Hello, Dolly!

Hello, Dolly! is a big brassy star vehicle with a hit title song. The libretto is based on a play by Thornton Wilder which lifted generously from French and Austrian farces. Though Dolly is a matchmaker the story isn't necessarily a romance.

Dolly, Horace and Irene have each survived a spouse and settled into unfulfilling lives. Dolly decides to let her memories go and "rejoin the human race." She learns to like herself again and teaches the others to do the same.

Check out Richard Skipper's collection of testimonials on the many, many divas who've played Dolly Gallagher Levi.

Gershwin series part three

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Girl Crazy. Music by George Gershwin. Lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Book by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. 1930 Broadway

Includes the songs Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm and But Not for Me.

A typical Ginger Rogers role does not believe in love at first sight. Whether you're Allen Kearns or Fred Astaire you have to earn her affection. Girl Crazy would launch the careers of Rogers and a brassy young singer named Ethel Merman. It also proved a delightful movie for a young Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.

I have to make a confession. I'm not a fan of the song "I Got Rhythm." I was in a highschool production of Crazy for You. "I Got Rhythm" is the act one finale and the dancey arrangement lasts about 9 minutes. It felt like 90. It's a different experience with Ethel Merman singing it. She made headlines for effortlessly sustaining the big note as the crowds went wild.

Merman's role had two other songs that I find more interesting. The menacing "Sam and Delilah" and the snarky torch song "Boy! What Love Has Done To Me!" Both were sadly cut from Crazy for You though the supporting woman in that show gets the delightful "Naughty Baby."

Pardon My English. Music by George Gershwin. Lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Book by Herbert Fields and Morrie Ryskind. 1933 Broadway

Pardon My English is less fondly remembered. It provided a showcase for vaudeville comic Jack Buchanan in dual roles. The songs "Isn't It a Pity?" and "The Lorelei" have had some legs and the rest of the score was heard again in a 2004 Encores Concert starring Brian d'Arcy James.

Cole Porter Series part 2

Anything Goes. Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter. Original book by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. 1934 Broadway.

High Society. (1956 Film) Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter. Screenplay by John Patrick. Based on The Philadelphia Story by John Barry.

High Society. (1998 Broadway). Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter. Additional Lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. Book by Arthur Kopit.

Poor Hope and Tracy. Their engaged to unsuitable spouses. The supporting cast must unite to reconnect them with their stalkers exes for true happiness.

The leading lady in Anything Goes is Reno Sweeney. She loves Billy but will devote her time to seducing Hopes fiance and setting her up with Billy. But the plot doesn't really matter. It's all an excuse for Ethel Merman (and subsequent divas) to belt some of Cole Porter's best tunes.

Tracy was the lead in Philadelphia Story. Katherine Hepburn commissioned the play, bought the film rights and saved her struggling career. Hepburn often played strong women who needed to be "tamed." She brought such strength to her roles that her leading men never really cowed her. High Society's Tracy is less successful. The film shifted the focus to her suitors, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Grace Kelly was not a singer and she lacked Hepburn's fire. The Broadway version gave Melissa Errico's Tracy more music but the trunk songs never felt right for her character. Critics recommended that audiences stick with the Hepburn film.

Panama Hattie

Class war is a staple of an Ethel Merman musical.

Disposable love interests are another. Poor Nick Bullet, the aristocrat, appears once on the song list in a duet with Hattie titled “MyMother Would Love You.” The featured duet in a Merman musical was  a friendship duet. Here it’s “Let’s Be Buddies” where Merman wins over Nick’s spoiled daughter.

The stakes are briefly raised with a terrorist attack (!?) but no mad bomber stands a chance against Ethel. 

Gypsy

I've tried to avoid the classics on this blog unless I could find an interesting take on them. In this case I've decided to compare Gypsy and Funny Girl.

Arthur Laurent's libretto for Gypsy has been heavily analysed and highly praised. The show lived past Ethel Merman's original star turn for three revivals, two films and counting. Funny Girl's book was dismissed as weak. The film was heavily edited to focus on it's star Barbra Streisand and subsequent attempts at revivals have yet to secure backing.

Some similarities: Both musicals have backstage rise-to-fame plots, VERY LOOSELY based on real-life stars and scores by Jule Styne. Fanny and Louise both clash with their mothers. Nicky and Herbie both abandon their leading ladies after a dressing room confrontation. Both shows end act one with a rousing song of unhealthy determination.

Later this week I'll look at how the shows differ, and why a Funny Girl revival may be better in our imaginations than in reality.

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.

Happy Hunting

Legends say that "Happy Hunting's" failure is the reason Ethel refused to allow Stephen Sondheim to compose the music for Gypsy. She was done with untested composers.

The libretto is an odd mix of roles old and new, giving her an Annie Oakley childhood, a Sally Adams fortune, monologues to an Ephram Levi-esque ex husband, and some romance aboard an Anything Goes style cruise ship. Though she never played Mame it culminates with a Mame style fox hunt, making nearly everything about the show feel borrowed.

Still she kept her opening number, "Gee! But it's good to be here," in her concert repertoire.

Read more about Happy Hunting here.