25 Observations on Broadway: The American Musical

Okay, we all spent last night in front of our TV sets watching the first two hours of Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon’s mini-series, Broadway: The American Musical. I’m sure you had favorite moments and that you also had a few questions and observations. Here are mine.

1. I was surprised to see that the footage of The Phantom of the Opera didn’t feature original casters Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. On the other hand, showing two anonymous performers was actually more representative of the show. After all, in the musical’s 18-year history, many more hundreds of thousands of people saw people like them, rather than Crawford and Brightman.
2. The statement was made that “Musicals have always reflected changing tastes.” No, not always — and I’m not necessarily saying they should.
3. Didn’t you love that Florenz Ziegfeld’s business card said, “Impresario
   Extraordinaire”?

4. It was fun to hear that Ziegfeld hired Eugene Sandow for his Follies even though the guy couldn’t sing, dance, or act; he was just a he-man with an extraordinary build. And we thought that the Weisslers invented stunt casting!
5. I love seeing pictures of theater marquees of yore, so I cherished the view of
   I’d Rather Be Right at the Alvin. It was fascinating to see that these structures once sported the same “movable letters” that are associated with movie theater marquees. Who knew that the famous Ziegfeld motto “Glorifying the American Girl” was actually put up on the marquee?

6. There were elaborate marquees, too. Take the one for Cinderella on
   Broadway, a 1920 musical, at the Winter Garden. Didn’t the marquee seem to
   be twice as wide as what’s there today? And how fascinating to see that quotations from the critics’ reviews were put on the marquees in those days.

7. Ziegfeld famously insisted that his Follies girls come down a long, wide staircase, but period footage showed us that many of the ladies struggled hard in their heavy headressed costumes to descend without falling flat on their pretty faces.
8. My favorite quotation came from Al Hirschfeld, speaking of vaudevillians:
   “Some of these people would spend their whole lives developing 12 minutes of
   material.”

9. The statement was made that George M. Cohan wasn’t “born on the fourth of
   July,” as he claimed. True enough, but there should have been mention that he was not more than 24 hours away from his claim; Cohan was born on the third of July.

10. And speaking of Cohan, weren’t you stunned to hear that “Only one musical theater performer has a statue in New York City?” Hey, City Council — get on the ball! If you need a list of musical theater luminaries who deserve a statue, just let me know. (P.S.: We were first shown Cohan’s statue at 46th Street as the title song of 42nd Street was played. Wonder how many neophytes came to the conclusion that the statue must be on 42nd Street? I mention this not to criticize the filmmakers but because it made me flash back to one of my youthful beliefs, which I won’t be surprised if you held too: Didn’t you once assume that all Broadway theaters were actually on Broadway?)
11. What fun to learn that Irving Berlin got his name because a printer made a
    mistake on the first piece of sheet music credited to the composer. (He put down “Berlin” instead of “Baline.”) According to Berlin’s daughter, Mary Ellen Barrett, “Dad decided that it was a good name for an American.” But did he have second thoughts only a few years later, when America went to war with a country that had a city by that name?

12. One of the great rules of playwriting is “Show, don’t tell,” and there was a
    fascinating moment when the program did both. After historian Philip Furia
    said that “Ragtime in 1910 was scandalous,” we saw astonishing proof: A piece of ragtime sheet music had on its cover the image of a goat-legged satyr.

13. We have many times heard the famous statement that Jerome Kern
    made when he was asked about Irving Berlin’s place in American music: “Irving
    Berlin has no place in American music; Irving Berlin is American music.” But Furia put the stress on the right syllables and made it sound brand new.

    

14. When I saw Fanny Brice’s big mouth, as wide as the Mississippi, I again asked myself a question that I’ve pondered ever since I saw Funny Girl‘s tryout in Boston. Ziegfeld is furious with Fanny for showing up pregnant in “His Love Makes Make Beautiful,” which suggests that he was deadly serious about the number. But then why would he have his ugliest girl (by far) sing “I am the beautiful reflection”?
15. I didn’t catch her name — which may not have been my fault, since the captioning for the documentary’s talking heads was quite erratic — but I loved that we got to hear from Marilyn Miller’s understudy. I mean, Miller was a star eight decades ago, so I wouldn’t have expected that anyone who knew her would still be around and still cogent.
16. Who knew that there were special lyrics written for “Over There” to comment on
    the famous actors’ strike that led to the founding of Actors’ Equity? Nice, too, that
    we got to hear an entire chorus’s worth.

17. I was surprised to see that Ziegfeld called Show Boat “the best musical
    comedy.” Considering that the show was so revolitonary, I’d have thought he
    would have wanted to coin a new term like “musical play.”

18. How long did we have to wait before we got to hear an opinion from Stephen
    Sondheim? For the record, 52:22.

19. It was fascinating to be reminded that there were no curtain calls for Show
    Boat. This made the audience uncertain on how to react, and their
    comparative silence made Ziegfeld worry that he didn’t have the hit he thought he’d had.

20. Of course, a buck today is very different from a buck back then. Still, we all
    had to be stunned by the ad that offered tickets for that elaborate original
    production of Show Boat at $1, $1.50, $2, $2.50, $3, $4 and $5. There was a notation that New Year’s Eve prices would be higher but, unfortunately, we weren’t shown how much higher.

21. Though I was floored by the vivid color in the clips from the film versions of Follow Thru and Sally, I would have still rather not have had movie musicals represented. Let’s keep this series to the Broadway stage, thank you.
22. During the sequence on Shuffle Along, I bristled when I heard, “For
    almost two years, [the audience] was always packed.” Shuffle Along ran 504 performances, which is about 15 months — and the show obviously wasn’t “packed” for all that time, or it wouldn’t have closed. Then I was mollified to hear that this wasn’t writer Maslon’s line but a statement once made by Langston Hughes. Okay; that’s the type of thing that would be said by someone who doesn’t have his finger on Broadway’s pulse. Still, should it have been included?

23. Didn’t you love the picture of a couple dancing on the roof of a Model T that
    was driving down a city street?

24. How did you like the cut of Walter Winchell insulting a telephone caller by
    asking her, “What’s on your alleged mind?” Granted, this seemed to be a
    staged piece of film, but it still served to demonstrate Winchell’s hubris. (Credit where it’s due, though: Winchell, we were told, was the guy who coined the phrase “The Big Apple” for New York City.)

25. Finally, could anyone make out what show or film was on the poster behind Jerome Chodorov while he was talking? Maybe we’ll get a better
    close-up when the rest of the series airs tonight and tomorrow night.

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