Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (128 page)

23
. See for example, Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 84–85.

24
. Laurent,
Original Story by
, 347–48.

25
. The AFI also placed
West Side Story
as No. 41 on its “Top 100 American Movies of the Last 100 Years,” compiled in 1998. The only musicals ahead of
West Side Story
on the list were
The Wizard of Oz
at No. 6 and
Singin’ in the Rain
at No. 10. The other seven film musicals on the AFI list, which include two animated features and a biopic, were
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(49),
The Sound of Music
(55),
Fantasia
(58),
An American in Paris
(68),
The Jazz Singer
(90),
My Fair Lady
(91), and
Yankee Doodle Dandy
(100).

Chapter 15:
Sweeney Todd
and
Sunday in the Park with George

1
. After Merman’s departure,
Gypsy
received several acclaimed revivals and films that highlighted a staggering array of luminous stars, including Rosalind Russell (Warner Bros. Film, 1962), Angela Lansbury (West End and Broadway, 1973 and 1974), Tyne Daly (Broadway, 1989), Bette Midler (Television movie, 1993), Betty Buckley (Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., 1998), Bernadette Peters (Broadway, 2003), and Patti Lupone (Ravinia Festival, Chicago, 2006;
Encores!
City Center, N.Y., 2007; Broadway, 2008).

2
. For an extended discussion of the difficult collaboration and a more positive appraisal of
Waltz
, see Geoffrey Block,
Richard Rodgers
, 213–25.

3
. Thomas P. Adler, “The Musical Dramas of Stephen Sondheim,” 513–25; quotation on 523.

4
. Eugene K. Bristow and J. Kevin Butler, “
Company
, About Face!,” 241–54; quotation on 253.

5
. See Stephen Banfield,
Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals
, 20–25, and Stephen Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 62–63.

6
. Oscar Hammerstein II, “Notes on Lyrics,” 3–48.

7
. Ibid., 4.

8
. Ibid., 15.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Ibid., 19.

11
. Ibid., 21.

12
. Ibid., 22.

13
. Ibid., 23.

14
. Ibid., 34.

15
. Although work on
By George
was begun in the spring of 1945, the show remained largely dormant until the following spring (around the time of Sondheim’s sixteenth birthday on March 22). It is possible that Hammerstein’s famous shredding of Sondheim’s work occurred later than usually reported. In any event,
By George
was first performed in May 1946.

16
. Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 62.

17
. Hammerstein, “Notes on Lyrics, 45–46; Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 65–66. Hammerstein’s point is well taken, but if he had been a Civil War buff he might have known that hot air balloons developed by France in the eighteenth century made it possible to use this technology for reconnaissance several decades before the French gave the United States its beloved statue.

18
. From the third show,
Mary Poppins
, based on the stories by P. L. Travers, Sondheim discovered the difficulties of libretto writing (Hammerstein customarily wrote the librettos as well as the lyrics). In “Theater Lyrics” Sondheim recalls that he sent Hammerstein a script for the fourth, original musical that included a ninety-nine-page first act and that Hammerstein circled this impressive number and wrote “Wow” (“Theater Lyrics,” 63).

19
. The title
Phinney’s Rainbow
incorporated allusions to
Finian’s Rainbow
, a popular musical of 1947 with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and music by Burton Lane and to the president of Williams at the time, James Phinney Baxter.

20
. Steven Suskin lists three stagings of
Saturday Night
: a reading by the Bridewell Theater Company in 1995; a small production, also in London, in 1997; and a production by the Pegasus Players in Chicago in 1999 with two new songs (Suskin,
Show Tunes
, 274–75). The show received its New York premiere on February 17, 2000. A cast recording was released that same year on Nonesuch 79609–2.

21
. Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 64.

22
. Ibid., 70.

23
. Ibid., 70–71.

24
. Ibid., 71.

25
. Hammerstein, “In Re ‘Oklahoma!,’” 11.

26
. Babbitt’s encyclopedic knowledge of popular music of the 1920s and 1930s and his aborted aspirations to composing popular music in the 1940s are less widely known. For those familiar with the breadth of his interests it is not surprising that in addition to teaching the European classics, Babbitt would also analyze the popular songs of DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson, Kern, Rodgers, and Gershwin “with exactly the same serious tone.” See Eugene R. Hubert, ed., “A Conversation with Stephen Sondheim” (typescript), quoted in Banfield,
Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals
, 22.

27
. Gordon,
Art Isn’t Easy
, 7. See also Steven Swayne,
How Sondheim Found His Sound
, 257–59, and Block, “Integration,” forthcoming.

28
. Sondheim remarked in an interview that “Moss Hart did a concept musical. His
Thousands Cheer
was a concept musical in 1933. Concept musicals have existed forever.” Quoted in Ilson, 195. For an application of the “ideal type” to the Broadway musical, see Block, “The Broadway Canon,” 537–39 and note 15.

29
. See Foster Hirsch,
Harold Prince
, and Carol Ilson,
Harold Prince
.

30
. The use of the concept musical on behalf of the integrated ideal is analogous to the practice of classical modernists (for example, Schoenberg and later Sondheim’s teacher Babbitt), who offered increasingly complex exhibitions of motivic unity to generate new heights in organicism.

31
. Prince,
Contradictions
, 231. Ethan Mordden’s take on whether
Follies
should be considered a failure is worth quoting: “Obviously, in days of lower costs, a hit made money and a flop lost money. But by 1971, hits lost money. No show that wins
Follies’
awards and runs over a year and eventually gets four major recordings, all the while becoming a classic by any standard of measurement, can be called a failure” (Mordden,
One More Kiss
, 40). Twenty years later, Lloyd Webber’s
Sunset Boulevard
, another relatively long-running, award-winning hit, managed to lose $25 million.

32
. In his informative
Everything Was Possible
, Ted Chapin includes the
Newsweek
design that featured
Follies
on the cover. The caption reads: “Both
Time
and
Newsweek
were planning to do cover stories of the show. However, they never liked to run the same ‘soft’-news covers, so when
Time
went forward with theirs,
Newsweek
canceled, but not before this cover was designed” (Chapin, second page of photo inserts between 144 and 145).

33
. Considering the alleged absence of song hits, one cannot help but be struck by the frequency and popularity of revues and other retrospectives based on Sondheim songs, especially
Side by Side by Sondheim
(1976) and
Putting It Together
(1993).

34
. Sondheim (with Prince), “Author and Director” (published in 1985), 357.

35
. Sondheim, “Larger than Life: Reflections on Melodrama and
Sweeney Todd
,” 3.

36
. Ibid., 6.

37
. Ibid.

38
. Ibid.

39
. Ibid., 10.

40
. Ibid., 11.

41
. Mark Horowitz,
Sondheim on Music
, 155.

42
. Ibid., 155.

43
. Banfield,
Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals
, 290.

44
. Ibid., 291.

45
. Sondheim, “Interview with Stephen Sondheim,” 1988, 229.

46
. Sondheim, “Larger than Life: Reflections on Melodrama and
Sweeney Todd
,” 10–11.

47
. Craig Zadan,
Sondheim & Co
., 246.

48
. Sondheim, “The Art of the Musical,” 274. Banfield points out that the chord Sondheim labeled as his “Sweeney chord” (a minor seventh with the seventh in the bass, C-D-F-A) and which appears only rarely in the score—for example, the last chord of the Judge’s version of “Johanna”—is in any event not the same as the
Hanover Square
chord (a diminished triad with an added major seventh, spelled as a diminished octave, G
-B-D-G) (Banfield, 305–7).

49
. Sondheim (with Prince), “Author and Director,” 365.

50
. Zadan,
Sondheim & Co
., 248.

51
. In Sondheim’s “defense,” the version of the organ Prelude heard on the cast album alludes to but does not quote the
Dies irae
.

52
. Sondheim, “The Musical Theater,” 228–250.

53
. In Laurents’s revised version of
Do I Hear a Waltz?
performed at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey in 2000 and the Pasadena Playhouse in 2001 (Fynsworth Alley CD 302 062 156 2), the reprise of “Take the Moment” was deleted and replaced by “Everybody Loves Leona,” which had been discarded from the original production.

54
. Sondheim (with Prince), “Author and Director,” 365.

55
. “City on Fire!” is first heard at the beginning of No. 26 and repeated after a short reprise of “Kiss Me.” It returns in No. 27, after the Searching music “Not While I’m Around” and again after the Beggar Woman’s “Alms … alms.”

56
. The eight songs that are not reprised in the final sequence are “The Worst Pies in London,” “Green Finch and Linnet Bird,” “Johanna” (Anthony’s version), “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir,” “Wait,” and “Ladies in Their Sensitivities” from act I and “God, That’s Good!” and “Parlor Songs” from act II.

57
. Horowitz,
Sondheim on Music
, 143.

58
. Ibid., 144.

59
. In “Sondheim Dismembers ‘Sweeney,’” Green cites
Love Me Tonight, Under the Roofs of Paris, The Smiling Lieutenant
, “and a couple of the MGMS” (none mentioned by name) among the short list of Sondheim’s favorite film musicals.

60
. Several useful discussions on the
Sweeney Todd
adaptation include Jesse Green, “Sondheim Dismembers ‘Sweeney’”; Mark Salisbury,
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
(n.c.: Titan Books, n.d.); and Andrew Buchman, “Tim Burton’s Cinematic
Sweeney Todd
(2007),” an unpublished paper presented at the Symposium on the American Musical held at the University of Washington, April 11, 2008. I am grateful to Andrew Buchman for allowing me to reap the benefits of this paper. The special features in the 2-Disc Special Edition of
Sweeney Todd
(DreamWorks Pictures 2007) also provide considerable information about the film (see especially Sondheim, “Interview with Sondheim,” 2007).

61
. The soundtrack includes the music and lyrics attached to the Beggar Woman’s coarse sexual solicitations that follow her plaintive solicitations for money, which Anthony gives her before he asks about the residents of the house.

62
. Horowitz,
Sondheim on Music
, 136–37.