CDs: Every Street's a Boulevard

Helen Gallagher had received attention for her featured dance role in composer Jule Styne's hit High Button Shoes 1947, starring Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray. Styne gave Gallagher a principal role in Make a Wish 1951, which Styne produced but did not write. The following year, Styne produced a hit Broadway revival of Pal Joey, and Gallagher won a featured Tony for her role of Gladys. Believing Gallagher ready to be a headliner, Styne wrote the score for her first vehicle.

The show was Hazel Flagg 1953, and while it was self-described as "a musical satire," the show's biggest problem was that it lacked the sardonic bite of its source, the 1937 screen comedy Nothing Sacred starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March. This was true even though the book for Hazel Flagg was written by Ben Hecht, who had co-authored the screenplay for Nothing Sacred.

Set in 1933, the action of the musical begins when Wallace Cook John Howard, political reporter for Everywhere Magazine, picks up a story about Hazel Flagg Gallagher, a young Vermont woman suffering from radium poisoning caused by painting dials in a watch factory. Hazel is reported to have only three weeks to live, so Everywhere editor Laura Carew Benay Venuta decides that, in order to stimulate circulation, she will devote the next issue to Hazel, bringing her to New York and fulfilling her last wishes.

Meanwhile, Hazel learns that Dr. Downer Thomas Mitchell has made a mistake, and she's not going to die after all. But when Cook arrives to take Hazel to New York, she decides to go just the same, bringing along the doctor to aid in the deception.

Styne, whose previous Broadway scores were for High Button Shoes, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Two on the Aisle, produced Hazel Flagg as well as composing it, with Bob Hilliard contributing the lyrics. The book was staged by David Alexander, and Robert Alton handled the choreography; Alexander and Alton had done the same jobs on Styne's Pal Joey, from which Gallagher withdrew to star in Hazel Flagg.

Second-billed Mitchell, a distinguished dramatic actor, had no songs but managed to win the musical-actor Tony Award for his work in Hazel Flagg. Although Howard Keel was first announced for Cook, the role went to film actor Howard, making his Broadway debut. The show marked a return for veteran Jack Whiting, whose career extended back to The Ziegfeld Follies of 1922. Playing New York's mayor, Whiting did a grand job by the one Hazel Flagg song that had a life beyond the show, the soft-shoe showstopper "Every Street's a Boulevard in Old New York." A year later, Whiting would play another mayor, in The Golden Apple. Kay Thompson was sought to play the editor, but the part went to Venuta, who had replaced Ethel Merman in Anything Goes. Thompson would go on to play a similar role in the film Funny Face.

Hazel Flagg arrived at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on February 11, 1953, and received three moderately favorable reviews, three pans, and one mixed notice. The New York Times' Brooks Atkinson liked it, calling it "a fast and brassy Broadway show." John McClain in The Journal American said, "It isn't fresh and intimate; it's big and old and plenty expensive, but it's a thoroughly pro show in the best tradition, and you'll come away rewarded."

But Walter Kerr in The Herald Tribune compared the musical to the film and felt that "the caustic humors which were its principal distinction lie buried beneath the embellishments. Somewhere along the line Mr. Hecht's point of view has been softened." In The Mirror, Robert Coleman declared, "There is so much to like about Hazel Flagg that we wish there were more."

As you would expect, RCA Victor's cast album reflects the opening-night tunestack. But shortly after the opening, Hazel's first song, the very pretty ballad "The World Is Beautiful Today," was replaced by "My Wild Imagination" a song cut during the Philadelphia tryout. And added for Venuta was a new song, "Make the People Cry."

After 166 performances and having recouped half of its $240,000 investment, the run was suspended on July 4 for a summer hiatus of eight weeks. When Hazel Flagg reopened in September, Tony Bavaar Paint Your Wagon had replaced Howard, and he was given two new songs, "Money Burns a Whole in My Pocket" and "Something in the Wind," in addition to the show's standout ballad, "How Do You Speak to An Angel?," which Howard delivers superbly on the cast album.

Remaining in the cast for the re-opening was Nancy Andrews, who had replaced Venuta before the suspension. Gallagher began to sit out matinees of the marathon role, with understudy Dorothy Love going on in her place. Donald Saddler, who had danced with Gallagher in High Button Shoes and would later choreograph her hit No, No, Nanette, came in to stage a new ballet.

Coleman re-reviewed Hazel Flagg in The Mirror and found the production much improved. But the show failed to regain momentum, and closed for good in less than three weeks, with a total of 190 performances. There was a film version of sorts, a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis picture called Living It Up 1954, with Lewis playing Homer Flagg, and featuring the songs "Every Street's a Boulevard," "How Do You Speak to An Angel?," "You're Gonna Dance With Me, Willie," and "Money Burns a Hole in My Pocket."

Although the show's depiction of the press's ability to manipulate public sympathy was markedly less sharp than the film's, Hazel Flagg told an amusing story. Far from a disaster, Hazel Flagg was one of those '50s also-rans, entertaining but overshadowed by its source. And one of its problems was its extremely able star. As Styne later admitted, "Gallagher was sensational when someone else carried the main load....But Lombard could touch your heart. Gallagher couldn't." Had Styne had someone like his Bells Are Ringing star Judy Holliday in the title role, Hazel Flagg might have made it. Gallagher's big showcase ultimately hurt her career more than it helped it.

Hazel Flagg may not possess one of Styne's best scores, but it makes for a very enjoyable disc. At its best, it's slightly superior to Make a Wish, the other RCA-Gallagher show album just released by Sepia, with everything helped by Don Walker's orchestrations and Hugh Martin's piquant vocal arrangements. Gallagher is at her vocal peak, and Venuta's delivery of "A Little More Heart" and "Everybody Loves to Take a Bow" makes one wish she had appeared on more cast albums. Long a collector's item on LP, it's good to have Hazel Flagg on CD.

Sepia's Hazel Flagg disc offers a number of bonuses. There are cover versions of "How Do You Speak to An Angel?" beautifully sung by Eddie Fisher, "Salome" Dinah Shore, and "I Feel Like I'm Gonna Live Forever" one featuring Sunny Gale, another with Guy Lombardo's orchestra and vocals by Kenny Gardner. Those are followed by a complete, extremely obscure 78 album called Record Gazette, recorded in 1947 and featuring Venuta, with orchestra and chorus, in six gay-'90s ditties.

With Sepia's CD release of Hazel Flagg, the only Styne Broadway cast recording that has never been on CD is RCA's Say, Darling 1958. Now that Sepia has given us Make a Wish and Hazel Flagg, one hopes the label will also get to such other early-'50s RCA show titles as Seventeen and the Bette Davis revue Two's Company.

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