Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (113 page)

51
. The three-note descending scalar fragment also returns prominently in the opening chorus (sung by whites) at the Midway Plaisance in Chicago (Harms, 181).

52
. Julie’s song “Bill,” if not her fate, is also foreshadowed by the barker at the Chicago Fair (Harms, 186).

53
. Also mm. 5–6, 9–10, and 15–16.

54
. Stanley Green notes this reference to “Make Believe” in
The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story
(New York: John Day, 1963), 58–59. Ethan Mordden and Deena Rosenberg provide two additional examples of thematic reminiscence. In “Why Do I Love You?” the orchestra plays the first eight measures of “I Might Fall Back on You” while a chorus sings “Hours are not like years, / So dry your tears! / What a pair of love birds!” Immediately thereafter Ravenal reprises the first eight measures of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” to the words “I’ll come home as early as I can, / Meanwhile be good and patient with our man.” Mordden, “‘Show Boat,’” 81, and Rosenberg, “‘Show Boat’ Sails into the Present,”
New York Times
, April 24, 1983, sec. 2, 12.

55
.
Show Boat
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1926), 183–85.

56
. The meeting scene portion of act 1, scene 1, is found in Harms, 37–53, Chappell, 36–52, and Welk, 31–46; the libretto appears in the McGlinn booklet of the EMI recording, 62–66.

57
. This harmonic progression is known in classical theoretical parlance as a deceptive cadence (a B-minor triad in the key of D major).

58
. This chord, an augmented sixth chord on B
expands into a dominant A-major triad to prepare circuitously the return to the tonal center of D.

59
. It is similarly not an accident that Magnolia and Ravenal’s declaration of love at the conclusion of the act will also be a waltz, “You Are Love.” Considering the importance of this waltz section in “Make Believe,” its omission in both the 1936 and 1951 film versions is regrettable.

60
. The Library of Congress typescript (identified in “Manuscript Sources” no. 1 of the online website) shows that before settling on “convention’s P’s and Q’s” the line read, “There really is no cause to have the blues,” a lyric that was removed before Kern’s first musical draft of this scene. In the third section of the song, this same typescript shows that “the world we see” replaced “reality.”

61
. The 1951 MGM film version offers yet another division of this material before Magnolia and Ravenal profess their love together:

RAVENAL:
Others find peace of mind in pretending Couldn’t you?

MAGNOLIA:
Couldn’t I?

BOTH:
Couldn’t we:

RAVENAL:
Make believe our lips are blending In a phantom kiss or two or three—

BOTH:
Might as well make believe I love you—

     F
OR, TO TELL THE TRUTH
… I
DO
.

62
. In addition to the Library of Congress and New York Public Library libretto typescripts there are two substantial musical drafts for this scene housed in the Library of Congress (designated Draft 1 and Draft 2 in the “Manuscript Sources” no. 1 of the online website). All of the Library of Congress material was acquired from the Warner Brothers Warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey.

63
. In the Library of Congress typescript Frank appears before Ravenal has the opportunity to pick up Ellie’s handkerchief.

64
. The 1927 production offered two other exchanges between Ellie and Frank that succeeded in conveying the dynamics between them. The first of these opens act I, scene 3 (Outside a Waterfront Gambling Saloon), where Ellie explains to Frank that she “won’t never marry no actor”; the second appears in scene 5 where she informs him that she might settle for Frank if nothing better comes along (“I Might Fall Back on You”).

65
. The dialogue in the New York Public Library typescript (see “Manuscript Sources” no. 2 of the online website) goes like this:

PARTHY
(O
FF
): Magnolia! (She enters lower deck.) Andy! Drat that man, he’s never home—Magnolia! (Magnolia enters on top deck. Windy motions her to stand still where she is so that Parthy won’t see her. Windy exits R. Parthy exits L.)

RAVENAL
(R
AVENAL RESUMES SOLILOQUY
): Who cares if my boat goes upstream?

PARTHY
(O
FF
): Nola!

RAVENAL:
Or if the gale bids me go with the river’s flow.

The Library of Congress typescript (see “Manuscript Sources” no. 2 of the online website) originally had Magnolia’s stage action occur after Ravenal sang this last line with corrections made in pencil.

66
. Library of Congress typescript 1–21 and 1–22.

67
. During the tryouts Kern and Hammerstein made still more changes in this scene. Shortly before its closing moments, according to Draft 2 of the Library of Congress score, the lovers sing a reprise of the waltz (section 2) for fifteen measures, after which Kern indicated by arrows and hatch marks a direct move to the coda. Draft 2 also contained another six measures of “Make Believe” after the coda, which Kern deleted before the return of Vallon’s theme. The underscored waltz of section 2 then led to a scene between Magnolia and Joe and “Ol’ Man River.”

In the earlier musical manuscript (Draft 1) Kern had Ravenal introduce the main chorus of “Make Believe” with a different text (beginning with “As the river goes so time goes”), and while the text is crossed out, the melody provides the underscoring between Ravenal and Vallon before the former sings the first A section of “Where’s the Mate for Me?” Also in Draft 1 after Ravenal hears Magnolia’s piano theme, a chorus of Girls rather than Ravenal himself repeats the theme. Kern’s inspiration to have Magnolia’s piano theme intrude upon Ravenal’s song was apparently not part of the initial conception.

In contrast to Draft 2, a draft that clearly served as the model for the published vocal scores, Draft 1 does not show the third and fourth sections of “Make Believe,” sections that provide much psychological nuance and musical richness to the scene. Instead, Draft 1 brings back the six measures of coda and the final confrontation between Ravenal and Vallon. As in Draft 2, the scene in Draft 1 concludes with Magnolia seeing Joe, and their dialogue (not given) is underscored by the opening strains of “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.”

68
. Included among this group of song hits are “When I Grow Too Old to Dream” from
The Night Is Young
(1935) with Romberg, and a trio of hits with Kern, “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” and “Can I Forget You?” from
High, Wide and Handsome
(1937), and the Academy Award–winning “The Last Time I Saw Paris” from
Lady, Be Good
(1941). Soon after he had begun working with Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein wrote “It Might as Well Be Spring” and “It’s a Grand Night for Singing” for
State Fair
(1945) with Rodgers and “All through the Day” from
Centennial Summer
(1946) with Kern.

69
. Beginning with the first of three versions of
Show Boat
in 1929, Hollywood would adapt twenty-six of Hammerstein’s Broadway shows for film.

70
. Kern turned down Hammerstein’s offer in 1942 to write a musical based on Lynn Riggs’s play,
Green Grow the Lilacs
(1931). One year later the property was turned over to Rodgers. The result, of course, was
Oklahoma!

71
. The Annie Oakley property turned out to be Berlin’s greatest book show,
Annie Get Your Gun
, in 1946 with a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields.

72
. The quotation is from Bordman,
Jerome Kern
, 294. The sensitive issues explored in
Show Boat
have hardly gone away. In reviewing the 1993 Toronto production of
Show Boat
, directed by Prince, theater critic John Lahr found it necessary to respond to the Coalition to Stop Show Boat, a group that tried to close the show for its alleged “racist, anti-African propaganda.” According to Lahr “the past must be remembered for its sins as well as for its triumphs” and
Show Boat
admirably “chronicles slavery not to condone but to deplore it.” “Mississippi Mud,”
New Yorker
, October 25, 1993, 123–26; quotation on p. 126.

73
. Ibid., 126.

Chapter 3:
Anything Goes

1
. Porter’s original lyric, “I wouldn’t care for those nights in the air / That the fair Mrs. Lindbergh went through,” intended for the unproduced
Star Dust
(1931), was replaced in
Anything Goes
by the now familiar “Flying too high with some guy in the sky / Is my idea of nothing to do, / Yet I get a kick out of you.” See Eells,
The Life That Late He Led
, 113, and Robert Kimball, ed.,
The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter
, 167 and 270.

2
. Eells,
The Life That Late He Led
, 111; Miles Kreuger, “Some Words About ‘Anything Goes,’” 13; and Lee Davis,
Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern
, 329–36. Kreuger also points out that the Bolton-Wodehouse book was not really about a shipwreck. In fact, a fake bomb created a mood of terror that was eventually alleviated by a celebratory prayer, “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” Davis’s more detailed survey of the early genesis of
Anything Goes
has the advantage of being based on a previously unknown first draft from 1934 in addition to Bolton’s less reliable reconstruction of the still-missing second draft (the rejected draft) years later. Davis does not seem to be aware of the Bolton scenario now in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, but Ethan Mordden discusses it briefly in
Sing for Your Supper
, 69–70. Thanks to James Hepokoski for calling my attention to the existence of the Bolton scenario.

3
. Richard G. Hubler,
The Cole Porter Story
, 30.

4
. Brooks Atkinson, “The Play: ‘Anything Goes’ as Long as Victor Moore, Ethel Merman and William Gaxton Are Present,”
New York Times
, November 22, 1934, 26.

5
. John McGlinn, “The Original ‘Anything Goes,’” 30.

6
. Gerald Mast,
Can’t Help Singin,’
194. Many thanks are due to Roberta Staats of The Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trusts for generously sending me a copy of Porter’s twenty-nine-page will, and to trustee Robert H. Montgomery Jr. for confirming its contents.

7
. In the McGlinn recording “There’s No Cure for Travel” is relegated to the appendix.

8
. The McGlinn notes indicate that Merman’s principal objection was the line “She made the maid who made the room,” with its implied homosexuality. Ibid., 33. A similar line appears in act I, scene 2, when Billy asks if Reno made the boat and a character named Snooks replies: “Did she make the Boat? She made the Cap’n!” Perhaps because of its heterosexual implications this line was permissible and could be retained in the dialogue (see the 1934 libretto, 1–2–13).

9
. In this instance McGlinn was reluctant to perform an appendectomy so he inserted “What a Joy to Be Young” in the main body of his recording rather than its rightful place in his appendix beside “There’s No Cure Like Travel,” “Kate the Great,” and “Waltz Down the Aisle.”

10
. Kreuger, “Some Words about ‘Anything Goes,’” 17.

11
. Ibid., 17.

12
. McGlinn, “The Original ‘Anything Goes,’” 33.

13
. Perhaps because present-day late-arriving listeners usually come into the theater already whistling “I Get a Kick Out of You,” McGlinn took the initiative of placing “Buddie, Beware” in the body of his recording rather than the appendix.

14
. Weidman has also written three librettos for Sondheim musicals,
Pacific Overtures
(1976),
Assassins
(1990), and
Road Show
(2008).