Hidden Harnick

The other day, I posted a wonderful, little-known song here, "I Worry," by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock for a little-known musical they wrote for TV, The Canterville Ghost.  It was from a terrific double-CD put out last year, Hidden Treasures, with Harnick (mostly, but not exclusively) singing his leser-known songs.

Here's another gem.

This is a wonderful song that got cut on the road for their 1960 musical, Tenderloin, which was the follow-up to their Pulitzer Prize-winning (and Tony Best Musical) Fiorello!  The entire creative team reunited, though the results weren't as strong, and the show flopped, though it did run for 216 performances, which is half a year.  The show takes place around 1930, concerning a crusading minister trying to clean up New York's red light district and a cynical reporter hoping to get a story, mainly about the minister.  As Harnick has said, the problem is that the main character is sort of a stick-in-the-mud, and the lesser character of the reporter was much more interesting.  But with noted Shakesearean actor Maurice Evans in the lead, they couldn't really trim the role, and as a result the show just didn't work well-enough.  But the score has some very nice things in it.

One thing it doesn't have in it, however, is the song, "I Wonder What It's Like," which got cut before the show made it to Broadway.  It’s sung by two naïve, innocent young ladies who work for the reformer, wondering what it’s like to have sex before you’re married.  It’s really wonderful.  During the pre-Broadway tryout, female critics loved it, but especially at that time there weren’t many of them, and the male reviewers disliked it since apparently a song like this in that era, still a fairly genteel time, made them uncomfortable.  It would likely fit just fine today if Harnick ever decided to readdress the show for revivals, which it still gets.

Well, though the song was cut, here are Harnick and Bock together singing it with much sweetness, and exuberance.  (Sheldon Harnick is the first solo voice your hear at the :30-second mark.  Jerry Bock, of course the other, is at the piano.)