The Pajama Game on Disc

Columbia Records recorded The Pajama Game on May 16, 1954, just three days after the show opened at the St. James Theatre. A quintessential '50s disc, the recording vividly captures the aura of a brand-new hit. Co-authored by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, the score is wholly delightful, with not a clinker to be heard, and full of that verve typical of the best golden-age musical comedies.

From his opening, aria-like "A New Town Is a Blue Town," on through "Hey There" and "Small Talk," leading man John Raitt makes a wonderful Sid Sorokin. Veteran song-and-dance man Eddie Foy Jr. was inspired casting for time-study expert Hines. Like Joan McCracken, Carol Haney has one of those unique singing voices that could only belong to a star dancer. And close listeners should be able to pick out future How to Succeed.../Little Me star Virginia Martin singing the line "He must be as fierce as a tiger when he's mad" in the song "I'm Not at All in Love."

The only seriously controversial aspect of this recording is the singing of glamorous leading lady Janis Paige. And it's true that in "I'm Not at All in Love" and even more in her duet with Raitt "There Once Was a Man," her pitch can be questionable, and there are frequent and noticeable shifts from chest to head voice. Yet problematic as Paige's singing can be, I've always loved her on this recording, finding that she has exactly the right sound for feisty Babe Williams. It may be worth noting that Paige's singing would get worse in her subsequent Broadway musicals, Here's Love and Mame, and in her appearance in stock in Ballroom.

The cast album of The Pajama Game was first issued on CD in 1987, still the early days of the format. At that time, the recording was transferred to CD without the benefit of much adjustment. This was made up for in 2000, when the recording came out again, this time as part of the Columbia Broadway Masterworks series from Sony Classical/Columbia/Legacy.

Not only did it get a fine remastering, but significant bonuses were added. Located and released for the first time was the twenty-eight-second, original-cast track "Sleep Tite," the company anthem sung at the annual picnic. At the end of the disc, there were selections from an April, 1954 CBS radio program "Stage Struck," hosted by Mike Wallace and focusing on The Pajama Game as it played its Boston tryout.

Wallace interviews composer-lyricist Ross and also presents three musical numbers from the show. Raitt and Paige the latter in more problematic form than on the cast album do "There Once Was a Man," then Adler sings and Ross plays "Hernando's Hideaway."

But the most valuable item is Raitt singing "The World Around Us," a song, Ross relates, that just went into the show to replace another song, "I Never Dreamed." "The World Around Us," a duet for Sid and Babe, would make it to the Broadway opening, but would be dropped during the first week of the Broadway run, replaced by Babe's reprise of "Hey There." This would leave Raitt with no songs in the second act. Although he's listed in the Playbill for "Hernando's Hideaway," he doesn't appear in that track on the recording. "The World Around Us" has been restored for the current Broadway revival, allowing star Harry Connick, Jr. to have a second-act song.

The 1955 London production of The Pajama Game, a reproduction of the Broadway staging and design, played 558 performances. If that's about half the length of the Broadway run, it's still a solid figure, as the London version played the vast Coliseum, now the home of the English National Opera.

HMV recorded the London cast, and the recording includes one number not on the Broadway set, Babe's second-act reprise of "Hey There." Playing Babe in London is Joy Nichols, an Australian who later came to New York and had featured roles in Redhead and Darling of the Day. Canadian Edmund Hockridge had Raitt's role and comedian Max Wall had Foy's. Playing Haney's part of Gladys was young Elizabeth Seal, who would go on to play the title role in Irma La Douce in London and on Broadway, winning a Tony in the process.

After hearing Paige, Nichols' singing makes for relaxing listening, as she's a superb vocalist with a solid, easy belt, and the music gives her no problems at all, even if she, too, must shift registers during the tricky "There Once Was a Man." Nichols sounds a good deal like Lisa Kirk, who would replace Paige in Here's Love.

Like Raitt, Hockridge is a big-voiced baritone, a little grander and stiffer than Raitt, but vocally impeccable. Wall, who later played the King in the London Once Upon a Mattress, is excellent, while Seal adopts some of Haney's sound. In general, this is a top-notch performance, among the best London cast recordings of a Broadway hit.

I've never heard a very rare 45 EP of five numbers from the 1957 Australian production that featured local musical-comedy stars Toni Lamond and Jill Perryman. But I do possess the 1961 British Music for Pleasure LP that offers one side of numbers from The Pajama Game, with the next Adler-Ross smash, Damn Yankees, featured on the flip side.

This is a studio-cast recording, and from The Pajama Game we get an overture not the Broadway one and five songs. Nicolette Roeg, a prominent Nancy in the original London Oliver!, sings two of Babe's numbers. Barry Kent, who was Lancelot in the London Camelot, does two of Sid's. And Joan Heal, star of the West End musical hit Grab Me a Gondola, does Gladys' "Hernando's Hideaway" and Mabel's "I'll Never Be Jealous Again," the latter with Mike Sammes. The arrangements are pretty awful, but Roeg is terrific in "I'm Not at All in Love."

A major new Pajama Game recording came along in 1997. This was JAY's double-CD, complete-score version, running over ninety minutes and including a number of items not to be found on the other recordings. These include the second-act Jealousy Ballet, in which Hines envisions what marriage to Gladys would be like; the finales of both acts; reprises of "Her Is" and "There Once Was a Man"; the entr'acte; and the curtain call and exit music. And quite a few numbers are featured in longer versions, notably "Once-a-Year-Day," "I'll Never Be Jealous Again," and "Hernando's Hideaway." Everything is heard in the original Don Walker orchestrations, and there's fine conducting from John Owen Edwards.

This is only partly a studio-cast recording. That's because it features four performers, including two of the three leads, from the 1989 New York City Opera production. Repeating from that engagement are Judy Kaye Babe, Avery Saltzman Hines, Brookes Almy Mabel, and David Green Prez. Kim Criswell is vocally overqualified for the role of Gladys. Also making brief appearances on the recording are Ted Pappas, director of the City Opera production, and veteran Fosse dancers Margery Beddow and Elaine Cancilla Orbach.

In place of City Opera's Richard Muenz is Ron Raines, and his operatic, gleaming Sid is the recording's outstanding element. Kaye is certainly a big-voiced and secure Babe. But while "There Once Was a Man" allows her to use some of her operatic range, the music almost exclusively asks her to push her chest tones. If the role isn't the best showcase for her voice, Kaye pulls it off, and gets to share "Seven and a Half Cents" with her husband, Green.

I've skipped over Columbia's second Pajama Game recording, the soundtrack album from Warner Bros.' 1957 film version. But then one can hear those vocals in a better fashion, as part of the soundtrack to Warner Home Video's 1999 DVD release of the film, which is in many respects the best of all Pajama Game discs.

Warner Bros. won the film rights to the show for $750,000, and the subsequent movie was co-directed and co-produced by George Abbott and Stanley Donen. It's especially notable for the large number of original-cast members present Raitt, Foy, Haney, Buzz Miller, Thelma Pelish, Reta Shaw, Ralph Dunn, Ralph Chambers. True, Raitt had considerable competition in winning the film role. Warners wanted Frank Sinatra, Abbott favored Marlon Brando, and Dean Martin and Gordon MacRae were also proposed. But the part ultimately went to Raitt, who had to turn down Broadway's Bells Are Ringing to do the film.

Part of the reason Raitt got the film role was because the studio had already secured some star wattage by bringing in Doris Day to play the female lead. Day's Babe ranks as one of the star's best performances. Day had supported Janis Paige in the 1948 film Romance on the High Seas. In 1960, Day would be the star and Paige a supporting lead in the film Please Don't Eat the Daisies. In comparing the stage and screen Babes, Donen later said, "Janis Paige was very different in the role. She was like a woman made of steel. I liked her, but probably in the film she would have appeared so tough that you would never have found her vulnerable." Day herself later wrote that she found it difficult to "fit into a polished company that had been together for two years."

The screenplay was the work of original authors Abbott and Richard Bissell, and it nicely streamlined the stage script. The film dropped the songs "Her Is," "A New Town Is a Blue Town," and "Think of the Time I Save." Adler wrote a wistful new song, "The Man Who Invented Love," for Day to sing in the movie, but the number was cut. It's available as a bonus on the DVD.

The film is also valuable for its preservation of some of the original Bob Fosse choreography for such numbers as "Once-a-Year-Day," "I'll Never Be Jealous Again," and "Steam Heat." The chance to see so many of the original Broadway performances is rare it would also be the case with the film version of the next Adler-Ross-Abbott show, Damn Yankees, and the Pajama Game film ranks as one of the best available documents of a '50s Broadway musical.