False Notes
I went to see In My Life, and was surprised that I didn’t like it more. After all, the sampler CD that I was given on the street (and was sent in the mail and had handed to me by umpteen people at work) looked promising. Mind you, I don’t mean that it sounded promising; I didn’t even listen to it, for I prefer to hear music for a new show first in the theater and only later on disc. But the show looked promising, given that the back cover of the disc said, “It’s sure to be love at first listen. Listen to the best music you’ve heard in your life.”
Was this the worst case of hubris ever exhibited by any Broadway show? I dusted off my LPs to see if any of them made a claim as grandiose as that of In My Life, and a tour through my alphabetically arranged collection yielded the following results:
Ankles Aweigh: “Things happen so fast in Ankles Aweigh — plot, music, and lyrics are so rapidly paced and so tightly integrated — that a plot synopsis is difficult.” Well, that’s truth in advertising!
Baker Street: “The hottest Broadway musical of 1965.” Given that the show opened on February 16, 1965, that judgment seems about 46 weeks premature. I’d say that the hottest musical of 1965 was a 1964 show, Fiddler on the Roof, which sold out each and every one of the 412 performances it played in 1965.
“Clownaround is a funny kind of musical.” Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.
“Rejoice for Cry for Us All.” Why? It only ran nine performances.
“Under the title of Donnybrook, The Quiet Man has returned this time to take the Broadway stage by storm in one of the most memorable musical comedies of the 1961 season.” First off, there is no “1961 season” where Broadway is concerned; it’s either 1960-1961 or 1961-1962. Donnybrook belonged to the latter, and I daresay that the 68-performance flop can’t be listed with Irma La Douce, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Camelot, and Carnival as one of the season’s “most memorable” shows.
Flahooley: “A magical musical that has New Yorkers standing in line for tickets.” After five weeks and 40 ill-attended performances, New Yorkers were standing in line for refunds.
The Girl in Pink Tights: “Audiences came happily out of the theater, humming.” Yes, but what songs from what show were they humming?
“They sure loved Goodtime Charley at the Palace.” The writer didn’t precisely tell us who “they” were. Maybe he meant the show’s authors.
Greenwich Village, U.S.A.: “An extraordinary musical which had the New York critics waving their hats in the air.” Was that to get rid of the smell?
I Had a Ball: “This album will show you why the production is such an obvious, dazzling delight.” Am I the only one that finds the word “obvious” an odd choice?
“In a year that had already given the musical theater Kiss Me, Kate and South Pacific, there were those who felt it improbable that Miss Liberty could achieve the same success. But they overlooked the considerable talents of some of the greatest men in the American theater, and Miss Liberty turned out to be a resounding hit with all its audiences.” There were 308 of them, mostly because of a terrific advance sale based on composer-lyricist Irving Berlin’s recent success with Annie Get Your Gun. But bringing up Kiss Me, Kate and South Pacific wasn’t smart; Miss Liberty would run less than a third as long as the former show and less than a sixth as long as the latter.
The Nervous Set “roused critics and audiences from a vernal torpor into many a cheerful cry of delight, and settled down for its run.” What it settled for was 23 performances.
Oh Captain! “instantly became one of Broadway’s biggest hits and seems securely berthed at the Alvin Theatre for many months to come.” Six months, as it turned out.
Rex: “The full biography of any and all of the contributors to this royal production is too lengthy to include here. The professionalism of each is extraordinary. A glance at the full list of credits highlights the fact that Rex has been created by a collaboration of most-qualified artists.” Indeed, both composer Richard (Oklahoma!) Rodgers and lyricist Sheldon (Fiddler on the Roof) Harnick had each had the thrill of writing a show that, for a while, held the title of longest-running musical on Broadway. This was the only time that collaborators who could make that claim, each from two completely different teams, had joined forces. But nowhere in the liner notes does the writer actually claim that Rex is any good.
That’s about as far as I could go, so I can’t say that I completed a scientific survey on which set of liner notes exaggerated the most. But before I finally concluded, I did have to check out just one more. I pulled out the album nestled between Whoopee and Wildcat, and read: “Whoop-Up is the sixth whopping hit musical comedy to be ushered to Broadway boards by the phenomenal producing team of Feuer and Martin in exactly that many tries at the course. Each of the preceding five productions — Where’s Charley?, Guys and Dolls, Can-Can, The Boy Friend, Silk Stockings — ran upwards of two years.” Well, that was true of Guys and Dolls and Can-Can, but not the others. I had a big chuckle at the next line: “And if delighted audience reaction is any indication, it seems as though Whoop-Up is destined to help producers break their own past records.” Well, it did break their record of uninterrupted hits.
Despite all of this, I say that In My Life wins the prize for Most Wildly Exaggerated Claim. Congratulations!
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
