Arms and the Girl

Nanette Fabray is best remembered today for her supporting role in the 1953 film The Bandwagon. She was a skilled comedienne who starred in a long string of Broadway flops. The cast album for Arms and the Girl is forgettable but Fabray, and supporting comic Pearl Bailey, show considerable charm.

Gwen Verdon Vehicles

The backstage stories are similar too.

Gwen Verdon’s desire to act vs. the producer’s desire for dancing.

Bob Fosse’s desire for dark eroticism vs. the collaborator’s desire to lighten up the source material.

New Girl In Town won Tony’s for Verdon and her co-star, Thelma Ritter, but flopped. Sweet Charity lost Tony’s to Mame and Man of La Mancha but went on to a film and revivals.

It's a shame Verdon didn't get to recreate more of her stage work on film. We're very lucky we got Damn Yankees preserved along with her work on the Ed Sullivan show.

Meanwhile my inspiration at Three Panel Shakespeare has drawn some more musicals of her own including Gwen Verdon's break-out show Can-Can!

Carousel vs. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Quick! Which of these two shows features:

• Ne'er do well fathers who dies young
• Leaving their winsome working mothers
• to raise mopey teenage daughters alone.
• The father returns from the dead to offer the daughter advice at her high school graduation,
• while the wife's feisty best friend provides the comic relief with her own dysfunctional marriage.

If you answered both you are correct!

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn's Johnny never beats his long-suffering wife. He just drinks and gambles away her money while promising to "Buy her a star." Meanwhile Carousel's Billy brings an actual star to his daughter but settles for giving her a slap.