Labor of Love
In honor of Labor Day, I thought I post a few little-known songs about labor unionizing from musicals. Actually, two of the shows are specifically about that, and all three songs, as it turns out, are about striking.
The first is from the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Fiorello!, by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, written about five years before they wrote Fiddler on the Roof. It starred Tom Bosley in the early World War I days of Fiorello LaGuardia's career as a lawyer handling cases of the under-privileged, and then taking on the corrupt Tammany Hall machine to run for Congress and then Mayor. Bosley won the Tony Award as (oddly) Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, because in those days, the Tonys had a rule whereby you could only qualify for "Best Actor" if your name was above the title or it said (under the title) "Starring..." But for Fiorello!, it was an ensemble cast, Bosley wasn't well-known, and the main actors were all listed together well-below the title.
In this scene, LaGuardia is called to help a group of women shirtwaist strikers whose leader has been arrested. He realizes the women are far out of their depth, which leads to the song "Unfair."
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