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

athletic and amusing choreography of Michael Kidd (1919–2007), who recreated the impressive original Runyonland opening and the sewer dance scene to the music of “Luck Be a Lady” much as audiences had seen these numbers onstage five years earlier. Many critics, including Sondheim, lamented scene designer Oliver Smith’s sets in which realism and stylization clashed infelicitously, but Kidd created a convincing ambiance through the movements of his eccentric and cartoonish but developed characters, both major and minor. Kaye leading the trio of tinhorns in “Fugue for Tinhorns” near the beginning of the film and the gambling sinners in his rendition of “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” near the end are indeed two of the great translations from Broadway to film. Although Vivian Blaine’s dramatic stage delivery is less suitable than Kaye’s for the more intimate framework of film, it is still a treat to hear her repeat her stage performance of “Adelaide’s Lament” (with the sole visual addition of a medicine cabinet). In addition to its entertainment value, the recreation of Kidd’s choreography and the roles of Nicely-Nicely and Adelaide make the film an invaluable historical document.

On the debit side, although the three new songs added to the film are all by Loesser, they do not make up in either quality or quantity for the five songs deleted from the show. The first new song, “Pet Me Poppa,” replaced “A Bushel and a Peck” for Adelaide and the Hot Box Girls for the simple reason that Goldwyn didn’t like it. Seeing dancers precociously impersonating cats nearly thirty years before Lloyd Webber made this a must-see musical theater experience does not make up for the song switch. The second new song was written to give Frank Sinatra, then at the peak of his stardom as a recording artist and fresh from winning the best supporting actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity (1953), an expanded singing role as Nathan Detroit. We may recall from chapter 11 that his non-singing stage predecessor Sam Levene gradually observed his singing requirements dwindle down to a line or two in the verse of “Oldest Established” in act I and a few more lines in his duet with Adelaide, “Sue Me,” in act II. In what corresponds to act I in the film Nathan gets more to sing in “Oldest Established” in the opening scene and replaces one of the tinhorns in the title song about an hour into the film. Another fifteen minutes later he sings a new song expressly written for Sinatra, “Adelaide,” a song that Nathan sings to Lieutenant Brannigan to convince him that the gamblers are holding an engagement party rather than a meeting to decide where to hold the floating crap game.

The third and final new song, the lyrical “A Woman in Love” arguably receives more air time than any song in the film. Introduced after the title song in the Overture, the song dominates the musical ambiance of the dinner date in Havana, Cuba, where Sky has taken Sarah on a bet. For twelve minutes of movie time (roughly from 77 to 89 minutes into the film), we hear it as a serenade in the café, as background music in the restaurant, and finally sung over a Latin accompaniment over dinner. After Sarah sings “If I Were a Bell” in a state of drunkenness and the couple returns to New York, “My Time of Day,” the song in which Sky bares his soul and reveals his biblical name (Obediah), is reduced to underscoring. Instead he sings a reprise of “A Woman in Love.”

“Pet Me Poppa” was a matter of one Hot Box Tune replacing another, but the deletion of “My Time of Day” seriously defeats Mankiewicz’s stated purpose of character development. In contrast to “Adelaide’s Lament,” which reveals so much about this character, the song “Adelaide” may be an opportunity for Sinatra but does little to enhance Nathan’s character or the dramatic situation. Before the film is over, three more songs from the show would disappear. The first is “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” a genuine love duet between Sky and Sarah directly following Sky’s intimate revelations in “My Time of Day,” and arguably the great ballad of a rich theater score. The second casualty is “More I Cannot Wish You,” another of Loesser’s most lyrical ballads and the only chance Arvide Abernathy, Sarah’s gentle Salvation Army mentor, gets to sing in the show. The last song to end up on the cutting room floor is the cynical duet between Sarah and Adelaide in which they each share their goal to “Marry the Man Today” “and change his ways tomorrow.” The song was honest in its day, but its message would cast pallor on the romantic double wedding that ends the film and is the least missed of the five discarded numbers.

My Fair Lady (1964)

Not only did the film version of My Fair Lady, which arrived two years after the show completed its unsurpassed six-year Broadway run, present all the songs from its stage source, it also retained nearly all of the dialogue and most of the original running order. At nearly three hours, Lady is the most faithful adaptation in our group of films. As an added bonus, film audiences got a chance to see stage stars Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins and Stanley Holloway as Alfred P. Doolittle repeating their roles. Cecil Beaton returned as costume and set designer.16

My Fair Lady, 1964 film. Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) (“In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.”) For a stage photo of this scene see p. 271.

My Fair Lady on film enjoyed some financial success, despite its then stratospheric production costs of $17 million. It also received more than its share of critical acclaim. Nominated for twelve Oscars, it won in no less than eight categories: cinematography (Harry Stradling), sound (George R. Groves), musical scoring (André Previn), art direction (Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton, and George James Hopkins), costume