CDs: Shinbone Alley
In 1916, writer-columnist Don Marquis introduced the characters of Archy and Mehitabel in The New York Sun. Archy was a little cockroach who thought himself a poet and believed that "creative expression is the need of my soul." Asking no remuneration but for an occasional scrap of nourishment, Archy would arrive at the newspaper office after hours to type his free-verse vignettes, looking at life "from the underside" and focusing in particular on a lady cat named Mehitabel, with "a soul too gay and a conscience too frail." Archy typed his stories by jumping onto the keys of the typewriter. Because the cockroach was unable to operate the shift key, Marquis wrote his characters' names in lower case.
In the early '50s, classical composer George Kleinsinger chose to set Marquis' stories to music. Kleinsinger had had particular success with pieces for children, written for narrator and orchestra, like 'Tubby the Tuba." But Archy and Mehitabel was to have songs as well, and the lyrics were contributed by Joe Darion, later the lyricist of Broadway's Man of La Mancha and Illya Darling.
The result was a 1955 Columbia LP featuring two distinct pieces. Side One featured Eddie Bracken as Archy and Carol Channing as Mehitabel, with David Wayne as narrator, in Archy and Mehitabel, a self-described "back-alley opera." Conducted by the composer, who was also the orchestrator, the score combines songs with recitative, narration, and orchestral interludes in a jazzy, lyrical style that bears traces of Leonard Bernstein and Kurt Weill.
The piece relates how Archy wants Mehitabel to settle down as a respectable house cat. Instead, she falls for a lowlife tomcat named Big Bill, runs off with him, then returns with a flock of unwanted kittens. Mehitabel reluctantly agrees to take a position as a house cat, leaving a lonely Archy. At the end, she returns to the alley and an overjoyed cockroach.
Bracken is perfectly sweet and humble, while Channing, fresh from Wonderful Town, puts to good use all of her extravagant vocal mannerisms in songs like "Cheerio, My Deario."
The flip side of the LP featured just Wayne and orchestra, in Darion and Kleinsinger's Echoes of Archy. Archy has vanished, leaving the narrator to sift through the cockroach's various writings. The anecdotes include Mehitabel's affair with a theatre cat named Horace not unlike Gus in Cats and another about a moth who longed to die so that he could experience the beauty of the inside of a flame. At the end, Archy returns to dance on the typewriter keys once again.
As it turned out, this LP would become nothing more than a sketch for a more substantial Archy and Mehitabel work. First came an expanded concert version, played by New York's Little Orchestra Society at Town Hall. Producer Peter Lawrence then attempted to pair the forty-five-minute concert piece with Menotti's one-act opera The Medium for a national tour.
But the Kleinsinger-Darion piece instead became a full-fledged Broadway musical, Shinbone Alley, which opened at the Broadway Theatre in 1957 and lasted forty-nine performances. Bracken was again Archy, while Mehitabel was played by a perfectly cast Eartha Kitt. The action was greatly expanded, extended ballets were a major feature of the show, and there were many new numbers "Flotsam and Jetsam," "A Woman Wouldn't Be a Woman," "Be a Pussycat," "Shinbone Alley". With a book by Darion and none other than Mel Brooks, Shinbone Alley retained the Big Bill and theatre cat episodes as well as much of the music heard on the original LP. In spite of a strong score, excellent performances, and striking choreography by Rod Alexander, Marquis' material proved unsuitable for full-scale Broadway expansion. But if the show was too slender for audiences used to the likes of My Fair Lady, The Most Happy Fella, Bells Are Ringing, Damn Yankees, and Li'l Abner, Shinbone Alley ranks as one of the better Broadway flops of the '50s.
No cast album was made of Shinbone Alley. But in 1993, a label called Legends released to stores a double-CD transfer of a live tape of a complete performance, recorded through the Broadway Theatre's sound system. A later Broadway Theatre tenant, The Body Beautiful, similarly exists only through a sound-system recording. With Kitt at her peak and with most of the dialogue and lyrics discernible, this tape recording allows one to hear a work that had grown considerably from its wispy LP introduction.
And the piece didn't end its life there. Reverting to the title Archy and Mehitabel, WNET-TV's "Play of the Week" series offered a 1960 studio taping of Shinbone Alley, with Bracken back as Archy and with Tammy Grimes making a divine Mehitabel. It must be said that both Kitt and Grimes were a better match for the feline heroine than was Channing.
In 1970, the property became a bizarre, ninety-minute animated film, called Shinbone Alley and featuring the voices of the original recording's stars, Bracken and Channing, along with much of the score and plotting from the stage musical. The film has been commercially released in VHS form and offers more music than the original LP. I would dearly love to locate a copy of the "Play of the Week" version.
DRG has now given a CD premiere to the LP that started it all, Columbia's 1955 Archy and Mehitabel/Echoes of Archy recording with Channing, Bracken, and Wayne. To fill out the disc, there's a bonus of another orchestral piece with narration, Carnival of the Animals, running twenty-seven minutes and also from the Columbia catalogue.
Carnival of the Animals features verse by Ogden Nash, newly written for this 1949 recording to accompany composer Camille Saint-Saëns' suite depicting various members of the animal kingdom. The verse is read by the Master himself, Noel Coward, in his customary clipped, dry manner, and Andre Kostelanetz conducts the orchestra. For a contrasting performance of this charming piece, I recommend London Records' Carnival of the Animals paired on LP with Peter and the Wolf, featuring as narrator Coward's friend and colleague Beatrice Lillie.
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