By Steven Suskin
The early 1950s saw two mini-studio cast attempts at reassembling the score. Producer Goddard Lieberson brought Mary Martin into the studio in 1950 with musical director Lehman Engel and orchestrator Ted Royal to record eight songs from Anything Goes. Five songs, actually; the album "Mary Martin in the great musical-comedy hit Anything Goes" [reissued on CD as DRG 19022] also includes an overture, a finale, and "Lady Fair" sung by a chorus without Martin. This preserves the songs, yes, but in a decidedly non-theatrical form. An even briefer set of four was recorded in 1953 as part of the RCA Victor Showtime series [Victor LPM-3157, not to my knowledge on CD]. Studio arrangements, yes, but all four tracks are delights. And why not? They feature Helen Gallagher, who was just then starring in Jule Styne's Hazel Flagg, and who from the evidence would have made a swell Reno Sweeney; Milton Rosenstock does a snappy job at the podium, too. "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Anything Goes," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," and (as a special treat) "You're the Top" with Gallagher joined by Jack Cassidy. Is that the closest to Merman and Gaxton — two musical comedy hams, sparring — we will find? Maybe so. Falling outside our purview is the 1954 television adaptation of the show, in which Merman is paired with Frank Sinatra and Bert Lahr. This is just now being released on DVD; my review will appear as soon as I find column space.
Next came the 1962 Off-Broadway revival, which was a 239-performance hit at the Orpheum. The orchestration by Julian Stein (of The Fantasticks) is effective, on a necessarily small scale. The resulting cast album [Epic/Sony], being the only one on the market for 25 years, stood in as the Anything Goes record of record. And it's fun. The songs are not quite what Porter had in mind; "Friendship" and "It's De-Lovely," two duets Porter wrote for Merman in later musicals, are inserted along with three pre-Anything Goes show tunes: the well-known "Let's Misbehave" and the lesser-known "Heaven Hop" and "Let's Step Out." (Among the missing are "Lady Fair," "Gypsy in Me," and "Buddie, Beware.")
Eileen Rodgers, from Fiorello! and Tenderloin, is the Reno Sweeney of the occasion; the then little-known Hal Linden does extremely well as Billy Crocker; and Mickey Deems plays Moonface. The role of Moonface's sidekick Bonnie has been expanded and is enthusiastically played by Margery Grey; she had appeared with Rodgers in the two aforementioned musicals, and ultimately married the lyricist of those shows. Also appearing are Kenneth Mars — who passed away on Feb. 12 — as Lord Evelyn and Barbara Lang as the heroine Hope, singing two duets with Linden. (Ms. Lang is best known as one of the wandering quintet in the original A Little Night Music.)
04 Apr 2011
In theory, John McGlinn's 1988 reconstruction [EMI CDC 7 49848] should be the crowning glory of Anything Goes recordings. The score is all here, including three songs that were cut back in 1934. And no expense was spared in reconstructing the piece. However, this disc loses out in the liveliness sweepstakes. Yeah, I know that 1934 was a different time, with different expectations and musical standards; but could everything have originally sounded so polite and pale?
I have just compared McGlinn's tempos with those of the six 1935 recordings, and they are more or less similar (although McGlinn's "All Through the Night" is appreciably slower). Even so, the reconstruction — for all its musical excellence — has something of an academic sound. It is not helped by the performers. Kim Criswell was a McGlinn favorite, yes, but I don't find her Reno compelling. And Cris Groenendaal, the Billy of the occasion, sings purty but without the requisite humor. Jack Gilford is on hand too, as Moonface, but in rather weak voice. (Frederica von Stade, singing Hope, is not in weak voice.)
Ah, if only we had some sense of what these songs sounded like when Gaxton and Merman knocked them over the footlights. Poor Gaxton is almost nonexistent on recordings, which is something of a surprise considering that he starred in ten full-scale Broadway musicals. Happily enough, a radio transcription exists giving us Gaxton singing the verse and first refrain of "You're the Top"; this from a WOR broadcast from Carnegie Hall on March 4, 1935, about three months into the run. And what do we find? That the voice Porter wrote Billy Crocker for was not a romantic baritone but crisply brassy, with pure bravado and a hammy smidgen of "Mammy."
As of this writing, a cast album for the current Roundabout Theatre Company revival of Anything Goes, starring Sutton Foster as Reno and Joel Grey as Moonface, using the Lincoln Center script and score, has not been announced.
(Steven Suskin is author of the recently released updated and expanded Fourth Edition of "Show Tunes" as well as "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations," "Second Act Trouble" and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He also pens Playbill.com's Book Shelf and DVD Shelf columns. He can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com.)
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