Obscure Recordings: Let It Ride!

Collectors were glad to see the recent Sepia CD releases of Make a Wish and Hazel Flagg, two significant '50s show titles from the RCA catalogue that the label had never gotten around to reissuing on CD. There are a number of '60s RCA titles that have yet to make it to CD, notably Maggie Flynn, Jimmy, By Jupiter, and Let It Ride!, the latter RCA's cast album of the 1961 Broadway musical based on the comedy Three Men on a Horse.

Three Men on a Horse was a hit 1935 farce, written by John Cecil Holm and George Abbott, that enjoyed a two-year Broadway run. It concerned Erwin Trowbridge, a sweetly timid greeting-card poet with an uncanny knack for picking the winners of horse races, provided that he doesn't actually place bets on them. Three Men on a Horse was made into a 1936 film starring Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell, and Sam Levene, the latter repeating his Broadway role of Patsy, a professional gambler who takes the amateur expert under his wing.

Three Men on a Horse was revived on Broadway in 1969, with Levene back and joined by Jack Gilford and Dorothy Loudon, and again in 1993, as a venture of the National Actors' Theatre, this time starring Tony Randall, Jack Klugman, and Ellen Greene.

In 1941, Three Men on a Horse was made into a Broadway musical, called Banjo Eyes and fashioned as a vehicle for popuar musical comic Eddie Cantor. With music by Vernon Duke and lyrics by John Latouche and Harold Adamson, Banjo Eyes played 126 performances. It was Cantor's last Broadway appearance.

In 1961, Three Men on a Horse was made into a Broadway musical for a second time, this one called Let It Ride!, with a book by Abram S. Ginnes and a score by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Livingston and Evans were an Academy Award-winning team of film songwriters responsible for such hits as "Que Sera Sera," "Mona Lisa," "Buttons and Bows," and "Tammy." They had already written the score for the TV musical "Satins and Spurs" starring Betty Hutton, and had done one previous Broadway musical, contributing fine songs to Oh Captain in 1958.

For Let It Ride!, Levene was once again hired to play Patsy. Popular television and nightclub comic George Gobel made his stage debut as Erwin. Gobel was immortalized in Elaine Stritch at Liberty, in a line about "going out there alone," i.e. without a drink. Betty Grable, Jayne Mansfield, Shelley Winters, Diana Dors, Edie Adams, and Marilyn Maxwell were all sought for the female lead of Let It Ride!, but the part went to television and film actress Barbara Nichols, perhaps best known for her poignant hat-check girl in the film Sweet Smell of Success. Directing Let It Ride! was Stanley Prager, whose other stagings include the musical flops Bravo, Giovanni, Minnie's Boys, and 70, Girls, 70.

When Let It Ride! received negative reviews in Philadelphia, Ronny Graham New Faces of 1952, Bravo Giovanni was brought in to revise the book, taking an "additional material" credit in the Playbill. When Let It Ride! opened on October 12, 1961 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre the same week saw the openings of Milk and Honey and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the reviews were not entirely negative, for John Chapman in The Daily News liked Let It Ride!, calling it "bright and intelligent," the songs "deft and original."

Otherwise, the critics were harsh. Howard Taubman in The Times wrote, "Unhappily, Mr. Gobel rarely ceased to be Mr. Gobel...the book tended to go sluggish...the songs were only serviceable, and the principals could not sing." Robert Coleman in The Mirror and John McClain in The Journal American both called the show "an also-ran," while Norman Nadel in The World-Telegram felt that it "adds nothing but dead weight to a fleet farce."

In The Post, Richard Watts called Let It Ride! "commonplace and disappointing," noting a "pedestrian quality and absence of charm in the telling of the story, the failure to reach any heights of imagination in song, dance, or narrative." Walter Kerr of The Herald Tribune had good words for Gobel, Levene, and choreographer Onna White, but was forced to sum it up by stating, "All in all, I'm not eager to say that the show is terrible. It's really too tame to tell."

In a season that featured a number of far superior new musicals, Let It Ride! only made it through sixty-eight performances. And that's pretty much what it deserved. Farces are always difficult to musicalize, as the songs tend to dilute their taut construction. In the case of Let It Ride!, a play that no longer seemed as hilarious as it did in 1935 had been further weakened by unnecessary "improvements" on the original plot and set of characters. A sweet, simple farce became a convoluted and not especially funny show. The songs were pleasant but not strong enough to bolster a shaky libretto. In general, Let It Ride! was an uninspired adaptation that diminished a less-than-deathless source.

Then too, in the interval between the original Three Men on a Horse and Let It Ride!, Guys and Dolls had come along to provide the last word on singing Manhattan gamblers. Let It Ride! took up one of Guys and Dolls' leads, Levene, while Nichols' role was similar to Guys and Dolls' Miss Adelaide. And both shows featured a chorus of small-time gambler cronies.

RCA Victor's Let It Ride! cast album did not stay in the catalogue long, and has never been reissued on LP or CD. The Livingston-Evans score is not up to their Oh Captain! contribution. Let It Ride! did have one bona fide showstopper, a number for sixteen bumbling patrolmen called "Just an Honest Mistake" which had little to do with the plot.

But Let It Ride! had more than its share of the sort of tacky numbers "Broads Ain't People," "Who's Doing What to Erwin?," "There's Something About a Horse," "If Flutterby Wins" that could only come from a '60s musical flop.

There are a few bright spots, such as a catchy if cheesy opening number about the pressures of urban life, "Run, Run, Run." Fresh from Wildcat, brassy Paula Stewart has a pleasant ballad expressing her feelings for Erwin, "The Nicest Thing," and a decent counterpoint number, "Love, Let Me Know," with Stanley Grover, playing Erwin's boss, who's also in pursuit of Stewart.

As those involved in Guys and Dolls had discovered, Levene was a marvelous performer who couldn't sing, so he was obliged to talk-sing his way through the bright title song and his duet with Gobel, "I'll Learn Ya." Leading lady Nichols was also no singer, and her one number, "I Wouldn't Have Had To," in which her character explains how she became a stripper, definitely belongs in the cheesy category.

Gobel was well-cast as Erwin, even if critics noted that he relied heavily on the floor mikes to project throughout the house. Gobel has a small but sweet voice with some nice falsetto high notes, and he gets to show it off on three attractive solos, "Hey, Jimmy, Joe, John, Jim, Jack," "Everything Beautiful," and "His Own Little Island."

The producers of the Let It Ride! album encouraged the performers to move around during the sessions in order to show off the label's much-touted "living stereo." If the Let It Ride! disc isn't a total loss, it's one of those collectors-only items, a title that was lucky to have gotten preserved at all.