The 1963 Songs We’ll Hear on Monday

More often than not, when my TheaterMania colleague Scott Siegel stages one of his “Broadway by the Year” concerts at The Town Hall, I predict what he’ll include in his program. Sometimes it’s an arduous task, such as when Siegel did The Broadway Musicals of 1926 earlier in the year — for he and I had to plow through 42 shows worth of material. But now that he’s doing The Broadway Musicals of 1963, he, for better or worse, only has 11 Main Stem tuners from which to choose.

The first that opened that year was the most anticipated — David Merrick import of Lionel Bart’s London smash-hit Oliver! (based on Oliver Twist, of course). Look for the entire cast — Nancy Anderson, Stephen Bogardus, Liz Callaway, Robert Cuccioli, Euan Morton, Julia Murney, and Noah Racey — to start the evening with a spirited rendition of “Consider Yourself.” For better or worse, Siegel always seems to include hit songs, so I expect to hear Liz Callaway do “As Long as He Needs Me,” but I won’t be surprised if Nancy Anderson and Euan Morton do “I’d Do Anything.”

You might have guessed that Oliver! would be the
longest-running musical that would open in 1963 (774 performances), but do you know what came in second? Believe it or not, Here’s Love, the musical version of Miracle on 34th Street at 334. While this property was one of the best ideas ever for a Broadway musical, much of Meredith Willson’s score is so tuneless that I don’t even know how the cast learned the so-called melodies. So I’m sure we won’t have to endure the musically myopic “Look, Little Girl” or “You Don’t Know.” Still, “The Big Calown [sic] Balloons,” “That Man over There,” and the title song are rousers that would be well-served by all seven singers to end either act.

The next-longest runner is a work of true quality that somewhat sabotaged an unfortunate title. 110 in the Shade (330 performances) is the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical version of The Rainmaker, and whatever Siegel chooses from it will be worth hearing. With Robert Cuccioli on hand, here’s betting he’ll do Starbuck’s first big number, “Rain Song.” I’d like to see him and Bogardus play warring lovers in the show’s finale, “Wonderful Music” (a title that offers truth in advertising). But this is a show that also needs a glorious female voice, and I’ll take either Callaway or Murney to do “Is It Really Me?” But I’ll really be in heaven if Siegel opts to do one of the finest numbers from the score that was cut in Boston. If you don’t hear “Sweet River” here on Monday night, get a recording that sports it, for it’s one of the most heartbreaking songs you’ll ever encounter.

We might get another heartbreaker in “Dear Friend” from She Loves Me (301 performances). This song — as well as the jaunty “Ice Cream” or the poignant “Will He Like Me?” — would be a natural for Callaway. Bogardus would be fun on the title song and Morton would be funny on the pseudo-sinister “A Romantic Atmosphere.” I suspect any selection that Siegel chooses will remind us how much we lost when composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick stopped collaborating. (I can’t say if we’ll feel the same way if we hear selections from the other 1963 musical that the team did, which played seven performances and closed just two days before She Loves Me opened. But Man in the Moon was a kid’s show, though it did play the Biltmore.)

Maybe I’ve always liked the score of Tovarich (274 performances) because I saw it during its Boston tryout (and no jokes, please, that Lee Pockriss, its composer, also wrote “Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini”). I suspect we’ll hear — and see – “Wilkes-Barre, PA” with Noah Racey and Julia Murney doing the Charleston that won Vivien Leigh her Tony. But “You Love Me” is really charming, “I Know the Feeling” genuinely pretty, and “All for You” a lovely swirling waltz. Here’s hoping any of the worthy performers takes on at least one of them.

The Girl Who Came to Supper originally had Florence Henderson (before her Brady Bunch fame) in the musical version of a play that became a film that starred Marilyn Monroe. (The former was called The Sleeping Prince, while the latter was retitled The Prince and the Showgirl.) Yet it was “Two-Ton” Tessie O’Shea in a supporting role who brought down the ‘ouse with a medley of London music hall songs. That I’m tabbing Nancy Anderson to do these is not at all a reflection on her weight, but on her comic ability to take on a role that won Ms. O’Shea a Tony, even though the show could only manage a 112-performance run and was long closed when the trophies were dispensed.

Poor Jennie! The Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz musical only lasted 82 performances, even though Mary Martin was headlined. It was, however, not a happy experience for Martin, who didn’t like her original leading man (Dennis O’Keefe) and suggested that he be relieved of his duties. But Martin wasn’t easy on the songwriters, either, for she strenuously objected that a lyric in one of the songs was “dirty.” The lyric? “Before I go and meet my maker, I want to use the salt left in the shaker.” The song? The poignant “Before I Kiss the World Goodbye,” which
will sound quite lovely in Liz Callaway’s voice.

How I wish I could tell you more about Hot Spot, the show with music by Mary Rodgers, who’d already written Once upon a Mattress, and lyrics by Martin Charnin, who was still 14 long years away from his success with Annie. The show did have a recording deal with Warner Brothers Records, but once a short run was ensured (it turned out to be 43 performances), the company backed away. The musical was topical, in that it was about life in the recently-started Peace Corps, but its ace trump was beloved Judy Holliday as star. Certainly she had to have at least one good song for her to agree to do the show, and here’s hoping that whatever it is, Nancy Anderson gets it. But chances are Siegel will opt for “Don’t Laugh” because it was written by someone else when the songwriters were too tuckered from an exhausting preview period. Don’t laugh — the songwriter who came in to try and save the day was Stephen Sondheim.

The big sin of The Student Gypsy (or the Prince of
Liederkranz) was apparently that bookwriter-composer-librettist Rick Besoyan repeated himself, and did pretty much the same operetta spoof he’d done four years earlier Off-Broadway with his smash Little Mary Sunshine. Nevertheless, two songs — “My Love Is Your” and “Somewhere” — had some merit, for Ed Ames recorded them. (Remember him? Those of a certain generation know him as the centerpiece of the Ames Brothers singing group, while those a bit younger recall him as Mingo on the Daniel Boone TV series. He was also the original Chief in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which began its Boston tryout right around the same time that The Student Gypsy closed after 16 performances.) Let’s hope that Cuccioli and/or Bogardus give the numbers a try.

Sophie (as in Tucker) was the first show I ever saw have a full-sized billboard (the type you see on highways) for its Boston tryout in early 1963. But the producers ran out of money, and had to scuttle their plans to come to our Shubert, to my eternal dismay, and went directly to the Winter Garden — for eight performances. The score was penned by Steve Allen, already in the public’s consciousness as a late-nite TV comic. But Allen loved to write songs, and though he wrote thousands, few were much good. Yet Allen spent years after Sophie’s failure sending out flyers hoping to get someone else to do the show. On one, he quoted Walter Kerr’s assessment in the Herald-Tribune: “Richard Rodgers is famous for his wrong note. Mr. Allen may be famous for always arriving at the right note.” Check Steve Suskin’s Opening Nights on Broadway, and you’ll find that Allen eliminated the last 10 words that finished the sentence: “And you have no idea how monotonous that can be.” Still, Allen used to cut albums of him playing piano, and once included “I Love You Today” from Sophie, so I guess that’s the best of the bunch.

And what of The Beast in Me, the four-performance flop that musicalized some James Thurber stories? Well, it was composed by Don Elliott, who had a nice career in jazz, so here’s a prediction that it will be a snazzy second-act opener for Ross Patterson’s Little Big Band, which always welcomes us back with an up-tempo instrumental.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]