The Valentine's Day Song Fest

One of the great entertainment oddities of coincidence and craft is that the same year, 1997, that the movie Titanic opened and won the Oscar for Best Picture, there was a Broadway musical, Titanic, that similarly won the Tony Award as Best Musical.

The stage show had a very successful run of 804 performances and won five Tony Awards.  The score was by Maury Yeston who wrote much of the score for the show, Grand Hotel, (augmenting the original score by Wright and Forrest), and also the Tony Award-winning Best Musical Nine, which was made into a movie a couple years ago.

I quite enjoyed the musical version of Titanic, despite some flaws from perhaps a lack of subtlety.  It was a Big Show, though given the topic that was understandable.  The score -- almost "operatic" in that the story is largely told through the numbers -- is quite good, even if I can only remember just a few of the songs.  This love song is one of them, and easily the most low-key number in the show. And perhaps its most heart-wrenching.

It's a storyline referenced in the movie version, as well.  The song is sung by an elderly couple, Isidor and Ida Straus, the co-owners of Macy's.  After the iceberg has been hit, and it has become clear that the ship is going down, evacuation plans have started.  And there's pretty much only room for women and children on the lifeboats.  This includes space for Ida Straus, but she makes the decision that having spent a lifetime with her dear beloved Isidor, she will continue to spend her life with him, to the end.

And so, together they sing, "Still."