Personal Favorites: The '50s
Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul 1950 clearly ranks as an opera rather than a musical, but I'll include it here, as it had its premiere on Broadway, and it has always moved me deeply. Extremely haunting is its depiction of unfortunate citizens desperate to transcend the red tape involved in getting out of an unnamed, iron-curtain European country. The Consul has a superb score and is filled with memorable moments of high-powered theatricality.
Call Me Madam 1950 takes its place on this list simply because I can't think of anything more enjoyable than the sight and sound of Ethel Merman playing the part of the brash but lovable American ambassador to the European duchy of Lichtenburg. By the time of Madam, show authors knew precisely how to write for Merman's comic style, her way with a brassy tune, and her ability to convey romantic vulnerability. Although the previous Merman vehicle, Annie Get Your Gun, and a subsequent one, Gypsy, are much stronger shows than Call Me Madam, I feel certain that seeing Merman in Madam would have made me very happy indeed.
Few would argue that Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I 1951 belongs on the list of Broadway's greatest. I include it here because I can't think of a more fascinating pair of musical characters than Anna Leonowens and the King of Siam. No matter how many times The King and I gets revived, those characters always strike me anew as touching, gallant figures, their relationship subtly but masterfully depicted in both book and score. I have no doubt that The King and I will be back on Broadway before too many years pass, and that I will once again delight to those irresistible characters.
Because I first became aware of Broadway musicals in the '50s, this installment contains several sentimental favorites. The first of these is New Faces of 1952, perhaps the last top-notch Broadway revue as opposed to the later variant, the songbook revue. RCA Victor's New Faces of 1952 cast album is the first one I recall falling in love with as a child and playing again and again. It still sounds wonderful to me, although I readily admit that it's impossible for me to be objective about it.
Another recording I loved as a child was Wonderful Town 1953, and, from the time I saw the 1958 television production with Rosalind Russell, the show became a favorite as well. I recall taping on a reel-to-reel recorder the soundtrack of that telecast, then listening to the complete program again and again, falling in love with its piquant mix of wit and sentiment, and knowing intuitively that the Leonard Bernstein-Betty Comden-Adolph Green score was special. All of my feelings for the show were confirmed in 1967, when I saw a gloriously entertaining City Center revival starring Elaine Stritch.
The Golden Apple 1954 combines dazzling intelligence with humor and glorious music in its resetting of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in early-20th-century America. It evinces a brand of wit and adventurousness typical of the early '50s. And it is also a part of '40s and '50s experimentation with Broadway opera, which ranged from Street Scene and The Consul to the all-sung but musical-comedy-style The Golden Apple. The Golden Apple is a one-off, and a show I adore. Perhaps no revival will equal the original, with its supreme cast and design. But I can't understand why Encores! continues to avoid it.
But here's the key sentimental favorite of this piece: Plain and Fancy 1955 was the first Broadway musical I was taken to see, following an earlier City Center Show Boat that I am told I slept through. Again, objectivity flies out the window. The Plain and Fancy cast album with soubrette Barbara Cook and the divinely droll Shirl Conway is among my all-time favorites, and I find the script a model of '50s musical comedy, even if its characters aren't as distinctive as those in, say, Wonderful Town. I'd like to see Encores! try this one too.
Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella 1956 is another special piece, also part of the period's experimentation with blending opera and musical comedy. Although it rises to fully operatic sequences, Happy Fella is less grand and more readily accessible than Street Scene. But aside from its compositional innovations, Happy Fella is on this list because I find it so touching. I tend to choke up at the end of the hero's "Mama, Mama" and at a couple of other places in the wholly wonderful score. The Most Happy Fella, while well-received and a success, would probably have been even more acclaimed had it not opened six weeks after one of the biggest musical hits of all time, My Fair Lady.
I've always had a soft spot for Li'l Abner 1956, another of those perfect '50s blends of heart and humor. Its cold-war satire dates it, but Li'l Abner was a delightful work in its day, and its cast album remains a favorite.
I fell in love with Judy Holliday and the Jule Styne-Comden-Green score for Bells Are Ringing 1956 from the cast album, and was lucky enough to get taken to see the show near the end of its lengthy Broadway engagement. Happily, Holliday remained for the entire run, so I got to see what was probably one of the happiest female musical-theatre performances of all time. The score is one of my top favorites of the decade. But Bells Are Ringing really exists only with Holliday, so we should all be thankful that she got to make the film version, which finally comes out on DVD in March.
It took me some years to grow to love The Most Happy Fella. But another operatic work, West Side Story 1957, moved me from the moment my father brought home the newly-released cast album. While Leonard Bernstein's music seemed to speak directly to me, I couldn't have realized back then that I was hearing as good a score as would ever be composed for a Broadway musical. I still find the show's integration of book, score, and dance a marvel, and await a revival that does justice to this incomparable show.
Once Upon a Mattress 1959 is the sort of lightweight piece that's often taken for granted, but I consider it a superlative achievement, with a book that's extremely amusing and a top-notch score that is rarely given its due. I can still recall the impact of Carol Burnett's clowning when I was taken to see the show in its first incarnation, downtown at the Phoenix Theatre.
Gypsy 1959 is, of course, almost invariably cited as one of Broadway's greatest musicals. I was lucky enough to get taken to see the original production twice, first by my grandparents in the summer of 1959, then a year later, by my parents. Of course, I wasn't old enough to take in the full impact of the show, particularly its serious messages about parents and children. So it wasn't until years later that I really understood Gypsy, at which time I also got the full impact of its incomparable score.
In later years, Gypsy became a treasured show simply because it features one of the greatest of all musical-theatre roles, and thus offered such rich material for stars as variously gripping as Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Dolores Gray, Ann Sothern, Tyne Daly, Linda Lavin, and Bernadette Peters.