Musical, and some might prefer West Side Story if
only because Leonard Bernstein, his lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, their
bookwriter, Arthur Laurents, and the director, Jerome Robbins, had more
to perfect. My Fair Lady is, essentially, Pygmalion with songs. West Side
Story, based on no more than the outline of Romeo and Juliet, is an original
show, and one developed to go where no show had gone before. Its heavy
reliance on dance as an abstraction of the narrative reflects exactly the use
of dance in Bernstein and Robbins On the Town. Otherwise, however, West
Side Story was unique. Musicals were still being cast at the time with a com-
bination of mainly singers, mainly dancers, and actors who hardly (or not
at all) sang or danced. West Side Story had four of those actors, playing the
grownups. But the Jets and Sharks gangs and their girls were cast as much
as possible by singer-actors, thus inventing a new subject of integration:
the performers. A year later, Flower Drum Songs Dream Ballet used dancing
doubles for Myoshi Umeki and Pat Suzuki, just as Dream Ballets had often
done since Id Rather Be Right and Oklahoma!. But West Side Storys Dream
Ballet, built around the song Somewhere, used the performers playing
Tony (Larry Kert), Maria (Carol Lawrence), the by then murdered Riff
(Mickey Calin), and the others, thereby substantiating the shows realism
even when the action had become most fantastical.
And of course that crossroads of naturalism and romance is precisely
where the shows creative team had long been headed. Keeping a log
through the works gestation, from 1949 (when Robbins conceived of the
gang-war Romeo and Juliet, though the hostile gangs were originally Catho-
lic versus Jewish) to 1957 (at the tryouts first night), Bernstein noted the
shows fine line between opera and Broadway, between realism and po-
etry. On the Town, after all, had been one thing primarilymusical comedy.
West Side Storys format was airier, almost mysteriously liquid, with its
turf-war ballets, its lyrical violence. It wasnt a musical comedy, yet it didnt
seem much like a musical play, either: musical plays balanced the elements
of song and dance with a lot of book (as with Oklahoma!, Brigadoon, and My
Fair Lady) or de-emphasized dance (as with South Pacific, Lost in the Stars,
and Candide). In West Side Story, Bernstein noted, the line between the art
and the entertainment is there, but its very fine, and [it] sometimes takes
a lot of peering around to discern it.
Then, too, the action seemed to move almost entirely (two exceptions
being the One Hand, One Heart scene in the bridal shop and the post-
rumble comic relief of the Gee, Officer Krupke number) from one expanse
( ) The Third Age
defeats the knights but kills the thirdand promptly revives him through
prayer. Thus, Lancelot is beyond invincible: a superman, elect of heaven.
He is also very, very pretty. In director Moss Harts finely shaded moment,
you could actually see Julie Andrews falling in love with Robert Goulet on
the spot.
The Matter of Arthur, as it is called, has inspired so many retellings be-
cause it collects so many of the constituent parts of Western mythology
the magical wound, the sorcerer-mentor, the holy quest, the death of a king
as the death of an entire people. T. H. Whites vast novel, a romance written
by a misanthrope with a tickling sense of humor, gave Lerner and Loewe
too much to work with, which may have led to its abiding flaw, a first act
that is musical play with comedy and a second act that is only musical play,
even a deadly oneworse, a corny one. However, when it was announced,
Camelot struck everyone as just more My Fair Lady, with much of the same
production crew, with another Novelty Star leading manRichard Burton
opposite Andrewswith the English setting, albeit A long time ago, as
the script states it, rather than Shaws Edwardian England. And even with
the strangely short overture but very long entracte, a reversal of the usual
practice of the time.
Had R & H tackled Whites novel, they might have come up with some-
thing very like Camelot, with its profusion of character songs (I Wonder
What the King Is Doing Tonight, The Simple Joys of Maidenhood, Cest
Moi, The Seven Deadly Virtues), its community festival number (The
Lusty Month of May, which does almost exactly what June Is Bustin Out
All Over does in Carousel, right down to the sexual observations), even the
three-note theme that runs through the score as a geographical calling card
(the pitches heard on the title words of the title song, directly comparable
to South Pacifics three-note ur-theme on the title words of Bali Hai).
Camelots was a big scoredangerously so, as some of both critics and
public have trouble absorbing too much music. However, the cultural he-
gemony of the Big Broadway cast album, at its height in 1960, after My Fair
Lady and before the Sgt. Pepper rock revolution, meant that most show
scores would be heard repeatedly more or less in their original theatre con-
text outside the theatre, at home. This affected composition, because re-
prises based on not dramatic necessity but a wish to popularize a melody
were no longer required. On the contrary, the dramatically revised reprise
began to flower as a new element of integration.
Thus, Camelots title song, the second vocal number, is heard throughout
the work, its lyrics repointed in meaningfor example, to cap the scene in
which Arthur conceives of the round table (Well send the heralds riding
through the country ...), but now as a duet for king and queen, showing us
( ) The Third Age
how close they have grown. Then, immediately after, it serves as a lead-in to
Lancelots Cest Moi, demonstrating the enthusiasm that Arthurs ide-
alism generates in noble hearts. Conversely, Lerner and Loewe could waste
one of their best numbers, the diaphanous Follow Me, in plot action and
underscored dialogue, knowing that Columbias Goddard Lieberson would
record it with all the talking deleted, as a purely musical experience.
Camelot was a big show in every way. Even as Lerner stripped Whites
morose fantasy down to the central triangle, Arthurs vision of his city on a
hill, and a bit of magic in the smallish roles of Merlyn and Morgan Le Fay,
the evening suffered from dimension-itis, with a grand and gala score but a
somewhat ordinary book. The subject is Biblical, Shakespeareanbut the
feeling, between the numbers, is too often earthbound.
They were frantically fixing it in tryout when Hart was felled with a heart
attack, and, upon his recovery, they continued to fix it in New York after it
opened, cutting two numbers. And theyre fixing it yet today. Like Show
Boat and Follies, Camelot is seldom performed the same way twice. Ever
since Oklahoma! opened at Londons Drury Lane, in 1947, American musi-
cals bowed in the West End in replica stagings, buttypicallywhen Cam-
elot went to Drury Lane, in 1964, it was in an entirely new production with
the two cut numbers reinstated and some dialogue revisions. (For one
thing, the finale, in which Arthur knights a lad named Tom with the mis-
sion to spread the legend of Camelot, now identified the boy by his full
name: Thomas Malory, who of course went on, albeit something like a
thousand years later, to write Le Morte DArthur, not the earliest but the
fullest source for Arthurian adaptations.)
In truth, most Camelots nowadays are very poorly brought off, with
none of the spectacle the original raised up and with superannuated
stars clomping through Arthurs role as if playing the bull in Nol Cow-
ards china shop. No: Arthur is a shy and insecure princeling who be-
comes possessed by the wishand the powerto reinvent the world.
No wonder President John Kennedy singled the show out as a favorite; it
is why the shows title is inextricably linked with him. In 1960 (though
not in an unhappy, much later tour), Richard Burton spit out Arthurs
lines as a man struck by lightning. Shocking as it sounds, his Arthur was
even better than his Hamlet. Andrews and Goulet, too, were excellent.
But that Camelot is as vanished as the real one. Revivals cartoon the
piece; it is now customary to play the villain, Arthurs bastard son, Mor-
dred, as a Bwa-ha-ha! Snidely Whiplash, though in 1960 Roddy McDowall
portrayed him as ascetic, quietly simmering with his evil plans, and thus
all the more likely to seduce the Round Table knights away from Arthurs
visionary prescriptions.
S O M E T H I N G T O DA N C E A B O U T
This is not to say that the musical cannot accommodate the epic. Show
Boat did sothough they ceaselessly try to tidy up Show Boat, too. Rather,
the musical had to find a new way to encompass big stories, perhaps in
shows written and staged to rise above realistic linear narration, to leap
through time and space in fantastical interlockings of naturalism and
fantasy, and to analyze those powerful character relationships even while
enacting them.
w
C H A P T E R
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AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
Somethings Always Happening on the River. The strings didnt come into
major play till the second tune, the slow waltz Dance Only With Me, and
for the transition into the third tune, The Husking Bee, Ramin brought in
the brass triangle.* Now, none of this was entirely new to Stynes ears.
The Lena Horne show Jamaica, just the year before, exploded with brass
tricks, especially in the overture, and Stynes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
scored by Don Walker, has a very imaginative overture, using the brass
triangle most excitingly in its coda. Nevertheless, something about all that
brass resolve in Ramins Say, Darling charts thrilled Styne. Perhaps it was
because the Say, Darling music, a mere accessory in the theatre, suddenly
sounded like a string of hit tunes. What matters here is that Styne may
well have heard in Ramins Say, Darling the template for how Stynes next
musical should sound. That musical was Gypsy (1959), and with Gypsy we
seem to move away from the strings-dominated R & H score to the brass-
dominated scores of the 1960s and after.
Gypsy has long held pride of place even on the short list of perfect shows,
because, compared with, say, Brigadoon or Hello, Dolly!, the character rela-
tionships are so sternly yet so richly drawn. It was billed as a musical
fableThe Tale of the Hungry Woman and the Children She Destroyed
Together, one might say. But its really an intimate drama about three
people. And if Rose is the stage mother from hell, she is also very much
loved by both daughter Louise and consort Herbie. Louise even likes
Rose, which is almost impossible with mothers. For her part, Rose needs
Herbiea littleand when he walks out on her, she is devastated even as
she knows shell get past it: because she has just realized that Louise is
actually good for something after all: stripping in burlesque.
Ironically, while the very title of Gypsy has become as much a sum-
moning term as Oklahoma! or My Fair Ladythat is, so embedded in
the musicals history that it stands beyond criticism, Gypsy is more a
thrilling noise than a description, because the show isnt about Gypsyor
Louise, as she is called for most of the action. Its about her mother.
According to Stanley Green, the idea for the show came from David Mer-
ricks having read the first chapter of Gypsy Rose Lees memoirs. Seeing the
tales potential as a musical, Merrick snapped up the rights, no doubt
sensing, in that musical fable to be, a panorama of old show biz, with its
* This special practice calls for three brass instrumentsthree trumpets, say. The
first hits a note and holds it, then the second hits a higher note and holds it, then the
third does the samebut then the first hits a yet higher note, and so on. The effect
is that of brilliant pitches chiming inside of an echo chamber, and theres literally
nothing else like it in the science of orchestration.
( ) The Third Age
JUNE (cold anger): Its a terrible act and I hate it! Ive hated it from the
beginning and I hate it more now!
Then, as the famous Gypsy placards at the sides of the stage read Dreams
of Glory, Louise got another scene and song, now with one of the boys in
the act, Tulsa, this one leading into All I Need Is the Girl.
* In fact, Gypsys director, Jerome Robbins, had it in mind to spice the production
with the participation of vaudevillians of various kindsin scene-change crossovers,
story bits, and a strange opening vignette between a mother and daughter that was
designed to startle the audience till it figured out that this was a playlet of the kind
often seen in vaudeville houses. All of this was eventually dropped, though a few of the
variety artistes were still in the company when tryouts began.
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
ROSE: Because I was born too soon and started too late, thats why!
With what I have in me, I could have been better than any of you!
Yet Rose seems exactly like the Nora Bayeses and Sophie Tuckers of her
own day. Couldnt she have done what they did? Show biz then was teem-
ing, with room for nearly everyone who applied. And of course Rose is a
great singing lead, which pushes the character even closer to those early-
twentieth century women stage pioneers. Rose knows how much sheer
nerve creates stardom, as when she dismisses those who long for the
uniquely American sainthood of entertainment-industry success but dont
pursue it. Some people sit on their butts, she observes. Got the dream,
yeah, but not the gutsperhaps the greatest single character lyric ever
heard.
( ) The Third Age
Or is Gypsys great secret asset all the information that is left to be dis-
covered in between the lines the performers actually utter? Gypsy is a show
we return to over and over because it isnt just wonderful: its mysterious.
R & H spend, in their shows, more time on the details, rounding off their char-
acters and their dilemmas with specifics. Gypsy races through its narrative,
leaving few clues about its peoples various backstories or their day-to-day.
It was the first great musical written this way, so perhaps it really is a fable:
the outline of a saga, using symbols and signifiersRoses love of animals
(instead of children, such as hers) and Chinese food as opposed to home
cooking, because she doesnt want a hometo explain something about the
nature of life. Show Boat and Follies are epics. Gypsy is a small world.
None of the other star shows of the time rivals it. Some major names
took beatingsAlfred Drake in Wright and Forrests Kean (1961) and Mary
Martin in Schwartz and Dietzs Jennie (1963), each playing real-life actors of
yore, Edmund Kean and Laurette Taylor. Drake needed a show like this
badly, because as an operetta ham he didnt have a wide choice of jobs. But
Martin was thought protean, capable of playing almost anything. Countless
shows were offered to her, from My Fair Lady to Funny Girl, but she did
pick a winner in Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones I Do! I Do! (1966) opposite
Robert Preston in an imaginative Gower Champion staging that somehow
came off as sumptuous though Martin and Preston were the entire cast. Its
close-fisted producer, David Merrick, utterly loved it, with only two salaries
to pay and no sets, just pieces flown in. Preston, too, needed the show badly,
for he seldom had a hit after The Music Man, despite his winning stage pres-
ence and ability to play, like Martin, virtually anything. In the title role of
Ben Franklin in Paris (1964), he even got a show with a splendid book (by
Sidney Michaels). Yet the piece failed; and two others of Prestons shows
closed out of town. In Bob Merrills The Prince of Grand Street (1978), Pres-
ton appeared as the leading actor of New Yorks old Yiddish theatre, not ex-
actly a tight fit for this actor. When the production folded, in Philadelphia,
Prestons vis--vis, Neva Small, was heartbroken. How she had believed in
the piece! How she loved the music, so much more lyrical and dramatic than
Merrill was known for! Thus agonized, Small told Preston she was going to
accept her boy friends proposal and give up the stage altogether.
Kid, Preston told her, never get married off a flop.
Some of the sixties failures puzzle us, because nothing went wrong. Back
in 1948, Sid Caesar led the cast of a smash revue, Make Mine Manhattan,
with takeoffs on everything from the United Nations to Allegro, then be-
came an outstanding television comic in a revue-like format. Thus, his play-
ing of seven crazy roles in Little Me (1962) should have created another
smash, with a very funny Neil Simon book and Bob Fosses choreography.
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
Some of the hit star shows were more extraordinary, out of the general
run of sixties style. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Forum (1962),
known in its day for its gaggle of comics led by Zero Mostel, is now known
as the occasion when the public first heard a score composed (as opposed to
simply lyricked) by Stephen Sondheim. But there is something odd about
Forum. As with How To Succeed, its love plot is the least interesting thing in
it. Instead, the driveline is the protagonists quest: Robert Morses climb to
power and Mostels manumission. But How To Succeed, like other sixties
musical comedies, is essentially a funny story spiked with jokes. Forum has
no story; rather, it has a premise run amok to the point thatas bookwrit-
ers Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart spun it outthe jokes became the
show. Further, Forums songs are as relentlessly zany as Forums book.
Tragedy tomorrow, Mostel promised the audience during Forums opening,
Comedy Tonight, and, indeed, this first of the Sondheim scores to be per-
formed on Broadway must be the drollest ever written. Even the number
that establishes the romance, Love, I Hear, culminates in a jest, on Today
I woke too weak to walk.
On the other hand, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams Golden Boy (1964),
from Clifford Odets 1937 play about a young boxer on the rise, is astonish-
ingly dark for the era. Except for Sammy Davis Jr. as the boxer, Joe Welling-
ton (he was Joe Bonaparte in Odets play, and white) and Billy Daniels as a
crooked promoter, Golden Boy was cast mainly with actors rather than
singers. This accommodated the intense dramatic challenges in the book,
started by Odets and finished by William Gibson after Odets death. Its di-
alogue is at once naturalistic and poetic, dire and honest. The romance, with
Lorna Moon (Paula Wayne) was interracial; early on, in the story, three
white punks attacked Davis with Hands offa the lady, nigger!, and after
they were chased away, Davis flinched when he accidentally touched Wayne:
Golden Boys score, like Forums, exactly matched its book in a different way,
catching the anxiety of a dramatis personae all ceaselessly on edge. Some of
the music gave the piece a much needed lift, as in Joes Night Song, one of
the most notable establishing numbers ever written for a star. Setting Joe
alone on a tenement rooftop, solitary and isolated, it gave the character a
sharp profile while letting Davis voice soothe it in his unique style of
thrusting lyricism.
Once, star shows were vehicles in the parlance, hobby horses for the
charismatic personality to ride in his or her trademark fun. Shows written
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
for Marie Cahill, Al Jolson, or the Marx Brothers had no validity without
them. But after Oklahoma! led writers to strong stories, the nature of the
vehicle changed. Gypsy especially but also Golden Boy and, say, Ben Franklin
in Paris typify the new kind of star show, still composed around the central
performer yet worthy art in its own right, almost as if the star had been
cast coincidentally. And even when a musical catered to the gifts of an
upcoming star, with all the shepherding and spotlighting that suggests,
and even when the book of such a show might be underpowered, the mu-
sical characterization could be quite high. It was as if there will always be
a problem getting a brilliant script but there will always be brilliant song-
writers whose work supersedes the script, even takes over for it. Thus,
whether the show itself succeeds or fails, the cast album will be a smash, as
with Meredith Willsons The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960), Jule Styne and
Bob Merrills Funny Girl (1964), and John Kander and Fred Ebbs Flora, the
Red Menace (1965). Here are three title roles, two based on real-life figures,
and offering stars so varied in their show-biz standing that Molly Browns
Tammy Grimes won a Tony for Best Supporting Actress (on a ridiculous
technicality involving her poster billing), that Funny Girls Barbra Strei-
sand was named Cue magazines Entertainer of the Year while the show
was in rehearsal, and that Floras Liza Minnelli was the only one making
her Broadway debut despite having been born in an extremely famous
show-biz trunk.
This trio headed very different kinds of shows as well. True, all three
works were old-fashioned period narratives with a quest theme using the
wagons-and-backdrops design common at the time, when big set changes
could be madein full view of the audience or in blackoutin seconds.
But the quests were odd: Molly Brown hoped to crash an unworthy Society.
The funny girl, Fanny Brice, was a Ziegfeld comic seeking redemption as a
beauty, the better to be loved. And Flora, hunting for self-fulfillment, was
temporarily lured by the Communist Party. The leading men varied as well,
from Molly Browns opera-weight baritone (Harve Presnell) through Brices
cake-decoration husband (Sydney Chaplin) to Floras flighty Party mentor
(Bob Dishy).
It was the music that made these shows. Molly Browns score could not
compare to Willsons Music Man games with song form, but it was inventive
all the sameand Tammy Grimes throaty belt was just the sound for her
socially unconventional character. Streisand and Minnelli, more typically
Top 40 vocalists, gave their shows real presence, playing youngsters on the
upswing in songs as fitted as ever Porters were for Ethel Merman. Strei-
sands The Music That Makes Me Dance and Minnellis All I Need (Is One
Good Break) were the equivalent of the I Got Rhythm and Eadie Was a
( ) The Third Age
Lady that placed the young Merman as the next musical phenomenon. But
more: Funny Girl enjoyed that brassy glister (orchestrated by Ralph Burns)
that Styne had so loved in the Say, Darling chartsthe Funny Girl overture
rivals Gypsysand Flora, the first show with a Kander and Ebb score,
unveiled their If I can make it here anthem genre, ideal for the shows
Depression setting. Thus, the curtain rose on a breadline, which gave way to
a high-school graduation ceremony and a rousing student chorus led by the
blazing Minnelli, Unafraid. Shaking off their fear of hard times, the kids
reached the last chord in block harmony of joyous determination as the
orchestra transformed the breadline theme into a triumphant fanfare.
In short, the musical-comedy format had been altered completely since
the Princess shows of the 1910s, the Guy Bolton or Herbert Fields farces
of the 1920s, and the Ethel MermanCole Porter model of the 1930s. From
the 1940s onand especially by the 1960seach musical comedy was its
own musical comedy. Further, the rise of the director-choreographer en-
abled that individual to conceive a work uniquely, authoring how it would
look and sound as if he were writing it.
Such a work would be, for example, Bob Fosses Sweet Charity (1966),
based on Federico Fellinis film Le Notti di Cabiria. Today, the musical is
flooded with renenactments of screenplays with songs added, but Fosse
and his librettist, Neil Simon, and his songwriters, Cy Coleman and Doro-
thy Fields, truly reimagined Fellinis tale of a prostitute eternally crushed
by life yet ever bouncing back. Cabiria (played by Giulietta Masina, Fellinis
wife) is naive to a fault, giving her money to fiancs who then abandon
her, getting picked up by a movie starits the high life!only to be locked
in the bathroom all night while he enjoys a liaison, being used by a magi-
cian who hypnotizes her, exposing her to ridicule, and so on. Its virtually a
disaster film, and Fellini leaves herrobbed and abandoned once more
trudging alone along a roadway, so betrayed that we sense that this time
she realizes how hopeless her life is. And yet. Out of nowhere, a group of
young people surround her, serenading her on guitar and harmonica. As
they all walk along together, their music and high spirits tease her despair.
And she almost, sort of, smiles.
Fosse saw The Nights of Cabiria as a splendid showcase for his wife, Gwen
Verdon, though he seems to have envisioned a darker show than the one
he ended up with, mainly because Neil Simon saw the tale as inspiring
rather than depressing and persuaded Fosse not to take Fellini out of con-
text. At that, the collaborators were very adroit in their adaptation, retain-
ing many of the films episodes while realigning them with musical-theatre
technique. The magician sequence was omitted, but, amusingly, Cabirias
visit to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Divine Love was transmogrified
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
into a look at an American sixties cult church, the Rhythm of Life, with
the Madonna (surely too pure an icon for Fosse) changed to a Daddy, a
word whose sexual connotation suited both Charitys world and the Fosse
style.
In the end, Sweet Charity was lighter than Cabiria, airy and fleet. At the
same time, it is more erotic, even if Cabiria and her pals were changed
from prostitutes to dance-hall girls. True, its a euphemism. Who dances?
one of the girls explains. We defend ourselves to music. Fosses staging
of Big Spender, with the girls lined up behind (and draped on top of)
a horizontal bar, calling out to prospective partners like exotic birds in
some lowdown aviary, marked the sublime and the bawdy at once, and
Coleman got as many double meanings out of the music as Fields did in
her lyrics.
It was a bawdy show generally, the opposite of the kind of thing Gower
Champion looked for in his projects. Rodgers and Hammerstein are famous
for the family show, but they occasionally flirt with the erotic, and the
menace levelfrom villains in Oklahoma! and Carousel, for starterscan
be high. It was Champion, really, who maintained a respectable establish-
ment in show after show, and Fosse who, from New Girl in Town on, kept
edging into uncharted arenas of sex and snuff. Redhead actually began with
a thrill killing, of an actress by a maniac fondling the strangle scarf he then
used to murder herand Redhead was a comic show. Sweet Charity avoided
the violence, but it did get off one smutty pun so subtle that audiences
may have missed it. During Theres Gotta Be Something Better Than This,
as Charity and her two sidekicks dream of more bourgeois jobs, Nickie
(Helen Gallagher) outlines becoming a receptionist in one of those big
glass office buildings. Shell have a desk and typewriter ... (and heres
the pun): Underwood! What else? says Helene (Thelma Oliver), with a
knowing shrug.
Above all, Sweet Charity seemed absolutely contempo, the latest musical
comedy, wired into the Zeitgeist. Though it feels all but archeological in
Charity revivals, the Rich Mans Frug came off in 1966 as reportorial:
a look at Madonnaesque voguing before its time, the cigarette-puffing
dancers posture presenting their upper half as tortured mannequin and
lower half as spider, all to a throbbing electric guitar. As with Funny Girl,
orchestrator Ralph Burns was one of the shows central collaborators, with
a highly fastidious percussion section, outfitting the two players with tim-
pani and six other kinds of drum and moving on to chimes, pop gun, whip,
siren, ratchet, bell tree, anvil, castanets, and twelve more.
Fosse made the piece, but Gwen Verdon was the piece, because, quite
aside from her spectacular ability in dance, she was fabulous company.
( ) The Third Age
The musicals great stars arent just great talents: theyre great eccentrics,
visitors from Mars. Verdon came to prominence as a dancer, yes; her break-
out part, in Can-Can, gave her very little dialogue and, most inappropri-
ately, a quasi-soprano tessitura for her one number (with the ensemble),
If You Loved Me Truly. By Damn Yankees, her first starring role, she was
establishedin part through Fosses choreographyas a dancing comic-
cum-romantic lead, and in New Girl in Town (based on Eugene ONeill, re-
member), she had an acting part expanded by dancing. Then, in Redhead
(1959), Verdon was carrying the show, and one doesnt carry a hit to the
first Tony sweep in the musicals history on one gift alone.
Its hard to know what to call Verdoncharming, versatile, enchanting,
bizarre? Above all, she was Fosses instrument, unique in the world of the
director-choreographer in how centrally she inhabited his style. George
Balanchine had such avatars in the ballet world, but on Broadway neither
de Mille nor Robbinsor any of their colleaguesclaimed so essential and
starry an exponent. The very first shot of Sweet Charitythe heroine
posed in her trademark black dress, heels, and bag, her body tilted against
itself, a broken toy ineptly mendedis the Fosse physique. Was there a de
Mille, a Robbins physique?
This is not to say that they were limited. De Mille probably worked in the
widest range of them all. She could fill Goldilocks (1958) with everything
from vaudeville hoofing (in the onstage opening number, Lazy Moon)
and period ballroom (in the Town House Maxixe) to ragtime raveup (in
the New Dance Sensation, The Pussy Foot) and Dream Ballet (after Lady
in Waiting, in which the Second Couple heroine chased romantic icons
from dragoon to princeling). De Mille could mix modes: for Allegros fresh-
man dance, she set a pas de deux for Harrison Muller and Annabelle Lyon,
he popping off in tap shoes and she en pointe, in ballet style.
Yet it was Fosse who, around the time of Redhead, seemed to have
utterly taken charge of the look and motion of musicals, if only because
the Fosse plastique was so readily identifiable. And the dazzling Verdon,
figurehead on the Fosse craft, affected the writing of shows by tilting
roles, Verdonizing them. As with Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, and Robert
Preston, authors hoping to attract the top players tailored scripts, ready to
wear, to their talents.
For example, couldnt Rose in Bye Bye Birdie (1960) have been a Verdon
part, if she had expressed interest? Chita Rivera played the role, as Rose
Alvarez, but librettist Michael Stewart had originally typed her as a Polish-
American; Carol Haney (who lost her singing voice on the day of her audi-
tion) and Eydie Gorm (who got pregnant) were the first casting choices.
Stewart easily switched ethnicities for Rivera, because the characters
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
particular tribe didnt affect the shows main action, a spoof of rock-and-
roll idolatry set mainly in the Midwest.
In any case, Birdies casting was secondary to its formal structure, an
invention of its director-choreographer, Gower Champion. A Champion
musical consists of short dialogue scenes hurtling toward the next song,
the next dance, as if magnetically drawn to music. This runs exactly counter
to the book-heavy R & H program, in which the script, at some length, de-
fines situation as it leads up to a song that expresses character. R & H create
musical plays: dramas in music. Champion created musicals. And of course
Verdon couldnt really have played Rose, for by 1960 she worked in Fosse
musicals only. Fosse might have taken over the Birdie production, perhaps,
but, as Ive said, he wasnt willing to treat the ethos of happy families and
teen dating etiquette in places like Birdies Sweet Apple, Ohio. Ironically,
Fosse did take on a somewhat comparable project a year later, without Ver-
don, in The Conquering Hero (1961), based on one of Preston Sturges mid-
American film comedies. Fosse left the show during its disastrous tryout,
but its too easy to call it a bad match of the sensualist Fosse and homespun
material. On the contrary, Fosse apparently saw the show as an ironic study
of American heroism, and was particularly intrigued by the chance to lay
out a battlefield ballet. Rather, The Conquering Hero was poorly written and
the cast the one thing a musical-comedy troupe cannot be: nondescript.
Birdie, on the other hand, is filled with lovable rogues, as Rivera and
her vis--vis, Dick Van Dyke, coped with the publicity attendant upon an
Elvis Presley-like drafteeVan Dykes protgentering the army. On
one hand there was Van Dykes mother, Kay Medford as a Lady Macbeth of
the Bronx, relentlessly chopping away at Rivera. This is Rose? she cries. I
cant believe it. She looks like Margo when they took her out of Shangri-la.
On the other hand was Paul Lynde, as a Sweet Apple at my age I hate
everything father. I didnt know what puberty was, he spits out in his
signature tone of sarcastic rue, till I was almost past it. It was Champion
material to the nth: winsome, spirited, funny. Innocent. Its most memorable
scene was The Telephone Hour, a stack of colorful cubicles in which
teenagers dissected their sets latest headline: another couple Going Steady.
We last saw Charles Strouse and Lee Adams working out the intricacies
of racial identity in Golden Boys impassioned score, but Bye Bye Birdie was
the show that introduced them, and while the later show is not only a mu-
sical play but a tragic one, Birdie is the essence of merry insanity expertly
crafted. Birdies first-act ensemble Normal American Boy is at once a plot
number (as the teen idol greets the press before entraining to Ohio for a
televised farewell kiss), a character number (Van Dyke is confused while
Rivera has the brains of the outfit, and the idol himself, an inarticulate
( ) The Third Age
redneck, doesnt utter a word, for PR safetys sake), a satire (on how celeb-
rity is manufactured with fake backstories and staged adoration), a clever
helping of suspense (the idols silence intrigues us: why isnt this king of
the jukebox at least singing?), and very, very funny. It is as well fast-moving,
to satisfy Gower Champions stopwatch pacing, which doesnt merely move
the story along. It moves the entire show along, pausing here and there
for the ballads (One Boy, Baby, Talk To Me), but above all playing tag
with the zippy numbers, especially Kids, Lyndes scathing rejection of the
younger generation, a song that naturally rejects rock and roll for his music.
The charleston.
Of course, the idol did eventually sing. The actor cast in the role, Dick
Gautierperhaps the first of the Elvis impersonatorsnot only looked
but sounded authentic. His Presley-ready performance pieces, Honestly
Sincere and One Last Kiss, were the first of their kind to invade the mu-
sical. Then, after Golden Boy, Strouse and Adams Its a Bird Its a Plane Its
Superman (1966) further tasted of the latest pop styles, not just in some of
what Strouse composed but in the orchestrations of Eddie Sauter. Snarly
brass flutters and a xylophone running amok in the overture seemed to
herald the shows battle of good versus eviland Superman really flew!
Bob Holiday, already known to the producer-director, Hal Prince, from Fio-
rello!, should have been a shoo-in: a handsome hunk standing six feet four
with a valid baritone. But for some reason Prince insisted on auditioning
half of Broadway before casting Holiday. Though the show failed, it was
nobodys fault, for the work trod that vast yet tiny line between spoof
and camp, balancing the sturdy Holiday with the flamboyant Jack Cassidy
as a Walter Winchellesque columnist in league with Michael OSullivans
mad scientist: dramatic conflict as a pie fight. Years later, an interviewer
asked Holiday how he managed his dual-personalities of Clark Kent and
bermensch. Was there nuance in the portrayal?
And Holiday replied, One was Jewish.
Eddie Sauters contribution emphasized the craft with which Superman
tackled an apparently artless subject. Consider the shows best number, the
bossa nova Youve Got Possibilities. Sung by Linda Lavin (as Cassidys sec-
retary) to Clark Kent, the number reminds us of Jerome Robbins eternal
question whenever he heard collaborators play him a new songBut what
is she doing? In other words: How do I stage it? What Lavin is doing is
fiddling with Clarks tie and undoing his shirt buttons, thus imperiling his
secret identity as the famous red, blue, and yellow suit starts to appear.
Sauter rose to the occasion with a captivating scoring, giving each A of the
number to a different combination: first, clarinets and a thumping string
bass, then sustained lower strings (the pit had no violins), then drums. And
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
Lavin made a banquet of the vocal, building very gradually from a baby
voice to a nobody-gets-out-of-here-alive belt, goofing with the words and
evenjust oncespinning one with vibrato.
While Broadway was, in a gingerly way, tasting the new sounds of non-
theatrical pop, the off-Broadway musical proved conservative, concen-
trating on intimate revues with a kind of thirties swank, new works with
old-fashioned music, and revivals. Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Rodgers
and Hart were favored; and Hugh Martin and Ralph Blanes Best Foot For-
ward (1941), in 1963, gave Liza Minnelli her first break and a new number
by the original authors, You Are For Loving.*
Off-Broadways musical wing was launched by a revival, in factthe
long-running Theatre De Lys staging of The Threepenny Opera with, almost
thirty years after the Berlin premiere, the original Jenny, Lotte Lenya.
Those old-fashioned new works I just cited were often musicalizations of
ancient plays, from Molire through Restoration Comedy to Oscar Wilde,
and the campy events included Rick Besoyans operetta spoof Little Mary
Sunshine (1959) and a realization for the stage of the Warner Bros. Depres-
sion backstager as Dames at Sea (1968), complete with Ruby, Dick, and
Joan. An all-pastiche score cleverly revived the Harry WarrenAl Dubin
song forms with impudent replicas: the list song (Its You), the Man I
Love solo (That Mister Man of Mine), the this would be a production
number if Busby Berkeley were in charge torcher (Raining in My Heart),
and even goofs on Shanghai Lil (as Singapore Sue) and Shuffle Off To
Buffalo (Choo-Choo Honeymoon).
As for the off-Broadway revue, here was where the variety show that
was more or less founded in the Ziegfeld Follies ended its career, for the
audienceeven for the smarter, streamlined revue format developed in
the 1930shad simply vanished. And yet producers were tempted, because
with Broadway costs running at $400,000, one could put on a little some-
thing on off-Broadway for $30,000, and even less for the bare-stage revue.
* The song was published as the joint effort of Martin and Blane, like the rest of the
Best Foot Forward score. However, late in life Martin revealed that he and Blane did not
collaborate but wrote their songs separately. One can pick out the Martin sound, es-
pecially in the numbers with a swinging punch to them (like Three Men on a Date or
The Three Bs) or those with wild choral improvs built in (like Wish I May), for Mar-
tin was famous for his vocal arrangements, from the jiving girl-group trio of Sing For
Your Supper in Rodgers and Harts The Boys From Syracuse to the big choral note- and
wordplay that became all but de rigueur in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In any case,
Martin and Blane broke up their partnership after MGMs Meet Me in St. Louis (which
Martin says he wrote entirely by himself). So You Are For Loving is contractually
by Martin and Blane but probably Martins alone.
( ) The Third Age
Jerry Hermans Parade (1960) was typical, with a cast of two comics (Dody
Goodman, Charles Nelson Reilly), two singers (Lester James, Fia Karin),
and a dancer (Richard Tone). The singers handled the melody (including a
bemusing anticipation of Hello, Dolly!s Ribbons Down My Back in Your
Good Morning) while the comics kidded the Rockefellers, the demolition
of the Womens House of Detention, Maria Callas playing the Palace (Mim
gets hit with a custard pie), and the many deaths in recent Broadway shows,
from The Andersonville Trial to J.B. and Rashoman. Note the emphasis
on local subject matter. From its inception in the 1910s, the Golden Age
American musical was essentially a validation of the style and content of
New York.
There are of course countless exceptions to this, perhaps none more so
than the most famous of off-Broadway musicals, Harvey Schmidt and Tom
Jones fable-esque The Fantasticks (1960). Even on Broadway, in 110 in the
Shade (1963), I Do! I Do!, or the mythopoetic Celebration (1969), Schmidt and
Jones treated rural or placeless scenarios. Indeed, 110 in the Shade recalls the
folksy side of R & H as well as their creation of unique lead roles for singing
actors. The two Boys of the show, the exhibitionistic rainmaker Starbuck
(Robert Horton) and the repressed Sheriff File (Stephen Douglass), are not
all that unusual; for all his flamboyance, Starbuck is something of a cowboy
Harold Hill. But the Girl, Lizzie, gave Inga Swenson a major opportunity
which she seizedas the woman too smart for her time and her town and
the men in it. In the R & H manner, Schmidt and Jones gave her a titanic
soliloquy, Old Maid, to bring down the first-act curtain.
But then, the dramatic-challenge part is one of the identifying qualities
of the post-Oklahoma! musical, and it seemed to summon into being the
emergence of high-powered actors who would have been wasted trying to
build careers in the 1920s and 1930s. Imagine, say, Alfred Drake in Good
News!, Barbara Cook in Leave It To Me! This new kind of musical star might
take a showy role or blend into an ensemble, as Cook did in Bock and Har-
nicks She Loves Me (1963), albeit as the shows pivotal character. By con-
trast, Mitch Leigh and Joe Darions Man of La Mancha (1965) was built
around two stand-out turns, Richard Kileys Cervantes/Quixote and Joan
Dieners Aldonzaand here, too, are exceptions to the New York flavor of
the musical (though Irving Jacobsons Jewish-inflected Sancho Panza was
almost an homage to Weber and Fields). Both shows are European in sub-
ject, if very different in tone, She Loves Me a luscious candybox of First and
Second Couple courtship rites and La Mancha dedicated to the sublime
madness of the individual defying the Fascist state. Their design plans
separated them, too, for William and Jean Eckart placed She Loves Me on a
revolve that opened up the central playing area, the boutique in which the
AF T ER WEST SIDE STORY
lead characters work. La Mancha, performed in Howard Bays unit set, had
a comparable design effect, a forbidding one: a stairway-drawbridge that
was the Inquisitions victims only communication with the world outside
their prison.
Musicals were now taking on visual plans that differed radically from the
fifties format of backdrops with front pieces on wagons. Thus, Sherman
Edwards 1776 (1969) took place almost entirely in another unit set, this
one so unobtrusive that its special design feature was a little calendar up-
stage whose pages turned, inexorably yet suspensefully, toward the first
date every American school kid learns. At length came the settling of the
Continental Congress contentions, the arrival of July 4 on the calendar,
the tolling of the Liberty Bell as the delegates rose to sign the Declaration
of Independence, the freezing of the action in a replica of the famous John
Trumbull painting ... and then, most thrillingly, a scrim came down, hiding
the stage behind the bottom half of the document with its signatures. And
the curtain fell.
In this age of director-choreographers, there were bound to be super-
productions to validate the High Maestros eminence, and two stand out,
Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof. They have much in commonboth ap-
peared in 1964; both were written, not only staged, by major practitioners;
both featured an admired star performance; both enjoyed a huge run, a
large-scale Hollywood adaptation, and constant revivals in recreations of
the original production. However, the pair represent two very different
strains of showmaking: Dolly! is a song-and-dance show, Fiddler a musical
play. To put it another way, Dolly! supposes a charmed existence in a life
without villains: a fantasy. Fiddler recalls a way of life plagued by poverty
and pogroms. The worst person in Dolly! is not much more than a spoil-
sport, and by the shows end even he comes around. By Fiddlers end, its
way of life is all but over.
Dolly!s director-choreographer, Gower Champion, had begun to fash-
ion shows with a distinctive look, as with I Do! I Do!s bare-stage-cum-
props or The Happy Times photographic projections. Bob Merrills Carnival!
(1961), Champions follow-up to Bye Bye Birdie, was notable for its unit
set of an empty field in which the carnival itselflittle more than a few
wagons and some streamerswas set up by the cast during the First
Number, Direct From Vienna. Further, the audience was treated at times
as a real-life carnival audience, with balloon and candy sellers in the aisles
and a volunteer drawn up onstage for a magic trick. Then, for Dolly!,
Champions set designer, Oliver Smith, hung a series of period lithographs
as backdrops to free-standing pieces that could appear to be moved into
place by the actors, all this fronted by a crescent runway to highlight
( ) The Third Age
Dollys little chats with her late husband. The costumes, by Freddy Wittop,
raved in blazing color against the black-and-white lithos, and Put on Your
Sunday Clothes featured a train, with almost the entire cast filling the
theatre with traditional musical-comedy rhapsody at the prospect of a
visit to New York.
This is the ethos of The Adventure in an Exotic Place, as old as the Amer-
ican musical itself. The Black Crook is an adventure, as are Babes in Toyland
and The Wizard of Oz, Watch Your Step and The Gingham Girl (in both of
which the exotic place is Manhattan), The Stepping Stones and Peggy-Ann,
Leave It To Me! and One Touch of Venus, even The Book of Mormon. And of
course the Dolly! adventure takes in a troupe of screwballs, though the so to
say tour guide (Carol Channing) is less an eccentric than a businesswoman
with an eccentric facade. What she really is is a performance artist living by
verbal sleight of hand, as here when trying to discourage the spoilsport,
Horace Vandergelder (David Burns)the well-known half-a-millionaire
from his intended bride. Dolly recommends instead a certain Ernestina
Money:
DOLLY: Age, nineteen; weight, one hundred and two; waist, forty-
seven ...
VANDERGELDER: Forty-seven?
DOLLY: Thats with the money belt.
DOLLY: I for one never believed the rumors... . Its just that he went
so sudden, thats all. A few spoons of chowder she made special for
him, and poof! . . . Just one word of advice, Mr. Vandergelder.
Eeeeeeat. Oooooout.
on a kind of close-up, and to a harp with woods and strings she sings, Ill
be wearing ribbons down my back this summerand in that instant the
show reminds us that musical comedy is about cute youngsters having fun
while the star clown watches over, and we realize that shes the Girl and
Out there!, however awkward and unromantic he may be, is the Boy.
Fiddlers book, by Joseph Stein, the opposite of Dolly!s, something of a
spoken drama that, every so often, pauses for lyrical expansion, by Bock
and Harnick. Hearing the Dolly! cast album, one wants to get up and dance;
hearing Fiddler, one wants to meet the characters. Jerome Robbins choreo-
graphed two of the greatest dance musicals of all time in On the Town
and West Side Story. But on Fiddler he was less a choreographer than a
directorthough, when the action broke into dance, it captured to the
very nth that way of life in what we have to call genius moments. Consider
the sudden switch from reality into fantasy in The Tailor, Motel Kamzoil
(also called Tevyes Dream), when musicians casually rose up from behind
the headboard of Tevyes bed as his nightmare took shape; or, in the
ensuing wedding, when four men danced balancing bottles on their
heads, the coordination, at one point, of a leggy step with a surge of music
creating a hair-raising grandeur.
Like Channings Dolly, Zero Mostels Tevye was a bigger-than-life guide
to the action, though the Fiddler company, unlike Dolly!s, formed an indis-
soluble ensemble, befitting the community of Anatevka. Bock and Harnick
troubled to open the show with a number, that, by synecdoche, pictured
the folk spirit that holds the village together, Weve Never Missed a
Sabbath Yet, as Tevyes wife (Maria Karnilova) and their five daughters
prepared the weeks one full-scale dinner before the setting sun forbade
further labor.
But Robbins wasnt satisfied. In a Dramatists Guild panel on the show,
Bock and Harnick recalled that Robbins kept prodding everybody to tell
him what Fiddler was about, as On the Town is about the quest for beauty
and West Side Story about the futility of clannishness. Finally, someone said
Fiddler was about the dissolution of a way of life. And Robbins then de-
manded a new First Number, showing the traditions that are going to
change. Said Robbins, this new song will serve as a tapestry against which
the entire show will play. One musical theme of the Sabbath number, at
the line Somehow the house will be clean, was developed into Fiddlers hit
tune, Matchmaker, Matchmaker, and another strain, at Theres noodles
to make and chicken to be plucked, became one of the four melodies of the
new opening, Tradition.
Each of these four introduces a segment of Anatevkathe fathers, the
mothers, the sons, the daughtersfor this is a segmented society, the
( ) The Third Age
When new, in the 1960s and 1970s, however, it usually denoted this sort of
non-realistic show that depended as much on how it was presented as on
the development of its story and characters. Allegro was a Concept Musical
because it was a parable more than a narrative, because its Greek chorus
mediated between the actors and the public, and because its cast could ap-
pear in scenes when they were meant to be emotionally but not physically
present, as when, at the heart of the protagonists despair at the false path
he has chosen, his late mother appeared with his hometown folk, many
miles away but in the audiences field of vision, to sing Come Home to
him. And Love Life was a Concept Musical because it programmed a slate of
commentary numbers between the story scenes, and because its two
leading characters never aged as they lived through one hundred fifty years
of American history.
Oddly, Cabarets tight coordination of contents and staging style evolved
more or less accidentally. In another of those Dramatists Guild panels, Cab-
arets authors, Joe Masteroff, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, recalled that the
show was originally to start with a mlange of songs taking place all over
Berlin. Ebb mentioned one about Herman the German and one in a ra-
dio station. Kander remembered a Chinese song. And one of the set was
Willkommen, the only one finally used, as the opening number. At some
point, said Masteroff, We decided to insert [these numbers] in between
the book scenes, at first in a rather random fashion, and then, somehow,
with purpose.
In Love Life, the commentative numbers were all delivered by chorus
members. Cabaret, however, assigned them to the Emcee, his cabaret
ensembleand Sally Bowles, bridging the gap between Cabaret the
metaphor and Cabaret the story. As the show proceeds, the two Cabarets
start to merge, and, finally, when Sally sings the title song, it is impossible
to tell whether it is her character number celebrating reckless hedonism or
the shows ironic jeremiad against reckless hedonism. In 1966, the number
began onstage in the cabaret, but during the trio section (I used to have a
girl friend known as Elsie ...), as the songs message began to resonate
to Sally or to us?she moved downstage. As she was about to take up
the refrain again, a curtain of streamers dropped to the floor behind her,
cutting her off from the cabaret and its layers of meaning, leaving the
playing area naked but for this one performer and her symbolic statement:
Life is a cabaret.
Sally is Cabarets central role, though some rate the Emcee as more
crucial, as he clearly is managing the action, at that in a showy turn. Joel
Grey won acclaim in it, but everyone does. Sally is harder to pull off, and a
lack of appreciation for Jill Haworths in fact very fetching Sally in 1966
( ) The Third Age
warns us that only when the role is turned inside out to appear as baroque
as the Emcee (as it was in Bob Fosses movie version, for Liza Minnelli) do
Sallys disarm criticism. At least Cabaret did bring Lotte Lenya back to
Broadway (after twenty-one years), as the heros landlady, opposite Jack
Gilford as a Jewish grocer who is utterly blind to the Nazi menace. Cabarets
hero, an Americanized Isherwood named Clifford Bradshaw (Bert Convy),
is almost as problematical as Sally, for he is the narrator and Cabaret is his
adventureyet he mustnt overpower this morality tale. Because its not
his story. Its ours.
w
C H A P T E R
T his ones easy. Rule One: Write about disillusioned or conflicted char-
acters, preferably middle-aged and, if possible, having suffered a long
prison stay for a crime they didnt commit, which will turn them into de-
ranged serial killers. Rule Two: Marry smart lyrics to tuneless music, and if
Jerry Herman complains, tell him, My arts longer than your art. Rule
Three: Hide your lack of joy in life behind those deceptive Concept Produc-
tions filled with narrators, ghosts, and Bernadette Peters. Rule Four: End
your shows without an ending, frustrating those in the audience who
havent already walked out. Does Boy get Girl? Dont let them know. If
Sondheim had written Oklahoma!, the farmer and the cowman would still
be fighting.
Of course, that isnt the Sondheim Handbook. Rather, thats how some
section of the public viewed his shows at first, when, in collaboration with
Hal Prince, Sondheim unveiled five masterpieces in a row, the only body of
work to rival the Big Five of early Rodgers and Hammerstein: Company
(1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976),
and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979). Indeed, many
Sondheim characters are disillusioned or conflicted. Thats the stuff of drama.
In a much later Sondheim show, Passion, the married Clara tells her adul-
terous lover, I often wondered how much you would love me if I were
free. Some may wonder if Sondheim would love the musical if it were still
fancy-free musical comedy. Does he like complicated situations? Yes. So did
Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ibsen, ONeill, Williams, Miller, Albee. As for the
impression that his lyrics outshone his music, this was soon enough un-
masked as the quack opinion of those who cant hear music beyond the
compositional level of Tea for Two. Not everyone has an ear for music.
( )
( ) The Third Age
* On Companys national tour, the role of Davidthe guy who makes the crack
about the Seagram buildingwas played by George Wallace, who fielded a strong bari-
tone. Dropping in on the show, Prince gave Wallace a note: George, youre singing too
well. In other words, he didnt sound natural any more. He sounded like someone in
a musical. On the other hand, all musicals need, in some role or other, the burnish-
ing of genuine vocal tone. The New York production had Elaine Stritch, who gave the
ensemble a kind of live guide vocal and, at last, enjoyed a solo, The Ladies Who
Lunch. A combination blueprint and epitaph for a fabled New York type, it is that rar-
ity, a piece utterly unlike anything else ever written. When a writer asked Sondheim
if, completing the composition, he realized that it was a great song bound to become a
standardnot to mention expert sociologySondheim replied, No, I just thought it
was a good number for Elaine.
( ) The Third Age
* Even while pretending to eulogize her hateful life with Buddy, in the number In
Buddys Eyes, Sally sings a key line: Nothing dies. That includes her love for Ben, her
belief that only his love makes her wonderful. Yet she has never understood that she
was too unsophisticated for the honcho-kingdom life Ben intended to lead. The first
rule of the Higher Hetero Leadership Class is: A man with an inappropriate wife is an
inappropriate man.
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
One arresting moment of that Kennedy Center Follies came at the very
end, when the present-day leads departed the now-empty theatre. (In 1971,
at this point, a section of the buildings rear wall was gone, as if the wreck-
ing crane was already at work.) At the last moment, one of the showgirl
ghosts left along with them, slamming the door behind her: because Ben
and Sally are still haunted byas one Follies number puts it, The Road You
Didnt Take. Would they have been happy if they had married each other,
instead of Phyllis and Buddy? Theyll never stop being spooked by the
thought: so the ghost came, too.
Yet Follies is obviously more than the story of four people. Its the story
of what happened to American art: it got serious. Folks reach a certain age
and dont like anything new. Theyre not writing them the way they used
to, they complain. Follies tells why: they were writing them sappy and
unrealistic. Anything Goes is great fun, but Carousel is enlightening, a much
more useful quality. Musical comedy becomes the musical, because the
prestigious shows arent silly any more.
Paradoxically, Follies old-style numbers are not at all the empty vessels
of melody and ditz that their predecessors were, for in the shows context
they actually help narrate. Thus, Broadway Baby places the ambitions of
show folk for whom professional success is a personal matter, something
they take pride in, reminding us that Sally and Phyllis regard show biz as
nothing more than a pay-the-rent. Later, One More Kiss (before we part),
the waltz of an apparently vapid ex-operetta star, warns us by its placement
very late in the continuity that Sallys dream is about to explode. As of old,
she and Ben will separate, as if they were the waitress and the royal in The
Student Prince.
One thing that sets the Sondheim-Prince shows apart from R & H is the
variety of Sondheims music. Companys score builds a steel-bright facade
hiding an approach-avoidance mentalityjust as its characters do. Follies,
when not singing the songs theyre not writing any more, is more lyrical in
spots, and even its hard-edged numbers arent as slashingly contemporary
in sound as those in Company. Phyllis Could I Leave You? is acid, but dear
old waltzy acid; Companys Another Hundred People (just got off of the
train) was 1970s newest tune, as bright and hard as a coin out of the mint.
And then came A Little Night Music. Nol Coward wrote the operetta
Bitter Sweet (1929) because he feared the (English) musical had lost its
sense of romancethe military march, the gypsy strain, the nostalgic
number, and above all the waltz. Its as if Sondheim thought the same thing
after Follies, for Night Music, from Ingmar Bergmans Smiles of a Summer
Night, revived not the sound but the spirit of operetta. Theres so much
singing that even the overture is vocal, and while the hit tune, Send in the
( ) The Third Age
Clowns, was written for the essentially non-singing Glynis Johns, it was
quickly taken up by, among others, the opera soprano Renata Scotto. She
actually brought the published sheet music, with its people-in-a-tree blue
logo cover, out onstage at a song recital, in the encore segment.
A Little Night Music is famously the waltz musical, and much of the
score uses the three-quarter enchantment melody that used to be called
sweeping, in the Night Waltz and You Must Meet My Wife, though
another waltz, Remember?, is nervous and uncertain. Further, much of
the rest of the score adopts other dance rhythms. The solo of the grand old
lady (Hermione Gingold) who surveys the vacillating lovers of the Berg-
manesque night with disdain and epigrams, Liaisons, is a sarabande,
and Johns establishing number, The Glamorous Life (whose refrain, amus-
ingly, allows not a single rhyme) is marked Tempo di Mazurca. Perhaps
Night Music is less a waltz score than simply one of the most lyrical pieces of
music ever written for Broadway. Certainly, it marked a turn in Sondheims
fortunes, because theatregoers who had had trouble absorbing his melody
elusively various as it iswere now acclimatized to and rhapsodic about it.
But they balked at Pacific Overtures, because here the Concept Musical
was raised to the highest power, fusing the composition and its presenta-
tion so brilliantly that average theatregoers found the show difficult to
digest. The subject was historythe forced opening of Japan to Western
trade in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, the libretto would have a great
deal of political developments to cover, whereas Company covered only
marriage, Follies show biz, and A Little Night Music romance.
Further, the decision to reenact these events in Kabuki style tilted the
work toward a certain oblique and epigrammatic approach, as if Pacific
Overtures were a gigantic haiku. Once again, we refer to Richard Rodgers
theory about sets and orchestrations matching, for Boris Aronsons de-
signs and Jonathan Tunicks scoring blended precisely with John Weidman
and Hugh Wheelers book and the Sondheim songsrestrained and styl-
ized, yet sharply etched. To this day, Pacific Overtures is the most unlike
musical ever seen, though it retains Sondheims interest in the so to say
crossroads of decision making. Here it is not the protagonist who is faced
with a choice, but, as Ive said already, an entire nation: is Japan to resist
Westernization or, to quote one of its lyrics, to accommodate the times as
one lives them?
Personalizing this, the action centered on two figures, a Samurai (Isao
Sato) and a nobody named Manjiro (Sab Shimono). Close friends through
their shared management of the trauma created by American gunboat di-
plomacy, they make opposing choices. The samurai becomes cosmopolitan
while Manjiro turns nativist, joining the war against foreign influence.
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
subject was hippie culture, especially in its mellow and anti-war forma-
tions. This made it a Zeitgeist Musical; and the music of the Zeitgeist was
rock. Hairs phenomenal international popularity inspired American pro-
ducers to seek out more Zeitgeist Musicals, in such aspects as rock science-
fiction (Via Galactica, 1972), rock Hair sequel (Dude, 1972), rock Molire
(Tricks, 1973), rock Shakespeare (Rockabye Hamlet, 1975), and rock Other
Famous Elizabethan Playwright (Marlowe, 1981). All were not just failures
but ghastly bombs, and it was the English who devised the first lasting
rock-musical recipe, in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rices Jesus Christ
Superstar (recorded song cycle, 1969; New York, 1971), which introduced
the genre loosely termed pop opera.
Broadway had already hosted pop operas, of course. But this newly
coined term denoted something racier than, say, The Golden Apple. No, pop
opera would be a mishmash of musical styles with contrarian social atti-
tudes and, when needed, a touch of Concept Musical flexibility. Thus, in
Lloyd Webber and Rices Evita (recorded song cycle, 1976; London, 1978;
New York, 1979), a character named simply Che wanders through the ac-
tion passing remarks even though he is more a superego than a character.
Then, too, pop opera doted on not only larger-than-life characters but per-
formers charismatic enough to play them. The star-making role in Jesus
Christ Superstar, ironically, is Judas, which gave Ben Vereen his punchout
job, and New Yorks Evita and Che were Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin,
two of the biggest talents of the age, she catching Eva Perns giddy sense
of entitlement and he as scathing as Jeremiah. Hal Princes staging found a
way to dramatize what had been written as a disjunct set of numbers, for
instance capturing the rivalry of army generals in a game of musical chairs,
or presenting the upper class as a frieze of pantywaists traveling across the
stage, noses in the air with almost imperceptible footwork. (Patinkin joined
them at one point, in Ches revolutionary fatigues, aping their pose with
lavish contempt.)
Pop operas continued to be huge hits: Lloyd Webbers Cats (1981; 1982)
and an English staging of Claude-Michel Schnbergs Les Misrables (1985;
1987) racked up a combined New York run of 14,165 performances. But the
jewel in the crown wasis, for it continues strong at this writing, after
some twenty-five yearsLloyd Webbers The Phantom of the Opera (1987;
1988). Phantom demonstrates the frailties and vigor of the form, for while
it is of one of the most engrossing and spectacular of entertainments, it
bears with its fellows the defects of the pop in opera. These include a ten-
dency to doggerel lyrics, obsessed with monosyllabic end-rhymes and lack-
ing in wordplay. There is also the incoherent mixing of musical styles, as
when some of Phantoms onstage opera pastiche sounds authentic while
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
the sopranos debut solo, Think of Me, which draws cheers from her au-
dience, does not remotely suggest music available to an opera company in
Phantoms time zone, 1881. Worse, the title song is a disco number.
Phantoms strengths, however, tell why it deserved to be a hit of hits
the unbelievable amount of Maria Bjrnsons scenery kept in rotation on
stage, for example, from the pastiche opera Hannibal, complete with ele-
phant (which is turned around to reveal two stagehands playing cards in-
side it) to the mirror transformed into a magic portal to the Phantoms
grotto. A trompe loeil effect using doubles simulates the trip through the
Opras catacombs until a gondola bearing the Phantom and his love glides
past a lake of burning candles. Or a rehearsal room appears, where singers
balk at their difficult Phantom-composed music till a bewitched piano sets
them all off singing like robots in flawless atonality. The shows music, at its
best, is enthralling, and the roles are elegantly turned, even the support
Judy Kaye won a Tony as the termagant diva Carlotta, not least for her
high E, one half-step past Candides Cunegonde.
Indeed, when the critic Ken Mandelbaum first heard that Andrew Lloyd
Webber would compose and Hal Prince direct an adaptation of Gustave
Lerouxs old novel, he predicted, That show will run forever: because the
combination of Lloyd Webbers big music and Princes theatricality was
bound to realize all the flamboyance and eerie beauty latent in the story.
No doubt the lyrics would have been better if death had not taken Alan
Jay Lerner off the project. But even with the less able wordsmiths who
followed Tim Rice in this genre, Phantom provides an electrifying evening
of music theatre. Too, for all its flaws, it largely avoids the unbridled
screamo vocalism that has marred so many of these exhibitsand, worse,
other kinds of musicals. Pop opera can even raise up a kind of quiet
screamo with overladen pianissimo, as in Jean Valjeans tortured solo in
Les Misrables, Bring Him Home, whose first line addresses God on
high. Gerard Alessandrinis modern-day Weber and Fields, Forbidden
Broadway, gave this number a gleeful sendup as God, Its High (this songs
too high).
On the other hand, detractors have made too much of pop operas visual
gimmicksCats tire rising to the Heaviside Layer or the helicopter of Miss
Saigon (1989; 1991). Phantom, of course, has a chandelier, dragged off the
stage and hiked to the top of the proscenium center and then daintily let
fall at the end of Act One. Its a misfire. The tire was a hoot and the helicop-
ter actually an impressive bit of stagecraft, but not till the 2004 Phantom
movie did we see what happens when an opera-house chandelier plum-
mets, as vast tyings burst, the audience panics, and it looks as if the very
auditorium must fly apart.
( ) The Third Age
Amid the influx of these new sounds, older songwriters went on cre-
ating utterly free of their influenceRichard Rodgers in Two By Two (1970),
Rex (1976), and I Remember Mama (1979), all star vehicles, respectively for
Danny Kaye as Noah, Nicol Williamson as Henry VIII, and Liv Ullmann.
Rex had some nice moments, but Rodgers was no longer working at par.
Leonard Bernstein, with Alan Jay Lerner, wrote marvelous music for an
incoherent book in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976), in which Ken Howard
and Patricia Routledge enacted a century of presidents and first ladies, with
a showstopper for Routledge as Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes and Mrs. Ulysses
S. Grant at the 1877 inauguration in Duet For One. The outgoing Mrs. Grant
was catty and the incoming Mrs. Hayes was on top of the world as their
dueling solos recounted the history of the tangled presidential election of
1876, Routledge switching back and forth between the two by flipping her
bonnet and changing voice from yowl to La Scala. Duet For One was the
sort of number that no contemporary-pop musical with its pounding
beat, or pop opera with its goofy lyrics, could have duplicated, and its why
authors continued to write in traditional styleBock and Harnick in The
Rothschilds (1970), their last outing together; Cy Coleman with Comden
and Green at their most prankish in On the Twentieth Century (1978), a
faux-operetta art nouveau train fest. Charles Strouse and Lee Adams
worked some pop flavoring into Applause (1970), with Novelty Star Lauren
Bacall in Bette Davis role in All About Eve; One of a Kind sang in the
restless riffing of modern jazz, and Backstage Babble recalled the breezy
Bach of the Swingles Singers.
Yet, later in the 1970s, working with Martin Charnin, Strouse com-
posed one of the most conservative of scores for Annie (1977), almost a
parody of the old genresnot quite pastiche, in the Follies manner, but
redolent, let us say, of the old attitudes. There was an angry cakewalk for
the Depression homeless in Wed Like To Thank You, Herbert Hoover, a
sort of Twentieth Century Fox Shirley Temple chorus for I Think Im
Gonna Like It Here, a blues for Easy Street, and, at Tempo di Ted Lewis,
Youre Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile. That last title revealed the
backstage of a radio show complete with ventriloquist and dummy, a
singing sisters trio, the only masked announcer on radio, and a sound-
effects man supplying the clacking of the hosts tap breaks. This sequence
was then repeated by Annies little friends back at the orphanage, with one
tyke imitating the typical upper mordent vocal decoration so popular in
the old days. Using two treadmills to bring scenery (and sometimes people)
on and off, with plenty of backdrops, the designer, David Mitchell, kept the
action fluid even as it raced from the orphanage to a Hooverville, a presi-
dential cabinet meeting, and so on. Further, even while smoothing out the
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
Best of all, Annie had a superb comic villain in Dorothy Loudon, the monster
mistress of the orphanage. Did I hear happiness in here? she snarled,
barging in on her charges laughter. Her solo, Little Girls, is marked Plain
Mean; it catches her malevolence in a tune in the minor, harping on the
second tone of the scale, the musical equivalent of smoldering rage.
Jerry Herman, arguably the most traditional of all the songwriters,
suffered respectable failures with Mack and Mabel (1974) and The Grand
Tour (1979). Then he shifted gears for his last new show, not in his song
style but in the shows content. La Cage aux Folles (1983), from the French
play by Jean Poiret that became a globally popular film, was a most con-
ventional yet daring work. Consider: Jean-Michel, the affianced young
son of Georges (Gene Barry), is bringing the in-laws to meet his parents,
and he plans to move his estranged mother back in with his father.
Georges resists:
JEAN-MICHEL: But how will it look if she doesnt sleep in your room?
GEORGES: Like any couple married twenty years.
Its exactly the sort of joke that Abe Burrows might have written for virtu-
ally any fifties or sixties musical comedy. But note that La Cages librettist
was the very out Harvey Fierstein, and Georgesas all of my readers surely
know alreadyisnt living with his wife because hes living with his male
partner, Albin (George Hearn).
Georges runs a drag club on the Riviera, and Albinor Zaza, his user
nameis the star attraction. Meanwhile, Jean-Michels father-in-law-to-
be is a homophobic reactionary. But when Albin learns that the boy he
raised wants to cut him out of les noces, and that Georges is going along
with it, he rips the theatre apart with I Am What I Am, virtually a gay
anthem. Throwing off his drag wigfiring it, in fact, like an explosive shell
in Georges faceHearn then stormed off the stage as the curtain fell, a
most memorable first-act suspense effect.
And this was Big Broadway, too, not a show making a quaint ruckus down-
town. The shows billing emphasized this: La Cage aux Folles, The Broadway
Musical, and it got a grand production with excellent choreography (by
( ) The Third Age
Scott Salmon) for the drag performers.* Further, the big ballad, Song on
the Sand, went to Georges and Albin; the heterosexual sweethearts were
the Second Couple, taking part in the score in only a here and there way. The
Boy got With Anne on My Arm, and the two then had a dance about it; and
she sang in ensembles only.
There had been overtly gay characters in musicals at least since Danny
Kayes flaming photographer in Lady in the Dark, and a gay partner couple
hosted a party for two hetero couples in the short-lived Sextet (1974),
strictly Little Broadway in the small-scaled Bijou Theatre. But just as Bert
Williams, Shuffle Along, and Ethel Waters opened up possibilities for
black performers and shows, La Cage aux Folles changed the gay experience
from the love that dare not speak its name to the love that would not stop
singingin the continued use of gay characters and themes to, shall we
say?, enrich the curriculum and, yet more educationally, in such works as
William Finns Falsettos (1992), consisting of the previously produced
March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland.
This is because the musical has long been an instrument of American
culture in reflecting and satirizing whatever was stirring in the nation at
large. One could argue that Lydia Thompson and her dangerous burlesque
appeared in response to the early rumbles of the feminist movement, that
the concentration of minority-group participation in the Ziegfeld Follies
was a response to the increasing visibility of immigrant cultures in daily
life. The Florida real-estate bubble of the 1920s, golf, aviation, and psy-
chiatry all got their very own musicals when they were novelties. Even a
blithely entertaining musical comedy such as Lil Abner (1956) had a satiric
edge. Conceived as part of the cycle of Hollywoods rustic musicals launched
by Cant Help Singing (1944) and The Harvey Girls (1946) and reenergized
by Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Lil Abner was to have been a film
for Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, but instead started on Broadway
with a score by Seven Brides songwriters, Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer.
Its source, Al Capps comic-strip saga of dumb Abner and winsome Daisy
Mae, was already satiric, and the musical quite naturally matched it. Just
a step or two behind the romance was a menu of contemporary talking
points: fear of nuclear war, the danger of scientists controlling our sloppy
but free way of life, physical fitness, Congressional ineptitude, and, above
all, the corruption of government by corporate money bosses. Though
a smash hit, Lil Abner made no important history, because the public
* An amusing touch: at the curtain calls, a little cart rolled from stage right to left
as the twelve Cagelles doffed their drag outfits to reveal what few if any in the house
could have guessed while they were in their drag finery: two of them were women.
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
Similarly, The Wiz (1974), a slick Harlem Oz, turned itself into a one-joke
event, although Charlie Smalls score reminds us how much variety lives in
the term rhythm and blues. On one hand is the irresistibly exuberant
Ease on Down the Road, with Ozs famous yellow-brick highway por-
trayed by four men in gold tailcoats bearing staves to mark the physics of
travel; on the other is the bad witchs rave-up, Dont Nobody Bring Me No
Bad News. At the center of the doings was young Stephanie Mills as Doro-
thy, a little bundle of vivacity in her white tutu and hose, scampering about
the stage or tracing the contours of soul coloratura. A sensation with a
four-year run, The Wiz had a secret: its content was very out there, even
heavy-handed, yet performed with a certain delicacy. Thus, a loud, ungainly
revival in 1984 lasted but two weeks, even with Mills Dorothy and the
same choreographer (George Faison) and costume-designer-cum-director
(Geoffrey Holder), because of a coarse and ungainly staging. Screechers,
mumblers, and pointers was the Times Frank Richs rating of the cast, in a
trunkload of marked-down, damaged goods.
While The Wiz combined two alien tonesL. Frank Baums fantasy
world with the earthy urban black styleBig River (1985) created the log-
ical marriage of Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with coun-
try music. As in the novel, Huck himself narrated, and William Hauptmans
Big River libretto was extraordinarily faithful to Twain, focusing on the
storys major events, from Hucks faking his own murder and his escape
with the runaway slave Jim to their meeting up with the Duke and the
King and the attempt to swindle the Wilkses out of their inheritance.
Much of the novels charm lies in Twains juggling of the lingos of the lower
Mississippiin his own words The Missouri negro dialect; the extremest
form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary Pike-County
dialect; and the modified varieties of this last. Roger Millers Big River
songs could be viewed as the musical equivalent: a pride of communica-
tions locked in the very sound of the folk they representa splendid First
Number with a schoolmarmish kick in Do Ya Wanna Go To Heaven; the
rousing Muddy Water, a breezy two-step complement to Ol Man River;
moments of both white and black gospel; and quixotic specialties like (Dad
gum) Guvment for Hucks evil father.
A solid hit at a two-and-half-year stay, Big River wasnt a one-off, as Rob-
ert Waldmans The Robber Bridegroom (1976), Adam Guettels Floyd Collins
(1996), and Jeanine Tesoris Violet (1997) also employed country style, al-
beit more or less expansively. However, Big River is unique in its day for
mating a classic form of American music with a classic work of American
literaturea rebellious one at that. The musical has always protected
nonconformists of various kindsthe orphan waif determined to dance in
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
the Follies, the pacifist in wartime, the feminist in bloomers, the stage
mother making show biz through force majeure, the novelist defying the
Spanish Inquisition, the pointillistic painter ahead of the curve, the Creole
drawn to forbidden music, the Witch at war with the Wizard. And Huckle-
berry Finn is one of Americas greatest rebels, as much a runaway (from
being sivilized) as Jim is. We never do find out what happens to Huck in
the end, for in Twains last paragraph Huck is set to light out for the [west-
ern] Territory to avoid having to live within the captivity of middle-class
cautions. And Hauptman reaches the end of his script with Twains very
last line, as Big Rivers lights faded to black: I been there already.
Grease, The Wiz, and Big River were linear narratives staged more or
less realistically. By the mid-1970s, however, the figure of the director-
choreographer preferred shows staged in a fantastical way. A musical is not
realistic. A musical is a musical, not only performed but about performing.
And Bob Fosse had the ideal project: Maurine Watkins 1926 comedy-
drama Chicago, about the trial of a murderessthe Gwen Verdon part,
obviously. However, Watkins was now alienated from the cynical tone of
the scripts and screenplays she wrote in youth, and she declined. After her
death, her estate negotiated, and the Fosse-Verdon Chicago (1975) could
be said to have ushered in a new era in the sub-history of the director-
choreographer production: usually in a unit set; utilizing the Concept
Musicals imaginary convergence of different times and places; and the
stagemaster himself collaborating in the writing of the show.
Thus, Chicago played in a space without sets (though the actors were re-
alistically costumed), the various locales defined by the action rather than
by a visual map. So Verdon, as Roxie Hart, sang Funny Honey atop a Helen
Morganstyle upright piano, the lyrics cut into a dialogue scene in which
her husband is interrogated by a cop after the murder. Further to Concep-
tualize the scene, the conductor, Stanley Lebowsky, played announcer for
the song (For her first number ...), and, after the scene, one of the en-
semble appeared to announce the next act: And now, the six merry mur-
deresses of the Cook County jail in their rendition of the Cell Block Tango.
Billed as a musical vaudeville, Chicago amounted to a deconstruction of
traditional musical-comedy stagingand of its writing, for Fosse was
listed as a co-author of the book with Fred Ebb.* Fosse had conceived
* Nine years before, Fosse had written Sweet Charitys book by himself, taking the
sobriquet of Bert Lewis (a play on his given names, Robert Louis). Realizing that he
needed experienced help, he called in Neil Simon, giving Simon sole credit, but this
occurred so late in the shows gestation that the first song sheets came out with the
Bert Lewis billing.
( ) The Third Age
Chicago as a kind of blueprint for a narrative rather than the narrative it-
self. Allegro, three decades earlier, had desegregated some of the musicals
essentialsbut Allegros score flowed through the story all the same. Chi-
cagos score (by Ebb with, of course, John Kander) stood apart from the
story in a series of performance piecesthus the announcements before
the songs. Further, most of the numbers were pointedly modeled on spe-
cialties out of the show-biz past. Follies revived old song genres. Chicago
revived old singersnot only Helen Morgan but Sophie Tucker, Ted Lewis,
Bert Williams, Eddie Cantor, and Marilyn Miller. Besides Verdon were
Chita Rivera as the chief other murderess, Jerry Orbach as their lawyer,
Mary McCarty as the Sophie Tuckeresque jailer, Barney Martin as Verdons
woeful husband, and M. OHaughey as a sob-sister reporter. The M. stood
for Michael, hidden from view because he played in drag for a twisty con-
clusion to Verdons trial, when Orbach ended his summation with Things
are not always what they appear to be, pulled off OHaugheys wig and
dress, and cried, The defense rests!
Chicago was, in all, an evening of unprecedented theatricality, a mu-
sical about how musicals work while, so to say, unworking them. Fur-
ther, this musical had a point to makethat show biz has so permeated
American life that everything in it is an act, and morality is a perfor-
mance. Not till O. J. Simpsons acquittal in a double-murder trial did we
see how observant Chicago had beenwhich may well explain the spec-
tacular success of the 1996 Encores! concert version, which, moved to
Broadway, became the longest-running revival in history, still playing at
this writing.
Chicago was a hit, to be sure, but it was overshadowed by the simulta-
neous appearance of another High Maestro piece, Michael Bennetts A Cho-
rus Line. Actually, the latter opened first, but downtown, at the New York
Shakespeare Festivals Newman Theatre, to make its way to Broadway
seven weeks after. A Chorus Lines famously innovative gestation, arising
from audiotapes of performers autobiographical recollections followed
by an improvisational workshop periodnot to mention the shows very
origin in Joseph Papps experimental outfitinspired encomiums from
writers who normally ignored theatre as subject matter and, it may be,
seldom if ever even saw a show. It was like the attacks on the musicals
Golden Age traditions that we heard in the 1960s, another uprising from
outside the shareholder community. Too corny! What kitsch! And now the
same outsiders sought to use off-Broadway and Joe Papp as a stick with
which to beat the Big Broadway of Chicago and Fosse, along with all that
Oklahoma! stuff and revivals of ... didnt they just do No, No, Nanette with,
like ... Ruby Keeler?
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
The pace is racy even when the music gives way to underscored dialogue
and the pack is culled down. The best First Numbers bring us immediately
into the story, but this sequence is so masterly in its comprehensiveness
that we are handicapping the outcome, judging the talent just as Zach does.
Then his assistant organizes the iconic line, clutching their picture-and-
rsums. As they spread out, he lets off a charming There you go! gesture,
his right fist sawing leftward through the air, and he walks off as the line
strides forwardbut now the mirrors turn, creating a blackout, and when
the lights come up again the line is downstage, holding their headshots in
front of their faces.
Beyond its brilliant staging, A Chorus Line was unique in maintaining
story suspense without a story. Rather, it contained many little stories in
the personal revelations of the auditioners, and there was even a love plot,
between Zach and his ex-girl friend (Donna McKechnie), trying for a mere
( ) The Third Age
job after an inconclusive spell in glamor work. There were no Concept Mu-
sical touches; this was pure fourth-wall realism. Yet there was a metaphor-
ical feeling about the show, as if the audition was not for a musical but for
life. Bennetts next show, Ballroom (1978), comparably saw the regenera-
tion of a lonely widow (Dorothy Loudon) in a romance with her dancing
partner (Vincent Gardenia) in terms of the equation [good performance =
good life]. And the following Bennett show, Dreamgirls (1981), about the
rise of a group not unlike the Supremes, expanded this with Bennetts most
exhaustive look yet at how success in show biz creates success in how one
feels about oneself.
In all, A Chorus Line was the work of a showman steeped in the intoxicat-
ing belief that the fabled American Dream really consists of participation in
the greatest art this nation has produced: a big fat smash Broadway show.
Michael Bennett didnt know what Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John
Steinbeck or Mickey Mantle knew. But he knew that theatre folk enrich us
with joy and enlightenment and, in payment, receive the ego gratification
of owning a piece of the spectacular live performance of something unique.
A Chorus Lines hit tune, What I Did for Love, was, it is generally admitted,
added to the score so composer Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Ed Kleban
could get a moment of their own in An Evening With Michael Bennett.
The song is not as articulate as it might have been, however: actors do it
not for love. They do it for pride, in the expertise that makes them special.
Ironically, the Bennett musicals used performing symbolicallyyet what
made them special was their high quality of performing, period.
So the director-choreographer became the musicals new captain of com-
mand; no wonder all choreographers wanted to direct. Sometimes they lent
their talents to dizzy musical comedy, as Michael Kidd did in Lil Abner.
Sometimes they worked in the musical play, as Jerome Robbins did in Gypsy.
Still, hovering over the High Maestro app, so to say, was the Allegro-Love Life
model of the Concept Musical, aiming at a unique work with some reading
of the nature of life. After all, these werent just staging experiments: Allegro
warned against letting outside demands compromise ones integrity, and
Love Life preceded Company in worrying over the claustrophobic isolation of
marriage. They reveled in the chance to let dance seep through the action, as
Allegro did, or to slip intrusive numbers into the continuity, as Love Life did.
They loved the ending to end all endings, as in Allegros ecstatic finale, as the
protagonist stepped forth into the life he was meant to lead just as a little
boy walks for the first time; or in Love Lifes alienated couple trying to reach
each other at opposite ends of a tightrope, because intimacy isnt easy
andas Alan Jay Lerner might have told his eight wivesyou never know
your spouse till youre divorced.
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
But Joe Laytons bio musical Barnum (1980) was a dizzy musical comedy.
Layton had already High Maestroed his way through a George M. Cohan
bio in George M! (1968), using an ensemble to trade off parts while dancing,
jumping, and cavorting around Joel Greys Cohan as they all raced through
his life. George M! was a frolic, andaside from some deeply felt romantic
momentsso was Barnum. Here the more and more inevitable unit set
suggested the big top, and the ensemble, when not playing parts, served as
circus folk. The central figure was Jim Dale, seldom offstage as he pulled off
stunts and tricks, changed outfits from burgher and clown to ringmaster,
resplendent in red tails, white tights, and black boots, and humbugged
his way through the doings of Phineas T. Barnum, husband to Chairy
(Glenn Close) but lover of opera star Jenny Lind (Marianne Tatum). The
shows structure observed the Gower Champion plan of short dialogue
scenes rushing headlong to the next musical number, the real meat of
the meal. Oddly, Champions ace librettist, Michael Stewart, was Barnums
lyricist, to Cy Colemans music. (Mark Bramble wrote the book.) The
atmosphere was dashing, funny, and thrilling, like Barnums circus itself: a
flimsy piece substantiated by its staging.
But Tommy Tunes Nine (1982), one of the most admired works in the
entire High Maestro series, returns us to serious consideration. An adapta-
tion of Federico Fellinis movie 8, Nine deals with the mid-life crisis of a
genius who cant enjoy his life because he ... what? Neither film nor mu-
sical can tell us, because there is no answer; some people are too interesting
to be happy. Fellinis protagonist was Marcello Mastroianni: attractive,
smart, sly, sensitive, distractedand one of those movie stars who always
withholds a percentage of his portrayal for himself, so that one never quite
collects him. Perfect: because thats true as well of the character, a kind of
Fellini, whom the world sees as a savior. Hire me! Make me famous! Film
my story and explain my life!
Critics have anointed 8 as a remarkable film since its release, in 1963.
Fittingly, Nine is a remarkable musical, in an adaptation very free in its
details yet faithful in spirit, and Tunes production, sweeping of gesture yet
intricate in insight, was Exhibit A in the argument favoring the director-
choreographer as the musicals new owner. Most arresting is the way
Nine moved onstagenot so much danced as swayed and shudderedand
the way Tune directed Arthur Kopits book and Maury Yestons score to
flow together so organically that it was hard to believe that this material
had ever before appeared in a different form.
The unit set presented a vaguely spa-like place. There were small seat-
like risers and, at the rear, the skyline of Venice seen from far off in the
lagoon, as if on the Lido. Exploiting the physical layout from the start,
( ) The Third Age
Tune launched the show with a crowd of women variously uttering odd
statements to the protagonist, Guido Contini (Raul Julia). As the women
then settled on their seats, Guido, with a baton, vigorously conducted them
in a most unusual overturea vocal one, like that to A Little Night Music
(though in Night Music the singers used the words of each song, while
Nines ladies sang simply La la la). But more: the entire overture was a
single movement, an Allegro in 24 , so that the four songs quoted swam
past the ear without the slightest break or change in tempo. The four
amounted to a CliffsNotes of Nines action: My Husband Makes Movies,
the establishing solo of Guidos wife, Luisa (Karen Akers); Only With You,
Guidos romantic duet with his adulterous light of love, Claudia (Shelly
Burch); Nine, sung to and about a younger Guido (Cameron Johann); and
I Cant Make This Movie, Guidos admission that his life has come to a
dead end.
Thus, the overture presented, respectively, Guido the artist, Guido the
lover, Guido in his platonic essence, and Guido in breakdown. In the show
itself, the number that followed I Cant Make This Movie, Guidos duet
with his younger self, Getting Tall, gently brought him back to a reconcil-
iation with his destiny. But the ideal overture states only the problem, not
its solution,* and as I Cant Make This Movie terminated, the show proper
began, as Guido interacted with his harem, especially Luisa and Claudia;
Carla (Anita Morris), a second adulterous partner, but a purely physical
one; his mother (Taina Elg); and his producer (Liliane Montevecchi), a
dreary old man in 8 but, here, a flamboyant ex-showgirl. Montevecchi got
her own number, Folies Bergres, complete with an amiably vicious movie
critic (Stephanie Cotsirilos) with her own solo bit (The trouble with Con-
tini ...), which the two then sang together, in quodlibet style, heating up
the pressure on the protagonist while invigorating Nines showmanship.
In fact, Nines first act consisted almost entirely of a series of blazing
showstoppers for the women, costumed in William Ivey Longs array of
black outfits from fashionable to bizarreCotsirilos wore a hat that looked
like something Don Basilio refused to wear in a Euro-trash staging of The
Barber of Seville. Nines second act dealt with the film Guido was apparently
going to make, a Casanova (which Fellini himself did film, in 1976, with
the unlikely Donald Sutherland), in an extended musical sequence that
emphasized Nines sophistication of elements: a phantasmagoria on the
* Opera buffs will point out that the most famous of the four overtures that
Beethoven wrote for his one opera, Fidelio, the so-called Leonore Number Three, states
both problem and solution. Beethoven, however, is always exceptional, the genius who
perfects rules by breaking them.
T H E S O N D H E I M H A N D B O OK
Fosse), and a score made of old songs. Was the High Maestro out of
control or simply heedless of the writing quotient in the creative process?
Michael Gore and Dean Pitchfords Carrie (1988) seemed to suggest
both at once, in director Terry Hands staging, a non-realistic depiction of
high-school life, from Stephen Kings novel, set in the big white box favored
by modernist revivals of classic theatre. Produced by Great Britains Royal
Shakespeare Company, Carrie originated in Stratford-on-Avon, where Bar-
bara Cook, playing Carries religion-fascist mother, was dismayed by Hands
lack of interest in fixing the shows many problems. Some of the score ex-
celled; but some of it was terrible. The narrative varied from clear to opaque.
And the special effectsrelating to Carries paranormal powersvaried
from incorrect to lame. Having played in shows in the charge of such expert
directors as Morton da Costa, Herbert Ross, and Hal Prince, Cook knew
how a musical is fitted up, and left the project before it arrived in New York,
its second booking, to be replaced by Betty Buckley. A colossal failurethe
classic analysis of flop musicals, Ken Mandelbaums, is entitled, with a logic
that crushes all before it, from Ankles Aweigh to Kelly, Not Since Carrie
Carrie managed to become a cult favorite even without a cast album, which
is like becoming sangria without wine. The piece finally resurfaced, in 2012,
in a cutdown off-Broadway revision, now with Marin Mazzies mother un-
fortunately naturalized down from psycho to someone you might have
known in summer camp. Still, the show may ultimately succeed in this new
form: rescued from its director and given back to its writers.
w
PA R T F OUR
Devolution
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( ) The Fourth Age
tone), and Music in the Air (now set in Switzerland, to avoid Nazi reverber-
ations). These were all Big Broadway, but in the 1950s and 1960s, the City
Centers annual spring season of authentic restagings of classics, along
with off-Broadways delight in small-scaled reairings of titles, from Leave It
To Jane to Gay Divorce, took over most of the revival franchise.
Then came the aforementioned 1971 No, No, Nanette, with its all-
star has-beens Ruby Keeler and Patsy Kelly (succeeded by Martha Raye), a
smash of grand proportion. The originals twenties quirkiness was regener-
ated into an up-to-date camp nostalgia, emphasized in Raoul Pne du Bois
costuming: art deco sweaters, Technicolor swimming togs, plus-fours
over Argyle socks, and a derby for Helen Gallagher to sport for her torch
song with the boys. Though the production was billed as being supervised
by Busby Berkeley in his return to stage work after some forty years in
Hollywood, Burt Shevelove, adapting and directing, was really in charge,
creating not only new life for Nanette but a new event in the Broadway
Olympics, the has-been hit.
Nanettes producers, Harry Rigby and Cyma Rubin, sundered their
partnership. She went on to an Oh, Kay! that closed in tryout, but he came
up with another knockout in Irene, in 1973, starring Debbie Reynolds (suc-
ceeded by Jane Powell, and both in their Broadway debuts). For some
strange reason, John Gielgud was hired to direct; perhaps Mao Tse-tung
and Lawrence of Arabia werent available. Gower Champion was, however,
and after a calamitous tryout he was rushed into action. Indeed, he saved
the showand, that same year, Hal Prince also had a hit in the latest
of the various attempts to fix Candide, mounted in Brooklyn. Princes
employed a very young cast in an environmental playing area in which
house and actors intermingled; at one performance, that madcap Kath-
arine Hepburn threw herself onto a nearby prop bed. Moved to Broadway
in 1974, this Candide did seem to reclaim the piece for the first time. But it
was vocally weak, and Voltaires crafty Jeremiad had been turned into
Duck, Duck, Goose.
Nevertheless, the age of revivals had dawned, unfortunately with the
mission to revise shows that needed little more than a book touch-up and,
perhaps, the replacement of a dull number or two. Was it because a 1971 On
the Town was extremely faithful to the text yet flopped? As the original
choreography was lost, Ron Field created new dances, but the words and
music were heard just as in 1944. Perhaps the male leads were weak. As
that English National Opera On the Town underlined, Gabey is the Dorothy
of the piece, winning in every way; everyone else is a Scarecrow or Tin
Woodman, lovable but bizarre. Bernadette Peters, Fields Hildy, was
perfect, a very embodiment of the raucous, strutting city.
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If Chicago was one of the most faithful revivals, a Roundabout Pal Joey in
2008, while retaining the entire 1940 score, commissioned a new book, by
Richard Greenberg. Further, Joe Mantellos direction and Graciela Dan-
ieles dances wholly reimagined a forties scenery-and-production-number
entertainment as a modern piece, in a unit set with only helpings of dance.
In 1940, Joeys meeting with the nice girl occurred outside a pet shop,
the visual cleverly designed by Jo Mielziner with the stores lettering
printed in reverse, for a trompe loeil effect: Joey and the mouse, facing
the audience, appeared to be looking through the stores front window. At
Roundabout, this meeting spot was changed to a greasy spoon, played in a
tiny inset.
Greenberg used almost none of the original John OHara libretto, little
more than its first few lines. In 1940, Joey was introduced to us as the cur-
tain rose, running through an audition for the small-time club manager
Mike. In 2008, Joey was given a bit of backstory to underscoring: after
being thrown to the floor with his suitcases in a get out of town vignette,
he then leaped from one audition to another till he finally hooked up with
DE VOL U T I O N
numbers, and, as with Hal Princes Show Boat, the spirit of the original sur-
vived, at least till Mendes fade-out, which left us with a view of the emcee ...
in the striped garb of a concentration-camp prisoner.
Has the revisal become the default setting? In the 2000s, there was talk
of a Brigadoon to be reset in the nuclear age, though the original text is one
of the soundest of the R & H era, a rare show that, in the day when New
York had seven daily newspapers, got seven raves. Even worse was a revi-
sion of Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerners On a Clear Day You Can See For-
ever (1965) in 2011. True, the original is famous for its marvelous score and
terrible bookbut its only half terrible. The shows premise was that Mark,
a psychiatrist (John Cullum), treating clairvoyant Daisy (Barbara Harris),
learns that she has been reincarnated, and falls in love with her former self
while Daisy falls in love with Mark. So the rather dreary modern-day scenes
were to be haunted by flashbacks to a fabulously sexy Regency England,
giving the musical a unique tang in the score, the optics, and in Barbara
Harris dual role, for Daisy was a nice little klutz while her other half was
something of an evil twin. At times, the show visually collapsed the two
different time periods together, because the jealous Mark kept interfering
in Harris affair with a rake (Clifford David). Quiet! Harris ordered Cul-
lum, when he threatened to sabotage one of the Regency scenes. Lerners
script was very funny, too, as when Harris slipped into Davids rooms and
found a doxy in his bed:
It was the sort of show that had the audience taking its seats for the second
act eager to see how it turned out.
But Lerner had no second act. He tried to firm it up with a Greek tycoon
interested in reincarnation and a ridiculous plot device linking a shipwreck
in the flashback to a plane crash today, but even at 280 performances On
a Clear Day was a disaster, Lerner revised it for the national tour, then
again for the film with Barbra Streisand; neither version worked. Then
the director Michael Mayer reconceived it (as his billing put it) with the
Regency flashback moved up to the recent past, thus losing the picturesque
argument between the everyday and the fantastical. And Daisy became
David, though his former self remained a woman. Now Mark would be en-
tertaining trendy bi-curious wonders about what hes attracted to. Is it
David? Or is it the girl David used to be? Worse, the score would lose its
zestily mannered Regency numbers for interpolations from the Clear Day
film and another Lane-Lerner collaboration, the 1951 Fred AstaireJane
( ) The Fourth Age
Powell movie Royal Wedding. In TimeOut, David Cote called the result a
Frankenscore, sewn together from mismatched partsand Harry Con-
nick Jr.s lounge stylings did not justify the music, though Jessie Mueller
won praise for her singing of the Royal Wedding numbers in the now de-
nuded flashbacks. Gone was the witty visual clashing of eras; the revisal
didnt even have sets, playing on furniture pieces in front of vast pointless
patterns. Worse, the gender gaming was mystifying, though David Turner,
the new heroine, played his part well. Didnt the shows glamor lie mainly
in the bravura of Harris split personality?
Speaking more broadly, the concentration of revivalsreally, the inces-
sant platforming of used musicis an admission that Broadway is running
out of sound. Anthology revues like Aint Misbehavin (1984), a chamber
piece made on the Fats Waller oeuvre, or the elaborate Sophisticated Ladies
(1981), on Duke Ellingtons catalogue, were unthinkable in earlier years
unnecessary, because so many new musicals were being written, including
by Waller and Ellington.
This led to the so-called jukebox musical, another term used variously,
though it most often refers to a book show with a new storyline into which
pre-existing songs are fitted. This may remind some of that mother of all
musicals The Beggars Opera, but, remember, John Gay wrote new lyrics to
old music; the jukebox score generally uses old lyrics with the old music
they originally were written for.
This aesthetic creates a problem when the characters in a show try to
address us in songs that established different characters in previous shows.
My One and Only (1983), billed as The New Gershwin Musical, really did
seem all new, partly because of its spectacular production numbers, its odd
look (with constructivist sets), its odd ensemble (black guys, white girls),
and its reteaming of the co-director, Tommy Tune, with his colleague from
Ken Russells film of The Boy Friend, Twiggy. The score was a fetching
mixture of standards (Strike Up the Band), semi-standards (He Loves
and She Loves), and rediscoveries (Kickin the Clouds Away) and one
number never performed on Broadway, In the Swim, which was cut from
Funny Face). So when Twiggy sang the Heroines Wanting Song sitting in an
odd little crescent-moon chair during a press interview, her lyric lines
sounding like answers to the journalists questions, Twiggys character was
truly introducing herself to us. This is because that number, Boy Wanted,
is from Gershwins little-known London show of 1924, Primrose. New
Yorkers had never heard it before, and were thus drawn in to share the
characters privacy. But if, instead, the character had sung Someone To
Watch Over Me, an old chestnut that for all its charm is dramatically all
used up, she would have nothing to share with us, whether in Crazy For You
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(1992) or Nice Work If You Can Get It (2012), two jukebox shows that lamely
sought to acquaint us with their heroines using this tired old piece.
On the other hand, some jukebox shows reach beyond classic Broadway
for their music, and old pop tunes, however familiar, are not, at least, dra-
matically exhausted the way old Broadway ones are. Jersey Boys (2005), on
the lives of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, is still playing as I write, and
Jellys Last Jam (1992), on Jellyroll Morton, enjoyed the advantage of a
fountain of music unknown to the general public. In librettist and director
George C. Wolfes vision, Jelly (Gregory Hines) preaches the gospel of jazz
piano while haunted by the Chimney Man (Keith David), a Death figure in
the form of a Cabaret-like emcee. The music, adapted (and expanded) by
Luther Henderson and lyricked by Susan Birkenhead, was presented with
such artistry that it came off as an entirely new creation.
Jersey Boys was the smash and Jellys Last Jam the arty number. All Shook
Up (2005) was the camp frolic, a lovable piece with an engaging cast singing
numbers associated with Elvis Presley. Joe DiPietros book and Christo-
pher Ashleys direction recalled the fifties style of show, when charm and
spiffy nonsense reigned within the confines of sane storytelling. Interest-
ingly, though All Shook Up used many songs that had charted bigtime, that
was fifty years before, so even Love Me Tender and Blue Suede Shoes
sounded fresh. Cheyenne Jacksonfitting his pants, as they put it in Texas
played a motorcycling nomad invariably addressed as the roustabout (a
running gag) who strays into a town ruled by a prudish mayor (Alix Korey).
Attention, citizens! she cries on her entrance, riding in a car from stage
left to right, brandishing a bullhorn. Freakish dancing, gyrating hips
this is how Rome fell!
The roustabout brings music and love to the place as a kind of rock-and-
roll Music Man, but we knew he would. What sparked this sadly unappreci-
ated show was the way the many Presley numbers were bent into plot
action, so that, for example, Teddy Bear and Hound Dog were mated in
a quodlibet as if they were character numbers written for the occasion. A
sharp and snazzy production kept everything moving brightly along, as
when the roustabout first appeared riding his chopper down a winding
road against rolling hills in a trick effect, his ensuing vocal capped spectac-
ularly when someone in the orchestra pit threw a guitar straight up into
the air and Jackson caught it one-handed right on the tonic button.
Perhaps the worst aspect of Broadways attempt to revive bygone art
amid a shortage of new work was the staging of movie musicals. Adapting
filmsas with Fanny, Oh Captain!, or Carnival!is no different than adapt-
ing plays or novels. The problem lies in the lack of adaptation: in the staging
of films that already were musicals, as if fulfilling a franchise extension
( ) The Fourth Age
Cameron Macintosh and put on in London first. To fill out the film score, a
new team, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, was brought in to write not
only new songs but trio sections and other bits for the existing numbers by
Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman. Julian Fellowes, author of the scripts
for Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, wrote Mary Poppins bookproof that
Disney and Macintosh saw this project as not just a franchise extender but
an opportunity to perfect the material artistically. Then, too, the produc-
tion, directed by Richard Eyre and Matthew Bourne, went all out in special
effects, most notably when Gavin Lee, in Dick Van Dykes old role, capped
a big dance number by tapping up the stage left proscenium, continuing
upside down along the top of the stage, and down the stage right side.
Sharp eyes could detect the wires supporting himbut how did he main-
tain the illusion of staying perpendicular to the proscenium surface, against
the rules of gravity?
In the title role, Ashley Brown managed to share the aura that Julie An-
drews created for Disneys Marya lot sweeter than the impenetrably tem-
peramental fay of the original books. Thats quite an accomplishment, but
then the production was almost recklessly brilliant, rethinking an all but
untouchably beloved classic while respecting the reasons why it is beloved.
To choose one instance among many: in the movie, Supercalifragilisticex-
pialidocious is a duet for Andrews and Van Dyke, processed in live action
against a cartoon backup of five buskers. The stage equivalent was a huge
production number accommodating a new Stiles-Drew episode in which
the ensemble (including the two children) spelled out the songs title in
body-language rendering of the letters, at first slowly and then mounting to
a lightning-strike clip in one of those mad scrambles that had the thespians
in the house wondering what the rehearsals must have been like.
Mary Poppins was notable also for the uncluttered simplicity of its
singing. The very notion of a power ballad makes one wonder if theres
something missing from, say, I Get a Kick Out of You. Is it too ... dulcet?
The song that goes like this is infecting the music just as the staged movie
is colonizing the repertory, as the revival is overcoming new workand the
musical might be in danger of losing its salient quality.
Originality.
w
C H A P T E R
L ooking at the musical in its early maturity around the turn into the
twentieth century, we noted that it had yet to develop almost all the
essentials of the Golden Age show: an above all characterful score, an intel-
ligent book, strong principal parts to generate a powerful narrative, imagi-
native staging, and a nuanced, individual visual style. In other words,
Camelots score, Fiddler on the Roofs book, The Music Mans leads, West Side
Storys staging, the look of Follies.
Considering the characterful score by itself, we realize how far weve
come in the uniqueness of the numbers in musical comedy, always the
more conventional mate of the musical play. The Gershwins Oh, Kay!, a
very representative item from 1926, runs from standard-make choruses
(The Womens Touch, Bride and Groom) to charm songs (Do, Do, Do
[what you done, done, done before]) and from ballads (Maybe) to rhythm
numbers (Clap Yo Hands, Fidgety Feet). Theyre all wonderful, but in
hearing them we realize why numbers dropped from one such show could
be resuscitated without a single change for another. Its a genre festival.
However, in a show like City of Angels (1989), a crime thriller in a Ray-
mond Chandler tone, the Cy ColemanDavid Zippel score precisely mirrors
the rufftuff lingo and wise-guy innuendo of Larry Gelbarts book. Re-
specting the late-forties setting, a radio singing group cuts in with com-
mentary numbersYa Gotta Look Out For Yourself and Stay With
Meand scat vocals, especially useful in the detective chase music pro-
logue. Colemans satiric voice is at its best here, and Zippels brilliant lyrics
make the most of some unusual concepts, such as when detective and
guilty lady sing a challenge-flirtation duet of double meanings in The
Tennis Song. (She: its not exciting unless the competition is stiff.) An
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T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
their joint attempt to outflop even Carrie, Springtime For Hitler. Brooks
actually thought to include a genre that had died out in the 1950s, the song
thats only there to cover a set change or give an actor a chance to slip into
his next costume, You Never Say Good Luck on Opening Night. With Na-
than Lane and Matthew Broderick assuming the parts Zero Mostel and
Gene Wilder played on screen, The Producers had difficulty replacing them
satisfactorily. Somehow, Lane seems to be the last comic who knows how
to make joke shtick land; and Brodericks habit of acting within scare
quotes, as if demonstrating rather than portraying his character, is frankly
inimitable. Still, the show ran almost exactly six years.
Can anyone write a musicalsuch as those naughty boys from South
Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who with Robert Lopez, a co-composer
of the childrens show spoof Avenue Q (2003), wrote all of The Book of
Mormon (2011)? Another physical adventure musical, this one followed
two missionaries of the Latter Day Saints to Uganda, along the way making
allusions to a ton of older musicals. This referential approach could be seen
as a defense mechanism, as the dark sort of musical overwhelms the zany
shows, and the zany shows got extra-zanythough The Book of Mormon
includes a brutal murder right on stage.
Perhaps the most intense push back by a funny show against the dark
shows was Urinetown (2001), itself dark, even brutal, but also deliberately
risible and joketastic. Greg Kotis book looked at a rebellion by the oppressed
in a fantasy society in which one pays to pee. Again, we got the references to
other musicalsto Steel Piers slow-mo first-act finale, for instance. But Uri-
netown mainly spoofed the very notion of a musical, with everybody singing
and dancing at, really, the most inappropriate times and places. If there
could be a gang-war musical or a serial throat-slayer musical, then what cant
be a musical? Urinetowns score, by Mark Hollman and Kotis, followed the
book in ridiculing the story even as it faithfully told it, while John Randos
direction and John Carrafas choreography brought everything up to fever
pitch, as when the rebels captive, gagged and bound to a chair, helpfully
tried to take part in a dance number by kicking her legs in rhythm.
Or consider Officer Lockstock (Jeff McCarthy), costumed very like a
member of the Nazi S.S., who nevertheless slipped into campy poses and
conversed with a scoffing Little Sally (Spencer Kayden) about the shows
curious premise. (In one of their talks, he took her onto his knee for You
see, sometimes, in a musical ...) The simple set, catwalks overlooking an
open space, with a large rectangular piece pulled on and off or rotated to
define locations, testified to the works off-Broadway origin. But if Little
Mary Sunshine looked back at sweet Rose-Marie, Urinetowns point of depar-
ture was West Side Story and the misery-laden shows that followed.
T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
The referential genre hit its apex in The Drowsy Chaperone (2008), about
as far as the musical could get from Disney stagings, pop operas, and the
Live From Hollywood retreads that have been common of late. A bit remi-
niscent of The Boy Friend in its reanimation of twenties musical comedy,
The Drowsy Chaperone offered a Man in Chair (Bob Martin, co-author of
the book, with Don McKellar) narrating, interjecting during, and generally
getting a kick out of an old show come to life in his studio apartment. His
taste was Jurassic; he summed up the contemporary musical as Please,
Elton John, must we continue this charade? No, he preferred the company
of a bride giving up the stage for love, her debonair bridegroom, a harried
producer, two real gangsters posing as pastry chefs, a flaky chorine, a Latin
Lothario, and an aviatrix ... what we now call a lesbian. In Casey Nich-
olaws clever staging, the evening-long spoof never got tired, and if Lisa
Lambert and Greg Morrisons score lacked the tang of The Boy Friends
twenties tunes, Nicholaws cast was sharp and spirited. As the heroine,
Sutton Foster dialed down the high energy she ran on in Thoroughly Modern
Millie, for the ingenue in these takeoffs is the only one who doesnt get the
jokes. Thus, Fosters big number, (I dont want to) Show Off (no more),
found her calmly spinning plates on rods, sharpshooting, playing music
on water glasses, charming a snake, getting out of a straitjacket in a chained-
up refrigerator, making surprise! costume changes, and singing while drinking
(via a guide vocal over the sound system, in flawless timing). We laughed;
to her, its just her day job.
Nothing generates excitement on Broadway like a hit musical comedy
with a star or two, like The Producers. Yet the musical play commanded, as
always, superior prestige, in the manner of West Side Story and Follies.
Moreover, following the lead of R & H in those first four mega-hits from
Oklahoma! to The King and I, the musical play was usually an adaptation.
Some musical plays trouble to maintain elements of the silly shows. Ru-
pert Holmes The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1985), a murder case based on
Charles Dickens last (unfinished) novel, was set within a jolly Victorian
music-hall frame, and featured an aleatory finale in which the actual audi-
ence solved the mystery by a simple vote. A stylish piece with a personality-
rich cast, Drood was rich also in atmosphereone advantage that the best
musical plays have over musical comedy. The fun shows employ fun music,
now music. Musical playsthe reincarnation, after all, of operettaare
always evoking something, taking us to somewhere else.
Similarly, Kander and Ebbs Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), in a Hal
Prince production, drawn from Manuel Puigs novel, made much of campy
movie spoofs and a few Latin numbers set against the hope/despair of
prisoners in an unspecified South American country. The score was foreign,
( ) The Fourth Age
That could be Curly McLain, Billy Bigelow, Sid Sorokin, Madame Rose,
the heroes of The Golden Apple, Man of La Mancha, Barnum, and countless
other shows. Unfortunately, Wildhorns hero was a serial killer, and the
( ) The Fourth Age
attractive music served only to try to make him and his partner attractive,
a hopeless task despite Jordans goofy charm and Osnes really quite
nuanced portrayal.
Of the old voices, Stephen Sondheim remained the undisputed champ,
now pursuing collaboration with the librettist and director James Lapine.
The Sondheim-Prince era had ended with Merrily We Roll Along (1981), a
shocking failure in its original production. Narrating its story in reverse
chronology (as in its source, the 1934 George S. KaufmanMoss Hart comedy-
drama), Merrily was the ultimate choice musical, relentlessly chugging
back in time to reveal the protagonists bad life decisions. However, George
Furths book reduced the plays plot-filled chronicle to a few episodes
and turned its protagonist into a cipher. Worse, his best buddy, originally a
quixotic charmer, became an enraged nebbish. Then, too, the youthful
castassembled possibly to duplicate Princes mentor George Abbotts ex-
pertise in discovering starswas, with exceptions, not of Broadway caliber.
A George Abbott youth cast is Nancy Walker, June Allyson, William Tabbert,
Ellen Hanley, Helen Gallagher, Russell Nype, Red Buttons, Liza Minnelli.
Moreover, kids are unable to project the typical Sondheim disillusionment;
despair belongs to the aged. To cap it all, the show looked horrible, in a
dingy, high-school-sort-of set with sweatshirts (not T-shirts, as often
reported) labeled with each characters relationship to the protagonist. At
that, the lettering was hard to read past the tenth row.
Sondheim had a mentor, tooa second one. After Oscar Hammerstein
died, Leonard Bernstein became, of a sort, an adviser, and when he heard
that Merrily was to be a popular show, accessible and commercial, Bern-
stein smiled upon it. After all, in his musicals, Bernstein had combined
classical accomplishment with hit tunesOhio, Tonight, Maria. And
here was Bernsteins former protg finally deciding to do the same
deciding, choosing, the first virtue in a Sondheim world: we are all guilty of
our lives. According to a story that circulated at the time, Sondheim went
to Bernsteins apartment in the Dakota to play him the Merrily score. Sit-
ting at the piano, Sondheim began by explaining that numbers associated
with the protagonist all grew out of an ur-theme, and that the rest of the
numbers were bonded in the use and re-use of melodic cells, so that one
songs A-strain was the B-strain of another song, while the accompaniment
to one song would recur as
And Bernstein slammed his fist on the piano, crying, We had an
agreement! This time, no art!
A Sondheim show without art is like one brother Karamazov, and there
was plenty of art in Sunday in the Park With George (1984), on the creative
process, and in Into the Woods (1987), on the psychological subtext of fairy
T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
tales. Passion (1994) at first disappointed some because it lacked the flam-
boyant theatrical gestures so much a part of the Sondheim oeuvrefor
instance the riveting look shared by Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in the
last seconds of Sweeney Todd, which might have been Brechtian punctua-
tion or the visual equivalent of See you in hell! Passions score is con-
stricted, like the romance between beauty (Jere Shea) and beast (Donna
Murphy), or between his beauty and hers (Marin Mazzie). Only the music
for soldiers and a blithely fortune-hunting husband is free and open; all
else winds tightly around nameless fears, like a predator lying in wait for
itself. In recent years, however, Passion is becoming a kind of secondary
classic, always difficult and consistently fascinating.
Indeed, the show could be seen as a Compassion Musical, for while it is
fiction, it nevertheless sympathizes with an extremely unlikely heroine, for
Murphy played a woman isolated, ailing, and unattractive. She didnt sim-
ply fall in love with the handsome, sensitive Shea: she obsessed over and
stalked him. But then, this was an age of Compassion Musicals. Side Show
(1997) offered a loving portrait of its Siamese twins (Alice Ripley, Emily
Skinner), shyly tackling the problems inherent in trying to maintain nor-
mal lives, even love affairs. William Finns A New Brain (1998), about a
songwriter (Malcom Gets) diagnosed with a brain tumor (as Finn himself
was), gushedin the best waywith the singular Finn ability to raise
music on virtually any topic, as in Poor, Unsuccessful and Fat (the lament
of a male nurse who, when Gets resents having to take a sponge bath,
replies, Honey, I dont want to be here, either), Change (the shrilling
of a homeless woman), and even Brain Dead.
Scott Frankel and Michael Kories Grey Gardens (2006), amazingly, ten-
derized the freak-show documentary about two batty dames decaying in an
East Hampton ruinKennedy relations, at that. The first act, set in the
past, began as musical comedy, then turned dire; the second act, today in
the ruin, was pure musical play, despite opening with Christine Ebersoles
lampoon on fashion, The Revolutionary Costume For Today. An aficiona-
dos favorite, Grey Gardens used its almost old-fashioned melodies and
witty, touching lyrics to humanize women who, in the film, seemed irritat-
ingly dotty, especially given that they had once been notables of the leader-
ship class. The show itself made quite a journey, too, from the jaunty,
forward-looking First Number, The Five-Fifteen, to the hopeless, heart-
broken Another Winter in a Summer Town.
Many of the most interesting musicals are now launched institutionally,
Grey Gardens at Playwrights Horizons and next to normal (2009) at Second
Stage Theatre. If the former was in large part fanciful, whimsical, the latter
was utterly realistic, the first Compassion Musical to treat genuine mental
( ) The Fourth Age
This is a notion out of Oscar Hammerstein: that fate rules not individ-
uals but clusters of them, some serving as helpers in the others earthly
journey. Julies self-sacrifice for Magnolia in Show Boats second act (an ep-
isode that Hammerstein invented, not to be found in Ferbers novel) is an
instance, and Grand Hotel is a festival of intertwined fates. It is noteworthy
that, when the shows original songwriters, Robert Wright and George For-
rest, were slow to give Tune the new numbers he needed during the tryout
and Tune called in his Nine songwriter, Maury Yeston, for doctoring, Yeston
insisted on writing a character number for each of the principals. For Grand
Hotel is indeed a musical with lead roles but no single lead, no Madame
Rose or Tevye. There are others such, of courseShow Boat again, Guys and
Dolls, Dreamgirls, Rent. But only Grand Hotel lavishes character songs on so
many principals with such intensityeven one, Roses at the Station, that
expands into several minutes the last few seconds of the Barons life.
Grand Hotel could be seen also in terms of its staging, in a set made en-
tirely of chairs, chandeliers, and a great revolving door, with the orchestra
perched above. As the chairs were shifted about to demarcate various lo-
cales within the hotel, the show took on a somewhat cinematic feeling, as
if in a movie without sets. Thus, the intermissionless two hours seemed
ceaselessly in motion, though there were few dance numbers as such.
Rather, the show itself was dancing, into quote Baums novel again
hunger for life, and knowledge of death.
A multitude of principals filled Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens Rag-
time (1988) as well, in a lively look back at the bygone days of an America
not yet absorbing its immigrant subcultures. Flaherty and Ahrens do their
best work when a show is set in the faraway, like this one, for like Frederick
Loewe, Flaherty responds to the exotic. For Loewe it was the Scots high-
lands, California of the Gold Rush, or Arthurian Britain; for Flaherty its
the Caribbean of Once on This Island (1990), the Dublin of A Man of No Im-
portance (2002). With librettist Terrence McNally, Flaherty and Ahrens
wrote Ragtime on the grand scale, requiring a High Maestro staging, one to
bleed together people who, in Concept style, are technically in different
parts of the story just as they are in different venues of American life. At
one point, an expert in explosives becomes tongue-tied when attempting
to join a terrorist gang, and Emma Goldman (who in real life attempted to
assassinate J. P. Morgan) magically appears to speak for him, in He Wanted
To Say.
But therein lies a problem, obviously. Drawn from E. L. Doctorows
novel, Ragtime treats a fantastical reality populated by both invented char-
acters and historical figures. The explosives expert is invented; Goldman is
real. However, as I have said, the music in musicals emphasizes everything
T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
retained, though their work was drearyas when Arachne, a sort of spider
goddess, came down to sing against that woven red curtain, her words and
music alike unintelligible.
Our tour began almost three hundred years ago with The Beggars Opera,
and the historians etiquette now calls for some statement about how much
detail has changed yet how little substance has changed. Nonsense: every-
thing has changed. The Beggars Opera is still playable, true. But it is an ar-
tifact nonetheless. Furthermore, the American musicals development was
prodigious even before a full evenings score, at least mostly by one source,
became the rule. The form changed again when the Golden Age added wit
and point to the lyrics and trio sections to the numbers to widen their dra-
matic reach. Then came Show Boat: an organically narrative libretto. Porgy
and Bess: the expansive score. The Band Wagon, On Your Toes, Oklahoma!: the
integration of dance. West Side Story: kinetic set changes for a flowing, un-
broken narrative and a thematically unified score, creating a new unity of
composition and production.
These are landmarks in the Great Tradition; the musical is still collecting
them, even as the unique titles recall earlier works, if only in spirit. Maury
Yeston and Peter Stones Titanic (1997) harks back to the spectacle, with its
lavish visualsThe King and I, My Fair Lady, Camelot. More important, Ti-
tanic recalls the big sing show, expressive as few musicals are: Carousel,
Street Scene, The Most Happy Fella. One could call Titanic a gigantic oper-
etta; even its orchestrations, by Jonathan Tunick, distinguish a career
already thought of as one of the most significant.
Yestons music all but overwhelems the action. Two ur-motifsa bright
Morse code-like jabbing and a brooding alternation of 42 and 31 thirds
in the tonic punctuate a score that surges from one set of characters to
anotherthe ships staff; the passengers, from grandees to proles; the flirta-
tious young; the bickering middle-aged; the serene oldsters, who refuse the
lifeboat to die together. The sentimental, the ambitious, the powerful. In a
prologue, the Titanics architect (Michael Cerveris) explained how art and
science together rose to a climax in this stupendous achievement, whose
very existence is a cry to God. Then came an elaborate musical scene
showing the turning of a page of history in the first boarding of the vessel,
technology marrying humanity. Which is the story aboutmans search
for glory or man himself?
Thus, Titanic was one of the few Big Idea musicals, making necessary a
truly grand production, designed by Stewart Laing and directed by Rich-
ard Jones with, obviously, a startling amount of scenery and a cast of
T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
forty-two. And, arguably, one of the greatest scores ever heard, romantic
in its anthems, often worried in its ballads, giving way but once to a dance
number, Doing the Latest Rag. The entire ship came alive as though the
show were a novel by other means: a stoker (Brian dArcy James), a wire-
less operator (Martin Moran), a steward (Allan Corduner), the captain
(John Cunningham), the owner (David Garrison), a star-struck second-
class passenger (Victoria Clark) and her weary-of-celebrity-worship hus-
band (Bill Buell), a department-store magnate (Larry Keith) and his wife
(Alma Cuervo), and various others, each with a throughline carefully in-
terlocked with the others throughlines.
For example, stoker and wireless operator shared a strangely touching
scene, as the one dictated an offer of marriage to his girl (in The Proposal),
and the other told how shyness led him to socialize himself, with the rhap-
sody of a bride, in the thousand voices he picked up on his reception set (in
The Night Was Alive). The two men then intertwined their love songs as
Titantic itself intertwined the key themes of technology and humanity.
Or: Captain, owner, and architect argued over who was at fault in the
disaster, then, as the complex set construction tilted more and more alarm-
ingly through the second act, the architect, alone in the first-class smoke
room, desperately redrew his blueprintsyes, now shes unsinkable!as
the furniture slid past him, including the grand piano. And at last, survi-
vors and the dead alike gathered in a reprise of their ecstatic hymn, God-
speed Titanic, andjust as we had seen when the ship first set fortha
little boy came running on with his toy sailboat, thrust it high in the air,
and the curtain fell.
In his introduction to the shows published text, Peter Stone commented
on how eager the press was to see Titanic fail. They were not only lying
in wait, Stone wrote, they were also drooling over the possibilities of
greeting the show with such stored up gems as . . . all singing, all
dancing, all drowning. Robbed of their gleeful sinking analogies, the
critics gave their praise, Stone thought, grudgingly. Yet the show played
two years, and it could surely have lasted another season but for its huge
running costs. In a time when unit sets and comb-and-tissue orchestras
are the norm, Titanic remains one of the last of the visual wonders, Big
Broadway in every possible meaning.
Along with the grand score, like opera but not like opera, the musical
as a form is unique for its pride of character songs, often the most sur-
prising element in a form celebrated above all for surprise. Those cops
raiding the Follies so long ago; Show Boat bringing Julie back after she
had been apparently swept out of the story; Carousel raising its curtain on
( ) The Fourth Age
Or Eddie, a boxer:
Aggressive; fast;
Punishment-proof:
Each hand held a kick like a mules hoof.
* Americas present copyright law, covering works registered from 1978 on, grants
protection for life plus fifty years (plus the added twenty years of the so-called Son-
ny Bono amendment). However, the older copyright law, with a protection of a flat
seventy-five (plus the amended twenty) years, required a renewal during the term
of protection, and Marchs poem, unrenewed, fell into the public domain. Thus the
competing versions. A very few other works have thrown off more than one musical
adaptationTom Sawyer, Twelfth Night, The Importance of Being Earnest. Booth Tark-
ingtons Seventeen sang on Broadway twice, as Hello, Lola! (1927) and, under its original
title, in 1951, with the future Dame Kenneth Nelson as Willie Baxter.
T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
Or Dolores:
Party. Lippa had the more accomplished singing Burrs and Queenie in
Brian dArcy James and Julia Murney, though LaChiusas Mandy Patinkin
and Toni Collette seemed closer to Marchs characters, he a monster hiding
his rage behind the mask of Happy Crazy Show Biz and she a femme fatale
in the literal sense: to get close is to court death.
The notion of unmasking corruption in glamorous terrain is another
facet of the modern musical, though it has plenty of antecedentsGypsy,
What Makes Sammy Run?, Follies, Dreamgirls, City of Angels ... perhaps A
Chorus Line, in a way ... and even Show Boat, in Julies throughline. All this
runs counter to the American success myth; Florenz Ziegfeld, poet laureate
of that myth, could imagine no ending happier than Sallys Orphan Makes
Hit on Broadway. But Marvin Hamlisch and Craig Carnelias unappreciated
Sweet Smell of Success (2002) unveiled the ugly side of show biz PR by de-
constructing the celebrity column once so intrinsic to the entertainment-
world infrastructure. Further, modern sensitivities would find the very
setting chillinga vanished New York of men in suits and fedoras having
total power and of women viewed as trinkets of various kinds.
Ernest Lehmans novella and his co-written (with Clifford Odets) screen-
play, both with the same title as the show, provided Sweet Smell Of Success
with its material: an ambitious and unscrupulous PR flack (Brian dArcy
James) courts an all-powerful columnist (John Lithgow), forming the First
Couple and leaving the shows sweethearts (Jack Noseworthy, Kelli OHara)
in the secondary slot. Indeed, in place of the films ice-cold columnist,
played by Burt Lancaster as an enraged Easter Island statue, the musical
expanded Lithgow with a warmer attitude. He remained a homicidally dan-
gerous power boss, but the music gave him a vital presence, evenat
timesa spirited or tender one. Welcome To the Night found him in-
ducting James into the celebrations of Manhattans dolce vitathe clubs
and the clothes, the stars and the style, to put it in columnese. Composer
Hamlisch fashioned a wild soundscape for the number, as the frantic
choristers, pounding drums, and slithery brass suggested a heathen rite.
Like the movie, the show took place in that nighttime of dangerous
glamor, in a unit set dominated by a cyclorama of skyscrapers. John Guares
book found its own equivalent for the spooky vernacular Odets invented
for the film, the wit of a warlord and his henchmen, making Sweet Smell
altogether one of the very darkest of musicals. Yes, Carousel is dark, but it
has its merry side, as in June Is Bustin Out All Over. Sweeney Todd is
dark, but its woman lead is a Victorian yenta. LaChiusas Wild Party guests
known as the brothers dArmano hold forth at the keyboard with Up-
town, on how black and white and gay and straight are becoming mar-
ried cultures. Its white hot, lurching along chromatic vocal lines, as reckless
T H AT I S T H E S TAT E OF T H E A R T
MGM movie. Moving to the mixer itself, dance takes over as Boq wheels
Nessarose onto the floor to join the other couples. Now more conflict: El-
phaba appears, only to realize that the hat has cursed her with the worst sin
an adolescent can commit: being uncool. Sadly defiant, she starts to dance
by herself in a weird undulating motion. Another twist: the guilty Glinda
the very arbiter of coolsupports Elphaba in her strange dance. And of
course whatever Glinda does instantly becomes the rage, and everyone
takes it up, retrieving Dancing Through Lifes main strain to cap the
number. In something like eleven minutes, what once might have been
an empty choreographic exhibition has jumped the libretto through five or
six scenes, all the while maintaining the zest of up-tempo melodymaking.
Its the heart and soul of what musical comedy does that no other form
can rival.
Except Wicked offers yet another reminder that musical comedy has not
survived in unedited form. As Ive said, A New Musical is how shows have
been billed for over fifty years, as though Broadway welcomed dark shows
yet feared to alienate ticket buyers with something more honest, like A
New Sadfest About Abstract Horrors like Racism and Everybodys Suffering
and Cute People Die. In fact, Dancing Through Life is meant ironically,
because Fiyero and the other principals learn that the thoughtless life isnt
worth livingin other words, that carefree musical comedy is no longer
functional because we expect more from musicals now.
True, like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Wicked programs
many zany moments. In a late confrontation, Elphaba accuses Glinda of
complicity in the assassination-by-falling-house of Nessarose. (Elphabas
sister, by the way, just as in the MGM script, though in Baum they are ap-
parently unrelated, and the names are Maguires invention.) As Glinda sees
it, it wasnt homicide, but a regime change. Anyway, what about Elphaba
and that broom of hers? Riding around, Glinda sniffs, on that filthy
old thing!:
To add to the comedy, in the ensuing battle between them, Glinda warms
up by twirling her magic wand like a red-state majorette.
Nevertheless, for all its fun Wicked is at heart a serious show, and therein
may lie its secret power. Its absorbing as entertainment and claims the
enduring appeal of a score that is melodious, intelligent, and inventive. But
it also gives its audience something to ponder, which the carefree musical
seldom did. If Wicked lacks anything, it is that isolated memorable event to
be talked of long after the show closesMy Fair Ladys spectacular set
( ) The Fourth Age
change from the arrival hall at the Embassy into the ballroom, for which
the revolving stage seemed to flip the Mark Hellinger Theatres auditorium
around to change the view. Or Ethel Mermans charging down the aisle on
her entrance into Gypsys backstage fable. Or simply the way Danny
Burstein put his hand on his heart in the 2011 Follies during Waiting
for the Girls Upstairs as he gazed up at Bernadette Peters: the Boy still
hopelessly in love with the Girl, though her thoughts be elsewhere.
Ah!: more darkness. Its inescapable, for the musical has grown from the
madcap to the sensitive and now, often, to the tragic. The night is alive.
Welcome to the night.
F OR F U R T H E R R E A DI N G
The musicals bibliography officially begins with Cecil Smiths Musical Comedy in America
(Theatre Arts, 1950), a formal but not academic history that perforce cut off just when
things had been getting interesting, at South Pacific. Note Smiths use of musical com-
edy as his portmanteau term for everything from revue to operetta; nowadays, writers
prefer the more neutral musical to avoid favoring, say, Rodgers and Hart over Ste-
phen Sondheim. Smith makes a readable guide, and he seems to have seen everything
that played in his lifetime. However, his opinion of the expansive scoreespecially
anything like Kurt Weills The Eternal Road or the WrightForrestVilla-Lobos Magda-
lenais often wayward, though Smith was a critic primarily of classical, not popular,
music.
After the first history came the first reference work, David Ewens Complete Book of
the American Musical Theater (Holt, 1958). Organizing his text around the major writers
with an appendix of Some Other Outstanding Productions, Ewen chose conserva-
tively, including such folk as Ludwig Englander, Louis Hirsch, and Gustav Luders,
though by 1958 they were so over they didnt even rate as has-beens. Then, too, Ewens
data were often errant, in misspelled names, incorrect song titles, and miscarried syn-
opses. This may be a problem built into the subject matter, for no other topic has as
many sheer details as the musical. Every work comes complete with a host of credits
and characters, a tunestack, a storyline, a production history that can take in numer-
ous revisions. Most books on the subject treat so many different shows that even ex-
perts can confuse two different people, two different lyrics. In 1970, Ewen put forth a
new edition, not a mere updating but a total rewriting, now organized by individual
titles from Adonis to Zorb, with the writers bios grouped together at the back. The
synopses ran much longer, at times verbosely so, but the dinosaur composers were still
on site.
However, Stanley Green had already cut them loose in The World of Musical Comedy
(Grosset & Dunlap, 1960), only two years after the Ewen first appeared. Englander and
company were gone; Green began with Victor Herbert and George M. Cohan. Thus,
Green banished The Belle of New York, Robin Hood, and King Dodo from the canon. Like
Ewen, Green served as an impartial emcee, never letting on how he personally reacted
to the art, but he did at least make very few errors. His output eventually included a
little known history of the musical, a study of Rodgers and Hammerstein (and Green
ghosted Rodgers autobiography), a coffee-table book on the thirties musical called
Ring Bells! Sing Songs! (Arlington House, 1971), and a very useful encyclopedia on the
form. However, Greens irreplaceable work is The Great Clowns of Broadway (Oxford,
1984), an exhaustively detailed look at Third Age stars from Ed Wynn and Joe Cook to
Beatrice Lillie and Bobby Clark. Profusely illustrated, the book is invaluable for its re-
suscitation of the most ephemeral element in the art, the comics performing style.
( )
() For Further Reading
Snatches of scripts bring us back to a time when the audience might laugh not because
a joke is funny but because the comic thinks it is, as when Green quotes a bit of Willie
Howard in George Whites Scandals of 1931:
Quite some time ago, my then Oxford editor, Sheldon Meyer, told me he was about
to publish a book surveying every Broadway musical from the earliest days on, with a
sentence, a paragraph or two, or even a mini-essay on each title. That sounded like
science-fiction to me: what writer could encompass so much material? Yet so it was,
and Gerald Bordmans American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle (first edition, 1978; fourth
edition updated by Richard C. Norton, 2010) is arguably the indispensable volume in
the canon. Stanley Green told Bordman that he should make a career of it: writing
about musicals, Green warned him, wouldnt make you rich, but youll have a lot of fun.
Unlike the dispassionate Green, Bordman had not only fun but opinions. Sheldon told
me he had to persuade Bordman to tone down his distaste for Sondheim; not getting
the music already told of poor listening skills, but to admit it publicly was to bait ridi-
cule. At that, Bordmans taste was so antique that he timed the musicals decline from
right after Rose-Marie or so. Of Carousel he wrote, in American Musical Theatre, For
[some] it was the beginning of an era of pretentious solemnity ... that attempted to
replace the marquee with a steeple. But Bordman took Greens advice, staying with
Oxford till his death, in 2011, and going on to smallish works on operetta (1981), mu-
sical comedy (1982), and revue (1985). In terms of genre criticism, the operetta book is
the most interesting, because while the voyage from comic opera to operetta is rela-
tively direct, that of operetta into the musical play needs detailed explanation. Every-
one knows what a musical comedy is: Anything Goes. Everyone knows what a revue is:
The Band Wagon. Everyone knows what an operetta is: Show Boat.
Wrong: Show Boats book is nothing like those of the other very lyrical, romantic
twenties shows like The Student Prince or The Vagabond King. At times, Show Boats li-
bretto resembles that of a play, as in the Miscegenation Scene. In fact, the writing is
that of a melodrama, as Steve cuts Julies finger and sucks up her blood so he can
swearcorrectlythat I have Negro blood in me. At other times, especially in scenes
involving Captain Andy and Parthy or Frank and Ellie, Show Boat plays like a musical
comedy. Today, we think of Show Boat as a musical play; Bordman calls that a mean-
ingless distinction based on confusion about the genre of the R & H shows. Fair
enough. But Bordman thinks of themthe early ones and The Sound of Musicas op-
erettas, too. The Sound of Music strikes me as a straight play with songs added in as an
afterthoughtwhich is exactly what it was, having been conceived as a drama with a
folk song or two. Further, in Bordmans view The King and Is fundamental romanti-
cism and exotic canvas mark it as consummate operetta. That creates an awfully
broad definition. Is Ragtime an operetta? Marie Christine?
Bordman wrote biographies as well. His Jerome Kern (1980) remains the standard
work on the man who, with Irving Berlin, concluded George M. Cohans early work in
Americanizing the Broadway score. For his only other bio, Bordman might have chosen
a composer comparable to Kernbut nobody was. Instead, Bordman chose the other
Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, in Days To Be Happy, Years To Be Sad (1982), though You-
mans was capable of great lyrical expression and intriguing harmonic travelogues. And,
like Kern, Youmans was very influential. The varying of accents in the melodic cell of
For Further Reading
because so many of the talents involved in the work chime inAngela Lansbury on the
difficulty in getting Arthur Laurents to see her Anyone Can Whistle role her way; Dean
Jones on why he left Company so soon after the premiere; Ron Field on his dumbfounded
exasperation, on Merrily We Roll Along, at how unaware Hal Prince was of the amateur
night he had erected in place of Big Broadway. It was like summer stock, says Field, who
then utters his famous reply to Michael Bennett during Merrilys previews, when Ben-
nett asks how the show is coming along. How good could it be? says Field. Its still
backward! In all, Sondheim & Co. offers over 350 pages of bewitching recollections and
analyses, making it one of the essential books in the field.
Joined by my own Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (Ox-
ford, 1983), the foregoing comprises an informal early library on the musical. Now
Im going to cite a few works from later yearsbut the proliferation of studies of all
kinds makes it impossible to shape anything like a canon. The following is no more
than a modest catalogue of books of interest. A students shopping list, so to say.
We should start with the father of musical comedy, in Jacques Offenbach (Scribners,
1980), by the British conductor Alexander Faris. A combination of biography and out-
put review, the book contains many musical examples, pointing up Offenbachs rela-
tionship to coeval composers, here mocking the grandiose Meyerbeer but there
anticipating Bizet and Tchaikofsky. Moving across what the French call The Sleeve,
Audrey Williamsons Gilbert and Sullivan Opera (Rockcliff, 1953) is the classic study,
updated in 1982but so lightly that Williamson regrets that the DOyly Carte com-
pany failed to revive Princess Ida after the sets and costumes were lost in a wartime
bombing raid. In fact, the company did revive the piece thereafter, in a new staging
famous for its outlandish, almost sci-fi designs. (It was seen here on the companys last
extended visit, in 1955.) Williamsons writing is generally stuffy, as in Tights, and es-
pecially striped tights, are ... something that should be used with discretion in the
costuming of male singers. Gayden Wren counters with more venturesome discussion
in A Most Ingenious Paradox (Oxford, 2000), at times surprising in its revisionism. Even
if you dont agree with his argument, youll never see these works the same way again.
Now we cross the Atlantic, for E. J. Kahns The Merry Partners: The Age and Stage of
Harrigan & Hart (Random House, 1955), anecdotal and full of atmosphere. The men
officiated in the transformation of burlesque into musical comedy (even if their shows
were really plays with music), and form a central piece in the historical puzzle. Kahn
reminds us that they were as well important enough to function as a major tourist
stop. To many out-of-towners, he writes, Harrigan and Hart were a New York land-
mark equal in stature to Broadway.
A century after Harrigan and Hart, Hal Prince comparably officiated in a transfor-
mation: of the musical play into the Concept Musical. Foster Hirschs Harold Prince and
the American Musical Theatre (Cambridge, 1989), as the title implies, discusses Princes
work in the perspective of the transitions the musical underwent during what the Rus-
sians would call Hal Princeshchina. When Hirsch quotes Stephen Sondheim on how
Allegros chorus that oversees the action and abstract scenic design haunted him
and Prince when they were producing their five masterpieces of the 1970s, we realize
that the influence of R & H lay not only in their musical play as a genre but in the spicy
theatricality permeating Allegros staging. The show was R & Hs unidentified flying
object, a kind of rebellion against their own form and its heightened realism. But then
Hirsch quotes Prince observing that a straight-on realistic musical always seemed to
me a contradiction in terms. Among the illustrations is one of A Dolls Life, about
which Hirsch remarks on Princes love of elevation, deep focus, and simultaneous ac-
tion: the Concept Musical in a single view.
For Further Reading
Michael Bennett worked with Prince and Sondheim on Company and Follies, but
then turned away to master his own form, examined in comprehensive detail by my
friend Ken Mandelbaum in A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett (St. Mar-
tins, 1989). Bennetts early death was a terrible loss to the musical, because like
Sondheimand like Kurt Weill, by the wayBennett wasnt willing to do the same
show twice. A great number of eye-witnessesactors, writers, those who depended on
Bennett and those who mistrusted him, who were often the same peoplegave Man-
delbaum a piece of their mind, yielding a unique book, part critical history and part
mourners wake. Mandelbaum handles the delineation of Bennett the artist; Bennetts
colleagues discuss the person. Nicholas Dante, the co-author of the Chorus Line book
and the first Paul, the Puerto Rican drag queen, told Mandelbaum that he thought it
wrong that CassieDonna McKechnies rolegot hired at the shows end. Cassie is
too smart and strong for Zach (the Bennett role, remember). As Dante puts it, With
Michael, you were out the door if you were a threat. Is that why Cassie and Zach broke
up? Yet Bennett and McKechnie married. Its one of A Chorus Lines many paradoxes, as
its fact-based storyline creates a fantasy that creates more facts.
Meanwhile, On the Line (Morrow, 1990), by Robert Viagas and Chorus Line origi-
nals (as the premiere cast is called) Baayork Lee and Thommie Walsh, is made almost
entirely of performers recollections, which generally reflect the ambivalence toward
Bennett that Mandelbaum uncovers. Some figures in the musicals history were hated,
and for good reasonJerome Robbins, Jack Cole, David Merrick. Some were loved
Moss Hart, Oscar Hammerstein. Bennett inspired a rueful affection, perhaps uniquely
so. Still, both books assure us that all of the originals found their way into something
that, whatever else happened to them, was pivotal in their lives. In a partly indefinable
way, the originals embodied their roles, even when playing a character fashioned out of
others confessions.
One feels this especially in the Chorus Line movie, which shifted emphasis onto the
Zach and Cassie romance even while the director, Richard Attenborough, made a beast
out of Michael Douglas Zach and a pathetic mooning castoff of Alyson Reeds Cassie.
Bennetts Zach was efficient rather than angry and his Cassie was valiant. Attenbor-
ough has Reed arriving late encumbered by duffel bags as big as China, twittering and
hoping and falling down on a rain-drenched pavement, no doubt to heighten her vul-
nerability. But why demean her? Bennetts Cassie was vulnerable yet winning. (Though
Bennett did at first plan to have Zach turn her down for the job at the end, supporting
Nicholas Dantes view of it.) Bennett should have made the movie himself, of course
but, says Mandelbaum, the studio wanted a literal transcription of the show, and
Bennett was too feverishly creative for that. In effect, while on stage his Chorus Line
nevertheless did everything a movie could. Even the husband of original Carole (later
Kelly) Bishop noticed. The stage version, he says, in On the Line, is more cinematic
than the movie.
Like On the Line, Colored Lights (Faber & Faber, 2003) is an oral history, this one of
Kander and Ebb by themselves, as told to Greg Lawrence. Their lively dialogue, rich in
anecdote, is notable above all for their quietly loving tone, a best friendship. How many
of those are there? Robert Wright and George Forrest were close their entire adult
liveslong ones, too. But more typical is Richard Rodgers two main collaborations:
the increasingly unreliable Hart antagonized him, and he and Hammerstein were really
two different breeds of man. Editor Lawrence discreetly keeps out of sight as Kander
and Ebb tour us through (as the old cabaret clich goes) a medley of their hits. This
includes a lost line from Chicagos Class: Last week my mother got groped in the
middle of Mass! The audience didnt laugh, so they cut it.
() For Further Reading
Yale and Oxford have each embarked on a series analyzing Broadways great song-
writers. The atmosphere is academic, though Geoffrey Blocks Richard Rodgers (Yale,
2003) never loses sight of the influence of the staging process on the writing of musi-
cals. Thomas L. Riis Frank Loesser (Yale, 2008) delves into many unknown aspects of
this unusual talent, a pop tunesmith who wrote an opera and a mentor and publisher
as well. On the question of why Guys and Dolls original librettist, Jo Swerling, was
fired, Riis cites the memoirs of Swerlings successor, Abe Burrows (Atlantic, 1980): pro-
ducers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin had wanted a romantic musical play in the South
Pacific manner, then jumped track in favor of sassy musical comedy. However, Loesser
had already started writing the scoreand it certainly wouldnt have suited a romantic
musical play. According to Feuers memoirs (with Ken Gross, Simon & Schuster, 2003),
Swerlings book wasnt workable, and, says Feuer, didnt even include Nathan and Skys
bet that sets the plot (as we now know it) rolling.
Over at Oxford, Jeffrey Magee gives us, in Irving Berlins American Musical Theatre
(2012), a solid discussion of Watch Your Step, an important show too often scanted by
historians. Magee provides also a blueprint of the Roscoe Number in Ziegfeld Follies of
1919. Its vintage Ziegfeld: showgirls parade in to famous classical bits enlyricked by
Berlin, the sequence bound into A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. Of course we know
that one, but heres Berlins version of Franz Schuberts Stndchen (Serenade):
Once to a maid this sweet serenade I sang with feeling and grace.
I vocalized just how much I prized her form and beautiful face.
Sad to say the maidens husband came with a garden spade
And ruined my serenade.
This trio of tales would have featured a First Couple and a tempter figure, creating a
nifty unity. Still, as I say, the tone would be cockeyedand the Friedman would have
been impossible to stage. One can see why Bock and Harnick substituted for it Frank
Stocktons The Lady or the Tiger, for it works in a simple set and has its own twist
ending. And perhaps Hawthornes Colonial setting seemed too uptight, as the 1960s
put it; Jules Feiffers Passionella, a fantasy but a mild one, certainly closes off the
group suavely. Better, it fixes the evenings chronological arc: first the Bible, then early
Anno Domini (at the time of Roman Gaul), then the present day.
Now to bios and memoirs. Neil Goulds Victor Herbert (Fordham, 2008), more savvy
than previous Herbert volumes, includes notes on every show. John McCabes George
M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway (Doubleday, 1973) gets close to this all-
important figure, so misunderstood after portrayals of him as a barnstormer when he
was a master of the now all but lost art of underplaying. Harry B. Smiths First Nights
and First Editions (Little, Brown, 1931) looks back on a career that reached from Regi-
nald De Koven through the first Follies on to Sigmund Romberg with almost nothing to
say about what Smith actually did. He also has an odd habit of misspelling many names
and titles, as if he wasnt paying much attention to the data of his life. The bibliography
of my Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business (St. Martins, 2008) points out the
standard biographies of early Golden Age writers, to which I would add Gary Marmor-
steins A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart (Simon & Schuster, 2012), which has
all the Broadway atmosphere that Smiths book lacks. But then George Abbotts Mister
Abbott (Random House, 1963) is another memoir obsessed with the to and fro of a
thoroughly uninteresting life. He does mention smuggling a copy of Quo Vadis (a
forbidden novel, on the Index of a preacher father) to the young Dorothy Thompson,
soon to be Abbotts cousin by remarriage and, later, the intrepid journalist and pundit,
second in fame, among women, to Mrs. Roosevelt only.
Charles Strouses Put on a Happy Face (Union Square, 2008) is almost all about his
shows, with many arresting details: auditioners for Bye Bye Birdie sang Bye Bye Black-
bird, as if sensing a connection; Lauren Bacall killed Sidney Michaels book for Applause;
Martin Charnin was so determined to direct Annie that when Strouse resisted, Charnin
broke up the partnership and started working with another composer. Imagine Annie
with different music for Tomorrow. And then came Annie 2. No one had liked the idea
of the original Annie, but then, given its flash success, everyone loved the idea of Annie
2which closed in tryout. Says Strouse, The easier it is to acquire backing, the more
likely the show will fail. Throughout, Strouse comes off as unnaturally mild-mannered
for such a rowdy business. Warren Beatty and Sammy Davis Jr. exasperate him, though
only one of Strouses collaborators causes him finally to blow his top. The curious can
find that singular personage named on the last page of the present volumes discography.
It takes performers really to spice things up, however, and Ethel Mermans as told
to autobiographies, Who Could Ask For Anything More? (with Pete Martin, Doubleday,
1955) and Merman (with George Eells, Simon & Schuster, 1978) speak in her own
tough-broad voice. The earlier book catches Merman more authentically, but Eells, who
knew Cole Porter personally and was his biographer as well, fills in the theatre back-
ground with aplomb. Mary Martins My Heart Belongs (William Morrow, 1976) is also
very personable. But it took Patti LuPone (Crown, 2010) to get into all the backstage
espionage of show biz. Her pre-Broadway tour of Stephen Schwartzs The Bakers Wife
(1976), which never came in, is Hitlers road show, and we see Patti avoiding ensem-
ble work in Les Misrables beyond her assigned role of Fantine, the shortest lead in
musical history. (In the Forbidden Broadway version, Fantine wishes, I didnt sing one
song, then die.) Co-directors Trevor Nunn and John Caird wanted the principals to
() For Further Reading
turn up among the chorus, thus to suggest that all, all are part of the vast horde of
helpless, hopeless humankind. Yes. But sly Patti had been slipping out through a secret
passage whenever these scenes were rehearsed, till she blundered into the Barbican
just as Nunn was setting up the barricade sequence. Patti was dragged into the block-
ing as a smelter, not even knowing, she confides, what a smelter was. Before publi-
cation, Patti held a contest for the best title; some wag on a web site suggested Id Like
To Buy a Vowel, a reference to Pattis sometimes impenetrable diction.
Among general academic studies, three works offer a kind of synopsis of the full
history in discussing a limited number of works: panorama by synecdoche. The biggest
is Raymond Knapps companion volumes, for Princeton, The American Musical: the first
on The Formation of National Identity (2005) and the second on The Performance of Per-
sonal Identity (2006). There are good insights on, for example, West Side Storys unity of
related melodic cells. Bernsteins use of the tritone at the start of Maria and Cool is
well known, but Knapp offers twenty-one musical examples to explore this further. He
notes also how the element of magic in Camelot fades as humanist idealism reforms a
primitive society. The shows ur-themethe three notes that are the first to be heard
at the very top of the overturesuggests to Knapp heroism from a bygone era, a
theme saturated with magic. True enough. Yet one would add that this triadic theme,
so boldly diatonic, contrasts with the music associated in the show with sorcery
Nimues Follow Me and the eerily tickling melody of Morgan Le Feys Enchanted For-
est, which is startlingly chromatic. It may be that Camelots ur-theme more truly
symbolizes the heros idealism: it not only opens the show but underlines Arthurs
tragedy of noble undertakings as virtually the last thing heard as the curtain falls.
Geoffrey Blocks single volume Enchanted Evenings (Oxford, second edition, 2009)
also uses musical examples, underlining a shift in the historians format, which now de-
mands the musicological analysis unknown to the Green-Bordman era. Like Knapp,
Block blueprints West Side Story, even tasting a bit of the aforementioned vocal lines that
originally sang to the angular theme at the very start of the prelude. (How long does it
take to reach the moonarooney?) All this exploration suggests that beneath West Side
Storys apparently artless continuity, the sheer logic of its wholeness, is a daring and
mighty creation. Simply the way the music soundsmodern-jazz-flavored riffs scored in
classical techniquewarns us how deceptively special it really is. In another part of the
forest, both Knapp and Block spend serious time on the movie musical, another aspect
that is more and more being seen as integral to the text of the musicals history.
The smallest of these three titles is Scott McMillins The Musical As Drama (Prince-
ton, 2006), similarly filled with unique observations on works that have become so
familiar we dont recognize the genius that activates them. McMillin suggests replac-
ing integration with coherence, for a great musical is often less interesting in its
harmony than in its discords. I see Porgy and Bess as an outstanding example, not least
in its cheek-by-jowl tournament of the popular (I Got Plenty O Nuttin) and the
classical (Bess, You Is My Woman Now). But there are many other such shows, deriv-
ing energy from the tension of components; Show Boat is a classic example, with its
hokum comedy and social progressivism, its comic roles and acting roles, its ragtime
and Ol Man River. One wonders if, eventually, the R & H titles will seem almost or-
dinary in their aesthetic consistency, while more disorderly works0n the Town, Can-
dide, Pacific Overtureswill continue to feel freakishly vital.
On specific shows, Mark Evan Swartzs Oz Before the Rainbow (Johns Hopkins, 2000)
is a luxurious tour through the life and times of The Wizard of Oz, the many illustrations
including even some color, very hard to accommodate when venturing into the early
Second Age. More than a narrative about a single title, this is a look at the show biz of
For Further Reading
its day, as when Swartz points out that The Wizard did such good business that tickets
could be purchased four weeks in advancevirtually unheard of in a time when the-
atregoers bought on the day of the performance.
No one knows that there is a making of Funny Girl book, because its author, the
shows fired director, Garson Kanin, published Smash (Viking, 1980) as a novel. To
throw us off, he swapped Funny Girls set designer, Robert Randolph, for Boris Aron-
son, whom Kanin knew from Do Re Mi. Otherwise, most of the Funny Girl people are
here (under fictional names), from the book doctor, John Patrick, to the chorus guy
who sleeps with the stage manager to understudy a lead. Smash is dishy, but Don
Dunns The Making of No, No, Nanette (Citadel, 1972) is even dishier. Ted Chapin runs a
more discreet outfit in Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (Knopf,
2003). Before his seniority as the head of the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization,
Chapin was a go-fer on the Follies staff; aficionados favor this title in particular for its
inside look at the musical of musicals.
Jeffry Denhams A Year With The Producers (Routledge, 2002) is less a making of
than one actors relationship with a show, from his audition to going on for Matthew
Broderick. So, from Ozs historian to Funny Girls failed director and Nanettes (if I have
the dish correctly) boy friend of the productions PR woman, we come to the narrative of
a performer. Thus, we become privy to aspects of Putting On the Show not available in
other books. For instance, there is the habit, in R & H-era musicals with a lot of plot and
characters, of ensemble multi-tasking, so Denham ends up playing a blind violinist,
Scott the choreographer, the Little Wooden Boy singer in the auditions for the role of
Hitler, and an old lady in the Along Came Bialy number, staged with more walkers than
at a Paper Mill Playhouse midweek matinee. Or there is the inside joke inserted into the
score, when Mel Brooks musical affiliate, Glen Kelly, at the lyric Im the German Ethel
Merman, dontcha know?, adds the four notes of Gypsys I had a dream motif right
after, in the brass. Or there are Nathan Lanes improvisations in performance, some of
them radical, a last echo of the way comics were expected to behave in shows in the past.
Zero Mostel did it, too, in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum and even
Fiddler on the Roof, but in cheesy ways that detracted from the performance.
Now to the etcetera. Robert C. Allens Horrible Prettiness (North Carolina, 1991)
details the early history of burlesque at the time when it was essentially the forerunner
of musical comedy. Allen emphasizes the participation of Lydia Thompson, danger-
ously impertinent in [Thompsons mostly-women casts] mocking male impersona-
tions, streetwise language, and nonsensical humor. Thompsons burlesque presented
a world without limits ... Meanings refused to stay put. Anything might happen. Does
this anticipate the crazy house of Hellzapoppinor, say, Pal Joey, with its openly appe-
titive Society Lady and submissive male sex object?
On vaudeville, another early form (though it flowered just when burlesque went
into decline), Douglas Gilberts already cited pathbreaking survey is joined by American
Vaudeville As Seen By Its Contemporaries (Knopf, 1984), Andrew Steins compendium of
writing souvenirs from back in the day. These include Edward Milton Royles general
introduction, which notes that the no-no words comprised not only damn but liar,
slob, and sucker; the program from Keith & Proctors 125th Street Theatre (in New
York), featuring little Hip, The Smallest Elephant in the World, and Wm. A Dillon,
The Man of a Thousand Songs, and the next-to-closing, McMahons Minstrel Maids
and Watermelon Girls, and the chaser (the last act, to clear the house for the next
show), a set of orchestral renderings; A Potpourri of Vaudeville Jokes; and the tale of
a man who ran up from the audience to claim a child actor as his long-lost daughter.
Oh, take me away! she criesbut her hard-faced manager refuses to release her.
() For Further Reading
The house staff must restrain the father as the shocked crowd demands family justice.
Shame! Shame! Give her up! At last, the man who runs the theatre appears, to bring
father and daughter together, to the cheers of the house.
It was all an act; thats show business.
Moving up to the modern era, Ken Mandelbaums Not Since Carrie (St. Martins,
1991) brings us to another corner of the industry, the flop musical. Drawing on not only
extensive research but his own vivid recollections, Mandelbaum covers 1950 to 1990,
seeking reasons why the greatest talents can bungle so badly (as with 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue), or fall in love with unpromising material (Prettybelle, the Jule StyneBob Mer-
rillGower ChampionAngela Lansbury show that closed in Boston, or A Dolls Life, the
Comden-Green sequel to Ibsen). One reason buffs love this book its comprehensive mas-
tery, from awetastic trivia (as when Kellys producer, television talk-show host David
Susskind, brings psychics onto his program to foretell Kellys future and all predict suc-
cess for a work that closed on opening night) and wonderful illustrations (such as all four
of Dear Worlds playbill covers) to lengthy, thoughtful considerations of such enticing
items as The Grass Harp, Juno, and Rags. Those in search of more on the same topic can
repair to Peter Filichias Broadway Musicals (Applause, 2010), which covers the hit and the
flop of each season from 1959 to 2009. Filichia offers some surprising titles; its all in
how you read the word the. The novelties include a live elephant in the 1974 Good News!,
seen for two preview performances only. We think back to Little Hip, and wonder.
Picture books are more useful in the musical than in many other fields, because
they raise the curtain on vanished productions. Frank Rich and Lisa Aronsons The
Theatre Art of Boris Aronson (Knopf, 1987), Mary C. Hendersons Mielziner (Back Stage,
2001), and Andrew B. Harris The Performing Self, on William and Jean Eckart (North
Texas, 2006) blend designs, performance stills, and informative text to reconstruct the
physique, so to say, of old shows. Its invaluable in exploring what musicals used to look
like and how they behaved. Edmund Burke said, I must see the Things, I must see the
Men. When I got the idea for Rodgers & Hammerstein (Abrams, 1992), my first thought
was to use the picture-and-text format to create a scene-by-scene revival of Allegro
using the Vandamm stills and snapshots taken during the Boston tryout. Words can go
only so far in describing this remarkable work, the cornerstone in the edifice of the
Concept Musical. Similarly, Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastniks Broadway Musicals: The 101
Greatest Musicals of All Time (Black Dog & Lebenthal, 2004) is invaluable for its many
unusual photographs. One isnt captioned: on page 24 is a shot of The Wizard of Oz
filling out the Babes in Toyland entry. The actual Babes shot, on the facing page, is the
Garden Wall scene mentioned some three hundred pages and a century ago, the I
Cant Do the Sum number to hold the continuity in place while the stagehands, be-
hind the backdrop, readied the next big set. The two kids in front, incorrectly identified
in the caption, are Alan (William Norris) and Jane (Mabel Barrison).
Last, we gaze into Broadway Song & Story (Dodd, Mead, 1985), transcriptions of
Dramatists Guild panels (by the authors and associates) on both plays and musicals.
We get fascinating looks back at On the Town, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cab-
aret, and much else. The Gypsy panel is especially full of arcane tidbitsother writers
tackled the project before Styne, Sondheim, and Laurents; June Havoc vacillated so
long on whether to let the production use her name that, in the first performances it
was changed from June to Claire and confused actors called her Baby Clune; Jerome
Robbins hated the overture, generally regarded as the greatest in its line; and Faith
Dane, who played the stripper billed as Mazeppa, Revolution in Dance, was the
daughter of Arthur Laurents high-school history teacher.
To which revelation Sondheim observes, Thats the most startling fact of the afternoon.
DI S CO G R A PH Y
This is a very selective catalogue, with three purposes: one, to guide the reader to a re-
discovery of old music and the styles in which it was originally played and performed;
two, to outline the development of the cast album, the single most influential element
in the creation of a permanent repertory of works; and, three, to point out recordings
both enlightening and entertaining.
If the musical begins with The Beggars Opera, the piece itself starts its modern ca-
reer with the Frederic Austin arrangements made for the 1920 revival at Londons Lyric
Theatre, Hammersmith (HMV, World, Past). Delicately vigorous in an antique scoring
for strings, woodwinds, and harpsichord (to reflect the productions fashionably obso-
lete look of three-cornered hats and buckled shoes), the Austin version absorbed its
mother work till it was thoughtin Britain, at leastto be the authentic voicing of
the play. The Lyric cast comes to us in the pale tones of acoustic recording (that is, into
a horn), but a Glyndebourne production of 1940 (HMV, Pearl), with opera singers and
Michael Redgraves Macheath, has the advantage of electrical recording (into a
microphone, yielding more realistic reproduction, used from 1925 on). The later cast
has more espressivo, and Redgrave is surprisingly musical for a supposed non-singer.
Still, to understand how well John Gay united script and song, one should sample
modern recordings, which routinely include linking dialogue. The classic performance is
EMIs in 1955 under Malcolm Sargent, with John Cameron, Elsie Morison, Monica Sin-
clair, Owen Brannigan, and other opera singers and, speaking the lines, such wonderful
actors as Paul Rogers, Robert Hardy, and Rachel Roberts. The speakers dont sound like
the singers, but at least the respective recording levels are equalizeda rare event in
these half-talk-half-song disc productions. Hearing the dialogue place the songs re-
veals how aptly Gay lyricked the music, creating a little monster of a solo for Macheath
in O Cruel, Cruel, Cruel Case!, which is actually a medley of four separate songs. (In the
Austin version, that is: Gays original stacked ten melodies atop one another.)
Alternate editions of the music include one made for the West End in 1968 (CBS) by
Benjamin Pearce Higgins in a pointedly now style that today sounds even more
archaic than Austins Edwardian piping. Nor does this cast control enough vocal tone,
though Peter Gilmores Macheath revels in sexy baritone and Hy Hazell, the delight of
many an English musical, from Lock Up Your Daughters to Fiddler on the Roof (as a re-
placement Golde), had been playing Mrs. Peachum virtually throughout her career.
With only six in the pit, CBS accords with the typical chamber scoring in this work. But
Richard Bonynge commissioned an Erich Wolfgang Korngold Symphony Of a Thou-
sand orchestration from Douglas Gamley for the all-star lineup of Kiri Te Kanawa,
Joan Sutherland (as Lucy), James Morris, Angela Lansbury, and, as Mrs. Trapes, Re-
gina Resnik (Decca). Gamleys arrangements, eclectic in the use of pastiche, upstage
the story. Thus, Stafford Deans Youll Think, Ere Many Days Ensue comes off as a
( )
() Discography
drunken music-hall turn, while Sutherlands Thus When a Good Housewife fairly
twirls with mad-scene coloratura. In all: an unfocused reading, but amusing and very
well sung.
For Beggars Opera DVDs, we can pass over one on Arthaus, with Roger Daltreys
anomalous pop twerping and incomprehensible mumbles. Warner Archive rescues Pe-
ter Brooks 1953 Technicolor film starring Laurence Olivier insays Pauline Kael
one of his most playful, sophisticated, and least-known roles. Brook opened the play
up with action scenes and changes in plot, moved numbers around, and used yet an-
other musical setting, this one by the major classical composer Arthur Bliss, for full
orchestra but in faithful old style. Bliss even reached over Austin to Gays original ver-
sion of O Cruel, Cruel, Cruel Case!, including nine of the ten melodies used in 1728.
The script (by Christopher Fry and Denis Cannan) follows Gays tone if not all of his
words, and generally the movie is superbdashing, Hogarthian, and so profligate of
imagination that a spectacular shot of prison doors opening on a vast crowd hot for a
hanging lasts but seconds. Most of the actors were dubbed in the music by opera
singers, but not Olivier, who, in the same red coat designed for the 1920 revival, clearly
also does his own stunts and horseback riding. This proves invaluable in one of Brooks
most arresting inventions: after a robbery, Olivier canters along singing My Heart
Was So Free till he reaches the summit of a hill and suddenly sees a noosed corpse
hanging in full body irons. Most interesting for students of the musical is the reappor-
tioning of dialogue to song: with much less of Gays full score of sixty numbers, the
work suddenly resembles a modern show.
From 1963 comes a BBC telecast (Decca) of the best of all the settings, Benjamin
Brittens. Though the spirit is that of Austin (in a twelve-man pit), the reworkings of
the vocal lines and the way the orchestra dialogues with them is utterly original. And
note how much more playing time Britten gives his band. The Austin version is awfully
dry in its stodgy alternating of speech and song; Britten moistens the spaces between
till a play with songs becomesalmostan opera with speeches, and far more inte-
grated than the piece was in 1728 or after. Peter Brook used actors but the BBC offers
opera people who can actJanet Baker, Kenneth McKellar, Heather Harper, and Anna
Pollak (who sang Jenny Diver, the Lotte Lenya part, for Malcolm Sargent). Pollaks wily
slattern of a Mrs. Peachum is so unlike what the term opera singer means that one
realizes how infectiously theatrical The Beggars Opera really is. Watch for a Decor Mal-
function at 26:45 in the discs running time, when a closing curtain gets stuck on Mc-
Kellars shoulder and Baker deftly flips it free without changing expression.
Gilbert and Sullivans scores are so much more integrated than Gays that one can
almost follow the action through the lyrics alone. Among the countless recordings,
seven series stand out, reissued over the years on various labels. The first is HMVs
acoustic albums using recording veterans and some DOyly Carte performers; the last
unit, a flavorful Princess Ida and nearly a DOyly Carte cast album with only two non-
company singers in minor roles, is the only Ida (of four) to include the contraltos
Come, Mighty Must!, apparently because Bertha Lewis was the sole singer to bring
this dirge to life. HMV went on to an electric DOyly Carte series, featuring one of the
best G & S albums of all time, 1927s Gondoliers. After the war, Decca made the first LP
DOyly Cartes, then a stereo group, five with the spoken dialogue; as with the Beggars
Operas, this gives the student a chance to see how old the integration of song and story
really is. Meanwhile, EMI produced a stero series under Malcolm Sargent with casts
very like his Beggars Opera crew. These are less theatrical than the DOyly Cartes, in
draggy tempos. However, except for George Baker in the Ko-Ko rolesuseful in the
old 78 sets but by now given to Jurassic-era wheezingthe singers make some very
Discography
beautiful music. Are these operas (as they were called in their day) or musicals? That is,
how much singing is enough singing? High school drama clubs get through them, yet
current usage favors plush voices, in both the so-called New DOyly Carte series (TER,
Sony) and Telarcs spicier runthrough of the favorite titles. TER specializes in reviving
cut numbers; the Patience, never released in the United States, offers a realization of a
lost solo for the Duke. It wont make headlines; but the performance is very well con-
ducted by John Owen Edwards, and the acting and singing, often out of proportion in
G & S, is acutely balanced. Some Savoyards find Simon Butteriss Bunthorne over the
top dramatically. But so is the character.
Let us try The Mikado on DVD. The 1939 English film (Criterion) with one American,
Kenny Baker, is a movie rather than a staging, and a very elaborate one, constantly
changing locale and filled with extras. The arrival of the Mikado is filmed as a full-scale
parade, with not only officials, guards, and palanquins but a band featuring a horn so
long it takes four dwarfs to bear it. Savoyards delight in the preservation of Martyn
Greens Ko-Ko and Sidney Granvilles Pooh-Bah, and the two do include traditional
DOyly Carte business (presumably handed down from Gilberts original stage direc-
tion). This takes in Greens pixilated dancing in Heres a How-De-Do and his turning
around at a flute solo in The Criminal Cried to see whos playing. We even get one of
the How-De-Do encores in an alternate staging, a DOyly Carte tradition for four
generations and a reminder that audiences could demand repetitions in the days be-
fore recordings and the freezing of productions just before opening night. However,
this Mikado hacks away at the score quite drastically. The DOyly Carte troupe made its
own Mikado in 1966 (VAI), so stagey that one spies the actors bald makeup. Another
stage production, but a much livelier one, is Jonathan Millers for the English National
Opera (A & E), set entirely in the lobby of a resort hotel. The Monty Pythons Eric Idle
plays Ko-Ko, with updated lyrics for Ive Got a Little List. But the best of the cast
and thoroughly into the spirit of Millers gentle jivingis Felicity Palmer as Katisha.
Her big solo in the first-act finale is rendered as a recital set piece at the grand piano in
full diva kit topped by a fringed silver lam mobcap with curly tail. The DVD adds
touches of trick photography: after Comes a Train of Little Ladies, the schoolgirls, in
hockey outfits, pose around a settee and the view turns as still as a yearbook shot.
Entre Nous: Celebrating Offenbach (Opera Rara) presents two CDs of unusual material
solos, ensembles, and extended scenesfrom the man who most definitively put com-
edy into the musical. The labels typical high-end production offers a dazzling group of
soloists under conductor David Parry and a 240-page booklet with texts, translations,
and plenty of background on the forty-one selections. This is a great way to take in Of-
fenbachs melodic contours, his piquant orchestrations, and his ability to handle senti-
ment as well as the grotesque. There is plenty of pastiche, of course, along with music
describing how it feels to freeze in a blizzard or roar along like a train. In the second-act
finale of La Diva, Jennifer Larmore is hosting a party when her boy friends uncle
bursts in to drag him away. The ten-minute sequence is an opera in miniature, as the
chorus exhorts the boy to stay by turning his nameRaoulinto a great tearful
groan. And when that doesnt work, everyone breaks into a cancan.
On DVD, to see how beautifully Offenbach marries what is sung to what is spoken,
try La Grand-Duchesse de Grolstein (Virgin) and La Belle Hlne (Kultur), both staged by
Laurent Pelly and conducted by Marc Minkowski, with Felicity Lott and Yann Beuron
in the leads. These are merrily modern stagings, interpreted rather than gimmicked.
Offenbach would have been surprised by all the dancing (that element of the musical
hadnt been integrated in his time), and the sets stray from the stage directions
Pelly plays Hlnes first act, laid in a public square in Sparta, in Helen and Menelaus
() Discography
bedroom. Pelly also encouraged Lott to exaggerate the Grand-Duchess erotic im-
pulses, all rotating hips and bouncing knees. The work is already a sly cartoon; this
makes it a crude one. Still, it does remind us how horrified American audiences were
when Offenbach was finally produced in English translation. Thats what they were
about?
To consider how the musicals rich table of contents prompted its creators to exper-
iment with serious themes, try Les Contes dHoffmann. The Lyons Opera offers a dark
and fascinating version (Images, Arthaus), directed by Louis Erlo, that places Hoff-
manns tales in a madhouse. Erlo and conductor Kent Nagano used the rediscovered
material that transforms a frisky opra comique into something so contemporary in its
paradoxically visionary bitterness that Lyons billed the show as Des Contes dHoffmann
an untranslatable pun meaning both Some Tales of Hoffmann and From the Tales of Hoff-
mann. The cast is top, with Natalie Dessay, Barbara Hendricks, and Isabelle Vernet as
Hoffmanns loves. Unfortunately, Andy Kaufman plays Hoffmann. Actually, its tenor
Daniel Galvez-Vallejo, but his resemblance to the late comedian is distracting. Veterans
Gabriel Bacquier and Jos Van Dam are also on hand, and Brigitte Balleys plays Nick-
lausse, the heros sidekick but, under this disguise, his muse. In the middle of the action,
without warning, she rises from the orchestra pit on a platform with the first violinist
to sing, to his accompaniment, Vois sous larchet frmissant . . . (See, beneath the
trembling bow ...), on how art consoles the loveless. The scene is at once ghoulish and
reassuring, and though it is but a moment in an event-filled staging, it reminds us how
densely observant the musical can be when it expands its perspective.
In the variety shows so popular in the nineteenth century, two anthologies instruct
us: Monarchs of Minstrelsy (Archeophone) and Legendary Voices of Vaudeville (Take
Two), each furnished with colorfully illustrated notes on the performers and material.
The minstrel disc goes back to music taken down in 1902, yet it can be heard easily
through the surface buzz. The program opens with a tiny minstrel show, from the local
street parade to advertise the bill, one of those ebullient marches so much a part of the
old American soundscapeMinstrels in town!through a typical First Part with the
Interlocutor and the end men:
and on to the olio acts, with the aid of a close-harmony quartet, a minstrel mainstay.
The solos typify the innocence of minstrel content in Dont Be an Old Maid, Milly (a
suitors plea), When You and I Were Young, Maggie, and My Sweethearts the Man
in the Moon. Note that the last title, a womans-point-of-view number, is sung by a
man. This is partly because minstrel casting was all male, but also because the etiquette
allowed for gender-neutral presentation into the start of the band-singer era, in the
late 1920s, when discs of men singing even Cant Help Lovin Dat Man and The Man
I Love could be issued without igniting a marriage-equality firestorm. Note also the
spoken intros to a few of the minstrel vocals: some of these cuts come from cylinders,
which could not be labeled like the flat discs. Without the announcer, listeners wouldnt
know what they were hearing unless they had the packaging handy.
Lew Dockstader, one of minstrelsys outstanding impresarios, is on this disc, and he
also gets mentioned in the first cut of the Vaudeville collection, in George M. Cohans
rendition of his own You Wont Do Any Business If You Havent Got a Band. This
clues us in to an essential difference between minstrelsy and vaudeville, besides the
obvious one of co-educational employment: vaudevilles material is racier in general,
Discography
always eager to try new things, mention the famous, remark upon cultural institutions.
Minstrelsy was nostalgic and shy of innovation. Then, too, vaudeville was urban in its
outlook, while the minstrel habitually yearned for (southern) country life. True, we
hear Marion Harris, in Sweet Indiana Home, long for my mammys arms, and Mar-
garet Youngs Tomorrow invokes my mammys knee. Minstrelsys influence was
pervasive, indeed. Yet Elsie Janis, in The Darktown Strutters Ball, reorients the black
worldview from Old Folks At Home to the big-city dance hall. Cmon, honey, she ad
libs, resorting to an encoded erotic term. Ball the jack!
We should pause to remark these vaudevillians expansive delivery, reflecting their
need to fill auditoriums without miking. Al Jolson isnt here, but others who shared his
aggressive style areGeorgie Price, Blossom Seeley, Lou Holtz, Harry Fox (the inven-
tor of the fox trot). Listen to Nora Bayes and her husband, Jack Norworth, duet in
Turn Off Your Light, Mister Moon Man. Each has a solo, but when they get together,
Norworth takes the tune while Bayes surrounds him with ad libs, replies, and commen-
tary, almost nagging at the music. Bert Williams; Sophie Tucker; the deep-toned mis-
tress of soap-opera singing Belle Baker; and the racial-stereotype specialists (Gus) Van
and (Joe) Schenck are also on hand, as are Vivian and Rosetta Duncan, the Cherry
Sisters of the headliner class.* Like everyone else in vaudeville, the Duncans depended
on those ad libs to keep the show moving, but theirs were the dumbest in show biz.
Why dont you dance? asks one, and her sister replies, Im waiting for you to get off
my foot!
In Music From the New York Stage 18901920, a four-box series of three CDs each,
Pearl has collected what appears to be every single surviving 78 side featuring an
original-cast performance. Some of the discs are so rare that Pearl had to settle for
copies with noisy surfaces, but then the program actually reaches back to the Bosto-
nians in Robin Hood and The Serenade; Marie Cahill inof coursean interpolation;
Lillian Russell; Montgomery and Stone slipping jokes into a number from The Old
Town; Eva Tanguay as the I Dont Care Girl; Eddie Cantor, Bert Williams, and John
Steel in Ziegfeld Follies of 1919; Edith Day in Irene. The song titles themselves revive a
long bygone time with sheer guiltless merriment, as in such ethnic concoctions as Oh,
How That German Could Love, My Little Zulu Babe, How Can They Tell That Oim
Irish?, and, addressing a question that had us all waiting for centuries, Who Played
Poker With Pocahontas? The very fullness of the bill sounds magnificent. However,
most of what Victor, Columbia, and the lesser labels were preserving was the specialty
number with no relationship to the plot. Thus, the series represents not the musical
per se but rather its vaudeville component, the most unstable element in the composi-
tion of old shows.
Consider Volume Three, covering 1913 to 1917. We hear two cuts of Eleanor Painter,
one of the eras leading sopranos, and a side of Irving Berlins Watch Your Step gives us
Charles King and Elizabeth Brice in Ive Gotta Go Back To (dear old) Texas, Brice go-
ing into a fluttery descant on the second chorus in a long-forgot style of the time. West
End star George Grossmith is amusingly grisly in Murders, from an English show,
Tonights the Night. Take me away, constable, he urges at the end, oh so calmly. I am
quite ready. Christie MacDonald recalls the central role of her career, in Victor
Herberts Sweethearts, in three cuts, her vocalism understated except at the most
* The Cherry Sisters were so terrible that they supposedly had to play behind wire mesh for
protection from vegetable projectiles. Notorious on the national level, they became a running gag
in early talkies.
() Discography
beseeching climaxes. The more spirited Mizzi Hajos is delightful in Pom-Pom; she, too,
descants, in yodeling style. Baritone George MacFarlane, an unusually strong singer,
offers My Castle in the Air, possibly the first song ever written by Jerome Kern and
P. G. Wodehouse and one of the transitional numbers in the creation of the New Music.
So far, so good. Yet most of the box comprises Al Jolson and his novelties, Chaunc-
ey Olcott too-ra-looring, a couple of band cuts, and more silly insert numbers. This
isnt the meat of the musical: its the side orders. Most disappointing of all is a cut of
the Duncan Sisters in more Kern, The Bull Frog Patrol, from Shes a Good Fellow, in the
fourth volume. What we hear is slightly amusing, no more. But on The Jerome Kern
Treasury (see below), John McGlinn conducts Jeanne Lehmann and Rebecca Luker, a
womens chorus, and an orchestra playing the song in its original scoringand what
sounds thin and hokey on the Duncans 78 suddenly surges with melody. This is the
problem with these old discs: they are, more often than not, misleading rather than
representational.
Pearl offers another four volume set, this one at least yielding a good sample of each
shows core numbers, Broadway Through the Gramophone. Here are the (usually) one-sided,
twelve-inch 78 medleys that Victor (and, much less often, Columbia and Brunswick)
made from 1909 into the 1930s: four minutes of some six or seven numbers sung by a
merry little group with the odd solo here and there. Once again, Pearl has been amaz-
ingly resourceful in tracking down the rare sides (though the collection ends in 1929,
ignoring later two-sided selections from Jubilee and Revenge With Music, among
others). The ancient sound makes it difficult to hear the lyrics on the acoustic sides,
but the transfers are so vivid one might almost be in a Victor studio in Camden, New
Jersey, as the tiny orchestra bunches up in a corner and the singers crowd around the
horn, backing away whenever they hit a high note. Then, too, anyone who wants to
hear the difference between acoustic and electric recording has only to apply to Volume
Four, wherein the older style gives way to the new on disc one and the voices start to
ring out with astonishing realism.
With eight CDs worth of medleys, we are treated to an immense amount of mate-
rial. In just four minutes with Victor Herberts The Wizard Of the Nile, we get a ceremo-
nial chorus full of cymbal crashes (difficult to record in those days, for percussion
jarred the delicate technology); about twelve seconds of a love song; comic tenor Billy
Murray in Thats One Thing a Wizard Can Do:
the waltzy hit tune, Star Light, Star Bright; Murray again in that ode to a circus freak
mentioned in the text, My Angeline; and at last the jumpy A Cheer For Kibosh, with
everyone in spread harmony for the penultimate chord, up to high A. Its the entire
show in caption form.
of a stagestruck young woman. Its an endearing piece, filled with references to the
theatre of the day, a few of which even the all-knowing Stanley Green, who wrote the
extensive liner notes, couldnt place. Im eager to hear the source of a dramatic line
quoted in the lyrics: Troskeena Wellington, you cant square what you have done!
What, now, of complete scores? Two very different outfits have produced a slew of
titles. The Ohio Light Opera insists on two-disc sets, taped live on stage with the spoken
dialogue. This is a drawback, as Ohios casts are better singers than actorsand the discs
are overpriced in the first place. Worse, Ohio tends to fiddle with texts. In Naughty Mar-
ietta, important music has been cut from the opening, the Jeunesse Dore ball, and the
two act finales. Rombergs Maytime is unusually well sung for this series, but its New
York setting is blithely moved to New Orleans, which makes nonsense of Its a Windy
Day on the Battery. Apparently no one in Ohio knows that the Battery is the southern
tip of Manhattan. And one of the shows hits, Jump Jim Crow, has been bowdlerized
into Do Si Do to soothe the politically sensitive. This is good censorship but bad his-
tory, as Jump Jim Crow was created specifically to evoke the earliest days of minstrelsy.
The other outfit is the Comic Opera Guild of Ann Arbor, offering, also live, both
narration-and-dialogue but also music-only units of their titles; the group has recorded
most of the lesser-known Herbert shows and a lot of early Kern. There is no fiddling:
COG plays the text as written, often adding in cut numbers to fill out the evening. Unlike
Ohio, with its quite serviceable orchestra, COG performs with two pianosbut the
players, Adam Aceto and Patrick Johnson, are vivacious, with a strong response to the
authentic Herbert style and its tip-toeing rubatos. At times, the pair pounds away so
fervently that youll hear a few lovable clinkers. The singers, too, may slip out of tune. But
they all know how the music should go, while Ohio fields too many bland groups picking
their way through scores from a time that liked its vocalists blitzing like opera champs.
That said, Ohios Robin Hood and El Capitan are among the best in this field. Nicho-
las Wuehrmann takes De Wolf Hoppers El Capitan bass line up into tenor range
apparently a common practice in this role whenever Hopper wasnt availablewhile
the love-plot tenor, Kyle Knapp, and mezzos Alta Dantzler and Tania Mandzy offer
sturdy vocalism in Ohios liveliest cast, very ably led by conductor Stephen Byess.
Wuehrmanns counterpart over at Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Frederick
Reeder) has to carry the shows comedy while maintaining a near-operatic baritone
line. This Reeder does, even matching his singing style to his spoken lines with a Gil-
bert and Sullivan flourish, right down to his pronunciation of diamond in three glee-
fully fastidious syllables. Robin (Timothy Oliver) and Marian (Dominique McCormack)
have far less interesting roles, but they hit all their notes, which take him (like El Capi-
tans Knapp) up to high C and her to Ds and an E-flat at the finales. J. Lynn Thompson
conducts a sound performance, and the cast is good enough if never thrilling. Robin
Hood is presented in another of Ohios sneaky editions, though this time the revision
is an improvement, even daring a last-minute joke on the shows hit tune, Oh, Prom-
ise Me. El Capitan, a superior piece, appears to be more or less intact.
June Bronhill in her most famous role (twice, both for EMI), Beverly Sills (EMI), who
sings the lyrics of Broadways own Sheldon Harnick, and Joan Sutherland (Decca), in
an off beat tunestack that includes the rarely heard Quite Parisian, written by Lehr
and Ross for the comedian of the London premiere, W. H. Berry. Douglas Gamley ar-
ranged an overture that is a kind of Leonore No. 3 of operetta, and Sutherland turns her
entrance into Lucia di Lammermoor. Als Gast, Regina Resnik defies her age to play co-
cotte in the cancan, with an Et moi! tasty enough to snack on. But all this lures us
away from how the widow sounded to its first American audiences. Today, Ross Eng-
lish feels stodgy, but Engels opera singers are very comfortable in his verses, and, in-
deed, Ross sounds almost suave next to what Robin Hoods Harry B. Smith was writing.
Engel adds a zither to the so-called Merry Widow Waltz, an odd but effective touch,
and note a bizarre engineering glitch on the CD at the very start of the second verse of
In Marsovia.
The Wizard of Oz claims no modern recording, but the Hungry Tiger Press in San
Diego has gathered all the pertinent flotsam into a two-CD set: two-and-a-half hours
of flat discs, cylinders (with more of that announcing), piano rolls, and even music
boxes of songs from the show, from other Oz shows, and by Oz cast members in other
material. Elaborate notes and texts recreate the event, establishing which songs were
part of the core score and which joined it during its long touring history. Its a triumph
of the absurd, for if The Merry Widow, like Gilbert and Sullivan, sings its way right
through its plot, the Oz songs refer to anything but the plot.
For the English shows so influential in the United States, Hyperion obliges with a
bright, enthusiastic performance of The Geisha, under Ronald Corp. Is it comic opera?
Musical comedy? The score calls it a Japanese musical playbut it does demand
real singers with a sense of fun, as if comic opera and musical comedy at once. Thus,
Christopher Maltman and Sarah Walker get silly while duetting beautifully in The
Toy, about childhood playthings from windups to Punch and Judy. Note that the
booklets excellently detailed synopsis reveals that The Toy, like many of The Gei-
shas songs, touches the plotline but glancingly. The Geisha premiered in 1896, the
same year in which the last work by Gilbert and Sullivan; The Grand Duke, premiered.
But Savoyard integration is already overthrown; one can no longer follow the story
through the lyrics. Nevertheless, Geisha enthusiasts will brood and scheme till they
acquire the long-lost Urania LP of a Radio Berlin broadcast under Otto Dobrindt,
featuring Rosl Seegers melting O Mimosa San (the real geisha) and Ruth Zillgers
rougher voiced Molly (disguised as one), a standard separation of abilities in these
old comic operas: the sweetheart and the seriocomic. Hyperions Molly, Sarah Walker,
is full of lovely tone, however, for these old shows are frankly better sung today than
they were when new.
The most melodic of all the English imports is the only one still performed today,
The Arcadians, CDed by West End Angel in a compilation of two LPs and with an ex-
tremely strong cast headed by June Bronhill and Ann Howard. Original 1909 cast
members Florence Smithson, Phyllis Dare, and Alfred Lester turn up in seven bonus
tracks. The Geisha and The Arcadians were American hits, but Edward Germans comic
opera after Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, was not. Naxos two-CD set, complete with cut
numbers, tells why: its a very musical work, but awfully serious. German completed an
unfinished Sullivan score and collaborated with Gilbert, and thats the problem: Tom
Jones (and Germans other famous title, Merrie England) is G & S without the sparkle.
The Geisha and The Arcadians typify the generation after G & S, with a leavening of
music-hall fun, but German never got out of the Savoy. Those who nevertheless want
to hear how Fieldings sexy novel turns into a comic opera might skip Naxos for EMIs
Discography
old LP of excerpts, much better sung and, on CD, coupled with the Sargent Beggars
Opera (see above). And those who prefer the playful side of this territory should enjoy
Lionel Monckton: Songs From the Shows (Hyperion), twenty-two cuts sung by Catherine
Bott and Richard Suart, with chorus and Ronald Corp again conducting. The acoustic is
spacious, the tympani pounding as if in one of Mahlers doomsday movements, though
the songs are pure musical comedy. Theres nothing in Tom Jones as frivolously pleasant
as Moncktons Two Little Sausages or Moonstruckyet German and Monckton
were almost exact contemporaries, born two months apart in the early 1860s. Im
such a silly when the moon comes out, sings the Moonstruck girl, while Tom Jones is
all My Ladys Coach and For to-night, for to-night, let me dream out my dream of
delight.
For American comic opera, AEI offers a double-bill of core numbers from The Prince
Of Pilsen and The Pink Lady. This was the way many Americans heard the old classics in
the 1940s, when stagings were all but unheard of: a half-hour of radio, as actors per-
formed linking dialogue for legit singers (in this case Jessica Dragonette and Charles
Kullman, misspelled as Kuhlman on the album). Its operetta filet. The LP never made
it to CD, yet its worth mentioning, as these two once imposing titles are otherwise
unrecorded. Note, in the spoken cue before Pilsens finale, one of the very last Dutch
comics, as Hans Wagner.
In American musical comedy, the go-to figure is George M. Cohan, and Rick Benja-
min resuscitates the authentic style in Youre a Grand Old Rag (New World). Two singers
give us Cohans words and music (mainly in the most famous titles) to balance purely
orchestral tracks, such as the overtures to Little Nellie Kelly and The Talk of New York.
Benjamins male soloist, Colin Pritchard, renders his numbers in a genuine Cohan
voice, much less aggressive than were used to from, for example, Joel Grey in George
M! (Columbia, Sony). Still, that cast album is a treasury of Cohan songs, with visita-
tions from such obscure shows as The Little Millionaire; Hello, Broadway; and The Gover-
nors Son, which provides the ultra-Cohanesque Push Me Along in My Pushcart.
Unlike Rick Benjamins CD, the scoring reflects modern usagesand, though the notes
are mum about it, lyric revisions make completely new numbers out of The Merry Malo-
nes Tee Teedle Tum Di Dum (as Twentieth Century Love) and Billies Im a One
Girl Man (as My Town). A future Queen of Broadway, Bernadette Peters, plays Co-
hans sister, Josie.
The master of the age, in both comic opera and musical comedy, was Victor Herbert.
He is much recorded, but just about everything is flawedin vocal appeal, performing
style, or deceptive revision. Ohio Light Opera offers most of the famous titles, with the
usual Ohio problems. In The Red Mill, two minor characters get into a nice swing on
You Never Can Tell About A Woman. But the romantic numbers are feeble. One
might try Deccas CD reissue of the show, coupled with Babes in Toyland, two 78 sets
from the 1940s. These are arguably Herberts most agreeable scores, even cut down to
a handful of numbers each. The liner notes do nothing to assist us, getting very busy-
body about the singers biographies but, for instance, failing to explain why Kenny
Baker, in the third cut of Babes, claims to be a gypsy named Floretta. (Hes one of the
two babes, hiding from their wicked uncle in disguise.) Further, the booklet assures us
that the songs have been reordered to conform to the narrative; on the contrary, every-
things in the wrong place. Some problems are native to the original discs, as when
Babes Song Of the Poet omits the Lucia spoof so intrinsic to the numbers pastiche
form, or when, in The Red Mills Moonbeams, Eileen Farrell and the chorus smooth
out Herberts meticulous sixteenth notes into eighth notes, robbing the melody of its
edgy wistfulness.
() Discography
Then why recommend the CD? Because this is wonderful music wonderfully sung.
And there is an antidote of sorts: orchestral readings of the same two scores (Naxos) in
authentic style, sixteenth notes and all. Keith Brion conducts some fifty minutes of
Babes, including the lengthy prelude of the ocean voyage and shipwreck, which the
liner notes incorrectly declare to have been cut. The scene is listed in the New York
program.
The Comic Opera Guild recorded most if not all of the Herbert shows Ohio ignored.
One might try COGs Her Regiment, an unknown but tuneful piece with lyrics by one of
the better Broadway writers, William Le Baron, whose day job was running the Para-
mount studio in Astoria, Queens. (Le Baron wrote also the words of the great score to
Apple Blossoms, but there is no recording save two 78 sides by John Charles Thomas.)
More Herbert: Flappers A Victor Herbert Showcase looks in on the music as it was heard
in the years just after Herberts death. A mixture of vocal and orchestral cuts takes in
Herberts side-career in light-classical pieces, presented here in the lush violations of
tempo that mark the true Herbert style. The singers range from Richard Crooks to
Jeanette MacDonald (each with a high C), and the players range from violinist Alfredo
Campoli to, for that touch of camp, the Yerkes Jazzarimba Orchestra. A Sweethearts
medley blithely sings the lyrics used in MGMs version (a number here called Made-
moiselle is actually There Is Magic in a Smile in the show), but Pan Americana, a
march with a smashing Latin trio, returns us to pure Herbert. The twenty-one cuts
yield seventy-three minutes of music.
Beatrice Lillie, billed as Oh, Joy!) and Going Up, and move on to Sally, The Blue Kitten,
Sunny, No, No, Nanette, and most of the famous operettas, have been rereleased on
various labels and presumably will continue to resurface (though Going Up has proved
elusive save for a single side by Evelyn Laye). Some of the vocalism is raw. You can tell
the musical comedies from the operettas because the musical-comedy men cant
singand Lillie, who can, nonetheless talks her way through Jerome Kern. Still, these
are genuine preservations, made with their pit orchestras a generation before it be-
came the norm on Broadway.
A few DVDs bear preservations as well, more of performing styles than of specific
shows. Much of the choreography we see in early talkies is Broadway on a soundstage,
and Florenz Ziegfelds mixture of crazies and fairy princesses haunts us like Sondheim
Follies ghosts in four films especially. Sally (Warner Archive), though greatly changed
from what Ziegfeld produced on Broadway, does star Marilyn Miller, and the disc in-
cludes Technicolor footage of Wild Rosea real taste of what Miller was like on
stage. A Hollywood original, Be Yourself (Kino), Fanny Brices only surviving star vehi-
cle (her first film, the part-talkie My Man, is lost), serves as a museum visit to her ver-
satility, with five numbers from comedy to torch. Most Bricean is an opera spoof
starting, Is something the matter with [arts philanthropist] Otto Kahn or is some-
thing the matter with me?the lament of a would-be diva who then proceeds to flat-
ten the divas airs with the insight of an outsider with x-ray vision.
A sixth number is missing from the Be Yourself print Kino used, and a good two
reels worth of Rio Rita (Warner), including at least two numbers, is also missing. But
what remains follows the play somewhat closely, even retaining Bert Wheeler and Rob-
ert Woolsey from Broadway. While Rio Rita is not a great work, it was a great Ziegfeld
production, as the damsel and hero blithely operetta around while the two comics zany
the place up, the two energies never as much as trading a glance. A third Ziegfeld title,
Whoopeestill awaiting DVD releasepresents another classic Ziegfeldian in Eddie
Cantor. Further, the film offers an entire Ziegfeld cast, for the producer sold Whoopee
to Samuel Goldwyn, who closed the show and brought everyone out to California to
play a last performance before the camera. The film dropped about forty minutes of the
continuity, featured leads Ruth Etting (for song) and Tamara Geva (for ballet), and
most of the score. With camera-provocative choreography by Busby Berkeley, the film
Whoopee isnt exactly a replica of theatre style, but it comes close. It even includes an
authentic Ziegfeldian showgirl number, on an Indian motif, as squaws march (and
then ride) onto a stage set wearing less and less with each entrance.
On Golden Age composers, Pearl again assists us, with its Ultimate series, each sin-
gle CD decorated with old sheet-music covers, its contents devoted to original-cast
cuts from the 1910s on into the 1940s, but centering on the two middle decades. The
Ultimate George Gershwin includes London cast albums of the 1920sLady, Be Good!
and Tip-Toes on Volume Two and, on Volume One, Primrose, an English show in the
English manner, Gershwins New York jazz finally stealing in in Naughty Baby, later
used in Crazy For You. Most of the major Broadway songwriters created shows for Lon-
don, but only Gershwin actually wrote a show in Londons style, at times slavishly rec-
reating the sounds of the Monckton years. Leslie Hensons number When Toby Is Out
Of Town is one of the hippity-hoppity hymns to oneself that Edwardian comics loved
to romp through, and Heather Thatchers I Make Hay When the Moon Shines is an
homage to the aforementioned Moonstruck (on Hyperions Monckton CD, above).
The Ultimate Irving Berlins first volume takes in Watch Your Step and Stop! Look! Listen!
(given in England as Follow the Crowd) from the 1910s, but Volume Two moves into the
1920s with the Ziegfeld Follies and Music Box Revues, as Roscoe brings on the Weismann
() Discography
girls with The Girls of My Dreams and Lady of the Evening, the Brox Sisters recall
the close-harmony sister acts popular into the 1950s, and Grace Moore surpasses ev-
eryone in sheer warmth. The Ultimate Rodgers and Hart runs to three volumes, Cole
Porter to four, and rather a lot of movie material creeps in. Dont Fence Me In was
Porters biggest hit and Roy Rogers the lad who introduced it in Hollywood Canteen: but
it takes us far off our mission.
For a taste of twenties musical comedy in modern sound, try Kittys Kisses (PS Clas-
sics), from 1926, in which Rebecca Luker, Philip Chaffin, Danny Burstein, and (in a
small but very funny role) Victoria Clark revive the old couple mixups in hotel rou-
tine. The score is by Con Conrad and Gus Kahnuncelebrated but, here, tuneful and
charming. Oddly, this utterly unknown show had a previous recording: on a technical-
ity. In London, Kittys Kisses used the title and two or three songs from another 1926
musical, Rodgers and Harts The Girl Friend. Three generations later, in 1987, a regional
English theatre revived this mlange, still fraudulently titled The Girl Friend and now
offering less of the Kittys Kisses score and more Rodgers and Hart. Though the cast was
vocally weak, TER recorded it (on LP only); a comparison of the two discs reveals just
how sharp the PS cast is. However, PS interpolated Conrads New Dance Sensation
Oscar winner The Continental as a finale; the original finale, Step On the Blues, can
be heard on TER and in the English Girl Friend medley in Broadway Through the Gramo-
phone, Volume Four.
Among essential twenties musicals, Good News! should have had an authentic read-
ing by now. MGM first filmed it in 1930, and the 1947 remake (Warner DVD), faithful
to the story though retaining only key numbers, is very personably cast, including the
seldom seen Joan McCracken. The studio wanted Van Johnson for the football-hero
lead opposite June Allyson, ending instead with the preposterously suave Peter Law-
ford. But it works. The 1974 Alice Faye revival got a private cast album on two LPs made
of audio tapes of various performances. As I said earlier, the show suffered such a pile-
on of irrelevant De Sylva, Brown, and Henderson numbers that it was virtually a juke-
box musical, yet this was largely the basis for the score used in a lively 1933 Wichita
revival (Jay). Just Imagine is shunted into the second act, misguising a wishful dream
into a torch song, though The Varsity Drag, invariably used as a late-in-the-second-
act raveup after the 1947 film, is back in its original slot in Act One. Further, heres
ones chance to collect On the Campus and Todays the Dayand they even sneaked
most of the 1927 opening chorus into the first cue.
Twenties operetta fares better, if only because its more evolved musical narration
makes the insertion of extraneous numbers difficult. There are authentic readings of
Rose-Marie (Victor, Sepia), with Julie Andrews and Giorgio Tozzi, and The New Moon
(Ghostlight), with Rodney Gilfry and Christiane Noll, from an Encores! concert. Each
is ideal: a single disc stuffed with music, a wealth of vocal talent, no dialogue unless
dramatically necessary, and no interfering editions. This New Moon is especially rich
in vocal glamor, keeping Noll in the original high keys for her numbers; in London,
these had to be lowered for Evelyn Laye, as we hear on the 1929 album (World, Pearl).
The most recorded twenties exotic-setting operetta is The Desert Song, starting with
its only cast album, from the London run at Drury Lane, with Edith Day and Harry
Welchman. Their approach is mannered, even fantastical, as operetta folk generally
were (especially in England), and the text is authentic. In Romance, a typo in the vo-
cal score has duped many later Margots into a solecism on My princes become what I
mold them (to rhyme with enfold them). But the Chappell score reads, in a misprint,
would them. Day gets it right, because she learned it direct from parts rather than
from the printed score. Then, too, at the climax of One Flower Grows Alone in Your
Discography
Garden, the tenor sails up to high C while the bass dredges out a super-low Cas in
Rombergs writing but, to my knowledge, not to be heard on subsequent recordings.
These include Columbias old mono LP (Flare) with Nelson Eddy and Doretta Mor-
row, most complete but lacking the comics, Bennie and Susan. Worse, Eddy is at his
dullest, outshown by his rival in the love plot, David Atkinson. This LP-era tendency to
record operettas with little or no participation by the comedians explains why moderns
think of these shows as relentlessly romantic. Typically, Pearls CD release of the Lon-
don Desert Song tacks on Londons New Moon while omitting the comics two sides,
though the disc is filled out with The Blue Train, an adaptation of Robert Stolzs Mdi
and an out-and-out musical comedy with lots of drollery. Note, however, that both the
Rose-Marie and New Moon cited just above made sure to keep the funny characters in
place.
English studio Desert Songs include Bennie, whose main contributions are a Help!
Shes vamping me! duet, One Good Boy Gone Wrong, and a salute to Elinor Glyns
old term for sexual charisma, It. On a World LP, John Hewer sings bothand note
tenor Peter Hudsons unique rendering of One Flower, in an intense near-screech
suggesting calls to prayer from the minaret, much as at the end of Sands Of Time in
Kismet. Another English LP, on Saga, with Mary Millar and Robert Colman, offers not
only Bennie but Susan as well. Millar sings the incorrect would in Romance, but she
does sample the rare clockwork encore to The Sabre Song, enlivened by anachronis-
tic xylophone runs. The best known of the English Desert Songs (EMI) stars June Bron-
hill and Edmund Hockridge; Bronhill sings would, too. The performance is woefully
untheatrical, though Bronhill is as exquisite as ever.
My favorite Desert Song is Deccas 1945 set with Kitty Carlisle and Wilbur Evans. Ten
sides exclude the comics, but the reading sounds like a cast album, complete with cue-in
dialogue (mostly not from the show). One Flower, sung by Felix Knight, is sweet
rather than abrasive, and Carlisle makes The Sabre Song confidential rather than a big
showpiece: operetta with nuances. Offstage, Carlisle habitually referred to one of her
children as My daughter, the doctor, as though there were something unique about
the profession. It was Carlisle who was unique: the suavest of operetta singers and one
of Broadways best-liked people. Theres something simply endearing about her singing;
one hears it, say, in the twee chic of her ra-ta-ta-tas in the French Military Marching
Song. Note her descant on One Alone in the last cut; by 1945, the practice was about
to disappear. The CD release includes a little-known Decca New Moon album.
To follow the rise of the New Music, start with Joan Morris Vaudeville (Nonesuch),
with her husband, William Bolcom, at the piano, to get a fix on popular song at the turn
of the centuryand note the long verses and short choruses. The revolution starts
shyly, in Jerome Kern: Lost Treasures (Centaur), Anne Sciollas review of Kerns first six
years or so. Its a somewhat dainty recital, as Sciolla is subtle and her accompanist,
Brian Kovach, plays straight from the published sheets, without fireworks. The lyricists
are all from Kerns pre-Wodehouse days; they lack brilliance. The music has charm,
though, as when, in Whistle When Youre Lonely, tootling is written into the melody.
The other leader of the revolution was Irving Berlin, and the key work is Watch Your
Step, on CD in the aforementioned London production but also in its own 2001 off-
Broadway cast album (OC). An ingratiating kid ensemble and excellent keyboard work
from Mark Hartman bring the show back to life. When Julian Brightman, in Vernon
Castles old role, sings Im a Dancing Teacher Now, he demonstrates waltz and tango
as others watch and comment; one almost sees him in motion. Its fun to hear Berlin
trying out a genre he would make his own, in the I love to hate you sweethearts nag
(called, in fact, I Hate You) and the quodlibet counterpoint duet, in (Wont you play
() Discography
a) Simple Melody. Stepping out of the show itself, the company borrows Berlins two
other famous quodlibets, Annie Get Your Guns Old Fashioned Wedding and Call Me
Madams Youre Just in Love, for a wonderful stunt. Now, cries an announcer, we
will attempt, perhaps for a first time, to sing his most famous three [quodlibets]. Not
one after the other: all at once, six different strains in harmonious war. Further, we can
track Berlins next four years in Keep On Smiling (Oakton), Benjamin Sears recital, to
Bradford Conners piano. Anne Sciollas Kern is so innocent that Ballooning pleads,
And up above/Wed just make love,/If youd only go ballooning with me. But Sears
Berlin is ethnic stereotypes and wartime strains, and he and Conner work on the grand
scale. Its a bit of Jolson, perhaps, to Sciollas Christie MacDonald.
We jump back to Kern in the 1959 off-Broadway Leave It To Jane (Strand, DRG, AEI),
very much in style, even including the plotty ensembles so much a part of Second Age
scores. Louis Hirsch, a Kern acolyte, gets a superb showcase in Midnight Frolic (New
World), like New Worlds Cohan CD using period orchestrations and a handful of vo-
cals. Hirschs most famous tune, oddly, is the theme of The George Burns and Gracie Al-
len Show, which started out as The Love Nest, from Mary. Youll hear it sung, along
with Hirschs second famous number, Hello, Frisco! (complete with the interjections
mentioned in the text) from Ziegfeld Follies of 1915, whose eleven-minute overture is
included. Note the Roscoe Number, A Girl For Each Month of the Year.
This brings us to just about 1920, when Kern, Berlin, Cole Porter, and Hirsch are
joined by Vincent Youmans, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, and De Sylva, Brown,
and Henderson, as the Golden Age takes wing. A bit of backtracking, now, with another
elusive item, Early Kern (Shadowland). First issued on cassette and only later on CD
(with extra tracks), this invaluable retrospective takes Kern from his start (Never
Marry a Girl With Cold Feet) through his all-important Girl From Utah and Princess
eras, then on to such long-lined ballads as The Land Where the Good Songs Go and
Weeping Willow Tree. Save for one cut sung by an out-of-place has-been, the perfor-
mances are all of the first division, led by Judy Kaye, David Carroll, George Dvorsky,
Rebecca Luker, and other stalwarts in the revival of Broadway Melody. The closing cut,
Paige OHaras Alice In Wonderland, is illustrated in this books picture section.
To complete Kerns journey to Show Boat, try the Comic Opera Guilds reading of
The Stepping Stones and New Worlds Sitting Pretty, a John McGlinn project with Judy
Blazer and Paige OHara in roles intended for the Duncan Sisters. In the difference be-
tween the cute little ditties on Anne Sciollas Kern disc and these broadly limned vocal
sequences lies the saga of how the musical reinvented itself finally, in Show Boat. The
first-choice recording is McGlinns labor of love and passion, EMIs three-CD box in
crossover style, with numbers dropped during composition, rehearsals, or tryouts, and
forget-me-nots added in various restylings: a Show Boat symposium. I detailed a Show
Boat discography in an earlier book, a biography of Florenz Ziegfeld, so for now let us
consider Show Boat questions in a single disc, EMIs 1959 English studio cast, most re-
cently on Classics For Pleasure with, as a bonus, core numbers from Kerns Roberta and
Music in the Air.
Every production of Show Boateven every studio recordingmust deal with a
host of issues, mainly dramaturgical but also political and of course musical. As early as
the second staging (in London, in 1928), the spot just before the finales reprise of Ol
Man River got a completely new number, and virtually every major revival finds some-
thing different to do in that slot. Political considerations start with the shows very first
line, Niggers all work on the Mississippi. Our EMI recording changes the danger word
to darkies, which is still pretty dangerous. (In more correct times, the 1994 New York
staging settled on Colored folks work ...) More pertinent is the casting of Julie, un-
Discography
masked as a mulatto after having passed (i.e., for white) all her adult life. Obviously,
she must look Caucasian. But, for the last generation, the role has become unofficial
black property, which creates politically correct story nonsense. If Julie looks black,
how did she pass? This shouldnt come into play in recordings, of course, but in 1959
Shirley Basseys singles were charting for EMI, and this Show Boat was to be her first LP.
True, she had only two numbers, but she was featured alone on the cover in a color
photo, costumed on a mockup of a slice of boat deck. As Bassey was half-Nigerian, this
stretched credibilityas did MGMs casting of Lena Horne as Julie in the tab Show
Boat we see in Till the Clouds Roll By or the occasional appearances of Dorothy Dan-
dridge in the role in regional productions. At that, Bassey makes no attempt create a
stage Julie, tying Cant Help Lovin Dat Man to an after hours at the blues club
trumpet riff for a nightclub feeling or singing Bill with a smile.
But then, the entire album is a somewhat pop Show Boat, with arrangements so big
they suggest volcano explosions. The two romantic leads, Don McKay and Marlys Wat-
ters, were just then playing Tony and Maria in the London West Side Story, and they are
wonderful singersEMI gave the pair a West Side Story EP single all their own. They
clearly could have gone right into a Show Boat revival, if Show Boat revivals werent
routinely casting seasoned veterans in these parts. Magnolia is seventeen when Show
Boat begins, but stage Magnolias are often crowding forty. Meanwhile, for the sidekick
comic, Ellie, normally a dancer, EMI brought in the daffy Dora Bryan, billed on the
cover as guest artiste, as if her day job busied her with Shakespeare and the classics.
In all, this Show Boat lacks theatre bite, as a string of unrelated songs. At least EMI
added in Joe and Queenies I Still Suits Me, from the 1936 film. Without this duet,
the characters are disembodied singers, their Ol Man River and Cant Help Lovin
Dat Man robbed of their thematic and narrative significance.* At that, enlarging the
Show Boat tunestack is traditional. In 1958, with but a single LP side to work with the
(No, No, Nanette took the obverse), the Fontana label slipped in another of the 1936
film numbers, I Have the Room Above. No other major American show except Follies
counts so many add-ons.
The 1930s was the last great decade of the revue, and no recording is more apropos
than Decca Broadways Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, one of the greatest studio recreations in
its wealth of melody and authentic orchestrations. Ironically, it is too well sung, for the
Vernon DukeIra Gershwin songs were not performed this capably in 1936, when func-
tional (as opposed to attractive) voices were common and lyrics were often chanted
rather than sung. Decca includes no sketches. Its all music, and from the very first notes
of the third number, My Red-Letter Day, Karen Ziemba and the Walton brothers, Jim
and Bob, raise up a contagious con brio in their close harmony with woodpecking ac-
companiment. Later, Ruthie Henshall counters with jaded-lady verse in That Moment
Of Moments. She asks, What was there to do?, noting that The opera was getting
dull. So she moves to the lobby and meets her heart match, Howard McGillin. In ro-
mance comic books, you get what is called a kiss panel; in musicals, they love duet.
Revues loved songs that spoofed the famous. Thus, in I Cant Get Started (with
you), Peter Scolari and Christine Ebersole turn a good-night smooch into a review of
the leadership classFDR and MGM, Garbo and the Prince of Wales, The New Yorker
*EMIs Joe, Inia Te Wiata, sings Ol Man River in C Major, the score key, though
Joes now prefer B-flat, simply because Paul Robeson sang it thus. Still, it sounds
brighter in the higher key, and William Warfield, in the 1966 Lincoln Center revival
(Victor), sang it a half-step higher than that. He sounds marvelous.
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and Time. Hes the wonder boy of the age, yet she feels nothing. (Is she in for a surprise!)
Meanwhile, in Fanny Brices numbers, Mary Testa goes to town in Modernistic Moe,
a goof on Modern Dance from Brices familiar viewpoint of the nice Jewish girl bewil-
dered by but game for the latest twist in WASP sophistication. Note the numbers em-
phasis on pastiche and cultural reference, with quotations of Gertrude Stein, the old
Karl Hoschna musical Madame Sherry, and the pop tune Dancing With Tears in My
Eyes. And the dance break is mock-Shostakovich.
We can sample the small-scaled revue in the union show Pins and Needles (Colum-
bia), one of Barbra Streisands best albums. True, this is a show recording accompanied
by a jazz-flavored quartet and with the composer-lyricist, Harold Rome, in four
numbers. But Streisand dominates the survey in six cuts. She doesnt know a thing
about the period, said Rome at the time, and yet she gets into the songs as if shed
been born to them. The project came about in 1962, when Streisand was crashing into
fame. According to her biographer Randall Riese, Columbia honcho Goddard Lieberson
didnt want Streisand even after taping her with the rest of the original cast in another
Rome work with a thirties labor background, I Can Get It For You Wholesale. Streisand
dominated that recording, too, from a genuine showstopper, the comic lament Miss
Marmelstein, to What Are They Doing To Us Now?, a powerful humanist outcry in
the style of Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? and Remember My Forgotten Man.
Liebersons resistance is bizarre, especially when Pins and Needles offers Streisand the
Miss Marmelstein-like Nobody Makes a Pass at Me, which utterly overcomes even
the original-cast 78 of Millie Weitz (local 22, Dressmakers) when Pins and Needles was
new, in 1937.
In the thirties book show, Face The Music (DRG) catches the buffoonish worldliness
of the postVictor Herbert era, as in the prostitutes Torch Song referred to in the
text, put over with amusingly naive yet knowing commitment by Felicia Finley. She is,
so to say, contradicted by an interpolated revivalist hymn, If You Believe, led by Judy
Kaye at her most superb. The entire cast is marvelous, with great orchestra playing
under Rob Fisher.
Another of PS Classics excellent restorations, Kay Swifts Fine and Dandy (1930),
gives us the star-comic show. That comic, Joe Cook, was in only one number, the title
song, which Mario Cantone and Carolee Carmello put over with giddy aplomb. Car-
mello really takes stage with her two solos, Can This Be Love? and the second-act
torcher, Nobody Breaks My Heart: her vocal timbre is loaded with personality, at
once plaintive and determined, and she knows how these old ballads go. Note the odd
role of a certain Miss HunterEleanor Powell, in the originalwho is on hand simply
to lead production numbers.
On Your Toes brings us to the dance show, a fixture of the 1930s from The Band
Wagon to Rodgers and Harts Too Many Girls, in 1939. Columbias mono On Your Toes
suffers from sleepy tempos and Portia Nelsons inappropriately operatic delivery of the
ingenue role. Its a pleasant jolt to switch to the 1954 revival (Decca, MCA), where
Elaine Stritch, in a different part, reinstates musical-comedy style. Producer-director
George Abbott gifted her with a Rodgers and Hart interpolation (from Present Arms),
You Took Advantage of Me; dont be fooled by Stritchs placid opening, as her second
chorus thoroughly jazzes up the joint. Further, Columbia completely omits one of On
Your Toes most delightful touches, when the protagonist and his precocious jazz-classi-
cal composer student plan the orchestration of the title song even as the ingenue is
about to sing it and the ensemble interpret it in a hoofing-versus-ballet challenge dance.
Lets start the melody on the piano, it begins. Then Id sneak in a trumpet solo ...
And so it continues, with each addition sounding in the pit as the actors announce
Discography
it: the wire swish, the strings in an inner-voiced counter-melody, the woodwinds. Then
the whole band! as the tutti explodes with joy. And then Id sing the song! cries 1954s
Kay Coulter. The sequence comes through even better in the 1983 revival (Jay), in
slightly different words, now with Christine Andreas. A game cast, excellent conducting
by John Mauceri, and a rare Broadway attempt to bring back an old show in nearly its
original form (even in its brilliant orchestrations, by Hans Spialek) make this On Your
Toes one of the very best of revival albums. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, at more than
seventeen minutes, is, to my knowledge, recorded complete for the first time.
The essential thirties musical is Anything Goes, and while we have 78s from Ethel
Merman and from the original London leads (both on Ultimate Cole Porter Volume
Two), there was no cast album per se till the 1962 off-Broadway revival (Epic). The very
engaging cast rallies behind Eileen Rodgers almost implausibly resounding instru-
ment, a sharp little band offers nifty brass playing, and there are choral arrangements
not heard elsewhere. Alas, when this version made it to London seven years later, a
crew of nobodies ham-and-egged its way through the score (Decca, TER) with a lack of
charm so extreme it could be called fascinating, led by probably the only Reno Sweeney
in history to sing in a Vegas lounge-act croon. Yet the disc has one other distinction: till
its LP rerelease, it was the all-time rarest cast album of an American show, edging out
Victors television Lady in the Dark and the 1964 London She Loves Me (EMI). As legend
tells, Deccas Anything Goes was pressed and packaged, then abruptly cancelledbut
one box was shipped to South Africa. When it sold out, fewer people owned it than saw
Eve Arden in Moose Murders.
The superb 1987 Lincoln Center revision has generated numerous cast albums.
Patti LuPone in New York (Victor) and Elaine Paige in London (First Night), both with
Howard McGillin, return us to the land of belting Renos, but Im going to play eccentric
and confess a fondness for the Australian cast (EMI), with Geraldine Turner, Simon
Burke, and Peter Whitford. This is the snazziest of Anything Goeses, very bright in
sound with stereo effects so marked theyre less separation than geography. Is it that
conductor Dale Ringlands tempi are a hair faster than others? Did the cast all fall in
love that morning? But John McGlinn, as always, recalls to us the original (EMI) in an
archive package, with a years worth of liner notes by Miles Kreuger (including annota-
tions on Porters lyrics), the 1934 orchestrations (with a flourish at the overtures start
that anticipates Richard Rodgers Victory At Sea), a photo-offset of the 1934 playbill
cover and credits, and Where Are the Men?, led by Judy Kaye in occult billing. (Its
her married name.) Frederica Von Stade and Cris Groenendaal take the love plot, Jack
Gilford matches his usual humblebumble with that of his 1934 predecessor Victor
Moore, and Kim Criswells Reno sings I Get a Kick Out of You exactly as Porter wrote
it, in a seesaw between quarter notes and half-note triplets that suggests a serene
flight of the heart over mundane trifles. We should note as well a live 1954 television
Anything Goes (Entertainment One), with Merman, Frank Sinatra, and Bert Lahr. The
production itself is nugatory, but as a preservation of what Merman was like on stage
it is more valuable than any of her movies. Youll even see her acting a bit, as if train-
ing for Gypsy.
The 1930s is the decade in which the American recording industry began to issue
show albums. These were not cast albums in the modern sense; Victors twenty mi-
nutes of The Band Wagon (Sepia, with Inside U.S.A.) on an experimental long-playing
disc used Fred and Adele Astaire, but in non-theatre arrangements. Similarly, Jack
Kapp, then at Brunswick, made full-scale albums of Show Boat and Blackbirds of 1928
(in 1932 and 1933, respectively), using mixtures of cast members and ringers, again
with studio charts. Show Boat suffers from this disembodied rendition, as its an
() Discography
extraordinarily narrative show for its era. But Blackbirds, as a revue, features songs that
create their own theatre vibeand the performances, by Ethel Waters, Bill Robinson,
Adelaide Hall, Cab Calloway, the Mills Brothers, and Duke Ellingtons band, are ex-
tremely juicy. Waters pulls off an in-crowd homage on I Cant Give You Anything But
Love, closing on an ascending scale exactly as Louis Armstrong had done on his single
of the number.
Now comes an insert into history: someone privately recorded, live in New Haven
on the post-Broadway tour, Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 (AEI). The sound varies from distant
to tornado, but one can pick up a great deal of what musicals sounded like in the the-
atre. Note Eve Arden (unbilled) Sprechstimme-ing her way through Thats Where We
Come In. And is that indeed Ethel Merman we hear on two important numbers in an
undocumented substitute gig? The author of the liner notes, David Cunard, thinks it
might be. On the night this Follies was taken down, Merman was still in the cast of
Anything Goes in New York and was not to leave for another four months or so. Still,
listening through the sonic camouflage, Cunard says, The similarity is so vivid. On
certain phrases, it unquestionably is.
The best of all these early show albums is Victors Porgy and Bess of 1935, another
half-and-half: half original people (the conductor and chorus) and half guests (Law-
rence Tibbett and Helen Jepson of the Met). Gershwin himself supervised, getting
Victor to include The Buzzard Song, cut in the theatre to protect Todd Duncans
eight-performances-a-week energy level. Tibbett is stupendous and Jepson pale, but
these eight twelve-inch sides started a debate that continues today: is Porgy and Bess
better served by opera singers or theatre singers?
In 1938, the preceding years The Cradle Will Rock was recorded exactly as it played
on stage (Musicraft, American Legacy), making it the first American cast album, albeit-
piano-accompanied when the work had in fact been orchestrated.* Succeeding albums,
however, continued to filet shows, like Deccas Boys From Syracuse, with cover art
splashed with tasty stage shots but using Hollywoodians Rudy Vallee and Frances
Langford, in six cuts, dully sung. Deccas Panama Hattie, similarly theatrical in its ap-
pearance, offered only four numbersbut sung by the star, Ethel Merman, in topmost
form. Then in the early 1940s, Decca made two Porgy and Bess albums, the first with the
original leads, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, singing everyones roles just like Victors
Tibbett and Jepson. The second album brought in more singers; combined on a single
LP, the two sets constituted the first (sort of) cast album with orchestra, as every solo-
ist (and the conductor) had performed the opera on stage, all but one in the original
company, in 1935.
The first genuine Original Cast Albumthat is, a souvenir of what was heard in the
theatre, and, unlike The Cradle Will Rock, with its orchestration intacthappened by
accident. Failing to conclude a royalty agreement with the recording industry in 1942,
the musicians union declared a strike; no new recordings could be made, even with a
*Worse, this piece eventually collected three more cast recordings (MGM, Jay,
Lockett-Palmer) with piano only, which seems to me an affectation. Is this work
doomed to play its damn-the-torpedoes first night over and over, as if on The Twilight
Zone? Enough already.
As Todd Duncan had recorded Sporting Lifes It Aint Necessarily So in the origi-
nal sessions, MCAs CD Porgy release thought to append a bonus track of a real Sport-
ing Life, Avon Long of the 1942 cast, in the same number. Unfortunately, the engineer
pulled the wrong master, and the CD offers Avon Long in I Got Plenty O Nuttin
Sporting Life singing Porgys number.
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Cradle Will Rock piano. Victor and Columbia, with stockpiles of unreleased classical
performances, held firm. Decca, however, exclusively pop in content, had to keep
abreast of a volatile market; a prolonged strike would bankrupt it. The unions chief,
toil-and-troubling James Caesar Petrillo, tolerated no exception to his ban, but there
was a loophole. Anything related to the war effort was exempt, and Jack Kapp, now at
Decca, seized Irving Berlins all-soldier revue, This Is the Army, and had a hit. Further,
its batch of five discs meant that every sale was a gross saleand the Big Broadway
cast album was born.
Then Oklahoma! opened. The restless Kapp negotiated a separate settlement with
Petrillo in late 1943 and raced Rodgers and Hammersteins western into the studio.
Realizing what an industry-changer the cast album would prove, Kapp didnt wait to
see how Oklahoma! would sell: he knew how it would sell. Even before Oklahomas re-
lease, he captured Broadways next hit, One Touch of Venus; the choruses from a straight
play, the Air Forces complement to This Is the Army, Moss Harts Winged Victory; The
Merry Widow (in a studio rendering with Kitty Carlisle and Wilbur Evans); and the re-
vival of A Connecticut Yankee. This was all before New Years Day, 1944, with Carmen
Jones recorded just after. Decca was to take down over a dozen new shows during the
1940s, also following up on The Merry Widow with a brace of studio cast operettas (in-
cluding The Desert Song and Babes in Toyland, already cited).
The rest of the recording industry settled the strike in November of 1944, though
Victor had already competed with Decca, issuing a 1942 studio cast of This Is the Army
with a house tenor and baritone, adding in Fats Waller for a single cut. The eight sides
contained two numbers not on the original-cast discs, the interpolated Mandy and
That Russian Winter (on Hitlers disastrous Eastern campaign), which amusingly fits
the titles two last two words to the first four notes of The Volga Boatmans Song. With
a good-sized band very much featuring harp and piano as well as a mens chorus, Vic-
tors This Is the Army is almost indistinguishable from Deccas, perhaps explaining why
the earlier recording survived well into the LP era (and, later, made it onto CD), while
Victors was quickly withdrawn, becoming one of the most unknown of show albums.
After the strike was settled, Victor challenged Decca to dueling On the Towns. Decca
(on CD as a bonus with Wonderful Town) offered cast members with Mary Martin
ringed in for the ballads, while Victor (Pearl, Naxos, MCA) had Leonard Bernstein con-
ducting his ballets, the vocals left to unnamed soloists and a chorus. More swordplay:
Deccas Up in Central Park was virtually a cast album (with ringers Eileen Farrell and
Celeste Holm), but Victor (Encore) had Jeanette MacDonald.
Victor also founded its own operetta line to counter Deccas, starting in the mid-
1940s, all under Al Goodman conducting extremely untheatrical arrangements for radio
singers in smoothed-out forties style. Earl Wrightson, Donald Dame, Frances Greer, and
Mary Martha Briney were the usual soloists, but Elaine Malbin, a soprano with blitz,
also took part. She tears the pants off The Firefly with Allan Jones, in the original 1912
numbers but inevitably including the films interpolation of The Donkey Serenade in
its MGM arrangement. After a few years, Goodman took on the latest shows as well as
classics. This led to a curiosity: Goodmans was the sole recording of one of the last really
antiqued operettas, Polonaise, by a bizarre writing team, Chopin and John Latouche.
Goodman recorded even the latest revivals. When a 1951 Music in the Air flopped, Victor
gave up on making the cast album and shunted the title over to Goodmans outfit (Se-
pia). Retaining Jane Pickens of the revival as the only voice against a chorus, Goodman
varied his approach, emphasizing vocals where he had previously hogged the ear with
instrumentals. Then, too, Pickens is more individual than the Goodman regulars, with a
warm high mezzo used sensitively, if without the extravagance of the old-time operetta
() Discography
star. Her The Song Is You is elegantoddly so, considering that, two years before, she
played the overtly destructive title role in Regina, Marc Blitzsteins Broadway opera
based on The Little Foxes. Music in the Air is Goodmans best albumand, to this date,
the only recording, however skimpy, of this important score.
Columbia joined the movement when Victor did, running up a Song Of Norway with
its star, Irra Petina, in another of those untheatrical packages, although the album is
very listenable as sheer Grieg. Decca made the Song Of Norway cast album, replacing
Petina with Kitty Carlisle. Like Carmen Jones, Song Of Norway occupied six twelve-inch
78s, unusually long for the day; the LP release left out bits here and there. At that,
Deccas Bloomer Girl ran to eight ten-inch discs. On CD (MCA), it bears a unique sound,
not only in orchestration but its wide range of singing styles, from Mabel Tagliaferros
gilded-cage flutterings through the somewhat acidic tones of Celeste Holm and Joan
McCracken to the black glee of the jailhouse trio in I Got a Song. This was the decade
when operetta turned into the musical play and when Broadway began seriously to
implement racial integration, and everythings in transition. Bloomer Girl also boasts
E. Y. Harburgs best set of lyrics, lovely in Right As the Rain, whimsical in The Eagle
and Me (with a line that tickles Stephen Sondheim: Ever since that day when the
world was an onion), and scathingly satiric in Sunday in Cicero Falls, the typical
second-act opening broken into warring halves, as Holm rags on sanctimonious
churchgoers. First you get the Chamber of Commerce, then Kathy Griffin.
Another long 78 set was Columbias Street Scene, a full-scale original-cast preser-
vation of a title that, Goddard Lieberson had to know, was not commercially impos-
ing. Lieberson had it in mind to make his label the master of the show album just
when these discs were emerging as an instrument of cultural priority: Victor had
Toscanini, but Columbia would have The Musical. Further, Columbia seized industry
leadership from Victor in 1948, when it offered the LP for national consumption.
(Victor fought back with the 45, a kind of dainty little 78 with the same short side
timings and with technical defects in the thin vinyland the boxes notoriously fell
apart even under normal use. Columbia added injury to insult with sturdier packag-
ing for its 45 sets.) Unfortunately, Liebersons plansand the introduction of the
LPfell in the middle of a second Petrillo strike, which lasted right through 1948 till
the third week of December.
This time, the industry was ready. With January 1, 1948, looming as the strikes
departure point, Decca and Victor rushed three shows into the studio before they had
opened, the former Look, Ma, Im Dancin and the latter Inside U.S.A. and Bonanza
Bound. Dancin had to drop two numbers recorded but cut during tryouts (theyre on
Deccas CD release), and Victors Inside U.S.A. (Sepia), taken down four months before
the premiere, is another of those forties cast albums with a character disorder: using
the stars, Beatrice Lillie and Jack Haley, in non-show arrangements with supporting
people they may not have met, much less played with. More picturesquely, Bonanza
Bound, a Comden-Green (and Saul Chaplin) show, closed in Philadelphia and has
never been officially released. Sepias Inside U.S.A., rich in bonuses as always with this
label, includes not only the Astaires Band Wagon cuts but a Band Wagon from a little
known 1950s Victor series of sixteen 45 EPs (also paired on ten-inch discs) devoted to
classic titles from Shuffle Along to Kiss Me, Kate. There were two Victor Herberts, two
Rodgers and Harts, and so on; each show got four cuts by the best voices around
John Raitt, Doretta Morrow, Lisa Kirk, Jack Cassidy. The discs must have been thrown
together with little rehearsal; on The Band Wagons New Sun In the Sky, Harold Lang
twice sings, incorrectly and ungrammatically, Yesterday my heart sung a blue song.
Its sang.
Discography
With the strike finally ended, Columbia moved as quickly as Decca had in 1943,
speeding the just opened Kiss Me, Kate into the studio and following up with South
Pacific in the spring of 1949. As bestsellers, the two titles convinced consumers still
running a Victrola* to switch over to the LP, creating a sales avalanche and affirming
Liebersons position as a business wizard as well as a supporter of art. There was a third
best seller in this saga, part of a Columbia series that ran into the 1960s to a tally of
some twenty units: Liebersons Pal Joey, a studio rendering sounding very much like a
cast album, with the original Vera, Vivienne Segal andthis was odda dancer who
could sing, the just mentioned Harold Lang, instead of a singer, period. What differ-
ence did it make on a record whether the Joey could dance or not? But what Liebersons
Pal Joey revealed, above all, was that Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, and Brigadoon
were not the first shows with wonderful scores from beginning to endas Liebersons
ensuing releases, of Rodgers and Hart and the Gershwins, demonstrated. Thus, the Pal
Joey can be seen as one of the most influential of show albums, inspiring preservation,
dissemination, revival.
Mary Martin dominated early units in this series; she was the only soloist in Any-
thing Goes and The Band Wagon (together on DRG), and her participation on Girl Crazy
and Babes In Arms is as out of show as her two ballads in Deccas old On the Town.
However, some of Liebersons releases were more theatrical, despite his distaste for di-
alogue cues or spoken repartee between choruses. His 1951 Porgy and Bess (Naxos,
Sony), though heavily cut, remains even now the most dramatic of all, by a company so
stage-routined that some were alumni of the 1935 original. Oddly, at virtually the same
time, Victor recorded a Porgy with Ris Stevens and Robert Merrill in that same old
approach of two (white) singers taking all the leads. There are only eight cuts, including
odd bits, as when members of the Robert Shaw Chorale sing the solo lines in Gone,
Gone, Gone, including those of Porgy and Bess. Merrills voice comes up like dawn in
Mandalay, but mezzo Stevens has to take My Mans Gone Now down two whole steps,
to c minor, robbing the piece of its keening ecstasy. Later Porgys would avoid using
white singers, though one of the very best of the single-disc versions (Victor) once again
let the leads, Leontyne Price and William Warfield, monopolize the solos and duets.
As Liebersons review of the great scores got more dramatic, it lost the feeling of An
Evening With Mary Martin that pervaded the first releases. It helped that Liebersons music
director throughout the series was Lehman Engel, the most exciting of all conductors then
working on Broadway. Even foreign works were put into rotationthe aforementioned
Dorothy Kirsten Merry Widow and two Nol Coward titles, Conversation Piece (Must Close
Saturday, Phantom), with its dialogue, on two LPs, starring Coward and Lily Pons and fea-
turing Richard Burton in a non-singing part; and a Bitter Sweet with Portia Nelson and Rob-
ert Rounseville. Coward so disliked the performance of the latter that Columbia cancelled its
release, though its hard to hear what Coward objected to. Was it the American pronuncia-
tion of Zigeuner and Heigh-ho as Zagoynerrr and Hi-ho? The performance is actually
quite good, with a lot of the between-the-big-numbers musical scenes that were omitted on
the two English studio casts and a real Viennese cimbalom for Nelsons Zigeuner.
*This word was the name of the reproducing equipment manufactured by Victor,
but it came to denote any firms record player, in 78 days. As with Kleenex (for tissue)
and Frigidaire (for ice box), the brand name became the substantive.
One title was denied Engel. He rehearsed Liebersons On the Town, a gala reunion
of most of the original principals, butEngel himself told me thisjust before the
taping, Lieberson announced that Bernstein himself wanted to lead the band and they
both hoped that Engel would, as one of the shows songs puts it, understand.
() Discography
One of the best of Columbias reassessment line was Brigadoon (DRG) with Shirley
Jones and Jack Cassidy (and the original Broadway replacement Meg Brockie, Susan
Johnson). Has anyone else got as much out of a mere B above middle C as Johnson
does on her first note, a Scots sales spiel bit in Down on MacConnachy Square (Now-
www ...)? The mono sonics, constricted even for 1957, obscure the counterpoint of
MacConnachy in both chorus and orchestra, but Engels brisk baton work and the
soloists (Frank Poretta sings Charlie Dalrymple) are excellent. They do not outshine
the original cast (Victor), but Columbia has three songs Victor omitted, including The
Chase, following perhaps the most dramatic first-act curtain of all time with the most
intense second-act opening. Because choreography had become so intrinsic to the
structure of the forties musicaland to its prestigeVictor did include some of the
dance music to Ill Go Home With Bonnie Jean and Come To Me, Bend To Me. Co-
lumbia skipped all the dance music, but John McGlinns recording (EMI), eighty mi-
nutes to Columbias forty-five, has so much Brigadoon in it that even the non-singing
characters get a look in, supporting the very vocal Brent Barrett, Rebecca Luker, Judy
Kaye, and John Mark Ainsley. As so often with McGlinn, the smallest parts are cast
for plush, with Gregory Jbara, Donald Maxwell, Rosemary Ashe, Susannah Fellows,
and irrepressible Shirley Minty. Hearing all the dance musicespecially good in this
showand interstitial bits really gives one the feel of the work, as when the trip back
from haunted Scotland to jaded Manhattan is rendered by the orchestras slapping
Bonnie Jean with a boogie-woogie piano beat.
Before we leave the 1940s, lets consider Sweet Bye and Bye (PS Classics), a glimpse
into the future that closed in tryout in 1946. Another product of the Secaucus Dig
the rediscovery of Golden Age writing and performing materials in the Warner Bros.
music warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey, in 1982Sweet Bye and Bye is a genuine
curiosity, a superb one. The Vernon DukeOgden Nash score is brilliant (sample rhyme:
wish to abscond and a bank and a blonde), and Jason Carrs ingenious new eleven-
piece orchestration sounds like a full pit, with none of the canned yelping of the syn-
thesizer. With so many revivals depending on smaller scoring, Carr is the man of the
future. A vital reading and informative liner notes substantiate this ghost for us: a
must-hear for aficionado and debutant alike.
The acculturation of the LP enhanced the musicals commercial strength to a fabu-
lous degree, for the sleek new discs were so much easier to play than 78s that they
became essential middle-class leisure tools. Deccas The King and I is probably the
least highly regarded cast album of a major show in the postwar decade, lacking the
energy of Oklahoma!, the hammy grandeur of Kiss Me, Kate, the variety of South Pa-
cific, with its burlesque-show Bloody Mary dance and basso cantantes This Nearly
Was Mine. Decca formatted its King and I LP to be compatible with ten-inch-78
sides, so the label cut the score down to only core numbers, some very much trun-
cated at that. Later albums busily filled in the gaps, each with a different selection till
the 1996 revival (Varse) had to collect piquant leftovers (such as Royal Dance Be-
fore the King) just to stay at the party. Decca had as well the problem that singing
was not Gertrude Lawrences forte, and she sounds even less absolute as Anna in
that her successors include Barbara Cook (Columbia), Julie Andrews (Philips), and,
best of all, June Bronhill (Music For Pleasure, EMI). Yet that first King and I brings us
back to a time when these classic titles were innocent of the incrustations of histor-
ical importance, production annals, and analysis they would acquire. Today they are
canonical, but they were innovative when new; heard in their earliest incarnation,
they communicate more directly to us, as something that, once, was a surprise rather
than a landmark.
Discography
the dogs are in the movies curtain calls. Paramounts Lil Abner is the next best thing:
a stagey adaptation retaining Michael Kidds choreography, even for a minor number
like Rag Offen the Bush, a museum piece in the best sense. For Shinbone Alley (1957),
a sound-system audiotape of the complete show (Legend) preserves fifties style, albeit
in the example of an unconventional work. It was an expansion of a smaller piece
drawn from Don Marquis episodic poetry collection archy and mehitabel, on the adven-
tures of, respectively, a cockroach and a cat, and though Shinbone Alley failed, it makes
for lively listening. There is even an actual show-stopper, in Flotsam and Jetsam, for
stars Eddie Bracken and Eartha Kitt. They clearly have a ball with Joe Darions insouci-
ant lyrics and George Kleinsingers merry melody. At the first applause spot, the two
give an encore; at the second, Kitt tries to pick up the next spoken line, but the public
wont stop clapping, and the two have to fill in with ad libs. Says Bracken, as archy the
cockroach, Two of my feet are tired.
This is as good a place as any to consider Lost In Boston, an indispensably brilliant
set of four CDs (Varse Sarabande) on the cut number, mainly from the 1950s and
1960s. Broadways best singers make this a delight as well as an education, because
hearing what authors rejected leads us to comprehend how they relate to their narra-
tives. A few numbers are simply wrongThe King and Is bizarre trio Waiting, when
Anna confronts the King and Kralahome about their business arrangement; or When
Messiah Comes, for Fiddler On the Roof s Rabbi and later reassigned to Zero Mostel,
which treats eliminationist anti-Semitism humorously. Most of the selections, how-
ever, are as listenable as anything in the finished scoresThirty Weeks of Heaven,
from By the Beautiful Sea, set to the breakneck tempo of a no-frills vaudeville tour; or
the original opening of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, An English Music Hall, used in
the recent revival. Kaye Ballard will stop the show in your home with the typical alco-
holics lament, Say When, from On the Town. (Ready for a wee drinkie, she sweetly
tells a passing waiter, You can use my water glass.) Lynette Perry takes control of the
greatest number never heard: Flaemmchen, from Grand Hotel. Ron Raines dives into
Inside My Head, one of the many numbers Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones wrote
while trying to figure out exactly who the sheriff in 110 In the Shade really is. Theres a
nifty surprise in You Dont Have To Kiss Me Goodnight, from The Music Man; who
would have guessed that Zaneeta Shinn (the mayors daughter) and Tommy Djilas had
a song of their own? By the time The Music Man reached Broadwaycopping the Ma-
jestic Theatre because Happy Huntings ticket sales had slumpedZaneeta and Tommy
were little more than part of the Merry Villager body count. Presumably, they would
have been a Second Couple if Meredith Willson hadnt given Winthrop the shows sub-
plot. Steven Orich scores Goodnight (on Lost in Boston III) for a combination of
forties swing band and ragtime, and its another showstopper. Orich has a sense of
humor, too. In Travellin Light, cut from Guys and Dolls because Sam Levene couldnt
grasp the numbers slithery pulse, Malcolm Gets imagines domestic life complete with
the sound of Junior practicing violinand Orich fiddles us Jack Bennys old televi-
sion sign-in theme.
The 1960s brings us to the first truly dark musicalsnot musical comedies with
dark patches, like Show Boat, nor dark shows with, all the same, a lot of comedy, like
Carousel. The truly dark musical, which would culminate in Marie Christine, Parade, Kiss
of the Spider Woman, Spring Awakening, and others such, first turns up in the 1960s in
such titles as Zorb, A Time For Singing, The Yearling, and, slipping over into the 1970s,
Cry For Us All. The genre may be sampled handsomely in Golden Boy (Capitol, Bay Cit-
ies, Angel, Razor & Tie, DRG). In his memoirs, Charles Strouse observes that, at the
end of an extended tryout, Sammy Davis Jr. was near total exhaustion, his voice
Discography
hoarse and strainedand so he sounded on the cast album. At some point early on,
four of his tracks were rerecorded, and he sounds much better, though some feel that
his espressivo was muzzled. Unfortunately, all four CD issues use the retakes, so its
nearly impossible for the curious to audition the differences. The Golden Boy album is
nevertheless amazing. Taking in these very dramatic songs, its hard to believe that
Strouse and Adams are primarily known for Put on a Happy Face and Once Upon a
Time. Theres one odd note, sounded in a neighborhood jamboree called Dont Forget
127th Street, but this bleak story needed a first-act pick-me-up, and Davis ability to
don comic voices ties the number to the rest of the score. Hearing Davis broad dra-
matic range, rich palette of vocal colors, and valiant phrasing, I wonder why the entire
world thinks Frank Sinatra was the outstanding pop singer of postwar America. Note
as well Billy Daniels velvet iniquity on This Is the Life and While the City Sleeps,
the latter a paean to the dolce vita unknown to Scarsdale squares.
Hello, Dolly! and Cabaret represent two sixties opposites, unrevised musical comedy
and the dark show that nevertheless retains certain musical-comedy attitudes (albeit
only in Cabarets original version). In the former title, Victors original cast is a glory of
the catalogue, not only because of Carol Channings star turn but because her support-
ing players are so characterful that, after all this time, no one has rivaled them. This is
especially true in London with Mary Martin (Victor). Martin outsings Channingin
fact, Martin reminds us what a fine singer she was (signed, we should note, by Decca
strictly for her vocal charm in the early 1940s, before she had revealed her gamine
personality). But her London support is lame, and Martins replacement at Drury
Lane, Dora Bryan (EMI, with her Horace, Bernard Spear), similarly left an inconclusive
souvenir of what was hailed as a great performance. EMI recorded also Beryl Reid in
one of the great Why? recordings, because Reid, so treasurable as Connie Sachs in the
two BBC Le Carr Smiley series, was, in 1965the year of the Dolly! recordinga non-
singer known only for her stage run in The Killing Of Sister George. (The movie came out
three years later.) Notable, though, is Reids support, which includes Patricia Rout-
ledge, a sumptuous Irene. Too sumptuous, even operatic. Later, she slimmed her tone
for Darling Of the Day (Victor), in one of the great assumptions of a decade rich in
themInga Swenson, Barbra Streisand, Barbara Harris, Gwen Verdon, Lotte Lenya.
The black-cast Hello, Dolly! (Victor) is astonishingly different from all other Dolly! discs,
and not for the better. Cab Calloways Horace pranks like Sporting Lifecompletely
wrong for this joyless shopkeeper, specifically meant as a foil for the life-loving Dolly.
And Bailey is Lazy Mae, back-phrasing and hashing up the meaning of her lyrics.
Cabarets original cast offers interesting bonuses on Sonys CD release: Fred Ebb
(singing) and John Kander (playing and adding in bits) in cut numbers from their au-
dition LP. The London cast (Columbia) is overpoweredwonderfullyby Judi Dench
in what may be the most underpraised of the great star turns in the musical. There are
just so many the public can absorb before it goes all giddy from exposure to genius, as
if the arts cops, to protect us, had drawn their guns to say, Step away from Patti Lu-
Pone. Yet it is one of the musicals qualities that it is rich in topmost talent. Returning
to Cabaret, we learn great respect for Don Walkers orchestrations in hearing the 1986
London revival with Wayne Sleep (First Night), a regional staging brought in with its
merely functional cast and Teeny Todd scoring (which does at least drop an amusing bit
of Deutschland ber Alles into the finale). On Jay, a two-CD Cabaret gives us bonus
tracks of the extra songs, for, as with Show Boat and Follies, this works score has ex-
panded over time. But Jays cast is a Grand Hotel of styles, from Maria Friedmans fe-
verish Sally to Gregg Edelmans Broadway suave. He gets to sing an added number he
introduced, Dont Go (from the 1987 New York revival), heard also on the Dutch cast
() Discography
(Disky) as Blijf Hier. Jays Schneider and Schultz are Judi Dench and Fred Ebb. Yes,
that Fred Ebb. As performers, the two are so far apart, even in their duets, that they
suggest an I Do! I Do! starring Lady Bracknell and King Farouk.
In the 1970s, DVDs of the original stagings of Pippin and Sweeney Todd, both caught
on tour with cast changes, preserve the work of two very different super-directors, Bob
Fosse and Hal Prince, the former overruling a composition with his staging and the latter
staging the composition. On CD, A Little Night Music and Chicago serve us as models for
the musical play and musical comedy, though other than in completeness of program all
Chicagos are alike. Night Music offers a rare instance of a later production outranking the
original one (Columbia), for a 1990 English studio cast (TER) using some principals and
the twelve-man scoring (adding a percussionist) from a Chichester Festival revival is
very, very beautifully sung by a mixture of opera singers (Bonaventura Bottone and Ja-
son Howard, a Wotan as Carl-Magnus), actors with real voices, and a Desire (Sin Phil-
ips) without one. Elisabeth Welch, who dates so far back in show biz that she introduced
the charleston (in Runnin Wild, 1923), makes an elegant Madame Armfeldt, and every-
thing flows wonderfully under John Owen Edwards. Philips was graduated to the older
role in the National Theatre production of 1995 (Tring), to Judi Denchs Desire (and the
Swiss chocolate heir Laurence Guittard, Carl-Magnus on Broadway in the first Night Mu-
sic cast, now moved up to Frederick). This disc is better acted than sung, though it is
abundantly musical, with eighteen players (to the originals twenty-five) and lashings of
extra melody in the movie version of The Glamorous Life and the cut My Husband, the
Pig. Dench outclasses even Glynis Johns, setting a tone of cunning sophistication to lead
a truly theatrical rendering. It peaks in a breathless Weekend In the Country, so avid in
knotting up the shows plot strands that one virtually sees the curtain falling on Act One.
TER gives us the most musical Night Music, Tring the most characterful.
Yet doesnt it begin to seem that, after the mid-1970s, all casts in new shows seem
more or less the same stylistically? Is it because character writing in the better musicals
is now so preciseso definitivethat it leaves little room for performer initiatives?
For instance, going back to the 1940s, I find a lot of play in how a work can be re-
corded. Take Pal Joey. The touchstone is Goddard Liebersons aforementioned studio
disc with Vivienne Segal and Harold Lang, in print without a break for more than sixty
years as I write. The ensuing 1952 revival starred Segal and Lang, so its original cast
LP (Capitol, EMI) had to replace them, with Jane Froman and Dick Beavers, both sub-
stantial singers. Its a sexy coupling, too; for once, Den Of Iniquity sounds not sport-
ive but sinful. A 1980 London fringe staging (TER) was moved into the Albery Theatre
with its tiny band, though it was able to generate a very fulfilled quotation of The Rite
of Spring at Zips mention of Stravinsky. The small cast took in only girls in the cho-
rus, all directed to sing with the raucous vivacity of the bottom feeder; for once, we
realize how lowdown Joeys career really is. Sin Philips, though classy as ever, delivers
Vera as a kind of triumphant disaster, for, unlike Desire, Vera is a singing role. Philips
forges through it with nine parts authority and one part voice. As Joey, Denis Lawson
uses an aggressive American accent that seems designed to emphasize the characters
mooching self-love; this puts Lawson closest of all Joeys to John OHaras stories. Peter
Gallagher, in Encores!s 1995 concert (DRG), is suave but flavorless, tilting the story
toward Patti LuPones formidable Vera. So there is a lot of room for the interpretation
of these characters, and for varying attitudes in how a staging looks at Joeys world.
In the musical play, lets try Carousel. Billy is its most dramatic (and thus interpret-
able) role, because Julie has nothing comparable to the Soliloquy. John Raitt dominates
this part, having created (Decca) and then restamped it (Victor), in a Lincoln Center re-
vival twenty years later. Interestingly, Raitt doesnt vary his delivery much from song to
Discography
song yet still seems unchallengeable in the role, with a sweet yet virile sound that tries to
mask Billys irritated vulnerability while revealing it. Victors LP yields more of the score
than Deccas five twelve-inch 78s, though Decca was actually quite clever in rearranging
numbers to squeeze in as much as possible. Thus, Mister Snow ends not as on stage but
with the girls interjections from its reprise, and Youll Never Walk Alone starts as on
stage but then switches to the finale setting with full chorus. Further, the Soliloquy was
spread over two sides for a complete reading, including the transition to the ballad-like
final section (When I have a daughter ...), which was recorded also by Frank Sinatra
(Columbia), then cut from the text and never heard again.
In 1955, the first crossover recording of all time gave Carousel opera singers and
Florence Henderson, with an extended reading of the Bench Scene, cut down to If I
Loved You by itself on the Decca 78s. This and Victors Show Boat in 1956 appear to be
Victors imitation of Goddard Liebersons Columbia series of classic scores, with gener-
ous LP sides, little or no cue-in dialogue, and Lehman Engel conducting. But Carousel
needs a more driving Billy than the impersonal Robert Merrill. The other singers
mirror the original portrayals, as does another opera crew in 1962 (Command). This
one is the show-off Carousel, with interferingly noticeable new orchestrations and vo-
cals so grand they sound pushy. Even Alfred Drake, the Billy, gets into it, sounding like
Robert Merrill trying to act. New York City Opera stalwarts Claramae Turner and Nor-
man Treigle are vivid as Nettie and Jigger, but this is the least theatrical of Carousels.
Still, opera singers haunt this work. MCAs 1987 disc, with the score reorchestrated
by five names unknown to me, is the glamor Carousel, with Samuel Rameys absurdly
cultivated Billy and David Rendalls Mr. Snow offering too heroic a tenor for this pomp-
ous goon. The label filled its LP sides at over an hour in nonetheless spacious sonics,
but, again, this is a singing and not a dramatic Carousel. A telling error: MCA gave
Arminys sarcastic solo in Whats the Use of Wondrin to the Julie, Barbara Cook,
pulling her completely out of character.
Billy underwent extreme tempering in Nicholas Hytners 1993 staging for Great
Britains National Theatre, a revisionist interpretation of the entire work in its ecu-
menical Christian exhortation. Michael Hayden, Billy in both London (First Night) and
New York (EMI) casts, is a singing actor rather than an opera singer or, like Raitt, a
singing actor, but he arrestingly emphasized Billys hair-trigger defensiveness and fum-
bling wish to better his lot. Volatile as he leaped from tenderness to anger, Hayden
caught Hammersteins (actually Ferenc Molnrs, in Carousels source, Liliom) paradox
of the slap that bears frustrated love in every scene of his portrayal. He lacked vocal
wallop, but that only underlined his vulnerabilityespecially as the London disc in-
cludes anchoring dialogue, most effectively where The Highest Judge of All had been
before Hytner cut it. The New York disc, which makes many different choices about
what music to program, is better sung overall, especially by Sally Murphy as Julie, Au-
dra (Ann) McDonald as Carrie, and opera glamor diva Shirley Verrett as Nettie. How-
ever, both Jiggers have ugly rasps in lines conceived for a baritone. Does Jigger have to
sound unmusical to be believable as a crook?
Still, there is clearly a lot of variation potential in the playing of classic musicals.
But when we reach the Big Sing pieces that rose up in the 1970spop operas and
shows under their influencethere appears to be only one way to perform them cor-
rectly. Thus, vital and imaginative dramatic leads like Davis Gaines and Howard McGil-
lin find a way to cut themselves down to disappear into the constipated grandeur of the
title role in The Phantom Of the Opera. To state it another way: there are many record-
ings of this work, but they vary only in language or whether they are one or two discs.
In sheer performance, they are all exactly alike.
() Discography
Mr. Goldstone in the published score), with an extra helping of the Merman mor-
dents and her patented oo, a vowel unknown to all other speakers of English. Then the
Jule Styne Swing Number, Youll Never Get Away From Me, which Merman delivers
instrumentally, each phrase reflecting every other phrase, though she lightens the tone
at Come dance with me.
And so on. Sonys latest CD issue even gives Merman Little Lamb on a bonus
track, though she cannot connect with the woebegone Louise, created by the excellent
Sandra Church. A photograph of Church on the rear of the jewel case, in full stripper
kit, impishly pulling at both ends of her long white glove, presents the femme fatale:
picture at an exhibition. Yet her face is that of a kid, too young to be confident and too
sweet for the tease burlesque requires. No: shes the little lamb, truly lost, and Ive
never seen any other Louise pull that off. They always seem to know how the show will
end, like the characters in Merrily We Roll Along knowledgable before their time. But
then, everyone in theatre knows Gypsy now. Church, of the first cast, got to the mate-
rial virgo intacta, and you hear it in her cuts.
Angela Lansburys Rose (Victor) has been overpraised, though she is unquestionably
one of our foremost singing actresses. Hers was a great Rose, no questionbut an odd
one, because Rose is a dumb but shrewd willImakeit? and Lansbury could not hide her
innate intelligence and chic, the qualities that gave her top stardom (after some twenty
years in show biz) in Mame. True, she turned into a proletarian wretch in Sweeney Todd.
But Mrs. Lovett is a clown set into a Greek tragedya cartoon, really. Think of her blithely
loony By the Sea compared with, for instance, all of Todds music. Rose isnt a cartoon.
Lansburys Gypsy opened in London. Crossing the Atlantic to become the Very
Next Rose after Merman, Lansbury enlarged the character, bringing more variety
especially more funto her line readings. In Mr. Goldstone, when Rose catalogues
the stone phyla, from curbstones to gallstones, Merman simply presented the list.
Lansbury acts the moment, scoring each example as if fielding flies. But Lansburys
singing failed the part. Styne composed Rose for a four-wheel-drive sound that so
dominates the auditorium that everyone else is the undercard. Lansbury so to say
manages her way through Roses vocals. Its not Absolute Rose.
Tyne Daly (Electra) was an unexpected Rose, lacking a substantial music-theatre
background. Its worth noting that Lansburys replacement in London was Dolores
Gray, one of the outstanding singers in Broadway history, and so imposing a presence
that when Carnival In Flanders (1953) closed after 6 performances in early September,
Grays nine numbers and stand-and-deliver acting style won her the Best Actress Tony
way at the end of the season, an astonishing achievement. Rose is Singers Property.
Monumental Dolores, stacked and shellacked, with her dont touch me dont even
look eye flashes, would have been less a force of naturelike Mermanthan a power
plant giving off rays of voice-entitlement electricity.
Gray never recorded the role, and Daly was in uncharacteristically poor voice for her
disc. Still, her authority andthis is importantcharm come through, and though we
cannot watch a CD, the booklets photos remind us how great Daly looked in the pe-
riod clothes. Further, its really only her first cut, Some People, that finds her in diffi-
culty. The song lies low, where the notes dont sound; after, Daly rebounds. She gets a
lot out of Youll Never Get Away From Mealso low-lying, but smoother on the vo-
cal cords. Note her little laugh at the end, when Jonathan Hadarys Herbie warns her
that she is too controlling: Rose blithely bats away anything that thwarts her will.
Note, too, that Hadary was let into the score more than his predecessors, taking some
of Roses lines. Later Herbies will do as much, or more. Crista Moores Louise doesnt
seize the role, but Robert Lamberts All I Need Is the Girl is a highlight.
() Discography
Dalys replacement, Linda Lavina very interesting but uncharismatic Rose, all
charmless ambitiondid not record the part, and the next Broadway Rose, Bernadette
Peters (Angel), is the one least well served on disc, for hers is not a natural Rose voice;
much of her fascination lay in her line readings, the most rangy of all the Roses. Peters
rich characterization added sexiness and, at moments, the shadow of a vast inner de-
spair to the standard Rose applications.
Rose is more than domineering: crafty and reckless, a villain. Its not a Peters part.
Still, every artist brings something different to the role, and Peters created a very phys-
icalized Rose, with more body language than anyone else. This Rose had a rack, hips,
moves; she uses men. No arguments, she tells Herbie, shut up and danceand Pe-
ters drawls out dance in a rough intimacy that reminds us that these two are all but
married at this point.
Gypsy is not an especially pictorial show, but Peters director, Sam Mendes, built
around her an eye-filling concept production using a miniature proscenium to frame the
onstage numbers and drawing the ensemble into shifting scenery. It brought home the
notion that everyone in America is in show biz, even if most of them are working
the small time: real life. Mendes also featured June more than most directors do, as
when, in the important scene between her and Louise after the farm sequence, dainty
June most undaintily lit a cigarette with an air of sheer disgust on Kate Reinders pretty
face. As Sartre tells us, hell is other people, especially your mother. My favorite bit of the
Mendes productionanother instance of how visually he saw the pieceoccurred
when Rose and her troupe passed through the stage door of their Wichita booking. Way
upstage, we glimpsed the silhouettes of two baggy-pants comicsan etch-a-sketch of
burlesque and the objective-correlative of Roses doom. She has hit (as the caption sign
placed near the wings states it) The Bottom.
Thus, without Mendes staging and Peters book scenes, her CD is less alluring than
the others. Still, as the first Gypsy recorded for a CDs extensive playing time, it is more
complete than its predecessors. Dalys, one of the last show albums to appear on LP,
clocks in at fifty-four minutes. Peters disc has ten more minutes, allowing for such
niche items as the Entracte (which then skips the second acts opening traveling mu-
sic to present the Toreadorables act), Roses deflated reprise of Small World when
Herbie leaves her, a lengthy version of The Strip, and even a bit of the last dialogue
scene that preserves Peters view of Rose as a born star who could do everything in
show biz except make it. Then, too, Peters is the most lovingly sung of Roses, espe-
cially in Small World, in an unusually upbeat tempo. Its radiant. When Herbie (John
Dossett) joins in at the end, you can hear their chemistry mixing.
Theres something fascinating in the 2008 Patti LuPone Encores! revival (Time/Life).
No, I mean besides LuPone. Its an appendix of seven songs dropped from Gypsy either
before or during rehearsals and, in one case, on the eve of the first tryout performance,
in Philadelphia. Sonys CD issue of the Merman cast includes two of these sung by
demo specialists. Time/Life has recorded them anew with the LuPone cast (and, when
needed, fresh orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick), so we collect these numbers as they
would sound in the theatre. Truth to tell, most of them are of minor interest, though
Herbies Nice She Aint (one of the Sony bonuses, by the way) reminds us that this role
might well have been cast with a singerGeorge Wallace, say. At least Smile, Girls, a
tango for Rose while directing the Toreadorables (thus the songs Latin rhythm), is
rather amusing, and a great Merman number with its blend of sarcasm and pep.
Of greatest curiosity is the often mentioned quodlibet: Rose woos Herbie with
Small World, her daughters make remark in their own little duet, then the two songs
are sung simultaneously. Styne must have thought a lot of the latter number, for it was
Discography
included in the first selection of titles to be offered as sheet music before the New York
premiere, as Mamas Talking Soft. (Yes, with the shows insistent Momma respelled
thus.) Legend tells us that the staging placed the girls on a platform, one had a fear of
heights, and, in the usual mad rush to get a production on its feet in full true for the
first time, the song was dropped, leaving Small World on its own.
I wonder, though, if thats all there is to it. Hearing the quodlibet sung for the first
timethis is its first recordingone realizes that the two melodies simply dont com-
plement each other. In fact, they clash. In a two-part quodlibet, one tune should be si-
lent or sustaining long notes while the other tune is busy. Think of the quodlibet in Call
Me Madam, Youre Just In Lovethe one that Watch Your Step turned into an Irving
Berlin quodlibet festival near the start of this discography. The two melodies disarm
each other, one so smooth (I hear singing and theres no one there ...) and the other
so bouncy (You dont need analyzing ...), each operating at strength only when its
partner is at rest. Gypsys quodlibet is a shambles; you hear everything at the same
time. Im guessing that more than a fear of heights led to its being dropped.
As for the LuPone Gypsy proper, it may be the best since the original. Certainly, Lu-
Pone is vocally the most qualified of Mermans successorsand her instinct for the
telling detail is fiercely at work. As Ive said, Rose is not only a Great Role but one that
attracts great performers, each discovering something unique. I think LuPone discov-
ered Roses vulnerability. Her last dialogue scene, when she virtually admits that she
gave her life away for nothing, was truly shattering. (It actually got recorded, for Barnes
& Noble offered a special two-disc Gypsy with odds and ends on the second record, in-
cluding that final scene.) All along, LuPone gave hints that Rose is not the invincible
powerhouse she seems, as in Youll Never Get Away From Me, wonderfully brought off
with a very able Boyd Gaines. If you heard them out of context, youd take them for a
Boy Meets Girl love couple with no fault line in their relationship and no quake to come.
The entire cast is fine, with an effervescent If Momma Was Marriedbetter on
disc, without the every line enacted in charade staging that director (and, of course,
book writer) Arthur Laurents imposed on it. Conversely, Tony Yazbecks wonderful All
I Need Is the Girl is starved for its staging. Its a no-fail number anyway, but somehow
Yazbecks dancing and commentary (Now Im more debonair) personalized it. The
whole disc is alive, even so. Bill Raymond, uttering Pops words in Some People (You
aint getting eighty-eight cents from me, Rose!) is a jolt of narrative intensity; this is
one of the few men who see right through her. Stephen Sondheim originated this line
on the Merman LP, because the actor playing Roses father had not been called for the
recording session. Immortally, Sondheim fumbles the lines meaning. He says, You
aint getting eighty-eight cents from me, Rose, as though withdrawing from a pool of
contributors.
We are closing with Gypsy because, of all the Great American Musicals, it is the one
unencumbered by the baggage of extra considerations. Show Boat is too big. Follies is
hard to perfect. Other titles, from Oklahoma! and Brigadoon to Fiddler on the Roof and
Hello, Dolly!, require the resuscitation of the original choreography or some genius sub-
stitution. Gypsy, on the other hand, is a simple show, trim and uncluttered. It sums up
much of what happened to the musical during the Golden Agethe development of the
overture as a kind of prefatory tone poem (at first in Show Boat, more commonly in the
1930s), the growing importance of realistic character development (in the 1940s),
the rise of the director-choreographer (in the 1940s and 1950s), the revolution in fast-
moving set changes (in the 1950s especially).
Above all, Gypsy demonstrates the power of smart, funny, naturalistic book conti-
nuity. More and more, Gypsy looks like the ideal show, if not the greatest nevertheless
() Discography
the one without flaws. Yet Arthur Laurents did find fault with one of Gypsys aspects,
and was always scheming to improve it by erasing the huge box at the bottom of the
shows credits: entire production directed and choreographed by jerome
robbins. Laurents staged three of Gypsys four revivals, relentlessly throwing crazy
dust on the very memory of a Jerome Robbins Gypsy, presumably because Robbins
thus maintained eternal authorityeven in deathover Laurents only two unquali-
fied successes in the musical, West Side Story and then Gypsy. Laurents went after both
of them, at last unleashing his West Side Story (in 2009) with some of it translated
into Spanish.
But why stop there? Why not The Desert Song in French and Rifian Berber, The Boys
From Syracuse in Ephesian Greek, Camelot in Old English with Beowulf signing at stage
left? Weve covered so much people territory in this book, with fizzy entertainers from
Weber and Fields and Marilyn Miller right up to Patti LuPone, with writers as diverse
as De Sylva, Brown, and Henderson and Jonathan Larson, from The Wizard of Oz to The
Wild Partys. Its tiresome to end with a personality as mean-spirited as Laurents, for-
ever nosing around to place your insecure spots so he could mug them at whim. But an
intimate anecdote will give us a crisp little departure, and show biz does love a good
story. The diva advises the young actress on the rise, When you exit, take everything
with you, including the grand piano. Well be humble and take almost nothing as we
slip out: I once asked Anne Kaufman, a neighbor of Laurents at Quogue who knew him
well, how anyone so unpleasant could attract and hold a lover as handsome, built, and
blond as Tom Hatcher, and Anne replied, The blond was even worse.
I N DEX
Aarons, Alex A., 113, 115, 133, 158, choices of characters in, 224
16061 and Concept Musicals, 22021, 224,
Abbott, George 240
and Fiorello! 190 dancing in, 212, 240
and Merrily We Roll Along, 264 influence of, 224
and New Girl in Town, 166, 167 as integrated show, xi
and The Pajama Game, 202 and R&Hs management style, 164
and On the Town, 178 score of, 238
and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 168 set design in, 109
Academy of Music, 1516 setmakers of, 159
Adams, Edith, 175 theme of, xi
Adams, Lee, 208, 213, 214, 232 Allen, Fred, 137
adaptations Allen, Robert C., 20
of films, 25556 All Shook Up, 255
television musicals as, 174 Almodvar, Pedro, 275
Adler, Richard, 75n, 189, 202 Ameche, Don, 174
Adonis, 2930, 55 The American Idea, 6364
African Americans Anderson, Maxwell, 147
and Cabin in the Sky, 15051 Andrews, Julie, 164, 194, 196, 199, 200,
and In Dahomey, 128 257
and Finians Rainbow, 177 Andrews Sisters, 235
and Follies, 99, 101 animal fable song genre, 6465
headliners, 19091 Ankles Aweigh, 244
and integrated shows, 177 Anna Christie (ONeill), 16667
and opera pool of Broadway, 155 Annie, 23233
Ah, Wilderness! (ONeill), 60 Annie 2, 132
Ahrens, Lynn, 268 Annie Get Your Gun, 135, 172, 180, 192
Aint Misbehavin, 254 Anyone Can Whistle, 207
Akers, Karen, 242 Anything Goes, 14042
Aladdin, 17475 as classic of the 1930s, 180
Alberghetti, Anna Maria, 175, 191 and Follies, 227
Alda, Alan, 207 and Merman, 90, 134
Alda, Robert, 192 revival of, 192, 24950
Aldredge, Thomas, 190 script of, 140n
Alessandrini, Gerard, 231 Applause, 232
Alice in Wonderland, 76, 263 Apple Blossoms, 5556, 79
Allegro The Apple Tree, 207
characters of, 15859, 162 The Archers, 12
()
() Index
and hits/flops, 225 Street Scene, 17576, 186, 229, 267, 270
masterpieces of, 223 Streisand, Barbra, 20910, 253
and Prince, 76, 223, 264 Strike Up the Band, 31, 113, 13132
reactions to, 22425 Stritch, Elaine, 225n, 229
rules for show business, 22324 Strouse, Charles, 208, 213, 214, 232
success of, 264 Stuart, Leslie, 58, 59
variety in music of, 227 The Student Prince, x, 36, 56, 80, 120,
and West Side Story, 197, 198 125, 166, 227
song genres, 6468 Styne, Jule, 145, 182, 189, 202,
Sophisticated Ladies, 254 203, 204
The Sound of Broadway Music Sullivan, Arthur, 45, 7, 10, 18n, 2728,
(Suskin), 202 76. See also Gilbert & Sullivan
The Sound of Music, 128, 163, 224 Sumac, Yma, 256
Sousa, John Philip, 36 Summerville, Amelia, 30
South Pacific Sunday in the Park With George, 264
and choreography, 161 Sunny, 42
couples of, 173 Suskin, Steven, 202
elements of, 197 Suzuki, Pat, 197
heroine of, 207 Swartz, Mark Evan, 44
music of, 199 Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet
opening sequence of, 16061 Street, 223, 229, 265, 274
performance spots in, 128 Sweet Adeline, 96, 128
and Pulitzer Prize, 190n Sweet Bye and Bye, 184
set design in, 109 Sweet Charity, 21011, 237n
Spamalot, 256 Sweethearts, 79, 8182, 247
Spencer, J. Robert, 266 Sweet Smell of Success, 27475, 277
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, 26970, Swenson, Inga, 216
269n
Spring Awakening, 269 Tabasco, 28
Stamper, Dave, 1023 Tabbert, William, 168, 264
stars and star shows, 2089, 27374 Take a Chance, 167
Steel, John, 99, 101, 102, 105 The Tales of Hoffmann, 18n
Steel Pier, 260 The Talk Of New York, 61
Stein, Joseph, 219 Tangerine, 113
Steinbeck, John, 163 Tarkington, Booth, 272n
The Stepping Stones, 9596, 96n, 218 Tarzan, 256
stereotypes, 22, 2627 The Tattooed Man, 38
Stewart, Michael, 212, 218, 241 Tatum, Marianne, 241
Stiles, George, 257 Tauber, Richard, 57, 124
Stone, Dorothy, 95, 97 Taymor, Julie, 256, 269
Stone, Fred T. B. Harms publishing imprint, 8384,
and extravaganzas, 47, 94 96
The Red Mill, 72, 73, 7475, 80 television
and traditional casting, 68 impact on Broadway, 182
The Wizard of Oz, 4344, 45 television musicals, 17475
Stone, Matt, 260 Tenderloin, 162
Stone, Peter, 270, 271 Terris, Norma, 125, 127
Stop! Look! Listen! 130 Tesori, Jeanine, 236, 259
Stothart, Herbert, 120 Theatre Syndicate, 40
Strauss, Richard, 8, 29, 92 Third Little Show, The, 137
() Index