Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (114 page)

15
. Atkinson, “The Play: ‘Anything Goes,’” 26.

16
. Ibid., 26.

17
. Eells,
The Life That Late He Led
, 116.

18
. Lewis Funke, “Theatre: ‘Anything Goes’ Revival of Musical Opens at Orpheum,”
New York Times
, May 16, 1962, 35.

19
. Ibid., 35.

20
. George Abbott,
“Mister Abbott,”
187.

21
. 1962 libretto, 1–8–59. Many thanks to Louis H. Aborn, president of Tams-Witmark, for graciously allowing me to examine the 1934, 1962, and 1987
Anything Goes
librettos, and to John L. Hughes, managing director of Samuel French Limited in London, for generously supplying a reference copy of the 1935 London libretto.

22
. Stephen Holden, “A Glimpse of Olden Days, via Cole Porter,”
New York Times
, October 18, 1987, section 2, p. 5.

23
. “Son Helping to Update Crouse’s ‘Anything Goes,’
New York Times
, August 25, 1987, section 3, 14. For
West Side Story
, librettist Arthur Laurents created a deliberately artificial and meaningless slang that would never become old-fashioned and require updating.

24
. Kreuger, “The Annotated ‘Anything Goes,’” 133.

25
. Ibid., 133–37. Despite Kreuger’s best efforts, he was unable to discover the full meaning of the reference, “Drumstick Lipstick,” and concluded that its meaning “is lost to the ages.” In the new millennium, readers of
Slate Magazine
’s Timothy Noah replied to his plea and located two 1934 references to Drumstick lipstick in
New York Times
ads for Drumstick face power and the Drumstick compact, various cosmetic products manufactured by the French firm, Charbert. Noah announced the solution in “Drumstick Lipstick, Explained!” posted June 16, 2005.

26
. Eells,
The Life That Late He Led
, 124.

27
. A more direct reference to Aimée Semple McPherson had occurred in Moss Hart’s sketch on the headline “Gandhi Goes on Hunger Strike” in the 1933 revue
As Thousands Cheer
(music by Berlin).

28
. “Son Helping to Update Crouse’s ‘Anything Goes,’” sec. 3, 14.

29
. Ibid., 14.

30
. Holden, “A Glimpse of Olden Days,” 35.

31
. 1934 libretto, 2–1–11.

32
. Those concerned by this usurpation of Hope’s role and her solo opportunity may be somewhat placated to learn that in 1987 she is given a new interpolation, “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye” (act II, scene 1), and a duet with Billy and some sailors, “All through the Night” (a song from the original 1934 version now transferred to act II, scene 2). Furthermore, she is allowed to retain her interpolated duet with Billy in act I, scene 7, “It’s De-Lovely,” which had been introduced in act I, scene 2, of the 1962 version (see the online website).

33
. 1934 libretto, 1–6–71. Mrs. Wentworth is the owner of the Pomeranian canine that Billy turns into a Mexican hairless.

34
. In 1962 Billy is Chinchilian. The phrase “putting on the dog” made a comeback. Throughout the gestation of this first edition of
Enchanted Evenings
the
New Yorker
regularly displayed ads for “Put on the Dog” T-shirts, the expected side of the shirt featuring drawings of the front or back of a dog.

35
. Gerald Bordman, “Preserving the Heritage: The Living Record,” in
Musical Theatre in America
, ed. Glenn Loney, 407.

36
. From
Pal Joey
, “I Could Write a Book.”

37
.
The New Harvard Dictionary of Music
defines a triplet as “three notes of equal value to be played in the time normally occupied by two notes of the same value, indicated by the figure 3.” Don Randel, ed.,
The New Harvard Dictionary of Music
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 873.

38
. “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (lyrics, Stephen Sondheim; music, Jule Styne) from
Gypsy
(1959), also written for Merman as the eccentric Rose, uses a variation of this idea on the title words.

39
. In an early version of “Blow, Gabriel Blow,” vastly different melodically but otherwise rhythmically identical to the familiar version, the triplets are absent. See the Cole Porter Collection, Box 15, Folder 121, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

40
. “Easy to Love,” Billy’s love song to Hope, dropped because of its difficulty for William Gaxton, also retains Reno’s half-note triplet in the midst of a chromatic line.

41
. Porter harmonizes “if today” with a dominant seventh on C (C-E-G-B[
]), a chord that leads to a change of key (F major) two measures later.

42
. See Stephen Citron,
Noel & Cole
, 112.

43
. Those responsible for choosing the interpolated songs either inadvertently or by design discovered two that fit in with the syncopated world of Reno and Billy, “Friendship” and “It’s De-Lovely,” both of which share melodic fragments in common with the original “Anything Goes” and, of course, many other Porter songs.

Chapter 4:
Porgy and Bess

1
. “Gershwin Gets His Music Cues for ‘Porgy’ on Carolina Beach,”
New York Herald Tribune
, July 8, 1934, sec. 5, 2, and George Gershwin; reprinted in Merely Armitage, ed.,
George Gershwin
, 72–77.

2
. See Frederick S. Roffman, “At Last the Complete ‘Porgy and Bess,’”
New York Times
, September 19, 1976, sec. 2, 1+, and Allen Woll,
Black Musical Theatre
, 165–66. Shortly before these exploratory negotiations the Metropolitan Opera introduced Louis Gruenberg’s opera
The Emperor Jones
. Although well received, Gruenberg’s opera, which featured Lawrence
Tibbett singing the title role in blackface, was performed only ten times in 1933 and 1934. African Americans were similarly excluded in most of the other important roles.

3
. Edward Jablonski,
Gershwin
, 194–96.

4
. Only one year after its Met debut the international reputation of
Porgy and Bess
as an opera was further enhanced in Glyndebourne. A third uncut recording generated by this production was made in 1989. See the Discography and Filmography in the online website.

5
. After Gershwin’s
Pardon My English
, Freedley (without Aarons) would produce four hits for Porter shows:
Anything Goes
(1934),
Red, Hot and Blue!
(1936),
Leave It to Me!
(1938), and
Let’s Face It
(1941).

6
. See especially Hollis Alpert,
The Life and Times of “Porgy and Bess,”
11–118; David Ewen,
George Gershwin
, 218–65; Jablonski,
Gershwin
, 250–91; and Charles Schwartz,
Gershwin
, 243–71. For an important source on the genesis of
Porgy and Bess
that was published since the first edition of
Enchanted Evenings
, see Howard Pollack,
George Gershwin
, 567–91.

7
. Dorothy Heyward, “Porgy’s Goat,”
Harper’s
215 (December 1957): 37.

8
. Jablonski,
Gershwin
, 255.

9
. The outline of scenes and songs in the online website indicates the division of lyrical labor between DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin.

10
. Gershwin began his orchestration with act I, scene 2, completing it in February 1935. In a letter to Schillinger (May 16) the composer wrote that he had completed act I, scene 1. act II occupied Gershwin’s attentions at least for the remainder of May and June, and on July 19 Gershwin conducted a run-through of acts I and II at the CBS studio. Completion dates for act III are even more meticulously documented: scene 1 (July 22); scene 2 (August 4), scene 3 (August 23). Several weeks later Gershwin wrote on the first page of the orchestral score, “finished September 2, 1935.”

11
. Brooks Atkinson and Olin Downes, “‘Porgy and Bess,’ Native Opera, Opens at the Alvin; Gershwin Work Based on DuBose Heyward’s Play,”
New York Times
, October 11, 1935, 30.

12
. Atkinson and Downes, ibid.

13
. Downes, ibid.

14
. Atkinson, ibid.

15
. Ibid.

16
. Downes, ibid.

17
. Ibid. Several days later the
New York Times
gave the composer an opportunity to respond at some length to his critics: “I chose the form I have used for ‘Porgy and Bess’ because I believe that music lives only when it is in serious form. When I wrote the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ I took ‘Blues’ and put them in a large and more serious form. That was twelve years ago and the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ is still very much alive, whereas if I had taken the same themes and put them in songs they would have been gone years ago.” G. Gershwin, 1.

18
. Jablonski,
Gershwin
, 264.

19
. Virgil Thomson, “George Gershwin,” 18.

20
. Thomson, “Porgy in Maplewood,”
New York Herald Tribune
, October 19, 1941; reprinted in Thomson,
The Musical Scene
(New York: Knopf, 1945), 167–69.

21
. Vernon Duke, “Gershwin, Schillinger, and Dukelsky: Some Reminiscences,”
Musical Quarterly
33 (January 1947): 108.

22
. Richard Rodgers, “Foreword,”
The Gershwins
, by Robert Kimball and Alfred Simon (New York: Atheneum, 1973), xiii.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Schwartz,
Gershwin
, 318.

25
. George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Catfish Row,” 1–2. Interestingly, neither Atkinson nor Downes was bothered by Gershwin’s songs. In fact, according to Atkinson it was their presence that made the “hour of formal music transitions” palatable. Similarly, Downes may have felt that there were a few songs too many “which hold back the dramatic development,” but he undeniably shared Atkinson’s view that “it is in the lyrical moments [i.e., songs] that Mr. Gershwin is most completely felicitous.” Gershwin finds an ardent recent defender in Lawrence Starr, who observes that “for a nineteenth-century European like Verdi, it is acceptable—perhaps even appropriate and admirable—to have ‘hit tunes’ in an opera; for a twentieth-century American it is inappropriate and vulgar.” Starr, “Gershwin’s ‘Bess,’” 430.

26
. Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Catfish Row,” 1.

27
. Richard Crawford, “Gershwin’s Reputation,” 259.

28
. Charles Hamm, “Theatre Guild Production,” 495–532.

29
. The following discussion of the “Buzzard Song” is adapted (with some changes) from Block, “Gershwin’s Buzzard.”

30
. The play by Dorothy and DuBose Heyward was originally published by Doubleday in 1927. Page references in this chapter correspond to the version of Porgy anthologized in
Famous American Plays of the 1920s
(New York: Dell, 1959), 207–307. The typescript of DuBose Heyward’s libretto with George Gershwin’s annotations is now housed in the Music Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Gershwin Collection, Box 27, Item 2).

31
. Dorothy and Dubose Heyward,
Porgy
, 252.

32
. Typescript libretto, 2–18.

33
. Ibid.

34
. Ibid., 2–14.

35
. Armitage,
George Gershwin
, 52.

36
. Isaac Goldberg,
George Gershwin
, 325.