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Now. I've been thinking about your ideas about 40s musicals, and for the most part, I agree with all of what you've said. 'Girl Crazy' might be one exception to all rules, at least I feel it that way. It has the feel of being brand-new and not an adaptation of anything at all. I don't know whether it's because it's probably Judy Garland's most perfect moment on film--and she's stellar in all ways, even beautiful here--but I just watched it for the 3rd time, I think, in my life. I think it is one of the great MGM musicals, and here are 3 wonderful vintage reviews, with wonderful details many of us didn't know (at least I didn't). First there is the original musical, hitting B'way a year after the start of the Depression, then a most arcane review I accidentally found under movies, of a play based on the 1930 book, but without music. I know nothing about this. And finally, there is the review of this terrific film.

.....

Here I've copied the list of numbers from the 1951 Mary Martin studio recording, which I imagine is the same as the stage (maybe you know). And below it is the list of numbers for the movie, with 'Fascinatin' Rhythm' added from 'Lady Be Good', I believe:

1. Overture

2. The Lonesome Cowboy

3. Bidin' My Time

4. Could You Use Me

5. Bronco Busters

6. Barbary Coast

7. Embraceable You

8. Sam And Delilah

9. I Got Rhythm

10. But Not For Me

11. Treat Me Rough

12. Boy! What Love Has Done To Me

13. Cactus Time In Arizona

14. Finale

15. But Not For Me

1. Main Title/Montage - The M-G-M Studio Orchestra

2. Sam And Delilah - Tommy Dorsey And His Orchestra

3. Treat Me Rough (Extended Version) - June Allyson/Mickey Rooney/The Music Maids/The Stafford Trio/Kathleen Carns/Ruth Clarke...

4. Bidin' My Time - Judy Garland/The King's Men

5. Could You Use Me? - Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland

6. Ginger Dear (Outtake) - The M-G-M Studio Chor

7. Happy Birthday To You (Extended Version) - The M-G-M Studio Chor

8. Embraceable You - Judy Garland/Henry Kruze/P. Hanna/G. Mershon/H. Stanton/Ernie Newton/Tommy Dorsey...

9. Walking In The Garden - The M-G-M Studio Orchestra/Judy Garland/Roger Edens

10. Barbary Coast - Tommy Dorsey And His Orchestra

11. Fascinating Rhythm - Mickey Rooney

12. Bronco Busters (Outtake) - Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland/Nancy Walker/The M-G-M Studio Chor

13. Boy! What Love Has Done To Me! (Extended Version) - Tommy Dorsey And His Orch

14. Embraceable You (Reprise) (Extended Version) - Tommy Dorsey And His Orch

15. But Not For Me - Judy Garland

16. I Got Rhythm - Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney/Six Hits And A Miss/The Music Maids/Hal Hopper/Trudy Erwin...

17. End Title (Extended Version) - Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland/The M-G-M Studio Chor

Honestly, I don't think anybody alive knows exactly how the songs were arranged in "Girl Crazy" as originally performed. It's pretty much been revised constantly since its original run, and the film's no exception. With the film, the obvious change is that the Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman characters' songs were both given to Judy Garland, and the story is modified substantially and the songs rearranged to accomodate the change. Besides that, you have changes like the addition of the specialty singer (the young June Allyson) at the beginning of the film to do "Treat Me Rough," etc.

That being said, I am very fond of this film, and find it terribly underrated. I don't think Judy Garland ever sounded better, and Chuck Walters who later graduated to director with "Good News" did a great job with the musical numbers. (It's just my opinion, but I don't think he ever got the credit he deserved throughout his MGM career). He is Garland's specialty partner in "Embraceable You," and it's probably one of my favorite pieces on film. Understated and elegant, it shows off the star and the song beautifully.

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I don't know what 'Just one of Those Things' is originally from, though it's easy enough to find out, except that I do know that Frank Sinatra sang it wonderfully as a lounge singer in 'Young at Heart', a film with some original and some old songs.

"Just one of Those Things" was introduced by June Knight and Charles Walters in Cole Porter's "Jubilee." Charles Walters went on to become first a dance director (for films like the film version of "Girl Crazy" referenced above), and then film director for films such as "Good News," "Easter Parade," and "Lilli," but he was first spotted by Hollywood as a potential successor to Astaire.

But it took awhile to remember exactly what struck me in this song as identical (almost) to another: There's a song called 'Who' by Jerome Kern and sung in 'Till the Clouds Roll By' by Judy Garland, which has almost the same rhythmic figure and the melody is not that far off. However, I don't know whether Kern or Porter ran into almost the same thing first.

I'd never noticed that before! "Who?" is from one of the Kern musicals for Marilyn Miller, I think "Sunny." It's definitely the earlier composition. Hammerstein was quoted regarding the trickiness of developing a song around a single word that would be interesting enough to hold attention for such a musical phrase.

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Avenue Q! is coming to San Francisco in Aug 2007 and Los Angeles in Sep 2007. Why does California always lag so far behind Broadway? It's not as if it's the place where musicals come to die. Anyway, I am jazzed and looking forward to watching it. Wish me luck that I will get one of the best, if not the best, seats in the house. :wub:

I have seen Avenue Q many times on Broadway. So run, don't walk to get tickets.

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Irving Berlin, anyone?

The singers who took a masterclass conducted by Barbara Cook were told to come prepared with one of his songs because, Ms. Cook said, they were so simple and direct. What she does with these five youngsters is quite remarkable, and she herself is -- as always -- wonderful.

The class was recorded, and the two-hour-plus video is available for streaming on the website of the New York Public Library.

Warning: Once you enter the website, you may just never come out. Thanks, NYPL, for this and so many other treasures.

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This is kind of off-topic on this thread, but your discussion made me think of it. Has anyone read the new Wilfred Sheed book, The House that George Built? "George" refers to Gershwin, and Sheed also writes about Berlin, Kern, Rodgers, Porter, and others. Sheed focuses on the creation of the body of songs often called "standards," but this invariably brings him to Broadway and (in his case) even more to Hollywood.

Robert Gottlieb's review in the August 16 in the New York Review of Books convinced me to order the book.

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This is kind of off-topic on this thread, but your discussion made me think of it. Has anyone read the new Wilfred Sheed book, The House that George Built? "George" refers to Gershwin, and Sheed also writes about Berlin, Kern, Rodgers, Porter, and others. Sheed focuses on the creation of the body of songs often called "standards," but this invariably brings him to Broadway and (in his case) even more to Hollywood.

Robert Gottlieb's review in the August 16 in the New York Review of Books convinced me to order the book.

Not at all off-topic, Bart, and thanks to you and carbro. I definitely need to read the Sheed things, and there was a younger fellow, early fifties I think, who was interviewed a good bit earlier this summer or spring. Can't remember the name, and couldn't find it yet. I first thought it must have been Sheed, but it was another guy who had written perhaps 6 books on musical comedy. Am going to look up the NYReview article and read tomorrow. I see that not buying it as I used to I often don't take the time to study the online contents page well-enough.

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The singers who took a masterclass conducted by Barbara Cook were told to come prepared with one of his songs because, Ms. Cook said, they were so simple and direct. What she does with these five youngsters is quite remarkable, and she herself is -- as always -- wonderful.

There's no place to hide with a song like "Always," no vocal pyrotechnics or clever wordplay to pull out of the hat, so to speak. Berlin really forces a singer to be honest and sincere, something which Cook really emphasizes in her master classes.

Berlin wrote a some musical shows, but he was one of the few writers who really had significant output on Broadway, in movies, and Tin Pan Alley. Most writers tended to specialize in one form or another, e.g. Rodgers on Broadway, Warren in movies, and Mercer on radio. Personally, I think Berlin's best media tended to be Tin Pan Alley and to a somewhat lesser extent movies. His gift was really having a great ear for turning out a hit song rather than trying to capture a character speaking in a given situation.

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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000023/

This is one of the best pages I've ever seen on IMDB, it's under Judy Garland's main page, but in the early movies it lists all the songs she sings in a fair number of the movies. Best of all, in some of the listings, even the year is given, so you can really see when something made in the 40s is harking back to 1912. Somebody did a good job on that page. It doesn't list the composers, but that's easy to look up.

Also, several recommended 'Good News'. Finally watched it, and it is a quite nice piece of Americana, reminds me of some of the better Doris Day musicals. Might be June Allyson's best light film, and Peter Lawford is quite handsome in it.

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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000023/

This is one of the best pages I've ever seen on IMDB, it's under Judy Garland's main page, but in the early movies it lists all the songs she sings in a fair number of the movies. Best of all, in some of the listings, even the year is given, so you can really see when something made in the 40s is harking back to 1912. Somebody did a good job on that page. It doesn't list the composers, but that's easy to look up.

Thanks for the link - haven't had time to go over it in detail, but it looks like it was done by someone who cared. Even with all the travails, what a career.

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Thanks, dirac, I also looked at Fred Astaire's, and some of his old movies have the songs listed, but i years are given, they are all in the same year. What is interesting about the Garland page is seeing that songs were used 20 or 40 years after they were first introduced, and we always know that they were used in many other ways in the intervening years if they are standards.

Here are some new listens and views of some older shows:

1) Girl Crazy update. Sidwich mentioned that there may be nobody still alive who knows exactly how the original B’way show’s tunes existed, were placed. But here is what the IBDb shows, and I had not till now discovered that they have a link for all musicals to ‘Songs for this Production’ and that they—marvelously, at least in this case—have the names of the characters who sang them. The “Goldfarb” song may be the only one that is not familiar in either movie or studio recording. You can see the cast here for characters below: http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=11231

Act 1

Bidin' My Time ....................................... The Foursome

The Lonesome Cowboy ....................................... Cow Punchers

Could You Use Me ....................................... Molly Gray and Danny Churchill

Bronco Busters ....................................... Dundeens and Cowboys

Barbary Coast ....................................... Molly Gray, Tess Parker, Flora James and Chorus

Embraceable You ....................................... Molly Gray and Danny Churchill

Goldfarb, That's I'm! ....................................... Gieber Goldfarb, Slick Fothergill and Ensemble

Embraceable You (Reprise) ....................................... Kate Fothergill and Danny Churchill

Sam and Delilah ....................................... Kate Fothergill

I Got Rhythm ....................................... Kate Fothergill and Chorus

Act 2

Land of the Gay Caballero ....................................... Ensemble

But Not for Me ....................................... Molly Gray and Gieber Goldfarb

Treat Me Rough ....................................... Slick Fothergill and Chorus

Boy! What Love Has Done to Me ....................................... Kate Fothergill

(When It's) Cactus Time in Arizona ....................................... Molly Gray and Chorus

--which studio recording with Mary Martin , Eddie Chappell, and Louise Carlyle I listened to this morning. I see little to recommend here, especially after seeing the film again. There’s not one song that doesn’t sound better with Garland’s voice, although Martin sounds good sometimes in ‘But Not For Me’, and there is a reprise of this. The CD has listed Ted Royal as doing the ‘Orchestrations for Miss Martin’, ‘Orchestra and chorus conducted by Lehman Engel, 'vocal arrangements by Johnny Lesko', and ‘Other orchestrations by Carol Huxley’. The worst is perhaps this slurry lounge-like version of ‘Bidin’ My Time’, but ‘I Got Rhythm’ sounds dreadful too, and has a cheap-sounding arrangement. I can see that my appreciation for Mary Martin’s vocal style is extremely limited, and that I really only appreciate her in the single thing I also saw her in—‘Peter Pan’, where I thoroughly adored her and it. Elsewhere, I do not find her voice beautiful enough to stand alone on recordings; the rest of her charming personality is needed for it to work for me. This is from 1952. I haven't made much of a survey of studio recordings by people who weren't in the actual shows, although I do know the Kiri TeKanawa/Jose Carreras 'South Pacific', and I somehow intuited that she would get 'A Cockeyed Optimist' exactly right, and she did--but not a single other song comes across as distinguished at all. I want to get to the 'West Side Story', although friends don't like it.

2) Re-watched the old glory ‘The Gay Divorcee’ last night, with its two magnificent Astaire/Rogers pieces, ‘Night and Day’ and ‘The Continental’. ‘Night and Day’ was the only song kept from the Broadway ‘Gay Divorce’, which was Astaire’s last Broadway show with his sister Adele(1932). Otherwise, Mack Gordon and Harry Revel contributed two songs ‘Don’t Let It Bother You’ and ‘Let’s Knock Knees’, and Con Conrad and Herb Magidson are the writers of ‘A Needle in a Haystack’ and ‘The Continental’.

Here’s the IBDb of the Cole Porter songs from the 1932 show; I don’t think I know a one of them other than Night and Day.

Act 1

After You, Who? ....................................... Guy

Why Marry Them? ....................................... Barbara and Girls

Salt Air ....................................... Teddy, Barbara and Girls

I Still Love the Red, White and Blue ....................................... Hortense

After You, Who? (Reprise) ....................................... Guy

Night and Day ....................................... Guy and Mimi

How's Your Romance? ....................................... Tonetti and Girls

Act 2

What Will Become of Our England? ....................................... Waiter and Girls

I've Got You on My Mind ....................................... Guy and Mimi

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch ....................................... Hortense

You're in Love ....................................... Guy, Mimi and Tonetti

3)The Dolly Sisters—movie. This is entertaining, colorful, glossy and has little to do with these quite tragic vaudeville sisters from Budapest. They are listed as performing in the 1911 and 1912 Ziegfeld Follies in IBDb. Jenny committed suicide and Rosie, while pluckier in many ways, also made one suicide attempt. The movie was mainly of use to me to find out about this unusual and exotic couple of little vaudevillians and there mostly tragic lives. It’s a musical in a loose sense, and June Haver and Betty Grable are both very lovely, and do look like dolly-like sisters in the lead roles. Of course, it's in many ways a terrible movie, but at least it's there.

4)Up in Central Park/Arms and the Girl CD. Romberg/Fields score for the former is quite lovely, and I don’t remember the film having the song ‘I’d Like to Show You My Currier and Ives', although there is a Currier and Ives scene. Two original cast members—Wilbur Evans and Betty Bruce—are here, and the soprano songs done by Deanna Durbin in the film are here sung beautifully by Eileen Farrell. It is interesting that Romberg came much closer to American-style shows after his original successes doing songs to Schubert tunes, etc. I remember that Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Joy of Music’ has him making a difference between musical comedy and operetta that seemed convincing long ago, but now seems less so. He wanted to call some of the more exotic things 'operettas', even like ‘South Pacific’, and those that were ‘more realistic’ American things he considered to be the real ‘musical comedies’, although I believe he therefore thought of ‘Oklahoma!’ as a musical comedy as well. I don’t think we see it so much that way anymore, thinking ‘South Pacific’ is also a musical comedy, and things like ‘Rose Marie’ and ‘The Chocolate Soldier’ are more properly called operettas. But ‘Up in Central Park’ does seem to be more of a musical comedy by a composer mostly known for real operettas. I like the movie better than the New York Times critic of the day did. I’d never heard of ‘Arms and the Girl’ and didn’t even know it was anything other than more of ‘Central Park’ when all of a sudden there was this unmistakable voice coming through—Pearl Bailey in her second show after ‘St.Louis Woman’ (a wonderful score by Harold Arlen, which I have on 78’s bought in a stoop sale in 2003). Also good work on there by Nanette Fabray, one of my all-time favourite comedienne/showgirls. Georges Guetary is the male lead. This is by Morton Gould, who is rarely heard of any more, and I didn’t know he wrote any Broadway scores. Both shows have lyrics by Dorothy Fields, who I’ve always associated purely with Cy Coleman, especially for ‘Sweet Charity’, a terrific score.

5) Operettas are definitely Gilbert and Sullivan, although I’m not a big fan. I did check out The Pirates of Penzance from the 1980 Delacorte production and also the movie, which had all the same cast except Patricia Routledge was replaced by Angela Lansbury. I thought the singing by the principles—Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt, and Rex Smith—was adequate, but never really pretty. Good voices, but not ever sweet enough, maybe Smith's was the best.

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Thanks, papeetepatrick. Your post is (for me) a kind of trip down memory lane.

I love the Astaire movies, though I haven't really analysed or ranked them or anything like that.

Dirac, have we ever had a thread discussing Astaire's dancing (with and without partners)? I seem to have misplaced my Croce (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) book and would love to hear what BT people have to say.

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Thanks, dirac, I also looked at Fred Astaire's, and some of his old movies have the songs listed, but i years are given, they are all in the same year. What is interesting about the Garland page is seeing that songs were used 20 or 40 years after they were first introduced, and we always know that they were used in many other ways in the intervening years if they are standards.

Maybe RKO commissioned more scores than MGM did? :dunno: Also worth noting, Astaire was the singer of choice of the Gershwins, Berlin and Porter (and maybe others?) to introduce their songs. He may not have had the greatest voice in Hollywood, but his taste and artistic integrity were more than enough.

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Maybe RKO commissioned more scores than MGM did? :dunno:

Possible, but probably not too likely, dirac or sidwich will know. It's also probable that some Astaire movies did have songs from an earlier day, that had not been written for the particular movie--but that nobody has fully refined Astaire's IMDb page yet. I had been thinking when I wrote the long post that this interests me, in particular, because I, like many, started with the book musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Lowe, where all the songs cannot be sung elsewhere and no songs from old shows are inserted; I then progressed to the older shows, most of which are a mishmash of songs, including songs from other shows by the same composer/lyricist ('Fascinatin' Rhythm' is included in the film version of 'Girl Crazy') and other songs by different composer/lyricists (as in 'The Gay Divorcee'). But when I first saw these shows, I always thought everything was written expressly for them, and that if they were Broadway adaptations, even if songs were cut, I thought the songs retained were always from the original show. Not so, as I've been seeing with these first few researches.

These links show a famous example from MGM, although it may not be representative, since it is directly derived from the old movie musicals in part. Thanks for getting me to look up the wiki link of the 'Singin' in the Rain' movie, since I had no idea it would have the songs listed and when they first appeared on screen. There's no minimizing the importance of NACIO HERB BROWN! We love him, and I didn't know that 'Broadway Melody of 1929' and 'Hollywood Revue of 1929' were definitely the first screen appearances of these songs--or rather, they'd have to be since there had only recently come sound, but I think some may have been introduced publicly prior to these movies (1927 for one of them).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singin'_in_the_Rain_(song)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Were_Mean...%281929_song%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singin'_in_the_Rain_(film)

Also worth noting, Astaire was the singer of choice of the Gershwins, Berlin and Porter (and maybe others?) to introduce their songs. He may not have had the greatest voice in Hollywood, but his taste and artistic integrity were more than enough.

This is probably sometimes true too, so he introduced 'Night and Day' in 'The Gay Divorcee', although none of the other songs were kept. Did the composers have that much say about what went into the film versions as had gone into the stage versions? I doubt it, but don't know. Someone will.

Here's an example of the kind of show that would obviously have needed songs before it's time, unless a vast new book musical was going to be undertaken for the screen, and that never happened, certainly not then. Although it looks as though some were definitely written for this film:

Ziegfeld Girl (1941) ("You Never Looked So Beautiful" (1936) (uncredited), "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" (1918), "Laugh? I Thought I'd Split My Sides" (1941) (uncredited), "Ziegfeld Girls" (1941) (uncredited), "You Gotta Pull Strings" (1936) (uncredited)) ("Minnie from Trinidad" (1941), "We Must Have Music" (1941) (uncredited))

'I'm Always Chasing Rainbows' is also in 'The Dolly Sisters', but I have no idea if the character Harry, Jenny's beau, is supposed to have been based on the originator of the song (not Chopin).

Edited to add: Just looked him up--yes, it was a Harry Carroll who first put this bit of schmaltz together, but wiki only mentions marriage to a Rockette and 2 children.

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RKO pulled out all of its available stops for the Astaire-Rogers series, with new scores from top of the line composers (Croce has a good discussion of this in her book, including the high pressure on the songwriters to produce multiple hits from fewer songs than they would write for a stage show), partial exceptions being The Gay Divorcee, although only “Night and Day” was retained from Porter’s score, as papeetepatrick notes, and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, which had one or maybe two? undistinguished new songs from Kalmar and Ruby. (There is one MGM Astaire-Rogers film, as it happens - Rogers was brought in as a last minute replacement for Judy Garland -- The Barkleys of Broadway, which had a score by Harry Warren and Ira Gershwin and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” originally written for Shall We Dance.)

Also worth noting, Astaire was the singer of choice of the Gershwins, Berlin and Porter (and maybe others?) to introduce their songs.

He was not a great favorite of the Gershwins. But you are right, his musicality and taste were greatly appreciated; he sang the songs as written. (Jerome Kern, for example, used to have fits over what jazz musicians and singers did to his songs.)

Dirac, have we ever had a thread discussing Astaire's dancing (with and without partners)? I seem to have misplaced my Croce (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) book and would love to hear what BT people have to say.

I don’t think we’ve ever had an Astaire movies thread, but we have indeed had some pretty detailed discussions in the past on various forums – if you do a search using “Astaire,” they’ll come up, and should you have anything to add to revive one of them, please do. :dunno:

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I don’t think we’ve ever had an Astaire movies thread, but we have indeed had some pretty detailed discussions in the past on various forums – if you do a search using “Astaire,” they’ll come up, and should you have anything to add to revive one of them, please do. :dunno:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...hl=fred+astaire

Here's the one I remember, from the Everything Else Forum, but first I looked on the Other Arts Forum, and there are several there.

Interested parties should look through these, despite the fact that it begins with this very thread:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...%2Bfred+astaire

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I don’t think we’ve ever had an Astaire movies thread, but we have indeed had some pretty detailed discussions in the past on various forums – if you do a search using “Astaire,” they’ll come up, and should you have anything to add to revive one of them, please do. :dunno:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...hl=fred+astaire

Here's the one I remember, from the Everything Else Forum, but first I looked on the Other Arts Forum, and there are several there.

Interested parties should look through these, despite the fact that it begins with this very thread:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...%2Bfred+astaire

Thank you for doing my job for me. :)

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He was not a great favorite of the Gershwins. But you are right, his musicality and taste were greatly appreciated; he sang the songs as written. (Jerome Kern, for example, used to have fits over what jazz musicians and singers did to his songs.)

Hmm, I thought the Gershwins were quite fond of the Astaires. The siblings were all quite close in age, and came up through the ranks together so to speak, bursting on the scene simultaneously with "Lady Be Good!" back in 1924/25. All told, I think the Gershwins wrote two musicals for the Astaires, and two movies for Fred before George passed.

A few years ago some recordings came out of Fred and Adele singing songs from "Lady Be Good!" and "Funny Face" with George playing the piano. They're some of the few recordings of Adele performing that still exist, I believe. The recording is very primitive, but the group seem to be having a marvelous jazz age time. :dunno:

‘Night and Day’ was the only song kept from the Broadway ‘Gay Divorce’, which was Astaire’s last Broadway show with his sister Adele(1932).

I think Adele had already retired by then. Astaire's leading lady in "The Gay Divorce" was Clare Luce, I think.

Maybe RKO commissioned more scores than MGM did?

I think that's some of it.

RKO was pouring a lot of money into the Astaire-Rogers musicals. They were the cash cow of a relatively small studio, trying to ride out the Depression.

Somewhat similarly, Universal invested a lot of money into Deanna Durbin's musicals (relatively speaking), with costumes, sets, supporting casts. Durbin can't decide which costume she likes better? She'll wear them both! (If you watch "Can't Help Singing" for which Universal- a relatively poor studio- commissioned an entirely new Jerome Kern score for its star, during the finale the camera cuts away from Durbin wearing one costume to the actress wearing a completely different costume).

MGM was a relatively large studio, and Garland made quite a few Mickey-Judy musicals which had relatively modest budgets for which the producers would mine the already rich song catalog. So "Singing in the Rain" might have been written in the late 20s, but Garland would sing the song in a Mickey-Judy musical in about 1940 (I can't remember which one), and then it was most famously used in the Gene Kelly movie.

Some of it that Astaire just seemed to be a certain then-contemporary time, I think, though. Garland was cast in quite a few period pieces, and her performing style was versatile enough to accomodate different period styles. I think there's a part of Astaire that always seemed to be of the Jazz Age to Big Band Age. He did a few period pieces, but his persona, style and musical phrasing seem most at home from the Jazz Age on.

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STRIKE UP THE BAND--another Garland/Rooney vehicle, and one I had not seen. Very entertaining, not great like 'Girl Crazy' though:

These are the most important songs from the film:

1. Strike Up the Band (1940) (performer: "Strike up the Band" (1927), "Our Love Affair" (1939), "Do the Conga" (1939), "Nobody" (1939), "The Gay Nineties", "Nell of New Rochelle" (1939), "A Man Was the Cause of It All" (1939), "Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl" (1909), "Come Home, Father" (1864)) ("Our Love Affair" (1939), "Drummer Boy" (1939))

Much more detailed and exemplary list of every tune in the movie can be found herehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033110/soundtrack

Only the title song retained from the original. Several songs by Roger Edens:

Songs from the original 1927 show: (sorry formatting is not neat)

Fletcher's American Chocolate Choral Society ....................................... Timothy Harper, Richard K. Sloane and Horace J. Fletcher

I Mean to Say ....................................... Timothy Harper and Anne Draper

Typical Self-Made American ....................................... Horace J. Fletcher, Jim Townsend and Yes-Men

Soon ....................................... Joan Fletcher and Jim Townsend

A Man of High Degree ....................................... Entire Company

The Unofficial Spokesman ....................................... Colonel Holmes and Company

Three Cheers for the Union ....................................... Company

This Could Go On For Years ....................................... Company

If I Became President ....................................... Colonel Holmes and Mrs. Grace Draper

Soon (Reprise) ....................................... Joan Fletcher and Jim Townsend

(What's the Use of) Hanging Around with You? ....................................... Timothy Harper and Anne Draper

He Knows Milk ....................................... Jim Townsend, Joan Fletcher, Richard K. Sloane, Horace J. Fletcher and Ensemble

Strike Up the Band ....................................... Jim Townsend, Entire Company and Red Nichols and His Band

Act 2

In the Rattle of the Battle ....................................... Company

Military Dancing Drill ....................................... Company

Mademoiselle from New Rochelle ....................................... Colonel Holmes, Gideon and Swiss Girls

I've Got a Crush on You ....................................... Timothy Harper and Anne Draper

(How About a Boy) Like Me? ....................................... Mrs. Grace Draper, Colonel Holmes, Gideon and Horace J. Fletcher

Official Resume ....................................... Ensemble

Ring a Ding Dong Bell (Ding Dong) ....................................... Bridesmaids and Company

Brief summary of movie, with difference from show shown:

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/47385/Stri...e-Band/overview

Review of Encores! Revival of show gives more information on what the original show would have been like:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/tr...d=1077011431588

The Encores review mentions 'The Man I Love', so I don't know whether that was originally meant for the show or not.

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There's a Gershwin.com "official" website with the brothers' shows and movies with their casts, synopses and songs. The Man I Love is listed among the songs in the original, 1927 production of Strike, and there is a slightly different list, without TMIL, for a 1930 staging. I'd give the link, but it's a pop-up flash, so I'm afraid anyone interested will have to click through for themselves.

Before visiting the site, you should lower the volume on your computer. I was met with a delightful -- but too-loud -- brass section accompanying Tony Bennett in Strike Up . . . How'd they know? :shake:

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There's a Gershwin.com "official" website with the brothers' shows and movies with their casts, synopses and songs. The Man I Love is listed among the songs in the original, 1927 production of Strike, and there is a slightly different list, without TMIL, for a 1930 staging.

Carbro, thanks. That's a marvelous site. Now it's even more complicated, but they describe how the score was softened for the New York 1930 version after the 1927 production closed out of town. IBDb was therefore only showing songs from 1930. The Encores! version then did use both 'The Man I Love' from the first show and 'Soon' from the second show, and sounds like it would have been a real pleasure. Wonderful photos of Fred and Adele in 'Lady Be Good!' That site is an invaluable resource for these shows, and some of the other creators will have big sites as well that I'll remember to look up as they come up again.

Interesting that Kaufman, one of the creators of the original and two other satires with the Gershwins, may have been referring to this one when he said 'Satire is what closes on Saturday night!' Also that from 1927 to 1930, that cheese was converted to chocolate, which may or may not have had to do with the Depression, but although now something of a hit, the 1930 score is considered much inferior to the original. I'm going to try to get hold of a recording of the show's real score(s) now. I wonder if 'The Man I Love' had not become a standard by the time of the film, although the film clearly now has almost nothing to with the original, mainly just appropriating the hit title song and making a 'let's put on a show' movie for Judy and Mickey (who did look better in makeup, I thought.)

Having just also watched 'Good News', it was amusing to see that Mickey Rooney broke a date with Judy Garland in the library just as had Peter Lawford done to June Allyson, for another girl temporarily thought more racy or sizzling or something.

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Hmm, I thought the Gershwins were quite fond of the Astaires. The siblings were all quite close in age, and came up through the ranks together so to speak, bursting on the scene simultaneously with "Lady Be Good!" back in 1924/25. All told, I think the Gershwins wrote two musicals for the Astaires, and two movies for Fred before George passed.

I should have clarified what I meant by 'not great favorites.' I was responding to carbro's comment about Astaire's singing and how it was regarded by various songwriters, and Arlene Croce, writing about about the brothers' less than happy experience working on Shall We Dance, quotes one of them, I believe it was George, as saying apropos of Fred and Ginger, 'the amount of singing one can stand from these two is quite limited.' That's from memory, but I'm pretty sure that was the gist.

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Here's one for our Musical Comedy Department--ROSALIE, which I've almost finished watching. Elephantine thing, and not great, except for Eleanor Powell's amazing dancing, as well as a couple of good Cole Porter songs. But does anyone know if there has ever been a Gershwin/Romberg Broadway show, or even just a Gershwin one, that was then turned into a Hollywood musical with songs by Cole Porter--and yet with the same story? This must be a singular occurrence.

In any case, you can see the songs from the original 1927 show here:

http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=10548 Then click 'Songs in this Production.'

The wiki entry is very good for this strange development of a show(s). Weirder than what happened to Strike Up the Band, which kept one of the songs and changed the whole story. The wiki article describes how the one famous song from the Gershwin Rosalie, How Long Has This Been Going On?, had been originally written for Funny Face. A friend told me today that the song was restored to the film version, and he was right. I haven't seen Funny Face for many years, so the song list for that indicates Audrey Hepburn sang it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie

Here's the NYT review from 1937 by Frank Nugent. Pretty accurate, but these giant things age rather well in a certain sense--we end up valuing them for those very over-spendings that were disparaged at the time. That was the theme of much criticism of the film of Hello, Dolly! and look how well that has aged: It still looks brand-new.

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res...9649D946694D6CF

I wouldn't say I thought Rosalie was a good film, but we do get In the Still of the Night

from it (it was introduced there, and is one in Porter's 'square vein', which always surprise me after the extreme urbanity I usually associate with his best songs), and for once, I was even able to enjoy Nelson Eddy well enough. But Ms. Powell's dancing just knocks me out--including when she does it in the dorm in the satin pajamas. She was truly magnificent atop those drums, I daresay.

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