This week’s topic is the screen musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein. I would daresay they are the most popular and most influential musical collaborators of modern times. Their partnership would push the musical form forward in ways that were then considered groundbreaking, if you can even imagine that. Richard Rodgers had previously worked with lyricist Lorenz Hart on several projects, resulting in well known songs – one of my favorite musicals from their partnership is Pal Joey, which was made into a movie with Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Rita Hayworth. Oscar Hammerstein II had teamed with others on operettas and the like, including Showboat with Jerome Kern.
They were the team that really championed the song as a vehicle for the characters to push the story forward, to advance the narrative. While this was done previously, more often Broadway performers sang tunes that showed off their range, or tunes popular at the time. The story kind of loosely linked songs together, but the R&H musicals really used them in new ways.
These musicals were wildly popular and because they first appeared on Broadway, the music was widely available on original cast albums. The songs were recorded and rerecorded by the biggest pop stars of the day, so when I was a kid in the 1960s, before rock & roll took hold, these tunes were on the radio and on the television variety shows. You couldn’t get away from them.
Also, my mother was a big fan of musical films and we often watched old movies on television. The Rodgers & Hammerstein musical was its own special thing, because it was going to take me far from the world that I knew. These musicals dropped us into the customs, cultures, costumes, and historical moments that many people knew little about and gave us stories of moral and cultural conflict.
They formed a backbone for the evolution of musicals today. The Disney animated musicals owe a lot to the Rodgers & Hammerstein template. While there are more contemporary styles that are reverting to the jukebox-style of building a story around existing songs, and other musicals that play with the song form.
But since the Rodgers & Hammerstein canon was sort of the bedrock of my youth, I wanted to spend some time with them. So let’s get started.
1. OKLAHOMA (1955) with Shirley Jones, Gordon McRae, Rod Steiger, Gloria Grahame
Did you know what it was like to live in an American territory out in the west back in the early 1900s? Me neither. The territory didn’t become a state until 1907, the same year jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden [who I talk about at the top of the show] was blowing jazz in Storyville. Out here in cow and corn country, pioneers had settled the frontier through farming and ranching – as we learn in the musical’s "The Cowman And The Farmer Should Be Friends" song. This ditty points to the very real land conflicts that historically led to violence and political maneuvering across the western frontier, something seen in other films like Kevin Costner’s Open Range (2003).
Anyway, this is a charming piece of Americana centers on the romances of two couples: primarily good girl Laurie (Jones) and amiable cowboy Curly (McRae), a pairing that is threatened by a claim from ranch hand Judd (Steiger), who wants Laurie for his own. The musical includes the dark dream sequence ballet taken from the stage musical, that was considered to be pioneering in its day. The ballet plays out Laurie’s fears about Judd muscling in on her and hurting Curly. These two spend a lot of the musical pretending to others that they don’t care for each other. The secondary romance in the film is about the character Ado Annie (Grahame), who is famously the "Girl Who Cain’t Say No," and efforts by boyfriend Will Parker to make her settle down.
Though the film is set in Indian Country, nary a Native American is seen in the film. And there is a carpetbagger character with a Muslim name: Ali Hakim. Played by Eddie Arnold, he’s a cartoon foreigner, a Persian, who only has an accent. But we get a lot of info about old-timey customs like ladies taking naps in the hot afternoons, and about newly married couples being stranded on top of a hayloft, and I love Ado Annie’s tune “I Cain’t Say No,” because it’s an attempt to see sexuality from a woman’s perspective. Ado Annie doesn’t get much condemnation for her flirtatious ways in this. But Rod Steiger terrified me as Judd. He was portrayed as brutal, dirty and unscrupulous. And somehow the fact that he didn’t need a dance double in the dream ballet made him that much more terrifying.
I also love how lyricist Hammerstein adapts the local accent for the rhyme structure of the songs – scare become skeer, pretty becomes purty so it can rhyme with flirty, can’t becomes cain’t so it rhymes with faint, etcetera. So many songs became staples: "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top," "People Will Say We’re In Love," and "Oh What a Beautiful Morning." It was the first feature to be filmed in ToddAO 70 mm Widescreen, so it’s eye-fillingly gorgeous.
Note: The musical, which was first performed on Broadway in 1943, is so enduring that there is a brand-new revival on Broadway right now. It is stripped down, darker, presented in the round with a bluegrass band performing all-new orchestrations and getting rave reviews.
2. THE KING AND I (1956) with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr
Oklahoma was adapted from a book called "Green Grow The Lilacs," and The King And I was also adapted from Margaret Landon’s novel “Anna and the King of Siam.”
Once again, Rodgers and Hammerstein create a major musical in a foreign country, now known as Thailand, at a pivotal point in history, the 1860s. The King of Siam, played by Brynner in his career-defining role, decided to hire a British governess to educate his many children to help modernize the country – more like Europeanize – and she ends up educating everyone, most especially the king. Can this be categorized as a White Savior movie? I think so. It’s unusual in the fact that the savior comes in the form of a woman, because the status of women was not particularly high at that time in that country.
It’s also a film that strongly suggests that the widowed Mrs. Anna and the King of Siam have a silent and unconsummated love affair, and that their big production number “Shall We Dance” is evident of their affection. Despite constant threats to leave his employ because he refuses to give her the house she is contracted to received, Anna ends up staying and advising the King until his death.
What the musical glosses over and considers quaint is the reality of female slavery within the country at that time. This is expressed in the fate of the concubine Tuptim, here played by Puerto Rican performer Rita Moreno. She has been given to the king as a gift but she is in love with another but she is not free to marry. She runs away and when she is found, Anna stops the king from lashing her. But in the original book, as well as in the previous nonmusical version with Rex Harrison as the king, the slave girl Tuptim is killed. Apparently Anna gets over this as part of the country’s customs.
What I loved MOST about this film is when the ladies and children of the court put on a Siamese version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the visiting English dignitaries. Watching this as a kid, this was my favorite part. First, because it was a showcase of traditional Thai dance, music, and theater. And perhaps even more importantly, it was a production of an anti-American slavery tract in another country before an audience of the world’s Number One colonizers and enslavers! The English! And they didn’t seem to bat an eye, they thought it was quaint.
This is also a film where most of the main roles are not played by Asians. Yul Brynner is Russian.
[On the show] I played "Hello Young Lovers" because it was among the songs from it, but while many people remember "Shall We Dance," I like this because it tells us that the main character Anna Leonowens isn’t thirsty. She’s not desperate for love, she’s satisfied in who she is, and she isn’t bitter over losing the love she had. My mother particularly loved a song from this, called "Something Wonderful." It seems to express women’s frustration with being with a strong man. It also falls into the R&H formula of having a big inspirational anthem sung by an older female character at the end of Act I. You have this again with "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" in The Sound Of Music and "You’ll Never Walk Alone" in Carousel.
3. CAROUSEL (1956) with Shirley Jones, Gordon McRae
How many of you had to sing ("You'll Never Walk Alone") one at a graduation or recital? This is from CAROUSEL, one of the saddest and most miserable of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals. I remember seeing it as a kid on TV and what I really liked was the carousel music theme with the horses spinning around, and then there was a beautiful ballet sequence on the New England seashore with a young girl. But I saw it again a few years ago and I was kind of appalled by it. Because it seems to condone the idea of domestic violence as a form of love.
Carousel reteams Shirley Jones and Gordon McRae in the lead roles, and they look good and sound good together. And the music is lovely and a bit more evolved than R&H's previous work. But the book is …?
First, the main character, Billy Bigelow, is DEAD when this starts. He’s dead, he was kinda lousy in life, and the Starkeeper in heaven or wherever he’s gone to afterward tells him to recount all his earthly missteps and then gives him one chance to go back and do a good deed to redeem himself. When the main character is already dead, how depressing is that?
The story is set in Maine at end of the 19th century. Billy is a carousel barker known to have ladies everywhere the carnival lands. So he’s a player. The older woman who owns the carousel attraction uses him as bait to bring young ladies to the ride, but is kind of possessive. It doesn’t spell it out in the musical but you get the sense that they’re more than just employer and employee. But once he claps eyes on young millworker Julie the two of them are done for and they quickly marry. Except Billy leaves the carnival and is basically an unemployed layabout. The couple ends up moving in with Julie’s cousin, who owns a restaurant where Julie works to pay the bills.
Meanwhile, Julie’s best friend from the mill, Carrie, hooks up with an enterprising fisherman, Mr. Snow. Though he smells like fish, he makes plenty of money and treats his girl like a queen. By contrast, Julie struggles to make ends meet, doesn’t know where Billy is half the time, and then it is revealed that he beats her. Ain’t that romantic? So of course Julie is pregnant, so Billy hooks up with a ne'er-do-well friend in a scheme to rob the mill owner while a big island clambake is going on. Not only does he get nabbed by police, he accidentally falls on a knife and is killed. Boo hoo. Julie is heartbroken, of course, but it cracks me up that she’s literally standing over her husband's body with her cousin singing "You’ll Never Walk Alone" within about two minutes.
So the part of this flick that really makes me go WHAAAA???? is toward the end. Billy’s daughter is now 16, about to graduate high school and deeply unhappy after having been taunted all her life about being poor, dead criminal Bigelow's daughter. Billy comes down to earth and becomes visible to her briefly to give her a bit of advice. But in that moment, she pulls back from him because he’s a stranger, and he goes to slap her. When this child tells her mother that this strange man tried to put his hands on her, she says it didn’t feel like a slap but a kiss. Julie, who seems to have caught a glimpse of Billy before he disappears, smiles and says: "YES, IT IS POSSIBLE, DEAR, FOR SOMEONE TO HIT YOU, HIT YOU HARD, AND IT NOT HURT AT ALL."
No. No no no no no no no.
Anyway, the songs in this bittersweet tale of marital violence became popular, including "June Is Busting Out All Over" and "If I Loved You." But to be honest, even though the Maine scenery and shots of the fishing boats on the water are gorgeous, the choreographed scenes are marvelous, and all of that clambake lobster looks delicious, I don’t need to ever see this again.
4. CINDERELLA (1957)
This is not technically a big screen musical, because it has always aired on television. The 1957 production aired to the largest TV audience up until then with Julie Andrews as Cinderella. But because videotape back then didn't exist, it was a one-off! So when the powers that be decided to air it again, it was in a new production. This is the version I grew up with, televised in 1967 with Lesley Ann Warren as Cindy and Stuart Damon as the Prince, with Celeste Holm as the Fairy Godmother, and Ginger Rodgers and Walter Pidgeon as the Queen and King. It is available for viewing on Amazon Prime, and I saw it again within the last six month. It's the ultimate fairy tale redone in R&H style. Because it’s fairly short compared with the others, this is among my favorites, And it’s got some really clever lyrics, as demonstrated by the "Stepsisters Lament" in which they cleverly downplay all Cindy's charms and threaten to break her arm and pull her hair out, ha ha. I also love other songs from this project, including "Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful," "In My Own Little Corner," and "Lovely Night."
"Cinderella" was reproduced for the Disney Channel in 1997 with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother -- and as co-producer -- and Brandy as Cinderella. This version also featured a diverse cast, with Bernadette Peters as the Stepmother, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen, Victor Garber as the King, Jason Alexander as a courtier and Paolo Montalban as the Prince. But some of the reviews of this diverse-cast, updated version weren't very kind.
5. SOUTH PACIFIC (1958) with Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, Ray Walston, Rossano Brazzi
Rodgers & Hammerstein adapted this from a couple of short stories from "Tales of the South Pacific" by James Michener.(Side note: Michener was also the author of the giant-sized novel "Hawaii," which was made into a non-musical film starring Julie Andrews and Richard Harris, and that hair-raising tale of missionary work, colonization, disease, poverty, culture clash, and racial superiority could take up another show). Here, American GIs during WWII are stationed in the South Seas. The story centers on two characters, a nurse named Nelly Forbush (Gaynor) who falls in love with a widowed French planter (Brazzi) only to find that her racial prejudice won’t allow her to marry a man who has been in a relationship with a native islander. And the other character is young soldier named Joe (Kerr), who despite having a girl back home, is lured into a relationship with a young local beauty (played by a young France Nyugen) by her mother, played by Juanita Hall. The musical was reportedly supposed to send a strong anti-racism message.
The musical contrasts the stories of a young American woman conflicted in her love affair with a white man by prejudice against his mixed-race children and a young American man conflicted in his love affair with a young native girl by duty to his family and the girl he left behind. But there is so much else going on in the film in terms of a love triangle, a big show-within-a-show, the WWII maneuvers, that the Don’t Be Racist message gets a bit muffled. Moreover, the message seems to only extend to Asians and Pacific Islanders, as African Americans continued to catch hell Stateside, and there are no African American characters.
Which brings me to Juanita Hall. Who is African American, and was a prominent figure on Broadway for many years. Here she plays Bloody Mary, the mother of the young girl Liat. She plays a local Tonkinese islander, speaks pidgin English, and is throwing her daughter at the young lieutenant Joe to get frisky with. So is it because she imagines her daughter’s life will be better with an American who has some financial means? Is it because there are no Tonkinese men available? And the American Seabees as they’re called totally make fun of Bloody Mary constantly. It is Bloody Mary who sings "Bali Hai" to entice Joe to the island and into her daughter’s bed, and I never understood exactly why.
South Pacific has a lot of song and dance numbers like "Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair," "There Is Nothing Like A Dame," the standard "Some Enchanted Evening," and the anti-racism song "You’ve Got To be Carefully Taught." Another very strange thing about South Pacific, is these colored lenses that come over the scenes. You’ll be watching and suddenly it will go green, or red, or yellow. Apparently the director wanted these to be subtle color changes, but this is not subtle at all and detracts from the film, I think.
Many people love this movie. I can take it or leave it.
6. FLOWER DRUM SONG_(1960) with Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, Miyoshi Umeki, Jack Soo, Juanita Hal
Several years ago TCM was having an “Asian Images In Film” festival. They showed this, one of my all-time favorite musicals, one I had not seen in its entirety or without commercials in many years. This was the Crazy Rich Asians of its time, with a mostly Asian cast, with two of the main Chinese-American roles played by Japanese actors. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and centering on a well-to-do Chinese American family and their attempts to keep to tradition and find a suitable wife for the oldest son from the old country, Flower Drum Song was also adapted from a popular 1950s novel. I had so many fond memories of seeing it as a kid, mostly because it presented an entirely different culture and place to me. But seeing it again more recently was eye opening. It’s a little frayed around the edges and showing its politically incorrect age as it concerns Asian stereotypes. It's still a delightful story with strong performances and amiable music; but many of the jokes are just wrong. (A completely re-jiggered book and staging was done in Los Angeles a few years ago by playwright David Henry Hwang is an attempt to clean it up and update the story.)
When I was a kid watching Flower Drum Song, Nancy Kwan was just IT. She was hip and happening and gorgeous, and I felt like I was just enduring the movie until she hit the screen again to do “I Love Being A Girl” or “Sweet Sunday” or “Fan Tan Fanny.” I loved her jazz dance moves, her wardrobe and her smooth patter. I didn’t understand that she was the conniving bitch of the movie -- I wasn’t sophisticated enough. But now, the movie for me is all about how precise, how precious, how heartbreaking Miyoshi Umeki was. Watching FDS this time, I fell totally in love with her, with her simplicity, her acting, her graceful long hands. She was utterly amazing. She won the first Academy Award ever given to an Asian actor, not for this but for Sayonara. She deserved it. I also remember her clearly from TV's The Courtship of Eddie’s Father with Bill Bixby as well. She had such a quiet, sweet intensity; some critics say she was successful because she was the very picture of the subservient Asian stereotype.
Anyway, this is the classic immigrant story. People who settle in America from another country for a new life; yet while the older generation insists on clinging to the ways of the old country, their children become completely Americanized. In this story, a young Mei Li (Umeki) and her father stow away on a boat from China to San Francisco to fulfill a marriage contract they forged with a local matron for her son, Sammy Fong (played by the hilarious Jack Soo, who was a stock character on 70s TV comedy Barney Miller). However, Sammy Fong is a swinging playboy nightclub owner with plans to marry the club’s lead attraction Linda Low (Kwan). He pawns off the Chinese newcomers on another local Chinatown matron. Madame Liang – played by our African American friend Juanita Hall – so Mei Li can become the bride to her brother’s college age son, Wang Ta, played by dreamboat James Shigeta. Complications predictably ensue.
At first Wang Ta is unaware of this arrangement and romances Linda Low himself. Linda goes out with him just to make Sammy jealous. Mei Li is quietly in love with Wang Ta and just waiting for him to pick her and finalize their marriage. Meanwhile, another local woman, Helen the seamstress, is also in love with Wang Ta. There are crossed signals, broken hearts, cross-cultural and cross-generational jokes, and a lot of song and dance numbers, some of them painful. Linda Low has a great number with "I Love Being A Girl," which reminded me of Ann Margret’s "How Lovely To Be A Woman" in Bye Bye Birdie (1963), and Wang Ta’s younger siblings and elders sing “The Older Generation,” which reminded me of "What’s The Matter With Kids Today," also from Bye Bye Birdie.
But some of the numbers I now see are awful, too, like the nightclub showgirl tune "Fan Tan Fannie" with a lot of fans and what Americans think of as Chinese musical flourishes, and "Chop Suey," a song of culture clash involving long lists of then-new concepts, sung by the cast. And "I Love Being A Girl" is a prehistoric artifact of a song. Nothing wrong with pride in being female, but the tune concentrates on women being girly, frilly, interested only in curly eyelashes, cold cream, dates with boys, and phone calls. We’re about much more than that. One of the best songs in the film is by a minor character, Helen the seamstress, who is in love with Wang Ta. She sings the torch song "Love Look Away," which leads into one of R&H’s infamous dream ballet sequences.
And early on in the musical, there are bad jokes about Chinese cuisine, including Tiger Bone Wine, Shark Fin Soup, and "Send me some 100-Year-Old Eggs, and make sure they're fresh!"
Still, the cast gives it their all, and some of the scenes were actually shot in Chinatown. A charming relic of a movie.
7. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1962) with Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer
This is the crown jewel of the Rodgers & Hammerstein ouevre, judging by the fact that it is shown on TV every year, it is constantly being revived on theater stages, and there are live orchestral sing-alongs all the time. Who doesn’t know the story of the plucky young nun novitiate Maria, whose rambunctious ways are a trial to the Mother Superior who sends her to be a governess to a motherless family in 1930s Austria. Not only does Maria tame the children, she wins the love of their stiff and joyless naval captain dad, launches them as international singing sensations, evades the evil Nazis and helps lead the family to freedom over the Alps in Switzerland.
There was a time I loved this musical, because Julie Andrews brings her freshness, her impeccable English diction, pristine soprano, and perfect comic timing to this as she does to just about everything. But I’ve seen it so many times it’s lost its charm. Even the travelogue of downtown Vienna, the scenes on the estate, and the Alpine vistas – I’m over it. I also used to find the idea of committing oneself to a nunnery fascinating (I also love the 1959 film A Nun's Life with Audrey Hepburn -- highly recommended).
But for me the takeaway of The Sound of Music is as simple as its name. It was true then and it is true now: Music heals.
I’m also amused by the fact that the song "My Favorite Things" has become synonymous to many with the Christmas holiday. It was not written nor intended as a holiday song, and in the film is sung during a decidedly warm weather thunderstorm. Because of the lines about :silver white winters" and "snowbells and sleigh bells," it keeps getting recorded alongside "Walking In A Winter Wonderland" and "Silver Bells."
So there it is, my take on the biggest Rodgers & Hammerstein movie blockbusters. For me, and perhaps my generation -- we the latter-year Baby Boomers-- these are the standards by which other modern musicals are judged. But they are also showing their age. So much has changed in our cultural politics, particularly our evolved attitudes about race, immigration, and the roles of women, that sometimes enjoying them now can feel like a guilty pleasure.
No comments:
Post a Comment