Loesser, Lerner & Loewe 101Class 7 • Paint Your Wagon (1951) & My Fair Lady (1956)

OLLI Winter Term 2021 • Alan Teasley, Instructor

Today’s Opening Number

[4:50]

Fred Astaire sings a song by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane

(1951)

Goals of the Course: You Will . . . Be familiar with ten stage musicals by these composers and lyricists, as well as some of their work for the movies

Explore the qualities of these shows that have had them acclaimed as classics of “Broadway’s Golden Age”

Enjoy their many contributions to the Great American Songbook

Today’s Focus

You will learn: Additional information on Brigadoon Lerner’s work during a “break” from Loewe Background, story, & songs of Paint Your Wagon and My Fair Lady (Part 1)

You will review: The influence of Rodgers & Hammerstein on the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s

You will (continue to) appreciate: The scope and variety of Lerner & Loewe’s Broadway musicals

You will hear some great music!

Common Characteristics of the Musicals of Lerner & Loewe

• Musical plays anchored by a strong libretto, seamlessly coupled with memorable lyrics

• Unabashedly romantic melodies that blend operetta with Broadway yet evoke a specific place and time (Scotland, gold rush California, Edwardian England, belle époque Paris)

• Integration of dance & design as key components of storytelling.

• Songs always work “in” the show and often work “outside” it as well.

Revisiting Brigadoon Brigadoon (1947): Creative Team

• Producer: Cheryl Crawford • Director: Robert Lewis • Book & Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner • Music: Frederick Loewe • Dances & Musical Numbers: Agnes de Mille • Scenic Design: Oliver Smith • Costumes: David Ffolkes • Musical Director: Franz Allers • Cast: David Brooks, Marion Bell, George

Keane, Pamela Britton

Best Choreography: Agnes de Mille

Brigadoon Won 1 Tony Award in 1952

This was the first year Tony Awards were awarded, and the categories were not what they became. No nominees were noted. Other winners in Musical categories:

Street Scene Best Score—Kurt Weill Finian’s Rainbow Best Choreography for Michael Kidd; Best Featured Actor in a Musical for David Wayne Lucinda Ballard won for Best Costume Design—for her six (!) productions that year, including Street Scene

Brigadoon: The Contribution of Agnes de Mille

“[Oklahoma! in 1943] was the fullest expression to date of a movement toward the greater integration of a musical’s component parts: dialogue, song, and dance. This last crucial element was supplied by a petite, determined, often querulous, perennially anxious choreographer.”

Kantor & Maslon, Broadway: The American Musical (2019)

Brigadoon: The Contribution of Agnes de Mille

• Between Oklahoma! and Brigadoon, de Mille choreographed One Touch of Venus, Bloomer Girl, and Carousel.

• As soon as producer Cheryl Crawford acquired the rights to Brigadoon, she brought in de Mille.

• De Mille and director Robert Lewis found the script excessively saccharine and set about to “neutralize the operetta-like goo in the story . . . .”

Brigadoon: The Contribution of Agnes de Mille

• De Mille took a red pencil and crossed out whole sections of the libretto where she felt dance could tell the story better.

• Act I now ended with a wedding dance and the sword dance, while Act 2 began with a frantic chase followed by Harry’s death and a moving funeral sequence (with real bagpipers!)

• The result combined Scottish folk traditions, classical ballet, and American modern dance.

Ethan Mordden’s Statement“Brigadoon, interestingly enough, was the work of men who had failed and failed till they went into the Rodgers and Hammerstein camp. “Brigadoon is so rationalized that it can’t be operetta, after all. In fact, it’s a Rodgers and Hammerstein show, one of the few that Rodgers and Hammerstein didn’t actually write.”

*Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 1940s (1999)

Broadway’s Golden Age

Year Rodgers & Hammerstein Lerner & Loewe Frank Loesser Others

1943 Oklahoma! What’s Up?

1944 On the Town (Bernstein)

1945 Carousel The Day Before Spring

1946 Annie Get Your Gun (Berlin)

1947 Allegro Brigadoon Finian’s Rainbow (Lane, Harburg)

1948 Where’s Charley? Kiss Me, Kate (Porter) Love Life (Weill, Lerner)

1949 South Pacific

1950 Guys and Dolls

1951 The King and I Paint Your Wagon

1953 Me and Juliet Wonderful Town (Bernstein)

1956 My Fair Lady The Most Happy Fella Candide (Bernstein et al.)

1957 Pipe Dream Cinderella (TV)

West Side Story (Bernstein & Sondheim)

1958 Flower Drum Song Gigi (film)

1959 The Sound of Music Gypsy (Styne & Sondheim)

1960 Camelot Greenwillow

1961 How to Succeed . . .

The Typical Aarons & Freedley Show of the 1920s*

1. Get top stars. 2. Use the stars’ personas to create the script and score. 3. Get a top score with a contemporary sound. 4. Embody a “racy, wacky, absolutely twenties world

view.” 5. When the plot thins, “have someone don a disguise.”

*Ethan Mordden, Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre (2013)

The Rules in Ethan Mordden’s “R&H Handbook”*

1. Develop each story’s community background, culture, mores. 2. Write about people whose lives have meaning. 3. Start uniquely. 4. Anchor the score with character traction. 5. Change your genre from show to show. 6. [Don’t have rules.] 7. The second act should last half as long as the first act with

twice as much action.*Ethan Mordden, Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre (2013)

Lerner’s “Break”: 1947-1951Love Life (October 1948): Lerner (book & lyrics), Kurt Weill (music), Elia Kazan (direction), Michael Kidd (choreography) Royal Wedding (film, March 1951): Lerner (story, screenplay & lyrics), Burton Lane (music), Stanley Donen (direction) An American in Paris (film, November 11, 1951): Lerner (story & screenplay), George & Ira Gershwin (music & lyrics), Vincent Minnelli (direction)—won 6 Academy Awards Paint Your Wagon (opened in New York on November 12, 1951)

Love Life (1948): Creative Team

• Producer: Cheryl Crawford • Director: Elia Kazan • Book & Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner • Music: Kurt Weill • Choreography: Michael Kidd • Scenic Design: Boris Aronson • Costumes: Lucinda Ballard • Cast: Nanette Fabray, Ray Middleton

Love Life: 2020 Encores! Production

Suspended . . . for now[5:36]

Royal Wedding (1951)

• Producer: Arthur Freed (MGM) • Director: Stanley Donen • Story, Screenplay, Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner* • Music: Burton Lane* • Choreography: Nick Castle & Fred Astaire • Cast: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter

Lawford, Sarah Churchill, Keenan Wynn

*Oscar Nomination for Best Music, Original Song: “Too Late Now”

An American in Paris (1951)

• Producer: Arthur Freed (MGM) • Director: Vincent Minnelli • Story & Screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner* • Music: George & Ira Gershwin • Choreography: Gene Kelly • Cast: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar

Levant

*Oscar Win for Best Writing, Story & ScreenplayMovie won 6 Oscars total, including Best Picture

Paint Your Wagon (1951): Creative Team

• Producer: Cheryl Crawford • Director: Daniel Mann • Book & Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner • Music: Frederick Loewe • Dances & Musical Ensembles:

Agnes de Mille • Scenic Design: Oliver Smith • Costumes: Motley • MConductor: Franz Allers • Cast: James Barton, Olga San Juan,

Tony Bavaar, Rufus Smith

Paint Your Wagon: The Setting

California Wilderness, 1853

Paint Your Wagon: The Singing Chorus

Encores! 2015 Production

Paint Your Wagon: The Dancing Chorus

Encores! 2015 Production

Paint Your Wagon: The Story

• “Crusty old miner” Ben Rumsen and his 16-year-old daughter Jennifer find gold in the California wilderness.

• Soon the town of Rumsen has 400 residents—all men except for Jennifer.

• Jennifer falls for Julio, a young Mexican miner.

• A Mormon man arrives with two wives, which the miners think isn’t fair. They demand he sell one of them.

Paint Your Wagon: The Story

• In the ensuing auction, Ben wins Elizabeth with the highest bid.

• A coach arrives with Cherry and her “Fandango girls.”

• Jennifer heads back East to learn civilized ways.

• Some more stuff happens in Act II. • Jennifer ends up with Julio.

“By mixing Western gold dust with show vitality, the authors have produced a bountiful and exultant musical jamboree . . . not quite so meticulously edited and organized as Brigadoon. [T]he abundance, good humor, and romantic beauty of Paint Your Wagon make a very happy evening in the theatre. It’s a lot of fun.” (Brooks Atkinson, New York Times)

“It is a lush and lusty score, more lush and lusty than the book and lyrics. But scarcely less monotonous. . . . There is too much dancing, just as there is too much of everything but story and James Barton.” (Robert Garland, Journal-American)

Paint Your Wagon Reviews (1951)

“It has gigantic faults. [The first act] is an intermittently interesting, unfunny, almost actionless hour and a half before any real agitation or energy captures the stage.”(William Hawkins, World-Telegram & Sun)

“Twice in the first act Agnes de Mille catches hold of a striking mood. At the opening of the second act Miss de Mille cuts loose with a roaring dance-hall fandango, and she follows it almost immediately with an exquisitely touching number . . . But the rest of Paint Your Wagon is much too earnest a proposition.” (Walter Kerr, Herald Tribune)

“Paint Your Wagon is so lavish with its songs, dances, and colorful atmosphere that I feel more than customarily ungrateful when I say the result is mildly disappointing. (Richard Watts Jr., Post)

Paint Your Wagon Reviews (1951) Paint Your Wagon at the 1952 Tony Awards

No Nominations

Paint Your Wagon (Film, 1969)

• Producer: Alan Jay Lerner (Paramount)

• Director: Joshua Logan • Screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner

(“Adaptation by Paddy Chayefsky”) • Additional songs by André Previn • Conductor: Nelson Riddle* • Choreography: Jack Baker • Cast: Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood,

Jean Seberg, Harve Presnell*Oscar Nomination for Best Music/Score of a Musical[Trailer 1:04]

Paint Your Wagon (2015 Encores! Production): Creative Team

• Producer: New York City Center • Director: Marc Bruni • Choreographer: Denis Jones • Orchestrations: Ted Royal • Musical Director: Rob Berman • Cast: Keith Carradine, Alexandra

Socha, Justin Guarini, Nathaniel Hackmann

Paint Your Wagon The Songs (Broadway)

Act I (continued) “Whoop-T-Ay” “Carino Mio” “There’s a Coach Comin’ In”

Act II “Hand Me Down That Can O’ Beans” “Another Autumn “Movin’” “All for Him” “Wandrin’ Star”

Act I “I’m On My Way” “Rumson Town” “What’s Going On Here?” “I Talk to the Trees” “Lonely Men” “They Call the Wind Maria” “I Still See Elisa” “How Can I Wait?” “Trio” “In Between”

Video Excerpts from . . .

[Total: 7:16]

Previewing My Fair Lady My Fair Lady (1956): Creative Team

• Producer: Herman Levin • Director: Moss Hart • Book & Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner • Adapted from Shaw’s Pygmalion • Music: Frederick Loewe • Choreography: Hanya Holm • Production Design: Oliver Smith • Costumes: Cecil Beaton • Musical Direction: Franz Allers • Dance Music Arranged by: Trude Rittman • Cast: Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley

Holloway, Robert Coote, John Michael King

“My Fair Lady”

Broadway: The American Musical (PBS, 2004)

from Episode 4: “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” (1943-1960)”

[7:12]

Preparation for Class 8

Immerse yourself in My Fair Lady. A YouTube playlist of the Original Broadway Cast Recording is on the Class 7 page of the website. It looks like the 1964 film of My Fair Lady will be available on Netflix as of April 1, 2021. It is available on YouTube for rental ($2.99+). Check the class website on Sunday for links to more My Fair Lady YouTube playlists.

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