A Broadway Memoir With Midwestern Sensibilities

A new book — or, rather, a reprint edition of a not-so-new book — has got me cogitating about the classic Broadway musicals. This, given many of the less than delightful things that one finds oneself compelled to think about these days, is quite a benison. To be sure, although I grew up with the cast albums of many of those evergreen shows and can honestly confess that I love every last one of them, my love isn’t entirely uncritical. If from a certain perspective, for instance, my affection for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific and The King and I is a bit less qualified than my fondness for their Oklahoma! and Carousel, it’s because Curly (the hero of Oklahoma!) is a simpleton and Billy Bigelow (the hero of Carousel) is a thug, whereas Emile de Becque (the love interest in South Pacific) has class and courage and the King of Siam (despite his ruthless side) is a man of substance and complexity with noble ambitions for his country. Then there’s this: Carousel and Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon have what may be the two most gorgeous (and beautifully arranged) scores ever, but they also have two of the stupidest premises: The former imagines a deity called “The Starkeeper” who stands on a ladder putting stars in the sky, as if on the top of a Christmas tree; the latter is set in a Scottish village whose inhabitants wake up every morning a century later than the day before, the consequence of a miracle prayed for by the addlepated local minister in the hopes that it would protect them from outside influence. This solution, unsurprisingly, proves itself to be imbecilic after only two days — i.e., two centuries. Still, how much can you beat up on a show that includes “Waitin’ for My Dearie,” “The Heather on the Hill,” “There But for You Go I,” and “Almost Like Being in Love”? (READ MORE: Film Noir Made Me Conservative)

Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, based on Shaw’s Pygmalion, is widely considered to be the ultimate Broadway musical. But Professor Higgins, who’s supposed to be an expert linguist and a persnickety perfectionist when it comes to proper usage, is given a few lines to sing that are not just grammatically godawful but downright inelegant. For example, when he expresses his deep-seated misogyny in “An Ordinary Man,” he sings: “I’d be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling / Than to ever let a woman in my life.” For one thing, “equally as willing” is glaringly non-standard; either “equally willing” or “as willing” would suffice. For another, whether you go with “equally” or “as,” starting the second line with “than” throws another stick into the spokes, grammatically speaking. Plus, a stickler like Higgins would be very unlikely to opt for the split infinitive “to ever let.” And what kind of English is “a dentist to be drilling”? Yet this genuinely lousy lyric made it through 2,717 performances on the show’s initial run (beginning in 1956), survived the movie version, and has presumably remained unchanged in innumerable Broadway revivals, in countless major productions on the West End and elsewhere, and in mountings by schools and local theater groups all over the world, even though it could easily have been improved at any point along the way. A few quick suggestions, none of them stellar, but all of them preferable to the original: 

• “I would find it less alarming to be forced to take up farming / Than to ever let a woman in my life.”  
• “I’d prefer an awful ailment or the deadliest derailment / Than, etc.”  
• “I’d much rather share a sherry with a chap with dysentery / Than, etc.” 

You’re welcome. No charge.

What of the other Broadway classics? Guys and Dolls is perfect — every song a gem. Frank Loesser even removed five (five!) top-notch tunes from the stage version (including “A Bushel and a Peck,” which my mother sang to me when I was a baby) to make room for three new, equally fantastic songs in the movie version (including “Adelaide” and “A Woman in Love”). A Little Night Music is sheer genius. Also terrific: Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Fiddler on the Roof. I have a love/hate relationship with Evita (which, strictly speaking, isn’t a Broadway show because it was written by a couple of Brits and premiered on the West End before moving to New York): On the one hand, the movie version is a boffo two-hour-plus music video containing some first-rate melodies and a performance by Madonna that’s especially creditable, even miraculous, given that in every other film she’s appeared in, she obviously can’t act; on the other hand, it’s never made clear to us why we should share the character Che’s consistently snotty attitude toward the title character. (Incidentally, he’s supposedly called Che because it’s sort of the Argentinian equivalent of “pal” or “buddy”; but of course, the name brings to mind the vile Che Guevara, leading us to wonder throughout whether we’re being encouraged to share Guevara’s take on Peronism, which, whatever its deficiencies, was fiercely anti-Communist.) Plus, all too many of Tim Rice’s lyrics are staggeringly wince-worthy. A typical line refers to the radio as “the sound radio” because Rice needed an extra syllable; another says of the young Evita, with incredible awkwardness, that “there was nowhere she’d been at the age of fifteen”; later, instead of using the actual expression “what’s cooking,” Evita sings the cringe-inducing line “I already know what cooks,” because Rice needs a rhyme for “looks.”  (READ MORE: World War True)

Then there’s West Side Story, which is, well, West Side Story, and wonderful in its way, but even the lyricist himself, Stephen Sondheim, admitted regretting that in “I Feel Pretty” he gives lyrics to the heroine, Maria (e.g., “it’s alarming how charming I feel”), that don’t sound entirely natural coming out of the mouth of a girl just off the boat from Puerto Rico. Which reminds me: in one song in South Pacific, Nellie Forbush calls herself a “little hick,” only to then toss off, in another song, the ten-dollar word “bromidic” (which sounds more suited to Professor Higgins than to a callow nurse from Little Rock). Speaking of hicks, Oklahoma!, in addition to having a dopey hero, pushes my tolerance for Broadway’s almost inevitably condescending take on homespun country types, notwithstanding its immortal songs and pathbreaking theatrical status. 

A Midwestern Show for a Midwestern Man

This brings us, finally, to The Music Man, with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson. On the hick-o-meter, it scores even higher than Oklahoma! I mean, if you want to be Midwestern, fine. Just don’t shove it in everybody’s face. (Kidding! Kidding!) But Willson wasn’t some born-and-bred New Yorker like Rodgers or Hammerstein trying to figure out how people talked and thought and lived out there in the dreary, dusty, distant hinterlands far beyond the Hudson; he was the real thing. He intended The Music Man to be a tribute to his beloved native state, Iowa, and to the folks in his hometown of Mason City (on which River City was modeled). Granted, two of the songs, intended to capture Hawkeye State-talk, are, to me at least, beyond annoying: “Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little)” and “Shipoopi.” I’m not crazy about that widely celebrated “Rock Island” number at the beginning, either — a bunch of traveling salesmen yakking repetitively to the rhythm of the train they’re riding. (Excerpt: “Ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can bicker, ya can talk, / ya can bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk, ya can talk, / ya can talk, talk, talk, talk, bicker, bicker, bicker.”) While I’m at it, I could also do without the barbershop quartet. 

All that being said, now that I — like Rodgers and Hammerstein, a born-and-bred New Yorker — have lived for over a decade in a burg of 13,000 souls (Mason City today is just over twice that), I must admit that the small-town values celebrated in The Music Man have grown on me. Not that I was ever less than utterly charmed by the thing. (After all, I spent my childhood summers in a South Carolina town with a population of around 25,000.) Even as a kid, I was delighted to discover that the jaunty march “Seventy-Six Trombones” and the sentimental waltz ballad “Goodnight, My Someone” — which two songs could be more different? — had virtually the same melody. I was similarly impressed by the way in which “Lida Rose” and “Will I Ever Tell You” were written to be sung in counterpoint. Also, “Till There Was You” is one of the undying love songs. In short, it’s a remarkably sweet show that taught me one or two things about the magic of music. I appreciate it even more after reading the book to which I alluded at the outset of this piece. “But He Doesn’t Know the Territory”: The Story behind Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, written by Willson himself, was first published in 1959 and was recently reissued with a foreword by Michael Feinstein, the internationally celebrated piano man, and Great American Songbook connoisseur, who quite rightly observes that Willson’s memoir “is one of the best-documented chronicles illustrating the collaborative process of birthing a musical.”

In the case of The Music Man, that process was long and tough. When it began, Willson was just short of 50. He’d spent his life as a musician, orchestra leader, and radio personality; he’d written songs like “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” and “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You”; he’d been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Score (for Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and William Wyler’s The Little Foxes); and he’d played flute and piccolo both in John Philip Sousa’s band and the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. Then, in 1951, the Broadway production team of Ernie Martin and Cy Feuer suggested he try his hand at a musical comedy based on his Iowa boyhood. The Music Man opened in 1957. During the intervening six years, Willson went through dozens of drafts (several of which clocked in at well over four hours) and put on dozens of auditions for producers, directors, lighting designers, actors, and potential backers — not to mention their spouses, assistants, secretaries, entourages, and assorted hangers-on. (READ MORE: Gustav Klimt’s Last Painting Was Among His Best)

Some of those auditions went off like a dream; others were nightmares. Among the celebrities who were left cold by The Music Man was the playwright Moss Hart, whose own superb Broadway memoir, Act One, was published in the same year as Willson’s; choreographer Bob Fosse turned down the project because “the score all sounded alike to him.” The actors who passed on the leading role of Harold Hill — which boosted Robert Preston to stardom — included Gene Kelly and Danny Kaye. One of the things that make Willson’s memoir so charming (and so Midwestern) is that he has absolutely nothing negative to say about any of these people — or, for that matter, about anyone. “The first production meeting” on The Music Man, he maintains, “glistened with a special kind of professionalism I’ve never run into anywhere else but Broadway.” Other showbiz autobiographies are full of petty score-settling — stories about how producer X is a back-stabber, director Y a slave-driver, and actress Z a scene-stealer (and a slut, to boot). There’s nothing remotely like that here: Everybody Willson meets is a saint, a sweetheart, a softie. (“Outside of a couple people like Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer,” he asserts, “the truly professional Broadway dancer is the most dedicated human of our time.”) In other words, his memoir is as wholesome as his musical. And you know what? It makes for a delightful escape from the nasty and brutish world of 2024. 

From the very beginning, certain people — foremost among them Willson’s then-wife, Rini — were full-throated champions of The Music Man and confident that he’d eventually work out the kinks and end up with a smash hit. But right up to the opening night, many of those closest to the production weren’t all that sure. What on earth, for instance, would sophisticated habitués of the Great White Way make of a song that starts like this?:

Oh the Wells Fargo Wagon is a coming down the street
Oh please let it be for me
Oh the Wells Fargo Wagon is a coming down the street
I wish I wish I knew what it could be
I got a box of maple sugar on my birthday
In March I got a grey mackinaw
And once I got some grapefruit from Tampa
Montgom’ry Ward sent me a bathtub and a cross cut saw

Let’s face it, it makes “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” look like “C’est Magnifique.” Indeed, after an unpromising benefit preview just before the show’s official Broadway debut, the author William Saroyan, dining at Sardi’s, overheard some defeatist talk about its prospects. Strolling over to a member of the production team, Saroyan declared that The Music Man was “one of the great pieces of Americana” that would win every award up for grabs. Saroyan (whose novel The Human Comedy is itself a more than noteworthy dose of pure Americana) was right, of course. Meredith Willson’s immortal musical is so American that, as Feinstein notes in his foreword, it’s “not an international show compared to other Broadway blockbusters; while it is performed in other countries, most of the interest is domestic.” Which, needless to say, seems nothing less than deeply, beautifully fitting. 

The post A Broadway Memoir With Midwestern Sensibilities appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.