DVDs: Bing Sails Again

The quintessential '30s musical, Anything Goes featured Cole Porter's most hit-filled score along with a book, a shipboard farce, originally by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. Hired to direct and edit the text was Howard Lindsay, who saw at once that the script needed a good deal of work. When the S.S. Morro Castle burned at the cost of many lives, Lindsay realized that even more work would be needed, as the script, originally titled Hard to Get then Bon Voyage, revolved partly around a shipwreck.

To help Lindsay with the revisions, producer Vinton Freedley hired press agent Russel Crouse, thus beginning a writing partnership that would go on to include such hits as Call Me Madam, Life with Father, and The Sound of Music. The new writers created a funny farce everywhere tailored to the personalities of the stars, the comedy team of slick William Gaxton and bumbling Victor Moore, and brash but big-hearted Ethel Merman.

It was the first of five shows Merman would do with Porter, and the first time Merman was billed above the title between Gaxton and Moore. The second pair of writers changed Merman's role from Jenny, a nightclub singer, to Reno Sweeney, an evangelist turned nightclub singer.

By the time they had finished, Lindsay and Crouse had come up with an effective book which seems to have retained very little of the Bolton-Wodehouse original. If this final '34 script is invariably revised for revivals, that's mainly because of its length and the many bits tailored specifically to the talents of Gaxton and Moore.

Anything Goes opened during the depths of the Depression, on November 21, 1934 at the Alvin Theatre, where Freedley had presented Merman in her Broadway debut in Girl Crazy four years earlier. Greeted with unanimously good reviews, Anything Goes went on to run for a healthy 420 performances, while a London production in '35 played 261 performances.

With the exception of an opera, Porgy and Bess, Anything Goes is the only musical of the 1930s that's still regularly revived. New York saw it again in 1962, at off-Broadway's Orpheum Theatre, with a book revised by Bolton along with a revised tunestack that began the practice of interpolating songs from other Porter shows into Anything Goes. The result ran 239 performances and provided a new performing version of the show that lasted until the show's first Broadway revival, by Lincoln Center Theater in 1987. With Patti LuPone in the Merman role, the new production had a new book by John Weidman and Timothy Crouse son of Russel. While it featured all but one of the original songs, there were several interpolations. This Anything Goes played for two years.

If Broadway has seen the show twice, it has been mounted four times in the West End. The first revival, in 1969 and produced by the youthful Cameron Mackintosh, was based on the '62 off-Broadway version, and failed to take, closing after twenty-seven performances. In 1989, the Lincoln Center version brought it back to London, with Elaine Paige in the lead. And just recently, the National Theatre revived the show, in a production that transferred to Drury Lane for an extended run.

The first film version was released in 1936, and featured Merman recreating her Reno Sweeney opposite Bing Crosby and Charlie Ruggles. Only four of the original songs title song, "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "There'll Always Be a Lady Fair" were retained, while four more "Sailor Beware," "Moonburn," "My Heart and I," "Shanghai-Di-Ho" by other songwriters were added. While the film departs from the plot of the stage show, it maintains the outlines of the original story, and all of the principal characters from the show are there. And it's most valuable for preserving Merman in one of her stage roles.

Merman was again Reno in a one-hour, 1954 television production that also starred Frank Sinatra and Bert Lahr. Retaining the shipboard setting but featuring a largely different plot, this version used five of the original songs plus a couple of other Porter numbers.

In 1956, Anything Goes got a second film version. To avoid confusion, the '36 film was retitled Tops Is the Limit for TV airings. The new film again starred Crosby, who was surrounded by three dancing stars, Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, and Jeanmaire. Best known for the film of South Pacific, Gaynor would go on to play Reno in the national tour of the Lincoln Center production. French ballerina Jeanmaire was familiar to film audiences from Hans Christian Andersen 1952, and would again sing Porter in the 1981 Broadway revival of Can-Can.

The new film, a color release, retained five of the original songs "All Through the Night," "You're the Top," "Anything Goes," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow", adding from another Porter show "De-Lovely." Also added were three new, fairly catchy songs by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.

But aside from those five songs and the shipboard setting, the new Anything Goes film had nothing to do with the stage show. Gone was the original plot, along with characters like Reno Sweeney, Billy Crocker, and Moonface Martin. The director of the '56 Anything Goes film was Robert Lewis, who guided such Broadway musicals as Brigadoon, Jamaica, Foxy, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

In Sidney Sheldon's new screenplay, Broadway veteran Crosby and television star O'Connor team up to star in a new Broadway musical. Crosby goes to London, where he signs a young American Gaynor as leading lady of the forthcoming show. O'Connor journeys to Paris and, unbeknownst to his partner, signs a bewitching French singer-dancer Jeanmaire for the show's female lead. To add to the confusion, Crosby falls for O'Connor's choice, Jeanmaire, while O'Connor falls for Gaynor. And there's a subplot involving Gaynor's gambler father Phil Harris, in trouble with the U.S. Treasury and thus unable to return to America.

This rarely seen remake of Anything Goes is now available for the first time on DVD. It's a thoroughly mediocre script, a routine, minor musical picture at best. Gaynor and O'Connor share an attractive deck dance routine to "De-Lovely." But the best reason to catch the film is for the chance to see the exotically charming Jeanmaire, a gamin pixie and a classically trained ballerina who could also sing and act. The highlights of the film are the two Jeanmaire sequences staged by her husband, ballet great Roland Petit, the "I Get a Kick Out of You" number that introduces Jeanmaire's character of Gaby Duval, and the dream ballet that offers Gaby's fantasy of taking Broadway by storm.

The new DVD of the '56 Anything Goes includes no bonus features whatsoever. But then just the release was enough, as this was a fairly obscure picture that one did not expect to see on DVD. Now it will be interesting to see if they ever get around to releasing on DVD the worthier '36 Anything Goes.