Company v.2

A recent production of Company inspired me to revise this comic slightly. The original was in pencil and marker. The revised was drawn with digital pen, keeping the same models but cleaning them up and giving Elaine Stritch more prominence (never a bad thing!).

A Connecticut Yankee

Mark Twain's story was a cynical take down of modern greed. The musical settles for a love triangle. Legends say that Rodgers tried to save his partnership with the alcoholic Larry Hart by pitching a revisal for their Pal Joey star Vivienne Segal. Sadly Hart passed shortly after opening. His last song was a showstopping "To Keep My Love Alive."

The show is not favored for revival due to a dull book that the New York Times called "feeble" in 1943 and "quaint" in 2001. The songs "Thou Swell" and "My Heart Stood Still" were hits and "To Keep My Love Alive" has been recorded by the likes of Mary Testa, Ella Fitzgerald and Elaine Stritch.

The Bing Crosby film in 1949 used the same source story but a different (and in my opinion inferior) score.

Wonderful Town - Quick Sketch

Wonderful Town

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

Book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov

Broadway 1953

Ruth Sherwood may have felt overshadowed by her sister Eileen but the stories she wrote about their life launched a successful franchise. My Sister Eileen was adapted into a hit Broadway play, a film, a TV series (starring Elaine Stritch!), and two competing musicals!

Columbia Pictures' film musical featured a sexy challenge dance between Eileen’s suitors, Bob Fosse and Tommy Rall, but Bernstein, Comden and Green’s Wonderful Town had the longer shelf life. The show rejuvenated the career of Rosalind Russell and boosted the profile of Donna Murphy in a successful revival.

10/25/2016 - Here is an updated comic:

Company

Larry Kert: Who do you have to f**k to get out of Company?  

Stephen Sondheim: The same people you f**ked to get in it. Happy birthday, Larry.

Dean Jones: I went out there in Boston and sang this song ‘Happily Ever After’ and I could feel the audience asking me, ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ I saw their eyes widen as they asked, ‘Why do you hate us?’”

Company gave Elaine Stritch her signature song, frightened off its first leading man, and kicked off Sondheim’s most prolific decade.

Ethan Mordden: No show was as misunderstood as Company. This is odd, because its theme is very clearly stated: the absolute intimacy of marriage is very difficult but very necessary…. Sondheim spend the 1970s producing five consecutive masterpieces… yet was, at that time but not after, the most contested major talent in the musical’s history…. Rodger’s and Hammerstein were accepted masters at that time and after- taken, even, for granted. Sondheim was argued.

*** Update 7/18/2016

A recent production of Company inspired me to revise this comic slightly. The original was in pencil and marker. The revised was drawn with digital pen, keeping the same models but cleaning them up and giving Elaine Stritch more prominence (never a bad thing!).

Sail Away

To be a professional pepper upper/ isn’t everyone’s cuppa tea.

But I've wit and guile / and a big false smile

And the tourists rely on me

Noel Coward was impressed by Elaine Stritch’s performance in Goldilocks and offered her a supporting role in his new musical Sail Away. Stritch’s cruise ship hostess would supply the comedy while Jean Fenn’s tourist would engage in a bittersweet romance.

Ethan Mordden (Open a New Window): “Stritch confronted Coward with the rumor that one of the woman leads was going to have her name listed last and set off in a box with the word “and” in front of it. The exasperated Coward replied ‘she shall have her name listed last and set off in a box with the word ‘but’ in front of it.”

Out of town audiences were bored so Fenn’s role was cut and Stritch’s role built up to get the love interest and the jokes. She was a smash. The show wasn’t.

Howard Taubman (New York Times – 1961 review) “As Mimi, the brash, energetic, implacably vivacious cruise hostess, Elaine Stritch gives what must be the performance of her career. She reads lines like an unerring marksman.” Ben Brantley (New York Times – 1999 concert) “Critics fell to their knees in adoration in 1961.That adoration did not extend to Sail Away itself. ''The general feeling was that in 1936 it would have been the best musical of the year,'' wrote the actor Graham Payn, Coward's companion. ''In 1961 it ran for five months.'' The reasons are still apparent.” Ken Mandelbaum (Not Since Carrie): “The failure of both her star vehicles, Goldilocks and Sail Away, did irreparable damage to Stritch’s career.”

It would take eight years for Stritch to appear in another musical on Broadway.

Goldilocks

Who’s been sitting in my chair? Just me. Just me.

By 1958 Elaine Stritch had sung a solo in the revue Angel in the Wings,  played featured roles in revivals of Pal Joey and On Your Toes, and understudied Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam. Goldilocks was to be her breakout starring role. There were some fun songs and a comic supporting role for Margaret Hamilton, but the book was a third-rate Kiss Me Kate. The show closed in 5 months.

Brooks Atkinson – New York Times - 1958

The book undoes what the actors and collaborating artists accomplish, which is a pity…

Miss Stritch can destroy life throughout the country with the twist she gives to the dialogue. She takes a wicked stance, purses her mouth thoughtfully and waits long enough to devastate the landscape.

Elaine Stritch on the dancing bear: “I think he was more or less the funniest guy I worked with - well, certainly in that show. I didn’t like any of the directors. I didn’t like - what else didn’t I like? The whole production.”

Noel Coward was impressed by her performance and offered her a role in his new musical. More on that tomorrow.