Destry Rides Again

All this talent and labor has been squandered on a conventional Western story written by Leonard Gershe and based on a story by Max Brand. There are times when it seems to be a cartoon on the Western stencil. It seems to be poking fun at itself, hoping to have its cake and eat it also. ~ Brooks Atkinson. New York Times.

Destry Rides Again is a comedy and could easily be played for full blown camp, ala Blazing Saddles. Still Deputy Destry and the two unfortunate sheriffs carry a kernel of drama. Jimmy Stewart’s Destry refused to carry a gun… until he did… in the 1939 film. Andy Griffith’s Destry tricks the villain into betraying his henchmen, who take swift revenge. 

While Destry drives the plot the redemptive arc goes to Frenchy. Legend has it that the diva-tastic Dolores Gray’s temper kept her from achieving full stardom. In Destry Rides Again she got a dandy vehicle that featured her in nine songs. Marlene Dietrich died in Stewart’s arms but Gray got to walk with him into the sunset.

Carnival!

Lili has her sorrows and romantic frustrations. They do not seem to be deep, but when she grows up at the end, “Carnival!” achieves an effect of honest emotion. That is quite an achievement for any musical. ~ Howard Taubman. New York Times. 1961.

Lili may be the most unworldly heroine ever in a Broadway musical, dangerously blurring the lines between innocence and mental deficiency… But there were glimmers of a more cynical attitude in ''Carnival,'' anticipating the self-hating, self-worshiping portraits of theater folk by Bob Fosse. ~ Ben Brantley. New York Times. 2002.

I Can Get It For You Wholesale

How much can an anti-hero get away with in a financially successful musical? The onstage Harry Bogen was guilted out of his worst act in the source novel but his victims were more sympathetic than those of J. P. Finch or Pal Joey.

Regardless, Harry Bogen is not the one folks remember from Wholesale today:

The evening’s find is Barbara Streisand, a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh. Miss Streisand is a natural comedienne, and Mr. Rome has given her a brash, amusing song, “Miss Marmelstein,” to lament her secretarial fate.

~ Howard Taubman. New York Times. 

Jerry's Big Ladies!

“Mame is also the most basic of sixties titles, in a form invented in this decade, which I call the Big Lady Show. This is a star vehicle that doesn’t wait for you to be enthralled by the star: it vigorously informs you that the star is enthralling - in writing and direction that make her almost absurdly conspicuous." ~ Ethan Mordden.

Mame and Hello Dolly were big successes that featured a wide range of stars, though both suffered from miscast film versions. Dear World's source material defied adaptation to the formula and suffered despite a fantastic lead performance.

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.

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan provide an easy candidate for Musical Madlibs as they wrote their most popular works in quick succession for the same company. Their attempts to find variations on a theme were hilariously documented in the film Topsy-Turvy.