The other day, I posted a video here of two songs from the recent Encores production of Dear World, which I said originally starred Angela Lansbury. Well, this is Lansbury herself as a guest on Julie Andrews’ TV variety show in 1973 singing one of those two songs, “I Don’t Want to Know.” The musical, based on the play The Madwoman of Chaillot, was a flop (as was the movie that starred Katharine Hepburn), but it had some very nice songs in it. What leaps out in this performance below is that, rather than standing and throwing herself into a performance, Lansbury sings the number wonderfully just simply seated with the other guests.
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The 1969 Jerry Herman musical Dear World, based on the play The Madwoman of Chaillot – later made into a movie with Katharine Hepburn -- starred Angela Lansbury. It was a flop, running only 132 performances, however Lansbury won the Tony Award, and the show has some wonderful songs in it (as well as another fun, Jerry Herman title song), and may be the most “adventurous” of his scores, going off in some challenging directions, including a long sequence called “The Tea Party” that ends up having three separate, interesting songs overlap with one another. Last year, the Encores! group in New York – which puts on semi-staged, limited runs of lesser-known shows -- did a production of the show, that starred Tony-winner Donna Murphy. This is a video of two good songs. The first is “Tomorrow Morning” (that cuts off early, as the chorus is about to join in), and the second is “I Don’t Want to Know.” As a bonus, this is a three-minute montage of several of the songs from the Encores! production, which I’m glad includes some of the aforementioned “The Tea Party,” as well a bit of “Kiss Her Now,” which I think is one of the most achingly-beautiful songs Herman wrote. Oh, okay, I’m also going to post a finale, of sorts: a very short video of the curtain call – not for the bows, though, but because 55-seconds into the video the cast sings one chorus of the title song, which I like. This is a wonderful clip from a 2022 revival of the Frank Loesser musical Guys & Dolls done at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It’s the number “Marry the Man Today,” along with the lead-in dialogue. What leaps out is that the actresses here are two of the major leading ladies in the current Broadway – Jessie Mueller (who starred in Beautiful: the Carole King Musical, winning the Tony, and was nominated for Waitress and Carousel) and Philipa Soo, who shot to fame in Hamilton, and starred in the musical adaptation of Amelie (which I saw in its pre-Broadway run in Los Angeles), as well as the revivals of Camelot and Into the Woods. (I’ve long been partial to Jessie Mueller, having seen her in the musical She Loves Me at the 150-seat Writers Theatre in my hometown of Glencoe, Illinois, a year or so before she left for Broadway.) The quality of the clip is pretty good, though – being taken from the audience during a production -- the sound isn’t as crisp as ideal, but still pretty good. Not shockingly, when celebrating the 4th of July, we must have something from the musical 1776. Here are William Daniels, Howard DaSilva and Ken Howard recreating their roles from the original Broadway cast in the movies adaptation. I always feel a certain closeness to the show, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical, because it was the first production I ever saw on Broadway -- and with this original cast. This is "The Egg," as they sing about the birth of a new nation. Continuing our celebration o' the day, we have this decidedly-offbeat song, "Dear Old Dad," from the 1961 off-Broadway musical, Smiling, the Boy Fell Dead, a spoof of Horatio Alger-type stories, with music by David Baker, and lyrics by none other than Sheldon Harnick, his first stage show, three years before he teamed up with Jerry Bock for Fiddler on the Roof. And oddly, two years after he and Bock won the Tony and Pulitzer for Fiddler on the Roof. (This off-Broadway show had been written earlier, but took a few years to get produced.) As is well-known, when Broadway songwriters Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, and librettist Joseph Stein wrote Fiddler on the Roof, they based it on stories by Sholem Aleichem. Originally, they were given a novel written by Sholem Aleichem called Wandering Star, but they thought it was too unwieldly for a stage musical. (I’ve read the book, and it’s very good, but it is indeed expansive and wouldn’t make a manageable musical. The tale in large part is about a troupe of a family of actors in Russia, and their adventures which carry them to America, with a many-levelled love story.) But Harnick said that they liked the environment so much that they looked into other stories by Sholem Aleichem, and came across his tales of Tevye’s daughters. Which, of course, lead to Fiddler on the Roof. Recently, I read a collection of short stories by Sholem Aleichem (the pen name of Sholom Rabinovitch), and there’s a section devoted solely to stories about Tevye. A few things leaped out. First, in one of the non-Tevye stories, there’s a sort of first-person tale where the author ruminates about what he’d do if was wealthy, and it’s titled, “If I Were Rothschild.” I have to believe that that’s where Sheldon Harnick came up with the idea for “If I Were a Rich Man.” The wishes are different – Tevye’s in the song are more about things for him and his family, the article is basically larger wishes for the town and wider environs, though the concept overlaps. For instance, the short story begins, “If I were Rothschild, ah, if I were only Rothschild.” And one thing he’d do is “provide a new roof for the old synagogue so the rain won’t drip on the heads of the men who come to pray.” In fact, I think – and I can’t remotely swear to this, though I have a vague recollection – that I read years ago that that’s the original name of the song, but Harnick changed it. And it’s a better title for the song, giving it a more universal and timeless sense. But it seems very likely that this is where the idea of the song came from. As I’ve written in the past, I became email friends with Sheldon Harnick, who passed away last year at age 99. I’d have loved to have asked, had I read this story first. But it really does seem near certain – most especially thanks to the second thing that leaped out. Which is the real revelation here. In the Tevye section of the collection I was reading, there’s a story called “The Bubble Bursts.” Tevye has been convinced to make a risky investment with a very distant relative. It doesn’t work out, the investment goes bust, and he loses it all. But before it does, when left alone, all sorts of visions passed before him of what life will be like if he becomes rich – “visions so sweet,” he says “that I wished they would never end.” And Tevye explains: “I saw a large house with a tin roof right in the middle of town, and inside the house were big rooms and little rooms and pantries full of good things, and around it a yard full of chickens and ducks and geese. I saw the mistress of the house walking around jingling her keys. That was my wife, Golde, but what a different Golde from the one I knew. This one had the face and manner of a rich man’s wife, with a double chin and a neck hung with pearls. She strutted like a peacock giving herself an air, and yelling at the servants girls….And at the head of the table sat the master of the house, Tevye himself, in a robe and skullcap, and around him sat the foremost householders of the town, fawning on him. “If you please, Reb Tevye. Pardon me, Reb Tevye.” Remarkable. “If I Were a Rich Man” spills right out of that. Unlike my guess with the “Rothschild” article's title, there is absolutely no question in mind that Sheldon Harnick read this particular story, and did a masterful job adapting some of Sholem Aleichman into a lyric. All of which adds to the likelihood that he also read the story, "If I Were Rothschlld," given the overlap of it all. For those of you who might not remember all the words of the song, here are just a few notable passages – I'd build a big, tall house with rooms by the dozen Right in the middle of the town A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below. I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks For the town to see and hear Squawking just as noisily as they can. I see my wife, my Goldie, looking like a rich man's wife With a proper double-chin Supervising meals to her heart's delight. I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock Oy, what a happy mood she's in Screaming at the servants, day and night. The most important men in town would come to fawn on me. They would ask me to advise them like a Solomon the Wise: ‘If you please, Reb Tevye’ Pardon me, Reb Tevye’ -- Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes. No question at all. The lyrics absolutely are adapted, in part, from Sholem Aleichem. And wonderfully and artistically so. And so, just as a full reminder, here’s the song. And as a wonderful bonus, this is Sholem Aleichem himself (Sholom Rabinovitch, of course) reciting about a minute of that very story, "Ven ikh bin Rotshild." Recorded over 100 years ago, I believe in 1902. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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