By Steven Suskin
07 Aug 2005
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This week's column discusses the 1954 television cast album of Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's Lady in the Dark and Philip Chaffin's album of vintage songs entitled "Warm Spring Night."
LADY IN THE DARK plus DOWN IN THE VALLEY [Sepia 1052]
The opening strains of Lady in the Dark might well be enough to make you wonder whether you really want to hear this 1954 "NBC color spectacular" version of Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's 1941 musical. Here we have a mid-fifties TV musical with all the trimmings (and all the strings). "Oh, Fabulous One" is very much of its time, and I expect Mr. Weill, who died in 1950, would have run for his hatchet upon hearing this. However, these are just the opening strains.
It was presumably thought that Weill's modernistic original orchestrations were too harsh for TV; he was only five years out of Europe when he wrote Lady in the Dark, and the score certainly has a somewhat metallic sound (which I love, myself). The big numbers were rethought for TV, and not for the better. But that's what Max Leibman, producer of Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," wanted, and he set his music staff — orchestrator Irv Kostal and musical director Charles Sanford — to transform Lady in the Dark. And they did, certainly. (Some of the scenes-with-music and more intricate passages were left pretty much alone, happily.)
Even so, there are some spots of interest. My favorite recording of this score is Lehman Engel's 1963 studio cast, starring Rise Stevens and featuring Adolph Green [Sony Classical MHK 62869]. Fans of that excellent recording will be surprised to find material on the 1954 LP that was cut in 1963. Thus, we get more complete versions of "Girl of the Moment" and "The Greatest Show on Earth" (with "new" sections basically following Weill's original arrangements); on the other hand, much of the "Wedding Dream" has been cut. Once you get past the somewhat stunning (in an adverse way) sweetening that has been laced onto this poor Lady, the recording offers some interest to Weill fans. One must keep in mind that Weill's score had been severely disrespected, in the 1944 film version (starring Ginger Rogers). When the TV version came after Weill's death, it at least gave the viewer an idea of what the show had been. It wasn't until Engel's recording that Lady in the Dark was preserved in its full splendor; I daresay that anyone interested in the musical theatre, "advanced ideas" division, should know the 1963 recording.
The TV Lady in the Dark is headed by ex-movie star Ann Sothern (at the time starring in the sitcom, "Private Secretary"). She is, shall we say, different than the other Liza Elliotts we know. Sothern is supported by Carleton Carpenter in the Danny Kaye role, and he does pretty much fine. The Gershwin fan will find two changes, one curious and one amusing. The character Randy Curtis, the movie star ("A precious amalgam of Frank Merriwell, Anthony Eden and Lancelot!") has been renamed "Randy Culver" — presumably to avoid confusion with the newly minted star Tony Curtis. And the word "mistress" has been censored out of Gershwin's delicious "The Best Years of His Life," which makes for an interesting mess of a mishmash.
Bell is best remembered as the second Mrs. Alan Jay Lerner; her presence in Bloomington presumably had to do with the fact that Weill and Lerner were collaborating at the time on Love Life. (She earlier made a brief appearance in the legendary stateroom scene in the Marx Bros. classic "A Night at the Opera," looking for her Aunt Minnie.) Bell left Brigadoon in 1948, left Lerner in 1949, and appears to have left the business altogether after repeating her Down in the Valley performance for NBC Opera Theatre in 1950. This television cast recording, from RCA, was not the first Down in the Valley recording, and I'm afraid it isn't the best. Decca recorded it earlier with Alfred Drake, and Drake — circa Kiss Me, Kate — makes a far more authoritative Brack Weaver than William McGraw. The Decca recording, though, is not in print, while this one — finally, after many years — is.
If neither the Lady in the Dark nor Down in the Valley is obligatory listening, they combine for a worthWeill twofer album, especially for fans unfamiliar with the composer's non-Broadway "American Folk Opera." Continued...
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