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

When he returned to the script in 1983, Abbott (now ninety-five) had had time to rethink and reinterpret his responses and actions of 1936. He now recalled the situation somewhat differently than in both his and Rodgers’s published autobiographies: “I respected Rodgers and Hart so much in that field … I didn’t do as much as I should have done…. I threw out three sets…. In the old days, if they wanted to sing a song, they set it in Central park or the Palladium. What for? To sing a song like ‘Quiet Night’? I made ‘Quiet Night’ part of the plot.”22

In order to further integrate plot and music as well as to establish greater credibility (and, of course, accessibility) for a 1980s audience, Abbott altered his original libretto. In 1936 Sergei and Vera had been several times married; in 1983 Sergei is given some romantic potential with Peggy (as revealed in their reprise of “Quiet Night,” now “part of the plot”) and Vera and Konstantine are lovers both on and off the stage. Also in 1983 the original meeting between Junior and Peggy is made more understandable; Frankie now knows a friend of Peggy’s uncle who can introduce them.

The main changes between the 1936 and 1983 books, however, deal less with plot than with language. The earlier version is more sexually suggestive and, still more surprisingly, perhaps even funnier. Here, for example, is what 1936 audiences heard in the dialogue that precedes Vera’s meeting with Junior in act I, scene 4:

PEGGY: You’re to be a strip tease girl in a burlesque show.

VERA: Well, if he’s got ideas like that, why should I bother to dress?

PEGGY: Darling, he thinks you are an actress. He doesn’t know we are casting to type.

In 1983 Vera is cast as a primmer prima ballerina who has the potential to play a striptease character when given time to consider such an outrageous thought. Abbott is clearly no longer casting to type:

PEGGY: You’re going to love the part—it’s a striptease girl in a burlesque show. It will shock the dance world. It will show us as the progressive ballet company I want us to be.

VERA: What about Sergei Alexandrovitch? He will say no.

PEGGY: First you have to like it. This young man who is coming will play the music and tell you all about it.

VERA (Begins to play the part): Sure, a striptease girl—why not?

As a sexually liberated goddess of the ballet world, the original Vera is allowed to conclude the scene in her apartment with a risqué punch line that indicates her desire to see more of Junior. After the foreplay of dancing to the “Zenobia” ballet with Junior, they climb on her bed and she takes his glasses off. When Junior tells Vera his real name and his nickname, Vera replies with a line that could have been stolen from a Mae West film: “But I’ll call you Phillip. I can’t call you Junior. For very soon you will be a great big boy.”23

The original book of On Your Toes had fewer Groucho Marx–Margaret Dumont–type exchanges than the 1934 Anything Goes, but those that remained were carefully expurgated. Thus in Abbott’s 1983 revised book (act 1, scene 6) Sergei learns of the glitch that will pave the way for Junior to escape from his role as a supernumerary to become a star of the “Zenobia” ballet: the dancer Leftsky has been detained in jail. This change obscures the politically topical nature of the 1936 version which finds Lefsky (less obviously named than his 1983 counterpart) in a hospital.

SERGEI: He got in fight with union delegates—All afternoon we are waiting and waiting for him—

PEGGY: Waiting for Lefsky!24

Theater audiences in 1936 would not have had any trouble relating this reference to Clifford Odets’s then widely known union play produced the previous year, Waiting for Lefty, in which members of a taxi drivers’ union are waiting in vain for their leader, who has been killed.

The Classroom Scene

A comparison between the 1936 and 1983 versions of the first classroom scene, act I, scene 3, further demonstrates evolving social attitudes. In 1936 Junior not only derogates as “cheap” the musical ditty Frankie has composed, but he also displays a favoritism toward his “serious” jazz (and, not incidentally, male) student composer Sidney Cohn. In fact, he is so engrossed in his protégé that he is oblivious to Frankie’s feelings. Although Frankie is still the one who will return to apologize for leaving so abruptly, by 1983 Junior has learned something from the feminist movement of the intervening years. At least he realizes that he has hurt her feelings.

Gone from both the lyrics and the vocal score of “The Three B’s” in 1983 are Hart’s virtuosic and delectably absurd rhymes in 1936 that called attention to their brilliance: “Who are the three ‘B’s’ of music? / Name the holy trinity / Whose true divinity / Goes stretching to infinity / No asininity / In this vicinity / Who are the three “B’s” of music?”25

In 1983 Junior offers the following interpretation of romantic lieder: “And thus we note the painless transition into the next phase. The early 19th century brought forth a renaissance of what we could term singing composers. The great music of that period was idealized folk song. Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and, last but not least, Franz Schubert.”26

The following dialogue from 1936 (abandoned in 1983) introduces “The Three B’s” from quite a different perspective:

JUNIOR: You will notice I am careful of the pronunciation, Schu-bert, not Shubert [a reference to the organization which, then as now, owned a considerable number of Broadway theaters]. (Walks to piano) Let us take this lovely melody. (He plays the Ständchen and sings) “Dein ist mein Herz” which means “Yours is my heart.” We are all familiar with that melody but I wonder is there anyone who can tell me what life force may have inspired Franz Schubert? (Hands are raised by some of the class) Yes, Miss Wasservogel?

MISS WASSERVOGEL: A beautiful girl.

JUNIOR: