Give My Regards To Broadway

[poliphilo]

I don't like musicals, but I'm loving Channel 4's history of Broadway.

Maybe what I mean when I say I don't like musicals is that I can't stomach Rogers and Hammerstein.

Or Andrew Lloyd Webber.

It's something to do with cosiness.

But Cole Porter and George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Yip Harburg and Ethel Merman and Ethel Waters and Fred Astaire ain't cosy. No siree!

Those songs from the twenties and thirties have a Deco stylishness, a chromium shine. They shimmy and they glitter and they shake their collective ass. The moon is their mama. She smiles from an spangly sky.

Indulgence and effulgence.

My generation (or the one just before) carries on like it invented popular music. Well, nuts to that! I'm not saying that the Beatles aren't good, but there's no way they're better than the chaps I've listed above.

And let's not forget Noel Coward. He doesn't get into the picture because he's a Brit, but I love him dearly.

And let's not forget Kurt Weill.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Biography

Jimmy Van Heusen was born in Syracuse, New York in 1913 as Edward Chester Babcock. He adopted his professional name at the age of 15 when he became a part time radio announcer. "Van Heusen" was taken from the name of the shirt company. In 1938, while working for Remick Publishing, Inc., Van Heusen met Jimmy Dorsey and wrote his first hit "It's the Dreamer in Me". This commenced his three-decade long career writing Tin Pan Alley hits, movie and show tunes. He won Oscars for "Swinging on a Star", "High Hopes", and "Call Me Irresponsible", and an Emmy for "Love and Marriage". Van Heusen wrote most of his songs with two prominent lyricists - Johnny Burke and Sammy Cahn, many of which were written for the two baritones Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Jimmy Van Heusen died in 1990.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Now I can place him.

I've heard the songs and I've worn the shirts!

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I can tell you the first song he wrote you never heard - The Cross-Eyed Canary.

But anyway. I hate to admit it but I LOVE ALW. His stuff is fun to sing (speaking as a singer) and Phantom of the Opera is one of my all time favorite plays.

On the other hand, the muscials, and the composers that you mention are classic and timeless. Probably ALW won't be.

South Pacific, I think, is the first musical I ever saw LIVE.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Cross-Eyed Canary? No, I can honestly say I've never heard it.

I've seen Evita on stage and at the movies and I don't think it works very well, but I like some of the songs.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it onstage, the movie was terrible.

I think what I loved about Phantom was...the way it made me feel. I am a romantic (no kidding!!!) and somehow it didn't seem at all scary that this disfigured man was holding a beautiful woman hostage...all the props, that chandelier that comes down at the end of the first act (and if you're sitting up front, you can feel the breeze lift your hair) and all of that. Somehow, when it's live and not on the screen, it feels like you are a part of it.

And of course...I'm a BIG fan of Colm Wilkinson, for whom the part of the Phantom was originally written.

The Cross Eyed Canary was supposedly the first song Jimmy Van Heusen ever wrote. I was told this by one of the law professors who works here, so I know it's the absolute truth.

(snort)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I thought The phantom was written for Michael Crawford.

Leastways, wasn't he the one who played it for years in the West End and on Broadway?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Nope, ALW wrote Phantom originally for Colm. He did the 'preliminary' - you know, here's what the first act will be like - at ALW's summer palace (I have the video someplace). Before ALW finished with Phantom, Colm was offered the part of Jean ValJean in Les Mis - of course, no one EVER heard of him in that, right?- So Michael Crawford lucked out because he made the play famous.

But Colm was a compelling Phantom.

He's compelling-period.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Michael Crawford's career trajectory has been most peculiar. He's best known now as a leading man in musicals, but he made his name as a slapstick comedian.

Have you ever seen his old BBC sitcom- Some Mothers Do Ave Em? It's- ahem- an acquired taste.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Nope. But I saw him in *Barnum*. "Join the circus like you wanted to, when you were a kid..." He actually had a pretty nice voice.

There's a PBS station that I watch sometimes that shows old BBC sitcoms. That's where I saw "No, Honestly" and "Good Neighbors" and "As Time Goes By"...and countless others.

I keep veering off the subject, don't I? I get more exercise from running to retrieve my mind...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

As Time Goes By is the one with Judy Dench,right?
I don't recognise the other two.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Yes, Dame Judi. She's amazing, the PBS station showed "A Fine Romance" just before it, so we got to see her age.

Good Neighbors was about two people who tried in the midst of rather wealthy suburbia to go 'back to Nature'. Felicity Kendal was in it.

And No Honestly was with Pauline Collins and her husband.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good Neighbours- ah, I know what you mean. It was called The Good Life over here. Yes, it's a favourite of mine.

No Honestly I don't recognise- but Pauline Collins and John Alderton did a number of shows together.