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Decent Quality Since 1847

Fiorello! -- the Whole Show, Sort of

11/26/2016

4 Comments

 
Last night we finished the Second Elisberg Industries International Film Festival, where the little-known award-winning musical Fiorello! was presented over the course of 14 episodes.  It occurred to me that some people may have come in during the fest and missed some of the earlier part, or skipped a few and wanted to catch up -- so here's a list of all the episodes with links to them.

Fiorello! opened in 1959 and ran almost two years, for 795 performances.  It was the co-winner for Best Musical with The Sound of Music at the Tony Awards, and also became only the third musical (at the time) to receive the Pulitzer Prize for drama.  The score was by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, who five years later would write Fiddler on the Roof.  Its then-little known star, Tom Bosley, won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical.  He would later go on to fame playing 'Howard Cunnighman, the father on Happy Days.  (The Tonys had a quirk in its nominating process whereby you were only eligible to be nominated as lead actor if your name was above the title in the billing, or listed as "starring."  In the case of Fiorello! -- like many other ensemble shows -- the entire cast was listed together under the title, so even though Bosley was the lead and played the title character, he wasn't eligible to be nominated as lead actor.)

Anyway, for the record, here are all the episodes posted on these pages for the festival --

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-1

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-2

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-3

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-four

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-five

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-six

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-seven

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-eight

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-9

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-10

​http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-11
 
http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-12-the-finale

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-13-curtain-call

http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-14-encore

​
4 Comments
Lisa Kadonaga
12/8/2019 09:48:25 pm

People might be interested in which musical numbers were listed in the playbills for the pre-Broadway tryouts (I was able to obtain copies). I'm using the character rather than the performer names, to make things clearer.

New Haven (Schubert Theatre, Oct 17-24, 1959)

Act I
"On the Side of the Angels" -- Neil, Morris, Marie
"Politics and Poker" -- Ben and Politicians
"Unfair" -- Dora and Girls
"Impatient" -- Fiorello and Thea
"Unfair" reprise -- Fiorello and Girls
"Where Do I Go From Here" -- Marie
"The Name's La Guardia" -- Fiorello and Company
"I Love a Cop" -- Dora
"Marie's Law" -- Marie and Morris
"Home Again" -- Ben and Company
"Till Tomorrow" -- Floyd, 4th Player, 6th Player, 5th Player, and Company
"Home Again" reprise -- Company

Act II
"When Did I Fall in Love" -- Thea
"Gentleman Jimmy" -- Mitzi and Dancing Girls
"Gentleman Jimmy" reprise -- Mitzi and Company
"Business is Fundamentally Sound" -- Mr. Lopez, Mr. Zappatella, 3rd Player, and Boys
"The Very Next Man" -- Marie
"Till the Bootlegger Comes" -- Dora, Mitzi, Secretary, Nina, Old Lady, 3 Unidentified Female Characters (played by Barbara Gilbert, Dellas Rennie, Charlene Carter)
"The Very Next Man" reprise -- Marie
"The Name's La Guardia" reprise -- Ben and Politicians


Philadelphia (Erlanger Theatre) -- there wasn't a date on the program I found, but in her memoirs Pat Wilson said that another show, Saratoga, had started its Philadelphia tryout at the same time ... and the info I found on Saratoga suggests that was Oct 26

Act I
"On the Side of the Angels" -- Neil, Morris, Marie
"Politics and Poker" -- Ben and Politicians
"Unfair" -- Dora and Girls
"Impatient" -- Fiorello and Thea
"Unfair" reprise -- Fiorello and Girls
"Where Do I Go From Here" -- Marie
"The Name's La Guardia" -- Fiorello and Company
"I Love a Cop" -- Dora
"Marie's Law" -- Marie and Morris
"Home Again" -- Ben and Company
"Till Tomorrow" -- Floyd, 1st Man, 6th Player, 5th Player, and Company
"Home Again" reprise -- Company

Act II
"When Did I Fall in Love" -- Thea
"Gentleman Jimmy" -- Mitzi and Dancing Girls
"Gentleman Jimmy" reprise -- Mitzi and Company
"The Very Next Man" -- Marie
"Till the Bootlegger Comes" -- Dora, Mitzi, Secretary, Nina, Old Lady, 3 Unidentified Female Characters (played by Barbara Gilbert, Dellas Rennie, Charlene Carter)
"The Very Next Man" reprise -- Marie
"The Name's La Guardia" reprise -- Ben and Politicians

(in both playbills, the Yiddish translations are credited to Bernie Lawrence -- Italian translations are credited to the The Living Language Courses)

The playbills only record what was printed up before the show -- in reality, there were changes that didn't make it into the copies. Pat Wilson says that Marie's song "Where Do I Go From Here" was cut on their third day in New Haven. "Business Is Fundamentally Sound" was cut in New Haven too, early enough to make the playbill printing deadline.

"Little Tin Box" was added while they were in Philadelphia (presumably the bootlegger song was cut to make way for it). Lambert's book on Bock and Harnick says that the melody for "Little Tin Box" had already been written (for a rejected song called "Take A Flyer", which seems to have been about service rivalries ... possibly they'd been alluding to Fiorello's enlisting in WWI).
Lambert's book says that "Marie's Law" was moved up earlier in Act I (to after "Unfair"), during the Philadelphia run. "Impatient" (one of Fiorello's few songs in the show) was cut too.

After the show opened on Broadway on Nov 23rd, except for a couple of attempts made to re-integratet "Where Do I Go From Here?", the order of the scenes and songs stayed that way for more than 50 years, until the NYU Steinhardt 2012 production when Harnick added the song for Fiorello that he and Bock had been working on.


Reply
ROBERT J ELISBERG
12/9/2019 10:38:07 am

Thanks for the added information. I actually saw the second performance of that new addition when "Fiorello!" was performed soon after at the Reprise! series in Los Angeles. It was very good, though the song changed a few times over the years as Sheldon Harnick kept tweaking it. I saw a later version at the Timeline Theater in Chicago which was even better..

Reply
Lisa Kadonaga
12/13/2019 06:57:23 pm

Thanks to you for assembling all this great material, Robert!
I know you've posted about the "Hidden Treasures" Sheldon Harnick CD set before, so I'll just refer readers to what you said several years ago.
http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/hidden-harnick

It's a great collection, and hearing Jerry Bock playing piano (and sometimes singing) is a lot of fun. I'm just imagining what it would have been like to listen in on the two of them when they were working on projects together.
A couple of those songs from the early versions of Fiorello! are featured:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmLNgq40xzQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZfXeSrklYY

Reply
Robert Elisberg
12/14/2019 08:32:53 am

Lisa, thanks for your note -- and re-linking. Yes,"Hidden Treasures" is wonderful.

Reply



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    Robert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 

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