Dan Dietz - The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals

The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals

The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals

Dan Dietz

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Plymouth, UK

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dietz, Dan, 1945 author.

The complete book of 1950s Broadway musicals / Dan Dietz.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-3504-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-3505-2 (ebook) 1. MusicalsNew York (State)New York20th centuryHistory and criticism. 2. TheaterNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. I. Title.

ML1711.8.N3D52 2014

792.6'45097471dc23 2013050441

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To the memory of my beloved

maternal grandmother, Olympia DeMarinis Cioffi

Introduction

The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals examines in detail all 206 musicals that opened between January 1, 1950, and December 31, 1959. The musicals discussed are: seventy-one book musicals with new music; two book musicals with preexisting music; five operas; three plays with songs; twenty-one traditional revues; thirteen personality revues; two dance revues; seven imports; forty institutional revivals; ten commercial revivals; four return engagements; five transfers from Off Broadway; and twenty-three pre-Broadway closings (including one revue that closed during rehearsals). For a quick rundown of these shows, see appendix C, Chronology (by Classification).

The purpose of this book is to present a complete picture of each musical, including technical information and commentary. My goal is to provide a reference source that examines in detail the technical aspects surrounding the musicals as well as information that sheds new light on them, from obscure details to analyses of their book and song structures (such as the occasional curious choice by a musicals creative team to give very little music to a leading character, a decision that seems antithetical for a musical).

The era offered a wide variety of musicals, from the frothy ( Call Me Madam , The Pajama Game ) to the somber ( The Consul , Juno ), from smash hits ( Guys and Dolls , My Fair Lady ) to legendary flops ( Hit the Trail , Portofino ). Most shows were lighthearted in nature, and its notable the critics often used such words as carnival , jubilee , fandango , hoedown , haymaker , and festival to describe not just a particular song or dance sequence but also to characterize their take-away, overall impressions of the musicals they reviewed.

But if fun was the order of the day for most mainstream musicals, there were certainly serious ones as well, and from these emerged a trend in which music was utilized in a more expansive manner than was typical of the era. Instead of offering the usual number of twelve or fifteen songs, many musicals used twice that amount, and some explored sung-through or at least expanded song or dance sequences to tell their stories.

The 1940s institutionalized the traditional book musical by using story, song, and dance to further the plot ( Oklahoma! being perhaps the most obvious example); the 1960s offered the first successful concept musical ( Hair ); and the 1970s institutionalized the concept musical as a viable alternative to the traditional book musical (Stephen Sondheims Company , Follies , and Pacific Overtures , and Marvin Hamlischs A Chorus Line ). As the decades passed, music itself emerged as the primary method of telling a musicals story, and the public became accustomed to sung-through musicals ( Evita and Les Miserables ).

The 1950s was in many ways a transitional period between the traditional book musical and the sung-through musical. As the decade progressed, more and more musicals offered operatic or operatic-styled music, and these were produced on Broadway somewhat regularly over the ten years. The trend started in the late 1940s with such works as Kurt Weills Street Scene and Gian-Carlo Menottis The Telephone and The Medium , all of which premiered in 1947, and Marc Blitzsteins Regina (1949). In the 1950s, the trend continued, and each season offered an average of one musical that was either an out-and-out opera or employed an expansive array of music with often twice the customary number of songs. These included Menottis The Consul (1950), The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954), and Maria Golovin (1958), Jan Meyerowitzs The Barrier (1950), Samuel Friedmans (and, to be sure, Verdis) My Darlin Aida (1952), Jerome Morosss The Golden Apple , Harold Romes Fanny (1954), Blitzsteins Reuben Reuben (1955) and Juno (1959), Frank Loessers The Most Happy Fella (1956), and Leonard Bernsteins Candide (1956) and West Side Story (1957).

Even such also-rans as Shinbone Alley (1957), Oh Captain! (1958), and First Impressions (1959), all of which had delightful scores, offered more than twice the average number of musical sequences. The 1950s were clearly an era in which theatre composers experimented with the employment of more songs and dances as a means of storytelling (in fact, one or two critics noted the dance sequences in First Impressions were sometimes more successful than the songs in telling the musicals story).

For this book, the technical information for each production includes: name of theatre (including transfers); opening and closing dates as well as number of performances (for consistency, Best Plays is my source for this information); the shows advertising tag ( Bagels and Yox is The American-Yiddish Revue and Borscht Capades is An English-Yiddish Musical Revue); names of book writer, lyricist, sketch writer, and composer; names of director, choreographer, musical director, and producer; and names of scenic, costume, and lighting designers. The names of cast members are included, with each name followed by the name of the character portrayed; performers names that are italicized reflect those who were billed above the title.

Also included are the number of acts; for book musicals, the time and locale of the show; and the titles of musical numbers, by act (following each song title is the name of the performer, not the character, who introduced the song). If a musical is based on source material, such material is cited.

The commentary includes a brief plot summary (in the case of revues, representative sketches are discussed); brief quotes from the critics; informative trivia; details about London and other foreign productions as well as New York revivals; and data about recordings, published scripts, and film and television versions. In many cases, the commentary also includes background information about a musicals gestation and pre-Broadway tryout history. Tony Award nominees and winners are included (with winners names in boldface) as well as New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize Award winners. Throughout the book, bolded titles refer to productions that are discussed elsewhere in the text.