| re: Sometimes an Obscure Show Deserves to Be Forgotten | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 04:34 pm EDT 06/18/22 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 04:32 pm EDT 06/18/22 | |
| In reply to: Sometimes an Obscure Show Deserves to Be Forgotten - BroadwayTonyJ 03:54 pm EDT 06/15/22 | |
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| Thanks for mentioning May Wine. I may have written misleading things here in the past. I have never read the script and until yesterday I think I had heard only one of the songs. Maybe two. So my knowledge of it is decidedly limited. It just sounds like a very interesting show, and I have hoped that Encores might at least look into it, although I think that is a long shot. A very long shot. Yesterday I found that three original cast members — Leo G. Carroll, Vera Van, and Walter Woolf King — appeared on Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, hosted by Rudy Vallee, where they performed a scene from the show (although how close it was to the actual scene is up in the air) and three songs were sung. I am linking this on youtube. A few other songs from the show can be heard on youtube, of which at the moment I will recommend Shirlee Emmons singing "Dance, My Darlings" (I think this recording is much better than the Patrice Munsel-Alfred Drake recording of the song for Bagley) and Lois Hunt singing "Something New Is in My Heart." I don't know if the show is worth unearthing for the kind of production it would receive at Encores! but it was unconventional for 1935, although with mostly standard operetta-style lyrics. In the Hammerstein Complete Lyrics book, editor Amy Asch says that the show was not an operetta, but it sounds to me like it was one, albeit an unusual one that eschewed some traditional operetta elements. And many of the critics called it an operetta, while noting that it lacked some of the expected elements. Unfortunately, it seems as if no Broadway version of the script may exist, although the rehearsal version might be close enough to use as the basis for a production or concert. More of a problem is that the orchestrations may be lost, although a piano-vocal score exists. There are so many unrecorded scores by the major writers. Some of them are from shows that were successful. It is sad that the Packard-McGlinn project foundered because I am pretty sure that McGlinn hoped to move on to other writers after Herbert and Kern, although completing just those two would have been a huge undertaking. Btw, I meant to ask you something in a thread that is no longer on the first page so I will ask here: What movies were you thinking of in which Glynis Johns sang, apart from Mary Poppins? I have seen some of her early movies, although some of them I have seen only parts of (tuning into TCM after they started). Am I remembering correctly that she sings a bit in The Sundowners (not really an early movie of hers)? And I know there is a singing sequence in Miranda, and it is comic, but if memory series it is not her voice. Or do we hear her own voice at some point? I am asking partly because I am wondering if she sang live in any of those movies, in which case those would not be examples that contradict Sondheim's statement, although “Sister Suffragette" in Mary Poppins clearly contradicts his statement. |
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| Link | May Wine on Fleischmann's Yeast Hour |
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