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

Coward. In the final chorus the then-better-known Arturo Toscanini replaced Leopold Stokowski as the leader of the “the greatest of bands,” and one stripper (Lili St. Cyr) replaced another (Rosita Royce). Even present-day trivia buffs could not be expected to know who either stripper is (although it might be said that Lili St. Cyr has achieved immortality by being mentioned in “Zip”). The 1952 version of “Den of Iniquity” (act II, scene 2) replaced Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with Ravel’s Boléro and added a final lyrical exchange between Joey and Vera after their dance.50

In his autobiography Abbott somewhat exaggeratingly refers to a preliminary script by librettist O’Hara as “a disorganized set of scenes without a good story line [that] required work before we would be ready for rehearsal.”51 In fact, although it contains no lyrics among its indications for songs and displays several notable deletions and departures from his Broadway typescript in 1940 (including an ending in which Linda and Joey are reconciled), in most respects O’Hara’s preliminary typescript follows the story line of the 1940 version closely.52

Some songs that became part of the Broadway draft, “That Terrific Rainbow,” “Happy Hunting Horn,” and even “Bewitched,” were not given any space at all in O’Hara’s preliminary script. Further, the early typescript offers no indication for a ballet, an idea that Abbott credits scene and lighting designer Jo Mielziner for suggesting during rehearsals.53 The dialogue that precedes “The Flower Garden of My Heart” in the published libretto is also missing from the earlier draft, but in this case O’Hara’s description of this production number (original draft, beginning of act II) leaves no room for doubt that he was responsible for the idea of the ballet:

The song is Richman corn [Harry Richman, who introduced Irving Berlin’s song “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in the 1930 film also called Puttin on the Ritz], the flower number kind of thing—every girl reminds me of a flower; here is a hydrangea, here is a crocus, etc. a YOUNG MAN stays in the spotlight, holding out a hand for Hydrangea, who is in silly nudish costume. He never quite lets her get all the way in the light, but hands her away with one hand as he reaches for Crocus with the other. He looks at the fannies etc. in a way to make them ridiculous, and is mugging terribly, even in rehearsal.

Song and Story

O’Hara’s typescript of the 1940 Broadway libretto (I-6–36) contains handwritten changes for “Bewitched,” the biggest song hit from Pal Joey. Here are the typed lyrics as they once appeared in the B and final A sections of the third A-A-B-A chorus.

B

We can fight—we start shrieking

Always end in a row,

Horizontally speaking is not the whole thing now,

A

I’m dumb again

And numb again

Like Fanny Brice singing “Mon Homme” again.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.

The draft poses a cultural literacy problem for those who might not know, even in 1940, that Fanny Brice sang “My Man” in Ziegfeld 9 O’Clock Frolic (1920) and Ziegfeld Follies (1921), or that this song was originally the French song “Mon Homme” by Maurice Yvain and Channing Pollock.54

Fortunately this lyric was abandoned. The first three lines were crossed out and replaced with the following handwritten script for the B section with the forced rhyme pal / verti-cal:

When your dream boat is leaking

And your pal ain’t your pal

Geometrically speaking just keep it vertical

The final version published in 1940 with its paired rhymes in B, is not indicated in the O’Hara typescript:

B

Though at first we said, “No sir,”

Now we’re two little dears.

You might say we are closer

Than Roebuck is to Sears.

A

I’m dumb again

And numb again,

A rich, ready, ripe little plum again—

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.

All of these versions are variations on a theme that Hart explored in numerous songs, including “It’s Got to Be Love” discussed earlier: love as a sickness. Vera, the restless wife of the wealthy Prentiss Simpson, is generally in control of her emotions and entertains no delusions about the cause of her sleepless nights. In the verse that precedes the chorus she even refers to Joey as a “fool” and a “half-pint imitation,” but even this realization does not prevent her from catching the dreaded disease.

In his autobiography Rodgers recalls what he learned from his training in Goetschius’s class of five students: “Whenever Goetschius talked about ending a phrase with a straight-out tonic chord (the first, third and fifth step of any scale), he would call it a ‘pig,’ his term for anything that was too easy or obvious. Once I heard the scorn in Goetschius’ voice I knew that I’d avoid that ‘pig’ as if my life depended on it.”55 In “Bewitched” (Example 5.6) Rodgers avoids the infelicitously named “pig” at the end of the second eight-measure A section. He does this by moving to an A in measures 15 and 16 on the word “I” rather than the expected first note of the scale, F (also on the word “I”), that he set up at the end of the first A section in measures 7 and 8. The harmony, however, add interest as well as richness but not following the expectations of the melody. When the melody resolves to F (mm. 7–8), Rodgers harmonizes this note, not with F but with D minor (D-F-A, with F as the third rather than an F major triad, F-A-C, with F as the root); when the melody closes on A at the end of the second A section (mm. 15–16), the note that avoided the “pig,” Rodgers offers the F harmony expected eight measures earlier (but now a surprise), with A as the third. Only at the conclusion of the final A section (mm. 31–32) does Rodgers join melody and harmony (the note C in the melody matches the C major chord in the harmony) to conclude the song with a satisfying close.

Example 5.6. “Bewitched” (chorus)

(a) Chorus, mm. 1-16.

(b) B section, or release, mm. 17-20

Rodgers also finds an effective musical means to capture Hart’s virtuosic depiction of Vera’s