Playlist For Sunday, August 4th, 2019: Son of My Favorite Things, The Sequel

I'm not usually a fan of sequels, okay? Son of Godzilla? The Godzilla That Ate Brooklyn? The Brooklyn That Ate Godzilla? Not really up my alley. But Exception Time: My Favorite Things, Part II. :) Back a couple of weeks ago, I foisted 30 odd musical favorites on you, restraining myself from playing the other 700 of the top 1000. Now I feel bad for them. For you. For the world. Hence The Sequel.

And all are just as good as the Top 30, I promise. Gypsy, Band Wagon, Flora, Hamilton, Guys, Dolls, Kates, Dollys???  You'll go nuts. Dollars to donuts.

After this show, tho...quel dommage...I am off on an eeeerie bike expedition, dashing (and dotting) along the Lake Erie perimeter for 3 weeks! So expect not the Broadway LIVE. Three recorded shows await you, starting on August 11, so you'll just have to hold your breath (til I'm back in early September) for the LIVE stuff.

 Note smiling face.

And it was raining.

I'll be humming Broadway on the Byways. Meanwhile, enjoy those "donuts" and save ME a seat, okay?


Wanna Sing A Show Tune (Michael Feinstein)
Overture/Audition (Company, 42nd Street)
Take Back Your Mink (Vivian Blaine & The Hot Box Girls, Guys And Dolls)
Too Darn Hot (Lorenzo Fuller, Ensemble, Kiss Me Kate)
Come Up To My Place (Nancy Walker, Cris Alexander, On The Town)
A Shine On Your Shoes (Fred Astaire, The Band Wagon)
Murder, He Says (Betty Hutton, Happy Go Lucky)
My Own Morning (Leslie Uggams, Hallelujah, Baby!)
Still Hurting (Sherie Rene Scott, The Last Five Years)
Not A Day Goes By (Bernadette Peters, Sondheim, Etc.)
Elegance (Charles Nelson Reilly, Jerry Dodge, Eileen Brennan, Sondra
      Lee, Hello, Dolly!)
Confession of A Park Avenue Mother (Charles Nelson Reilly, Parade)
Why Do The Wrong People Travel? (Elaine Stritch, Sail Away)
Airport Song (Rob McClure, Tracee Beazer, Gaelen Gilliland, George
      Merrick, Honeymoon In Vegas) 
Not Every Day Of The Week (Bob Dishy, Liza Minnelli, Flora The Red Menace)
Look What Happened To Mabel (Bernadette Peters, Mack & Mabel)
Show Off (Sutton Foster, Drowsy Chaperone)
Monkeys And Playbills (Company, [title of show])
Come To An Agreement (Tony Danza, Rob McClure, Honeymoon In Vegas)
In The Dark (Company, Desperate Measures)
Things (Faith Prince, Brad Oscar, Life Begins At 8:40)
Road To Hell (Chris Sullivan, Company, Hadestown)
Slow Train/License To Kill (Michael Shaeffer, Arinze Kene, Debbie Kurup,
      Sheila Atim, Girl From The North Country)
Burn (Phillipa Soo, Hamilton)
Fifty Checks (Tom Wopat, Catch Me If You Can)
Smash! (Megan Hilty, Bombshell)
Rose's Turn (Ethel Merman, Gypsy)

You Hoyden, You! :)

 Selections from the crayon box that IS 2 on the Aisle this week...

well, at least it's 1 of the 500 themes we pursue this time 'round:

 Colors.

 Here's Doris Day, wearing AND singing BLUE!

"Shakin' the Blues Away"

from Love Me Or Leave Me, 1955,

an Irving Berlin goodie originally from 

The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927.

 More Blue with Harry and Kelli:

Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli O'Hara in the 2006 revival of

The Pajama Game.

"A New Town Is A Blue Town,"

a Richard Adler/Jerry Ross gem.

 On the Feelings Theme side,

Vivien Leigh in Tovarich,

in which she played a deposed czarina of Russia,

marking time as a maid in Paris?

(You can't make this sorta stuff up.) (Wait...)

Yes, Viv sang and danced and won a Tony!

Below with Jean-Pierre Aumont...

 ...and below again, with other Tony winners from 1963:

Zero Mostel (who had won for Forum), Vivien, and

Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill 

(both of whom had won for Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolfe?)

We'll hear "I Know How You Feel"

with a Russian accent. 

 From A Connecticut Yankee,

which opened in 1927, the work of Rodgers and Hart.

Above, a pic from the 1943 revival with

Vera-Ellen and Chester Stratton.

Vera was 22 years old and still singing her own songs at that point,
not like in White Christmas where she was dubbed by
Rosemary!

We'll hear "I Feel At Home With You"

which rhymes "hoyden" with "annoyed in"

and "term it" with "hermit."

Thank you, Lorenz! 

 

Here's Gwen Verdon

feeling Merely Marvelous in

Redhead.

(The show, with music by Albert Hague and Dorothy Fields,

was originally conceived for Beatrice Lillie 

and was titled The Works.)

I never really understood the plot of this musical;

I just know it had something to do with a wax museum in London,

run by Gwen's 2 aunts (Arsenic and Old Lace, anyone?)

and that there was a murder (or several),

and that Scotland Yard makes an appearance.

This pic looks more like a turn of the century Chicago.

Gwen twisted arms (and stepped on people, evidently)

to get Bob Fosse his first shot at Broadway directing.

Lots of Tonys:

Gwen, Bob, Richard Kiley, Leonard Stone, Costume Design,

and Best Musical of 1959.

Recently revived out in CA with 

Lee (Cat Woman) Meriwether!

Green Snakes, Black Dresses, and Pink!: Just De-Lovely!

A young Harold Lipshitz,

better known as Hal Linden!

Hal started off as a sax and clarinet player/singer with big bands,

like Sammy Kaye's.

After WWII, he turned his attention to acting,

later winning a Tony for his role in

Bock and Harnick's The Rothschilds.

In 1962, he appeared as Billy Crocker

in an Off-Broadway revival of Anything Goes,

above at the cast recording with 

Eileen Rodgers and Mickey Deems.

We'll hear Hal's rendition of "It's De-lovely"...with Barbara Lang,

who played Hope Harcourt.

Funny Face started off as a musical back in 1927,

with the music of George and Ira Gershwin.

By the time it became a movie, 30 years later,

the plot was changed, the music was changed...

everything but Fred Astaire was changed!

Above, Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson

perform "On How To Be Lovely"

and below, fashion editor Kay envisions a season of "Pink!"

Ouch!

Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor, 1963:

Julius F. Kelp and Buddy Love.

Jerry said he thought he should have made 

the Buddy character meaner...

Love received a lot more fan mail than Julius!

 Co-starring was Kathleen Freeman and Stella Stevens.

"That Old Black Magic"

The Jackie Gleason show was the ONE program

(Saturday nights at 7:30pm if memory serves)

that my family watched while eating dinner

on TV trays in the living room!

Cheeseburgers and Jackie...

Fond, if greasy, memories.

Well, in 1959 he starred in Take Me Along

 with Walter Pigeon, Eileen Hurlie and Robert Morse.

Jackie won the Tony that year,

and we'll hear his rendition of "Little Green Snake."

Music: Bob Merrill

The title song of the show was later used in

a United Airlines ad campaign.

 Sister Act, the movie, came out in 1992,

and by 2011 it had become a Broadway musical

with tunes by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater. 

The original production starred Patina Miller 

( star "Leading Player" in the revival of Pippin) 

and Victoria Clark (who won a Tony for her role in The Light In The Piazza).

The musical has had productions literally around the world,

from Pasadena to Prague.

We'll hear "Lady In The Long Black Dress"

and below are various trios of 

TJ, Bones, and Dinero

who get the chance to sing this hilarious "Shafty" song. 

Oh, and 1 quartet! :)

Playlist For July 28, 2019: Theme Ahoy!

The following playlist is brought to you by M&Ms, ColorForms (TM), Rainbows, Lollipops and Roses. But no unicorns. Yet. Is there a musical with unicorns? I desperately hope not. But along with Colors, I have the Audacity (TM) to include 17 more themes to this coming Sunday's agenda, so I'd like to call this the Theme Ahoy Edition of 2 on the Aisle. I sit here simply AGOG, a word I hold with great respect and do not use lightly, with my ability to go all Musical Theatre of the Ridiculous on ya!

Theme One: Lovely, as in DE-Lovely, as in Lovely Days and Lovely Nights, and aren't I Lovely, and isn't it Lovely, and man isn't this a Lovely day to get outta jail?

Theme Two: A Crayola Deluxe box o' 64! Green, Pink, Brown, Blue! (I did use some restraint here, because as you might guess, Blue wins big in musicals. It's a color, it's an emotion, like a dessert topping that dovetails as a floor wax, it's 2 things in 1!).

 vs

Theme 17: Feelings. Nothing more than Feelings. NO, not that song and not those feelings...Broadway Feelings. And somehow they're less saccharine, at least the ones I'm pulling. Nell Carter, Angela Lansbury, Kristen, Idina, Vera-Ellen, Gwen.

Theme 345: Rainbows, cuz when colors get together...Silly, right? But no unicorns. Absolutely none.

And that's it. Can you stand all this Broadway nuttiness? As I've said before, Broadway isn't for wimps. Oh yea, it might sound all light and fluffy SOMETIMES, but beneath that (Essie) Whimple and that "Long Black Dress" lies a world of Tough. Together we stand, in the face of ANY theme.

Listen, if you dare. :)


It's De-Lovely (Colin Donnell, Laura Osnes, Anything Goes)
It's A Lovely Day Today (Russell Nype, Galina Talva, Call Me Madam)
Isn't This A Lovely Day (To Be Caught In The Rain)(Fred Astaire, Top Hat)
Lovely (Jessica Boevers, Jim Stanek, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way
      To The Forum)
A Lovely Day To Be Out Of Jail (Pamela Isaacs, The Life)
It's De-Lovely (Hal Linden, Barbara Lang, Anything Goes)
A Lovely Night (Julie Andrews, Cinderella)
How Lovely To Be A Woman (Susan Watson, Bye Bye Birdie)
On How To Be Lovely (Kay Thompson, Audrey Hepburn, Funny Face)
Lovely (Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To
      The Forum)
Little Green Snake (Jackie Gleason, Take Me Along)
Blue Skies (Al Jolson, The Jazz Singer)
Think Pink! (Kay Thompson, Funny Face)
That Old Black Magic (Jerry Lewis, The Nutty Professor)
My White Knight (Barbara Cook, The Music Man)
Lady In The Long Black Dress (Nicolas Colicos, Thomas Goodridge,
      Ivan De Freitas, Sister Act)
A New Town Is A Blue Town (Harry Connick Jr., The Pajama Game)
Blue Room (The Revelers, The Girl Friend)
You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown (Gary Burghoff, Bob Balaban, Reva Rose,
      Skip and Bill Hinnant, You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown)
Sarah Brown Eyes (Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald, Ragtime)
Sweet Georgia Brown (Instrumental, Some Like It Hot)
Shaking The Blues Away (Doris Day, Love Me Or Leave Me)
I Feel Merely Marvelous (Gwen Verdon, Redhead)
Swell (Joanna Gleason, Barry Bostwick, Jeff Brooks, Chris Sarandon,
      Nick & Nora)
I Feel Pretty (Carol Lawrence, Reri Grist, Marilyn Cooper, West Side Story)
I've Got A Feeling I'm Falling (Bobby Short, K-RA-ZY for Gershwin)
That's How Young I Feel (Angela Lansbury, Mame)
I Feel At Home With You (Chester Stratton, Vera-Ellen, A Connecticut Yankee)
I Know The Feeling (Vivian Leigh, Tovarich)
I've Got A Feeling I'm Falling (Nell Carter, Ain't Misbehavin')
What Is This Feeling? (Idina Menzel, Kristen Chenoweth, Wicked)
Look To The Rainbow (Ella Logan, Finian's Rainbow)
I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (Debbie Reynolds, Irene)
Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Judy Garland, The Wizard Of Oz)
That Terrific Rainbow (Barbara Ashley, Pal Joey)

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that je ne sais quoi pas!

 Rosalind Russell was 47 years old when she starred in 

Wonderful Town

as Ruth Sherwood to Edith (Edie) Adams' "Sister" Eileen.

She was one of 7 children, raised in Waterbury, Ct.

Her parents thought she was studying to be a teacher

(attending Marymount College in Tarrytown),

but she fooled 'em!

 The great "Conga" number with the "Brazilian Navy"...

for a look at her "Swing!", visit my 2 on the Aisle FaceBook page
 or YouTube.

Whatta hep cat!

 Chorines from The Boy Friend,

and below Ann Wakefield and Bob Scheerer

who got to sing Sandy Wilson's 

"Won't You Charleston With Me?"

 The Broadway version's cast included

a young Julie Andrews, above/front and center!

 The musical Swing! (2000)

featured swing-era music of 

the Duke, the Count, and other royalty,

along with new songs/lyrics by Ann Hampton Callaway and others.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett directed and choreographed. 

 And not to forget the Boswell's take on that

swing classic,

"It Don't Mean A Thing".

Above, all set for their Java number,

and below, probably tuning in Otto Bruno's Sunday Music Fest!

No Vacancy, but time is running out!

 Grand Hotel has a provenance as long your arm:

It all starts in 1929, as a novel (and play) called Menschen im Hotel,

by Vicki Baum.

Act 2: A 1932 MGM movie with Greta Garbo,  John AND Lionel Barrymore,

Joan Crawford and Wallace Beery.

 It was screaming to become a musical.

Robert Wright and George Forrest heard the screams,

but made several changes in the plot and setting.

From 1928 Berlin, it moved to 1950s Rome,

the aging ballerina morphed into an opera singer,

and American gangsters were added for comic relief

(think Kiss Me Kate?).

Set to star was Joan Diener (who had already worked with

Wright and Forrest on Kismet)

and Paul Muni.

 Paul got sick, the reviews got sicker, and the production was canceled,

never opening on Broadway.

(And I can't even find a photo! But here's a very dashing one of Paul!)

 Thirty years later,

the same creative team decided to try again,

this time with the traditional Berlin setting,

 Tommy Tune directing,

Maury Yeston writing additional tunes,

and a great cast.

Above, Liliane Montevecchi as the Russian ballerina,

and below Michael Jeter as Otto Kringelein 

and Rex Smith as the Baron.

 Mixed reviews greeted the production

(Rex with Jane Krakowski, above),

but over 1,000 performances,

thanks to Tommy Tune's staging, an incredible set by Tony Walton,

and Tonys for Michael Jeter and Tune.

 Just last spring (2018),

it was revived by Encores!

with Helene Yorke and Brandon Uranowitz (above),

and Irina Dvorovenko and James Snyder (below).

 Our friend Ben Brantley of the Times found this resuscitated version

 "one of the most sumptuous pieces of eye candy ever to glitter 

from the City Center stage."

 Director and choreographer Josh Rhodes, a super set by Allen Moyer and costumes by Linda Cho.

 I had a chance to see this, thanks to a perfectly timed snow storm

that prolonged my NYC stay,

and the only thing I didn't get about this production was the casting of Irina.

She was tooooo gorgeous and young to ever be 

an aging anything...

however, a breath-taking performance.

In our Oldies Corner,

Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers,

with Kid Ory on vocals:
"Doctor Jazz", written by Joe "King" Oliver.

Below, the Peppers as they existed in 1926.

Jelly was born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe...

and basically invented jazz (to hear him tell it),

and I believe him.

 Another "item" in our oldie goldie corner:

Ben Pollack And His Californians

which featured a young Glen Miller 

and Benny Goodman on the far left.

We'll hear their version of "He's The Last Word"

with The Williams Sisters (below) on vocals.

That song was written back in 1926 by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson.

 And don't forget about Ruth Etting,

"America's Sweetheart Of Song" back in 1920s and 30s.

In 1933 she recorded "Dancing In The Moonlight", 

certainly NOT to be confused with the single released

by King Harvest in 1973!