Theater News

When Broadway Went Disco

Filichia hears Ethel Merman’s disco CD and thinks of other times when musical theater and disco have collided.

Here in New York, we were pretty much snowed in on Presidents’ Day, so there wasn’t much to do. How to perk up the proceedings? Well, what about The Ethel Merman Disco Album that Fynsworth Alley recently re-released?

Say what you will, but Ethel Merman did try to stay au courant. I remember that night in the ’70s when, on a Carol Burnett show, The Merm sang not one of her eight signature songs that are on this album but a medley of two then-current, easy listening-slash-country tunes, “The Butterfly of Love” and “Gentle on My Mind.” By then, she could have retired; after all, some people can get a thrill knitting sweaters and sitting still. But some people ain’t she.

On the disco album, Merman’s backup singers wind up sounding as if they’re making Greek-chorus-like comments when they sing, “Why, why, why, baby?” (As Franz Liebkind asks in the movie of The Producers, “Baby? Who is this baby?” They can’t mean Ethel, can they?) But these singers are not the only distraction: In every cut, Ethel stops singing for minutes at a time as the band takes over, and each interlude is so lengthy that I often forget what the song is.

This recording was made almost half a century after Merman had established her career by singing “I Got Rhythm” in Girl Crazy on Broadway in 1930. Speaking of “I Got Rhythm,” how interesting that this cut starts out in a decidedly non-disco arrangement; the Merm sings it half-tempo while, in the background, a soft piano is soon joined by violins. Was this disco album, then, a carefully engineered plan to seduce young listeners with six new-sounding arrangements before giving them something traditional on the seventh cut, in hopes that they’d say, “You know, we like the old-world style better?” No. Two minutes into it, the arrangement does go disco, though the chorus does most of the work until Ethel returns with that famous note — which she doesn’t do as well as she did in her heyday but which still sounds pretty wonderful.

I don’t know how well The Merm did in ensnaring the younger crowd. She looks pretty old in the accompanying photos. Maybe that’s why, after she sings the line “I’m always doing something for the boys,” a military bugle riff follows — just so we understand that the something she’s doing for the boys is not a carnal act but some volunteer work for the armed forces. (On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong, for the chorus keeps interjecting “Hey, whatcha doin’? Whatcha doin’?” and they sound more alarmed every time they ask the question.) Finally, it’s funny in this context to hear The Merm sing about being sure that if she took even one sniff of cocaine, it would bore her terrifically, too. Lord knows, the white stuff was closely associated with the disco years. (Dontcha love the irony that disco’s primary showplace, Studio 54, is now a theater that’s housed one of the most successful revivals in Broadway history?)

Let’s not forget that Ethel wasn’t the only Broadway representative to feel she had to go disco. As Thomas Z. Shepard wrote in his liner notes for A Collector’s Sondheim, “1979 was open season for rearranging any and all songs to a disco beat.” He mentioned this by way of introducing Gordon Grody’s “The Disco Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” which was included on the album. Meanwhile, Evita got in the act with a whole album (The highlight: “Don’t Cry for Me, Argenteeeee-na!”) and On the Twentieth Century got the then-popular 12-inch vinyl single treatment via a group called The Body Shop, with “Never” on one side and “Our Private World” on the other. The Salsoul Orchestra did a 20-minute Fiddler on the Roof disco medley. RCA Victor, still trying to mine gold from their previous rock hit, did a Hair Disco Spectacular. And not only was there a whole series of disco medleys on an album called “Hooked On Broadway,” but was a volume two, too.

Then, of course, there was Got Tu Go Disco, the musical in which a Cinderella-like waif hoped to dress to kill and go to a disco. It was supposed to open in May 1979 but kept postponing its previews until well into June. In fact, how well I remember the evening of June 12, 1979. I was playing host to two musical enthusiasts from Boston and they had seen all the shows they’d planned to catch. Our conversation turned to the much-postponed Got Tu Go Disco, so I said, “Hey, why don’t we drop by the Minskoff and see if they’re rehearsing?”

Well, we hoofed it over to the theater, walked into the lobby, sauntered onto the escalator, and entered the back of the auditorium just in time to see an actor I recognized (I’ll call him Ken) standing center stage with his hands on his hips, speaking directly to a man sitting about H-110, saying in a none-too-soft voice: “And I am sick and tired of what’s been going on here. Nobody knows what the hell he’s doing.” He ranted for about four minutes until the gentleman in H-110 — I assume he was one of the three directors of this troubled show — softly and without much determination in his voice said, “Ken, drop your attitude. Can we start the number, please?” Then Ken and everyone else went into the title song, which I can still sing to you today (not that you’d want to hear it) because this director du jour started and stopped it four or five times and it burned its way into my consciousness.

My friends and I eventually became bored, so we left and went down the escalator to find an unpleasant surprise. Those who have passed the Minskoff during its dark periods will recall that, at such times, the escalators are shielded by sliding steel gratings that pull down and lock so that no one can enter — or, in our case, exit.

“Listen,” I said to my suddenly panicked friends, “there is another way out of here. I remember it from when I attended the gypsy run-through of Timbuktu.” They looked relieved until I mentioned, “It’s an exit to the right of the stage.” They registered a look of horror that said, “How are we going to get to that exit without going on stage?” but I headed them off with, “Come on, there’s so much chaos going on with this show that no one’s even going to notice that we’ve walked on stage. Just follow me.”

So back into the auditorium I marched with my reluctant apostles behind me, right down the aisle, grateful that there was a set of stairs leading to the stage and that there was a break in the action. We had no problem leaving Got Tu Go Disco, which would leave Broadway only 17 days later. It opened 13 days after our visit to such words as “memorably unmemorable” (Barnes, Post), “pure trash” (Watt, News), and “not for a theater audience” (Eder, Times).

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