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1. The King and I
2. Carousel
3. Show Boat
4. My Fair Lady
5. West Side Story
6. Gypsy
7. The Most Happy Fella
8. Camelot
9.Cabaret (right at the end of the Golden Age)
10. Fanny

I started writing reasons why I loved them, but they all ended up being variations on the same reason – the writing. In each, the writing combines intelligence with emotion – these characters are complex and believable, and their music and situations are deeply moving.

I don’t want it to sound as if I didn’t like your book. I did. I devoured it. It’s exactly the kind of book I like. Which means it’s also exactly the kind of book I like to nit-pick. I hope you don’t mind doing my doing it on a public forum. I mean, I was going to write this on my blog and figured “Why not comment here as well?”

I love all the stuff about the 1940s – I know exactly what you mean. One of my theatre professors once told me that I lived in the 1930s – a list of my favorite films includes Swing Time, Love Me Tonight, and Animal Crackers. And I certainly agree with your magic moment, when the hairs rise on your neck – that’s what I adore about musicals. And I love all your reminiscing about Mary Poppins. But when we start talking about how all musicals are based on ridiculous conceits, that’s where we start to part ways. To me, it seems as though you’re deliberately choosing musicals that you can make sound ridiculous. And even some of them don’t sound ridiculous – The Pajama Game? The idea of inter-company politics and unionizing breaking up a romance doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. And then you bring up the R&H flops. But when you talk about Pipe Dream, you leave out the most interesting part of the story – Suzy is a prostitute, and that’s why Doc rejects her. Her “friend,” Fauna? More like her madam, Fauna. Really, I think the basic idea of Pipe Dream is quite sound, and its only failing is in how R&H toned down some of the more racy elements and don’t make the prostitution explicit. But even so, I think Doc and Suzy have an incredibly fascinating relationship. Maybe not quite as interesting as Billy and Julie or Anna and the King, but far moreso than Curly and Laurey, for my money. And then you dismiss Flower Drum Song in half a sentence! I’d hardly call a musical a flop if it a) played two and a half years, followed by a national tour, returning its entire investment and making a tidy profit, b) had a successful film version, and c) was revived in a full-scale commercial production on Broadway. Admittedly, the revival was not very good, but still – it’s hardly a forgotten flop musical, like Me and Juliet. (Now that show you could’ve ripped apart – it’s the most uninteresting, and therefore worst, show that R&H ever wrote.)

Later in that chapter you mention an “eccentric failure to enforce any uniformity of singing style,” a comment that I don’t necessarily disagree with. However, I do disagree with your two examples – South Pacific was written so that Emile and Nellie would have two different singing styles, to reinforce their backgrounds. Emile sings operetta basso profundo because of his old-world European roots, and Nellie sings American pop, because she grew up listening to Marilyn Miller. Again, much the same thing happens in American In Paris – Kelly and Guetary are divided because of the music they sing. They’re supposed to represent two very different choices for Leslie Caron.

And then you make some extremely broad generalizations later in that chapter – “In the early days musicals got around the problem of realism by permitting songs to appear only in the context of a show within the show.” That is just very inaccurate – the necessity of the “show within a show” conceit comes much later than the 1920s. Of course, they existed, but they certainly weren’t used with regularity. If anything, I would say it was easier for the audiences to accept people breaking out into song for any reason, anytime, before the advent of film and its realism. I also have a slight problem with you classifying the action in a musical as “unreal and dreamlike.” And I think Oscar Hammerstein would have a problem with that too. Some musicals, I’ll give you – Carousel, sure. South Pacific, I’ll give it to you. But Oklahoma? No way – “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” “Farmer and the Cowman,” “Many a New Day” – these are songs designed to intersect with a realistic scene and show what might happen if the scene was done in music. Hammerstein was a pioneer of realism in musicals, stretching all the back to the 20s – Show Boat, yes, but also Sweet Adeline, The New Moon, Rainbow – his operettas tried to put real life on stage.

I do disagree with you about Brigadoon (not the quality of the movie, that’s horrible), but that’s just opinion – I find the ending incredibly romantic and moving, if staging properly. I also can’t believe you like the 1950s Show Boat film (although I do agree that Ava Gardner is easily the best thing about it) – the acting is stiff and wooden, Howard Keel is a manly baritone (Gay is supposed to be a wimpy tenor), Kathryn Grayson is way too old as Magnolia (and she can’t sing), and all the tempos are so slow, they’re practically funereal. Have you seen the 1936 version with Irene Dunn? It’s not perfect (no “Why Do I Love You” for one), but it’s far superior to the 50s version.

Later, when you’re talking about Carousel, again I wonder how well you know the stage version. Richard Rogers practically disavowed the film, but he said the stage version was his favorite out of everything he ever wrote. I think it’s a testament to the strength of the material that even a terribly-made film like Carousel can still move you because the writing is so good. But in the stage version, there is no heavenly prologue, and Billy does indeed kill himself. It’s much more morally ambiguous than the film is.

And of course, I do love Sondheim. Sunday in the Park with George is probably my favorite musical of all time – never has a work of art moved me as much as that show. Did you see the recent West End revival? I saw it twice – Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell were magnificent. I hope you continue to explore his work. I constantly revisit it; in my memory and in my CD collection. Although I’m not sure Yentl makes Pacific Overtures look like Mary Poppins – Yentl certainly is challenging, in its way, but I think a commercial stage production of Yentl (especially starring Babs) would be a sure bet to make more money than any commercial production of PO.

We also have a difference of opinion about Billy Elliot. I didn’t love it, and I thought the second act was really not very good, but that Solidarity number, with the ballet girls and the police and the strikers all dancing together, I thought that was stunning and a beautiful example of what musical theatre can do. That number was the hair-raising magic moment for me. The rest – eh.

You later talk about Lili – are you aware that a full-scale Broadway musical was written based on the film? (The film is hardly a full-scale musical, with one song and one dance number.) Carnival, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill. Check out the CD – it’s really quite good, although the actual numbers within the puppet show are kind of cheesy in that musical theatre way. But a duet for Paul and Lili where she sings about how she hates him while he sings about his love for her is incredibly beautiful and moving.

But again, I want to make sure that you know much I really enjoyed your book – please, keep them coming! Discussion (some would say argument) about musicals is what I live for. Which brings me to this post – “Golden Age”? Is there a widely-agreed upon Golden Age for movie musicals? In his book on the subject, Ethan Mordden suggests the true Golden Age for movie musicals was 1928-1936, which I think is pretty reasonable. That’s when the most experimenting with the form came, and the most creativity, and also some of the best films. As good as many of those Freed MGM films of the 50s are, almost all of them have a manufactured, assembly-line feel to them that just grates on me. And I think many of them are quite overrated, although I do love Gigi and Seven Brides. (A Star is Born – Garland version, of course – is possibly my favorite movie of all time, but I don’t really consider it a musical, either. More of a movie with music.) I mean, compare all of those Howard Keel films to the Astaire/Rogers films of the 30s – both were studio franchises, but the Astaire/Rogers films have so much more real emotion and real spontaneity.

Anyway, there you have some of my thoughts on your book and musicals in general. If you’d like to chat more, I’m always up for it!

Yours,
Mark