Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber

by Block, Geoffrey

  15. Alpert, The Life and Times of “Porgy and Bess,” 276.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Vicki Ohl, Fine and Dandy: The Life and Work of Kay Swift (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 180.

  18. Howard Pollack, George Gershwin, 653.

  19. A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn, 481.

  20. Rent’s Mimi is memorably described in the satirical Broadway revue Forbidden Broadway when it summarizes how the character has evolved from La Bohème: “In La Bohème she’s a sweet, shy, seamstress. Now, she’s a crackhead, nymphomaniac, prostitute, YEAH!!!” Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back DRG 12614 (1997).

  21. Pollack, George Gershwin, 654.

  22. The film version that was available to me was a non-commercially distributed recording that clocked in at 115 minutes. Depending on the source consulted, the published literature offers film times of about 150 minutes (Berg, Goldwyn, 487); “just under two and half hours (with an intermission following Crown’s seduction of Bess, as in many two-act versions of the work)” (Pollack, George Gershwin, 649); and 138 minutes according to Stanley Green, Hollywood Musicals Year by Year, 220. The Berg and Pollack figures would make the film only thirty-five minutes less than the 1993 Nunn version. Assuming these two authors are correct, the copy I viewed may have been missing portions of the nine reels housed in the Library of Congress available for private viewing. Despite this possible omission, the only major “song” missing in the DVD available to me was “My Man’s Gone Now” (included on the soundtrack). See the discussion of Pal Joey for a discrepancy between the timings listed on the package of a commercially distributed video and the contents of the video itself.

  23. “The most obvious change is the elimination of some major numbers: the ‘Fuoco di gioia’ chorus in Act I, the Concerted Finale of Act III, and the ‘Willow Song’ of Act IV (Zeffirelli finds it ‘boring,’ even on the stage). In addition, major sections in individual numbers are cut: a few pages of the ‘Vittoria’ chorus (act I), the second stanza of the Drinking Song (I), a large portion of the final stanga of ‘Si pel ciel’ (II), and various passages in the Duet between Otello and Desdemona (III). There are also many small cuts in the semi-declamatory syntax that pervades the work.” Marcia J. Citron, Opera on Screen, 75–76.

  24. Mamoulian’s notes were published in Tom Milne, Rouben Mamoulian (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 13, and in Charles Hamm, “The Theatre Guild Production,” 509. The sequence, which bears a strong rhythmic resemblance to the opening drumbeats and some of the rhythmic layering that introduce the Kittiwah scene, appears in a different place on the soundtrack where it serves as an introduction to “I Can’t Sit Down” after a fragment of “How are you dis morning’”?

  25. Foster Hirsch, in “Porgy and Bess—The Film,”12–13. Hirsch is also the author of books on the Shubert brothers, Kurt Weill, and Harold Prince (see the Bibliography for listings of the latter two).

  26. After presenting the orchestral introduction from the beginning of the scene to Rehearsal 93, the film cuts to Mingo’s announcement of Porgy on the measure before Rehearsal 128 (17 pages of the Vocal Score, 506–522).

  27. Abbie Mitchell: Gershwin Performs Gershwin: Rare Recordings 1931–1935, Music Masters 5062–2-C (1991); Helen Jepson: Gershwin Plays Gershwin, Pearl GEMM CDS 9483 (1991); Anne Brown: Porgy and Bess, Decca MCAD-10520 (1992).

  28. Robert Lawson-Peebles, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” 99.

  29. The actual strip music is a jazzy version (with growling trumpet) of Luigi Boccherini’s familiar minuet from the Quintet in E Major., op. 11, no. 5 (1771), which had recently figured prominently in the plot of The Ladykillers (1955), starring Alec Guinness.

  30. This is a good place to mention that both Stanley Green, in Hollywood Musicals Year by Year, and the commercial but generally fairly meticulous website IMDb cite 111 minutes as the length of the film; Wikipedia and the covers and liner notes on both the VHS and DVD releases state the timing as 109 minutes. The actual running time is 87 minutes. For various reasons, I think this correction might spare potential viewers considerable anxiety about what could possibly have happened to the twenty or so non-existent minutes they may have been looking forward to.

  31. Turturro claimed that the character of Silvano was based on his own father, an Italian immigrant who fought and died for America at Normandy (Robbins, “‘Cradle Will Rock,’” 69). The creator of the role of Larry Forman, Howard da Silva, also the first Jud Fry in Oklahoma! and Benjamin Franklin in 1776, was blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the progeny of the Dies Committee in the 1930s.

  32. John Houseman, Run-Through, 266.

  33. Ibid., 267.

  34. Tim Robbins, “‘Cradle Will Rock,’” 122–23. According to Houseman, Welles’s final remarks were less dramatic: “We have the honor to present—with the composer at the piano—The Cradle Will Rock.” Houseman, Run-Through, 267.

  35. Houseman, Run-Through, 268 (compare with Robbins, “‘Cradle Will Rock,’” 123).

  36. Ibid., 269.

  37. Although not in the cast of Cradle, Lee was part of the WPA Federal Theater Project and played under Welles in the American Negro production of Macbeth one year before Cradle.

  38. Houseman, Run-Through, 270.

  39. Terry Teachout, “‘Cradle’ of Lies,” 51–55.

  40. Ibid., 55. When comparing Weill to Blitzstein, Ethan Mordden judges the latter’s politics and artistic legacy harshly: “Weill was a melodist and an artist, who happened for various complex reasons, having to do with the nature of the precarious Weimar Republic, to have collaborated on artwork with Leftists. Blitzstein was a braying stooge of the Communazi Red Front whose work never succeeded and who is virtually forgotten today” (Mordden, Beautiful Mornin,’ 144).

  41. bruce d. mcclung, “‘Lady in the Dark,’”: 173–74. According to both Ira Gershwin and Leisen, Rogers had recorded an a cappella version of the whole song.

  42. Ibid., 174.

  43. The initial delay in filming was due to Martin’s pregnancy. Production was delayed further as a consequence of a lawsuit filed by Gregory LaCava, who claimed to be the rightful producer and director. Mainly for these reasons, the gestation from the purchase of the film rights to the release of the film original took more than four years.

  44. In 1953 he married Rita Hayworth, a fourth marriage for each (ending in 1955).

  45. Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia, 506.

  46. Hirsch, Kurt Weill on Stage, 238.

  47. Concerning Weill, in addition to Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus, two other American shows received film treatment. Like the two discussed here, Knickerbocker Holiday (1944) eradicated most of Maxwell Anderson’s political satire and bypassed most of the score, retaining only three songs, including the famous “September Song,” and interpolating new ones by Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, and other lesser known studio composers. In 1974, the American Film Theatre released a relatively faithful and reasonably complete version of Lost in the Stars, starring Brock Peters (Crown in the Preminger Porgy and Bess) that received generally unfavorable notices.

  48. Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds, An American Masters Production, CentreStage WHE73153 (2001).

  49. Words and Music, directed by Norman Taurog, Warner Home Video, 2007.

  Chapter 9: Carousel

  1. New York Post, October 23, 1944; cited in Frederick Nolan, The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Walker, 1978), 128; 2nd ed., 156. For the Gershwin reference see Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, 238; for the Weill reference see Kim H. Kowalke, “Formerly German: Kurt Weill in America,” 50.

  2. Oscar Hammerstein II, “Turns on a Carousel,” New York Times, April 15, 1945, sec. 2, 1, and Rodgers, Musical Stages, 238.

  3. David Ewen, Richard Rodgers, 236–37. Hammerstein also recalled that Molnár made a “valuable suggestion” during the New Haven tryouts, “which involved playing two scenes in o
ne set—actually a more radical departure from the original than any change we had made” and “proved successful in pulling together a very long second act.” See Oscar Hammerstein, “Turns on a Carousel,” 1.

  4. Elliot Norton, “Broadway’s Cutting Room Floor,” 80. Ewen credits Mamoulian for removing Mr. and Mrs. God from their New England living room and replacing them with a Starkeeper. Ewen, Richard Rodgers, 236.

  5. “Guild Scores Again with Its ‘Carousel,’” New York World-Telegram, April 20, 1945; review excerpted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 147; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 226. Since the first edition of Enchanted Evenings was among the guilty parties, it is imperative to note that in his recent well-researched archival study Tim Carter “found no evidence for the quite persistent story that “[This Was] A Real Nice Clambake” in Carousel derives from a song (“This Was a Real Nice Hayride”) originally intended for Oklahoma!” (Tim Carter, “Oklahoma!” The Making of an American Musical, 285n23).

  6. Ward Morehouse, “‘Carousel,’ Beguiling Musical Play with Lovely Score, Opens at Majestic,” New York Sun, April 20, 1945; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 226–27.

  7. John Chapman, “‘Carousel’ Is a Lovely, Touching Musical Drama Based on ‘Liliom,’” Daily News, April 20, 1945; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 144; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 228.

  8. Robert Garland, “‘Carousel’ Makes Bow at Majestic Theatre,” New York Journal-American, April 20, 1945; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 146; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 227.

  9. Brooks Atkinson, “The Theatre: ‘Carousel,’” New York Times, June 3, 1954, 32.

  10. Rodgers, Musical Stage, 243.

  11. For another interpretation of the relationship between music and drama in Carousel see Larry Stempel’s comparison between the aria “Somehow I Never Could Believe” from Weill’s Street Scene and Billy’s “Soliloquy.” Stempel observes that Hammerstein’s words and not Rodgers’s music “indicate the basic emotional change he [Billy Bigelow] undergoes in thinking about being a father.” Stempel, “Street Scene,” 327.

  12. Kern’s shrewd decision to use Magnolia’s piano theme for the release of Ravenal’s song “Where’s the Mate for Me?” (Example 2.4) lets audiences know immediately that Magnolia has entered Ravenal’s consciousness and foreshadows their eventual union. At the end of Ravenal’s song Magnolia appears as if in answer to the question posed in the song’s title, and Ravenal is unable to complete his final words, “for me.” After some underscored dialogue Ravenal admits within the song “Make Believe” that his love for Magnolia is not a pretense but a reality (“For, to tell the truth, I do”). Versions of Show Boat differ on whether or not Magnolia actually says the magic words “I do” at the conclusion of their duet, but no one in the audience can seriously doubt that after “Make Believe” her love for Ravenal is the real thing.

  13. Six Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Modern Library Association, 1959), 161–62.

  14. Ibid., 176.

  15. Ibid., 100.

  16. Although the published vocal score (Williamson Music Co.) lists the scene between Julie and Billy as act I, scene 1 (following the pantomimed Prelude), the published libretto identifies the scene as act I, scene 2. See Six Plays.

  17. Ibid., 93–94.

  18. Quotation in Rodgers, Musical Stages, 236. State Fair was released in August 1945, several months after the April opening of Carousel.

  19. Ibid.

  20. The words “dozens of boys,” “many a likely,” “does what he can,” “she has a few,” and “fellers of two” also display these untied and metrically neutral eighth-note triplets. During the opening thoughts in the “Soliloquy” (when Billy imagines that he will be having a son), he sings metrically challenging quarter-note triplets tied to quarter notes (e.g., “The old man!” and “Of his Dad”). See the introduction of the quarter-note triplet in chapter 3, 54–55.

  The eighth-note triplets that Billy and Julie sing do not go against the metrical grain as Reno Sweeney’s half-note triplets do in “I Get a Kick Out of You” (the bracketed words and syllables in “Mere al-co-[hol doesn’t thrill me at] all, / so [tell me why should it be] true” and Example 3.1a). Nevertheless, they do help to establish a distinct and slightly askew rhythmic plane (especially when preceded by ties in “If I Loved You”), just as Billy and Julie try unsuccessfully to thwart society’s expectations. Four measures of triplets appear in succession in Billy’s “Soliloquy” (in duple meter) on the words that describe the future Billy Jr. and Billy himself: “No pot-bellied, baggy-eyed bully’ll boss him a round” (in Example 9.4a), later with the words, “No fat bottomed, flabby-faced, pot-bellied, baggy-eyed bastard’ll boss him around.”

  21. David Ewen writes that the Carousel waltzes were taken from a work called Waltz Suite that Paul Whiteman had commissioned but never performed (Ewen, Richard Rodgers, 239). Rodgers, who in his autobiography recalls two other associations with Whiteman in 1935 and 1936, is silent on this point.

  22. “Two Little People” does not appear as a separate title in the vocal score (Williamson Music Co., 43–47), but Hammerstein does so title this music in his Lyrics, 142. Also in Lyrics Hammerstein includes a stanza that does not appear in the published vocal score: “There’s a feathery little cloud floatin’ by / Like a lonely leaf on a big blue stream. / And two people—you and I—/ Who cares what we dream?” Hammerstein’s stanza does appear, however, in the holograph manuscript in the Music Division of the Library of Congress where it is sung by Julie to music that is altered only on the words, “leaf on a big blue stream” (g-f-e-d-c-d). In his holograph score Rodgers entered a sketch labeled “2 little people” that does not correspond either to Hammerstein’s text or to Rodgers’s final version.

  23. Aside from Julie’s complementary stanza discussed in the previous note, the only major changes between Rodgers’s holograph and the published vocal score are those of key and the absence of dotted rhythms in the D-major sketch. Not only does Rodgers place “If I Loved You” in C major in the holograph, he also places the first page of “Scene Billy and Julie” in F major and G major instead of G major and A major, 33; he also assigns the “mill theme” (Example 9.1) to D major in both of its appearances rather than G major and E major as in the published score, 38–39 and 47–48, respectively.

  24. The idea of retaining an accompaniment figure for the sake of musical unity rather than for a demonstrable dramatic purpose was earlier evident in On Your Toes (“There’s a Small Hotel” and the principal tune of “Slaughter on 10th Avenue”).

  25. When in act II Carrie imitates one of the “hussies with nothin’ on their legs but tights” that she saw in New York, her music also clearly echoes the music associated with Julie’s name (“You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan”) that Carrie introduced early in act I (“I’m a Tomboy, jest a Tomboy”). Appropriately, the stage directions indicate that “Mr. Snow enters with Snow Jr. and interrupts song.”

  26. Howard Kissel, “Carousel Is Music to Our Tears,” Daily News, March 28, 1994; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 55, 6.

  27. Frank Scheck, “Sharp New Staging Gives a Lift to Rodgers and Hammerstein,” Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 1994; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 55, 72.

  28. This quotation was Boswell’s adaptation of the medieval dictum, also appropriate in this context, “to cite heresy is not to be a heretic.” John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), xvii.

  29. Edwin Wilson, “The Music Makes It Soar,” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 1994; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 55, 76.

  30. Rodgers, Musical Stages, 156.

  31. Ibid., 236.

  32. Joseph P. Swain discusses how augmented triads and modality also serve to establish an individual c
haracter and identity for Carousel. See Swain, The Broadway Musical, 99–127. An especially poignant use of the augmented triad (F-A-D) occurs on the fourth measure of “If I Loved You” (Example 9.5a) where it follows a simple but extremely effective harmonic progression in measures 1–3, a musical embodiment of the joys and soft terrors of a hypothetical romance: a D-major triad on measure 1, a D–diminished seventh on measure 2 that never fails to surprise and delight, and a D-major triad in first inversion (F in the bass) on measure 3 that gently prepares for the augmented triad on F in measure 4.

  33. I Remember Mama was based on the first play that Rodgers and Hammerstein produced on Broadway, John Van Druten’s hit play of the same title, which opened its long run of 714 performances in 1944. In 1967 Rodgers wrote eight songs for a televised adaptation of Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion that featured Norman Wisdom as Androcles, Geoffrey Holder as the Lion, and Noël Coward as Caesar. For more on Rodgers’s final musicals see Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers, 202–55.