Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber

by Block, Geoffrey

  One of the many ways in which the staged Carousel stands out from conventional musical theater fare is that the main character takes his own life. In Oklahoma! the villain (Jud Fry) kills himself accidentally while in the process of trying to kill the male protagonist (Curly), and film audiences who were seeing the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows in their filmed order had also recently witnessed the death of the King of Siam. Despite this sad eventual turn in the plot, perhaps in an effort to prepare younger viewers and those new to the show for Billy’s death and to reassure them that he was still alive on screen, although technically dead, the film opens in heaven fifteen heavenly minutes later (the equivalent of fifteen years on earth) where Billy tells the story of Carousel, including his death, as if it were a flashback. For those viewers who might view Billy’s suicide as a sin comparable to his decision to commit a robbery in order to get enough money to support the as yet unborn daughter he imagined in “Soliloquy,” the suicide of the stage version was changed to an accidental death. By the end of the film Billy will take advantage of the opportunity to return to earth in order to rectify some of the emotional damage he inflicted on his daughter, Louise, now fifteen earth years old. At the end of the play he succeeds in comforting his troubled daughter at her high school graduation, and when he does, the strains of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” can move even modern-day cynics to request some tissues.

  Even if the film proves disappointing on many levels, it offers the opportunity to get a sense of what audiences saw onstage, including Louise’s dream ballet with choreography pilfered from Agnes de Mille (who had to sue to be properly credited) as well as most of the songs and a large helping of the original stage dialogue. Looking at the scene we focused on in the Carousel chapter, we see that much has been retained. It begins about seven minutes into the film, after the first scene in heaven. Some of “The Carousel Waltz” was heard over the credits—significantly shorn of its dissonant and mysterious opening, which will be heard later with new associations—but a more substantial statement of the waltz, starting with the first main waltz after the introduction, occurs in the transformation from Heaven to Earth. Despite a few cuts here and there, most of the waltz returns when the scene shifts to the amusement park. There it supports the pantomimed prologue that tells us so much about how Billy regards Julie as special and how the carousel proprietress Mrs. Mullin jealously senses an undeniable romance in bloom. With a few small additions and deletions, most of the nonunderscored dialogue with Carrie, Julie, Mrs. Mullin, and Billy that opens act I, scene 2, is preserved.5 All this takes a little over five minutes.

  The opening of the Julie and Carrie sequence that precedes “Mr. Snow,” however, with its rhythmic recitative merging into the Julie Jordan tune and the “Mill Theme” is entirely removed from the film.6 As a result, “Mr. Snow” appears after only thirty seconds of underscored dialogue (a little more than 15 minutes into the film), the conversation in which the stage Carrie assumes her friend now has “a feller of yer [your] own.” Now that Julie has Billy, more an intuitive assumption than a reality at this stage in the relationship, Carrie can sing about her feller. Instead of the Julie Jordan music that underscores this conversation in the stage version, when we hear the “Mill Theme” for the first time in the film, it is impossible to understand its significance. By the end of the brief exchange, however, the underscoring will match the musical phrase indicated in the score (this is the musical passage of dotted rhythms and leaps in the deleted sequence illustrated in chapter 9), but now employed with equal meaninglessness. As a result of these liberties, the proof substantiating Carrie’s presumption that Julie has a feller, so clearly explained in their musical exchange onstage but now deleted, creates an abrupt and less convincing transition to Carrie’s song about her feller, “Mr. Snow.”

  Billy’s long “Soliloquy” appears boldly without cuts and lasts nearly eight minutes, and earlier “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” continues with an elaborate and athletic dance of New Englanders that lasts nearly six minutes.7 On the other hand, portions of “A Real Nice Clambake” and “When the Children Are Asleep,” including their verses, were cut, and the latter is placed considerably later than in the stage version. In its new context, this song now takes place on a boat Carrie and Mr. Snow are sharing with Julie and Billy on the way to the clambake. Since they are now overheard by the more troubled partners, the contrast between Julie and Billy’s turbulent relationship and the more placid one of Carrie and Enoch is more pronounced. In another departure, the distinctive dissonant chords that open the stage show were removed from the opening film credits and opening of the “Carousel Waltz.” They return, however, in the film with a new meaning on two occasions to underscore the darker menacing presence of Mrs. Mullin a few minutes before the “Soliloquy” and again shortly after Billy’s death, and a third time to announce the carnival troupe during Louise’s ballet.

  In the end, the mixture of fantasy and realism that worked so well onstage fails to persuade. Mast, the film critic who pronounced this Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptation “the worst of the lot,” finds fault with nearly every aspect but saves his sharpest comments for the director: “Henry King’s direction captures a styleless visual void—from a papier maché forest beside a backlot … to a tacky electric-blue heaven strung with plastic Stars of Bethlehem; to a real beach where a soliloquizing Billy wanders in thought (but never picks up a pebble, sifts some sand, or touches a rock).”8It is possible that the musical film Carousel has negatively prejudiced many viewers against the show. In any event, of all the films from the Rodgers and Hammerstein era, Carousel is perhaps most in need of a film remake. This might happen. In 2006, an article in FirstShowing.net announced that the popular Australian movie and stage actor Hugh Jackman, who successfully portrayed Curly in the film adaptation of Trevor Nunn’s London stage revival of Oklahoma!, had acquired the rights for Carousel and is looking for a director and a screenwriter.9 Once everyone recovers from the financial debacle of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008), Jackman’s most recent star vehicle, it may be time to welcome a new turn on the carousel.

  Kiss me, Kate (1953)

  In the light of its MGM predecessors On the Town, which butchered Bernstein’s great 1944 score in its screen version of 1949, and the remake of Show Boat in 1951, which cut many songs and played havoc with both the script and spirit of its original, the film adaptation of Kiss Me, Kate, directed by Show Boat alumnus George Sidney and starring Show Boat film alumni Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel, was remarkably faithful. By later standards, however, the film adaptation has a long way to go in terms of fidelity to its increasingly respected source, the Broadway version. Sidney begins by taking a major structural liberty in his decision to open the film in Fred’s apartment a month or so earlier than the first rehearsal rather than beginning with the stage show’s opening rehearsal number, “Another Opnin,’ Another Show.” In addition to “Another Opnin,’” another song gone from the film was “Bianca,” which Porter wrote for the character Bill Calhoun under duress when the actor who played him, Harold Lang, insisted he was contractually entitled to a song. In the chapter on Kiss Me, Kate (chapter 10), we noted Porter’s erroneous belief that the song’s banality would preclude its use.

  Kiss Me, Kate, 1953 film. Cole Porter (Ron Randell), Lilli Vanessi (Kathryn Grayson), Lois Lane (Ann Miller), and Fred Graham (Howard Keel) in Fred’s apartment after a run-through of “So In Love.”

  Kiss Me, Kate, 1953 film. Petruchio (Keel) gives his new fiancée Katharine (Grayson) an unscripted paddling to conclude the first act of “Taming of the Shrew.”

  Also absent from the film was the choral number, “I Sing of Love,” which those familiar with the cast album also never got to hear, and most of the two parallel finales in which the vitriol and the martial nature of the former is replaced by the tender words and musically lyrical qualities of the latter. Partially compensating for these quasi-operatic omissions is the insertion of a dazzlingly jazzy song and dance number
originally composed for Porter’s Out of this World, for Lois (Miller), her suitor (Tommy Rall), her former suitors (Bobby Van and Bob Fosse), and their new girlfriends (Carol Haney and Jeanne Coyne). In marked contrast to the Pal Joey and Kurt Weill films we looked at in act I, the Kiss Me, Kate screenplay, greatly shortened in the transition from stage to film, effectively creates a sequence of songs occasionally interrupted by five minutes or less of dialogue.

  The show’s principal ballad is the first of two songs to undergo a new context. Although the final A section of “So in Love” will eventually be heard in its rightful position as a reprise, sung by Lilli in her dressing room before the show moves to its Padua phase and “We Open in Venice,” its main dramatic purpose in the film occurs in its new context as an audition number in Fred’s apartment, a song performed by Fred to interest the prospective dramatic lead Lilli in the show. The character impersonating Cole Porter (Ron Randell), a depiction only slightly more believable than the casting of Cary Grant in Night and Day (1946), sits down at the piano (later joined by an invisible orchestra), and Fred starts the love song. Even before the second A section Lilli joins in, and immediately making the song her own, sings the second A by herself. Fred starts the B and is answered by Lilli, a process repeated in the final A before both Fred and Lilli conclude the song in glorious harmony and ardent glances. In the stage version Lilli sings the song alone in the dressing room unheard by Fred, and Fred sings a reprise in act II unheard by Lilli.

  In contrast to the gradual unfolding of Fred and Lilli’s love onstage, before seven minutes have gone by in the film, viewers in this medium hear and see that they are deeply in love. Fred may be infatuated with the sexy Lois (Bianca), but the flirtation is fundamentally innocent, or at least superficial. In any event, Fred’s attentions are not seriously reciprocated by Lois, who is using Fred to further her show business career and that of her boyfriend Bill Calhoun (Lucentio). Despite its fundamental meaninglessness, the dalliance between Lois and Fred leads to an incriminating note intended for Lois but mistakenly delivered, with a bouquet of flowers, to Lilli, who imprudently reads the note onstage, thus provoking genuine rather than acted stage violence against Fred as Petruchio. Had Fred not included the note, it is likely that the onstage conflicts would not be mirrored by offstage fireworks but by reconciliation, which would spoil the fun (and not incidentally end the show prematurely). The flowers serve their purpose, helping Lilli to realize that she is still in love with Fred. Although she is engaged to the rich and powerful cattle baron Tex, a man incapable of song—in the stage version her fiancé is the Washington diplomat Harrison Howell, also without a song—tellingly we observe her remove the engagement ring in her dressing room before she finishes the reprise of “So in Love.”

  The re-connection Lilli and Fred make at the end of the “So in Love” duet in Fred’s apartment is immediately interrupted by the whirlwind entrance of Lois, who is clearly familiar with the surroundings. Lois (Ann Miller) then proceeds to sing and dance a sexually charged and energetic song and tap dance number, which she hopes will go into the show. Those who find “Too Darn Hot,” an entertaining but somewhat gratuitous act II opener may appreciate its new context as a diegetic show-within-show. In fact, when she is finished she learns that the song will be taken out because there’s no place to put it—art imitating life evaluating art. In the absence of a second act subdivision, a luxury offered to all stage works but only to a few of their longest film adaptations (e.g., My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof), where could such a song go? The answer: as an audition number in the director’s apartment.

  In order to guide film viewers who presumably are less familiar than stage audiences with the plot of The Taming of the Shrew, the Shrew performance in the film offers a narrative in which Petruchio explicitly introduces the main characters and situation. The film is also clearer than the stage version about such matters as the fact that Lilli reads Fred’s note to Lois (at the end of “Were Thine That Special Face”), which explains why her violence toward Fred goes considerably beyond what is called for in the script. The film also clarifies the connection between Fred’s removal of food from the hungry Lilli in the dressing room scene and when Petruchio deprives Kate of food in his later efforts to tame her. The cuts in the libretto deprive film audiences of some of the Spewacks’ and even more of Shakespeare’s lively dialogue, but when films were expected to run less than two hours, even great material had to go.

  One of the more unfortunate aspects of this often successful film adaptation is that even nearly twenty years after the first film version of Anything Goes (see chapter 8), Porter’s lyrics still required considerable cinematic expurgation. We might expect that the script would replace “bastard” with “louse,” but changes in the lyrics amount to a censorship that is collectively depressing. What follows is a generous, if not exhaustive, sample:

  • “Too Darn Hot”

  “According to the Kinsey report” is replaced by “according to the latest report” and instead of indulging his favorite sport, man prefers taking the lyrically cumbersome “lovey-dovey to court.”

  • “Tom, Dick, or Harry”

  “God-damned nose” is replaced by “Doggone nose” and “in the dark they [women] are all the same” is replaced by “in a brawl they are all the same.”

  • “I Hate Men”

  “Maiden” replaces “virgin” and instead of Mother having to marry Father, she now “deigns to marry Father.” The film version goes on to make several other unfortunate deletions and additions in this song.

  • “Where Is the Life that Late I Led?”

  Since “puberty” is suggestive and provocative, “the charming age of puberty” becomes the first awareness of “masculinity.” Later in the song the mandatory removal of “hell” (also removed later in “Always True to You in My Fashion” and in “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”) necessitates the replacement of the rhyme “well / hell” with “pain / Cain,” as in raising a bit of.

  • “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”

  The suggestive failure of a woman to defend her virtue (All’s Well That Ends Well) is replaced by the infelicitous woman “shocked she pretends well.”

  • “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple”

  Perhaps the title of this song should have been altered to something like “I Am Ashamed to Sing a Sexist Song about Women Being Simple.” In any event, Kate replaces the music to this beautiful song with a recitation (with a little underscoring of “So in Love”), fortunately unexpurgated, of Shakespeare, who wrote the lyrics.10

  While Porter’s reputation will survive the changes made to his lyrics in the film, it is not enhanced by them. Yet all things considered, the film adaptation of Kiss Me, Kate, is not only relatively faithful to its stage version (when compared with its predecessors) but boasts full-throated but not overdone singing by Keel and Grayson, and exuberant singing and dancing by Miller. The ensemble dancing of Miller, Rall, Van, Haney, Coyne, and Fosse, choreographed by Fosse in the angular signature style that he would develop further in the 1960s and 1970s, is outstanding as well as historic, and the supporting roles, especially Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore as the two gunmen, add to the film’s quality. Even the interpolated “From This Moment On,” is arguably no more extraneous than “Too Darn Hot” was in its original place as the opening of act II. The film, shot and released in 3D, in its day a novelty and today a distraction, does not undermine the film’s enjoyment, but it is probably good to know about it in advance.

  The large and impressive oil painting of Laurence Olivier as Hamlet in Fred’s apartment is clearly visible as a backdrop to Miller’s “Too Darn Hot” and other scenes. The character of Hamlet not only demonstrates a Shakespearean connection but likely also alludes to the fact that producer Jack Cummings tried unsuccessfully to engage the non-singing Olivier for this role. It is difficult to imagine what would have happened if this had come to pass, since the demands of the role require a trained singer
with a strong high G. The film also introduces a few touches that enhance the dramatic verisimilitude and topicality, such as when Fred, who thinks that Lilli has left the show, says in a stage whisper to a question about her whereabouts that she is probably at that moment flying over Newark. One charming musical touch that deserves honorable mention occurs during the duet in “Wunderbar” when Lilli sings the main melody of the overture and act II finale to Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus (one of the many operettas Fred and Lilli have doubtless sung together in various small towns) as a counterpoint to the main tune of Porter’s song.

  Guys and Dolls (1955)

  The starting point for the Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) film adaptation of Guys and Dolls was Goldwyn himself who, in the words of his biographer A. Scott Berg, “grew determined to produce Guys and Dolls as the ultimate film musical, an epic” and in the end “spent $5.5 million overproducing the movie.”11 Interestingly, in a career that goes back to the 1910s and includes such memorable films as Wuthering Heights (1939) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Guys and Dolls would be only the second in a group of musical films that concluded his body of work. The first film of this trilogy brought Goldwyn in contact with Frank Loesser on the successful original film musical Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye, three years earlier. The second musical, Guys and Dolls, would also prove to be the penultimate product of Goldwyn’s long career, his seventy-ninth feature film. Four years after Guys and Dolls, a huge box office success with the highest earnings of any film in 1956 (more than $13 million in the United States alone), Goldwyn finished his career with his third musical, the commercial and artistic failure, Porgy and Bess (discussed in chapter 8).