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

25. “Abbondanza” sketches (first sketched as “The Helps”), unlike the sketches for “Lovers in the Lane,” were dated precisely by Loesser in December 1953. Ibid., 2851 and 2859–62.

26. Ibid., 3006–07.

27. Loesser, “Some Loesser Thoughts on ‘The Most Happy Fella.’”

28. Ibid. Loesser expresses the same sentiment in “Some Notes on a Musical.”

29. Loesser, “Some Loesser Thoughts on ‘The Most Happy Fella.’”

30. Abe Burrows, “Frank Loesser 1910–1969,” New York Times, August 10, 1969, sec. 2, 3.

31. The phrase “Greater Loesser” in the present chapter title is borrowed from a New York Times Magazine profile by Gilbert Millstein, May 20, 1956.

32. Robert Coleman, “‘Most Happy Fella’ Is a Masterpiece,” Daily Mirror, May 4, 1956; review excerpted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 455; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 310.

33. John McClain, “This Musical Is Great,” New York Journal-American, May 4, 1956; review excerpted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 455–56; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 310.

34. Walter F. Kerr, “‘The Most Happy Fella,’” New York Herald Tribune, May 4, 1956; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 455; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 308. Kerr’s lack of appreciation for shows most take for granted as rich in music is also evident in his responses to Candide and West Side Story.

35. Richard Watts Jr., “Arrival of ‘The Most Happy Fella,’” New York Post, May 4, 1956; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 308.

36. George Jean Nathan, “Theatre Week: Fish nor Foul,” New York Journal-American, May 9, 1956, 16.

37. Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: Loesser’s Fine Music Drama,” New York Times, May 4, 1956, 20; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’s Reviews, vol. 17, 311.

38. Howard Taubman, “Broadway Musical: Trend toward Ambitious Use of Music Exemplified by ‘Most Happy Fella,’” New York Times, June 10, 1956, sec. 2, 7.

39. Conrad L. Osborne, “‘Happy Fella’ Yields Up Its Operatic Heart.”

40. Ibid., 5.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 17.

43. According to Abba Bogin, Loesser’s musical assistant and rehearsal pianist in Fella and a reliable source of practical and anecdotal information, “Ooh! My Feet” was originally intended for Lieutenant Branigan in Guys and Dolls. See Block, “Frank Loesser’s Sketchbooks,” 77–78.

44. Loesser Collection, 3004. A transcription of this “Big D” draft appears in Block, “Frank Loesser’s Sketchbooks,” 65.

45. Loesser Collection, 2794, 2811, 2857–58, 2900–01, and 2915.

46. Loesser, “Some Loesser Thoughts on ‘The Most Happy Fella.’”

47. In the previous chapter it was suggested that Porter deprived Kiss Me, Kate of dramatic nuance when he departed from his conceit that the Padua songs would distinguish themselves from the Baltimore songs through contrasting statements in the major and minor modes.

48. Vocal score and libretto (New York: Frank Music, 1956, 1957), 67.

49. Sometimes Loesser’s melodic manipulations can be subtle to the point of inaudibility for most listeners. For example, a transformed version of the “Tony” motive (the seconds have now been inverted to become sevenths) can be detected during the final moments of act I, when Rosabella “overcomes her resistance” and willingly accepts Joe’s sexual advances. During the course of their kiss the “Tony” motive returns to the “sighing” seconds that underscored Tony’s imaginary conversation. Vocal score, 126.

Moments later (near the beginning of act II) Loesser inserts another small musical detail that conveys a dramatic message. In the fleeting moment between choruses of the uplifting “Fresno Beauties” Joe and Rosabella sing their private thoughts in a duet that neither can hear. The interval that separates the one-night lovers is the same minor seventh that brought them together in the seduction music ending act I. Ibid., 133.

50. Ibid., 187–88.

51. Ibid., 252–53.

52. Ibid., 257.

53. Burrows, “Frank Loesser: 1910–1969, New York Times, August 10, 1969.

54. Donald Malcolm, “Nymphs and Shepherds, Go Away,” New Yorker, March 19, 1960, 117–18.

Chapter 12: My Fair Lady

1. My Fair Lady’s performance run was not surpassed until nearly a decade later by Hello Dolly! in 1971.

2. Walter Kerr, “‘My Fair Lady,’” New York Herald Tribune, March 16, 1956; quoted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 470–71 (quotation on 470); reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 346.

3. William Hawkins, “‘My Fair Lady’ Is a Smash Hit,” New York World-Telegram and The Sun, March 16, 1956; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 470; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 347.

4. Rex Harrison, Rex: An Autobiography, 114. According to Gene Lees, Porter was one of the many who had turned down the Pygmalion adaptation (see note17). Gene Lees, Inventing Champagne: The Worlds of Lerner and Loewe, 88.

5. Robert Coleman, “‘My Fair Lady’ Is a Glittering Musical,” Daily Mirror, March 16, 1956; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 470; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 17, 345.

6. John Chapman, “‘My Fair Lady’ a Superb, Stylish Musical Play with a Perfect Cast,” Daily News, March 16, 1956; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 468 and 470 (quotation on 468); reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, 17, 345.

7. Hawkins, “‘My Fair Lady,’” 347; Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 470.

8. Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: ‘My Fair Lady,’” New York Times, March 16, 1956, 20; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 468. Reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, 17, 347.

9. Gene Lees in Inventing Champagne and William W. Deguire, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera annotator, give 1901 as the date for the composer’s birth (some earlier sources say 1904). Although Lees remains curiously noncommittal in attributing the city of Loewe’s birth (Berlin or Vienna), Berlin is the setting for all the biographical material that he offers for Loewe’s early years. Lees, Inventing Champagne, 12–16; and William W. Deguire, “Loewe, Frederick,” The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1985), vol. 2, 101–3, and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1992), vol. 2, 1306.

10. Lees, Inventing Champagne, 14.

11. It was noted in the previous chapter that the revue The Illustrators Show,