CDs: You Can't Beat a British Crime
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BELLE Must Close Saturday
The subject of countless books, films, and articles, the Dr. Crippen murder case remains one of the most sensational in British history. Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife, Cora, were Americans who had relocated to London. He was a dentist, she a mediocre music-hall singer who took the stage name of Belle Elmore.
By 1910, the marriage was in trouble and Belle discovered that her husband was having an affair with his secretary-nurse, Ethel le Neve. Soon Belle disappeared, with her husband first explaining that she had left him, then stating that she had died. When Crippen dropped out of sight, police began to suspect the worst, and they were soon digging up a body in Crippen's cellar, the corpse containing traces of poison.
Meanwhile, Crippen and Ethel, impersonating a father and son, boarded a ship bound for Quebec. When the ship's captain guessed their identity, he had the transatlantic wireless operator send a message to Scotland Yard. The police took off on another ship bound for Canada and eventually captured Crippen and Ethel, who were returned to London, where they stood trial. Crippen was found guilty of Belle's murder and was hanged; Ethel was acquitted.
In May, 1961, Belle, or the Ballad of Dr. Crippen opened at London's Strand Theatre. A self-described "music hall musical," Belle told the Crippen tale in terms of an Edwardian-era music hall performance. Belle was set at the Bedford Theatre in Camden Town in 1910, a house presided over by an Emcee and a star comic. The numbers were music hall pieces, just as the songs in Chicago are vaudeville-style sequences.
Belle had a fine score by Monty Norman, who had previously collaborated on the London hits Expresso Bongo, Make Me an Offer, and Irma La Douce. Norman would go on to Songbook a one-nighter on Broadway as The Moony Shapiro Songbook and Poppy, Peter Nichols' musical about the opium wars.
Based on a play by Beverly Cross, who would soon write the libretto for Half a Sixpence, Belle's script was by Wolf Mankowitz, who had done Bongo and Make Me an Offer with Norman and would later write the musical Pickwick.
Critics weren't sure what to make of Belle. Some even felt that its retelling of a murder story in music-hall terms was tasteless. Belle was forced to close after forty-four performances, but it ranks as one of the more interesting musical flops of its time, a show that deserved a better reception.
It can also be seen as an influential piece, a concept-musical precursor to such shows as Oh What a Lovely War!, Cabaret, and Chicago. Then there's Broadway's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which employed much the same concept as Belle, a music-hall retelling of a tale of murder. Drood's tale of murder was a fictional one, courtesy of Charles Dickens.
Belle seems to have had the misfortune of being a concept musical at a time when realistic, contemporary, Soho-set shows like Norman's Expresso Bongo and Make Me an Offer were all the rage. Still, another concept musical, Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's Stop the World-I Want to Get Off, arrived in London two months after Belle and was a success.
Fortunately, Decca made an excellent recording of Belle, and it's now on CD for the first time, on the U.K. label Must Close Saturday. The catchiest tune is "Meet Me at the Strand," delivered by the Bedford's principal lady, Jenny, played by belter Nicolette Roeg, who would go on to several years of duty as Oliver!'s Nancy. The Emcee at the Bedford Jerry Desmonde sings five different versions of "The Ballad of Dr. Crippen," a recurring piece, like "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" in another musical about a London murderer.
"Coldwater, Michigan" is a jaunty salute by Dr. Crippen George Benson to his home town. Rose Hill is an amusingly off-key Belle in "Bird of Paradise." The company at the Bedford perform "The Dit-Dit Song," a salute to Marconi, who invented the wireless, as well as a bouncy title song, "I Wonder What's Happened to Belle." A rousing march, "You Can't Beat a British Crime," closes the show. There's even a minstrel sequence, just like those in two Alan Jay Lerner concept musicals, Love Life 1948 and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 1976.
A footnote on Belle: It was not the first time that the Dr. Crippen story had been musicalized. The first act of Mary Martin's 1943 Broadway hit One Touch of Venus closed with a Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash song called "Dr. Crippen." When the hero's troublesome fiancée disappears, the tale of Dr. Crippen is enacted in a series of tableaux, leading to the hero's arrest for the fiancée's murder. As it happens, the lady's absence is a result of Venus's having temporarily "dissolved" her. The song's recurring refrain is "Here's to Doctor Crippen,/Hawley Harvey Crippen/Lying in a felon's grave./When they tried him in court/He had one retort,/It was all for Ethel Le Neve."
ONE OVER THE EIGHT Must Close Saturday
Last summer, Must Close Saturday issued on CD the Decca cast recording of a 1959 West End revue called Pieces of Eight. The same label has now released Decca's cast recording of that show's sequel, a London revue called One Over the Eight. Both revues were built around the comic talents of Kenneth Williams, who is probably best remembered for his appearances in the Carry On films.
Opening in the West End a month before Belle, One Over the Eight featured sketches by Peter Cook, who would make revue history with Beyond the Fringe just a month after the Williams show opened. One Over the Eight's leading lady was Sheila Hancock, who had already done Make Me an Offer and would go on to play in the West End two of Dorothy Loudon's roles, Miss Hannigan in Annie and Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Heard in a couple of numbers is Lynda Baron, who would sing "Who's That Woman?" in the London premiere of Follies and would also play older Belle in the London revival of Little Me. One Over the Eight is said to have been particularly distinguished by designer Tony Walton's innovative use of projections.
Because Williams had no singing, the One Over the Eight cast album had to include spoken sketches. The most amusing of these are by Cook, one featuring an interview with the author of a newly opened, abysmally reviewed West End play, the other eventually recycled in Beyond the Fringe about a one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan. Singer Toni Eden has a slinky Lionel Bart Oliver! song called "Send Me" and an ardent, up-tempo request, "Please Stop Following Me Around."
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