Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

delivered, with a bouquet of flowers, to Lilli, who imprudently reads the note onstage, thus provoking genuine rather than acted stage violence against Fred as Petruchio. Had Fred not included the note, it is likely that the onstage conflicts would not be mirrored by offstage fireworks but by reconciliation, which would spoil the fun (and not incidentally end the show prematurely). The flowers serve their purpose, helping Lilli to realize that she is still in love with Fred. Although she is engaged to the rich and powerful cattle baron Tex, a man incapable of song—in the stage version her fiancé is the Washington diplomat Harrison Howell, also without a song—tellingly we observe her remove the engagement ring in her dressing room before she finishes the reprise of “So in Love.”

The re-connection Lilli and Fred make at the end of the “So in Love” duet in Fred’s apartment is immediately interrupted by the whirlwind entrance of Lois, who is clearly familiar with the surroundings. Lois (Ann Miller) then proceeds to sing and dance a sexually charged and energetic song and tap dance number, which she hopes will go into the show. Those who find “Too Darn Hot,” an entertaining but somewhat gratuitous act II opener may appreciate its new context as a diegetic show-within-show. In fact, when she is finished she learns that the song will be taken out because there’s no place to put it—art imitating life evaluating art. In the absence of a second act subdivision, a luxury offered to all stage works but only to a few of their longest film adaptations (e.g., My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof), where could such a song go? The answer: as an audition number in the director’s apartment.

In order to guide film viewers who presumably are less familiar than stage audiences with the plot of The Taming of the Shrew, the Shrew performance in the film offers a narrative in which Petruchio explicitly introduces the main characters and situation. The film is also clearer than the stage version about such matters as the fact that Lilli reads Fred’s note to Lois (at the end of “Were Thine That Special Face”), which explains why her violence toward Fred goes considerably beyond what is called for in the script. The film also clarifies the connection between Fred’s removal of food from the hungry Lilli in the dressing room scene and when Petruchio deprives Kate of food in his later efforts to tame her. The cuts in the libretto deprive film audiences of some of the Spewacks’ and even more of Shakespeare’s lively dialogue, but when films were expected to run less than two hours, even great material had to go.

One of the more unfortunate aspects of this often successful film adaptation is that even nearly twenty years after the first film version of Anything Goes (see chapter 8), Porter’s lyrics still required considerable cinematic expurgation. We might expect that the script would replace “bastard” with “louse,” but changes in the lyrics amount to a censorship that is collectively depressing. What follows is a generous, if not exhaustive, sample:

• “Too Darn Hot”

“According to the Kinsey report” is replaced by “according to the latest report” and instead of indulging his favorite sport, man prefers taking the lyrically cumbersome “lovey-dovey to court.”

• “Tom, Dick, or Harry”

“God-damned nose” is replaced by “Doggone nose” and “in the dark they [women] are all the same” is replaced by “in a brawl they are all the same.”

• “I Hate Men”

“Maiden” replaces “virgin” and instead of Mother having to marry Father, she now “deigns to marry Father.” The film version goes on to make several other unfortunate deletions and additions in this song.

• “Where Is the Life that Late I Led?”

Since “puberty” is suggestive and provocative, “the charming age of puberty” becomes the first awareness of “masculinity.” Later in the song the mandatory removal of “hell” (also removed later in “Always True to You in My Fashion” and in “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”) necessitates the replacement of the rhyme “well / hell” with “pain / Cain,” as in raising a bit of.

• “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”

The suggestive failure of a woman to defend her virtue (All’s Well That Ends Well) is replaced by the infelicitous woman “shocked she pretends well.”

• “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple”

Perhaps the title of this song should have been altered to something like “I Am Ashamed to Sing a Sexist Song about Women Being Simple.” In any event, Kate replaces the music to this beautiful song with a recitation (with a little underscoring of “So in Love”), fortunately unexpurgated, of Shakespeare, who wrote the lyrics.10

While Porter’s reputation will survive the changes made to his lyrics in the film, it is not enhanced by them. Yet all things considered, the film adaptation of Kiss Me, Kate, is not only relatively faithful to its stage version (when compared with its predecessors) but boasts full-throated but not overdone singing by Keel and Grayson, and exuberant singing and dancing by Miller. The ensemble dancing of Miller, Rall, Van, Haney, Coyne, and Fosse, choreographed by Fosse in the angular signature style that he would develop further in the 1960s and 1970s, is outstanding as well as historic, and the supporting roles, especially Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore as the two gunmen, add to the film’s quality. Even the interpolated “From This Moment On,” is arguably no more extraneous than “Too Darn Hot” was in its original place as the opening of act II. The film, shot and released in 3D, in its day a novelty and today a distraction, does not undermine the film’s enjoyment, but it is probably good to know about it in advance.

The large and impressive oil painting of Laurence Olivier as Hamlet in Fred’s apartment is clearly visible as a backdrop to Miller’s “Too Darn Hot” and other scenes. The character of Hamlet not only demonstrates a Shakespearean connection but likely also alludes to the fact that producer Jack Cummings tried