ON THE RECORD: A Wonderful Wonderful Town
By Steven Suskin
07 Mar 2004
 |
 |
Donna Murphy in Wonderful Town
|
This week's column discusses Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green's Wonderful Town.
WONDERFUL TOWN [DRG 12999]
A musical version of the 1940 comedy hit My Sister Eileen, starring Rosalind Russell (who played the role in the 1942 screen version), must have seemed like a relatively easy proposition. But it wasn't, by far.
The screen version was the first problem; Columbia Pictures wouldn't sell back the remake rights, without which Broadway producers and investors were loath to move ahead. Budding producer Bobby Fryer decided to go ahead where three earlier managements wouldn't, hoping that the show would prove profitable even without the prospects of a film sale. (As it happened, Wonderful Town never reached the screen. Columbia made their own movie musical "My Sister Eileen" in 1955, which is memorable mostly for the presence of a balding young dancer/choreographer named Fosse, playing the soda jerk.)
With the names Rosalind Russell and George Abbott on the prospectus, Fryer was able to raise the capitalization. The second problem came when Ms. Russell arrived in town, a month or so before the first rehearsal, to hear the Leroy Anderson-Arnold Horwitt score. She didn't like it and refused to do it. Abbott and Fryer agreed, so Mr. A. picked up the phone and called Betty Comden and Adolph Green, his lyricist-librettists for On the Town and Billion Dollar Baby. Could they quickly write lyrics for the show — the libretto was already written, by the men who wrote the original play — and who should write the music?
Lenny, they said. Leonard Bernstein had left Broadway after the success of On the Town in 1943, concentrating on his symphonic career. But when the call came in, around Thanksgiving 1952, Bernstein had a three month-old daughter dangling on his knee. Why not take two months out of his schedule — the show was slated to premiere in New Haven in mid-January — with the prospects of a big and immediate (and unforeseen) payday?
So Betty and Adolph and Lenny went to work. Which led to the third problem. Playwright-librettists Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields were highly protective of their
Sister Eileen. They apparently envisioned a sweetly nostalgic look at Greenwich Village in the 1930's. "The Wrong Note Rag" — the eleven o'clock song that our heroes came up with — specifically illustrated the problem. Dissonant, satirical and not at all what the librettists had in mind. One can also see a vast difference between the first act story vignettes — written by Betty and Adolph — and the rest of the spoken text. The vignettes were presumably forced on Chodorov and Fields, and they were not happy. (Part of their sensitivity seems to stem from 1940, when some of the critics specifically praised director George S. Kaufman for writing the jokes that turned the play into a hit.)
Wonderful Town was a blockbuster, as it turned out, but not a happy one. Says George Abbott: "There was more hysterical debate, more acrimony, more tension and more screaming connected with this play than with any other show I was ever involved with." Relations weren't helped three months into the run when Jerry Robbins — who had been summoned by Abbott to help fix the show during the tryout — went before the House Un American Activities Committee and named names, including Chodorov.
The rush job aspect of Wonderful Town has led to criticism, in some corners, of the Wonderful Town score. Latter-day criticism, mind you; audiences were delighted with the show's unabashed freshness in 1953. There is none of the artistic striving of West Side Story or Candide here, or even On the Town. There are some who listen to Wonderful Town and think — but you mean this is Leonard Bernstein? It sounds like just a musical comedy.
But that's what it is, and precisely what it was meant to be. A bouncy, entertaining, tongue-in-cheek musical comedy score. Wonderful Town works wonderfully on that basis; it was a major hit in 1953, the most successful musical to come along since The King and I. The score is filled with pleasures, like "Ohio," "One Hundred Easy Ways," "Conga!," "Swing," and the "Wrong Note Rag." No, it isn't West Side Story; but in 1953, how could anybody have expected Leonard Bernstein — or anyone — to come up with something like West Side Story? Due to the circumstances, the score for Wonderful Town was written off the cuff, with no time for reflection. If it's West Side Story or Candide you want, I can refer you to a veritable shelf-full of recordings.
There is even a handful of Wonderful Town recordings, due in part to Bernstein's celebrity; this new recording makes the sixth Wonderful Town CD on my shelf. The only ones I bother with have been the two Rosalind Russell recordings. The songs were written to order for Russell, who wasn't much of a singer. But she sold these songs, and how, in a way that no one else has been able to do. (On the other recordings, at least. Carol Channing, Elaine Stritch and Kaye Ballard each had success with the role on stage, and now Donna Murphy joins their ranks.) The 1953 original cast [Decca Broadway 440 014 602] is primitively recorded, and somewhat abridged. The 1958 TV version [Sony Broadway SK 48021] was recorded in early stereo, which makes it considerably clearer; and original conductor Lehman Engel helped preserve the Broadway sound. Russell's performance was somewhat more reassured in 1958, which was not preferable, while the supporting cast gained some and lost some. Continued...
