There exist original cast recordings of several shows that closed on the road prior to scheduled Broadway openings. These include Nefertiti, The Baker's Wife, Bonanza Bound, Prettybelle, and Hot September. The latter was released on LP by Blue Pear, a label that also issued on disc live tapes of the scores to Zenda and Lolita, My Love. And a couple of shows that folded in tryout got recorded when revived (Mata Hari, Colette, Chu Chem, the latter put on cassette but never commercially available).

Mel Miller's enterprising Musicals Tonight! series has already produced cast albums of Look Ma, I'm Dancin!, Watch Your Step, and Foxy. The latest Musicals Tonight! CD, from an April 2002 production, is the least expected thus far.

The show in question is That's the Ticket!, which opened at Philadelphia's Shubert Theatre on September 24, 1948, and closed there about 10 days later. The book was by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, who co-authored the screenplay for Casablanca, and wrote the play Front Porch in Flatbush, the basis for Stephen Sondheim and Julius J. Epstein's musical Saturday Night.

Had That's the Ticket! continued on to New York, it's quite likely that Jerome Robbins would have begun his career as a Broadway director with a flop. For That's the Ticket! was the first musical directed by Robbins, who left the choreography to Paul Godkin, a principal dancer for Robbins in the previous year's High Button Shoes.

The music and lyrics were by that major (and sometimes underrated) talent Harold Rome, whose hit Call Me Mister had opened on Broadway two years earlier. Rome would go on to Wish You Were Here, Fanny, Destry Rides Again, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and Gone with the Wind. But That's the Ticket! was perhaps closer in spirit to Rome's earlier Pins and Needles.

That's the Ticket! was both political satire and fantasy, something of a cross between A Connecticut Yankee and Of Thee I Sing. A reactionary political party in search of a suitable candidate finds one when a frog in Central Park turns back into Sir Alfred, a knight from the middle ages under a witch's curse. By the final curtain, Sir Alfred has won the heart of heroine Patricia, and been elected President.

Prominent in the story is Marcia LaRue, the witch who had transformed Alfred, but is at present a glamorous film star with political aspirations. Kaye Ballard had her first leading role as Marcia; Leif Erickson was Alfred; Loring Smith (The Matchmaker) was Patricia's political-boss father; and the company also included Jack Carter, George S. Irving, and Herbert Ross.

Rome recorded a couple of songs from the show, and Susan Watson sang one on the Take Home Tune LP 18 Interesting Songs from Unfortunate Shows. Musicals Tonight!'s New York premiere production featured Irving, moving up to Smith's role, and David Staller as Alfred. At 74 minutes, the new CD provides a forgotten road-closer with preservation more comprehensive than that accorded any number of hits of the period.

It's not at all difficult to figure out why this bit of looniness failed, but it's rather amazing to be hearing it. And the rarity of the piece is not its only attraction. To the accompaniment of Mark Hartman at the piano, Rita Harvey's Patricia has the attractive "Love Is Still Love" and the duet with Alfred, "Dost Thou?" Irving still sounds good in the calypso-flavored "The Money Song," which had a bit of life beyond the show's. There's the delightful "Cry, Baby," in which the heroine is induced to weep. (It seems her tears were responsible for turning the frog back into the knight. But Alfred has been turned back into a frog by Marcia, and a frog can't run for President.)

But the zestiest numbers belonged to Marcia, and one can just hear Ballard (who also closed out of town in Reuben Reuben and Royal Flush) delivering them. That's not to say that Carter Calvert (who sounds a bit like Kim Criswell) doesn't offer tasty renderings of the campy introductory number, "The Ballad of Marcia LaRue"; the sinuous "Take Off the Coat" (recycled in the 1950 revue Bless You All, and recorded by Dolores Gray); the slinky "You Never Know What Hit You"; and the very catchy 11 o'clock number, "A Determined Woman."

The fall of 1948 saw the revival of the "Petrillo Ban," with the musician's union forbidding Broadway pit players from recording cast albums. Had That's the Ticket! come in, it might very well have suffered the same fate as such unrecorded fall '48 Broadway entries as Magdalena, Love Life, and Where's Charley? (Of course, there's also the possibility that Ticket might have closed so quickly that a recording would have been out of the question.)

Who ever thought we'd get a cast album of That's the Ticket!? Those interested in Rome and wildly obscure musicals will want to investigate.