The DVD Report #21: September 25, 2007
The movie musical has a long history going back to the first talking film, The Jazz Singer . In the first few years of the talkies it seemed every other film was a musical, from 1928's The Singing Fool to 1929's The Broadway Melody , Applause , The Love Parade and Hallelujah to 1930's Under the Roofs of Paris, Monte Carlo and The Lottery Bride, then just as quickly as they came into fashion they went out. Films were becoming more sophisticated and so were depression audience tastes. Musicals didn't stay out of fashion for long. They bounced back bigger than ever with Busby Berkeley's larger than life choreography highlighting four spectacular films in 1933 and 1934: 42nd Street, the grand-daddy of the backstage musical; Gold Diggers of 1933 with its witty screwball comedy punctuating the music and ending with a lavish tribute to World War I's "Forgotten Man"; Footlight Parade in which James Cagney first kicked up his heels and danced on screen; and Dames in which Dick Powell sings "I Only Have Eyes for You" to fifty Ruby Keelers. Even more popular were the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals from 1934 to 1939, in which screwball comedy blended nicely with elegant dancing and music by some of the greatest composers of the 20th Century including George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin. Critics and fans still argue over which one of the team's nine musicals was their best. Let's end the argument by conceding that Porter's The Gay Divorcée is the best expansion of a Broadway musical, Berlin's Top Hat is the most stylish, and Gershwin's Swing Time is the one with the greatest score. As the Astaire/Rogers collaborations came to an end, the young team of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland was just getting started. The Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection, out today, features the four musicals they made together between 1939 and 1943: Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway and Girl Crazy, all of them either directed or co-directed by Busby Berkeley. The first three of these films are of the "let's put on a show" variety and the simplistic story lines do not hold up very well, though the music and the energy of the performers still does. Rooney even won an Oscar nomination for Babes in Arms which jettisons much of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's original score. "The Lady Is a Tramp", for example, was considered too sophisticated for the teenaged Garland and had to wait until Lena Horne sang it a few years later in Words and Music c. The ever popular "Where or When" is retained, however, and baritone Douglas McPhail does a rousing rendition of the title song. Nicely incorporating the Oscar-nominated "Our Love Affair" and the rousing title tune, Strike Up the Band features the duo in top form but is otherwise a disappointment as it abandons the rest of the score and the plot from Gershwin's original stage musical. Of interest to film buffs, Enid Bennett and Helen Jerome Eddy, fondly remembered as the mothers of Skippy and Sooky in the Oscar-nominated Skippy and its sequel Sooky have featured roles as mothers here. Norman Taurog, who directed them in those films, winning an Oscar for the former, was later to co-direct Rooney and Garland in Girl Crazy. The only completely original film of the set is Babes on Broadway, which includes the Oscar-nominated song, "How About You?". Virginia Weidler co-stars. Margaret O'Brien, in her film debut, and Donna Reed have bit parts and Ava Gardner is an extra. The most enduring of the four films is Girl Crazy, which retains most of the Gershwin score and was successfully remade by MGM as When the Boys Meet the Girls in 1965 with Connie Francis and Harve Presnell. Retaining the dude ranch setting of the original stage musical, the score includes "I Got Rhythm" and "But Not for Me". Musicals in which the actors express their feelings in song rather than in the lines between the songs was a convention long used in opera and operetta. The first modern musical to utilize this device was Show Boat, filmed as a partial talkie in 1929, later as a full blown musical, and a great one, in 1936. The device was not utilized again until 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis, in which Garland was directed by her future husband, stage-trained Vincente Minnelli. The only other musical of the era to utilize this device was State Fair, the only musical written directly for the screen by Rodgers and Hammerstein, who perfected the device in Oklahoma!, which ten years after State Fair would become the first of the blockbuster screen musicals adapted from Broadway shows. Both Meet Me in St. Louis and State Fair were musicals about families in hometown America. Both offered a treasure trove of hits. From Meet Me in St. Louis came "The Boy Next Door", "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and the Oscar-nominated "Trolley Song" as well as the title tune. From State Fair came "Our State Fair", "That's for Me", "It's a Grand Night for Singing" and the Oscar winning "It Might as Well Be Spring". The 1962 remake featured additional music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers that included "Willing and Eager" and "Never Say No to a Man". State Fair had of course been previously filmed in 1933 and was, in fact, one of that year's Oscar nominees for Best Picture. Some prefer the original non-musical version with Will Rogers, Janet Gaynor, Lew Ayres, Sally Eilers, Norman Foster and Louise Dresser, but I prefer the first musical version with Charles Winninger, Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Vivian Blaine, Dick Haymes and Fay Bainter in those roles. The original, which I finally caught up with recently, seems like just another Will Rogers film to me, despite the fine acting of Gaynor, Ayres and Foster, whereas the 1945 version seems more like a lived-in piece. That is especially true of the character of the mother. Dresser, who could be a fine actress in films like The Scarlet Empress, plays the part in State Fair, much as she did her part in David Harum, as a foil for Rogers. Bainter's line readings are more like a real down-home mother would say them. Her exasperation at not getting just the right amount of ingredients into her mince pie, and her later giddiness at winning the blue ribbon at the fair, seem quite real. Shoot me, but I also prefer Alice Faye to Dresser in the 1962 version. Between State Fair and the film version of Oklahoma!, there were occasional transfers of Broadway book musicals such as Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam, but for the most part movie musicals were either heavily fictionalized biographies of great composers and the occasional performer, or musical compilations of scores by composers such as Berlin and Gershwin. Gershwin's music is the main ingredient of the Oscar-winning An American in Paris, whereas Berlin's music first showed up in a compilation in 1938's Alexander's Ragtime Band, a device later used in 1942's Holiday Inn, which included a new song among the oldies, the Oscar-winning classic, "White Christmas". Two 1943 musicals, This Is the Army and Thousands Cheer incorporated Berlin music that was both old and new. Apparently no one wanted to tamper with a proven formula when it worked, so along came 1946's Blue Skies, 1948's Easter Parade and 1954's White Christmas and There's No Business Like Show Business, all of them huge box office successes and all of them fondly remembered today. Compilations of the music of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, and Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz respectively were the chief ingredients of the two best musicals of the era, Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon. Musical biographies covered the lives of composers such as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart. All of them were heavily fictionalized: in the Gershwin biopic, Rhapsody in Blue, to make the composer's short life seem longer than it was; in the Kern biopic, Till the Clouds Roll By, to hide the dullness of his private life; the Porter biopic, Night and Day, to hide his homosexuality and the Rodgers and Hart biopic, Words and Music, to hide both the dullness of Richard Rodgers' life and Larry Hart's homosexuality. See them for the music, not to gain any real insight into the lives of the men being portrayed. One of the best, and more truthful, of the composer biographies was 1951's I'll See You in My Dreams in which Danny Thomas played composer Gus Kahn and Doris Day his wife. Musical biographies of performers had been around for some time when James Cagney made perhaps the most celebrated of them all, 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy, the biography of George M. Cohan, who was, of course, also a composer. Next to the Cagney film, the most popular of the star biographies was 1946's The Jolson Story. The Cohan biography featured several fictional characters along with the real ones and hid the fact that the Irish Catholic performer was married more than once. The Jolson biography played like a remake of The Jazz Singer, so much of Jolson's alleged early life seemed to have gotten confused with the early life of the character he played in that film. Totally ridiculous was the re-naming of Jolson's ex-wife so audiences wouldn't know she was supposed to be Ruby Keeler. Despite the disingenuousness of the enterprise it was a huge hit and Jolson became a bigger star than ever having recorded the songs to which Larry Parks lip-synced. Notable biographies of female stars include 1940's Lillian Russell with Alice Faye as the great turn-of-the-century star and 1953's So This Is Love in which Kathryn Grayson plays Oscar-nominated opera star Grace Moore (One Night of Love). Susan Hayward won an Oscar nomination impersonating Jane Froman who sang her own songs to Hayward's superb lip-synching in 1952's With a Song in My Heart, which was so heavily fictionalized that the character of Froman's nurse/companion for which Thelma Ritter also won an Oscar nomination didn't exist in real life. 1955, the year in which Oklahoma! forever changed the look of screen musicals, was the last gasp for musical biographies. Sure, there were later attempts such as 1957's The Helen Morgan Story, but the three big female star biographies of 1955 pretty much ended the era in high style. Susan Hayward, who only three years earlier lip-synched her heart out in With a Song in My Heart, was back, this time getting her wish to sing the songs herself as Lillian Roth in I'll Cry Tomorrow. So impressed was Roth with Hayward's interpretations that she changed her own singing style to suit Hayward's in later life. Doris Day gave what is arguably her greatest performance as singer Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me opposite a highly-effective James Cagney as her brute of a husband. Not to be outdone, Eleanor Parker pulled out all the stops to play Australian-born opera singer Marjorie Lawrence, who went on despite being afflicted with polio, in Interrupted Melody. Parker's voice was dubbed by Eileen Farrell. Hayward and Parker received Oscar nominations for their interpretations of Roth and Lawrence. Day went on to become the number one box office star in the world after Pillow Talk four years later. I'll have more to say about movie musicals beginning with 1955's Oklahoma! at another time. -Peter J. Patrick (September 25, 2007) |
Buy on DVD! |
The DVD Report #20: September 18, 2007
You know it's Fall when Hollywood begins to release its big gun Oscar hopefuls and the year's earlier contenders start to make it to DVD. So far this year there's been only one film consistently generating Oscar buzz and it's just been released on DVD. Actress Sarah Polley's directorial debut, Away From Her, is a quietly-effecting slice-of-life drama about a husband going through the agony of watching his wife slowly slip into the haze of Alzheimer's disease. In temperament and mood, it is a good companion piece to The Secret Life of Words in which Polley and Tim Robbins play two lost souls who find one another. Julie Christie who had a cameo as a psychologist in that one is the Alzheimer's patient here. She and Gordon Pinsent as her husband might well be the Polley/Robbins characters in old age. Pinsent, who is heartbreaking as the husband, has the lion's share of the film's scenes, but it is Christie at her most luminous who you will remember. She can still knock your socks off with a smile even when there is nothing behind the smile. A million-watt smile from another era, and one with deviousness masking loneliness, was the one put on by Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Looking timeworn in previous DVD editions, the 40th anniversary edition has been spiffed up to look like it was shot yesterday. The DVD features commentary by co-stars Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross on one track and director Mike Nichols on another. A second disc contains the original soundtrack and if you purchase it at Best Buy you get yet a third disc, the DVD of 1982's Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park. Finally being released on DVD is Gorilla at Large, the 1954 circus thriller in which Bancroft had her first starring role. I saw this in a theatre as a kid and for years couldn't understand why Bancroft hadn't become a big star. Then The Miracle Worker came along and the rest, as they say, is history. Here she is, though, at an early peak, as a trapeze artist flying low over a scary gorilla's open air habitat, while Cameron Mitchell, Raymond Burr, Lee J. Cobb, Lee Marvin and others stand helplessly by. Second lead Charlotte Austin has the most piercing scream since Fay Wray in the original King Kong. Gorilla at Large is paired with the cheesy 1981 film, Mystery on Monster Island, one of several twofers being released by Fox for under $10 a pop. Other combos available under the Midnite Movies banner include the silly The House on Skull Mountain paired with cult favorite The Mephisto Waltz and the taut A Blueprint for Murder paired with Man in the Attic, a nifty remake of The Lodger. You also know it's Fall when DVD companies start releasing horror movies in anticipation of Halloween. In addition to the new entries in its Midnite Madness line, Fox has just released two sets of Vincent Price horror films, both of them reissues with one new film and a supplementary disc each. Included in the Vincent Price Scream Legends Collection are Tales of Terror, Twice Told Tales, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Theater of Blood, the previously unavailable Madhouse, and the newly-released Witchfinder General which had no been available under its U.S.-release title of The Conqueror Worm. While Madhouse may be the new-to-DVD film, it's Witchfinder General that gets the deluxe treatment, including commentary by producer Philip Waddilove and actor Ian Ogilvy. There's also a featurette on the making of the film and its young director, Michael Reeves, who died of an accidental barbiturate overdose at the age of 25 a few months after the film's release. More a historical drama than a horror film, though there's plenty of the latter, Witchfinder General developed quite a cult following that was outraged when the film showed up on TV with its original score replaced by one improvised on a Moog synthesizer. This is the restored version in which Price has one of his best roles as the real life Matthew Hopkins who died peacefully in old age, but not here, definitely not here! In the film the hunter and killer of innocents, as alleged witches, gets his just desserts in a most unusual way. The Fly Collection is not exactly a collection of Vincent Price films as Price stars in only two of the three films, but the supplements include the excellent A&E biography of the actor previously available as a supplement to Laura, Price's own favorite film. The original 1958 film, The Fly, was a huge box office success at the time and has remained a cult classic through the years. Price has a supporting role as the brother of scientist David Hedison who experiments with teleportation to his detriment. He gets top billing in the immediate sequel, Return of the Fly, in which nephew Brett Halsey picks up where his father left off. The film, though a good one, suffers a bit from being in black and white. As Price himself says in a 1987 interview, two films made in black and white can be great but one in color and the other in black and white makes no sense. When it came time to make the third film in the trilogy, the previously-unavailable The Curse of the Fly, Price's contract with American-International allowed him to make other films outside the studio, but not horror films. As a consequence Fox was forced to hire another actor in his stead and selected Brian Donlevy to play the part in a film in which there were ironically no flies, merely mutants who got that way from utilizing the family's teleportation facilities. A decent horror film in its own right, it bears little resemblance to its predecessors. Long before Jurassic Parkthere was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, the original 1925 version of which has been restored from various prints, some of the footage looking better than others. If you can get past that, the highlight of the film is the special effects by Willis O'Brien, who later did King Kong, which are still amazing. The A-list cast brings more to the film than one might expect. Bessie Love is a thoughtful, intelligent heroine, Lloyd Hughes a stalwart leading man, Lewis Stone an authoritative father figure, and a fierce, bearded Wallace Beery has one of his best early lead roles as the head of the expedition. The one sour note is the use of a white actor in black face with atrocious diction as preserved on the newly struck title cards. One might think they could at least replace words like dat and mo' with proper phrasing. King Kong, Godzilla and hundreds of later creature flicks owe much to the ending of The Lost World. Alas, the 1925 version is being released without much fanfare as a companion disc to the well made but less compelling 1960 remake. Historical dramas have always been in fashion. To coincide with the release of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Universal is releasing a twofer of two earlier historical dramas. Personally, I've never understood how Anne of the Thousand Days could win ten Oscar nominations as well as various other awards in 1969. Granted, its Oscar-winning costumes were well made, but the stodgy script from a 1940s play was laughable coming just three years after the sublime A Man for All Seasons in which Robert Shaw played a robust young Henry VIII. How anyone could accept middle-aged, sleepy-eyed Richard Burton in the role so soon after that is beyond me. Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn does manage to give a good performance despite having to spout awful dialogue like "I know my Elizabeth will make a better queen than Henry ever made a king" or other such nonsense. Easier to take is Mary, Queen of Scots, if only because Vanessa Redgrave as Mary and Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth are so ferocious in their performances. Jackson had just played Elizabeth in the acclaimed TV mini-series, Elizabeth R and she was fascinating to watch reprising that role here. Like all films about Mary Stuart, the best scene is the one where Elizabeth comes to visit her in prison even though we know that in real life the two never met. Molly Shannon stars as an aging single woman who becomes obsessed with saving animals to the detriment of all else after the poisoning death of her beloved pet dog. John C. Reilly as a nutty neighbor, Thomas McCarthy and Laura Dern as her self-absorbed brother- and sister-in-law, Regina King as her best friend, and Peter Sarsgaard as an animal activist all have their moments, but the whole thing is rather lame. One of the most controversial films of all time has been spiffed up for a Special Edition DVD. In 1980 director William Friedkin was still riding high on the success of The French Connection and The Exorcist almost a decade earlier. In filming the thriller Cruising about a an undercover cop's investigation of a string of murders of gay men in Greenwich Village, Friedkin became obsessed with the gay leather scene and used a notorious after hours bar to film background material. Fueled by articles in the Village Voice, the gay community protested. The more they protested the more he filmed at the bar, causing star Al Pacino to say the film he made was not the film he signed on for. To this day, Pacino disavows the film which is never shown in any of his retrospectives. A pity because he delivers one of his best performances, though the film itself is a muddle. Having different killers at the beginning and end and even suggesting that Pacino himself might be a killer is meant to be ambiguous, but comes across as just confusing. Also being released is a new 35th anniversary edition of Deliverance with commentary from all four stars (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox) and director John Boorman, and a 30th anniversary edition of Saturday Night Fever with various extras. -Peter J. Patrick (September 18, 2007) |
Buy on DVD! |
The DVD Report #19: September 11, 2007
Sunday, September 16 is the broadcast date for the 59th Annual Emmy Awards. I basically hate the Emmys. I watch the show every year and kick myself afterward for wasting my time. The show is long and boring and they give out way too many awards, usually to the same shows and people they awarded the year before. Still, I keep hoping that each year will be different. Rather than predict the winners, which I basically stink at, I will tell you what shows and performers I think should win, even if most of them won't. All are available on DVD, most of them are just recently released. For best drama series my choice is Heroes, one of the most original shows to come down the pike in decades. It plays like a street-smart comic book brought to life on one hand, and an acutely observed human drama on the other. It also boasts the most eclectic cast on television. We've seen stories about various characters with special powers before, most recently the X-Men and Fantastic Four film series, but this is different. For one thing, the characters with special powers don't all get together, and for another, they don't all live to fight the bad guys. Among the intriguing characters, none of whom are drawn as perfect human beings, are the artist who can paint the future (Santiago Cabrera), the Jekyll-and-Hyde mom (Ali Larter), the politician who can fly (Adrian Pasdar), the ex-con who can walk through walls (Leonard Roberts), the kid who can make non-working telephones and elevators run with the touch of his hand (Noah Gray-Cabey), the schoolgirl who can regenerate her dead body parts (Hayden Panettiere), the cop who can hear people's thoughts (Greg Grundberg), the office worker who can transport himself through time and place (Masi Oka) and the superhero who can absorb all of their characteristics (Milo Vertimiglia). Intertwined among them are a few fascinating characters without special powers, including a second generation geneticist (Sendhil Ramamurthy), a best friend (James Kyson Lee) and a mysterious businessman (Jack Coleman). If you've never seen the show and discover it on DVD, be sure you have the time to do nothing else until you've watched every fascinating episode back to back. It's that addictive. My choice for best actor in a drama series is Hugh Laurie in House. He deserved to win this award last year when they gave it to Kiefer Sutherland for 24. He deserved to win it the year before when they gave it to James Spader for Boston Legal. He sure as hell deserves to win it this year when they will probably give James Gandolfini his fourth for The Sopranos. Week after week, Laurie does his best to win our enmity as well as our admiration playing a mean misanthrope who is also a brilliant doctor. What other leading man on series TV could earn both our empathy and disgust as he stands there doing his job while his catheter bag bursts open and its contents pour out all over the floor next to a patient's bed? For best actress in a drama series, I'm a bit torn. I love Kyra Sedgwick's quirky detective in The Closer, but she was my choice last year, so this year I'm spreading the wealth and giving my support to Sally Field in Brothers and Sisters. Field grew up on television. She was The Flying Nun and Gidget before she became a serious actress, which she became in one fell swoop playing a woman with thirteen separate personalities in Sybil. Then she went and became a two-time Oscar-winning actress in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. Now she's back on TV playing the funny, warm, but not always wise mother of three sons and two daughters in Sunday night's best new drama series. In the supporting actor in a drama series category I like Masi Oka, the sweet-natured, reluctant swordsman from modern Tokyo in Heroes. The guy's a constant delight. Among the nominees for best supporting actress in a drama series I would single out Rachel Griffiths in Brothers and Sisters. Not only do the ladies from Grey's Anatomy cancel one another out in my mind, all three of them had better story arcs in previous seasons, Sandra Oh in the first and Chandra Wilson and Katherine Heigel in the second. I wouldn't mind seeing Lorraine Bracco finally winning for The Sopranos but Griffiths had the tougher role, playing the most complex of all the complex characters in Brothers and Sisters. She has to juggle running her late father's business as well as deal with a crumbling marriage and the sibling rivalry that all the characters have to deal with. Besides, she's overdue, not having won in prior years for Six Feet Under. My favorite among the nominees for best comedy series is Ugly Betty, though like Desperate Housewives, the hour long format allows for as much drama as it does comedy. The basic premise of the show is that the main character is ugly on the outside but beautiful on the inside, while the people she works with at a fashion magazine are beautiful on the outside and ugly on the inside, but not really. Betty is not ugly, just plain, with no fashion sense despite her glamorous surroundings. While she may not always do the right thing, whatever she does she does from the heart. Her co-workers, who are often mean, are shallow more than they are inherently evil. The cast is the best ensemble on television, led by America Ferrera as Betty, Eric Mabius as her immature boss, Vanessa Williams as the scheming department head who wants his job, Michael Urie as Williams' gay assistant, Becki Newton as the bimbo receptionist, Ashley Jensen as the wardrobe lady, Christopher Gorham as the accountant with a crush on Betty, Alan Dale as the publisher, Judith Light as his unstable wife and Rebecca Romijn as their daughter who used to be their son. Betty's family at home consists of her illegal-alien father (Tony Plana), her sexpot sister (Ana Ortiz) and her show tune-singing nephew (Mark Indelicato). All are given episodes in which they shine. For best actor in a comedy series you'd have to go a long way to find an actor with Alec Baldwin's impeccable timing as the new corporate boss in 30 Rock. Writer-producer Tina Fey is the star, but she wisely allows Baldwin to take center stage whenever he's on screen. The best shows of the first season evolve around his character and the guest stars who interact with him, most notably Isabella Rossellini as his ex-wife and Elaine Stritch as his mother. If they give the best actress in a comedy series award to anyone other than America Ferrera in Ugly Betty, it will the worst moment of the evening, but as stupid as the Emmy voters are at times, I don't think they're that dumb. It's the breakout role of the decade and she gives great speeches as evidenced by her Golden Globe win back in January. They're always a sucker for people who can give great speeches. No one deserves the supporting actor in a comedy series Emmy more than Neil Patrick Harris in How I Met Your Mother. I haven't watched very many episodes of this show, but like Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock, he seems to be a secondary character who is the show and like Baldwin, his timing is impeccable. Like Sally Field, Harris grew up on TV as Doogie Howser, M.D. Although he has made forays into movies ( The Proposition and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) and Broadway ( Assassins), like Field, he seems most at home on TV. For supporting actress in a comedy series my vote goes to Vanessa Williams in Ugly Betty. The former Miss America is a constant hoot as the show's villainess thwarted at every turn. I'll go with Broken Trail for best mini-series by default. It's beautifully photographed, with superb performances by Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church but moves at a snail's pace. Still, it's eons better than The Starter Wife, Brian Grazer's ex-wife's sour grapes saga of a dumped Hollywood wife. For best actor in a made for television movie or mini-series, I choose Broadbent over Duvall, though either would be a good choice. Though I generally don't like to see the same actors win for playing the same roles, Helen Mirren's work as Jane Tennison in the Prime Suspect series has been so superb over so long a period of time that it would be criminal not to give her another award for best actress for in a TV movie or mini-series for Prime Suspect: The Final Act. For supporting actor, I pick Thomas Haden Church in Broken Trail and for supporting actress let's give it to Samantha Morton in Longford. -Peter J. Patrick (September 11, 2007) |
Buy on DVD! |
The DVD Report #18: September 4, 2007
We're going to take a little digression this week, folks. Before there were DVDs there were CDs. Before there were movies available for home consumption, there were records. From the introduction of the LP, in the late 1940s, to well into the 1980s, one of the most popular recording genres was the original cast album. Let's list Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, Annie Get Your Gun, Finian's Rainbow, Brigaoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, My Fair Lady, The Most Happy Fella, West Side Story, The Music Man, Gypsy, The Sound of Music, Camelot, Oliver!, Hello, Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha, Cabaret, Company, Follies, A Chorus Line, Chicago, Sweeney Todd and Les Miserables as the thirty best-loved Broadway musicals through the 1980s. Certainly they are the most prolific in terms of the number of times they've been revived on Broadway, in regional theatres, on film and in studio cast albums. For every three of these well known shows, there are at least two lesser known, but equally-memorable ones that I love to listen to on CD. Unfortunately some of them are already considered rarities, commanding outrageous sums on Amazon and e-bay so if you're interested, grab 'em before the prices go even higher. The musicians' strike of 1948 kept Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? from being recorded, though several singles including Ray Bolger's "Once in Love With Amy" were released prior to the opening of the show and the subsequent strike. Fortunately the 1958 London Cast Recording of the musical version of Charley's Aunt is available with the entire wonderful score intact. Every song is a gem from "The New Ashmoleon Marching Society & Student Conservatory Band" to "My Darling, My Darling" to "Make a Miracle" to "Lovelier Than Ever" to "Pernambuco" and of course, "Once in Love With Amy" done full justice by Norman Wisdom. Shirley Booth won the New York Drama Critics poll of leading actresses in a musical for her portrayal of Aunt Cissy in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, no small achievement considering her competition included Getrude Lawrence in The King and I, Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam and Vivian Blaine in Guys and Dolls. While the story emphasis of the musical is still on twelve-year-old Francie, it's her older relatives who take center stage in the musical numbers and they're all terrific singing Dorothy Fields' lyrics to Arthur Schwartz's music. Highlights include Booth's "Love Is the Reason", papa Johnny Johnston's "I'll Buy You a Star" and mama Marcia Van Dyke's "Look Who's Dancing". You'll be dancing, too, as well as singing along with this unfairly forgotten masterwork if you give it a chance. Pagnol's trilogy of Fanny, Cesar and Marius was the basis for Harold Rome's majestic Fanny, the music of which was kept for the film version several years later, although the lyrics were sadly jettisoned. Ezio Pinza lent his authoritative voice to the role of Cesar, father of the sailor who goes off to sea leaving his girl Fanny behind. Walter Slezak had the role of his career as Panisse, the wealthy merchant and friend of Cesar who marries the pregnant Fanny. William Tabbert is the sailor Marius and a young Florence Henderson is Fanny. All are given wonderful songs to sing. Among the highlights are Pinza's "Welcome Home", Slezak's "Panisse and Son", Tabbert's title song and Henderson's "Be Kind to Your Parents" which sends the audience out on a high note. One wouldn't necessarily think a story about sophisticated New Yorkers stranded in Amish country would make for a captivating musical, but Plain and Fancy is exactly that. The score by Albert Hague and Arnold B. Horwitt is a constant delight, much of it provided by Shirl Conway ("It's Helluva Way to Run a Love Affair") and Barbara Cook ("This Is All Very New to Me"), though it is David Daniels and Gloria Marlowe who get to sing the show's best known tune, "Young and Foolish". Other highlights include "Plain We Live", "Follow Your Heart" and "Take Your Time and Take Your Pick". Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie was the basis for New Girl in Town which wisely puts the emphasis on the relationship between Anna and waterfront hag Marthy, played by Gwen Verdon and Thelma Ritter respectively, in roles for which they shared the Tony for best actress. Highlights of the Bob Merrill score include Verdon's "It's Good to Be Alive", George Wallace's "Look at 'Er", the Verdon-Cameron Prudd'homme duet, "Ven I Valse", Ritter's "Chess and Checkers" and best of all, Ritter's "Flings" - "flings is wonderful things but they gotta be flung by the young". It's sad that a great Pultizer Prize-winning musical and Tony co-winner (with The Sound of Music) could be considered obscure less than fifty years later, but such is the fate of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's Fiorello!, the far-from-stuffy musical about the rise of New York's fabled Mayor La Guardia. Originally intended as the breakout solo vehicle for Lou Costello, his sudden death during tryouts catapulted his understudy, Tom Bosley, to stardom as the diminutive politician. Bosley is pitch perfect singing "The Name's La Guardia" but most of the songs are left to the professional singers, with Howard Da Silva leading the crooked politicians in "Little Tin Box", Ellen Hanley as the first Mrs. La Guardia singing the lovely swan song "When Did I Fall in Love", and Patricia Wilson as Fiorello's loyal secretary and the future second Mrs. La Guardia singing the lament, "The Very Next Man". Other highlights include Pat Stanley's "I Love a Cop" and Eileen Rodgers' "Gentleman Jimmy", a campaign ode to La Guardia nemesis James J. Walker. Taking a beloved screen musical and replacing the music isn't exactly a recipe for success, but when the musical is Lili with one unforgettable song ("Hi Lili Hi Lo") and the stage version replaces it with an equally unforgettable one ("Love Makes the World Go 'Round") success comes easily. Bob Merrill's Carnival benefits not only from a captivating score, but from the marvelous cast employed to sing it. As naïve waif Lili, Anna Maria Alberghetti is sheer magic singing such songs as "Mira" and "Yes, My Heart". Jerry Orbach, in his first Broadway musical, as the crippled puppeteer who secretly loves her, is given such equally memorable songs as "I've Got to Find a Reason", "Her Face" and of course "Love Makes the World Go 'Round". James Mitchell and Kaye Ballard provide comic relief with "Always, Always You". Noel Coward's last musical, Sail Away, was a showcase for star Elaine Stritch. Set aboard a cruise ship, Stritch is the social director who falls for a younger passenger. Coward's wit shines through his rich melodies in such songs as "Come to Me", "Sail Away", "The Passenger's Always Right", "Go Slow, Johnny" and especially "Why Do the Wrong People Travel?" The Original Cast Recording annoyingly covers up the word "ass" in the latter, but it is heard loud and clear in the London Cast Recording of a year later. That recording also restores some of the more risqué lyrics in a few of the other songs, but overall both recordings are a treasure worth seeking out. Coward's Blithe Spirit was the basis of Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray's High Spirits, a gloriously daft and deft musical about the here and now as well as the hereafter. The show's four stars are all given great numbers to sing - the best of them being Edward Woodward's "If I Gave You", Louise Troy's "Was She Prettier Than I?", Tammy Grimes' "Home Sweet Heaven" and Beatrice Lillie's "The Bicycle Song", "Go Into Your Trance" and "Something Is Coming to Tea". Grimes, Woodward and Troy share the penultimate "What in the World Did You Want?" and the entire company sends the audience out with "Something Tells Me". It's sheer bliss. A smash hit musical about America's early days wouldn't appear until four years later when Sherman Edwards' 1776 took Broadway by storm, but Ben Franklin in Paris, which got there first shouldn't have been as easily dismissed as it was. The musical by Sidney Michaels and Mark Sandrich Jr. provided Robert Preston with one of his best roles as the irascible Renaissance man of the title. He is complemented by Franklin Kiser as his grandson, the teenage Franklin Temple, and Ulla Sallert as one of the four women the 69-year-old statesman had affairs with while on a diplomatic mission to Paris. Highlights include "What Became of Old Temple", "To Be Alone With You", "God Bless the Human Elbow" and the lovely ballad, "Look for Small Pleasures" - "look for small pleasures and not for lightning to tame, look for small treasures and not for fortune or fame." Wall Street and the financial world of the stock market would seem to make for a pretty dull show. Not so. Carolyn Leigh and Elmer Bernstein's send-up of that world, How Now, Dow Jones, is anything but. The show opens with Brenda Vaccaro providing lessons on how the market works with "A-B-C" and closes with a reprise of Tony Roberts' anthem "Step to the Rear" - "will everyone here kindly step to the rear and let a winner lead the way!" In between, you get Roberts going from wimp to charmer in "Gawk, Tousle and Shucks", dueting with leading lady Marlyn Mason in "The Pleasure's About to Be Mine", Mason dueting with Vaccaro in "They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore", broker Hiram Sherman worrying about "A Little Investigation" and Vaccaro worrying about her brassiere in "He's Here". Based on the hit play and film of the same name, Kander and Ebb's The Happy Time had the misfortune of opening on Broadway in the wake of two trendy off-Broadway rock musicals, Hair and Your Own Thing, which rendered it immediately culturally obsolete, providing it with the distinction of becoming the first Broadway production to lose $1 million. A pity because the score is one of the most vibrant of the era, with Robert Goulet and David Wayne in fine voice, supported by Mike (later Michael) Rupert and Julie Gregg, all of whom are given wonderful songs to sing. Highlights include "I Don't Remember You", "(Walking) Among My Yesterdays", "Seeing Things" - "you and I have a different way of seeing things" - "A Certain Girl" and best of all, Wayne's "Life of the Party" - "if you want your bell to really be rung, you'd better have me there, the life of the party to bring the party to life!" One of the most lyrical of all musicals was Jule Styne and E.Y. Harburg's Darling of the Day, the musical version of Holy Matrimony about the reclusive artist who gets a new lease on life when his valet dies and the dead man is mistaken for the artist. As the artist, Vincent Price proves to have a pleasant talk-singing voice in the tradition of Rex Harrison and Robert Preston, and does very well with such tongue-twisters as "To Get Out of This World Alive", "I've Got a Rainbow Working for Me" and "Butler in the Abbey" and does quite well, too, with the love song "Sunset Tree". The real treasure, though, is Patricia Routledge in her Tony-winning role as the young widow who had been corresponding with the dead valet. Every one of her songs, "It's Enough to Make a Lady Fall in Love", "A Gentleman's Gentleman", "Let's See What Happens", "That Something Extra Special", "What Makes a Marriage Happy" and "Not on Your Nellie" are exquisitely done. Styne's score is one of his best and Harburg's lyrics are very much in a class with his more famous ones for The Wizard of Oz and Finian's Rainbow. The musical version of All About Eve, called Applause, might just have easily been called "All About Margo" as unlike the beloved film, it makes no bones about who the central character really is. Lauren Bacall, whose screen career really wasn't that impressive, makes us believe that she was the greatest of stars through sheer force of will and her throatily-inspired singing of such songs as "Welcome to the Theatre", "Being Alive" and "Something Greater". As with the film, the men, even Len Cariou as the one Margo and Eve fight over, are clearly subordinate to the women in this show business fable. The score by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams provides Penny Fuller as Eve with a couple of good songs, most notably "The Best Night of My Life", but the real finds of the show are Bonnie Franklin and Lee Roy Reams as gypsies. Franklin gets to belt out the raucous title tune and together they parody Eve's newfound success in "She's No Longer a Gypsy" - "gonna get those crazy invitations now to Truman Capote's balls." Pop, rhythm and blues, and Broadway show tunes fused to make Purlie, the musical version of Purlie Victorious, one of the most infectious musicals of all time. The jubilant musical by Gary Geld and Peter Udell gets off to a perfect start with "Walk Him Up the Stairs" and never lets go. Cleavon Little is perfectly cast as the "New Fangled Preacher Man" and Melba Moore sparkles throughout, especially in "I Got Love". Sherman Hemsley provides comic relief with "Skinnin' a Cat" and the wondrous score also includes such melodic treasures as "The Harder They Fall", "Down Home", "First Thing Monday Morning", "He Can Do It" and the joyous "The World Is Comin' to a Start". Kenward Elmslie and Claibe Richardson's score for the musical version of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp is so rich and vital it's difficult to understand how this show flopped. Golden-voiced Barbara Cook never sounded better than as the fanciful spinster singing "Dropsy Cure Weather", "Yellow Drum", "Chain of Love" and "Reach Out" - "reach out and touch a flower opening in Spring, reach out and take my hand". She's matched by Russ Thacker as her feisty nephew singing about "Floozies" and "This One Day", servant-companion Carol Brice reminiscing about lost loves in "Marry With Me" and offering emotional support in "If There's Love Enough", and practical sister Ruth Ford on the verge of a nervous breakdown in "What Do I Do Now?" All that, and you get evangelist Karen Morrow telling the story of her life in "The Babylove Miracle Show". Well-publicized backstage machinations that resulted in the firing of several leading ladies before Bernadette Peters was cast as tragic silent screen star Mabel Normand in Jerry Herman's Mack & Mabel didn't help the show in its initial Broadway run and in fact, the show has never been revived on Broadway. Use of the overture by 1984 Gold Medal Olympic champions Torvill and Dean resulted in newfound admiration for the show and it was given a concert recording in London in 1988 providing new admirers with what some of us knew already, that this was one of the best shows of the 1970s. The score is consistently pleasing, but no more so than in Robert Preston's soliloquy as Mack Sennett, "I Won't Send Roses" and Mabel's "Time Heals Everything". Almost as good are Lisa Kirk's "Tap Your Troubles Away", Stanley Simmonds' "When Mabel Comes in the Room" and Preston's "I Promise You a Happy Ending". Scarcely getting any more respect than the film of the same name on which it was based, Geld and Udell's Civil War musical, Shenandoah, is a complex and moving work of art. From its rousing opening number "Raise the Flag of Dixie" to its emotional close with the hymn "Pass the Cross to Me", the score brims with magical moments. Best are John Cullum's angry "I've Heard It All Before", his soliloquy at his late wife's graveside in "Mediatation", "Violets and Silverbells" sung by the doomed Joel Higgins and Penelope Milford, and Donna Theodroe and Chip Ford's thrilling "Freedom" - "freedom isn't in a state like Maine or Virginia, freedom's in a state of mind." It's difficult to fathom why The Baker's Wife, based on the acclaimed French film of the same name, with an exhilarating score by Stephen Schwartz failed to make it to Broadway, but fortunately we have the Los Angeles Cast recording, with Paul Sorvino as the cuckolded baker, Patti LuPone as his wandering wife and Kurt Peterson as the young stud she leaves him for, to thrill to. Every song is a treat from the opening "Chanson" sung by Teri Ralston to Sorvino and LuPone's "Merci, Madame" and "Gifts of Love" to Peterson's sly "Proud Lady" to LuPone's soaring "Meadowlark" and plaintive "Where Is the Warmth?" to Sorvino's heartbreaking "Any Day Now" and "If I Have to Live Alone". There isn't a dry eye in the house when LuPone makes her inevitable return to the reprise of "Gifts of Love". Based on the French farce of the same name, Jerry Herman's La Cage aux Folles seemed like it would become a perennial, but a scarce two decades have proven to be unkind to Herman's last Broadway musical. Hopes of a film version were dashed when Mike Nichols decided to make a straight comedy version instead and the Broadway revival of a few years ago flopped badly. Still, we have the Original Cast Recording with Gene Barry, joining a long line of actors who talk-sing well enough to get by, as the nightclub owner and George Hearn in the performance of his life as his drag queen-lover, Albin. Highlights of the impeccable score include "Song on the Sand", "With Anne on My Arm", "The Best of Times" and Hearn's anthem, "I Am What I Am". At the other end of the spectrum, the worst recordings of Broadway musicals available on CD are Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's Skyscraper in which a croaking Julie Harris tries to fend off mid-town Manhattan developers; Grossman and Hackady's Minnie's Boys in which a shrill Shelley Winters is miscast as the mother of the Marx Bros.; Jule Styne and Bob Merrill's Sugar, a lifeless imitation of Some Like It Hot; Kander and Ebb's The Act in which Liza Minnelli tries hard but comes off as merely loud and obnoxious; and Jimmy McHugh's Sugar Babies, a lackluster burlesque musical despite the presence of Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller. -Peter J. Patrick (September 4, 2007) |
Buy on DVD! |
- ©1996-2010 - Written content and Logos are copyrighted by Wesley Lovell
- © ® ™ Academy Award(s), Oscar(s) and the Oscar statuette are registered trademarks and service marks of A.M.P.A.S.
- © Film images are copyrighted by the individual studios