Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber
Page 16
Pal Joey. Gene Kelly in right foreground (1940). Photograph: Vandamm Studio. Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection.
After two successful revivals at the New York City Center in 1961 and 1963 (both with Bob Fosse in the title role), the artistic and commercial failure of a 1976 revival at New York City’s Circle in the Square—abandoned by New York City Ballet star Edward Villella shortly before opening night—would not cause Pal Joey to lose its place as a classic American musical, a place firmly established by the 1952 revival. As another sign of its artistic stature Pal Joey became the earliest musical to gain admittance in Lehman Engel’s select list of fifteen canonic musicals.46 For Engel, Pal Joey inaugurated a Golden Age of the American musical.47
Pal Joey in 1940 and 1952
Compared to the liberties taken with the 1962 Anything Goes and the 1954 On Your Toes, the 1952 Pal Joey revival followed its original book and song content and order tenaciously. Nevertheless, some of what audiences heard and saw in 1952 departs from the original Broadway production. For example, in the 1952 revival, “Do It the Hard Way” is placed outside of its original dramatic context (act II, scene 4), when it is sung by Joey to Vera in their apartment; in 1940 this song is presented as a duet between Gladys and Ludlow Lowell in Chez Joey one scene earlier.48
The 1952 lyrics also depart in several notable ways from O’Hara’s 1940 typescript.49 In 1940 Hart concluded the chorus of “That Terrific Rainbow” (act I, scene 3) with the following quatrain: “Though we’re in those GRAY clouds / Some day you’ll see / That terrific RAINBOW / Over you and me” (preserved on the pre-revival recording); for the 1952 revival someone (presumably not Hart) replaced two lines of this lyric with one that is grammatically incorrect, perhaps to emphasize the amateurish nature of the song. Thus “Some day you’ll spy” now rhymes with “Over you and I” (Hart rhymed “someday you’ll see” with “over you and me”). This alteration was adopted in the 1962 vocal score published by Chappell & Co.
The topical “Zip”—a song in which newspaper reporter Melba Snyder (played in the revival by Elaine Stritch) acts out her interview with Gypsy Rose Lee, “the star who worked for Minsky”—also underwent several lyrical changes in 1952. In the revival Melba opened the song with Hart’s earlier version of the first lines when she recalls her interviews with “Pablo Picasso and a countess named di Frasso.” It is possible that Picasso and di Frasso were more recognizable to an early 1950s audience than the revised 1940 lyric that paired Leslie Howard and Noël Coward. In the final chorus the then-better-known Arturo Toscanini replaced Leopold Stokowski as the leader of the “the greatest of bands,” and one stripper (Lili St. Cyr) replaced another (Rosita Royce). Even present-day trivia buffs could not be expected to know who either stripper is (although it might be said that Lili St. Cyr has achieved immortality by being mentioned in “Zip”). The 1952 version of “Den of Iniquity” (act II, scene 2) replaced Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with Ravel’s Boléro and added a final lyrical exchange between Joey and Vera after their dance.50
In his autobiography Abbott somewhat exaggeratingly refers to a preliminary script by librettist O’Hara as “a disorganized set of scenes without a good story line [that] required work before we would be ready for rehearsal.”51 In fact, although it contains no lyrics among its indications for songs and displays several notable deletions and departures from his Broadway typescript in 1940 (including an ending in which Linda and Joey are reconciled), in most respects O’Hara’s preliminary typescript follows the story line of the 1940 version closely.52
Some songs that became part of the Broadway draft, “That Terrific Rainbow,” “Happy Hunting Horn,” and even “Bewitched,” were not given any space at all in O’Hara’s preliminary script. Further, the early typescript offers no indication for a ballet, an idea that Abbott credits scene and lighting designer Jo Mielziner for suggesting during rehearsals.53 The dialogue that precedes “The Flower Garden of My Heart” in the published libretto is also missing from the earlier draft, but in this case O’Hara’s description of this production number (original draft, beginning of act II) leaves no room for doubt that he was responsible for the idea of the ballet:
The song is Richman corn [Harry Richman, who introduced Irving Berlin’s song “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in the 1930 film also called Puttin on the Ritz], the flower number kind of thing—every girl reminds me of a flower; here is a hydrangea, here is a crocus, etc. a YOUNG MAN stays in the spotlight, holding out a hand for Hydrangea, who is in silly nudish costume. He never quite lets her get all the way in the light, but hands her away with one hand as he reaches for Crocus with the other. He looks at the fannies etc. in a way to make them ridiculous, and is mugging terribly, even in rehearsal.
Song and Story
O’Hara’s typescript of the 1940 Broadway libretto (I-6–36) contains handwritten changes for “Bewitched,” the biggest song hit from Pal Joey. Here are the typed lyrics as they once appeared in the B and final A sections of the third A-A-B-A chorus.
B
We can fight—we start shrieking
Always end in a row,
Horizontally speaking is not the whole thing now,
A
I’m dumb again
And numb again
Like Fanny Brice singing “Mon Homme” again.
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
The draft poses a cultural literacy problem for those who might not know, even in 1940, that Fanny Brice sang “My Man” in Ziegfeld 9 O’Clock Frolic (1920) and Ziegfeld Follies (1921), or that this song was originally the French song “Mon Homme” by Maurice Yvain and Channing Pollock.54
Fortunately this lyric was abandoned. The first three lines were crossed out and replaced with the following handwritten script for the B section with the forced rhyme pal / verti-cal:
When your dream boat is leaking
And your pal ain’t your pal
Geometrically speaking just keep it vertical
The final version published in 1940 with its paired rhymes in B, is not indicated in the O’Hara typescript:
B
Though at first we said, “No sir,”
Now we’re two little dears.
You might say we are closer
Than Roebuck is to Sears.
A
I’m dumb again
And numb again,
A rich, ready, ripe little plum again—
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
All of these versions are variations on a theme that Hart explored in numerous songs, including “It’s Got to Be Love” discussed earlier: love as a sickness. Vera, the restless wife of the wealthy Prentiss Simpson, is generally in control of her emotions and entertains no delusions about the cause of her sleepless nights. In the verse that precedes the chorus she even refers to Joey as a “fool” and a “half-pint imitation,” but even this realization does not prevent her from catching the dreaded disease.
In his autobiography Rodgers recalls what he learned from his training in Goetschius’s class of five students: “Whenever Goetschius talked about ending a phrase with a straight-out tonic chord (the first, third and fifth step of any scale), he would call it a ‘pig,’ his term for anything that was too easy or obvious. Once I heard the scorn in Goetschius’ voice I knew that I’d avoid that ‘pig’ as if my life depended on it.”55 In “Bewitched” (Example 5.6) Rodgers avoids the infelicitously named “pig” at the end of the second eight-measure A section. He does this by moving to an A in measures 15 and 16 on the word “I” rather than the expected first note of the scale, F (also on the word “I”), that he set up at the end of the first A section in measures 7 and 8. The harmony, however, add interest as well as richness but not following the expectations of the melody. When the melody resolves to F (mm. 7–8), Rodgers harmonizes this note, not with F but with D minor (D-F-A, with F as the third rather than an F major triad, F-A-C, with F as the root); when the melody closes on A at the end of the second A se
ction (mm. 15–16), the note that avoided the “pig,” Rodgers offers the F harmony expected eight measures earlier (but now a surprise), with A as the third. Only at the conclusion of the final A section (mm. 31–32) does Rodgers join melody and harmony (the note C in the melody matches the C major chord in the harmony) to conclude the song with a satisfying close.
Example 5.6. “Bewitched” (chorus)
(a) Chorus, mm. 1-16.
(b) B section, or release, mm. 17-20
Rodgers also finds an effective musical means to capture Hart’s virtuosic depiction of Vera’s obsession. Hart conveys the society matron’s idée fixe by giving her thrice-repeated lyrics to conclude the first three lines of each A section, as in “I’m wild again! / Beguiled again! / A whimpering, simpering child again” (with the internal rhymes wild, beguiled, and child) before delivering the “hook” of the song’s title, “bewitched, bothered and bewildered” (always unrhymed) to conclude each A section. It is tempting to conclude that Rodgers’s musical characterization of Vera’s emotional state corresponds with uncanny accuracy to the lyrics. But since the lyrics apparently followed the music—in contrast to Rodgers’s subsequent modus operandi with Hammerstein—it is more accurate to admire Hart’s special sensitivity to Rodger’s music, which presents an equally repetitive musical line, the note B ascending up a half-step to C. By inverting the musical line (turning it upside down) in the B section (mm. 17–24), Rodgers manages to maintain Vera’s obsession while providing welcome musical contrast to the repetitive A sections.
Vera’s ability to rhyme internally also reflects her complexity and sophistication—or, as Sondheim would say, her education.56 In other songs Hart’s lyrics convey literal lyrical parallels to Rodgers’s music. Examples of textual realism include Joey’s monotonous recitation of the alphabet and numbers to match the repeated notes in the verse of “I Could Write a Book,” the word “blue” in the phrase “but I’m blue for you” to match Rodgers’s “blue note” (a blue seventh) in the first period of “That Terrific Rainbow,” and the hunting imagery that corresponds to the horn-like fifths in “Happy Hunting Horn.” Other pictorial examples include the gunshot at the end of this last song to suggest fallen prey, the graphic chord each time Melba Snyder sings the word “Zip!,” and the dissonant chord cluster after she mentions “the great Stravinsky.”
Perhaps in an effort to musically integrate his Pal Joey songs, Rodgers maintains his obsession with the prominent half-steps that characterized “Bewitched.” No less than three other songs in Pal Joey prominently employ various melodic permutations of the half-step interval. Can we attribute any dramatic meaning to this? By emphasizing this interval in both of Vera’s solo songs, “Bewitched” and “What Is a Man?” (Examples 5.6 and 5.7), Rodgers helps establish the musical identity of a woman who has allowed herself the luxury of an obsession. When Vera is with her paramour and sings with him, she has no need to obsess about him. Consequently, the half-step is absent in her duet with Joey, “Den of Iniquity.” Why Joey should sing half-steps so often in “Plant You Now, Dig You Later” is less explicable.57 What remains consistent is that the songs prominently displaying the half-step are the “offstage” songs, not the songs sung in rehearsal or as part of the entertainment in Mike Spears’s nightclub or Chez Joey.
Example 5.7. “What Is a Man?” (chorus, mm. 1-16)
The seemingly irresistible musical and psychological pull that characterizes the move from the seventh degree of a major scale (aptly labeled the leading tone) to the tonic, one half-step higher (e.g., B-C in the key of C), was also used to produce meaningful dramatic effects in other shows. In South Pacific (1949) Rodgers (with Hammerstein) greases rather than avoids the “pig” (an F) for the sake of verisimilitude in “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” In this well-known song Rodgers conveys Nellie Forbush’s delusion by introducing the oft-repeated title line with an equally repetitive ascending scalar phrase (C-D-E-F) that relentlessly and obsessively returns to the central key and thereby exposes her failure to accomplish her task. Later in the show when she admits to herself and her fellow nurses that she is, in fact, “in love with a wonderful guy,” Nellie sings an exaggerated eighteen repetitions of the half-step interval (again from the leading tone up to the tonic) on the repeated words “love, I’m in” (B-C-C, B-C-C, etc.). In “Bali Ha’i,” also from South Pacific, Rodgers convincingly conveys the mysterious quality and seductive call of the exotic island by its emphasis on repeated half-steps (e.g., “Ha’i may call you” becomes F-F-F-G).
Not to be overlooked is Rodgers and Hart’s ability in Pal Joey to write first-rate songs appropriate for their second-rate surroundings, a delicate balancing act that will also be used by Frank Loesser in the Hot Box numbers of Guys and Dolls. In “That Terrific Rainbow,” for example, Hart presents a wide array of trite and clichéd images to create his rainbow.
I’m a RED-hot mama,
But I’m BLUE for you.
I get PURPLE with anger
At the things you do.
And I’m GREEN with envy
After moving from red, blue, purple, and green, the object of the lyric’s affection burns the protagonist’s heart with an ORANGE flame. Before the end of the next stanza, the RED-hot mama with a heart of GOLD accuses her love object of being WHITE with cold, an unfortunate situation which creates GRAY clouds that, hopefully, will eventually make way for “That Terrific Rainbow.”
When Mike Spears’s club is converted to Chez Joey in act II, the lyrics of the more elaborate and pretentious new opening production number, “The Flower Garden of My Heart,” read like a parody of the hackneyed and formulaic Mother Goose rhyme “Roses Are Red”: “In the flower garden of my heart / I’ve got violets blue as your eyes. / I’ve got dainty narcissus / As sweet as my missus / And lilies as pure as the skies.” In the same chorus Hart gives Gladys the couplets, “Just to keep our love holy / I’ve got gladioli,” and in ensuing choruses “Oh, the west wind will whisk us / The scent of hibiscus,” and “You will look like sweet william / And smell like a trillium.” Was Rodgers perhaps too successful in achieving conventionality and mediocrity in this song? Perhaps. In any event, it was one of only two numbers—the other is “A Great Big Town”—excluded from the pre-revival cast album?
Pal Joey’s successful original run was surpassed by Rodgers and Hart in their final collaboration, the now largely forgotten By Jupiter (1942), which received 427 performances. After that, Hart possessed neither the interest nor the will to tackle a setting of Lynn Riggs’s play, Green Grow the Lilacs (1931). Rodgers therefore left his “partner, a best friend, and a source of permanent irritation,” and turned to Hammerstein to create Oklahoma! in 1942 and early 1943. In the increasingly small intervals between drinking binges Hart managed to create a few new songs for the successful 1943 revival of the 1927 hit A Connecticut Yankee (including the bitingly funny “To Keep My Love Alive”), but within a few months of Oklahoma!’s historic debut he was dead.
The new team of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the integrated ideal would dominate the American musical until Hammerstein’s death in 1960. But something irreplaceable was also lost when the Rodgers and Hammerstein era replaced Rodgers and Hart. The new partners would continue to compose excellent songs that, although integrated, can be sung successfully outside of their carefully considered contexts. Only rarely, however, would Rodgers recreate the rhythmic energy and jazzy melodic vernacular that distinguished so many of his songs with Hart, songs such as “You Mustn’t Kick It Around,” “Happy Hunting Horn,” “Plant You Now, Dig You Later,” and “Do It the Hard Way” in Pal Joey and “It’s Got to Be Love” “Slaughter on 10th Avenue,” and the title song in On Your Toes.
Alec Wilder addresses this point in American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900–1950, an idiosyncratic survey that for years was the only book seriously to discuss the musical qualities of popular songs.58 Although Wilder treats the songs show-by-show, he scrupulously avoids discussing their dra
matic context or even their texts and consequently evaluates them solely on their autonomous musical merits. For this reason he remains impervious to the psychological insights in “Bewitched” and instead berates Rodgers’s repetitive “device” that was “brought to a sort of negative fruition in that it finally obtrudes as a contrivance.”59 Nevertheless, Wilder devoted fifty-three pages to Rodgers and Hart and only six to Rodgers and Hammerstein, and he tells us why:
Though he wrote great songs with Oscar Hammerstein II, it is my belief that his greatest melodic invention and pellucid freshness occurred during his years of collaboration with Lorenz Hart. The inventiveness has never ceased. Yet something bordering on musical complacency evidenced itself in his later career. I have always felt that there was an almost feverish demand in Hart’s writing which reflected itself in Rodger’s melodies as opposed to the almost too comfortable armchair philosophy in Hammerstein’s lyrics.60