The history of Anything Goes after its premiere in 1934 differs markedly from the fate of Show Boat discussed in the previous chapter. The original 1927 Broadway version of Show Boat was superseded by Kern and Hammerstein’s own rethinking of the work in the 1946 revival that included a reworked book, several deleted songs and a brand new one, and new orchestrations. As we have seen, after Hammerstein’s death in 1960, the 1971 London and 1994 Broadway Show Boat revivals presented conflated versions of the musical that included songs from various earlier stage productions (New York, 1927; London, 1928; New York, 1946) and also songs from the 1936 film classic. Some of the original as well as interpolated songs were also either placed in different contexts or distributed to different characters.
Despite these liberties, both the 1971 London and 1994 Broadway revivals contained interpolated songs that had been associated with one version or another of this musical (“How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” from the 1971 London production is an isolated exception). In contrast, the Anything Goes revival in 1962, the version distributed to prospective producers until replaced by the 1987 revival, incorporated no less than six songs out of a total of fourteen from other Porter shows (“It’s De-Lovely,” “Heaven Hop,” “Friendship,” “Let’s Step Out,” “Let’s Misbehave,” and “Take Me Back to Manhattan”). Also, in 1962 the order of several songs was rearranged and, ironically, a thoroughly revised book was written by Guy Bolton, who had prepared the original scenario early in 1934 and with P. G. Wodehouse had submitted the rejected 1934 book.
The 1987 revival contained yet another new book, this time by Russel Crouse’s son Timothy and John Weidman.14 This book retained two of the interpolations from 1962 (“It’s De-Lovely” and “Friendship”), and added two other Porter tunes from shows that had not even appeared on Broadway, “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye” from O Mistress Mine, a 1936 musical produced in London, and “I Want to Row on the Crew,” from the Yale fraternity show Paranoia of 1914. The 1987 production also rearranged the order and dramatic context of several other songs from the original 1934 Broadway run. Most strikingly, the 1987 revision resurrected three songs that had appeared at various phases of the 1934 tryouts and initial run: “There’s No Cure like Travel,” “Easy to Love,” and “Buddie, Beware” (see the online Appendix for the sources of all the interpolated songs).
One year before criticizing the undramatic use of recitative in the Theatre Guild production of Porgy and Bess, Brooks Atkinson reviewed the Broadway premiere of Anything Goes. The review is an unequivocal rave of “a thundering good musical show” with “a rag, tag and bobtail of comic situations and of music sung in the spots when it is most exhilarating.”15 Most surprisingly from a modern perspective is the fact that Atkinson praises the book, not as a work of art, perhaps, but as a well-crafted vehicle to set off William Gaxton’s talent for wearing disguises and the comic characterization of Victor Moore’s Moon, “the quintessence of musical comedy humor.” Atkinson does not feel the need to consider Anything Goes as anything other than the “thundering good song-and-dance show” it purports to be.16 Another reviewer, Franklin P. Adams, lambasted the songs from Anything Goes (because they were difficult to remember or whistle), but offered no negative remarks about the book.17
Like Atkinson’s newfound distaste for On Your Toes upon its ill-fated 1954 revival (discussed in chapter 5), the New York Times review of the 1962 Off-Broadway revival, twenty-eight years after Anything Goes made its debut, demonstrates that a new standard for musical theater had evolved during the intervening years. In contrast to Atkinson’s appreciation of the original book, Lewis Funke wrote that “if you can get by the deserts that lurk in the libretto, knowing that there always will be that oasis of a Cole Porter tune waiting at the end of each rugged journey, you may find yourself enjoying the revival of Anything Goes.”18 In Funke’s account, “only some of the lines retain their mirth” and the encapsulated plot summary that he offers serves merely to remind sophisticated 1960s audiences that “those were simple days in musical comedy.”19 What Funke neglects to report is that the book he is criticizing is not the 1934 book by Lindsay and Crouse but a version rewritten in 1962 by Bolton.
In his autobiography, director and librettist George Abbott (1887–1995), who authored or co-authored books for an impressive array of musicals, including On Your Toes, The Boys from Syracuse, Where’s Charley?, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, and Fiorello!, discusses a review of a 1963 Off-Broadway revival directed by Richard York of the 1938 Rodgers and Hart classic The Boys from Syracuse:
I was delighted to read of its outstanding success, and distressed that some of the reviewers referred to the old-fashioned jokes in the book. But I was puzzled when one of the reviewers cited one of these jokes, a corny pun: “Dozens of men are at my feet.” “Yes, I know, chiropodists.” This kind of humor is so alien to me that I knew I could never have written it; and when I got back to New York I found that the “old jokes” in the revival were new jokes inserted by Mr. [Richard] York to “modernize” the script. I took out some of these gags, but because the production as a whole was so delightful, I couldn’t get very angry.20
It has become a commonplace almost universally shared by writers on Broadway musicals—along with directors and producers—that weak books are the main reason for the neglect of most musicals before Oklahoma! and Carousel. For this reason, after Rodgers and Hammerstein began an irreversible vogue for integrated book musicals, revivals of musicals were almost invariably accompanied by a team of doctors performing major surgery that included the reordering of songs and interpolations from other musicals of the same composer.
This type of surgical procedure begs several questions that merit further exploration. Is the idea of the so-called integrated musical heralded by Rodgers and Hammerstein in the 1940s intrinsically superior to a musical with an anachronistic book and timeless songs? Are the books of the 1930s as weak as later critics make them out to be? Can some of the alleged weaknesses be attributed to the modernized books rather than to the originals? If the books of 1930s musicals are weak, why are they weak, and can they be salvaged by revisions and interpolations? Is it really a good idea to strip the original books down to their underwear and then dress them up again with as many songs as possible from other shows? Or can reasonable men and women provide an acceptable modern alternative? Are modern actors unable to successfully recapture and convey an older brand of comedy? Might the problem with Anything Goes stem more from an incongruity between music and text than from a diseased book?
Part of the answer to these questions might be traced to evolving social concerns rather than aesthetic considerations. Our current sensitivities and our understanding of topical issues are no longer what they were in 1934. As Porter would say, “times have changed.” The following chapter will suggest that much of the criticism of Porgy and Bess, which followed the Porter hit one year later, was due (especially after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s) less to its artistic qualities than to its perceived perpetuation of negative black stereotypes and Heyward’s and Gershwin’s presumption to speak for blacks. In Show Boat, changing sensitivities made it necessary for Hammerstein to alter offending references, and later versions, especially the 1951 MGM film and the 1966 Lincoln Center production, tried to deflect criticism by minimizing the miscegenation scene and the role of blacks in general. Most musicals suffer, some irreparably, when their depiction of women is judged by feminist standards that emerged in the 1970s (see the discussion of Kiss Me, Kate in chapter 10).
Although increasing sensitivity to ethnic minority groups or to women is probably not the major obstacle to the revivability of Anything Goes, the stereotypic depiction of Reverend Dobson’s Chinese converts to Christianity, Ching and Ling (and the pidgin English adopted by Billy and Reno when they put on Ching’s and Ling’s costumes), were subsequently considered to be racially insensitive. In act I, scene 6, of the 1934 libretto, Moon refers to the converts as
“Chinamen”; in the analogous place in 1962 he refers to them as Chinese.21 In 1987 Reverend Dobson was still accompanied by two Chinese converts, but their names have been changed to the more biblical John and Luke. The new authors also took care “to give them independent comic personas and not base the humor on the fact that they’re Chinese.”22
In response to dated slang, Crouse (the younger) and Weidman removed some “terrible words in the language like, ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’” and other topical words and phrases that required a 1930s cultural literacy alien to later audiences.23 But since the lyrics to the musical numbers were considered untouchable onstage, if not the screen (see the discussion of the Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate film adaptations in chapters 8 and 14, respectively), the removal of “wacky” and “zany” do not fully solve the problems of topicality. In the preface to his essay “The Annotated ‘Anything Goes’” that accompanies McGlinn’s reconstructed recording, Kreuger describes the audiences for this and other 1930s shows as a “constricted group of cognoscenti, who went to the same night spots, read the same newspaper columns, and spent weekends at the same estates,” and were therefore “swift to pick up even the most obscure references in all the lyrics.”24 Kreuger goes on to explain the meaning of seven references in the title song and no less than thirty-eight topical references in “You’re the Top.”25
Although this level of topicality is problematic to modern audiences who have neither lived through the 1930s nor had the opportunity to study Kreuger’s annotated guide, it might also be said that Porter’s lyrics presented problems to his British neighbors in his own time. In fact, in preparing for the London opening of June 14, 1935, Porter was asked by producer C. B. Cochran to remove several incomprehensible Americanisms when he took his show across the Atlantic. Eells mentions a few of these changes: “Cole agreed and set about converting the Bendel bonnet into an Ascot bonnet; a dress by Saks into one by Patous; and the eyes of Irene Bordoni into those of Tallulah Bankhead.”26 Nevertheless, in contrast to audiences who attended the 1962 and 1987 productions, most 1930s audiences, both in New York and London, would have recognized the parodistic parallels between Reno Sweeney, the evangelist who became a singer, and the then-famous evangelist Aimée Semple McPherson.27 What about audiences in 1962 or 1987 and beyond? And does it matter?
In a New York Times interview that appeared shortly before the 1987 revival, the younger Crouse and Weidman admit to adding even more “swashbuckling slapstick gags” to their updated version, although they quickly add that none of these new gags were “gratuitous” and that they are “all closely tied to the plot.”28 Crouse and Weidman also express their intention to take their characters “more seriously” and to make them three-dimensional (or “maybe two and two-thirds”).29 In a feature story on Anything Goes that also appeared several days before the premiere of the 1987 revival, director, editor, and dramaturge Jerry Zaks discusses his search for a theme (“people dealing with the ramifications of trying to fall in love”) and explains his intention “to ground everything in a recognizable reality,” that is, to remake the book in a post–Rodgers and Hammerstein image. He continues with a telling example: “In previous versions of the show, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, with whom Reno Sweeney falls in love, is someone so totally foppish and out of touch with his sexuality that she ends up looking stupid for having fallen for him. Both in the book and the casting we tried to suggest the potential for a real relationship between them.”30
Zaks makes a good point. When Sir Evelyn is introduced in 1934 (scene 2) his masculine identity is immediately called into question:
REPORTER: Sir Oakleigh, you and Miss Harcourt. Right here, please. (SIR EVELYN OAKLEIGH and HOPE HARCOURT are pushed into focus) Society stuff.
CAMERA MAN: What are their names? Who are they?
REPORTER: Sir—what’s your first name?
OAKLEIGH: Evelyn.
1ST CAMERA MAN: Not her first name—your first name!
When in act II, scene 1, Sir Evelyn relates that he “had an unpremeditated roll in the rice and enjoyed it very much” with a Chinese maiden named Plum Blossom, his admission may be taken more as a boast of his full-blooded heterosexuality than the confession of a sin. And Reno, who has experienced chagrin that Evelyn has been treating her every inch a lady and is much relieved by this welcome revelation, immediately responds accordingly: “Brother, I’ve been worried about you but I feel better now.”31 Reno will repeat this sentiment in both 1962 and 1987.
The main reason that the generally stiff and staid Sir Evelyn provides a less-than-perfect match for the exuberant Reno in the original Anything Goes is more substantive than his androgynous first name and questionable heterosexuality: the Englishman is never allowed to sing. Although his sexual identity is eventually resolved to the satisfaction of a 1930s audience, his non-singing status significantly reduces his dramatic identity. In a musical (or opera) a character who does not sing—for example, Parthy before the 1994 Show Boat revival (discussed in chapter 2)—proceeds at his or her own peril.
Apparently, future book doctors saw this as an illness that needed a cure. Thus in the 1962 revival Bolton celebrates Sir Evelyn’s emergence as a regular fellow in act II, scene 1, by letting him sing an innocuously risqué interpolated duet with Reno, “Let’s Misbehave.” In 1987 Sir Evelyn remains musically silent in his stateroom scene with Reno but eventually emerges in act II, scene 3, with his own song for the first time, “The Gypsy in Me,” a song that Hope sang in the 1934 original and no one sang in 1962.32
Extending the premise that a musical comedy character will be denied three-dimensionality or identity if he or she is not allowed to sing, even Billy’s boss, Elisha J. Whitney, is given a brief interpolated song to open act I, scene 4, in 1987. On this occasion he sings “I Want to Row on the Crew,” borrowed not from Broadway but from one of Porter’s fraternity shows at Yale. The ship’s deck becomes even more crowded when Moon’s female accomplice, Bonnie, is given two interpolated numbers in 1962 (“Heaven Hop” in act I and “Let’s Step Out” in act II). In 1987 Crouse and Weidman discard these interpolations and in act II give Bonnie (now named Erma) “Buddie, Beware,” the tune sung briefly by Ethel Merman as Reno in the original Broadway production before she persuaded Porter to give his late-arriving friends an opportunity to hear a reprise of “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
In the 1987 revival words such as “wacky” and “zany” had been replaced, offending ethnic stereotypes were removed, and all the important characters were dramatically enhanced and, more important, allowed to sing. But do these changes make the 1987 Anything Goes superior to the original? Is it any funnier to hear a new set of topical jibes at Yale, Porter’s alma mater, in a libretto created by two former Harvard roommates? Is it an improvement that Reno in 1934 is asked by Billy to seduce Sir Evelyn while in 1987 Reno meets and falls in love with the Englishman on her own?
What is lost and gained by this book surgery? Gone from latter-day versions of Anything Goes, for example, is much of the Marx Brothers humor built on puns and misunderstandings. Note the following exchange between Mrs. Wentworth (a humorless society matron not unlike Groucho’s Margaret Dumont) and Moon, an exchange missing from the 1962 and 1987 revivals. Are modern audiences better or worse off for its absence?
MRS. WENTWORTH: We have a great deal to talk about. You see, I’m honorary president of the Texas Epworth League.
MOON: Oh, the Texas League—you must know the Dean Boys.
MRS. WENTWORTH: The Dean boys?
MOON: Yes, Dizzy and Daffy.
MRS. WENTWORTH: No, I don’t remember them—
MOON: Well, you ask the Detroit Tigers about them. They remember them.
MRS. WENTWORTH: The Detroit Tigers? I know a family in Detroit named Lyons.
MOON: Lyons? Well, I know Maxie Baer [the boxing champion], but he’s from San Francisco.
MRS. WENTWORTH: Ah, San Francisco. Have you ever been there?
MOON: I summered a few years at San Quentin.
MRS. WENTWORTH: San Quentin … Is that near Santa Clara?
MOON: Clara wasn’t there when I was there. I wonder what ever became of Clara?
MRS. WENTWORTH: I’m not sure I understood what you just said.
MOON: Well, I wasn’t listening.33
Some things about the evolving Anything Goes books stay the same the more they change. In 1987 Billy still has the opportunity to reply when asked his nationality that he is Pomeranian—the beard he is wearing was taken from a dog of that breed—even though Reno no longer notices that Billy is “putting on the dog.”34 Although many of the original puns and gags had disappeared by 1987, one 1934 line, “calling all pants,” remained a part of Anything Goes scripture because it always got a laugh, even though no one involved in the production was able to explain why it was so funny or even precisely what it meant (the discussion of the 1936 film adaptation of Anything Goes in chapter 8 should hopefully clear up this mystery).
Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Page 9