Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (5 page)

Collections in the New York Public Library (Loesser), Yale University (Porter, Weill), the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Blitzstein, Moss Hart, Sondheim), the Kurt Weill Foundation (Weill), and the Library of Congress (Gershwin, Kern, Loewe, Porter, Rodgers, and Weill) were indispensable in my research. Of the many who facilitated my use of these priceless holdings I would like to thank individually Harold L. Miller of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, David Farneth and Joanna C. Lee of The Kurt Weill Foundation, Victor Cardell and Kendall Crilly of Yale University, and especially Raymond A. White of the Library of Congress, for sharing his time and knowledge so generously.

For special kindnesses I would like to identify and thank the following: Louis H. Aborn, President, Tams-Witmark; Tom Briggs, Director, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library; Tom Creamer, Dramaturg, The Goodman Theater; Marty Jacobs and Marguerite Lavin of the Museum of the City of New York; David Leopold, Al Hirschfeld’s representative at the Margo Feiden Galleries; and Roberta Staats and Robert H. Montgomery
of the Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trusts. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1990 enabled me to research and draft several chapters, and the University of Puget Sound provided generous financial and other assistance at several stages over the past decade. I am also grateful for the expertise and helpfulness of Oxford University Press, especially my editor, Maribeth Payne, her assistant, Soo Mee Kwon, production editor Joellyn M. Ausanka, and copy editor Paul Schlotthauer.

Jacqueline Block, Andrew Buchman, and Richard Lewis read portions of various early drafts, offered useful advice and encouragement, and helped me to consolidate central ideas as well as many details. In later stages several reviewers offered valuable suggestions both large and small that I was able to incorporate into the final draft. Throughout I was guided by the wise counsel of my friend, colleague, and “ideal reader” (i.e., intelligent, curious, and challenging, but not necessarily a musician), Michael Veseth, Professor of Economics.

The following people also provided much-needed information, services, or support: Marcie Bates, Ronald L. Blanc, Abba Bogin, John E. Boswell, J. Peter Burkholder, Theodore S. Chapin, Tara Corcoran, Christopher Davis, Lee Davis, Denise Dumke, Sarah Dunlop, Arthur Elias, Hugh Fordin, April Franks, Peter P. Mc.N. Gates, Rosemarie Gawelko, Peter Greenfield, David Grossberg, John L Hughes, Judy Hulbert, Autumn Inglin, Caroline Kane, Andrew King, Al Kohn, Frank Korach, Deann Kreutzer, Arthur Laurents, Florence Leeds, bruce d. mcclung, Anne McCormick, Judith McCulloh, Kathy McCullough, Paul McKibbins, Zoraya Mendez, Betty Kern Miller, Jeremy Nussbaum, Leonard Pailet, Harriet F. Pilpel, Mitchell Salem, Evelyn Sasko, Joan Schulman, Larry Starr, Jo Sullivan, Hope H. Taylor, Andrea N. Van Kampen, and Robin Walton.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends. My parents and my sister, Norma, introduced me to the joy of musicals when I was a child, and the senior Blocks have unceasingly nurtured my intellectual and aesthetic growth ever since. My friends shared and profoundly enriched my processes of discovery. My wife, Jacqueline, was my friendliest and most helpful critic. My daughters, Jessamyn and Eliza, not only inspired me to organize my time more efficiently but gave perspective and meaning to this and all my other work.

The second edition of
Enchanted Evenings
was born and nurtured from inception to fruition through the generosity and wisdom of my editor at Oxford University Press, Norm Hirschy. Throughout every stage of the process, including an insightful reading of the new chapters, Norm offered
the full range of his punctual, thoughtful, nuanced, and always kind and enthusiastic editorial expertise, guidance, and support. I can’t thank him enough. Thanks also to Oxford’s Senior Production Editor Joellyn Ausanka for honoring me by requesting this book and then ably guiding it through the production process as she did with the first edition and with
The Richard Rodgers Reader
. I would also like to thank Patterson Lamb for her unobtrusive and helpful copy editing and Katharine Boone and Madelyn Sutton for their administrative assistance.

For this, as with every project I have undertaken, the library and music office staff at the University of Puget Sound was invariably friendly and helpful. In addition, Media Consultant Stephen Philbrook and his student assistant Kyle Cramer provided indispensable assistance through the complicated task of locating and processing the new film photos. I am also grateful to my students for keeping me in touch with what is happening on Broadway (and in general for that matter) and for sharing their perceptive thoughts, observations, and reactions.

Michael Veseth, the “ideal reader” of the first edition, was always available to demonstrate his problem-solving acumen and to help me figure out what I was trying to accomplish. Andrew Buchman offered thorough, knowledgeable, and helpful comments on the expanded Sondheim chapter and the three new chapters and provided an invaluable sounding board and an endless source of enthusiasm and encouragement at every stage.

As with the first edition, my wife, Jacqueline, and daughters, Jessamyn and Eliza, provided a family ambiance of love and encouragement, blessings that were deeply appreciated and especially meaningful at a time of loss and mourning. My mother died in August 2007, not long after Norm first proposed my doing an expanded second edition of
Enchanted Evenings
, and my dad died while I was writing the new chapters last October. I dedicate this second edition to their inspiring example and beloved memory.

Oxford has created a companion website,
www.oup.com/us/enchantedevenings
, to accompany
Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from
Show Boat
to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber
, and the reader is encouraged to take full advantage of it. Among its contents, the website offers plot synopses, a discography and filmography, appendices of Sources, Published Librettos, and Vocal Scores, Long Runs: Decade by Decade 1920s–2000s, The Forty Longest-Running Musicals on Broadway 1920–1959 and 1920–2008, and additional useful and extensive appendices listing scenes and songs for the opening night Broadway versions of all of the principal shows discussed in the main text. In addition, the website offers outlines of scenes and songs from pre-Broadway tryouts, Broadway revivals, and other source material to assist the reader’s understanding and comprehension of the discussions. The phrase “online website” will appear at the mention of these appendices in the main text.

T
he central subjects in acts I and II of this book are fourteen “book” musicals that premiered on Broadway between the late 1920s and the late 1950s, beginning with
Show Boat
(1927) and ending with
West Side Story
(1957).
¹
All of these shows, and the Sondheim and Lloyd Webber shows discussed in the Epilogue—most for several generations—have demonstrated a measure of popularity and critical approbation. They also offer an array of fascinating critical, analytical, social, and historical issues. Perhaps more important, the musicals surveyed here continue to move us to applaud and cheer (and sometimes hiss), to sing their songs, follow their stories, and make us laugh and cry. In short, they entertain us. Forty, fifty, sixty, even eighty years later we eagerly revisit these shows, not only on Broadway, but in high school and college productions and amateur and professional regional theaters of all shapes and sizes, artistic aims, audiences, and budgets.

In this selective (and to some degree idiosyncratic) survey I do not presume to develop a theory of permanent or ephemeral values or to unravel the mysteries of either artistic merit or popular success. I do, however, attempt to establish a critical and analytical framework that might contribute to an understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of the selected musicals. The purpose of this introduction is to present recurring topics and issues, to encapsulate the approach to the subject this book will take, and to explain—and sometimes defend—the choices.

Why start with
Show Boat
? Certainly, other American musicals that premiered before December 27, 1927, are still successfully revived. Nevertheless, although the choice of where to begin a survey of Broadway is by nature somewhat arbitrary and destined to generate controversy, Broadway historians and critics with surprising unanimity subscribe to the view espoused by the admittedly biased judgment of
Show Boat
enthusiast Miles Kreuger: “The history of the American Musical Theatre, quite simply, is divided into two eras—everything before
Show Boat
and everything after
Show Boat
.”
²
Show Boat
not only opened up a world of possibilities for what an ambitious American musical on an American theme could accomplish; it remains firmly anchored as the first made-in-America musical to achieve a secure place in the core repertory of Broadway musicals.

Before
Show Boat
the Broadway shows that created their greatest initial and most lasting imprints were often British and Viennese imports such as William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s
H.M.S. Pinafore
(1879) and Franz Lehár’s
The Merry Widow
(1907), respectively. Earlier shows that displayed unequivocally American themes—for example, the so-called Mulligan shows of Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart between 1879 and 1883, Percy Gaunt and Charles H. Hoyt’s phenomenally successful
A Trip to Chinatown
in 1891 (657 performances), and George M. Cohan’s
Little Johnny Jones
in 1904—are today remembered for their songs.
³
The latter show is perhaps best known from its partly staged reincarnation in film (the 1942 classic film biography of Cohan,
Yankee Doodle Dandy
, starring James Cagney) or the musical biography
George M!
(1968), which features a potpourri of memorable Cohan songs. Victor Herbert’s
Naughty Marietta
(1910), Jerome Kern’s so-called Princess Theatre Shows (1915–1918) with books and lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton (especially
Very Good Eddie
and
Leave It to Jane
), Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy’s
Irene
(1919), Sigmund Romberg’s
The Student Prince in Heidelberg
(1924), Vincent Youmans’s and Irving Caesar’s
No, No, Nanette
(1925), and
The Desert Song
(1926) (music by Romberg, lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein 2nd) are occasionally revived and singled out as outstanding exponents of the American musical before
Show Boat
.
⁴
But unlike Gilbert and Sullivan and Lehár’s imported classics, these stageworthy as well as melodious operettas and musical comedies are not widely known, and the Herbert and Romberg operettas are mainly familiar to the Broadway-attending public primarily in greatly altered MGM film versions.
⁵
The unfairly neglected musicals before
Show Boat
certainly merit a book of their own.

By 1927, the early masters of the American Broadway musical, Herbert, Cohan, Romberg, and Rudolf Friml, either had completed or were nearing the end of their numerous, lucrative, and—for their era—long-lived Broadway runs. Joining Kern, a new generation of Broadway composers
and lyricists—Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and, in Germany, Kurt Weill—all but Hammerstein and Weill are featured in Al Hirschfeld’s drawing “American Popular Song: Great American Songwriters”—had already launched their Broadway careers by 1927.
⁶

But despite their auspicious opening salvos, the greatest triumphs for this illustrious list, with the exception of Kern’s, would arrive after
Show Boat
in the 1930s and 1940s.