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

and a character named Snooks replies: “Did she make the Boat? She made the Cap’n!” Perhaps because of its heterosexual implications this line was permissible and could be retained in the dialogue (see the 1934 libretto, 1–2–13).

9. In this instance McGlinn was reluctant to perform an appendectomy so he inserted “What a Joy to Be Young” in the main body of his recording rather than its rightful place in his appendix beside “There’s No Cure Like Travel,” “Kate the Great,” and “Waltz Down the Aisle.”

10. Kreuger, “Some Words about ‘Anything Goes,’” 17.

11. Ibid., 17.

12. McGlinn, “The Original ‘Anything Goes,’” 33.

13. Perhaps because present-day late-arriving listeners usually come into the theater already whistling “I Get a Kick Out of You,” McGlinn took the initiative of placing “Buddie, Beware” in the body of his recording rather than the appendix.

14. Weidman has also written three librettos for Sondheim musicals, Pacific Overtures (1976), Assassins (1990), and Road Show (2008).

15. Atkinson, “The Play: ‘Anything Goes,’” 26.

16. Ibid., 26.

17. Eells, The Life That Late He Led, 116.

18. Lewis Funke, “Theatre: ‘Anything Goes’ Revival of Musical Opens at Orpheum,” New York Times, May 16, 1962, 35.

19. Ibid., 35.

20. George Abbott, “Mister Abbott,” 187.

21. 1962 libretto, 1–8–59. Many thanks to Louis H. Aborn, president of Tams-Witmark, for graciously allowing me to examine the 1934, 1962, and 1987 Anything Goes librettos, and to John L. Hughes, managing director of Samuel French Limited in London, for generously supplying a reference copy of the 1935 London libretto.

22. Stephen Holden, “A Glimpse of Olden Days, via Cole Porter,” New York Times, October 18, 1987, section 2, p. 5.

23. “Son Helping to Update Crouse’s ‘Anything Goes,’ New York Times, August 25, 1987, section 3, 14. For West Side Story, librettist Arthur Laurents created a deliberately artificial and meaningless slang that would never become old-fashioned and require updating.

24. Kreuger, “The Annotated ‘Anything Goes,’” 133.

25. Ibid., 133–37. Despite Kreuger’s best efforts, he was unable to discover the full meaning of the reference, “Drumstick Lipstick,” and concluded that its meaning “is lost to the ages.” In the new millennium, readers of Slate Magazine’s Timothy Noah replied to his plea and located two 1934 references to Drumstick lipstick in New York Times ads for Drumstick face power and the Drumstick compact, various cosmetic products manufactured by the French firm, Charbert. Noah announced the solution in “Drumstick Lipstick, Explained!” posted June 16, 2005.

26. Eells, The Life That Late He Led, 124.

27. A more direct reference to Aimée Semple McPherson had occurred in Moss Hart’s sketch on the headline “Gandhi Goes on Hunger Strike” in the 1933 revue As Thousands Cheer (music by Berlin).

28. “Son Helping to Update Crouse’s ‘Anything Goes,’” sec. 3, 14.

29. Ibid., 14.

30. Holden, “A Glimpse of Olden Days,” 35.

31. 1934 libretto, 2–1–11.

32. Those concerned by this usurpation of Hope’s role and her solo opportunity may be somewhat placated to learn that in 1987 she is given a new interpolation, “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye” (act II, scene 1), and a duet with Billy and some sailors, “All through the Night” (a song from the original 1934 version now transferred to act II, scene 2). Furthermore, she is allowed to retain her interpolated duet with Billy in act I, scene 7, “It’s De-Lovely,” which had been introduced in act I, scene 2, of the 1962 version (see the online website).

33. 1934 libretto, 1–6–71. Mrs. Wentworth is the owner of the Pomeranian canine that Billy turns into a Mexican hairless.

34. In 1962 Billy is Chinchilian. The phrase “putting on the dog” made a comeback. Throughout the gestation of this first edition of Enchanted Evenings the New Yorker regularly displayed ads for “Put on the Dog” T-shirts, the expected side of the shirt featuring drawings of the front or back of a dog.

35. Gerald Bordman, “Preserving the Heritage: The Living Record,” in Musical Theatre in America, ed. Glenn Loney, 407.

36. From Pal Joey, “I Could Write a Book.”

37. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music defines a triplet as “three notes of equal value to be played in the time normally occupied by two notes of the same value, indicated by the figure 3.” Don Randel, ed., The New Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 873.

38. “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (lyrics, Stephen Sondheim; music, Jule Styne) from Gypsy (1959), also written for Merman as the eccentric Rose, uses a variation of this idea on the title words.

39. In an early version of “Blow, Gabriel Blow,” vastly different melodically but otherwise rhythmically identical to the familiar version, the triplets are absent. See the Cole Porter Collection, Box 15, Folder 121, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

40. “Easy to Love,” Billy’s love song to Hope, dropped because of its difficulty for William Gaxton, also retains Reno’s half-note triplet in the midst of a chromatic line.

41. Porter harmonizes “if today” with a dominant seventh on C (C-E-G-B[]), a chord that leads to a change of key (F major) two measures later.

42. See Stephen Citron, Noel & Cole, 112.

43. Those responsible for choosing the interpolated songs either inadvertently or by design discovered two that fit in with the syncopated world of Reno and Billy, “Friendship” and “It’s De-Lovely,” both of which share melodic fragments in common with the original “Anything Goes” and, of course, many other Porter songs.

Chapter 4: Porgy and Bess

1. “Gershwin Gets His Music Cues for ‘Porgy’ on Carolina Beach,” New York Herald Tribune, July 8, 1934, sec. 5, 2, and George Gershwin; reprinted in Merely Armitage, ed., George Gershwin, 72–77.

2. See Frederick S. Roffman, “At Last the Complete ‘Porgy and Bess,’” New York Times, September 19, 1976, sec. 2, 1+, and Allen Woll, Black Musical Theatre, 165–66. Shortly before these exploratory negotiations the Metropolitan Opera introduced Louis Gruenberg’s opera The Emperor Jones. Although well received, Gruenberg’s opera, which featured Lawrence Tibbett singing the title role in blackface, was performed only ten times in 1933 and 1934. African Americans were similarly excluded in most of the other important roles.

3. Edward Jablonski, Gershwin, 194–96.

4. Only one