Little Me

Patrick Dennis is best remembered for his 1955 novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade. Mame could be cruel but she had a big heart. There was no heart to be found in his 1961 novel Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of that Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, Belle Poitrine (as told to Patrick Dennis). Belle is ruthless as she sleeps and murders her way to B-movie stardom.

The musical shifted focus to her 7 hapless suitors. All were played by television star Sid Caesar. The show ran 257 performances and received 10 Tony nominations but revivals shutter fast. There’s not much there to work with. If Fosse had collaborated with Kander and Ebb he’d have explored the dark side of Belle’s ambition. Neil Simon’s book isn’t interested in that, or much of anything, beyond broad sketch comedy. Revivals have expanded Belle’s role but rewrites can’t make her sympathetic. The title song, “Little Me,” reminds us that Belle’s greatest love affair is with herself.

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!

On The Twentieth Century

The role of Lily Garland was a showcase for the divine Madeline Kahn. Legends say that a combination of health problems and creative differences led to Kahn's departure 9 weeks into the run. She was replaced by the delightful Judy Kaye and the show lasted 449 performances.

On the Twentieth Century won Tony's for book, score, and leading men, but soon disappeared. Without a star leading lady critics felt their wasn't much point in reviving it. Marin Mazzie headlined a concert in 2005 and Kristin Chenoweth is dominating the current revival. She faces steep competition in the Tony race but the new cast recording suggests that her performance is dynamite!

"Some thought of On the Twentieth Century as Kiss Me, Kate on a train. But the earlier show, despite its marvelous score, mixes a messy chowder of Shakespeare, operetta and vaudeville, while the later show is above all consistent. ~ Ethan Mordden. One More Kiss: The Broadway Musical in the 1970s. 

City of Angels

City of Angels has a fantastic score and great roles for women. The original Broadway production won Tony Awards for best musical, score and book. So why isn't it more frequently produced?

Some say the expense. Stine writes in his screenplay in a color studio while Stone investigates in a black and white film world. Both stories require lots of sets, costumes and characters. It's hard to scale this one down to ten actors and a piano.

Others say the book. Gelbert's libretto is deservedly praised for it's pace and humor. However Stone's mystery is hard to follow, relying on exposition dumps, and Stine's personal problems are hard to sympathize with. Hollywood paid you a fortune to turn your pulp novel into a pulp screenplay? You can't stop cheating on your sanctimonious wife? Gee that's tough.

Gelbert wrote a similarly complex book for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It was peopled with cartoon characters but at the heart was Pseudolus the wily slave. In his "I want" song he tells the audience he longs to be free. That sets the stakes for the rest of the show. Stine sings  that he wants "lots of fun and pots of dough." Understandable but less than compelling.

There's more to Stine if you examine the wish fulfillment in his screenplay. The bully producer who dominates the Stine's world is quickly dispatched on screen. He writes his mistress as a spinster and his upstanding wife as a prostitute. Stone resists the advances of multiple women in ways Stine never could. If we ever got a major revisal I'd love to see all this pay off. Stine could stand to learn a more valuable lesson from Stone than he does in the final scene. Till then I'll settle for the songs.

Life in Showbiz

Marriage vs. Career is a common theme in musical theater. While the leading ladies in my last post had to compromise their ambitions to keep their partners, the leading men in The Will Rogers Follies, Barnum and Stop the World; I Want To Get Off ignore their marriages till death puts a sudden end to them.

Barnum and Littlechap tell their stories in a Circus Ring while Will Rogers performs his in a heavenly Ziegfeld Follies. I almost included Pippin here. His life is presented as a play (and a circus in the 2013 revival) and he contemplates committing suicide rather than settling down with Catherine. Still his quest for meaning takes him many other directions in the first act and his quick foray into a career is quickly abandoned.

Will Rogers and Betty Blake have the least combative marriage of the three couples, though his career leaves her singing "There's No Man Left for Me." Barnum and Cherry's squabbling has a friendly nature to it but Littlechap and Evie turn genuinely sour, not reconciling till late in their lives.

Pioneer Romance Musicals

While Annie Get your Gun has been successfully revived several times, Wildcat has vanished and The Unsinkable Molly Brown is only now seeing a resurgence. Ethel Merman's Annie threw a shooting match to heal the wounded ego of her suitor. Bernadette Peters did the same in 1999 but her suitor caught on and threw his own shot as well. Will the upcoming revisal of Molly Brown put her on equal footing with her spouse? Time will tell.