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

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